Sale frees up cash for new projects

Article Excerpt

EMERA INC. $54 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol EMA; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 236.2 million; Market cap: $12.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 4.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.emera.com) owns 100% of Nova Scotia Power, that province’s main electricity supplier. It also holds interests in several power plants and natural gas pipelines in the U.S. and the Caribbean. The company has now completed the sale of its power utilities in Maine (Emera Maine) to ENMAX Corp., the utility company owned by the City of Calgary. Emera received $959 million U.S. for that business. ENMAX will also assume $500 million U.S. worth of debt, bringing the total value of the deal to roughly $1.8 billion U.S. The proceeds will help Emera fund its plan to spend $7.5 billion on new projects and plant upgrades between 2020 and 2022. The cash will also help the company meet its goal of raising the annual dividend rate between 4% and 5% each year through 2022…