Topic: How To Invest

The Successful Investor Hotline – Friday, March 22, 2019

Article Excerpt

FORTIS INC., $49.71, Toronto symbol FTS, is the main supplier of electrical power in Newfoundland and PEI. It also owns electrical utilities across Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean. In addition, the company distributes natural gas in British Columbia, Arizona and New York State. The company plans to spend $17.3 billion on capital projects between 2019 and 2023. That’s equal to 81% of its $21.3 billion market cap (the total value of all outstanding shares). Most of that spending will go toward improving the reliability of Fortis’s regulated utilities. As a result, it’s likely that regulators will let the company pass along most of the costs of those upgrades to its customers. About 55% of that spending will go Fortis’s U.S. operations, with a further 42% going to its Canadian utilities. The company’s Caribbean operations account for the remaining 3%. Fortis also expects that its cash flow will cover 68% of those investments, while new debt will pay for an additional 24%. Sales of…