Investors, if you are considering buying stock in Windstream (NASDAQ: WIN ) , please ask yourselves this question: "Am I gong to purchase part of a company I think will continue to grow its telecom business, or am I only attracted to its high-yield dividend?"
That's important to determine because in this era of absurdly low Treasury yields (around 1.9% for a 10-year note), Windstream's dividend yield of over 11% exerts a gravitational pull that can easily override common fiscal sense.
Let's take a look at Windstream's first-quarter earnings and try to find an answer.
Total revenue for the quarter declined 2.5% from the same period last year. As a company that is still invested heavily in the sinking wire-line telephone business, that shouldn't come as a surprise.
But the company has been shifting its focus to providing broadband Internet service to consumer and business customers, and those segments have shown growth: Business service revenue is up 2% and consumer broadband service revenue is up 5% over the first quarter of 2012.
Top 10 Food Companies For 2015: SuperValu Inc.(SVU)
SUPERVALU INC., together with its subsidiaries, operates retail food stores in the United States. Its stores offer grocery, general merchandise, health and beauty care, pharmacy, and fuel products. The company operates stores under the Acme, Albertsons, Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher?s, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw?s, Shop ?n Save, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy, and Star Market banners, as well as in-store pharmacies under the Osco and Sav-on banners. It operates approximately 2,394 traditional and hard-discount retail food stores, including 899 licensed Save-A-Lot stores. The company also offers supply chain services, which include wholesale distribution of products to independent retailers, including single and multiple grocery store independent operators, regional and national chains, mass merchants, and the military customers, as well as provides logistics support services. SUPERVALU was founded in 1871 and is based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Rich Duprey]
Bought out earlier this year from SUPERVALU (NYSE: SVU ) by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, Albertsons has decided to forgo compiling individual customer shopping habits through loyalty cards at all of its brands, including Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's/Star Market, and its namesake stores. Shoppers might not be aware of the treasure trove of data contained in those plastic store cards you swipe at the beginning of your checkout procedure, but they're a marketer's dream.
- [By Dan Caplinger]
Once a company becomes a member of the elite Dividend Aristocrats list, it takes a lot to dislodge that company from its ranks. After all, having demonstrated a 25-year history of raising dividends even through the ups and downs of the economy, companies don't want to give up the hard-earned distinction without a fight. Unfortunately, though, sometimes losing Dividend Aristocrat status is unavoidable, and SUPERVALU (NYSE: SVU ) marks a good example of what can happen to derail a company's dividend success.
5 Best Dividend Stocks To Watch For 2014: Plum Creek Timber Company Inc.(PCL)
Plum Creek Timber Company, Inc. is a publicly owned real estate investment trust (REIT). The trust owns and manages timberlands in the United States. Its products include lumber products, plywood, medium density fiberboard, and related by-products, such as wood chips. The trust also focuses on mineral extraction and natural gas production, communication, and transportation. Plum Creek Timber Company was founded in 1989 and is based in Seattle, Washington.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jacob Roche]
Weyerhaeuser� (NYSE: WY ) and Plum Creek Timber (NYSE: PCL ) have seen sales go up almost 20% in the past three years, and margins are strong. Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek both get a significant amount of their business from the sale of whole logs, manufactured wood, and pulp, making them key suppliers to the increasing demand from different industries. Plum Creek is in a particularly good position, as much of its assets are in the eastern half of the United States, which has been less affected by the beetle.
- [By Saibus Research]
WY and the majority of the timber, forest and paper products companies have a track record of unimpressive returns on capital, cyclical revenue and profit trends, heavy use of capital expenditures, and significant environmental regulation. We also think that WY's conversion to a REIT was a mistake. Morningstar Investment Research's Timber, Forest and Paper Products analyst Dan Rohr said it best when he rated WY and its Timber REIT peers Rayonier (RYN), Potlatch (PCH) and Plum Creek (PCL) as not possessing any economic moat. That probably explains why we only have an ancillary exposure to this industry for our proprietary portfolio based on our holdings in Brookfield Infrastructure (BIP) and Cintas (CTAS). Brookfield's Timber segment only accounts for 5% of its Fund Flows from operations and Cintas's document management business is suffering from reduced prices on recycled paper. At least Cintas Document Management only accounts for 8% of Cintas's revenue.
5 Best Dividend Stocks To Watch For 2014: Alamo Group Inc. (ALG)
Alamo Group, Inc. provides equipment and related replacement parts for maintenance and agriculture. It offers industrial equipment, such as boom-mounted mowers and other types of cutters for heavy-duty, intensive use applications, including maintenance around highway, airport, recreational, and other public areas; heavy-duty, tractor-and truck-mounted mowing and vegetation maintenance equipment; air, mechanical broom, and regenerative air sweepers along with environmental sweepers, and pothole patchers; and products for excavation, grading, shaping, and other tasks involved in land clearing, road building, or maintenance. The company produces catch basin cleaners and roadway debris vacuum systems; parking lot sweepers; and snow plows and heavy-duty snow removal equipment, hitches and attachments for trucks, loaders, and graders. It offers a line of tractor-powered equipment, such as rotary cutters, finishing mowers, flail mowers, disc mowers, ZTR ride-on mowers, front-end loaders, backhoes, rotary tillers, posthole diggers, and scraper blades; cutting parts, plain and hard-faced replacement tillage tools, disc blades, and fertilizer application components; heavy-duty mechanical rotary mowers, snow blowers, and rock removal equipment; a line of hydraulic, boom-mounted hedge, and grass cutters, as well as other tractor attachments and implements; and hydraulic, boom-mounted hedge and hedgerow cutters, and agricultural seedbed preparation cultivators. The company also provides light-duty power arm mowers and agricultural implements; vacuum trucks, high pressure cleaning systems, and trenchers; and hydraulic and mechanical boom mowers. The company sells its products through a network of independent dealers and distributors, governmental end-users, and related independent contractors, as well as to the agricultural and commercial turf markets in the United States, England, France, Canada, and Australia. The company was founded in 1955 and is based in Seguin, Texas.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Garrett Cook]
In trading on Thursday, industrials shares were relative leaders, up on the day by about 0.66 percent. Top gainers in the sector included Alamo Group (NYSE: ALG), up 27.5 percent, and PMFG (NASDAQ: PMFG), up 7.8 percent.
5 Best Dividend Stocks To Watch For 2014: Progress Energy Inc.(PGN)
Progress Energy, Inc., a utility holding company, engages in the generation, transmission, distribution, and sale of electricity in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. It uses coal, oil, hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear power to generate electricity. The company also engages in various alternative energy projects to generate electricity from swine waste and other plant or animal sources, biomass, solar, hydrogen, and landfill-gas technologies. Progress Energy serves various industries, including chemicals, textiles, paper, food, metals, wood products, rubber and plastics, and stone products, as well as phosphate rock mining and processing, electronics design and manufacturing, and citrus and other food processing. It has approximately 22,000 megawatts of regulated electric generation capacity and serves approximately 3.1 million retail electric customers, as well as other load-serving entities. The company was formerly known as CP&L Energy, Inc. Progress En ergy, Inc. was founded in 1925 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Holly LaFon] ess Energy shares climbed over 2011 as the company announced in January it would merge with Duke Energy. Together, they will form the nation�� largest utility with a combined enterprise value of $65 billion and $37 billion in market cap. The new company will have 57 gigawatts of domestic generating capacity through a mix of coal, nuclear, natural gas, oil and renewable resources. Progress energy shareholders will receive an approximately 3 percent dividend increase.
Incidentally, development of a comprehensive energy policy was one of what Grantham called ��he most important and most dangerous issues��facing the world.
Progress is at the forefront of the push for nuclear energy in the U.S., which has been deemed the ��uclear renaissance.��Thirty-five percent of the electricity used by Progress Energy customers comes from one of their four nuclear sites, two in North Carolina, and one each in South Carolina and Florida. It plans to build another reactor in Levy County, Florida.
Revenue at Progress Energy has declined at a 2.6% annual rate over the past five years, and it achieved cash flow of $95 million in 2010, after three years of losses. Earnings have remained positive, reaching a record for the decade of $856 million in 2010.
RSC Holdings (RRR)
RSC is a machinery rental service for construction, industrial, petrochemical, governmental and manufacturing businesses in the U.S. and Canada. RSC tends to benefit in economic downturns, as more businesses turn to renting rather than buying equipment to cut costs. Rented equipment rose 20.7% percent (the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth) and rental revenue increased 27% in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to last year.
United Rentals (URI), one of RSC�� largest competitors, had a rental revenue increase of 18.5% in the fourth quarter compared to last year, which included a 6.7% increase in rental rates.
The company�� fleet utilization also
- [By Ben Levisohn]
We expect Caledonia to generate close to $600M in EBITDA. While RIGs mid-water OPEX has averaged about $125k/d we expect it to be lower at Caledonia. 2015 Consensus EBITDA for RIG is ~$3B which means 20% of RIGs 2015 EBITDA comes from the rigs that will become Caledonia. The problem (in a bear market) is that companies with lower end rigs trade at a discount ��just ask Awilco (AWLCF), Fred Olsen Energy, and Paragon Offshore (PGN) which trade at an average multiple of 3.3x on 2015 EBITDA versus RIG which trades at 6.3x.
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