Power Production

by Debra Fiakas CFA Last week Covanta, Holding Corp. (CVA:  NYSE) announced the pricing of a note offering.  The waste disposal and waste-to-energy company raised $400 million in the deal.  The new capital will make it possible for Covanta to repay some older debt when enough to spare for future expansion capital.  Covanta’s business model of using the municipal waste it collects for electricity generation is capital intensive.  What is more management has shown a penchant for acquisitions.  Just two months ago Covanta acquired two waste transfer stations from a competitor. Covanta appears to be making...

Tom Konrad CFA It’s Good to be Small Small investors have an advantage over big hedge funds and other professional investors: They don’t have as much money. Why is not having much money an advantage?  It allows us to invest in stocks that large investors simply cannot touch because of lack of liquidity.  If a stock only trades $50,000 worth of shares a day, a even a relatively small $50 million dollar hedge fund would have to buy all of the shares traded for two weeks just to allocate 1% to the stock, and would have...

by Al Speisman, Esq. Al Speisman, Esq. Power REIT1 (NYSE MKT:PW) is a micro-cap Real Estate Investment Trust with assets generating consistent, secure cash flow.  Power REIT’s assets consist of long-term railroad infrastructure as well as 600 acres of land leased to solar farms. Power REIT’S current underlying value of $11.07 per share is delineated in a shareholder presentation on Power REIT’S Web-Site. This valuation does not factor in potential success in Power REIT’s pending Federal Appeal. A recent article appearing in Value Investors...

FPL Group Inc (FPL) reported 2005 fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $206 million, or $0.53 per share, compared with $173 million, or $0.47 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2004. FPL Group's net income for the fourth quarter 2005 included a net unrealized after-tax gain of $27 million associated with the mark-to-market effect of non-qualifying hedges. The results of last year's fourth quarter included a net unrealized after-tax loss of $2 million associated with the mark-to-market effect of non-qualifying hedges. Excluding the mark-to-market effect of non-qualifying hedges, FPL Group's earnings would have been...

Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA The Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK) has been one of my star performers in an excellent year.  Is it still a good investment at these prices?  Since I recommended the Algonquin Power Income Fund (AGQNF.PK/APF-UN.TO) in January as a renewable energy income stock for 2009, the company is up 69%, in addition to the C$0.02 monthly dividend, worth approximately another 8% through August on the US$1.82 purchase price, making it the second-best performing of my ten picks (after Cree, Inc (CREE).)  However, since the major basis for my recommendation at the time was the...

Tom Konrad CFA The Windstar Wind Farm. Photo credit: Western Wind Energy If the sale of Western Wind Energy Corp (TSXV:WND, OTC:WNDEF) were a movie it would be a satire like This Is Spinal Tap, the 1984 Rob Reiner classic Mockumentary profiling a “Heavy Metal band on the verge of spontaneous combustion.” I doubt any wind turbines are about to spontaneously burst into flame, but the news keeps getting weirder. First, there was the hedge fund (Savitr) which began pressuring management to put the company up for sale after...

Tom Konrad CFA Location of the Miekle wind energy project. Photo source: Finavera On June 21st, Finavera Wind Energy (TSXV:FVR, OTC:FNVRF) announced the ratification of the sale of its Tumbler Ridge and Meikle wind energy projects to Pattern Energy with 99.63% of votes cast in favor (a 2/3 majority was needed). The result should have surprised no one, given that the sale was essential to Finavera’s liquidity and ability to fund its operations.  After shareholder, stock exchange, and regulatory approval, Pattern will forgive C$9.3 million of Finavera’s...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Two weeks ago TerraForm Global, Inc. filed yet another amendment to its S-1 registration statement as the SunEdison, Inc. (SUNE:  NYSE) spinout grinds forward with its initial public offering.  TerraForm is a collection of SunEdison’s renewable energy properties, primarily its solar, wind and hydro-electric power generation facilities around the world.  The current portfolio sums up to over 1,400 megawatts in total generating capacity, of which over 900 are spoken for through power purchase commitments that cover the next 19 years.    On a pro forma basis, the assets produced $298.9 million in total revenue, providing...

Charles Morand Last Friday, the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog noted how, according to HSBC, growing government efforts to de-carbonize the electricity supply across the developed world would hurt makers of power generation technology with high exposure to coal. Yesterday, the EIA released its Electric Power Monthly report for April 2009. In it, the agency notes the following: The drop in coal-fired generation was the largest absolute fuel-specific decline from April 2008 to April 2009 as it fell by 20,551 thousand megawatthours, or 13.9 percent  The April decline was the third consecutive month of historically large drops...

Tom Konrad CFA In the first article of this survey of yield cos, I looked at the possible reasons for the seemingly endless enthusiasm for US-listed clean energy yield cos.  Here, I'll take a look at how these yield cos are constructed, and why investors should prefer one structure over another. Who's Your Daddy? Most yield cos have been created by clean energy project developers in order to create a ready, low-cost buyer for those projects.  With the recent string of very successful IPOs, the capital available for such projects may prove...

Tom Konrad CFA Western Wind and the Toronto Hedge Funds Last October, Western Wind Energy (TSXV:WND, OTC:WNDEF) received an unsolicited takeover bid of $2.50 a share from Algonquin Power (TSX:AQN, OTC:AQUNF) to buy the company.  Before the bid, the stock had been trading in the $1.20-$1.25 range, but President and CEO Jeff Ciachurski felt that it did not fully value the company’s projects and assets, including approximately $1 per share of US tax assets which the Canadian company Algonquin would not be able to use. Large shareholders at the time were in favor of the sale, including at least one shareholder...