The Best Peak Oil Investments: Nine Mass Transit Stocks
Tom Konrad CFA In 2007 and 2008, high gasoline prices gave a large boost to mass transit ridership. Here are the stocks that might benefit if that scenario repeats itself. Americans are notoriously attached to their cars, but high oil prices in 2007 and 2008 led many to get on a bus or train. According to a 2009 paper Transit Ridership Models: Present Status and Future Needs by Grace Galluci and John D Allen, Ph.D. from Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority, current published transit ridership models do not yet incorporate changes in gasoline prices. The authors consider...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Bicycle and Scooter Stocks
Tom Konrad CFA When gas prices rise, more people turn to bicycles for transportation. Will these bike and scooter stocks ride in the oil price's slipstream? UPDATE: Here is an article on one more bicycle stock that should have been on this list: Shimano (SHMDF.PK). A 2008 survey of bicycle retailers found that the vast majority of bike store owners felt that their sales had increased because many people were turning to bicycles for some of their transportation needs because of high gas prices. 95% of store owners reported that they had new customers because of...
Will Electric Bicycles Get Americans to Start Pedaling?
by Marc Gunther. First Published on Yale Environment 360 Electric bicycles are already popular in Europe and in China, which has more e-bikes than cars on its roads. Now, manufacturers are marketing e-bikes in the U.S., promoting them as a "green" alternative to driving. Most Americans know about Tesla , the Chevy Volt, and the Nissan Leaf. But what about Evelo, the eZip Trailz, and the Faraday Porteur? The first three are, of course, electric cars. They benefit from a lot of media attention and generous government subsidies, including a...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Accell and Six Other Bicycle Stocks
Tom Konrad CFA This article gathers all the bicycle and e-bike stocks I've found in one place, and takes a look at a recent find: Accell Group (ACCEL.AS). When I first became interested in alternative transportation as a peak-oil investing theme in late 2007, I was frustrated at my inability to find very many good alternative transportation stocks: The list of bike stocks I found was already very out-of date, and the lists of rail transit and bus companies I found did not distinguish between publicly traded companies I could invest in, and private companies I could...
The Four Best Peak Oil Investments
Tom Konrad CFA The best four stocks I've found in my six month quest to find the best peak oil investments. I apologize for being a tease. Since March, I've been writing this series I've called "The Best Peak Oil Investments," but in many cases what I've actually done is to warn readers to stay away from particular sectors. This bait-and-switch was compounded for my syndicated readers at Seeking Alpha when their editors decided to re-title the early articles in this series "Peak Oil Investments I'm Putting My Money On." If you've stuck...
What I Learned During Last Week’s Visit With ePower
John Petersen Last week I spent a couple days with ePower Engine Systems working my way through a variety of business and technical due diligence issues. As always happens with new clients, it was a full immersion course in how ePower’s technology works, what the documented performance of the current tractor is, and how that performance is expected to change as ePower: transitions from a four cylinder engine designed for stationary use to an EPA compliant six cylinder engine designed for the trucking industry; automates a new charge control system that will opportunistically charge the batteries in...
Less Well Known Autonomous Car Stocks
Car manufacturers have fully embraced self-driving or autonomous cars. It is not because they have heard a loud clamor for such technology from consumers. No, automakers are keen on the idea because manufacture of self-driving cars could help them overcome the short comings of highly cyclical sales pattern associated with its car dependent upon a single driver. In other words, they are in it for themselves whether consumers benefit or not.
If consumers are not so important, at least investors should benefit. Besides the car manufacturers there are a few smaller companies that can give investors a taste of the self-driving car phenomenon.
LiDar and...
Another Chance To Buy Power REIT On The Cheap
Tom Konrad CFA An earlier version of this article appeared on the author's Forbes blog on June 3rd. An article about Power REIT (NYSE:PW) that came out on Seeking Alpha on May 30th has sent some investors running for the hills. The article has since been removed from Seeking Alpha. According to PW's CEO, David Lesser, Seeking Alpha’s editorial staff concluded that it had reached unsupported and erroneous conclusions after discussions with him and Ryan Griffin, the article’s author. Ryan Griffin told me that he did not have time to respond to the...
Buying Opportunity at Renewable Energy REIT, Courtesy of Disgruntled Shareholder
Tom Konrad CFA Power REIT (AMEX:PW) aims to be the first renewable energy infrastructure Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). The Renewable Energy REIT Renewable energy advocates have been calling for a change in the tax laws to allow renewable energy within the REIT structure. A REIT is allowed to pass profits directly through to investors. These profits are not subject to double-taxation like most corporate profits. Owning shares of a renewable REIT would be much like owning a slice of a wind or solar farm. This would open up the renewable energy investment opportunity to everyone, not just...
Historic Oil/Gas and Gas/Coal prices provide opportunity for fuel switching
Oil Gas and Coal Gas Ratio That sound you hear is the stampede of shale gas drillers away from dry gas plays. The irrational exuberance of shale gas drillers, chief amongst them Chesapeake's voluble Aubrey McLendon, is leading to an impressive destruction of capital. The long run marginal cost is significantly above the current spot price. With natural gas storage bursting at the seams, natural gas is reverting to its historical nuisance byproduct as drilling moves to liquid rich plays. While not sustainable in the long term, the present pricing situation presents opportuinities to...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Shimano
Tom Konrad CFA I missed Shimano (SHMDF.PK) in my recent list of bicycle and scooter stocks, but in many ways, Shimano is the best of the lot. Shimano Inc. manufactures bicycle components and fishing and rowing gear, with the bike segment accounting for about four-fifths of sales, but I had not realized that they were public until I received a note from a reader in response to my recent article on bike and moped stocks. In that article, I noted that, while bike sales rose in response to rising oil prices in 2008, bicycle repairs surged...
Ameresco, New Flyer, PFB: Q1 Efficiency Earnings Highlights
Tom Konrad CFA Performance contractor Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE:AMRC) reported earnings on May 9th. Revenues were below analyst expectations, but Chairman, CEO, and President George Sakellaris put this down to timing issues, and stuck by his full year guidance. Strong growth in the firm’s backlog and awarded project’s seem to back up this relatively optimistic view. From the earnings call transcript e are very confident about the improving market conditions in few of our regions, as well as continued growth in our all other offerings. These are expected to be the growth drivers for the near-term. We are also...
Manufacturers Going All Out for Self-driving Car Tech
There is a clutch of self-driving cars and cars with autonomous driving features on the market today. Drivers just cannot seem to get enough of them. Apparently, the idea of zooming down the highway with little to no responsibility holds considerable appeal. Then again, maybe it is the novelty of the idea that will eventually give way to the next fad.
In August 2018, Cox Automotive revealed the results of a survey that found fewer Americans are embracing self-driving technology than previously thought. A surprising 49% of respondents said they would NEVER own a fully-autonomous car. This is up from 30% naysayers two years ago. Views...
New Flyer Sees Bus Market Revival
Tom Konrad CFA Highlights from New Flyer Industries’ (TSX:NFI, OTC:NFYEF) first quarter conference call The Numbers New Flyer announced first quarter results on May 9. The results were: Q1 2012 Q1 2011 Earnings up; reverses loss $2.7 million profit $6.4 million loss Revenue up 6.2% $227.6 million $214.3 million The improved numbers mostly arise from a more favorable product mix, and the benefits of New Flyer’s restructuring, which removed most of the debt burden. The North American transit bus market remains very competitive, and this competition...
Time to Buy One of the Best Peak Oil Investments
Tom Konrad CFA The Euro crisis rolls out a bargain in the stock of a leading e-bike manufacturer. A little over a year ago, I concluded a 27 part series looking into non-oil stocks that might benefit from rising oil prices by picking what I thought were the four best stocks I had found in the process. I had not yet bought any of the stocks picked because, as I said at the time, I personally do not...
When Isn’t a $68M Civil Action Material?
Tom Konrad CFA David and Goliath (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Last week, I investigated the Goliath vs. David civil action in which Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE:NSC) and Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad (WLE) are attempting to prevent Power REIT (NYSE:PW) from foreclosing on the lease of the 112 miles of track owned by Power REIT and operated by WLE under a sublease with NSC. As in Biblical times, Power REIT, in its role as David, looks likely to surprise the market with a legal victory. I calculated that any victory could lead to payments...