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...
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...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Pure-Play Mass Transit Suppliers
Tom Konrad CFA I'm attempting to bring this series on peak oil stocks to a conclusion in which I can choose five stocks that should benefit from rising oil prices. One sector I feel should be represented is suppliers to mass transit companies, but I only looked at the percentage of revenues coming from mass transit and rail when I brought you my list of nine mass transit stocks. From that list, the following companies get substantially all their revenues from mass transit, passenger rail, or rail freight: New Flyer Industries (NFYIF.PK/NFI-UN.TO), is the largest manufacturer...
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...
Why the Sell-off at New Flyer?
Tom Konrad CFA Heavy duty transit bus manufacturer New Flyer Industries (NFI.TO/NFYEF.PK) released its fourth quarter earnings and annual report on March 21, quickly followed by analyst downgrades from CIBC and Canacord Genuity. Too far, too fast Over the next few days, the stock fell from over $8 to below $7, although it is still well above the level where followers of my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2012 would have purchased ($5.65) even after dividend payments worth $0.22. After a rise like New Flyer has had over the last three months, some investors took the...
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...
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock (GLDD), An Oil Spill Cleanup Stock
Tom Konrad, CFA Great Lakes Dredge and Dock is curiously in the center of a many emerging trends, some of which are not yet being talked about. I've been watching Great Lakes Dredge and Dock (GLDD) for a few months as a possible alternative transportation stock to talk about for my Best Peak Oil Investments series. My thinking goes like this: barge and river transport are two of the most fuel efficient ways to move bulk cargo. Barges are even more energy efficient than rail freight for most uses, according to the Congressional Budget Office. One...
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...
Where Electric Vehicles Make Sense
Tom Konrad CFA Electric Transit Buses Coming to North America Quayside electric bus in Newcastle. Photo credit: LHOON On June first, New Flyer Industries (TSX:NFI, OTC:NFYEF) unveiled its first all-electric bus prototype. New Flyer is far from the first manufacturer to launch an electric bus. The first deployment of electric buses on a commercial route was at the end of 2010 in Seoul, using buses developed by Hyundai and Hankuk Fiber. Wikipedia lists twenty manufacturers of electric buses worldwide. Even in North America, Balqon Corporation (OTC:BLQN), a...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The L.B. Foster / Portec Rail Products Takeover Saga
Tom Konrad, CFA LB Foster (FSTR) may not succeed in their attempt to buy Portec Rail Products (PRPX) unless they raise the offer price. As a Portec Rail Products (PRPX) shareholder since 2007, I've been watching the saga of L.B Foster's (FSTR) attempt to buy the company fairly closely, and it's been a lot more interesting than we could expect. I've put together a detailed time line at the end of this article. Offer Premium The tender offer came at only a 4% premium compared to the price the day before it was announced, leading...
The New Golden Age of Railroads
John Petersen Did you know that both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have billion dollar investments in railroads? If so, did you ever wonder why? For Mr. Buffett, it's an indirect investment through Berkshire Hathaway, which bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad outright in February of last year. For Mr. Gates, it's a direct 10.04% stake in Canadian National Railway. The reason is simple. Railroads are the cheapest, cleanest and most energy efficient ground transportation networks in the world, which effectively guarantees them an increasingly important role as the world comes to grips with...
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...