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...
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 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 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...
Aerovironment’s New Farm Worker
by Debra Fiakas CFA Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had their starting point in military exercises, carrying surveillance cameras and even bombs to sensitive sites. Drones as we have come to call them have also zoomed across the horizons of adventuresome consumers, who see sport and entertainment possibilities. However, drones offer time and cost savings, quality and accuracy in data gathering and safety to a host of scientists, engineers and infrastructure operators. According to industry research firm Markets and Markets, the unmanned aerial market is estimated to be $13.2 billion in the current year and has the...
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...
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: An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Tom Konrad CFA A couple readers have asked me if they should accept the New Flyer (NFI-UN.TO/NFYIF.PK) Rights offering to exchange their C$5.53 principal 14% subordinated notes for nine shares of New Flyer common stock. The answer is most emphatically YES. When I last wrote about New Flyer, I knew that they were planning to convert from their unusual stapled security structure to a more conventional share structure, but I was not certain how they could entice IDS holders to go along with the swap. Now, it's clear. The New Flyer IDS is the...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Maersk
Tom Konrad CFA Containerized shipping is the most efficient way to move goods, but few ships are nearly as efficient as they could be. One company is steaming ahead of the pack. It seems obvious that more international trade increases greenhouse gas emissions. After all, if we buy local products rather than products made halfway around the world, we will save all the carbon emissions required to ship them to us. It also seems to make sense that rising fuel prices will lead to a decrease in international trade, as companies reduce fuel use by assembling things...
Ebay: A Sustainable Social Distancing Stock
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
Of the few survivors of the dot com bust, Ebay (EBAY) is a perennial also-ran. It owned the market for consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions in 2000, but has since repeatedly lost market share. Nevertheless, the company remains a profitable business that enables the sustainable reuse of easy to ship items while returning cash to investors.
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The Competition for Sellers
In the early 2000s, Ebay lost sellers to Amazon's (AMZN) marketplace, which had the...
The Best Peak Oil Investments: Three Mass Transit Operators
Tom Konrad, CFA Government budgets are putting pressure on mass transit operators, but the best public companies are likely to benefit from the trend. Three recent Economist articles led me to question my assumption that rising oil prices should be good for mass transit operators. In the August 19th edition, there was an article about mass transit service cuts in Atlanta, as well as one about the likelihood of rising rail fares in Britain. In crisis, there is also opportunity. Reading beyond the gloomy headline of the Atlanta article, it becomes clear that the...
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...
A Green Peak Oil Company Expanding in North America: Stagecoach Group
Tom Konrad CFA What’s the budget-conscious way to travel in the US? If you buy in advance, flying is still reasonably priced, but increased security and wait times mean that it’s quicker to drive for shorter trips. With current high gas prices, driving is increasingly expensive. Except on a few routes, Amtrak is slow, has very limited service, and costs a bundle. In our new peak oil world of $4 gas and, more and more people are opting for bus travel. The young like it: My girlfriend’s daughter travels by bus almost exclusively, even though she owns a car....
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: 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...
