Water Utilities Keeping The Flow In Cash Flow
Fiakas Water Utilities Keeping The Flow In Cash Flow by Debra Fiakas CFA After a long series of posts on suppliers of water infrastructure, from fire hydrants to filters and from taps to treatments, it is now time to look at the companies selling water. The majority of water utilities is owned by municipalities and is beyond the reach of investors. However, there is a clutch of publicly traded companies that peddle water as a business. Which water utilities make sense to return hungry and risk wary investors? A short...
Water Infrastructure: Opportunity Coming Down The Pipe?
by Debra Fiakas CFA The most recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives a grade D+ for U.S. infrastructure as of the end of 2013. Not a very good grade, but an improvement over the plain D grade that had been handed out four years earlier. With the travesty of the water contamination in Flint, Michigan during 2014 to 2015, the ASCE report should carry special interest. The threat to the health of the Flint community could be found in anywhere in the U.S. The executive summary of the ASCE 2013 report does...
Graphene, Miracle Material
In 2010, when two physicists, Andre Greim and Konstantin Novoselov, won the Nobel Prize for Physics to recognize their work with carbon atoms, there were over 3,000 different companies with ongoing projects to develop commercial materials using their ‘graphene’ breakthrough. With its hexagon structure of individual carbon atoms, graphene was expected to find applications in so many products, from semiconductors to turbine blades to car tires. That is because this ‘miracle material’ is the strongest known to man. Yes, even stronger than its carbon cousin the diamond. Nine years later most of the throng has fallen by the wayside.
Nonetheless, graphene is no bust. At...
Trex: While The Sun Shines
by Debra Fiakas CFA It appears to be the ‘summer of the small-cap’ as performance in the sector outpaces other sectors on the first day of summer 2016. In keeping with the adage “make hay while the sun shines”, we shifted into a higher gear to find promising small companies that might participate in the small-cap renaissance. Trex Company (TREX: Nasdaq) bubbled to the top of a couple different screens based on growth and return. There is much to like in a company delivering strong growth. A bargain price is just icing on the cake. With a ratio...
Investing In Water Desalination
By Jeff Siegel The million-dollar manicured lawns of Montecito, CA have withered, died, and gone to seed. The polo fields are little more than dust now, and many have traded the good china for paper plates so as to avoid using the dishwasher. There’s no doubt about it Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, black or white, fat or skinny. When she lays the smack down, we all feel it. And there is no better example of this than the debilitating drought that’s wringing the Golden State dry. Of course, for those who can afford...
Alternative Energy Mutual Fund?
I recently received an e-mail question from Don that asked, Have you come across any mutual funds that invest in alt. energy stocks? Here was my response, Don, I haven't found any specific mutual funds that are entirely in this sector. I know that the Pax funds have a few holdings of Alt E stocks. This sector has been hot recently, so I know many of the stocks that I follow are in many mutual fund portfolios. Most mutual fund managers are momentum players and when they see stocks moving quickly in any specific quarter,...
Away Last Week
I was away on holidays last week with self-imposed lack of access to email - thanks to Tom for holding the Alt Energy fort alone! Several of you sent me emails to which I haven't gotten around to responding yet. I apologize for that. I will get on that tonight and you can expect a response in the next few days at the latest. Best, Charles
Graphene-Based Materials
The previous post “Miracle Material” acknowledged the fallout of many of the companies that a decade ago had set out to commercialize that extraordinary form of carbon called graphene. It is a single atom thick but is a couple hundred times stronger than steel, showing promise for an ultra-lightweight material that could unprecedented performance. Unfortunately, developers found out carbon atoms do not behave as well in a production process as they might on a scientist’s laboratory bench. There are several companies that with perseverance and tenacity have been successful in bringing graphene into our lives.
Off the Bench
Haydale Graphene Industries (HAYD: LSE) offers a mix...
Guinness Atkinson Set To Launch Alternative Energy Mutual Fund
Guinness Atkinson Asset Management, Inc., announced the upcoming launch of the no-load Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy Fund, which will invest in companies involved in the production, distribution or storage of alternative energy, including energy conservation. The fund is designed as a vehicle for investors seeking to profit from and participate in the shift from conventional fuels to alternative energy sources. The fund will invest primarily in companies that produce 50 percent or more of revenues from alternative energy and will be managed with an emphasis on value. Lead manager of the fund will be Tim Guinness,...
Graphene Nanoplatlets
Applied Graphene Materials (AGM: LSE) has developed a process for high-volume production of graphene nanoplatelets or ‘stacks of two-dimensional graphene sheets that can be used in coatings, composites and polymers. The attributes of nanoplatelets are not as impressive as the single layer of carbon atoms that scientists work with on their laboratory benches. However, nanoplatelets ‘play’ better than single atoms, dispersing more easily into other materials. Applied’s management says the promise of graphene is better achieved by being practical in transferring its characteristics to other high value materials.
Applied’s graphene nanoplatelets are used in a range of products: paints, coatings, polymers, composites, thermal pastes, and lubricants. In...
Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory to lead U.S. fusion research project
The U.S. Department of Energy chose Princeton's Plasma Physics Laboratory to lead the United States' participation in an international fusion energy project known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). "We wanted to do it because it gives us an intellectual role in planning this experiment and making sure it succeeds," said Robert Goldston GS '77, director of the plasma physics lab. "This is very important for the future of fusion energy." In what Goldston described as an "amazing step" towards the development of nuclear fusion, ITER aims to construct the first device capable of producing self-sustaining...
What John Kenneth Galbraith Would Have Said About the Credit Crunch
John Kenneth Galbraith, renowned economist and author of the bestselling The Great Crash, 1929, died in 2006, and so he never saw the crash of 2008. But he would not have been surprised. I just finished reading his A Short History of Financial Euphoria: Financial Genius is Before the Fall, a treatise on bubbles and busts of history, starting with the Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1637 and ending with the crash of 1987. The book was written in 1989, but the message is still timely today. Galbraith draws out the common factors of all financial...
New Server
If you are seeing this post, that means this website has been successfully moved over to the new server. As you may (or may not know) I run a hosting business on the side. This website is more of a hobby for me. This is in addition to my REAL fulltime job. One positive about maintaining this website is it has brought me more clients for my hosting business. I recently added a new client that is now getting some decent traffic. So I purchased some servers and I'm in the process of relocating all my...
Lunch With Warren Buffett
Tom couldn't attend to his usual Monday column this week so he asked me to step in. My own investing has been partially on hold over the past couple of months as I have been watching developments in the markets, so I figured I would open the week with something a little lighter albeit not entirely unrelated to alt energy and cleantech investing. Deflating Valuations = Happy Value Investors One of the good things about the current state of equity markets for alt energy investors is that several great company's stocks that had been trading at...
Crystalline Graphite
ZEN Graphene Solutions (ZEN: TSX-V) recently teamed up with the University of Manchester, seat of the two Nobel Prize-winning scientists who are credited with isolating graphene. ZEN management hopes to work with Manchester on commercialization of graphene for a variety of applications, including concrete, composites, membranes, and sensors.
ZEN’s Albany graphite project is located in southeastern Ontario. In March 2019, the company completed tests on a production process to purify graphite concentrate from its mine. The purified graphite was near 99.8% carbon per gram and will be used as a precursor material for ZEN’s graphene. The company plans to use a chemical exfoliation process to convert...
Recycled Holiday Cards
A couple of weeks back the Treehugger.com website had a link to a company called Green Field paper that makes recycled holiday cards. Well I needed to purchase some cards to send out to clients. So I decided to give them a try. I went to the website and was amazed at all the different choices in recycled card stock. But the cards that suprised me the most are the Grow-a-Note cards. These cards are made from handmade paper and are embedded with a variety of wildflower seeds. So the receipient of the...
