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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (29096)	11/27/2007 5:51:27 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78743

Here are my short comments. It's not an advise to invest or sell these stocks. My methods differ from yours, so there is a chance I am very wrong: - CWT. Utility. If water crisis comes, I would like to have utilities because THEY actually deliver and price water. Unfortunately, THEY are also strictly regulated. IMHO, unlike oil, in the case of water the regulatory bodies will trump free market and disallow huge increases in prices for utilities. They will be allowed to get crumbs from the pie, but that's it. Something like 5% ROA, 8-10%ROE. I am willing to be persuaded that I am wrong though if someone gives me strong arguments. Skip. - MWA. One of the companies that sell infrastructure and IMHO do not have a good pricing power. Skip. - SBS. 64M question is whether foreign utilities would be as regulated not to profit from water as domestic. IMHO, they will be, except for individual cases where the government is corrupt and in cahoots with the utility. OTOH, in developing markets utility may grow organically as infrastructure grows. SBS definitely has shown that and got their debt going down. Returns are still poor... Skip. - SJW. Utility. Skip. - PICO. Now, this one is interesting. It is a holding and favorite of Clyde from stocksbelowncav.blogspot.com It's also a tough company to analyze - Clyde called it "poor man's Berkshire Hathaway" and it is as difficult to analyze as its namesake. :( The owners - I mean "managers" - pull gigantic salaries and bonuses. They are also running yet another secondary that may depress the stock price again. But it is interesting... - GE is not a water play. ;) Skip - URS is not a water play IMO, unless I am missing something. Lousy returns (though they paid off their debt I guess). Skip. - SGR - I am also not sure how much this is a water play. Lousy returns. Skip. - KHD. Same. Skip. - UUPLY. No info. Utility? Skip - NWPX. See MWA. Skip. If you search for Pico in Clyde's blog stocksbelowncav.blogspot.com , you will find the full (?) list of publicly traded US water utilities and couple more water stocks: - CWCO. Interesting. But probably expensive. I will look into it. - WTR - AWR - SWWC - MSEX - CTWS - YORW - ARTNA - PNNW - BIW - all above are utilities. See utilities. Skip. - BDDD - no data. - NESW - no data. So from this list I would consider PICO and CWCO as possibilities. Not very exciting but still possibilities.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (29096)	11/28/2007 10:05:13 AM
From: Madharry	Respond to of 78743

seekingalpha.com A little info about khd. I own it embedded in MFCAF. right now it looks like selling my xlf puts early yesterday was a good thing. I listened to the conference call on CNQ yesterday. The recent increase in royalty rates by the alberta government has made it economically not worth the risk to drill for natural gas at the same rate as in the past. Seems clear to me that NG Prices are headed higher over the next couple of years. CHK is a great buy on weakness IMHO.