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Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades (AGU, CPB, DYN, ELON, FIC, HRL, ITRI, LVS, MICC, MTB, OVTI, POT, SAP, SNDA, SNPS, TSL)

Administrator — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:34:21 +0000

These are some of this Wednesday’s key analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen in Wall Street research calls.

Agrium Inc. (NYSE: AGU) Started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Campbell Soup Co. (NYSE: CPB) Cut to Equal-Weight at Barclays Capital.
Dynegy Inc. (NYSE: DYN) Cut to Sell at S&P Equity Research (late Tuesday call).
Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) Started as Outperform at Baird.
Fair Isaac Corp. (NYSE: FIC) Reiterated Sell at Argus.
Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL) Cut to Sell at Soleil.
Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) Raised to Neutral at Macquarie.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS) Reiterated Buy and $58 Target at Argus.
Millicom International (NASDAQ: MICC) Started as Buy at Deutsche Bank.
M&T Bank Corp. (NYSE: MTB) Started as Market Perform at BMO.
OmniVision Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OVTI) Reiterated Buy and Raise Target to $36 at Gleacher & Co.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (NYSE: POT) Started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) Reiterated Buy at BofA/ML.
Shanda Interactive Entertainment (NASDAQ: SNDA) Cut to Sell at Roth Capital.
Synopsys Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL) Reiterated Buy and $38 target at Auriga.

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JON C. OGG

Filed under: Analyst Calls Tagged: AGU, CPB, DYN, ELON, FIC, HRL, ITRI, LVS, MICC, MTB, OVTI, POT, SAP, SNDA, SNPS, TSL

Smart Grid Challenges and Opportunities (CEG, CNP, DUK, NEE, PGN, EXC, HON, ED, WHR, GE, ELON, MTZ, GRID)

Administrator — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:30:10 +0000

Of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill passed in 2009, more than $3.4 billion was targeted at modernizing the US electricity transmission and distribution systems and promoting investments in smart grid technologies. When corporate investment is added to the stimulus spending, more than $8 billion is about to be invested in making improvements to the US electricity grid.

A variety of utilities and companies have received federal grants to implement various pieces of the smart grid. Constellation Energy Inc. (NYSE:CEG), CenterPoint Energy (NYSE:CNP), Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK), NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE), Progress Energy (NYSE:PGN), and Exelon (NYSE:EXC) have all been awarded the maximum $200 million stimulus grants. Honeywell International (NYSE:HON), Consolidated Edison (NYSE:ED), and Whirlpool Corp. (NYSE:WHR) have been awarded grants for projects related to customer systems, electric distribution systems, and equipment manufacturing, respectively. General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) also recently announced a $200 million investment in smart grid. Two other companies, Echelon (NASDAQ:ELON) and MasTec (NYSE:MTZ) have been working on partnerships in smart metering and energy management (Echelon) and building out transmission and distribution lines (MasTec). There’s even an ETF play available, the First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index ETF (NASDAQ:GRID).

The concept of the smart grid is to open a two-way, real-time communications path between utilities and consumers. The current grid is not able to handle real-time events, such as lower prices at certain times of the day when electricity rates are in less demand and therefore lower. Smart meters, sophisticated and scalable demand response systems, and meter data management all need to be able to communicate with one another as well as with utility companies and customers over all kinds of networks.

By comparison with today’s grid, the smart grid is a supercomputer replacing an abacus. Utility companies now get monthly meter readings and batch them up before sending them to the billing system. Under a smart grid system, the utility company will be able to handle millions of data transactions every day.

One research firm estimates that for every million smart meters a utility company’s smart metering operations must support every day over 2,000 meter sways, more than 1,000 customer moves, 10,000 missing reads, 20 meter failures, and more than 97 million meter reads. This is a sea change on an order of magnitude that utility companies have never faced before.

So let’s assume that the smart grid is in place. What are the benefits, both the utility and to the customer? The chief gain to a utility will come from its ability better to balance supply and demand, and to provide greater reliability by making their power purchases more rational. From a strategic perspective, better use of assets such as generating plants and other infrastructure will help utilities make better investment decisions. Operationally, load factors will improve and system losses and outages will decline. As a result, costs should fall.

For consumers get new tools that will help them see how much electricity they are using, when they are using, and how much it costs at exactly the time they use it. Savvy consumers will have far more control over their use of electricity, and once the initial cost of the smart meters and appliances is amortized, consumers will save money.

An almost forgotten benefit of the smart grid is the reduction in CO2 emissions. Because supply will be better fitted to demand, fewer new generating plants will need to be built. Electricity will be more efficiently used and, thus, less will be required. The federal government has targeted a 5%-8% improvement in energy efficiency by 2020 to go along with a 12%-15% renewable energy generation target.

Renewable generation projects using solar PV cost about $396/MWh, solar thermal projects cost about $257/MWh, and onshore wind projects cost about $149/MWh. Energy efficiency projects cost about $50/MWh. And energy efficiency is the goal of the push for a smart grid.

The US Energy Information Administration estimates that an investment of $520 billion in the smart grid will return $1.2 trillion in gross savings by 2020. No other technology even comes close to that kind of return.

Over the next four or five years investment in the smart grid could reach $215 billion, according to an analyst at the Bank of America. The total investment needed to revamp the US electricity grid could be into the trillions of dollars, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The takeaway here is that smart grid technologies boost energy efficiency, which the most cost-effective way we have to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Nothing else comes close.

Paul Ausick

Filed under: Alternative Energy, Green Biz, Infrastructure, Utilities Tagged: CEG, CNP, DUK, ED, ELON, EXC, GE, GRID, HON, MTZ, NEE, PGN, WHR

The Smart Grid Surge Hitting Home (ITRI, COMV, ELON, ED, CEG, DUK, FPL, NVE, POM, SO)

247wallst — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:37:50 +0000

We are seeing at least some significant moves from the company’s who have announced that they are grant recipients under part of the $3.4 billion Smart Grid pledge from the Obama administration day. We are seeing the big moves in the companies which traders and investors believe will receive the direct orders from the utilities, and are even seeing gains down in the utilities and power companies who are getting direct grants.

Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI), for smart metering systems, was up 3% at $59.56 with a $2.38 billion market cap. Comverge, Inc. (NASDAQ: COMV), for peaking and base load capacity solutions to electric utilities, operators, and electric markets, is up 10% at $12.95 with a $286 million market cap. Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) is up 7% at $14.70 with a $598 million market cap.

In the utility sector we are seeing the following moves:

Consolidated Edison Inc. (NYSE: ED) up 0.3% at $41.47; $136 million grant vs. $11.4 billion market cap.
Constellation Energy Group, Inc. (NYSE: CEG) up 0.4% at $32.03; $200 million grant vs. $6.45 billion market cap.
Duke Energy Corporation (NYSE: DUK) up 0.15% at $15.95; $200 million grant vs. $20.7 billion market cap.wins $200 million smart grid grant
FPL Group Inc. (NYSE: FPL) down 2.2% at $50.95; $200 million grant vs. $21 billion market cap.
NV Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NVE) up 1.3% at $11.52; $138 million grant vs $2.7 billion market cap.
Pepco Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: POM) up 0.4% at $14.51; $168 million grant vs. $3.2 billion market cap.
Southern Company (NYSE: SO) up 0.35% at $32.69; $165 million grant vs. $26 billion market cap.

Many of the beneficiary companies have not reported yet their awards.

Jon C. Ogg
October 27, 2009

Posted in Green Biz, Politics, Utilities Tagged: CEG, COMV, DUK, ED, ELON, FPL, ITRI, NVE, POM, SO

Top 10 Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades (AMGN, CELL, ELON, SATS, KR, QLGC, MBI, PETM, S, YUM)

247wallst — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:58:50 +0000

These are the top 10 pre-market analyst upgrades and downgrades in Wall Street research calls this Tuesday morning:

Amgen (AMGN) Started as Buy at RBC.
Brightpoint (CELL) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Echelon (ELON) Raised to Neutral at Piper Jaffray.
Echostar Holdings (SATS) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Kroger (KR) Started as Buy at Deutsche Bank.
QLogic (QLGC) Raised to Outperform at RBC.
MBIA Inc. (MBI) Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan.
PETsMART (PETM) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Sprint Nextel (S) Cut to Underweight at Piper Jaffray.
YUM! Brands (YUM) Cut to Neutral at UBS.

JON C. OGG
AUGUST 11, 2009

Posted in Analyst Calls Tagged: AMGN, CELL, ELON, KR, MBI, PETM, QLGC, S, SATS, YUM

Rough Week For Smart Grid Players (ITRI, DGII, COMV, ENOC, ELON)

247wallst — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:21:02 +0000

Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) is supposed to be one of the winners in the stimulus package. The advanced metering company is known as the Smart Grid meter reader to many traders. The company is involved in metering, data collection and utility software solutions for electric, water, and gas utilities, and it claims nearly 8,000 utilities worldwide as its customer base. This is one of the companies deemed to be a winner under the Obama stimulus package. Where this gets interesting is that Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII), Comverge, Inc. (NASDAQ: COMV), EnerNOC Inc. (NASDAQ:ENOC), and Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) are all other smart grid plays and not large caps that have had a rough week in stock prices.

But this week has been a rough week for Itron. Last Friday this closed at $63.17 and it closed out 2008 at $63.74. Shares closed at $58.04 yesterday. Despite the market woes this week, the weakness here at Itron appears to be over worries of a delay in the company’s advanced metering infrastructure deployment. We saw that this was due to software issues as a pact with San Diego Gas & Electric has fallen short of initial hopes in numbers of homes. There are some security concerns in the software from what we have seen and been told, although to what extent is still in the air.

Pacific Crest cut earnings targets for 2009 over the last week and UBS downgraded the stock to Neutral earlier this month. The company is set to report earnings next week on Wednesday, February 18. Based upon what we have seen in many infrastructure support companies, it is no shock that traders have been selling this one ahead of earnings as so many are very cautious on even the “good” and “smart” capital expenditures being pushed down the road from utilities.

Just last week, Itron announced a collaboration with Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) to enable utilities to remotely monitor and control distribution automation devices utilizing the OpenWay advanced metering infrastructure network by Itron. DGII closed yesterday at $7.96, down from $8.65 last week and from a high this week of $8.89.

Comverge, Inc. (NASDAQ: COMV) is another player that is deemed to be a winner in the smart grid. It is in the field of measuring peak and base load capacity for electric utilities and grid operators under the Smart Grid. Its shares were at $5.57 last week and are trading at $5.25 this morning.

EnerNOC Inc. (NASDAQ:ENOC) provides demand response applications and joins up utilities and end users to work around peak load demand for many large customers. This can include automatically shutting down HVAC units, dimming street lighting and the starting of back up generators to smooth out the disturbance. This stock closed out last week at $12.11, and even with a small gain this morning it is at $11.28.

Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) is up this morning after the announcement that it joined The Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition (DRSG). Echelon is a pure-play for the grid stocks as it provides both an advanced metering system and networking technology to extend energy management applications into individual devices inside homes and businesses. If it weren’t for a 5% gain because of a “Smart Grid” headline boosting it to $6.70 early on, it would have looked worse here too. This was at $6.99 last Friday.

Jon C. Ogg
February 13, 2009

Posted in Cult Stock, Infrastructure, Technology Companies, Utilities Tagged: advanced meter readers, COMV, Digi International DGII, electric grid, ELON, ENOC, ITRI, Itron, Obama, smart grid, smart grid monitors, smart grid stocks, stimulus package

Wachovia Initiates Alternative Energy (CPST, ELON, FCEL, ITRI)

247wallst — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:05:01 +0000

Wachovia has initiated coverage of some alternative energy stocks this morning. There may be other calls so we’ll follow up with more later depending on the length and details. Here are the ones we saw so far this morning:

Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ: CPST) Started as Outperform at Wachovia.
Echelon (NASDAQ: ELON) Started as Outperform at Wachovia.
FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ: FCEL) Started as Market Perform at Wachovia.
Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) Started as Outperform at Wachovia.

Jon C. Ogg
July 10, 2008

Top Analyst Upgrades (AMAT, BP, CPST, EGLT, ELON, ITRI, KLAC, NSC, PQ, PCLN)

247wallst — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:01:44 +0000

These are some of the top UPGRADES we are seeing from Wall Street analysts this Thursday morning:

Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) Started as Buy at Banc of America.
BP plc (NYSE: BP) raised to Overweight from Neutral at HSBC Securities.
Eagle Test Systems (NASDAQ: EGLT) started as Buy at Banc of America.
KLA-Tencor (NASDAQ: KLAC) Started as Buy at Banc of America.
Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
PetroQuest Energy (NYSE: PQ) Raised to Buy from Neutral at UBS.
Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) started as Buy at Stanford Research.

Jon C. Ogg
July 10, 2008