ConEd (ED) Hits 52-Week High On Investments In Renewables

Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED) touched a new 52-week high of $78.25 on Jun 14. Popularly known as ConEd, it is a diversified utility holding company with subsidiaries engaged in both regulated and unregulated businesses.

What’s Driving ConEd Stock?

The company is diversifying its generation mix through investments in renewable energy. Consolidated Edison continues to follow a systematic capital investment plan for infrastructure development and the expansion of renewable assets.

In the first quarter, the company invested $247 million in renewable electric production projects. It purchased projects like Texas Solar 7 and acquired a 12.5% ownership interest in the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The company plans to continue with its renewable investments in the remaining half of 2016 as well – it had earlier announced a plan to invest $3,168 million in energy delivery systems and $985 million in renewable electric production projects. Going forward, the company has set aside $1.7 billion for its renewable as well as energy infrastructure projects for the 2016–2018 period.

Overall, the company has a robust capital expenditure plan of around $11.5 billion for the 2016–2018 time frame. Roughly 81.3% of the planned investment has been allocated for its regulated utility operations, while the rest will go to its competitive business. The company is gradually converting some of its operations to gas, which is environmentally friendly. Consolidated Edison expects 2016 earnings in the range of $3.85 to $4.05 per share.

ConEd and SunPower Team Up

On Jun 13, 2016, Consolidated Edison announced that it intends to combine solar-plus-storage systems at over 300 New York homes into a virtual power plant in order to boost the grid's resiliency and reliability.

Consolidated Edison and solar company SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ:SPWR) presented the pilot program under which they will install over 1.8 MW of solar PV systems and around 1.8 MW (4 MWh) of battery storage in what is touted as the largest residential distributed energy storage program in the country.

Zacks Rank

Currently, Consolidated Edison has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the electric utility space include Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE:AGR) and Spark Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPKE) . While Avangrid holds a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), CenterPoint carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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