Transalta Power continues to Rebuild

This blog has watched and analysed Transalta Power (TA) since 2016.During this time blogs have been written on Wordpress,Linkedin and Workathon.And during this time Transalta has changed dramatically. It was in 2016 that Transalta reduced it's dividend by 80% to $.045 per quarter.However through a series of dividend increases (in 2021 and 2022) and recently that the present dividend is $.07 per quarter.The original decision to cut it's dividend created a lot of damage to it's stock price.But  management underwent changes and thedividend cut was approved so there would be more cash to transform it's operation from coal based to natural gas..Changes continued until 2025.So that now Transalta has no coal based power generation.

  Transalta also had a large stable of  renewable energy operations.These were chiefly wind, hydro and solar power generators.They were safer and cleaner but not producing large amounts of profit.Transalta decided to first form a separate company called Transalta Renewables and then to buy up Transalta Renewable shares.Now it owns 80% of Transalta Renewables which produces a small but steady cash flow to TA shareholders.This helps to stabilize the TA share price.TA shares are not as volatile as other shares and even as other utility shares.As it's beta statistic is.43 .In other words for every 1% change in the TSX index TA only moves .43%,

  In 2016 Transalta had a substantial percentage of it's power generation coming from coal.But the Alberta government forced them to close their coal operations and change the power source to natural gas powered generation.This made the output more stable.And they got cash subsidies for doing the conversion.At about this time TA decided to delist Transalta Renewables and include it as an asset of Transalta Power.Consequently by 2021 with both of these operations almost completed TA  had increased it's assets and it's market cap.But net income had not completely bounced back nor had it's dividend.

  In 2022 it made a venture into Australia.It built a combined-cycle generator in South Hedland and another plant that shares it's power with the massive BHP ,an Australian miner.Neither one is massively successful and they divert resources away from it's main thrust in North America.These projects are the main assets of Transalta Australia.TA Australia is a sizeable operation.Although the value of the assets were not obtained the annual revenue is about $500 million.This blog believes that  TA must obtain greater scale in Australia. or divest much of it to generate some cash.Especially after it has just acquired 2 generating facilities in Wyoming for 1 billion U.S. dollars..

 Transalta operations,especially amongst the renewable energy assets still has quite a few marginal power energy generators.And it has it's assets too spread out.This blog is recommending that some of it's non-core operations be divested for cash.Especially after the announcement that it is acquiring two plants in Colorado for $1 billionThe stock price fell by $2 after this announcement..In addition, it announced an $350 million equity offering that will help to pay for the two new plants.This brought the price back almost $1.It is suggested that non-renewable plants that are not very profitable and an unmanageable distance from Alberta should be looked at quite closely.This would include their Australian operations although they are not totally non-renewable.Savings here might open the possibility for a slightly larger dividend a couple of years out.But Transalta does not have the cash now for a dividend raise.

  Dale Mcintyre has a masters degree in economics.He writes articles (freelance) for Marketbeat,Yahoo Finance and Zacks Research. 

 

Silver is useful for Construction but also a Store of Wealth

This graph is fairly representative of the silver story.As silver,like most commodities, moves in cycles.It will move up for a number of years and the price increases will fall within a tight range.But then the price may fall or rise for smaller price increases for a number of years.The annual  increases over the whole period  can be traced into a pattern.And the pattern for silver is quite similar to that in the graph above.experienced small For awhile it showed continuous small price increases gradually getting larger (as in the middle period above) and lately larger price increases.

    Silver has a role in Construction

   Gold has for a long time been used as a measure of wealth and a relatively safe haven.When the economy was considered less stable more people put their money into gold;gold was a store of wealth. And it provided relative safety.However over time gold was used more not less as a store of wealth.Silver has for a long period of time been connected to gold and was also  thought of as a store of wealth .  However  not nearly as valuable  and not as directly connected to financial stability as gold was.Silver moved with the price of gold but only at a fraction of gold's movement.Still financial instability was and continues to be directly connected to a rise in the price of silver.It provided not only a  store of wealth  for it's investors but an increasing store of wealth.

For quite awhile silver 's main role was in building mirrors of all kinds.Silver's usefulness in mirror construction  was directly connected to  it's  reflective ability.It's ability to reflect is greater than any other element and it's weight required to complete it's function  is very reasonable.It was a steady role but not one that lead to large or even medium increases in price.But silver's owners  found a new and important role for silver. .It is used to improve the efficiency of electricity generation in solar panels.It is also used in the production of electricity vehicles.Presumably in the workings of the lithium batteries.Both of these uses are growing in importance and have lead to the new found attention and price increases of silver.These new uses have acted to stabilize the price of silver.

Price of Silver Forecast up to 2030

This blog considers that the trends seen in 2024 and 2025 will continue to a large extent until 2030.The political turmoil around oil and the middle east will continue and  will not be resolved completely.And the American dollar will be weak with a few bright spots.This means that  many investors will pull out of the dollar and into both gold and bitcoin.But there is no doubt that that gold is the safe haven of choice.However this will put upward pressure on both gold and bitcoin.And as we know when gold moves up silver will follow although not to the same degree.This could lead to  choppy behaviour for silver.But the extra demand put on silver for construction purposes will even out the downward pressure on silver.So in conclusion silver will continue to march slowly towards it's former high of $115 per ounce.Presently it trades at $84 an ounce and may not even reach $90 an ounce by December.But it's direction is clear.It is saomewhat difficult to predict the upward limit on  the silver price But with the increased usage of silver for solar panels and electric vehicles this does put a downward limit on silver.

                                                                                                                                               

  Dale Mcintyre (M.A,Econ) wrote this artZacks Researchicle on silver.He is a freelance writer for Zacks Research and has written many articles for Zacks.