Buy TransCanada, hold on to Enbridge

Article Excerpt

TRANSCANADA CORP. $60.38 (Toronto symbol TRP; Shares outstanding: 702.5 million; Market cap: $48.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.transcanada.com) operates 90,300 kilometres of natural gas pipelines and generates over 3,100 megawatts of power in Canada and the U.S. In the quarter ended March 31, 2016, the company earned $366 million, or $0.52 a share, down 7.8% from $450 million, or $0.60, a year earlier. That was mainly due to costs from planned maintenance at its 48.5%-owned Bruce Power nuclear station in Ontario. Revenue rose 4.6%, to $2.9 billion from $2.6 billion. On July 1, 2016, TransCanada completed the acquistion of Texas-based Columbia Pipeline Group (New York symbol GPCX) for $13 billion U.S. Columbia operates natural gas pipelines and underground gas storage terminals across the U.S. TransCanada has $25-billion in other projects underway that it expects to complete over the next three years. These investments will let it increase its dividend by between 8% and 10% each year…