Updating your Income stocks

Article Excerpt

3M COMPANY $164 (www.3m.com) is a buy. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company plans to triple production of N95 face masks and other personal protective equipment. That’s mainly why 3M’s sales in the month of July 2020 rose 6% from a year earlier, to $2.8 billion. By division, its July sales climbed 29% in health care, 9% in consumer, and 6% in safety and industrial, while its transportation and electronics revenue fell 7%. If you factor out foreign exchange rates and the contribution of 3M’s acquisitions, sales still improved 3%. 3M is a buy. AMEREN CORP. $85 (www.ameren.com) is still worth holding. The company supplies electricity and natural gas to 3.3 million customers in Illinois and Missouri. Ameren expects to earn between $3.40 and $3.60 a share for all of 2020, and the stock trades at 22.3 times the midpoint of that range. That’s a high p/e considering coal supplies 70% of its electrical power and the company will have to spend more in the next few…