Updating WINDSTREAM CORP., T. ROWE PRICE GROUP INC. and CONAGRA FOODS INC.

Article Excerpt

WINDSTREAM CORP. $10 will buy Iowa Telecommunications Services Inc. (New York symbol IWA), which sells telephone services in rural areas of Iowa and Minnesota. This is Windstream’s fourth major purchase this year. If you include its previous deals for two rural phone companies and a firm that sells Internet services to businesses, Windstream is paying a total of $2.2 billion in cash, shares and assumed debt. That’s about half of its market cap. Using acquisitions to expand adds risk. But Windstream can put these businesses’ steady cash flows toward the purchase price. That should help it maintain its $1.00 dividend, which yields 10.0%. Buy. T. ROWE PRICE GROUP INC. $49 is buying 26% of UTI Asset Management Co., India’s fourth-largest wealth-management firm. The $138-million price is 4% more than the $132.9 million, or $0.50 a share, that T. Rowe Price earned in the third quarter of 2009. UTI has over 10 million clients, and accounts for about 10% of India’s mutual…