Growth plans should keep dividends high

Article Excerpt

PEMBINA PIPELINE $29.06 (Toronto symbol PPL; Shares outstanding: 354.7 million; Market cap: $10.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 6.0%; www.pembina.com) owns pipelines that carry half of Alberta’s conventional oil, 30% of Western Canada’s natural gas liquids (NGLs) and almost all of B.C.’s conventional oil. Pembina also owns facilities that extract, process and store NGLs. In the three months ended September 30, 2015, the company’s cash flow per share jumped 25.0%, to $0.60 from $0.48 a year earlier. That’s mainly because of new plants starting up and boosting volumes at its NGL extraction business. Pembina plans to spend $2.1 billion on capital projects this year, up 10.5% from $1.9 billion in 2015. It will mainly invest these funds in projects already in progress, almost all of which already have long-term contracts with customers. That cuts the company’s risk. The stock trades at 11.6 times Pembina’s forecast 2016 cash flow of $2.50 a share. It yields 6.0%. Pembina Pipeline is still…