Tracking Stock for Utilities: Highway to Higher Valuations?
Telecoms may offer IOUs a model for multiplying market caps by dividing their shareholdings.April 1, 2000
Frontlines
A Fax From Al Gore
People
News Digest
Perspective
April 1, 2000
Off Peak
Et Tu, Mexico?
A consultant questions whether our trade partner's role in organizing cutbacks in world oil production is consistent with NAFTA obligations.
Fuel Cells: White Knight for Natural Gas?
New technologies cloud the future for the traditional electric utility, but offer hope to the gas industry in boosting residential demand.
Investors apparently were paying attention in January when a Web-based analyst predicted Plug Power's stocks could gain 10,000 percent or more by 2010. Before month's end, the fuel cell manufacturer, which doesn't expect to turn a profit before 2004, saw a ninefold increase from the $16 closing day share price at its October initial public offering. That month Avista Corp.
E-Marketing: Is Energy Missing the Net?
Before the industry can tap into the Web's full potential, it needs to remove some roadblocks - without regulating itself into a corner.
Everyone involved in energy recognizes that deregulation is driving major changes in how the industry operates. What some may not recognize is that the evolution of e-commerce is compelling even greater changes in the way energy is marketed and purchased in both wholesale and retail markets.
Frontlines
Why utilities haven't scored at e-commerce.
From what I hear, utilities would love to junk their call centers, whether or not they run them in-house. Call centers had their moment in the sun, but today the Internet makes them look feeble. Why hire a minimum-wage sales staff to take orders by phone when consumers will gladly input their own bids at the click of a mouse? You can't trim transaction costs any closer than that.
People
Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson appointed three new members to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board for two-year terms. J. Brian Atwood is the executive vice president of Citizens Energy Corp. and director of Citizens International. Daphne Kwok is the executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans Inc. Burton Richter is the Paul Pigott Professor of Physical Sciences at Stanford University and director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.