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Alliant Energy's Focus on Renewable Assets to Drive Growth

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Alliant Energy Corporation (LNT - Free Report) is well positioned for long-term growth on strong economic development in its service areas, and ongoing investment in regulated natural gas and renewable energy assets.

Alliant Energy has plans to invest nearly $5 billion during the 2018-2021 time frame. The company is successfully completing major construction projects on time and at or below budget. Constructive regulatory environment will enable the company to recover capital expenditures and thus improve earnings.

Alliant Energy currently targets long-term annual earnings growth in the range of 5% to 7%. We expect Alliant Energy to keep up the good performance and achieve the earnings growth target on the back of a number of strategic initiatives undertaken by the company.

Nearly 98% of the earnings of the company are generated from regulated operations. The regulated nature of Alliant Energy's operation provides strong earnings visibility, which has enabled the company to increase the annual dividend rate for more than a decade.

Despite the strong positives, demand for the utility continues to vary with weather conditions, on which the company has no control. Milder summer and winter months could adversely impact earnings and performance of the company.

Alliant Energy is subject to extensive environmental regulations at both federal and state levels. This could impact the company’s operations and its ability to recover costs from customers on a timely basis and hence the rate of return.

Price Movement

In the past year, shares of Alliant Energy have lost 1.7% narrower than the industry's decline of 5.5%.



Alliant Energy has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the industry are NextEra Energy (NEE - Free Report) , Entergy Corporation (ETR - Free Report) and CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP - Free Report) , each carriying a Zacks Rank#2 (Buy).  You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

NextEra Energy delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 4.75% in the last four quarters. Its 2018 and 2019 Zacks Consensus Estimate moved up 6.8% and 6.9%, respectively, in the last 60 days.

Entergy Corporation pulled off an average positive earnings surprise of 60.21% in the last four quarters. Its 2018 and 2019 Zacks Consensus Estimate surged 2.6% and 2.8%, respectively, in the last 60 days.

CenterPoint Energy delivered an average positive earnings surprise of  11.50% in the last four quarters. Its 2018 and 2019 Zacks Consensus Estimate moved up 9.2% and 7.9%, respectively, in the last 60 days.

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