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4 Reasons to Add York Water (YORW) to Your Portfolio Now

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The York Water Company’s (YORW - Free Report) ongoing investments to build and improve infrastructure, steady dividend payments and upward estimate revisions make it a good investment candidate.

Let’s focus on the factors that make this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock a strong investment pick at the moment. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Growth Projections

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2022 earnings per share and revenues is pegged at $1.36 and $57 million, suggesting an increase of 4.6% and 3.4%, respectively, from the year-ago period.

The consensus mark for 2023 earnings and revenues is pegged at $1.41 and $60 million, respectively. The bottom- and top-line estimates suggest a 3.7% and 5.3% year-over-year increase, respectively.

Surprise History & Dividend Yield

York Water’s four-quarter positive earnings surprise is 2.2%, on average. The current dividend yield of the company is 1.69%.

Return on Equity (ROE)

ROE of a company indicates how efficiently the company is utilizing its funds to generate returns. The current ROE of York Water is 10.74 compared with the industry’s average of 9.87, which indicates that the company is utilizing its funds better than its water utility peers.

Debt to Capital

The company’s debt to capital is 36.8%, which is lower than the industry average of 47.3%. This indicates that it is efficiently managing operations via utilizing lesser debt than peers. Its times interest earned ratio at the end of second-quarter 2022 was 4.7, which suggests that the company has enough financial flexibility to meet debt obligations in the near term without any difficulties.

Price Performance

In the past month, the stock has gained 11.8% compared with the industry’s 10.7% rally

 

Zacks Investment Research
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Other Stocks to Consider

Other top-ranked stocks in the Utilities sector include Otter Tail Corporation (OTTR - Free Report) , The Southern Company (SO - Free Report) and Sempra Energy (SRE - Free Report) . While Otter Tail sports a Zacks Rank #1, the other two companies carry a Zacks Rank of 2.

Otter Tail, Southern Company and Sempra Energy delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 31.4%, 9.4% and 4.4%, respectively, in the last four quarters.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2022 earnings for Otter Tail, Southern Company and Sempra Energy has moved 31.8%, 1.4%, and 1.3% upward, respectively, in the past 60 days.

 

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