< The 2014 All-America Research TeamDaniel FordBarclaysFirst-Place Appearances: 6

Total Appearances: 15

Analyst Debut: 2000Though he tumbles to third place after a year on top, Barclays analyst Daniel Ford remains “the go-to guy when you need to understand what is happening in the utilities space,” in the opinion of one investor. Ford, who works out of Wells, Maine, believes that regulated utilities will be hurt by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s anticipated normalization of interest rates, as well as the winding down of significant policy-driven investments in the system, which he forecasts will slow earnings growth visibility over the next five years. Utilities with the highest projected capital expenditure perform the best in this environment, he adds, and to that end, he prefers American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio. The electricity provider has “highly visible drivers, including transmission, that should promote 4 to 6 percent annual earnings-per-share and dividend-per-share growth rates through the end of the decade,” explains Ford. Meanwhile, unregulated power companies, which have suffered through several years of declining natural-gas prices, can at least look forward to prices not going any lower, even if they don’t recover, the researcher contends. “Opportunity, therefore, will depend on a tightening supply-and-demand balance of power generation,” he adds. “Here, we believe some improvement is slowly coming to select markets. In particular, we see Texas and New England approaching equilibrium over the next two to three years.” NRG Energy has a high concentration of economic exposure to those power markets, which is one reason that Ford assigns the Princeton, New Jersey–based diversified provider a buy rating.

RUNNER(S)-UP
Stephen Byrd
Morgan Stanley

Gregory Gordon
ISI Group