Fields of Green

In This Issue: Fields of Green Have We Reached the Bottom? Columbia on Launch Pad Energy Stocks Will Rise Again – Get Positioned Now There's an $8.8 trillion Arctic fire sale taking place right now… and you're missing out. It's not your fault, though. The only story the mainstream financial press covers these days is about low gas prices. But let's face the facts – it's only a matter of time until energy prices snap back to reality. So while it isn't your fault that you haven't heard about this story, it will be your fault if you don't profit from it after what I'm about to show you. I've found five companies positioned for massive profits when oil prices recover. And if you follow my advice today, you could bank gains of up to 1,324% when it happens. Get the full – shockingly profitable – story here. Fields of Green 2/05/2015 By Thomas Scarlett The well-known agriculture/chemical company Monsanto (NYSE: MON) has had its ups and downs in the last two years, but for the last few months the stock has been on an upswing, riding a wave of positive earnings reports and well-conceived business expansion. There's still plenty of room for further increases. Monsanto delivered earnings per share for the first quarter of fiscal year 2015 that were noticeably ahead of the expectations management had laid out several months ago. The company highlighted several key first-quarter milestones, including strong soybean results driven by Intacta RR2, as the product is projected to exceed its 10-12 million acre target. The company also noted the USDA's final Environmental Impact Statement concluding that Monsanto's Roundup Ready2 Xtendsoybeans and Bollgard IIXtendFlexcotton should be fully deregulated. The company's sales of seeds have been improving after losing some ground in the first half of 2014. Its genetically modified corn took a particularly large hit, a 16 percent drop in revenues, as farmers have switched to planting more soybeans. Management expects seed sales to pick up even more, which should add more than $3 billion in earnings over the next five years. Seed sales from its Latin America operations are expected to drive much of this growth. The company expects the amount of farmland planted with its seeds to quadruple from 3 million acres this year to 12 million acres. Monsanto is also investing significant resources to develop drought-resistant crops and other seeds with traits needed to grow food crops in challenging, food-poor regions of the world. And the company has done a good job in recent expanding its revenue based beyond the often-unpredictable agricultural markets: Chemicals developed by the company have included drugs used to treat Parkinson's disease and arthritis, as well as mass-produced LEDs and many other industrial chemicals. "Coupled with an expanding portfolio of solutions for farmers, this gives us the confidence to aim for at least doubling our ongoing earnings per share over the next five years and evolve our capital allocation priorities; including an additional $10 billion share repurchase authorization that further enhances Monsanto's ability to return value to our shareholders," the firm's CEO said. Monsanto has been one of America's top agricultural and biotechnology corporations for a long time. By the 1940s Monsanto was a major producer of plastics, including polystyreneandsynthetic fibers. Notable achievements by Monsanto and its scientists as a chemical company included breakthrough research oncatalyticasymmetric hydrogenationand being the first company to mass-producelight emitting diodes(LEDs). The company also formerly manufactured controversial products such as the insecticideDDT, PCBs,Agent Orange, andrecombinantbovine somatotropin(a.k.a. bovine growth hormone). Like its rival Dow Chemical, its production of Agent Orange made it a target of protests back in the 1960s, but those days are long gone. Monsanto continues to make strong progress with new platforms, including its Climate Corporation platform, which is expected to contribute a key part to Monsanto's strategy and earnings profile during this five-year growth horizon. During its annual update, Monsanto highlighted advancements across the industry's broadest research and development pipeline, including its breeding, biotechnology, crop protection, microbials, BioDirect and Climate platforms. The company has also been a leader in making agriculture more sustainable, working to increase water-use efficiency in irrigation across its own global seed production operations by 25 percent by 2020. While overall water use will always vary due to the weather, Monsanto estimates that these conservation efforts alone will result in saving between 30 billion and 80 billion gallons of water annually, the equivalent of filling 45,000 to 110,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Monsanto has traditionally done a good job of maintaining and increasing its dividend, making this a good play for both income and growth. The dividend yield is currently 2 percent. The stock's price-earnings ratio is now around 23, but with justified optimism about earnings, that's not excessive. The share price remains below its 52-week high of 129. We think Monsanto rates a buy up to 132. Tom Scarlett is an investment analyst for Personal Finance. Why You Should Heed My (Fearless) Energy Predictions for 2015 Last year I went 5 for 5 – predicting (1) U.S. oil production would soar, (2) the price of oil would fall, (3) the price of natural gas would rise, (4) the ban on U.S. oil exports would not be lifted, and (5) KiOR, a major biofuel company, would fail. All 5 predictions came to pass. Now I'm offering you my stunning predictions for 2015 – including the name of the major global oil company that will disappear. It's sure to be one of the most shocking energy events of 2015. Don't be caught off-guard when it happens. Click here. Have We Reached the Bottom? 2/04/2015 By Robert Rapier When I made my predictions for 2015, I knew that some of them were pretty aggressive. One in particular had the potential to be proved wrong by the end of January, and that was that the closing price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil would not drop below $40 per barrel (bbl) in 2015. A number of respected pundits are projecting that very outcome, with some suggesting that crude could even crash all the way to $30/bbl. The reason I consider my prediction very aggressive is that on the day I made it the price of WTI closed at $48.80, but in each of the previous three months the price of oil had dropped at least $10/bbl. So if WTI had maintained the same downward trajectory, it could have ended January below $40/bbl. I explained the basis of my prediction in that initial article, and then elaborated in Oil Demand Is Not Declining. In a nutshell, I don't believe the situation in 2008 -- when oil prices fell into the $30s -- applies today for two reasons. First, global demand is 5 million barrels per day higher than it was in 2008. Second, most of the new oil production added in the past five years came from the shale oil fields in the U.S. Most of that production has breakeven costs above $40/bbl, which is a higher break-even than the marginal oil production from five years ago. And a funny thing happened in January. The decline in the price of WTI was much slower than it had been during the previous five months. For the first time since September, the monthly change in the price of WTI was less than $10/bbl: But there is a bit more to the story than that. If you look at the price changes over the past year, they trended slightly up during the first half of 2014, began to fall in the second half of June after peaking above $107/bbl and continued to decline throughout November. Following OPEC's Nov. 27 decision not to cut export quotas the decline accelerated. It didn't slow down until mid-January, when prices broke from the downward trend and flattened out: So, instead of ending January below $40/bbl, WTI finished the month at $48.24, up over 7% from the previous day's close. This increase was despite the fact that earlier in the week the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that U.S. crude oil stocks rose by almost 9 million barrels over the past week to reach nearly 407 million barrels, the highest level since the government began keeping records in 1982. As I write this, the price has broken back above $50/bbl. When oil prices are plummeting, traders tend to ignore bullish news, and when they are climbing bearish news is often shrugged off. While oil could resume its decline this month and disprove my prediction by the end of February, the fact that the price of WTI rose despite news that should have sent it lower may indicate that we have reached the bottom. (Follow Robert Rapier on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.) This article originally appeared in the The Energy Letter column. Never miss an issue. Sign up to receive The Energy Letter by email. Profit from the S&P 34 If you've never heard of the S&P 34, you're not alone. It's my nickname for a private portfolio I've put together using my secret stock-picking system. My system is so powerful – and simple to use – that the first time I tested it out, I made a staggering $127,344 in profits. And today, I'm revealing 34 companies it pinpointed that are trading at least 20% lower than they should be. Translation: They're flat-out bargains… for now. But you have to hurry. I can only make the names of these 34 companies available to the public for a limited time. So click here to get their details today. Columbia on Launch Pad 2/04/2015 By Robert Rapier Over the past few years, it was a pretty good bet that any MLP initial public offering would see significant gains in its first day of trading. In fact, it was becoming harder and harder for most investors to get an MLP at the IPO price, because new units were typically opening much higher than the projected pricing range. An example of this is Shell Midstream Partners (NYSE: SHLX), whose future growth is expected to be driven by dropdowns from the midstream assets of Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A). The sponsor's initial estimate had the IPO raising approximately $750 million with 37.5 million shares priced between $19 and $21, which would have offered an annualized yield of 3.25% at the midpoint based on the forecast minimum distribution. We thought that SHLX would be a great long-term holding, and recommended it to readers of MLP Profits for purchase below $29. But SHLX opened at $32, closed on the first day of trading at $33.55, and is currently trading above $40. (See MLP Profits for our latest recommendation on Shell Midstream Partners.) SHLX is the last MLP IPO of 2014 still trading above its IPO price. After its debut on Oct. 29 the price of crude oil continued to fall, and the decline accelerated in late November after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided not to cut its production quotas. Soon enough natural gas prices plunged as well. Thus, the last two IPOs of 2014 -- Antero Midstream Partners (NYSE: AM), which launched in November, and Rice Midstream Partners (NYSE: RMP), which went public in December -- are both trading at least 10% below their IPO price. This week will see the first MLP IPO of 2015 in Columbia Pipeline Partners (expected to list as CPPL), which is aiming to raise $800 million in the third-largest initial offering ever for an MLP. The partnership will begin as a subsidiary of the natural gas distributor NiSource (NYSE: NI), which plans to spin out CPPL's general partner in mid-2015. Some of the details of Columbia Partners IPO were spelled out in 3 More IPOs to Test Volatile Market. In brief, CPPL will own not particular NiSource midstream assets but rather a rising percentage stake in an operating company representing the entire business. This includes 15,000 miles of strategically located interstate pipelines extending from New York to the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation's largest underground natural gas storage systems, and related gathering and processing assets concentrated in the rapidly-growing Marcellus and Utica shale basins. Columbia Partners expects to price 40 million units between $19 and $21, and to pay out a minimum quarterly distribution of $0.1675 per unit for a midpoint annualized yield of 3.4%. This IPO is due to price on Feb. 6, and its size, structure, likely yield and projected growth rate rank it alongside some of the other recent large MLP offerings, including Valero Energy Partners (NYSE: VLP), Phillips 66 Partners (NYSE: PSXP) and the aforementioned Shell Midstream Partners. CPPL is an MLP that warrants serious consideration, particularly if it doesn't open well above its expected offering price. (Follow Robert Rapier on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.) This article originally appeared in the MLP Investing Insider column. Never miss an issue. Sign up to receive MLP Investing Insider by email. Buffett Didn't Start Out Rich But he did begin investing with a powerful strategy that kick-starts wealth like none other. Funny thing is, Buffett can't use the strategy anymore – he's too darn rich. Luckily (unless you're a billionaire already), it's open to you. And it still works like magic. In fact, there's no swifter, surer way to becoming a millionaire in all of investing. Want to learn how? The full story. You are receiving this email at benjamart.ss.stock@blogger.com as part of your subscription to Investing Daily's Stocks To Watch, published by Investing Daily. 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