Whittier Trust Co. Purchases 57,211 Shares of Golar LNG Limited (GLNG)

Whittier Trust Co. boosted its position in Golar LNG Limited (NASDAQ:GLNG) by 2,496.1% during the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund owned 59,503 shares of the shipping company’s stock after buying an additional 57,211 shares during the period. Whittier Trust Co.’s holdings in Golar LNG were worth $3,576,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Golar LNG by 884.2% in the second quarter. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC now owns 4,675 shares of the shipping company’s stock valued at $138,000 after purchasing an additional 4,200 shares in the last quarter. First Mercantile Trust Co. lifted its holdings in shares of Golar LNG by 92.8% in the first quarter. First Mercantile Trust Co. now owns 5,101 shares of the shipping company’s stock valued at $140,000 after purchasing an additional 2,455 shares in the last quarter. Russell Investments Group Ltd. bought a new position in shares of Golar LNG in the first quarter valued at approximately $172,000. First Trust Advisors LP bought a new position in shares of Golar LNG in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $201,000. Finally, Raymond James & Associates bought a new position in shares of Golar LNG in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $210,000. Institutional investors own 77.24% of the company’s stock.

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GLNG has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Stifel Nicolaus restated a “buy” rating and issued a $42.00 target price (up previously from $36.00) on shares of Golar LNG in a report on Thursday, April 19th. ValuEngine upgraded Golar LNG from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, April 19th. BidaskClub upgraded Golar LNG from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, May 4th. Zacks Investment Research lowered Golar LNG from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 9th. Finally, Citigroup dropped their target price on Golar LNG from $35.00 to $32.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, June 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has assigned a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the company. Golar LNG has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $36.86.

Golar LNG opened at $27.30 on Friday, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Golar LNG Limited has a twelve month low of $19.32 and a twelve month high of $35.54. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.62, a quick ratio of 0.28 and a current ratio of 0.28. The company has a market capitalization of $2.83 billion, a PE ratio of -18.57 and a beta of 0.64.

Golar LNG (NASDAQ:GLNG) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, May 31st. The shipping company reported ($0.20) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the Zacks’ consensus estimate of ($0.16) by ($0.04). The company had revenue of $66.19 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $60.45 million. Golar LNG had a negative net margin of 73.05% and a negative return on equity of 7.10%. equities research analysts anticipate that Golar LNG Limited will post -0.21 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, July 5th. Investors of record on Thursday, June 14th were issued a dividend of $0.05 per share. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, June 13th. This represents a $0.20 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.73%. Golar LNG’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently -13.61%.

Golar LNG Company Profile

Golar LNG Limited, a midstream liquefied natural gas (LNG) company, engages in the transportation, regasification, and liquefaction of LNG. It operates through three segments: Vessel operations, Floating Liquefaction Natural Gas Vessel (FLNG), and Power. The company engages in the acquisition, ownership, operation, and chartering of LNG carriers and floating storage regasification units (FSRUs); and the development of LNG projects.

See Also: Closed-End Mutual Funds (CEFs)

Want to see what other hedge funds are holding GLNG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Golar LNG Limited (NASDAQ:GLNG).

Homebuilder Confidence Still Solid in July, but Not Rising

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo housing market index (HMI) for July came in unchanged from June’s index reading of 68. The HMI posted an 18-year high of 74 in December 2017. Economists polled by Bloomberg were expecting an index reading of 68 for July.

NAHB Chair Randy Noel said that while demand remains strong, builders continue to be burdened with rising materials costs. Random length framing lumber fell to below $550 per thousand board feet (nearly 7%) earlier this month after rising by about 85% over the past two years.

The index is based on an NAHB monthly survey of homebuilder perceptions of current single-family home sales and expectations for sale in the next six months. An index reading above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than view them as poor.

The current sales conditions subindex for July was unchanged at 74, and the subindex that estimates prospective buyer traffic rose two points to 52. The subindex measuring sales expectations for the next six months dropped from 75 to 73.

NAHB chief economist, Robert Dietz, said:

Builders are encouraged by growing housing demand, but they continue to be burdened by rising construction material costs. Builders need to manage these cost increases as they strive to provide competitively priced homes, especially as more first-time home buyers enter the housing market

In the NAHB’s regions, three-month moving average indexes dipped in two of four regions. The South’s index score fell one point to 70 and the West’s score fell from 76 to 75. In the Midwest remained unchanged at 65, and the index rose one point to 57 in the Northeast.

ALSO READ: America’s Most Violent (and Peaceful) States

How Does CMS Energy Corporation Make Most of Its Money?

With a 3.1% yield and 12 years of annual dividend increases, CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE:CMS) is an enticing stock for conservative investors looking for a utility investment.�However, add in the roughly 7% annualized dividend growth rate over the past decade (more than double the historical rate of inflation growth), and things start to get a little more exciting. Here's what you need to know about this largely traditional utility with a solid history of rewarding income investors.

The core of the business

Roughly 95% of CMS Energy's revenue is derived from its regulated electric and natural gas utility operations. The rest comes from a tiny merchant power operation and "other." Interestingly, the company operates in only one state: Michigan. Although Detroit has been making headlines in recent years for not-so-good reasons (notably for declaring bankruptcy in 2013), the population of Michigan has actually been expanding, with 2017 marking the sixth consecutive year of population growth and the first year since 2001 that more people moved into the state than moved out. More people means more customers, which is a positive for CMS Energy's utility businesses.

Image source: Getty Images

CMS serves roughly 6.7 million customers (about two-thirds of Michigan's population). Generating and selling electricity accounts for roughly 55% of the top line, with natural gas distribution pitching in about 40%. The company gets around 38% of its electricity from natural gas, 17% from nuclear power, 9% from renewable power, 10% from storage and power purchases, and the rest (26%) from coal. As it has for most utilities, reducing the importance of coal has been a key focus in recent years, with that power source declining from roughly 50% of supply in 2005 to about 25% in 2017. The goal is to completely remove coal from the mix by 2040.

An odd thing to brag about

This brings up an unusual tendency the company has -- it's happy to tell investors that it has a large and aging system. For example, its coal fleet is more than 50 years old. Its distribution system is older than those of its peers. And most of its 1,670 miles of gas pipelines were built before World War II.

This is actually great news because of the basic model used in the regulated utility space. Essentially, utilities are granted monopolies�but must get rate increases approved by regulators. The way to get rate hikes approved is to spend money on the business, either to expand it or, as in the case of CMS, upgrade it. Regulators generally make sure that the rates a utility earns are high enough not only to pay for the work that's being done but to provide an additional return on the investment dollars to make it worth the effort for utilities and their public shareholders. With a coal fleet that's 50 years old, it's easy to sell a rate hike to build new power plants, because CMS is both improving its system and reducing carbon emissions. The same goes for replacing natural gas pipelines that were built in the 1930s.

The current five-year plan calls for spending roughly $10 billion on upgrades and improvements. About $5 billion of that is earmarked for the natural gas distribution business, $3.5 billion for electricity distribution, and $1.5 billion for power production (two-thirds of the power spending is slated to go toward clean energy). That said, CMS believes its system�needs more than $50 billion of investment over the long term. It can't do that all at once, meaning there's more spending to come after the current five year plan runs its course.

CMS believes this spending will push its rate base�higher by roughly 6% to 8% a year, which in turn should support dividend growth of around the same amount over time.�That's a fairly attractive growth rate for a utility, backed by the company's clear need to spend on its aging infrastructure.

Boring... and that's a good thing

CMS doesn't do anything particularly exciting, but that doesn't mean that investors aren't being well rewarded as the company's aging business gets much needed upgrades, which should, in turn, lead to reliable earnings and dividend growth for years to come. You can find higher-yielding utilities, and utilities with higher earnings and dividend growth rates, but the mix of yield, growth, and business simplicity at CMS is worth a very close look for conservative investors.

Why Okta's Shares Fell 10% in June

What happened

Shares of Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA), the company that offers services to manage and protect digital identities, fell 10.4% in June, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The biggest price drop came early in the month and was probably the result of an analyst downgrading Okta's shares.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Needham & Company lowered its buy rating for Okta's shares to a hold, and also reduced its price target from about $47 to $38 at the beginning of June, which likely led to some negative investor sentiment around that time.�

Image source:�YCharts.

In what should be an example of being cautious about following the whims of analysts, Needham proceeded to upgrade�Okta's stock back to a buy at the end of the month.

Now what

What's even more odd about the timing of the drop is that at the beginning of June,�Okta reported strong sales growth for its first quarter.

Sales grew by 60% from the year-ago quarter to $83.6 million, and the company's net loss of $26 million was a slight improvement from its $27.7 million loss in the first quarter of 2018.

The company also issued strong guidance for the second quarter, and management said that revenue will be between $84 million and $85 million. That represents about 39% to 41% growth year over year.

Okta's shares have climbed back up about 9% so far in July, which may mean that investors are starting to realize that Okta's first-quarter results warranted a much more positive response than they initially received.

Brandywine Realty Trust (BDN) Given Average Rating of “Hold” by Brokerages

Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE:BDN) has received an average recommendation of “Hold” from the ten research firms that are currently covering the firm, Marketbeat.com reports. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating on the company. The average twelve-month target price among brokers that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $18.17.

BDN has been the subject of several recent research reports. SunTrust Banks set a $18.00 price objective on shares of Brandywine Realty Trust and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, April 23rd. Stifel Nicolaus cut their target price on shares of Brandywine Realty Trust from $17.00 to $16.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, April 20th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price objective on shares of Brandywine Realty Trust from $18.00 to $17.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, April 24th. Zacks Investment Research raised shares of Brandywine Realty Trust from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, April 17th. Finally, ValuEngine cut shares of Brandywine Realty Trust from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 2nd.

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Brandywine Realty Trust traded down $0.07, hitting $17.05, during mid-day trading on Monday, Marketbeat.com reports. 40,173 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,729,491. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.04, a current ratio of 3.74 and a quick ratio of 3.74. The firm has a market cap of $3.06 billion, a PE ratio of 13.05, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.26 and a beta of 0.98. Brandywine Realty Trust has a 12-month low of $15.20 and a 12-month high of $18.69.

Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE:BDN) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, April 19th. The real estate investment trust reported $0.25 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of $0.32 by ($0.07). Brandywine Realty Trust had a return on equity of 8.37% and a net margin of 27.38%. The company had revenue of $136.36 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $133.17 million. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.32 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 4.2% compared to the same quarter last year. sell-side analysts anticipate that Brandywine Realty Trust will post 1.37 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, July 20th. Investors of record on Friday, July 6th will be issued a dividend of $0.18 per share. This represents a $0.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 4.22%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, July 5th. Brandywine Realty Trust’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 54.96%.

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in BDN. Westwood Holdings Group Inc. lifted its stake in Brandywine Realty Trust by 2.4% in the fourth quarter. Westwood Holdings Group Inc. now owns 2,424,416 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock worth $44,100,000 after acquiring an additional 56,015 shares during the last quarter. Marathon Trading Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Brandywine Realty Trust during the 4th quarter worth $182,000. Heitman Real Estate Securities LLC boosted its position in shares of Brandywine Realty Trust by 42.3% during the 4th quarter. Heitman Real Estate Securities LLC now owns 1,671,095 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock worth $30,397,000 after purchasing an additional 496,435 shares in the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC boosted its position in shares of Brandywine Realty Trust by 34.5% during the 4th quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 2,925,098 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock worth $53,208,000 after purchasing an additional 749,500 shares in the last quarter. Finally, BlackRock Inc. boosted its position in shares of Brandywine Realty Trust by 8.1% during the 4th quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 13,228,278 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock worth $240,624,000 after purchasing an additional 987,496 shares in the last quarter.

About Brandywine Realty Trust

Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE: BDN) is one of the largest, publicly traded, full-service, integrated real estate companies in the United States with a core focus in the Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Austin markets. Organized as a real estate investment trust (REIT), we own, develop, lease and manage an urban, town center and transit-oriented portfolio comprising 185 properties and 25.3 million square feet as of December 31, 2017, which excludes assets held for sale.

Oil mostly higher as Trump demands OPEC lower prices

Oil futures edged slightly higher Thursday, shrugging off a demand by President Donald Trump that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries move to counteract a rally that has prices near or above 3 陆-year highs.

Traders are also awaiting weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on domestic crude supplies.

West Texas Intermediate crude for August delivery CLQ8, +0.18% �on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 36 cents, or 0.5%, to $74.50 a barrel, with the U.S. benchmark hitting its highest since November 2014. U.S. markets were closed September for the Independence Day holiday. Brent crude LCOU8, -0.26% the global benchmark, was up 3 cents at $78.27 a barrel on London��s ICE Europe exchange.

Trump on Wednesday again complained via Twitter about rising gas prices and said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries were doing ��little to help,�� and demanded that the cartel, ��REDUCE PRICING NOW!��

The OPEC Monopoly must remember that gas prices are up & they are doing little to help. If anything, they are driving prices higher as the United States defends many of their members for very little $��s. This must be a two way street. REDUCE PRICING NOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2018

The tweet comes after Trump on Saturday tweeted that Saudi Arabia��s King Salman had agreed to increase output by 2 million barrels a day. OPEC and its major producer allies, namely Russia, had agreed in a June meeting to effectively raise output by 1 million barrels a day to help counteract lost barrels from Venezuela and Iran.

Indeed, analysts said Trump��s decision to exit from the Iran nuclear accord and the administration��s demands that countries eliminate purchases of Iranian oil have been a key driver of the rally.

��It does not occur to the U.S. president that it is Trump himself who is driving prices up through his Iran policy. Trump wants all countries to reduce their oil imports from Iran to zero. This would strip up to 2.5 million barrels per day from the market,�� wrote analysts at Commerzbank, in a note. ��The spare capacities in OPEC countries are just sufficient to offset this amount, but will not be enough if supply is additionally reduced by outages elsewhere �� such as in Libya and Canada at present �� and by falling oil production in Venezuela.��

Also, Iran has threatened to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. continues with its calls for renewed sanctions on Tehran.

The weekly EIA data due Thursday morning is expected to show a 4.5 million barrel fall in crude stockpiles, along with a 2.5 million barrel decline in gasoline inventories and a 250,000 barrel drop for distillate stocks, according to a survey conducted by S&P Global Platts.

The release will be ��one of the most-hyped storage reports ever,�� said Robert Yawger, director of energy at Mizuho Securities U.S.A., in a note. The storage figure for the Nymex delivery hub at Cushing, Okla., will be key, he said, with the outage of a Syncrude upgrader in Alberta, Canada, expected to result in a big storage draw, while refinery throughput could top 18 million barrels a day for a record. Exports could also challenge the record 3 million barrels a day seen in last week��s report, he said.

��If all those moving pieces pan out, the market will most likely have to digest a very big crude oil draw, which could rally [August WTI] towards Tuesday��s four year high of $75.27,�� he said.

Nymex August gasoline futures RBQ8, +0.55% �rose 1.64 cents, or 0.8%, to $2.134 a gallon, while August heating oil HOQ8, +0.86% �rose 2.27 cents, or 1%, to $2.1869 a gallon.

August natural-gas futures NGQ18, +0.10% �were off 2 cents, or 0.7%, at $2.85 per million British thermal units.

William Watts

William Watts is MarketWatch's deputy markets editor, based in New York. Follow him on Twitter @wlwatts.

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What's the Best Way Out of This Fund's Exorbitant Transaction Fees?

It would be hard to find a podcast-hosting duo more totally invested in answering your financial questions than Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp -- they put "Answers" in the show's name, for goodness' sake! And this week, they're at it again, combing through the Motley Fool Answers mailbag in search of conundrums to address for their listeners. But because three heads are better than two, for this episode, they've enlisted the help of Sean Gates, a financial planner with Motley Fool Wealth Management.

In this segment, they consider the case of Jeff, whose wife has a Roth IRA with Fidelity that contains a Vanguard�target date fund. Every time they add any money to the fund, they have to pay a $75 fee. That's both too much, and depressingly normal. But yes, there are maneuvers to get away from those fees.

Sean Gates is an employee of Motley Fool Wealth Management, a separate, sister company of The Motley Fool, LLC. The views of Sean Gates and Motley Fool Wealth Management are not the views of The Motley Fool, LLC and should not be taken as such.

A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on June 26, 2018.

Alison Southwick: Next question comes from Jeff. "My wife has a Roth IRA with Fidelity in which we bought a Vanguard target-date fund. I recently realized that every time we add money to the fund, they charge us a $75 fee!" Woof! "Would you recommend waiting until we have a large enough sum of money to add to the fund to make the fee 1-2% of the investment, or perhaps open an account with Vanguard and transfer the fund? Or maybe there's a better option than those two. My wife and I each already have a Roth IRA and 401(k), so if I transferred the fund to a normal account, wouldn't I get taxed on the dividends?"

Robert Brokamp: What he has encountered is what's called a transaction fee. When you open up a regular old brokerage account and you buy a stock, you pay a commission. It's usually $7-10. But when you buy a mutual fund, it can cost you -- as we're seeing here -- $75, unless it's a non-transaction fee fund -- you'll see a little NTF on the broker's website. One thing he might consider doing is selling that fund and buying a fund that is an NTF fund.

I will point out, though, there's a reason why Vanguard's fund in this situation is charging that. To be in these big brokerages, a mutual fund company has to pay Fidelity a fee to be on their fund marketplace. And in the end, the person who owns that fund is going to pay that. I've read an article that says the average is they're paying the broker 0.4% just to be on their platform.

So, to a certain degree, you're going to pay for it either way. If you love Vanguard's Target retirement fund, my recommendation would be then to transfer the money to Vanguard.

The second part of your question, about how you've said that you and your wife both have a Roth IRA and 401(k), it sounds like you're not aware of the fact that you can transfer this money to those accounts. You don't have to transfer the money to a taxable account. If you did do that, that would be considered distribution and it would be taxable, you'd pay penalties. You can just transfer it to your existing accounts. It might be that you're aware of the annual contribution limits to those accounts, and you might be confusing those contribution limits with what you can transfer. There's no limit on how much money you can transfer from one account to another. If you transferred this Roth IRA with Fidelity to another Roth IRA, that wouldn't affect how much money you could then contribute as a regular contribution. I'm just assuming, reading between the lines there, what the confusion is there.

Sean Gates: The only other thing I would add is, I don't think I would recommend waiting to collect a large sum of money before purchasing a mutual fund. I think that waiting has an opportunity cost associated with it that you might be discounting. Looking for alternate funds to invest in that don't have that commission would be a better option than just waiting until you have some sum of money to cover the cost of the $75 transaction fee.

Brokamp: We've talked about studies before that have looked at dollar-cost averaging vs. lump sum investing. You're better off just getting the money in as soon as you can -- just to back up what you said there. Having your money just sit around in a cash account until you've accumulated enough, there's a cost to that.