Analyst Likes This Utility Stock – ‘It’s Got Good Momentum’

We recently published 10 Trending Stocks to Watch as Brad Gerstner Explains Tailwinds for AI Trade – ’10x Manhattan Project’. PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) is one of the trending stocks to watch.

Jim Lebenthal, a partner at Cerity Partners, recently explained during a program on CNBC why he likes utility company PG&E.

“This is a California utility. It got unreasonably smacked down with the wildfires earlier this year. Its liabilities are nowhere near what the market feared. And it’s got good momentum right now.”

Analyst Likes This Utility Stock - ‘It’s Got Good Momentum’

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Third Point Management stated the following regarding PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“We are devastated by the recent events in Southern California. Several of our family members and team members call Los Angeles home, and our hearts are with all impacted by the fires.

While PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) does not operate in this region, there is press speculation that one of the fires, Eaton, may have been related to transmission equipment owned by SoCal Edison (SCE), another investor-owned utility (parent company Edison International.) Edison has stated publicly that they do not believe their equipment was involved. The investigation is ongoing, and we believe it is premature to make conclusions about the origin of the fire…

If the Eaton fire ignition was related to SCE equipment, the California legal standard of “inverse condemnation” exposes SCE to resultant property damage liabilities. After PG&E’s bankruptcy in 2019, California passed a bill called AB1054 which protects the state’s investor-owned utilities (Edison, PG&E and Sempra) from these liabilities as long as they adhere to a rigorous safety standard. This includes a comprehensive wildfire mitigation plan approved annually by the government and a commitment to spend billions to harden the grid; for example, PG&E is spending a whopping $18 billion on wildfire mitigation from 2023 -2025. In exchange, AB1054 includes several protections, such as a legal prudency standard that entitles the utility to cost recovery via multiple avenues in the event of a catastrophic fire and a $21 billion insurance fund to cover incurred liabilities. SCE has an active safety certificate and thus should benefit from the protections under AB 1054, just as PG&E would in case of a future fire. Regulator-approved cost recovery is a routine proceeding for utilities in areas prone to severe climate events (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc.) in acknowledgement of the fact that it is not feasible to remove all risk from overhead grid infrastructure. PCG has been the preeminent advocate in California for undergrounding, which we believe is the only way to permanently eliminate wildfire risk from grid assets…” (Click here to read the full text)

While we acknowledge the risk and potential of PCG as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than PCG and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.