PPL Corporation (PPL) Stock: Stronger Than the Storm?

What’s PPL doing to boost profits?
PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) hasn’t been standing still in the face of these threats, though. In April, PPL opened a new clean-coal facility that will help it recover gypsum as a byproduct that can then go toward fertilizer use. The company also completed a hydroelectric expansion project in Montana, raising its generation capacity by about 70% as part of PPL’s overall push toward renewable energy.

PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) also got a victory last month when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to claim a foreign tax credit for a “windfall tax” imposed on the company’s U.K. operations by the British government. The one-time $40 million impact is less than 10% of its total income-tax bill for 2012, but avoiding double taxation is a key element for the success of PPL’s multinational operations.

Facing the Fed storm
In the end, though, the biggest challenge for PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) stock will come from the Federal Reserve and its interest rate policies. PPL has done the best it can to boost its fundamental performance, but investors nevertheless are likely to bid utility stocks up or down as a group based on their expectations of what the Fed will do with rates. Moreover, the future direction of natural gas prices will go a long way toward determining whether PPL becomes more competitive in its unregulated market or continues to face the pressures that have held that division back in the recent past.

The article PPL Stock: Stronger Than the Storm? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Dan Caplinger.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger. The Motley Fool recommends Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) and National Grid plc (NYSE:NGG).

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