Dear Mr. Berko:

Dear G.H.:

Holy cannoli. Empire District Electric Co. (EDE-$18.72) does not pay a dividend anymore. Management suspended the 32-cent quarterly dividend six months ago, when its Joplin, Mo., service area was devastated by a tornado. The tornado damage will cost EDE about $25 million, and the costs will be capitalized. The suspended dividend, which EDE expects to restore next year, should conserve about $27 million in cash. When the dividend is resumed in 2012, management indicates a smaller payout of 25 cents a quarter.

EDE is a teeny-tiny utility with $510 million in revenues. It serves 205,000 electric and gas customers in Missouri. In the last 17 years, EDE managed to grow its dividend by only 4 cents while company revenues doubled from $256 million in 1994.

In 1994, EDE earned $1.18 per share, and in 2010 (a trouble-free year), EDE posted earnings of $1.17 a share. Not good, that! Unless EDE gets a high buyout offer from Boeing or Amazon, there’s not a single reason to own the stock.

Meanwhile, I must give you and other readers some good advice: Do not – and I repeat, do not – depend upon the Yahoo Finance website for financial information. If you insist on checking the site, it’s critical that you verify Yahoo’s financial data with a reputable source, such as your bookie or attorney. The yahoos at Yahoo Finance show EDE paying an annual dividend of $1.32, six months after management suspended its payout.

Mistakes like this are common with Yahoo. Unfortunately, the employees who run the site sometimes take more than 50 minutes for lunch. When many of those yahoos are gone that long, they’ve gotta be retrained after returning to their cubicle. That takes time and money.

National Grid PLC (NGG-$48.75) is an interesting utility with 27,000 employees, and it pays a sweet dividend of $3.80 with a solid 7.8 percent yield.

Home-ported across the pond in London, NGG has an 8,600-mile gas pipeline network that distributes to 11 million U.K. consumers, and also provides electricity to 3.5 million customers in New York and New England and distributes natural gas via a 4,000-mile pipeline to 3.4 million New York and New England users. It also owns 57 generating plants in Long Island, N.Y.

It also owns and operates electricity interconnects between England and France, plus three huge liquefied natural gas storage facilities in Great Britain.

In the past 10 years, NGG’s earnings have grown 30 percent, and the payout has increased 50 percent – and so have revenues, which now surpass $22 billion.

This appears to be a good utility for modest revenue, income and dividend growth. Standard & Poor’s, Market Edge, Reuters, Barclays Capital and Goldman Sachs are recommending NGG, and I agree.

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 1416, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429 or email him at malber@adelphia.net. ©2011 Creators.co