Wisconsin Energy Company (WEC)

[rnsmth]

From this morning's earnings call.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2179313-...ipt?page=2

I have owned it since Dec. 2012 and have a total return of 30% as I type this

Quote:Switching gears now. Our board, as you may recall, has authorized us to repurchase up to $300 million of Wisconsin Energy common stock from 2014 through 2017. This is the second phase of our repurchase program. You may recall that our board had previously authorized the purchase of up to $300 million of common stock from 2011 through 2013. So in the first quarter of this year, we purchased approximately 426,000 shares. In total, since our buyback program began, we've repurchased 8,103,000 shares at a cost of $296.4 million. This equates to an average purchase price of $36.58 a share.

And as we've previously announced, our board has adopted a dividend policy that trends to a 65% to 70% payout ratio in 2017. This policy should support annual dividend increases of 7% to 8% from 2015 to 2017, as we move to a payout ratio that is more competitive with our peers across the regulated utility sector.

In January, our board raised the quarterly dividend to $0.39 a share, an increase of 30% over the dividend that was paid during 2012. The new quarterly dividend is equivalent to an annual rate of $1.56 a share.