One of the strongest dividend stocks out there is Brookfield Renewable (BEPC). The Canadian company acquires and operates renewable energy assets around the globe, including hydroelectric, wind, and solar, as well as storage facilities. Its current dividend yield is about 3%.
On this episode of "The 5," Fool contributor Jason Hall talks about why he loves Brookfield. This segment was recorded on Oct. 11.
Jason Hall: Sanjay does have a question about Brookfield Renewable: What are its competitive advantages that gives us confidence in the yield?
Let's just talk about the mechanics of its business. Again, it builds or acquires, or invests in these renewable energy assets that have very long-term contracts to sell the power from these assets. That is massive, predictable cash flows. When you sign a 20-year contract, that's a take-or-pay deal to sell power from these assets you know you're going to get paid. The power is going to be needed, it's going to be consumed. It's also in the right space in terms of benefiting from the decline of costs for renewables because again, it's buying, and deploying these assets so it benefits, its costs continue to fall with every new deployments while hydrocarbons, fossil fuels, for energy production, there's only so much cost you can wring out of that. That's a substantial competitive advantage. I would say its management and the culture the company has in terms of its capital allocation practices is a competitive advantage as well. They have proved for over a decade. Brookfield has been around for a couple of decades now, but they have proven to be very good at capital allocation across the cycle. They're just very good at it and the track record's there. I would say those are the three things right there.