Water – The most important Natural resource.
Posted by adesigar on August 11, 2006
“Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink”
Seventy Five percent of the world surface is covered in water but 97% is salt or otherwise undrinkable. Another two percent of water is held in Glaciers and Polar ice caps. One, just ONE percent of the water on this Blue planet is usable for drinking, household use, agriculture, construction, manufacturing etc. Shocked? It gets worse. Water consumption is increrasing at 2.5 times the population growth. By 2025 two-thirds of the world population will live in water stressed conditions.
What are people supposed to do? Stop drinking water? Stop bathing? Stop agriculture, construction and industry? NO the answer lies in more efficient use of water, better distribution, purification, filtering and increasing the water supply. The companies that deal with water in any form will show good steady growth over the next few decades.
My Personal opinion is that since this is a very long term bet and there are no stand out companies that i can think of the best way to play this would be to invest in PowerShares Water Resource Portfolio (PHO) . If you prefer to invest in individual companies over Mutual Funds or ETFs my favourites are Aqua America, SUEZ, and Veolia Environnement. I have included a list of companies that form the Palisades Water Index.
- Calgon Carbon Corporation (filtration)
- Consolidated Water (water utility)
- Insituform Technologies (pipeline installation and repair)
- Companhia de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo (water and wastewater utility)
- Pentair, Inc NYSE (pumps, motors, filtration, water tanks)
- Southwest Water
- California Water
- Pall Corporation (filtration)
- Watts Water Technologies (valves)
- Amer States Water
- Aqua America
- Millipore Corporation (filtration)
- United Utilities
- ITT Industries (pumps)
- Franklin Electric (pumps and motors)
- Nalco Holding
- Layne Christensen
- Danaher
- Idexx Laboratories
- Lindsay Manufacturing (center pivot irrigation systems)
- Badger Meter (flowmeters)
- Synagro Tech
- Veolia Environnement
- Tetra Tech
- Urs Corp
- Valmont Industries (center pivot irrigation systems)
- Itron
- Flowserve (pumps)
- SUEZ-ADR
- Ashland, Inc.
- Idex
- Roper Industries (appliances, pumps, industrial controls)
- Emerson Electric (pump motors and flowmeters)
- Siemens-Ads
- General Electric (appliances, motors)
- 3M
Conflicts: I do not own shares in any of the companies or funds listed.
