There are many reasons why you should invest a part of your portfolio in foreign utility stocks. Listed below are some of them:

1. Conservative growth – Generally utilities are considered to be a conservative investor’s best friend. They tend to growth slowly and steadily over time and provide high dividends. Unlike technology stocks or other high growth sectors, they do not grow exponentially in a short period of time.

2. Dividends – As mentioned above, utility stocks tend to have high dividend yields – most have a yield of above 3% and this dividend rate is increased year over year by many well-run utilities.
Since they do not have the need to reinvest the retained earnings to grow, many of these utilities pay their earnings as dividends to shareholders.

3.Government Assistance/Tax relief – Utilities get many forms of assistance from the governments of the countries they operate in. This can be in the form of tax breaks for investing in capital goods such as power plant equipments, pipelines etc. Recently governments are offering high financial incentives to those utilities that invest in carbon reducing technologies, green power plants, environment-friendly technologies such as wind energy etc.

There are a number of foreign utility stocks that trade in the NewYork Stock Exchange(NYSE) and the Over-The-Counter (OTC) exchanges. These range from electricity only producing utilities to multi-utilities that operate in the water, gas and electricity markets.

For a list of foreign utility stocks, visit:

Hi-Yield Portfolio(HYP)- Brazilian Utilities

Hi-Yield Portfolio(HYP)- European Utilities
Cheers!
-David