Show Can Use Continue To As a result of last winter's serious energy there has been increasing doubt as to whether the rise in demand for electricity throughout the remainder of the can be sustained at the historical compounded rate of 7 percent a POSSIBLE revision of the pattern has stemmed from the continued attempts of both government and industry to persuade users of to cut back on of the sharp advances in the price of electricity have been an additional incentive for consumers to take it easy on power it seems likely that demand may expand more slowly than in the at least THE electrical utilities have been faced with other important problems besides the demand such as environmental crucial financing and climbing Financing has been an especially disturbing matter because of the fact that electric utilities require enormous amounts of capital for RECENT money market conditions made it extremely if not for the companies to raise debt capital while at the same time the depressed prices of their common stocks made equity financing In owing to their financial dilemma and the slowdown in customer some electric utilities announced cutbacks in their capital spending SINCE the plight-laden electric utility is the principal user of power generating it is reasonable to assume that the demand for such heavy machinery will grow at a slower rate over the next few It should be kept in that we are speaking of a slowdown only in the rate of There will be other factors which will tend to keep dollar sales FOR inflation itself will create greater volume even while the physical volume expansion there will be more nuclear plants in coming involving higher price Another factor is the large backlog of orders which the producers of steam generating equipment have on plus the fact that these companies are also involved in other expanding IN HIS economic message to the Congress in President Ford mentioned several proposals which could benefit the electric Included was a suggested increase in the investment tax credit from the current 4 percent to 10 percent on outlays for new production Also significant was his proposal to allow corporations a tax deduction for the cash dividends payable on preferred stock Issued after THIS could help many utilities to raise equity capital and maintain their debt-to-equity Both these if could benefit makers of generating The producers of steam generating equipment saw stocks fall drastically Reflecting the poor stock market atmosphere and concern about the electric utility the issues of the three major producers suffered severe market |