I have always been a big fan of the safety and income potential of the nation’s utility industry. With the economy in shambles, few utilities have the potential they once did, but MDU Resources (NYE:MDU) is looking as good as ever.

No matter how well an executive team manages their company, there is very little any of us can do to mitigate political risk. No matter what we do, if a runaway government wants to take our profits, there is nothing we can do to stop it.

But the political teeter-totter goes both ways. The government giveth and the government taketh. If they want to hand us profits, there is little we can do to stop it.

One company hoping the Obama administration will do more good than harm is MDU Resources Group (NYSE:MDU), a diversified natural-resource company based in Bismarck, North Dakota.

There is a reason this company has consistently outshined its competitors and has been named one of America’s 400 best big companies by Forbes. It is superbly managed by a team of fiscal conservatives that concentrate more on long-term goals than short-term earnings estimates.

MDU was recently named the country’s best-managed utility company. And it shows.

With a current ratio of 1.3 and nearly $800 million in operating cash flow, the company has more than enough financial strength to get it through the current economic mess. But like so many things, what happens next is up to the nation’s Investor in Chief.

When Obama signed an economic stimulus package worth nearly a trillion dollars into law, MDU shareholders were drooling at the possibilities.

Read the full article here at TFN: MDU Resources: The best utility of them all?