Jim:      Mr. Burke, welcome to Mad Money...

Kevin:     Good to be here, thanks for having me on the show.

Jim:      Very exciting sir, because you know that I have been a huge supporter of your stock and when it really dipped down to 7% yield, I told people to buy it hand over fist.

Kevin:     It has been a good buy in the last year. If you look back a year, and you add in that dividend, we are off by less than 2%. I wish my entire portfolio was off less than 2%.

Jim:      Well, that is why I have been saying to people, listen here is a way to handle your 401K during the down times, own some ConEd. But you know everybody wants to own Intel, or they want to own Microsoft, they do not care about the dividends.

Kevin:     Everybody should have a place in their portfolios for some solid income stocks. Companies that have been around for a long time, that have had a pretty conservative business model, that have done well for their shareholders and customers over a long period of time.

Jim:      Thank you, thank you, because I can’t emphasize enough that that is the case. And I think people say well ConEd, that is boring… I never regard that making money when things are good, and not losing that much when things are bad all that boring… if I want excitement I go to the new Yankee Stadium, or the City Field, right?

Kevin:     And I think that keeping the lights on in New York City has been very exciting over the years. It is a great city.

Jim:      Alright, let’s talk about that. Everyone knows and everyone is very worried about the New York city economy… when I tell people that they should be buying ConEd, is wow we have all kinds of problems, the banks are in trouble, people aren’t hiring, how can you recommend a utility that needs New York to do well. Can you explain that to people, why it is not that simple?

Kevin:     We look at our sales, and the sales are off a very small percentage. You know people do focus on the financial services markets, and those are very important in terms of the total personal income in New York City and New York state, and the taxes. They are off in terms of employment, but if you look at the broader base of services in New York City, the service employment industry, which is about 5 times as much as just the financials services employment, they are off less than a half a percent in the last year. So I think that there is still a lot of opportunity for a strong New York City, people are here because they want to do business in New York. People have been coming to New York City from around the country, and around the world for years. That immigration has kicked up in the last year or so, because people understand that if you want to do business, you come to New York City.

Jim:      Alright, Mr. Burke why is it that you don’t fear, like so many of the other utility executives that I bring on, a tough cap-n-trade program?

Kevin:     We stopped burning coal in the late 60’s or the early 70’s at ConEdison. We now have sold most of that generating plants. The plants that we own are connected into our steam system. About a decade ago the New York state moved towards what they called a restructuring of the industry. That allowed their customers to go out into the market and buy their electricity from a host of different suppliers. In order to create a competitive market in generation. They wound up, we sold our power plants to a lot of different owners, so we own a small percentage. We own about 700 megawatts of electric generation in New York City, and that is all connected into our steam system. That is about 5% of what we need on a hot summer day. So in terms of our assets, our assets are really in transmission and distribution for electricity, gas and steam.

Jim:      One last question, 10% rate hike, people are saying, that means to me that you are not done boosting your dividend.

Kevin:     We understand the importance of that dividend to our investors. We have had a great track record, you mentioned this earlier, 35 years of increases. There is only two utilities in the S&P 500 that have a record like that. We are going to continue to look at that, but you have to tie your dividend into what is going on with earnings per share. And we have also tried to keep a pretty conservative balance sheet. That has been important to us for a long time.

Jim:      Excellent, Kevin Burke, I will see you Thursday night. Thank you.

Kevin:     See you Thursday, thank you.