American Water Works (NYSE: AWK) closed at $19.13. AWK announces on August 11 a secondary offering of 30M shares of common stock by selling stockholder, a subsidiary of RWE AG. AWK options were active on August 13 with volume of 15,064 contracts trading according to Track Data.

St. Mary Land Exp (NYSE: SM) closed $28.75. SM options were active on August 13 on volume of 7,195 contracts. SM September and November option implied volatility of 51 is below its 26-week average of 64, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

Options Update: Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Analyst upgrades:

• Baird upgraded Regal-Beloit (NYSE: RBC) to Outperform from Neutral based on valuation and growth expectations.
• Black & Decker (NYSE: BDK) and Lennar (NYSE: LEN) were upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS based on valuation.
• Kroger (NYSE: KR) and Public Storage (NYSE: PSA) were added to Goldman's Conviction Buy List.
• CIBC upgraded Biovail (NYSE: BVF) to Sector Performer from Sector Underperformer.
• Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) was raised to Neutral from Underperform at Cowen.

Analyst downgrades:

• Merrill downgraded Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) to Neutral from Buy and expects marketing and promotional spending to limit earnings growth in 2009 and 2010. The firm lowered their target to $35 from $42.
• Mechel Steel (NYSE: MTL) was cut to Underweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley to reflect declining coal demand.
  
• Friedman Billings downgraded shares of Legg Mason (NYSE: LM) to Underperform from Market Perform on liquidity concerns given the Legg Mason's leveraged balance sheet and falling EBITDA. The firm lowered their target to $7 from $11.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Reich about some of the problems facing our economy and humanity. Those are two very big topics that could easily fill days of talk-time and we managed to scratch through it in 20 minutes or so.

Professor Reich is a wise gent who brings us closer to understanding what is needed in an ailing economy that has seen its share of economic disasters. What is needed is a good old belt tightening, it seems, and significant change in the mindset of Americans. It seems that since China and India are consuming everything in sight, it is up to us to make sue that there is going to be enough food and drink for our future generations.

We went on to discuss how the Oil Sector and Agriculture with stocks such as Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA) (NYSE: POT), The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MOS) and Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) are the natural leaders as they will need to bring much more product to a hungry world.

American Water Works Company sounds like an old company. And it is. The company got its start in 1886.

And now it has filed the necessary papers for an IPO.

Basically, American Water Works is a water and wastewater utility. It has customers in 32 states, as well as Ontario, Canada. In all, about 16.2 million people drink its water.

Last year, American Water Works posted $2 billion in sales and $252.5 million in operating income.

No doubt, the company has considerable competitive advantages. The capital costs are significant and the regulators are onerous. But, water is a necessity -- and this means lots of predictable cash flows.

Interestingly enough, there are 53,000 community water systems and about 16,000 community wastewater systems in the U.S. Thus, as a public company, American Water Works should have lots of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) opportunities.

The underwriters on the IPO include Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS), Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C), and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER). The proposed ticker symbol is AWK.

The prospectus is located on the SEC websites. Also, if you want to check out more IPOs, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.