For 25 years, Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, has surveyed the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is one of 100+ ideas in the Best Stocks for 2008 report.

"My favorite conservative recommendation for 2008 is Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK)," says Roger Conrad, editor of The Utility Forecaster.

"Like most electric utilities, Duke Energy faces a capital spending challenge in coming years, as it ramps up output to meet exploding future demand and meets new regulations on carbon dioxide. Unlike most, however, it's well positioned not only to meet the new rules but to profit from them.

"Duke's nuclear power plants have long been among the best-run in the industry. To them, the company has added a wind developer this year as well. But the real opportunity could well be in coal. In November, Duke won Indiana regulators' approval to build a 630 megawatt integrated gasification combined cycle plant (IGCC).

"By converting that state's coal to clean-burning gas, the plant will produce four times the electricity of the Edwardsville coal plant it will replace and 45% less carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt hour. That's not including the potential addition of CO2 capture technology.

"Sometimes it takes a while for the market to recognize a company's achievements. When it ultimately does, however, the result is super-charged returns," says Roger Conrad, editor of The Utility Forecaster.

"Over the past decade, few companies have risen as quickly to dominate their industries as Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ)." Here is the advisor's review.

"Verizon began its ascent with a series of mergers, combining with the former NYNEX, GTE and finally MCI Communications. It simultaneously unified its wireless operation with that of Vodafone, keeping 55% of the venture known as Verizon Wireless.

"Since then, Verizon Wireless has grown rapidly and today boasts the biggest consumer network in the US, along with the lowest turnover and highest margins. The former MCI coupled with Verizon's former business operation continues to expand globally.

"Even the wireline division -- which is steadily losing customers to competitors, including the company's own wireless service -- is finding new life upselling broadband services.

For growth, utility expert Roger Conrad likes Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA), while for income, he picks the cable firm's dividend-paying notes and preferreds.

The editor of The Utility Forecaster explains, "Cash flow and revenue growth of 30%-plus is hardly utility like. But those are the numbers cable communications provider Comcast Corp. put up in the second quarter and has consistently for the past few years."

Best of all, he adds, there's no end in sight to its success. He observes, "The company added 94% more revenue-generating units in the second period than last year, a clear sign sales of its 'triple bundle' of cable TV, broadband Internet and telecom service are still accelerating."

Mergers have been commonplace in the telecom sector in recent years, and utility expert Roger Conrad expects this trend to continue. Supporting these mergers, he notes, has been industry competition, technological advances, less-stringent regulation, the natural advantages of scale and a glut of capacity.

The editor of The Utility Forecaster points out that these factors triggered dramatic industry consolidation beginning in the late 1990s, when Wall Street threw "tens of billions of dollars at hyped-up startups." More mergers, he says, are "almost surely on the way."

One likely takeover target? Alltel Communications (NYSE:AT). The company, says Conrad, has been a prolific consolidator of rural wireless assets in recent years and now serves more than 11 million customers nationwide. Debt, meanwhile, is half last year's levels because of the 2006 spinoff of its wireline assets as Windstream.

Conrad explains, "Low debt, low customer turnover and robust growth have already attracted takeover interest from private capital, as well as national wireless giants Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel."