North Dakota Companies, Led By MDU Resources Group, Generated Exceptional Pretax Earnings Growth of 23% in 2017 and of 16% in 2016 With Strong North Dakota US Senate Duo of Heidi Heitkamp and John Hoeven ......................................................................................

From a review of US SEC filings, there were 5 Companies, including 2 Real Estate Investments Trusts (REITs), headquartered in North Dakota with stock market caps or Total Equity of more than $200 mil recently.

These fine 5 North Dakota Companies posted Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Total Pretax Income From Continuing Operations of $276.3 mil in Fiscal Year Ended (FYE) 2016, Up an Exceptional 16% from their similar Total Pretax Income of $237.4 mil in FYE 2015. 

Then in 2017, they did even better, posting Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Total Pretax Income From Continuing Operations of $340.3 mil in Fiscal Year Ended (FYE) 2017, Up an Even More Exceptional 23% from their similar Total Pretax Income of $276.3 mil in FYE 2016. 

Nearly all Republicans, a high percentage of Independents and even many perceptive Democrats all agree as a starting point that for US capitalism to work properly, Companies must generate in the aggregate reasonably healthy profits.  In the aggregate, these 5 North Dakota Companies did so in both 2017 and in 2016.

My Focus is on Pretax Income Rather Than on After-Tax Net Income Because Income Taxes are Simply a Transfer of Financial Wealth Between US Corporations and the US Federal, US State and Foreign Governments.  It Has Nothing Whatsoever to do with Company Operating Performance.

From a review of SEC filings, the chart below shows the Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Pretax Income (Loss) From Continuing Operations for the Fiscal Years Ended 2017, 2016 and 2015 for these 5 North Dakota Companies.

				Year	Year	Year
				2017	2016	2015
				Audited	Audited	Audited
				Pretax	Pretax	Pretax
				Income	Income	Income
			Most	(Loss)	(Loss)	(Loss)
			Recent	From	From	From
North Dakota Companies	City	State	2017	Continuing	Continuing	Continuing
Stock Market Cap or Total Equity Above $200 Mil	HQs	HQs	FYE	Operations	Operations	Operations
				$ mils	$ mils	$ mils
MDU Resources Group	Bismark	ND	Dec 17	350.0	326.2	247.1
NI Holdings	Fargo	ND	Dec 17	22.0	6.1	25.9
Sterling Real Estate Trust	Fargo	ND	Dec 17	19.9	12.9	11.4
Titan Machinery	West Fargo	ND	Jan 18	(14.4)	(22.7)	(56.2)
Investors Real EstateTrust	Minot	ND	Apr 18	(37.2)	(46.2)	9.2
Total all 5 North Dakota Companiea				340.3	276.3	237.4
Total Pretax Income % Growth
………. 2017 Above 2016	23%
………. 2016 Above 2015	16%