It’s so tempting for investors to chase the next flashy get-rich-quick theme and bet on speculative “growth” stocks, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. Such assets can deliver life-changing returns, but their market-moving volatility typically leaves many investors’ accounts bleeding. However, true generational wealth can still be built in the background, quietly, without taking on too much capital risk, by owning key assets that generate buckets of money year after year.
However, you don’t necessarily have to settle for the security of a slow-growing utility. There’s a TSX-listed infrastructure giant that offers the rock-solid stability of a utility combined with a hidden growth engine directly tied to the world’s biggest investment trends. I refer to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (TSX:BIP.UN), and it could be one of the best core holdings for your retirement portfolio.
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners Stocks: A Global Empire Built on ‘Boring’ Essentials
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is a global powerhouse that undoubtedly owns the business-critical assets you use every day. The portfolio is diversified across four key segments: utilities, transportation, midstream and data.
The infrastructure power owns everything from natural gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines to railroads, ports and toll roads. It owns energy storage facilities and the data centers and cell towers that power our digital lives. Assets are spread across North America, South America, Australia and other countries. This global footprint is incredibly defensive.
As much as 85% of Brookfield’s cash flow is regulated or tied to long-term contracts and protected against, or indexed to, inflation. The US$37 billion infrastructure portfolio has been a financial fortress for investors in BIP.UN units for years.
BIP’s “quietly rich” twin-engine growth strategy
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is building investor wealth using two powerful engines, and this is where the story gets exciting.
The first is the ‘silent’ income stream. This infrastructure powerhouse is a dividend growth machine. It has a 17-year history of consistently increasing its dividend payout, with it actively targeting annual growth of 5-9% for that payout. The current payout yields 5% annually. Given management’s dividend commitment to shareholders, this reliable passive income stream could grow faster than inflation and has been a major source of investor returns over the past two decades.
But income is only half the story. Capital gains on this infrastructure play could satisfactorily make investors rich.
Just looking at Brookfield’s historical track record, a hypothetical $10,000 investment in BIP.UN ten years ago, with dividends reinvested, could have grown to almost $155,000 by now. Even if you had just pocketed the dividends, the capital gains alone could have turned that $10,000 into more than $73,000.
BEEP.ONE data Ygraphs
But how could the ‘boring’ infrastructure company grow investor capital over the next decade?
The ‘secret’ AI engine hiding in plain sight
BIP may be the best Canadian infrastructure stock to buy right now to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. While management focuses on three unstoppable megatrends: Decarbonization, deglobalization and digitalization, the latter is a gold mine.
The rapidly emerging AI-powered global economy requires a massive expansion of physical assets, and Brookfield is building this infrastructure backbone. The data segment already includes more than 140 data centers, 308,000 telecom towers and even two semiconductor factories. In fact, Brookfield’s partnership with Intel Construction of a $30 billion semiconductor factory in Arizona is underway. Starting this quarter, Intel’s Arizona factories will mass-produce the company’s newest and most advanced silicon through 2026. Such deals are key growth drivers.
Brookfield is fueling its growth with a brilliant strategy called “capital recycling.” It sells mature, slow-growing assets for good profits to reinvest that money in high-growth areas. The infrastructure powerhouse asset recycling business is gaining momentum with many takers in 2025, providing billions in new liquidity to put into new acquisitions such as the Hotwire fiber-to-the-home network in the US.
Takeaway for investors
While no equity investment is risk-free, and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners essentially uses a significant amount of debt to execute its strategy, leverage is especially an issue during high interest rate regimes. Interest rates are coming down, Brookfield has a strong BBB+ investment-grade credit rating, and most of its debt is locked in at fixed interest rates.
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is a get-rich-reliably infrastructure powerhouse that offers a combination of safe, growing dividends and a powerful, hidden growth story that can successfully build on AI infrastructure this decade. It could be the best Canadian infrastructure stock to buy and hold over the next decade.
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