BCE Inc. has announced:
that 592,772 of its 14,085,782 Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AF (series AF preferred shares) have been tendered for conversion, on a one-for-one basis, into Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AE (series AE preferred shares). In addition, 1,084,090 of its 1,914,218 series AE preferred shares have been tendered for conversion, on a one-for-one basis, into series AF preferred shares. Consequently, on February 1, 2010, BCE will have 1,422,900 series AE preferred shares and 14,577,100 series AF preferred shares issued and outstanding. The series AE preferred shares and the series AF preferred shares will continue to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols BCE.PR.E and BCE.PR.F respectively.
The series AE preferred shares will continue to pay a monthly floating adjustable cash dividend for the five-year period beginning on February 1, 2010, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE. The monthly floating adjustable dividend for any particular month will continue to be calculated using the Designated Percentage for such month representing the sum of an adjustment factor (based on the market price of the series AE preferred shares in the preceding month) and the Designated Percentage for the preceding month. The series AF preferred shares will pay on a quarterly basis, for the five-year period beginning on February 1, 2010, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE, a fixed dividend based on an annual dividend rate of 4.541%.
This is a logical result (I recommended BCE.PR.F as the better of the pair), but is nevertheless unfortunate. The decline in BCE.PR.E outstanding will reduce its liquidity from already low levels and make swaps between them even harder to execute.
BCE.PR.F is tracked by HIMIPref™ but is relegated to the Scraps index on credit concerns. BCE.PR.E is not tracked by HIMIPref™.
[…] was last mentioned on PrefBlog when the BCE.PR.E / BCE.PR.F Conversion Results were announced on 2010-1-19. BCE.PR.F is tracked by HIMIPref™ but is relegated to the Scraps […]
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