PrefBlog

Fortis Inc. has announced:

that it has closed its public offering (the “Offering”) of Cumulative Redeemable Fixed Rate Reset First Preference Shares, Series M (“Series M First Preference Shares”) underwritten by a syndicate of underwriters led by Scotiabank and RBC Capital Markets. Fortis issued 24,000,000 Series M First Preference Shares at a price of $25.00 per share for aggregate gross proceeds to the Corporation of $600,000,000.

The net proceeds of the Offering will be used to repay a portion of the amounts borrowed by Fortis under its acquisition credit facility in connection with the acquisition of UNS Energy Corporation completed on August 15, 2014.

The Series M First Preference Shares were offered by way of a short form prospectus of Fortis dated September 11, 2014 and will commence trading today on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol FTS.PR.M.

Fortis is the largest investor-owned distribution utility in Canada, with total assets approaching $25 billion and fiscal 2013 revenue exceeding $4 billion. Its regulated utilities account for approximately 93% of total assets and serve more than 3 million customers across Canada and in the United States and the Caribbean. Fortis owns non-regulated hydroelectric generation assets in Canada, Belize and Upstate New York. The Corporation’s non-utility investments are comprised of hotels and commercial real estate in Canada.

Additional information about the Corporation can be accessed at www.fortisinc.com or www.sedar.com.

FTS.PR.M is a FixedReset, 4.10%+248, announced and supersized 2014-9-3. The issue will be tracked by HIMIPref™ and has been assigned to the FixedResets subindex.

The issue traded a massive 2,113,711 shares today (consolidated exchanges) in a range of 24.98-12 before closing at 25.10-11, 9×150. Vital statistics are:

Implied Volatility analysis suggests that FTS.PR.M is cheap relative to other Fortis FixedResets, with a theoretical price of 25.97 … but remember that this conclusion is not necessarily applicable with respect to other issuers! It could just as easily be that the lower-spread FTS issues are expensive relative to the universe!

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2014 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Issue Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.