PrefBlog

Intact Financial Corporation has announced:

that it has closed its previously announced bought deal offering (the “Offering”) of Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class A Shares, Series 7 (the “Series 7 Preferred Shares”) underwritten by a syndicate of underwriters (the “Underwriters”) led by TD Securities Inc. together with BMO Capital Markets, CIBC Capital Markets and National Bank Financial, resulting in aggregate gross proceeds (including the proceeds resulting from the exercise of their option) to IFC of $250 million. The net proceeds from the Offering will be used by IFC for general corporate purposes.

The holders of Series 7 Preferred Shares will be entitled to receive fixed non-cumulative preferential cash dividends, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of IFC, on a quarterly basis (with the first quarterly dividend, covering the period from issuance to September 30, 2018, to be paid on September 28, 2018), for the initial fixed rate period ending on June 30, 2023, based on an annual rate of 4.90%. The dividend rate will be reset on June 30, 2023 and every five years thereafter at a rate equal to the 5-year Government of Canada bond yield plus 2.55%.

Holders of the Series 7 Preferred Shares will have the right, at their option, to convert their Series 7 Preferred Shares into Non-cumulative Floating Rate Class A Shares, Series 8 (the “Series 8 Preferred Shares”), subject to certain conditions, on June 30, 2023 and on June 30 every five years thereafter. The holders of Series 8 Preferred Shares will be entitled to receive floating rate non-cumulative preferential cash dividends, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of IFC, at a rate equal to the 90-day Canadian Treasury Bill rate plus 2.55%.

DBRS Limited has assigned a rating of Pfd-2 with a Stable trend for the Series 7 Preferred Shares.

The Series 7 Preferred Shares will commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on May 29, 2018 under the symbol IFC.PR.G.

IFC.PR.G is a FixedReset, 4.90%+255, announced 2018-5-17. It will be tracked by HIMIPref™ and has been assigned to the FixedReset subindex.

As this issue is not NVCC compliant, it will be analyzed as having a Deemed Retraction – that is, a “DeemedMaturity” on 2025-1-31 will be assumed. This date may change in the future. Note, however, that this carries more uncertainty than it does with most other insurers because Intact is a P&C insurer, not a life company.

The issue traded 463,145 shares today in a range of 24.70-92 before closing at 24.80-82. Vital statistics are:

The TXPR price index is down 1.45% since the close prior to announcement (that is, from the close on May 16 until the close May 29), so the issue held its own against the overall market.

p> Enbridge Inc. has announced :

that none of Enbridge’s outstanding Cumulative Redeemable Preference Shares, Series F (Series F Shares) will be converted into Cumulative Redeemable Preference Shares, Series G of Enbridge (Series G Shares) on June 1, 2018.

After taking into account all conversion notices received from holders of its outstanding Series F Shares by the May 17, 2018 deadline for the conversion of the Series F Shares into Series G Shares, less than the 1,000,000 Series F Shares required to give effect to conversions into Series G Shares were tendered for conversion.

It will be recalled that ENB.PR.F will reset to 4.689% effective 2018-6-1 and will hence be referred to as a FixedReset, 4.689%+251.

ENB.PR.F commenced trading 2012-1-18 after being announced 2012-1-9. It is tracked by HIMIPref™ but relegated to the Scraps subindex on credit concerns.

It will be further recalled that I recommended against conversion.

Quadravest Capital Management has announced:

Financial 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it will undertake an offering of Preferred Shares and Class A Shares of the Company. The offering will be co-led by National Bank Financial Inc., CIBC World Markets Inc., Scotia Capital Inc. and RBC Capital Markets, and will also include BMO Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity Corp., Industrial Alliance Securities Inc., Echelon Wealth Partners, GMP Securities L.P., Raymond James Ltd., Desjardins Securities Inc., Mackie Research Capital Corporation, and Manulife
Securities Incorporated.

The Preferred Shares will be offered at a price of $9.90 per Preferred Share to yield 5.6% and the Class A Shares will be offered at a price of $10.30 per Class A Share to yield 14.6%.

The closing price on the TSX of each of the Preferred Shares and the Class A Shares on May 22, 2018 was $10.13 and $10.49, respectively.

Since inception of the Company, the aggregate dividends paid on the Preferred Shares have been $7.60 per share and the aggregate dividends paid on the Class A Shares have been $17.89 per share, for a combined total of $25.49. All distributions to date have been made in tax advantage eligible Canadian dividends or capital gains dividends.

The net proceeds of the offering will be used by the Company to invest in an actively managed, high quality portfolio consisting of 15 financial services companies made up of Canadian and U.S. issuers as follows:

Bank of Montreal	National Bank of Canada	Bank of America Corp.
The Bank of Nova Scotia	Manulife Financial Corporation	Citigroup Inc.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	Sun Life Financial Services of Canada Inc.	Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Royal Bank of Canada	Great-West Lifeco Inc.	JP Morgan Chase & Co.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank	CI Financial Corp.	Wells Fargo & Co.

The Company’s investment objectives are:
Preferred Shares:
i. to provide holders of the Preferred Shares with fixed, cumulative preferential monthly cash dividends currently in the amount of 5.50% annually, to be set by the Board of Directors annually subject to a minimum of 5.25% until
2020; and
ii. on or about the termination date, currently December 1, 2020 (subject to further 5 year extensions thereafter), to pay the holders of the Preferred Shares $10.00 per Preferred Share.

Class A Shares:
i. to provide holders of the Class A Shares with regular monthly cash dividends in an amount to be determined by the Board of the Directors; and
ii. to permit holders to participate in all growth in the net asset value of the Company above $10 per Unit, by paying holders on or about the termination date of December 1, 2020 (subject to further 5 year extensions thereafter) such amounts as remain in the Company after paying $10 per Preferred Share

The sales period of this overnight offering will end at 9:00 a.m. EST on May 24, 2018. The offering is expected to close on or about May 31, 2018 and is subject to certain closing conditions including approval by the TSX.

So Whole Units are being offered for 20.20 and the NAVPU as of May 15 was 17.76! That’s a premium of a little under 14%! Holy smokes, but it’s a nice business when it works, eh?

Update, 2018-5-26: The offering was successful:

Financial 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has completed the overnight marketing of up to 5,159,000 Preferred Shares and up to 5,159,000 Class A Shares of the Company. Total proceeds of the offering are expected to be approximately $104.2 million.