PrefBlog

Quadravest has announced:

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has filed a preliminary short form prospectus in each of the provinces of Canada with respect to 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 TD Securities Inc., 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 $10.00 per Preferred Share to yield 5.25% and the Class A Shares will be offered at a price of $10.90 per Class A Share to yield 11.01%.

The closing price on the TSX of each of the Preferred Shares and the Class A Shares on January 15, 2018 was $10.28 and $10.94, respectively.

Since inception of the Company, the aggregate dividends paid on the Preferred Shares have been $7.24 per share and the aggregate dividends paid on the Class A Shares have been $20.00 per share (including five special distributions of $0.25 per share, one special distribution of $0.50 per share and one special stock dividend of $1.75 per share), for a combined total of $27.24 per unit. 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 dividend yielding Canadian companies as follows:

Bank of Montreal	Enbridge Inc.	TELUS Corporation
The Bank of Nova Scotia	Manulife Financial Corp.	Thomson-Reuters Corporation
BCE Inc.	National Bank of Canada	The Toronto-Dominion Bank
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	Royal Bank of Canada	TransAlta Corporation
CI Financial Corp.	Sun Life Financial Inc.	TransCanada Corporation

The Company’s investment objectives are:
Preferred Shares:
i. to provide holders of the Preferred Shares with fixed, cumulative preferential monthly cash dividends in the
amount of 5.25% annually; and
ii. on or about the termination date, currently December 1, 2019 (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 currently targeted to be $0.10 per share; and
ii. on or about the termination date, currently December 1, 2019 (subject to further 5 year extensions thereafter) to
pay holders of Class A Shares at least the original issue price of those shares.

The sales period of this overnight offering will end at 9:00 a.m. EST on January 17, 2018. The offering is expected to close on or about January 30, 2018 and is subject to certain closing conditions including approval by the TSX.

So new Whole Units are being sold for 20.90, against a NAVPU of 19.44 as of December 29, 2017, a premium of 7.5%, ignoring valuation changes since year-end. What a great business! If I had better contacts in the underwriting community, I’d start a Split Share Fund with the underlying investment being CryptoCurrencies.

Update, 2018-1-17 Wow! They raised over $100-million!

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has completed the overnight marketing of up to 4,971,000 Preferred Shares and up to 4,971,000 Class A Shares of the Company. Total proceeds of the offering are expected to be approximately $103.9 million.

Brompton Split Banc Corp. has released its Semi-Annual Report to June 30, 2017.

Figures of interest are:

MER: “The MER per Class A share, excluding Preferred share distributions (which were covered by the portfolio’s dividend income), was 1.64% for the first six months of 2017 compared to 1.77% for 2016. The MER per unit, excluding Preferred share distributions, was 0.94% for the first six months of 2017 and 0.99% for 2016. This ratio is more representative of the ongoing efficiency of the administration of the Fund.”

Average Net Assets: We need this to calculate portfolio yield. The Total Assets of the fund at year end was $172.0-million, compared to $183.1-million on June 30, however “On April 6, 2017, the Fund announced the split of its Class A shares (“Share Split”) and the concurrent private placement of Preferred shares (“Private Placement’) effective April 25, 2017. Pursuant to the Private Placement, 1,382,784 Preferred shares were offered to investors at a price of $10.03 per Preferred share.” So instead of giving equal weight to the beginning and end figures, we’ll assign a two-thirds weight to the year-end figure to arrive at a weighted average of $175.7-million.

Distributions to preferred shareholders were 1,596,090, at a rate of 0.225, so the average preferred shares outstanding was 7,093,733. The Unit Value was 23.10 at year-end, 22.73 on June 30, average 22.92, for average assets of $162.6-million.

Split the difference between the two methods and say average assets were $169.2-million.

Underlying Portfolio Yield: Semi-annual dividends, interest and security lending income received of 3.412-million divided by average net assets of 169.2-million is 4.03% p.a.

Income Coverage: Gross investment income of 3.412-million less expenses of 1.161-million is Net Investment Income of 2.251-million, divided by Preferred Share Distributions of 1.596-million is 141%.