PrefBlog

Brompton Funds Limited has announced:

that at special meetings of preferred and class A shareholders (“Shareholders”) of Dividend Growth Split Corp. (“DGS”) and Brompton Split Banc Corp. (“SBC”) held today, Shareholders approved special resolutions to implement amendments to update and modernize the investment objectives, investment strategies and investment restrictions of DGS and SBC as well as certain other matters set out in the joint management information circular dated July 27, 2018 (the “Circular”).
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For SBC, the changes to the investment objectives, strategy and restrictions are primarily designed to accomplish the following:
i) allow the Manager to rebalance and/or reconstitute the portfolio more frequently than annually, at its discretion, for reasons other than mergers or fundamental corporate actions, so that SBC may respond to security or market developments on a timely basis; and
ii) provide for up to 10% of the portfolio to be invested, from time to time, in global financial companies.

Further information relating to these and other changes are described in more detail in the Circular. These changes are expected to be implemented as soon as reasonably possible.

I do not view this loosening of restrictions as being material.

Brompton Funds Limited has announced:

that at special meetings of preferred and class A shareholders (“Shareholders”) of Dividend Growth Split Corp. (“DGS”) and Brompton Split Banc Corp. (“SBC”) held today, Shareholders approved special resolutions to implement amendments to update and modernize the investment objectives, investment strategies and investment restrictions of DGS and SBC as well as certain other matters set out in the joint management information circular dated July 27, 2018 (the “Circular”).

For DGS, the changes to the investment objectives, strategy and restrictions are primarily designed to accomplish the following:
i) expand the investable universe of high quality dividend growth companies from which the portfolio manager can select by expanding the financial metrics that may be used to analyze the portfolio constituents, including forward-looking metrics;
ii) provide for up to 20% of the portfolio to be invested, from time to time, in global dividend growth companies; and
iii) allow the Manager to rebalance and/or reconstitute the portfolio more frequently than annually, at its discretion, for reasons other than the suspension of dividends, mergers or fundamental corporate actions or exceptional circumstances, so that DGS may respond to security or market developments on a timely basis.
…
Further information relating to these and other changes are described in more detail in the Circular. These changes are expected to be implemented as soon as reasonably possible.

I do not view this loosening of restrictions as being material.

Manulife Financial Corporation has announced (although not yet on their website):

the applicable dividend rates for its Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class 1 Shares Series 13 (the “Series 13 Preferred Shares”) (TSX: MFC.PR.K) and Non-cumulative Floating Rate Class 1 Shares Series 14 (the “Series 14 Preferred Shares”).

With respect to any Series 13 Preferred Shares that remain outstanding after September 19, 2018, holders thereof will be entitled to receive fixed rate non-cumulative preferential cash dividends on a quarterly basis, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of Manulife and subject to the provisions of the Insurance Companies Act (Canada). The dividend rate for the five-year period commencing on September 20, 2018, and ending on September 19, 2023, will be 4.41400% per annum or $0.275875 per share per quarter, being equal to the sum of the five-year Government of Canada bond yield as at August 21, 2018, plus 2.22%, as determined in accordance with the terms of the Series 13 Preferred Shares.

With respect to any Series 14 Preferred Shares that may be issued on September 19, 2018 in connection with the conversion of the Series 13 Preferred Shares into the Series 14 Preferred Shares, holders thereof will be entitled to receive floating rate non-cumulative preferential cash dividends on a quarterly basis, calculated on the basis of actual number of days elapsed in each quarterly floating rate period divided by 365, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of Manulife and subject to the provisions of the Insurance Companies Act (Canada). The dividend rate for the three-month period commencing on September 20, 2018, and ending on December 19, 2018, will be 0.91773% (3.68100% on an annualized basis) or $0.229433 per share, being equal to the sum of the three-month Government of Canada Treasury bill yield as at August 21, 2018, plus 2.22%, as determined in accordance with the terms of the Series 14 Preferred Shares.

Beneficial owners of Series 13 Preferred Shares who wish to exercise their right of conversion should instruct their broker or other nominee to exercise such right before 5:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on September 4, 2018. The news release announcing such conversion right was issued on August 10, 2018 and can be viewed on SEDAR or Manulife’s website. Conversion inquiries should be directed to Manulife’s Registrar and Transfer Agent, AST Trust Company (Canada), at 1‑800-783-9495.

The Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) has conditionally approved the listing of the Series 14 Preferred Shares effective upon conversion. Listing of the Series 14 Preferred Shares is subject to Manulife fulfilling all the listing requirements of the TSX and, upon approval, the Series 14 Preferred Shares will be listed on the TSX under the trading symbol “MFC.PR.S”.

MFC.PR.K is a FixedReset, 3.80%+222, that commenced trading 2013-6-21 after being announced 2013-6-17. The announcement of extension has been previously reported. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ and is assigned to the FixedReset subindex. Since it is an insurance holding company issue without a NVCC clause, a Deemed Maturity at par as of 2025-1-31 has been added to the redemption schedule as is my normal practice.

The most logical way to analyze the question of whether or not to convert is through the theory of Preferred Pairs, for which a calculator is available. Briefly, a Strong Pair is defined as a pair of securities that can be interconverted in the future (e.g., MFC.PR.K and the FloatingReset, MFC.PR.S, that will exist if enough holders convert). Since they will be interconvertible on this future date, it may be assumed that they will be priced identically on this date (if they aren’t then holders will simply convert en masse to the higher-priced issue). And since they will be priced identically on a given date in the future, any current difference in price must be offset by expectations of an equal and opposite value of dividends to be received in the interim. And since the dividend rate on one element of the pair is both fixed and known, the implied average rate of the other, floating rate, instrument can be determined. Finally, we say, we may compare these average rates and take a view regarding the actual future course of that rate relative to the implied rate, which will provide us with guidance on which element of the pair is likely to outperform the other until the next interconversion date, at which time the process will be repeated.

We can show the break-even rates for each FixedReset / FloatingReset Strong Pair graphically by plotting the implied average 3-month bill rate against the next Exchange Date (which is the date to which the average will be calculated).

Click for Big

The market appears to be relatively uninterested in floating rate product; the implied rates until the next interconversion bracket the current 3-month bill rate as the averages for investment-grade and junk issues are at +1.32% and +1.45%, respectively. Whatever might be the result of the next few Bank of Canada overnight rate decisions, I suggest that it is unlikely that the average rate over the next five years will be lower than current – but if you disagree, of course, you may interpret the data any way you like.

Since credit quality of each element of the pair is equal to the other element, it should not make any difference whether the pair examined is investment-grade or junk, although we might expect greater variation of implied rates between junk issues on grounds of lower liquidity, and this is just what we see.

If we plug in the current bid price of the MFC.PR.K FixedReset, we may construct the following table showing consistent prices for its soon-may-be-issued FloatingReset counterpart, MFC.PR.S, given a variety of Implied Breakeven yields consistent with issues currently trading:

Based on current market conditions, I suggest that the FloatingResets that will result from conversion are likely to be cheap and trading below the price of their FixedReset counterparts. Therefore, it seems likely that I will recommend that holders of MFC.PR.K continue to hold the issue and not to convert, but I will wait until it’s closer to the September 4 notification deadline before making a final pronouncement. I will note that once the FloatingResets commence trading (if, in fact, they do) it may be a good trade to swap the FixedReset for the FloatingReset in the market once both elements of each pair are trading and you can – presumably, according to this analysis – do it with a reasonably good take-out in price, rather than doing it through the company on a 1:1 basis. But that, of course, will depend on the prices at that time and your forecast for the path of policy rates over the next five years. There are no guarantees – my recommendation is based on the assumption that current market conditions with respect to the pairs will continue until the FloatingResets commence trading and that the relative pricing of the two new pairs will reflect these conditions.

Enbridge Inc. has announced:

that none of Enbridge’s outstanding Cumulative Redeemable Preference Shares, Series H (Series H Shares) will be converted into Cumulative Redeemable Preference Shares, Series I of Enbridge (Series I Shares) on September 1, 2018.

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

ENB.PR.H is a FixedReset, 4.00%+212, that commenced trading 2012-3-29 after being announced 2012-3-20. It will reset to 4.376% effective 2018-9-1. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ but relegated to the Scraps index on credit concerns.