PrefBlog

BCE Inc. has announced:

that 2,254,079 of its 25,000,000 fixed-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AK (Series AK Preferred Shares) have been tendered for conversion on December 31, 2016, on a one-for-one basis, into floating-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AL (Series AL Preferred Shares). Consequently, BCE will issue 2,254,079 new Series AL Preferred Shares as of December 31, 2016.

The remaining Series AK Preferred Shares will continue to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol BCE.PR.K. The Series AK Preferred Shares will pay on a quarterly basis, for the five-year period beginning on December 31, 2016, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE, a fixed quarterly cash dividend based on an annual dividend rate of 2.954%.

The Series AL Preferred Shares will pay for each quarterly period beginning with the quarterly period from and including December 31, 2016 up to but excluding March 31, 2017, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE, a quarterly floating cash dividend based on the T-Bill Rate for such quarterly period plus 1.88%, calculated in accordance with the articles of BCE. The floating dividend rate applicable to the Series AL Preferred Shares for the quarterly period beginning on December 31, 2016 is 0.58907% (annual rate of 2.389% based on an initial T-Bill Rate of 0.509%). The Series AL Preferred Shares will be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol BCE.PR.L and will start trading on January 3, 2017.

It will be recalled that the rate reset to 2.954% for BCE.PR.K was announced on December 1 and that I recommended that holders of BCE.PR.K not convert.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2016 at 11:43 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.