PrefBlog

BCE Inc. has announced:

that 585,184 of its 1,227,532 fixed-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series Z (“Series Z Preferred Shares”) have been tendered for conversion on December 1, 2017, on a one-for-one basis, into floating-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series Y (“Series Y Preferred Shares”). In addition, 1,276,161 of its 8,772,468 Series Y Preferred Shares have been tendered for conversion on December 1, 2017, on a one-for-one basis, into Series Z Preferred Shares. Consequently, on December 1, 2017, BCE will have 1,918,509 Series Z Preferred Shares and 8,081,491 Series Y Preferred Shares issued and outstanding. The Series Z Preferred Shares and the Series Y Preferred Shares will continue to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols BCE.PR.Z and BCE.PR.Y, respectively.

The Series Z Preferred Shares will pay on a quarterly basis, for the five-year period beginning on December 1, 2017, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE, a fixed cash dividend based on an annual fixed dividend rate of 3.904%.

The Series Y Preferred Shares will continue to pay a monthly floating adjustable cash dividend for the five-year period beginning on December 1, 2017, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE. The monthly floating adjustable dividend for any particular month will continue to be calculated based on the prime rate for such month and using the Designated Percentage for such month representing the sum of an adjustment factor (based on the market price of the Series Y Preferred Shares in the preceding month) and the Designated Percentage for the preceding month.

It will be recalled that after the conversion notice was sent, I recommended holding or converting to BCE.PR.Y; afterwards, it was announced that BCE.PR.Z will reset to 3.904% until the next interconversion date on 2022-12-1.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2017 at 11:50 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.