PrefBlog

Fortis, Inc. has quietly announced:

that only 101,586 Cumulative Redeemable Fixed Rate Reset First Preference Shares, Series K of the Corporation (the “Series K Shares”) were tendered for conversion into Cumulative Redeemable Floating Rate First Preference Shares, Series L of the Corporation (the “Series L Shares”) on or prior to the February 14, 2019 conversion deadline.

Pursuant to the terms of the Series K Shares, as described in the prospectus supplement of the Corporation dated July 9, 2013 to the base shelf prospectus of the Corporation dated May 10, 2012 relating to the issuance of the Series K Shares, holders of Series K Shares are not entitled to convert their Series K Shares into Series L Shares unless at least 1,000,000 Series K Shares are tendered for conversion during the conversion period. As a result of the failure of holders to tender at least 1,000,000 Series K Shares for conversion at this time, no Series K Shares will be converted into Series L Shares on March 1, 2019.

Holders of Series K Shares who exercised their right to convert their Series K Shares into Series L Shares will continue to hold Series K Shares on and after March 1, 2019 and any Series K Shares tendered for conversion will be returned to the holders thereof. As previously announced by the Corporation, the fixed dividend rate on the Series K Shares will be $0.2453125 per Series K Share, payable quarterly on the first day of March, June, September and December of each year during the five-year period from and including March 1, 2019 to but excluding March 1, 2024.
Investor enquiries should be directed to Ms. Karen Gosse, Vice President, Treasury and Planning, Fortis at 709.737.2865.

This was not a press release, although press releases are issued by almost all other companies making similar announcements. This announcement was quietly added to the preferred share section of their share information page – I don’t know when – it might even have been today, since my first inquiry was sent Thursday 21st and was only answered Tuesday 26th.

FTS.PR.K is a FixedReset, 4.00%+205, that commenced trading 2013-7-13 after being announced 2013-7-9. It resets to 3.925% effective 2019-3-1, although the company would prefer you didn’t know that. I recommended against conversion. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ but relegated to the Scraps – FixedResets (Discount) subindex on credit concerns.

My eMail of inquiry – sent on three successive days – also included the question:

The 3.925% rate for FTS.PR.K implies that the five-year Canada rate, as defined in the prospectus, was 1.875%, whereas your competitors’ calculations implied that this rate was 1.879%. For greater certainty, please confirm the exact date and time for which you obtained the relevant rate from Bloomberg.

Fortis Investor Relations tells me they’ll be getting back to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2019 at 10:47 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.