PrefBlog

BCE Inc. has announced (on January 21):

that 506,975 of its 6,707,867 fixed-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AF (“Series AF Preferred Shares”) have been tendered for conversion on February 1, 2020, on a one-for-one basis, into floating-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AE (“Series AE Preferred Shares”). In addition, 3,283,795 of its 9,292,133 Series AE Preferred Shares have been tendered for conversion on February 1, 2020, on a one-for-one basis, into Series AF Preferred Shares. Consequently, on February 1, 2020, BCE will have 9,484,687 Series AF Preferred Shares and 6,515,313 Series AE Preferred Shares issued and outstanding. The Series AF Preferred Shares and the Series AE Preferred Shares will continue to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols BCE.PR.F and BCE.PR.E, respectively.

The Series AF Preferred Shares will pay on a quarterly basis, for the five-year period beginning on February 1, 2020, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE, a fixed cash dividend based on an annual fixed dividend rate of 3.865%.

The Series AE Preferred Shares will continue to pay a monthly floating adjustable cash dividend for the five-year period beginning on February 1, 2020, 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 AE Preferred Shares in the preceding month) and the Designated Percentage for the preceding month.

BCE.PR.F is a FixedFloater which was added to the HIMIPref™ database in December 2008, when it was paying 4.40%. It reset in 2010 to 4.541% and after a net conversion to BCE.PR.F the issue pair was about 90% FixedFloater. It reset in 2015 to 3.110% and after a massive conversion the issue pair was about 60% RatchetRate. Notice of Extension/Conversion was published 2019-12-18. It reset to 3.865% in 2020; I recommended BCE.PR.E as the better part of the pair. The issue pair is now about 59% FixedFloater.

BCE.PR.E is a RatchetRate preferred, interconvertible every five years with BCE.PR.F. It was added to the HIMIPref™ database in May, 2012.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020 at 11:00 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.