PrefBlog

BCE Inc. has announced (on July 14):

Holders of fixed-rate BCE Inc. Series AA Preferred Shares have the right to convert all or part of their shares, effective on September 1, 2022, on a one-for-one basis into floating-rate Cumulative Redeemable First Preferred Shares, Series AB of BCE Inc. (the “Series AB Preferred Shares”). In order to convert their shares, holders must exercise their right of conversion during the conversion period which runs from July 18, 2022 until 5:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on August 22, 2022.
…
As of September 1, 2022, the Series AA Preferred Shares, should they remain outstanding, will pay, on a quarterly basis, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of BCE Inc., a fixed cash dividend for the following five years that will be determined by BCE Inc. on August 8, 2022 but which shall not be less than 80% of the five-year Government of Canada Yield (as defined in BCE Inc.’s articles) compounded semiannually and computed on August 8, 2022 by two investment dealers appointed by BCE Inc. The annual dividend rate applicable to the Series AA Preferred Shares will be published on August 10, 2022 in the national edition of The Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir and will be posted on BCE Inc.’s website at www.bce.ca.

BCE.PR.A is a FixedFloater that was issued with a 5.45% coupon in 2002 and reset to 4.80% in 2007; about half were converted to the RatchetRate BCE.PR.B.. It then reset to 3.45% in 2012 and there was a small net conversion back to the FixedFloater. It reset to 3.61% in 2017 and there was a 6% net conversion in the FixedFloater.

BCE.PR.B is a RatchetRate preferred that is interconvertible with BCE.PR.A every five years.

Thanks to Assiduous Reader CanSiamCyp for bringing this to my attention!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022 at 7:54 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.