Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited has announced:
its intention to redeem all of its 7,515,642 outstanding Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset Preferred Shares, Series C (the “Series C Shares”) and all of its 2,484,358 outstanding Cumulative Floating Rate Preferred Shares, Series D (the “Series D Shares” and, together with the Series C Shares, the “Preferred Shares”) on December 31, 2024 (the “Redemption Date”) at a redemption price equal to C$25.00 per share, for an aggregate total amount of approximately C$250 million, together with all accrued and unpaid dividends up to but excluding the Redemption Date (the “Redemption Price”), less any tax required to be deducted and withheld by Fairfax.
Formal notice will be delivered to the sole registered holder of the Preferred Shares in accordance with the terms of the Preferred Shares of the applicable series as set out in Fairfax’s articles.
Separately from the Redemption Price, (i) the final quarterly dividend of C$0.294313 per Series C Share will be paid in the usual manner to holders of Series C Shares on December 31, 2024, and (ii) the final quarterly dividend of C$0.47858 per Series D Share will be paid in the usual manner to holders of Series D Shares December 30, 2024, in each case to shareholders of record on December 13, 2024.
Fairfax intends to use a portion of the net proceeds from the previously announced public offering of C$700 million aggregate principal amount of its Senior Notes to redeem the outstanding Preferred Shares.
Non-registered holders of Preferred Shares should contact their broker or other intermediary for information regarding the redemption process for the series of Preferred Shares in which they hold a beneficial interest. Fairfax’s transfer agent for the Preferred Shares is Computershare Trust Company of Canada (“Computershare”). Questions regarding the redemption process may be directed to Computershare at 1-800-564-6253 or by email to corporateactions@computershare.com.
Following the redemption on December 31, 2024, the Series C Shares and the Series D Shares will be delisted from and no longer trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”).
Fairfax is a holding company which, through its subsidiaries, is primarily engaged in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance and the associated investment management.
For further information contact: John Varnell, Vice President, Corporate Development at (416) 367-4941
FFH.PR.C was issued as a cumulative FixedReset issue, 5.75%+315 that commenced trading 2009-10-5 after being announced 2009-9-29. It reset to 4.578% in 2014. I recommended in favour of conversion to FloatingResets. The conversion rate was about 40%. FFH.PR.C reset at 4.709% effective 2020-1-1. I recommended against conversion.
FFH.PR.D resulted from 40% conversion from FFH.PR.C in 2014 and commenced trading 2014-12-31.
As noted in the press release, this redemption was foreshadowed by the issuance of senior debt, with the potential redemption of preferreds being mentioned as a possible (probable?) use of proceeds.
Thanks to Assiduous Reader IrateAR for bringing this to my attention!
seems like lots prefs getting taken out. Any new issues though?
Any new issues though?
If you look in the right-hand navigation column, scroll down to the “Categories” hading and click on the New Issues link, you’ll find all the posts I’ve ever tagged as being a new issue announcement.
You won’t find much from the past few years! A few scattered Straight Perpetuals, a few SplitShares … but basically, emptiness.
This supports my contention that the preferred share market has been cheap cheap cheap for the past few years. I still think it’s cheap, but not as cheap as it was 40% ago.
When we see lots of new issues with retail falling over to buy each one, then I’ll start considering the possibility that the market has become rich … and we can start another cycle …
Oh, and … welcome to the blog!
It doesn’t seem like the banks will ever issue another one until/unless the regulators change their minds about bank preferreds.
For everyone else it’s an open question I think… I could believe that developments in credit markets have made prefs uncompetitive. But yeah I could also believe that once the overnight rate hits 3% and the 2025 resets start happening retail and redemption money will push yields down to a point where prefs make sense to issue again.
@jHymas – thanks for the welcome and the info. yeah – its been a good place to fish (preferreds) in the previous few years. I’ve had a couple taken out (Dundee and Fairfax- now) but things seem leaner these days. It’s kinda interesting how the cycle flows and prefs get such little attention – which is fine cuz more capital gains and good returns for the rest of us!
@IrateAR – hopefully there are some issues in the near future.
porpoise1877, your post prompted me to post my data. Since RBC announced in August 2020 the redemption of 6 preferred issues with a par value of $1.5 billion I have kept a log of the ongoing redemptions and new issues by all issuers.
The announced redemption of FFH.PR.C/D is the 100th issue to have its redemption announced. The par value of these 100 redemptions is $28.077 billion.
Since August 2020 there have been 12 new issues and their par value is $2.022 billion. These new issues are:
4 Split Share: PVS.PR.I, PVS.PR.J, PVS.PR.K and PVS.PR.L
1 FRR with a floor: EMA.PR.J
7 Perpetuals: MIC.PR.A, EMA.PR.L, GWO.PR.Y, PWF.PR.A, CU.PR.J, IFC.PR.K and BEP.PR.R
The last two issues were BEP.PR.R in April 2022 and then PVS.PR.L in September 2024. No operating companies have issued preferred shares in over 2.5 years.
Split share issuers such as Quadravest, Brompton and Middlefield are issuing units of their various split share companies and the amount of preferreds will be in the billions of dollars but I have no number for that.
PWF.PR.A
I believe you mean PWF.PF.A.
That’s a great log you’re keeping, RAV4guy! I keep thinking I should have something like that and deciding I don’t have time …
PWF.PF.A is correct. I proofread that several times and I still made a mistake.
I am retired. You are still working. Please, keep up the good work. You are doing work that can make a dollar or two for the rest of us. The log of redemptions is just a curiosity.
. thankyou , RAV4guy says: , for that log
“I have kept a log of the ongoing redemptions and new issues by all issuers”
Thank you for sharing. Your approach is much simpler than the one I attempted a few years ago. I was trying to track the size of the whole universe of preferred shares in Canada but ultimately it was too big a job with too many data issues. I should have just logged the changes like you!
My thesis back then was that the shrinking par value of available preferred shares would eventually have a big impact on prices. Your data shows a shrinkage of ~$26B. Its surprising to me that this has not had a more dramatic impact. Demand seems to have shrunk right alongside supply.
@rav4guy, is the redemption and new issue log you talked about posted publicly? Maybe I missed a pointer or similar in earlier discussions. If so, sorry.
Or when you said the discussion prompted you to share, was it the data summary in the post you were referencing instead?
I join the others above in thanking RAV4guy!
As for Stusclues’ query, and from what I have been able to find:
“I was trying to track the size of the whole universe of preferred shares in Canada but ultimately it was too big a job with too many data issues. “
At the end of 2019 the pref market capitalization appears to have been $ 69 billion, with some 365 issues.
https://www.bromptongroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Preferred-Securities-Overview-2020Q1.pdf
By December 2022 the numbers had changed. Fiera Capital posted an interesting chart setting out the various classes of prefs and compared them to LRCNs and OTC institutional shares. The total “pref” market for us retail investors showed around $50 billion (seemingly does not include split share prefs) and the rest was LRCNs, hybrid. and OTC institutional shares, all for a total of just over $80 billion.
https://www.fieracapital.com/wp-content/uploads/insights/5259/fiera-capital-finding-value-across-the-capital-structure-1.pdf
Given that historically the bulk of pref shares were held by the Banks – 56% according to Addenda in September 2023 — all the OSFI-encouraged pref redemptions since then may mean that non-financial prefs are now in the majority, but I haven’t worked that out.
https://addendacapital.com/en-ca/insights-news/making-sense-of-trends-in-the-preferred-shares-market
FletcherLynd said: “is the redemption and new issue log you talked about posted publicly?”
FletcherLynd, my data is just in a spreadsheet I created on my laptop using the ancient spreadsheet program I like to use. So it is not publicly available. I am willing to share the data. For example, I could print it, scan it to a PDF and share that. I never intended to print the data, so the spreadsheet is not formatted nicely for that. I am not sure of what use it would be since the redemptions are gone.
FletcherLynd said: “when you said the discussion prompted you to share”
I have posted about the data in the past. When porpoise1877 said: “seems like lots prefs getting taken out. Any new issues though?” and I had FFH.PR.C/D as number 100 on the list of redemptions I thought it was timely to comment again.
The data just comes mainly (99%) from Prefblog. As a redemption or new issue was announced I added the new information to the spread sheet. I believe I found out about the VB.PR.B and POW.PR.F redemption elsewhere as Mr. Hymas did not follow those issues. Those two were small amounts anyways.
Would love to help, I am a bit of an IT guy and could try to convert the ancient spreadsheet program file, or retype a scanned PDF into a new file format to make it more accessible.
As for the comment about what use it could be, as they are gone, I have a few thoughts. I personally hold FFH.PR.D and plan to redeploy the money into another preferred issue. I would definitely use the list.
Knowing what various companies have previously redeemed could help people think about preferred share investments with more corporate history. My thought is that could help each buyer to do an assessment of chance of redemption. Some want to avoid it, some may be looking for it.