BCE Inc. published their conversion notice for BCE.PR.F on 2024-12-16:
As of February 1, 2025, the Series AF Preferred Shares will, should they remain outstanding, 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 based on a fixed rate equal to the product of: (a) the yield to maturity compounded semiannually (the “Government of Canada Yield”), computed on January 13, 2025 by two registered Canadian investment dealers appointed by BCE Inc., that would be carried by a non-callable Government of Canada bond with a 5-year maturity, multiplied by (b) the “Selected Percentage Rate”. The “Selected Percentage Rate” determined by BCE Inc. is 170%. The annual dividend rate applicable to the Series AF Preferred Shares will be published on January 16, 2025 in the national edition of The Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir and will be posted on the BCE Inc. website at www.bce.ca.
There is a similar conversion notice for BCE.PR.E.
The Five-Year Canada rate is now 3.15%, if that is the case on the determination date of 2025-1-13, the dividend rate of BCE.PR.F will be 5.355%, or $1.33875 p.a.
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. In 2020 the issue reset to 3.865% (which was 239% of the GOC-5 rate) and there was a net 17% conversion to FixedFloaters, which thus comprised about 59% of the combined issue size.
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.
Thanks to Assiduous Reader niagara for bringing this to my attention!
[…] day brought with it sone interest with massive trading the BCE.PR.E / BCE.PR.F pair with Gundy CIBC acting on the E buy-side and the F sell-side. TMXMoney.com reports VWAPs (for all […]
“Selected Percentage Rate”. The “Selected Percentage Rate” determined by BCE Inc.
How erudite, superior and phony does that sound? I bot 600 in mid Dec at $16 looking for a rate reversion up and sounds like I am okay at a 8.5% or so. Looks like Monday the 13th was a perfect reset day! No one like hiding behind Board Room Blather, now finding its way into all crevices.
I sold the BCE.PR.Q for the same hide and go seek reasons after the reset runup in late 2023.
“Selected Percentage Rate”. The “Selected Percentage Rate” determined by BCE Inc.
How erudite, superior and phony does that sound?
It’s a peculiar feature of this class of shares; for analytical purposes, I assume that all issues will be forced into the ‘RatchetRate’ element of the pair and that anything better than that is a gift.
New fixed rate on BCE.PR.F is 5.496%
https://www.bce.ca/investors/preferred-shares/2025-notice-of-dividend-rate-serie-ae-af.pdf
Interesting to see the relative price premium (~$1) put on BCE.PR.E relative to other BCE prime-based floaters recently. I presume that this will vanish post-conversion date with BCE.PR.F (which is Jan 20). That is, assuming that BCE.PR.E is not all converted (by choice or force) to “F”.
BCE.PR.E/F conversion results:
https://www.bce.ca/news-and-media/releases/show/BCE-reports-results-of-Series-AE-and-AF-Preferred-Share-conversions-2?page=1&month=&year=&perpage=25
[…] thus comprised about 59% of the combined issue size. In 2025, the Selected Percentage Rate was announced as 170% and the new dividend rate subsequently reset to […]