PrefBlog

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!

National Bank of Canada has announced:

its intention to redeem all of its 12,000,000 issued and outstanding Non-Cumulative 5-Year Rate Reset First Preferred Shares Series 32 (the “Series 32 Shares”) on February 15, 2025, for cash at a redemption price of $25.00 per share, together with all declared and unpaid dividends.

The quarterly dividend of $0.2399375 per Series 32 Share declared on December 3, 2024 is the final dividend on the Series 32 Shares, and is payable in the usual manner on February 15, 2025 to shareholders of record on January 6, 2025, as previously announced.

Since February 15, 2025, is not a business day, amounts due to holders of the Series 32 Shares on that date will be paid on the first business day following that date, namely, Monday, February 17, 2025.

The redemption has been approved by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. Formal notice will be given to holders of the Series 32 Shares in accordance with the terms of the Series 32 Shares.

The redemption of the Series 32 Shares is part of the Bank’s ongoing management of its regulatory capital.

NA.PR.W was issued as a FixedReset, 3.90%+225, that commenced trading 2014-10-9 after being announced 2014-9-30. The company announced the extension on 2019-12-19. NA.PR.W reset at 3.839% effective February 16, 2020. I recommended against conversion and there was no conversion. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ and is assigned to the FixedReset (Discount) subindex.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has announced:

its intention to redeem all of its issued and outstanding Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class A Preferred Shares Series 41 (Non-viability contingent capital (NVCC)) (Series 41 shares) (TSX: CM.PR.P), for cash. The redemption will occur on January 31, 2025. The redemption price is $25.00 per Series 41 share.

The $0.244313 quarterly dividend announced on December 5, 2024 will be the final dividend on the Series 41 shares and will be paid on January 28, 2025, covering the period to January 31, 2025, to shareholders of record on December 27, 2024.

Holders of the Series 41 shares should contact the financial institution, broker or other intermediary through which they hold the shares to confirm how they will receive their redemption proceeds.

CM.PR.P is a FixedReset, 3.75%+224, that commenced trading 2014-12-16 after being announced 2014-12-8. In December, notice of extension was published. CM.PR.P will reset at 3.909% effective January 31, 2020. I recommended against conversion and there was no conversion. The issue is tracked by HIMIPref™ and is assigned to the FixedReset-Discount subindex.

Quadravest has announced:

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) invests in a high-quality portfolio consisting of 15 leading Canadian dividend-yielding stocks. The top five holdings currently held in the portfolio are as follows: Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife Financial Corp., Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Sun Life Financial Inc. and TC Energy Corp.

The recent extension of the Company’s termination date included a retraction right for Class A shareholders and Preferred shareholders. The Company will not require a rebalance of shares and all retraction rights have been satisfied.

The Company may use the normal course issuer to repurchase Class A shares at or below intrinsic value. The current intrinsic value exceeds $6.80 per share.

As previously announced, the annual dividend rate for the Preferred Shares has been set at 7.00% for the fiveyear renewal period effective December 1, 2024. The dividend policy for the Class A Shares will remain at the current targeted rate of $0.10 per share monthly, or $1.20 per annum.

Some details would be appreciated! Like, how many shares of each class were retracted? I wouldn’t expect many preferreds got retracted, given that the issue has been trading over par for the past three months, but what about the Capital Units? Inquiring minds want to know!

The terms of the extension were reported on PrefBlog.

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

Quadravest has announced:

Dividend 15 Split Corp. II (the “Company”) invests
in a high-quality portfolio consisting of 15 leading Canadian dividend-yielding stocks. The top five holdings currently held in the portfolio are as follows: Manulife Financial Corp., Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, National Bank of Canada and Sun Life Financial Inc.

The recent extension of the Company’s termination date included a retraction right for Class A shareholders and Preferred shareholders. The Company will not require a rebalance of shares and all retraction rights have been satisfied.

The Company may use the normal course issuer to repurchase Class A shares at or below intrinsic value. The current intrinsic value exceeds $7.00 per share.

As previously announced, the annual dividend rate for the Preferred Shares has been set at 7.00% for the fiveyear renewal period effective December 1, 2024. The dividend policy for the Class A Shares will remain at the current targeted rate of $0.10 per share monthly, or $1.20 per annum.

Some details would be appreciated! Like, how many shares of each class were retracted? I wouldn’t expect many preferreds got retracted, given that the issue has been trading over par for the past three months, but what about the Capital Units? Inquiring minds want to know!

The terms of the extension were reported on PrefBlog.

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

Quadravest has announced:

North American Financial 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) invests in a high-quality portfolio consisting of 15 financial services companies made up of 40% Canadian and 60% U.S. issuers. The top five holdings currently held in the portfolio are as follows: JP Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co., and Bank of America.

The recent extension of the Company’s termination date included a retraction right for Class A shareholders and Preferred shareholders. The Company will not require a rebalance of shares and all retraction rights have been satisfied.

The Company may use the normal course issuer to repurchase Class A shares at or below intrinsic value. The current intrinsic value exceeds $8.00 per share.

As previously announced, the annual dividend rate for the Preferred Shares has been set at 8.75% (subject to a 5-year minimum of 7%). The dividend policy for the Class A Shares will remain at the current targeted rate of $0.11335 per month, or $1.36 per annum.

This retraction potential existed due to the extension of the fund’s term, which came with special retraction provisions.

As IrateAR remarks, the Capital Units have shown:

crazy price moves in that one the last few days.

… which may be the reason Quadravest saw fit to issue the above press release – nothing has yet been disclosed for other extended issues DF.PR.A, LFE.PR.B, FTN.PR.A and DFN.PR.A.

FFN showed a 2024-12-11 VWAP of 7.26 on normal volume of a little under 300,000 shares, but on 2024-12-12, volume spiked to nearly 700,000 shares with a VWAP of 7.12. Today’s VWAP was 7.04 (and it closed much higher) on volume of 1.36-million, which is all wild enough.

What makes it stranger is that, as hinted in the press release, the Capital Units are trading below intrinsic value – the NAVPU was 18.29 on 2024-11-29, so it’s easy to believe the claim that the current intrinsic value exceeds 8.00 per share. It’s not normal for a Capital Unit to trade below intrinsic! It is, effectively, a reasonably normal leveraged portfolio that is also long a put option (to the preferred shareholders, at a NAVPU strike price of 10.00) on the whole whack. To trade below intrinsic, Capital Unitholders would have to assign a value to the fees and expenses associated with the fund which, horrendous though they might be, are rarely accounted for.

So … something’s going on with the Capital Units that I don’t understand. Prior to the press release, it might have been uncertainty – a good sized consolidation of capital units would have:

• reduced the projected income of the shareholders, and
• decreased their leverage

both of which are considered undesirable. But, at around 2pm today the share price commenced to skyrocket, from the day’s low of about 6.85 to the close of 7.31; this was well after niagara posted the link to the press release (10:38am; I don’t know the time the press release itself was issued). So who knows? Maybe it was something as mundane as a big investor unloading a hatful of them (or a big retail advisor unloading on behalf of clients). If so, someone sure absorbed a high market impact cost for the privilege of getting out in a hurry.

Coming on top of DFN.PR.A’s high-volume price drop yesterday, it all leaves me quite befuddled!