PrefBlog

National Bank of Canada has announced:

that it has closed its domestic public offering of non-cumulative 5-year rate reset first preferred shares series 40 (non-viability contingent capital (NVCC)) (the “Series 40 Preferred Shares”). National Bank issued 12 million Series 40 Preferred Shares at a price of $25.00 per share to raise gross proceeds of $300 million.

The offering was underwritten by a syndicate led by National Bank Financial Inc.

The Series 40 Preferred Shares will commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange today under the ticker symbol NA.PR.E.

The Series 40 Preferred Shares were issued under a prospectus supplement dated January 15, 2018 to National Bank’s short form base shelf prospectus dated November 21, 2016.

NA.PR.E is a FixedReset, 4.60%+258, NVCC-Compliant, announced January 12. It will be tracked by HIMIPref™ and has been assigned to the FixedReset subindex.

The issue traded 357,595 shares today in a range of 24.77-89 before closing at 24.78-80. Vital statistics are:

This issue looks quite expensive to me, according to Implied Volatility Analysis:

Click for Big

We see in this chart many of the same features we saw when reviewing the recent BPO new issue and BEP.PR.M and CM.PR.S:

• The curve is very steep, with Implied Volatility equal to 40% (a ridiculously large figure), and
• The extant issues are trading relatively near to, or well above par

The ludicrously high figure of Implied Volatility is something I take to mean that the underlying assumption of the Black-Scholes model, that of no directionality of prices, is not accepted by the market; the market seems to be taking the view that since things seem rosy now, they will always be rosy and everything will trade near par in the future.

I balk at ascribing a 100% probability to this outcome. There may still be a few old geezers amongst the Assiduous Readers of this blog who can still (faintly) remember the Great Bear Market of 2014-16, in which quite a few similar assumptions made earlier turned out to be slightly inaccurate.

For the long term, I suggest that any change in the slope of the curve will be a flattening, with a very high degree of confidence. This will imply that the higher-spread issues will outperform the lower-spread issues.

All told, though, I have no hesitation in slapping an ‘Expensive’ label on this issue – according to the Implied Volatility analysis shown above, the theoretical price of the new issue is 23.77, down sharply from the announcement day estimate of 24.01.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has announced:

that it has completed the offering of 18 million Basel III-compliant Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class A Preferred Shares Series 47 (Non-Viability Contingent Capital (NVCC)) (the “Series 47 Shares”) priced at $25.00 per share to raise gross proceeds of $450 million.

The offering was made through a syndicate of underwriters led by CIBC Capital Markets. The Series 47 Shares commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange today under the ticker symbol CM.PR.S.

The Series 47 Shares were issued under a prospectus supplement dated January 11, 2018, to CIBC’s short form base shelf prospectus dated March 16, 2016.

CIBC has designated the Series 47 Shares as eligible to participate in the CIBC Shareholder Investment Plan along with Series 41, 43 and 45. Holders of eligible shares may elect to have dividends on those preferred shares reinvested in common shares if they reside in Canada, or may elect stock dividends if they reside in the U.S. See “CIBC Shareholder Investment Plan” at www.cibc.com for more information.

The CIBC Shareholder Investment Plan – hard to find on their website! – is described here.

CM.PR.S is a FixedReset, 4.50%+245, NVCC-compliant, announced January 10. It will be tracked by HIMIPref™ and is assigned to the FixedReset subindex.

The issue traded 734,395 shares today in a range of 24.94-00 before closing at 24.96-97. Vital statistics are:

This issue looks quite expensive to me, but quantifying the degree of richness is difficult. According to Implied Volatility Analysis:

Click for Big

Well, it’s starting to get monotonous, but we see in this chart many of the same features we saw when reviewing the recent BIP new issue as well as last week’s BEP.PR.M issue, the CM issue and NA issue:

• The curve is very steep, with Implied Volatility equal to 40% (a ridiculously large figure), and
• The extant issues are trading relatively near to par

The ludicrously high figure of Implied Volatility is something I take to mean that the underlying assumption of the Black-Scholes model, that of no directionality of prices, is not accepted by the market; in turn, I suggest that this reflects a rather touching faith that the existence of a minimum rate guarantee on reset also indicates that the issues will never, ever trade below par. There will be a lot of long faces when this test gets failed in the future! All it will take is a spread-widening, whether market-wide or company-specific.

However, for the long term, I suggest that any change in the slope of the curve will be a flattening, with a very high degree of confidence. This will imply that the higher-spread issues will outperform the lower-spread issues.

I cannot even begin to imagine what the buyers of this issue must have been thinking. For example, CM.PR.O is a FixedReset, 3.90%+232, that commenced trading 2014-6-11 after being announced 2014-6-2. It resets 2019-7-31. It closed today at 23.71, very close to the fair value calculated by the above analysis of 23.68. How in the name of God’s Green Earth can anybody reconcile the prices of these two issues? [Hint: Maybe the 3% stockbrokers’ selling commission has something to do with it.]

All told, though, I have no hesitation in slapping a ‘Very Expensive’ label on this issue. According to the analysis illustrated by the above chart, the fair price is 23.94.

Quadravest has announced:

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has filed a preliminary short form prospectus in each of the provinces of Canada with respect to an offering of Preferred Shares and Class A Shares of the Company. The offering will be co-led by National Bank Financial Inc., CIBC World Markets Inc., Scotia Capital Inc. and RBC Capital Markets, and will also include TD Securities Inc., BMO Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity Corp., Industrial Alliance Securities Inc., Echelon Wealth Partners, GMP Securities L.P., Raymond James Ltd., Desjardins Securities Inc., Mackie Research Capital Corporation, and Manulife Securities Incorporated.

The Preferred Shares will be offered at a price of $10.00 per Preferred Share to yield 5.25% and the Class A Shares will be offered at a price of $10.90 per Class A Share to yield 11.01%.

The closing price on the TSX of each of the Preferred Shares and the Class A Shares on January 15, 2018 was $10.28 and $10.94, respectively.

Since inception of the Company, the aggregate dividends paid on the Preferred Shares have been $7.24 per share and the aggregate dividends paid on the Class A Shares have been $20.00 per share (including five special distributions of $0.25 per share, one special distribution of $0.50 per share and one special stock dividend of $1.75 per share), for a combined total of $27.24 per unit. All distributions to date have been made in tax advantage eligible Canadian dividends or capital gains dividends.

The net proceeds of the offering will be used by the Company to invest in an actively managed, high quality portfolio
consisting of 15 dividend yielding Canadian companies as follows:

Bank of Montreal	Enbridge Inc.	TELUS Corporation
The Bank of Nova Scotia	Manulife Financial Corp.	Thomson-Reuters Corporation
BCE Inc.	National Bank of Canada	The Toronto-Dominion Bank
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	Royal Bank of Canada	TransAlta Corporation
CI Financial Corp.	Sun Life Financial Inc.	TransCanada Corporation

The Company’s investment objectives are:
Preferred Shares:
i. to provide holders of the Preferred Shares with fixed, cumulative preferential monthly cash dividends in the
amount of 5.25% annually; and
ii. on or about the termination date, currently December 1, 2019 (subject to further 5 year extensions thereafter), to pay the holders of the Preferred Shares $10.00 per Preferred Share.

Class A Shares:
i. to provide holders of the Class A Shares with regular monthly cash dividends currently targeted to be $0.10 per share; and
ii. on or about the termination date, currently December 1, 2019 (subject to further 5 year extensions thereafter) to
pay holders of Class A Shares at least the original issue price of those shares.

The sales period of this overnight offering will end at 9:00 a.m. EST on January 17, 2018. The offering is expected to close on or about January 30, 2018 and is subject to certain closing conditions including approval by the TSX.

So new Whole Units are being sold for 20.90, against a NAVPU of 19.44 as of December 29, 2017, a premium of 7.5%, ignoring valuation changes since year-end. What a great business! If I had better contacts in the underwriting community, I’d start a Split Share Fund with the underlying investment being CryptoCurrencies.

Update, 2018-1-17 Wow! They raised over $100-million!

Dividend 15 Split Corp. (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has completed the overnight marketing of up to 4,971,000 Preferred Shares and up to 4,971,000 Class A Shares of the Company. Total proceeds of the offering are expected to be approximately $103.9 million.

There was no announcement from Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P., but BEP.PR.M closed today.

BEP.PR.M is a FixedReset 5.00%+300M500 ROC announced 2018-01-09. The issue will be tracked by HIMIPref™ but relegated to the Scraps subindex on credit concerns.

The issue traded 437,036 shares today in a range of 24.75-00 before closing at 24.99-00. Vital statistics are:

This issue looks quite expensive to me, but quantifying the degree of richness is difficult. According to Implied Volatility Analysis:

Click for Big

Well, it’s starting to get monotonous, but we see in this chart many of the same features we saw when reviewing the recent BIP new issue as well as last week’s BEP issue, the CM issue and NA issue:

• The curve is very steep, with Implied Volatility equal to 40% (a ridiculously large figure), and
• The extant issues are trading relatively near to, or well above par

The ludicrously high figure of Implied Volatility is something I take to mean that the underlying assumption of the Black-Scholes model, that of no directionality of prices, is not accepted by the market; in turn, I suggest that this reflects a rather touching faith that the existence of a minimum rate guarantee on reset also indicates that the issues will never, ever trade below par. There will be a lot of long faces when this test gets failed in the future! All it will take is a spread-widening, whether market-wide or company-specific.

However, for the long term, I suggest that any change in the slope of the curve will be a flattening, with a very high degree of confidence. This will imply that the higher-spread issues will outperform the lower-spread issues.

Complicating the above analysis is a high probability that the three extant issues will each be called at the first opportunity. I will certainly agree that this is likely to happen, but I balk at ascribing a 100% probability to this outcome. There may still be a few old geezers amongst the Assiduous Readers of this blog who can still (faintly) remember the Great Bear Market of 2014-16, in which quite a few similar assumptions made earlier turned out to be slightly inaccurate.

All told, though, I have no hesitation in slapping a ‘Very Expensive’ label on this issue. According to the analysis illustrated by the above chart, the fair price is 23.36.

Update: Demonstration – to prepare the following chart I have constrained Implied Volatility to 10% (a much more reasonable figure, I think) and done a very, very, rough approximation to the error-minimizing Market Spread.

Click for Big

In this calculation, the calculated fair values for the issues BEP.PR.G / I / K / M, with the difference from the actual market price in brackets, are 27.11 (+1.56), 28.23 (+2.48), 25.29 (+0.20) and 22.53 (-2.46). The values for N(d2) are 72%, 88%, 41% and 7%, respectively.

See the comments for the discussion.

Update #2, 2018-1-23: From January’s PrefLetter, here are charts FR-16, FR-31 and FR-37 … the numbering is consistent with the Fixed Reset Review of October 2016 that is referred to in the comments:

Chart FR-16, 2018-1-12
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Chart FR-31, 2018-1-12
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Chart FR-37, 2018-1-12
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See the comments for discussion.