Manulife Financial Coporation has announced (although not yet on their website):
the applicable dividend rates for its Non-cumulative Rate Reset Class 1 Shares Series 25 (the “Series 25 Preferred Shares”) (TSX: MFC.PR.Q) and Non-cumulative Floating Rate Class 1 Shares Series 26 (the “Series 26 Preferred Shares”).
With respect to any Series 25 Preferred Shares that remain outstanding after June 19, 2023, holders thereof will be entitled to receive fixed rate non-cumulative preferential cash dividends on a quarterly basis, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of Manulife and subject to the provisions of the Insurance Companies Act (Canada). The dividend rate for the five-year period commencing on June 20, 2023, and ending on June 19, 2028, will be 5.94200% per annum or $0.371375 per share per quarter, being equal to the sum of the five-year Government of Canada bond yield as at May 23, 2023, plus 2.55%, as determined in accordance with the terms of the Series 25 Preferred Shares.
With respect to any Series 26 Preferred Shares that may be issued on June 20, 2023 in connection with the conversion of the Series 25 Preferred Shares into the Series 26 Preferred Shares, holders thereof will be entitled to receive floating rate non-cumulative preferential cash dividends on a quarterly basis, calculated on the basis of the actual number of days elapsed in each quarterly floating rate period divided by 365, as and when declared by the Board of Directors of Manulife and subject to the provisions of the Insurance Companies Act (Canada). The dividend rate for the three-month period commencing on June 20, 2023, and ending on September 19, 2023, will be 1.76665% (7.00900% on an annualized basis) or $0.441663 per share, being equal to the sum of the three-month Government of Canada Treasury bill yield as at May 23, 2023, plus 2.55%, as determined in accordance with the terms of the Series 26 Preferred Shares.
Beneficial owners of Series 25 Preferred Shares who wish to exercise their right of conversion should instruct their broker or other nominee to exercise such right before 5:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on June 5, 2023. The news release announcing such conversion right was issued on April 25, 2023 and can be viewed on SEDAR or Manulife’s website. Conversion inquiries should be directed to Manulife’s Registrar and Transfer Agent, TSX Trust Company, at 1–800–783–9495.
The Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) has conditionally approved the listing of the Series 26 Preferred Shares effective upon conversion. Listing of the Series 26 Preferred Shares is subject to Manulife fulfilling all the listing requirements of the TSX and, upon approval, the Series 26 Preferred Shares will be listed on the TSX under the trading symbol “MFC.PR.S”.
MFC.PR.Q was issued as a FixedReset, 4.70%+255, that commenced trading 2018-2-20 after being announced 2018-2-12. It is tracked by HIMIPref™ and has been assigned to the FixedReset (Insurance) sub-index.
Thanks to Assiduous Reader CanSiamCyp for bringing this to my attention!
Hi James & all,
Due to the high expectations that inflation and the 5 year GOC will not last and go down soon we see the situations when YTW for a fixed share is lower than one that resets in a couple of years (eg MFC.PR.M which resets at the end of 2024 has a much bigger YTW than MFC.PR.Q that just reset). How does this situation affect your judgement when you choose to buy a fixed preferred share?
Thank you,
PS: We see a similar situation for the mortgages. The new preferred term is for 3 years instead of 5 years and as a result the 3 year term is a little more expensive than the 5 years term.
“How does this situation affect your judgement when you choose to buy a fixed preferred share?”
It makes me prefer M over Q, by a lot. This is because I am much more interested in market mis-pricings made plain by Implied Volatility Theory or target spread-type analysis than short term projections of the yield curve. For me, this is exactly the type of situation that creates excess long term returns.
My TC Energy preferreds are being taken out to the woodshed. Is there a significant concern of a credit event here?
Canada 5 year settled at 3.50% today. gotta love the kinds of returns fixed resets will give going forward … wow
fsabbagh, I dont think that there is anything TRP-specific, rather I think it is more the fact that none of their prefs reset for some time….the market prefers (no pun intended) recently reset issues or those upcoming for resets in the next month or two.
we see the situations when YTW for a fixed share is lower than one that resets in a couple of years (eg MFC.PR.M which resets at the end of 2024 has a much bigger YTW than MFC.PR.Q that just reset). How does this situation affect your judgement when you choose to buy a fixed preferred share?
It doesn’t. Market timing is a fools’ game and fools are welcome to it. If I knew for certain that in a few years the GOC-5 yield was going to be significantly lower than it is now, I wouldn’t fool around with silly little preferred shares. I’d be mortgaging everything I owned to buy Five Year Canada futures. But, of course, these guys are fools.
It turns out, according to everything I’ve seen and researched in the past few years, that the application of a standard scenario to FixedResets is much more important than the details of the scenario chosen. So I just apply the math, confident that in the long run standard fixed-income arithmetic will win the race. I’m in full agreement with stusclues comment above on that issue!
In the meantime … I’ll have periods of ups and downs against the index. The Forces of Chaos never get slain in the first act. But in the meantime, the distortions caused by the market timers create opportunities for optimization trades and while the market environment can be hostile for a while, it can’t last forever.
There was no conversion(June 6).
https://www.manulife.com/en/news/manulife-financial-corporation-announces-results-of-conversion-privilege-of-non-cumulative-rate-reset-class-1-shares-series-25.html