Tim McPartland | Innovative Income Investor

American Equity Investment Life Announces Preferred Pricing-Corrected

Insurer/annuity company American Equity Investment Life (AEL) has priced the previously announced preferred issue.

The fixed-rate reset preferred will carry an initial 5.95% coupon until 12/1/2024. At this point it will reset to the 5 year treasury plus a spread of 4.322%. On each 5 year anniversary it will reset again.

The issue is rated BB (just below investment grade) by both S&P and Fitch.

This is the companies 1st preferred, but they can be compared to Athene (ATH) a very similar company. The Athene issues can be seen here.

The pricing term sheet can be found here.

Jerry had the spread on this one pegged a couple hours ago.

Global Ship Lease Prices Baby Bonds

Container ship owner Global Ship Lease (GSL) has priced their previously announced $25 baby bonds.

The issue will carry a coupon of 8.00% and the issue will mature in 2024.

An interesting side note to this issue is that B Riley recently (10/01/2019) took a 11% position in the company and will be buying $2 million of this new issue.

Note the bonus rate for early redemption.

The pricing term sheet can be read here.

Regional Banker BancorpSouth Bank Sells New Preferred–Update

Update–link to FDIC site. Go to this page and search bancorpsouth (all one word).

Tupelo, Mississippi based banker BancorpSouth (BXS) has announced the issuance of a new preferred stock issue.

This issue is non-cumulative, qualified and has a 5.5% coupon.

The issue is rated Ba1 (junk) by Moodys. Note–junk doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad issue.

The issue will trade OTC Grey market immediately under ticker BCSBP. The permanent ticker will be BXS-A when it moves to the permanent exchange.

The announcement can be found in this press release.

Details such as 1st call date, dividend payment dates etc have not yet been filed. The bank is regulated by the FDIC and filings follow a different process than with the SEC.

Thanks to mcg and Gary for being on this issue.

Still Waiting on Pricing

We are still awaiting pricing on a number of previously announced new issues.

Insurance/annuity company American Equity Investment Life Holding Co (AEL) announced a new issue on Tuesday the 12th. This will be a fixed-rate reset preferred–non cumulative when it comes.

Global Ship Lease (GSL) announced a new baby bond yesterday. This will be a senior unsecured note with a maturity date in 2024–the company has indicated pricing in the 8% area.

Priority Income Fund (nontraded) filed a registration statement a couple of weeks ago indicating a potential new term preferred would be coming. Typically Priority announces these and then it takes 3-4 weeks before we see anything firm on an actual sale.
Given that they have 5 issues outstanding whether they sell another new issue is of little consequence to me–I have a little taste of the PRIF-D 7% issue already.

We will post as soon as further info becomes available.

Kind of Quiet–a Good Time to Review Holdings

Nomadicmist reminded us today, on the Sandbox Page, that while the stock market continues to ‘party on’ there is plenty to worry about in the world.

Nomad points to the recent downgrade of the Global Sovereign Outlook to NEGATIVE by Moodys for 2020. Essentially Moodys has been downgrading a number of countries lately and doesn’t see the economic outlook improving–and maybe getting worse in the year ahead.

A reuters article on the Moodys action can be found here.

Neither Nomad or me are predicting anything at all–we all know the global economic outlook is tenuous, but just suggesting that while markets are kind of quiet it is a good time to review holdings.

We all know “black swans” are lurking–are you holding what you want to hold if a BS appears?