I love September 30th (and the last days of March, June and December). The last day of the 3,6,9,12 months are huge dividend days for income investors.
September was NOT a terrible month for folks holding preferreds and baby bonds (a general observation). Certainly there were issues that got spanked soundly, but by and large losses were likely modest–or even non existent.
When the dividends hit the Fido account today it felt like Christmas. I was break even (more or less) for the month yesterday then the dividends hit overnight–yes!! This account stands at a record high now—-other accounts are a bit shy of highs (I think–eTrade doesn’t update their dividends as quick as Fido).
It is a bit silly worrying about a few dollars here and a few dollars there–but my wife does look at the accounts occasionally–and she only understands UP–anything with red is ‘not allowed’. So when the evening news talks a ‘market meltdown’ she gives me ‘the look’ — pretty funny. We can’t all be Gridbird – some of us have to answer to higher powers.
Well October starts tomorrow and I think we will see some wild rides–but then who really knows–guess we will find out soon.
Tim, I always look forward to the last day of the third month of the quarter too! My settlement accounts at Vanguard really go up on the on the end of that month. I retire for rhe second and final time in early November at almost 69 and apply for my SS on my 69th Birthday.. i have one great retirement from the SS and the dividend income without touching a penny of the capital. This is one incredible site with great folks adding commentary. I feel so blessed to have planned well and rhis site has been part of that planning. Been self employed since 1992 and built one heck of a portfolio over the years. Rock on!
Tim’s portfolio seems consistent with the broader set of preferreds/babys/terms. Results from 8/31 through 9/30.
Median preferred = -0.60%
Median baby/term= -0.29%
For preferreds that traded both on 8/31 and 9/30 (which excludes most of Grid’s holding because they did NOT trade on both dates) and closed >=$10.00
485 down (67%)
3 unchanged
160 up (33%)
So if a 1% to 1.5% dividend went ex during the month, you would have had a positive total return.
Hopefully you did NOT have a large allocation to precious metals, the median ones I track were down 10.1%. Pretty ugly.
Tex…. “Hopefully you did NOT have a large allocation to precious metals, the median ones I track were down 10.1%. Pretty ugly”… From personal experience can I add LTSH to precious metals? 🤣🤣
The flip side is ex-div days. When my accounts are all in the red.
congrats Tim! got my “rent” checks today too.
GMLPF weird action but I took the last few days of up trend to exit.
-james
Tim, Im pretty sure you received more dividend money than I did today. If you collected a penny in dividends you received more than I did today! I have a few that are supposed to pay 9/30 but they never show up; sometimes a couple weeks late.
Grid–Fido is just quick with them–strange as they don’t seem to be quick on anything else.
Tim, you know you would make more than one person happy here if you said some of that stash of cash received came from a certain issue named…..WTREP.
Is there any real concern that WTREP won’t pay the dividend on the preferred?
Not from my end, several have posted with angst. Its possible the divi may come late as quite often it does for me with delisted issues… Sometimes 2-3 weeks late, but they come.
FWIW it seems like Watford has the game plan all set up as this is came from company after delisted announcement.
How will holders of preference shares be paid dividends?
Holders of preference shares will receive dividends in the same manner as prior to the delisting. The Company will deposit an amount sufficient to pay dividends that have been declared with AST, the transfer agent for the preference shares, and AST will distribute dividends to the holders of record of the preference shares, including DTC. DTC in turn will distribute dividends as appropriate to its broker-dealer participants.
LOL ! Talk about “the look”, I persuaded my wife to buy another 100 shares of PBI-B this morning when it went down to $25.30 to make it an even 500 shares in her account. For some reason or another it closed today at $25.08 🙁
I added to PBI-B today as well. Just reviewed the 2020 annual report and latest 10-Q. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I don’t see anything to alarm me. Ex-div was 20 aug, so I’m scratching my head over the sudden drop. End-of-quarter fund rebalance?
Same here, couldn’t find any adverse information on the company website or Edgar, but the common dumped even harder down 3.2%. It appears these were large block sells right before the market closed for both common and preferred. I know a lot of folks here are way better at ferreting these things out, but I don’t know why either.
it seems a solid pick.
The credit rating agencies have been stair-stepping down their ratings for years, Moodys went from Baa3 in 2017 to the current B1 with a negative outlook. PBI is carrying a lot of debt with significant operating challenges, according to Moodys. Their debt to equity ratio is about 5000% per Fido. Too risky for me.
Coaster, thanks for highlighting that ratio. Not sure where the 5000 comes from but there is a very high D/E ratio (35.4x). Looking again at the 2020 Annual Report (https://www.pitneybowes.com/content/dam/pitneybowes/us/en/annual-report-2021/pitney_bowes_inc_-_2020_annual_report.pdf), I see
– $2.35B in LTD
– $66M in Equity
The thing I hadn’t noticed before is that they are carrying Treasury Stock at -$4.69B (negative). Not sure how you get to a negative number for Treasury Stock…
I decided to look up the D/E formula and realized I’ve had it wrong (doh). For some reason I thought it was LTD/Total SHE. According to investopedia it’s actually Total Liabilities/Total SHE, which gives a bigger number, but still much smaller than 5000:
Total Liabilities: $5.15B
Total Stockholders Equity: $.0664B
D/E = 77.6x
Not saying 77.6 is healthy 😉
Also educated myself further to find that the Treasury Stock account is always negative (doh)(It’s actually kind of astonishing that I didn’t know this, given the number of annual and quarterly reports I’ve scanned over the years). So I guess PBI has retired a *lot* of common (with either cash or debt?), given a Treasury Stock account of (4.69B). Is it necessarily bad that the number is so high?
Bill S–maybe she expects only ‘up’ as well–you’re to blame if it goes ‘down’.
Bill S. For what it’s worth I will give you my story. PBI-B was one of the first preferred stocks I bought 4 years ago when I was a rookie and before I found this website. It was under par, 24.48, and investment grade plus a great dividend to boot! It hovered under par forever and that always worried me to the point I would daily say Aargh! I asked the guys on this site if should cut my losses or hold. Everyone said cut your losses due to bad management. I did not take their advice and finally got out of when it went over $25, made about $1 profit. I do miss the high dividend, although I say Aargh much less these days! I would not buy it again especially with potential market uncertainty. I hope that helps!