Insurance company SiriusPoint Inc (SPNT) recently filed a registration for holders of their 8% resettable cumulative preferred stock.
NOTE– the sellers of the 5 million shares are private equity funds (they own a total of 8 million shares).
These shares were priced last night at $27.47/share. Now trading at $27.00 under OTC grey market ticker SRSPF.
The shares have an optional redemption on 2/26/2026, which will also will be the 1st ‘reset’ rate date.
The reset rate is the 5 year treasury plus 7.298%.
The issue is rated BB+ by S&P and Fitch.
The preliminary prospectus is her and the pricing term sheet is here.
NOTE–per James below your brokerage may try to tack on a foreign security fee.
As many here know, almost a month after the new Sirius issue was discussed on III, it made it onto the public side of Seeking Alpha, authored (surprise!) by the crew at HDO. 2 problems strike me with the HDO coverage: First, HDO used this as another pump and dump opportunity. Look at the trading patters vis-a-vis when the issue came out, when it was posted to the paying HDO members and when it was posted to non-payers. SEC, if you’re really concerned with pump and dump, there it is.
Forget your silly new rule about OTC stocks and go after pump and dump operations like HDO.
Second, the HDO article is very misleading in that they almost entirely ignore the call features of the issue, and to the extent they do mention them (in comments) they dismiss them. Folks, if there is a single preferred issue out there which is 99.9999% guaranteed to get called it is Sirius.
With that in mind I attempted the following post at SA. This is 100% of the post, verbatim, at least the second attempt. If anyone can tell me why this didn’t get posted I’m all ears.
The caveat to readers here is that SA heavily censors their website. Not for good reasons, but to protect the franchise. You don’t hear the other side of the argument, even if the “argument” is telling readers that the issue in question has risen to the point where the true yield is mediocre. Basic math:
“Let’s start with current numbers: Price is 29.64, yield is 6.78% and YTC is 3.70%. The only number that matters is that 3.70% YTC. This issue has zero chance of not being called at the first opportunity. The time to call is 4.60 years, so you effectively have a 3.70% yielding term preferred at the present price.
And let’s look at it at the $32 figure suggested by the author. At that price you have a 6.27% yield but the YTC has dropped to 1.75%. You now have a 4.60 year term preferred yielding 1.75%. If that works for you, fine.
I think 32 is improbable but then fixed income markets have produced some pretty silly valuations recently so who knows. But I sure wouldn’t be getting in at present levels in the belief it’s going to 32.”
Any idea when the the Sirius Point preferred dividend will be paid?
8/31 with accrued from May 31
Symbol is now SPNT-B.
Vanguard and the $50 fee …..
I’ve had the conversation with Vanguard literally dozens of times, via both the telephone and the messaging system. If an issuer is “foreign”, but is SEC reporting, the issue is SEC registered, will trade on a US exchange, cleared in the US and custodied in the US, it’s a US trade for brokerage purposes. No $50 fee applies. They don’t have to grab the shares off a foreign exchange, which is what the fee is all about.
Vanguard has promised me many times to fix this problem but it doesn’t remain fixed. It’s fixed today (on SRSPF), but the price is also a dollar a share higher today. Timing matters.
Yesterday, I even called Vanguard pre market to make sure they were going to have SRSPF up and running at the open and it would be recognized as a US-traded issue. They did get it up almost on time but the fee was there. I didn’t pay the fee. I wasn’t going to call them back and spend another 30 on the phone. I had to juggle a bunch of stuff in order to buy the desired number of shares at two other brokerages in 7 different transactions. At Vanguard, I would have been able to do the whole thing with one order.
You are costing me time and money, Vanguard.
Bob, I bought my 200 shares through Vanguard this morning. No extra charge at all. Unlike TD that zinged me for $6.95 yesterday.
Yep. Vanguard usually gets such problems fixed in a day or two (foreign charges, penny stocks, grey market classification) but then the price has often run up by then. I usually have to go elsewhere to buy new issues.
Just sold my SRSPF shares for 27.98. Wasn’t really expecting a fill so soon.
The price action of this issue perplexes me. Not going to argue with success. Just don’t understand why the cold shoulder and such a fast turn around. Maybe because of restricted selling group?
The ‘new’ secondary like issue was showing for 200 mill only got like 120. And I think some Chinese company owns like 33% of the insurer. It spun out at a set price I forget what like a 5.75 ytc. There was no charge to buy the offering/ dealer concession was fairly typical.
Heck with all the shippers, mcreits, MHLD etc doing so well I’m surprised it wasn’t better received
IYP – more like 6% YTC. It just wasn’t well understood. I remember picking up WCC at 26-27. Same thing.
Wow now I see it hit 26.90 ish yesterday….Not a good initialytrading llevel for those in at 27.45
Then sell it today, right now, at 27.94. Easiest 50 cents/share you may ever make.
Bob, I bought 300 yesterday at $26.95 and 200 more at $27.15. The thought of you making a killing on this without me participating a bit more was too much to bare.
Good! And I’m betting you already have your buy order in for when the underwriting dump hits, assuming it does.
Comments RE: SRSPF ….
This is another one that should not have had the $50 fee. Yes, it’s a Bermudian issuer but the company and this issue are both SEC registered and NYSE traded. It trades on US exchanges, has US market makers, US clearing and a US custodian. Still, some brokerages get it wrong. Vanguard got it wrong, so I just went elsewhere.
This issue came to market via an unusual path, which accounts for its $27 price. This was a (very) private placement and the holders obviously had so-called demand registration rights and exercised them. The terms of the issue (rate, reset, call, etc) were all pre ordained and all that remained to be determined in the public resale of these securities was the price.
Normally, on a new to market issue, it works in reverse. The price is set ($25 on a retail issue) and the coupon rate is the variable. The “pricing” is actually the setting of the coupon rate, not the price.
I like Bermudian insurers. The coupons are usually strong relative to the risk AND there is no withholding! The dividend is QDI and if you are in the QDI sweet spot (many are), your tax rate on the dividends are zero.
I bought about 1,000 shares today at about 27 for a YTC of almost exactly 6%. With the reset at 5yT + almost 7.3% this is almost certainly going to be called so 6% is what you will get, not the 7.3% nominal yld. It’s like WCC.
The sale of SRSPF today was done in a very controlled manner. I expect that to continue. When the underwriters get close to the end you may see a dump of the last couple hundred thousand shares. Maybe it drops to 26.50 or even 26, but then it comes back. If it does drop I would have no problem adding more shares.
That’s my take, anyway.
TD charged me OTC $6.95, as I toed in for 300 at $26.95 this afternoon.
TD charged me too but less than what Vanguard wanted to charge me. Schwab charged me nothing but I had only a few bucks there so had to go to TD after Schwab funds were exhausted.
$50 fee to buy in Fidelity. be warned!
-james
Thanks James–I thought that might be the case.
I plan to call FIDELITY fixed income desk and wrangle.