I’ve been working hard to raise my portfolio yield with out a huge amount of risk, but both UMB Financial (UMBF) and Wintrust Financial (WTFC) announced calls this week which, while expected, are making it a bit tougher to get the reward while minimizing risk,
UMBFP which was a 7% fixed rate reset perpetual originally issued by Heartland Financial was called for redemption for 7/15/2025.
Wintrust Financial announced a couple of calls Friday–both the 6.50% fixed to floating perpetual (WTFCM) issue and the 6.875% fixed rate reset issue (WTFCP) will be redeemed on 7/15/2025.
All of these issues were on the ‘hiding spot’ list and I owned 2 of the 3–I did not own the 6.50% Wintrust issues. The redemption of these issues, along with the Priority Income Fund 6.625% term preferred (PRIF-F) issue earlier in the week put quite a hole in our holdings–and I suspect many of you have the same issue to deal with now.
The hiding spot list still contains viable options, although more limited and I already own many of the issues.
Well it looks like my weekend due diligence project just got a little larger.
Would I be correct in thinking the final PRIF-F div pymt will be end of the month? thanks
No it should have been paid out at redemption. 2wr and I spoke to IR on Friday and they’re hopefully looking into it.
Original–hopefully will see anytime now–I know I didn’t receive anything except $25–it should have been paid at the same time as mentioned by Irish
With which broker, Tim? The IR guy was claiming the problem is not widespread otherwise his phone would be ringing off the hook…. I think only ETrade and Merrill Edge were mentioned by name here although probably 5 people have recognized the problem… Anyone know for sure that they HAVE been paid? All good info to have should we need to make a follow-up call to IR.
Mine (unpaid) are at fidelity and Schwab.
Unpaid at Merrill Edge
One person already said that Fidelity told him to call PRIF. That’s the only way it will happen. No brokerage will initiate this on their own. It’s up to the individual investor to call PRIF, or it won’t happen.
We’re at Fidelity, still nothing as of this morning. Never had this hiccup before, I’ll try emailing PRIF. Thanks one and all.
Steven Stone @ Prospect for Priority – 212-448-0702 press 0 and ask for him… pressing 1 for IR always seems to lead to a generic, unnamed “call you back” from Prospect IR.
Not paid at Vanguard as of this AM. Left a VM w Stephen Stone.
Still no payment at ETrade, and no callback from Steve STone. I did get an email response from lharrison@prospectcap.com stating, “It seems there was some error by DTC (not our transfer agent) on allocating the dividend.” Yeah, right – blame it on another entity that we can’t talk to since we are not their clients…… Anybody but Fido and Wells Fargo clients get paid yesterday?
About 12 years ago the DTC messed up and created an unintended reverse split of a preferred security issued by Santander Bank. Broker wouldn’t/couldn’t help. I eventually got it straightened out, but had to escalate up to the CEO of Santander Bank. Was an adventure talking to these guys in Madrid…
Received on 6/17 at Merrill Edge.
I sure can get aggravated over what’s really not a significant event, but STILL NO PAYMENT ON PRIF-F AT ETRADE. And just to make matters worse, today my call (my third unanswered call) to Steven Stone is met with. “I’m sorry, he’s not in but don’t worry, just call him some time next week!” Really? So no-one at Priorty/Prospect gives enough of a rat to have someone else assigned to the problem in Stone’s absence. Nobody there cares enough about their preferred shareholders to get this resolved. I don’t care if its a DTC created problem (yeah, right) somebody at PROSPECT/PRIORTY needs to address it because WE CAN’T. We are not DTC clients. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. No wonder I won’t extend out to buy the next in line to be called piece of paper beyond PRIF-I. That would require trust in these people which I have never had to begin with
from Prospect: “I know Steven is on vacation this week. I’m sorry for any delays in phone calls. I have asked our transfer agent to call DTC. Unfortunately, this is a DTC error and nothing to do with prospect or our transfer agent because we have proof of receipt by DTC. I will keep you posted with any information I receive. Again, I’m sorry for this and I’m trying my best to get it resolved. “
I did end up buying the “UMBFO”. Paid about 20 cents more than I liked but it will be fine. Great coupon & 5 years of call protection. After doing alot of reading and looking thru their reports I’m pretty comfortable with it. I still hear lots of the talking heads on CNBC saying that Powell will be lowering rates later in the year. If that is TRUE then we will look pretty smart in buying these issues before they jump up even farther.
Chuck, what are the basics we know about now? How far out can we look? Banks here are hedging their bets. about 1/4% higher on 30, 60, 90 day CD’s and on everything else it’s 3.68% no matter the 1-1/2, 2, 3 or 4 yr.
https://www.poppy.bank/personal/#cds
I think they are expecting the rate to drop in the next 6 to 9 months but long term they don’t know.
Currently they are pushing down the value of the dollar and they want to push down rates too. This combination they are hoping to grow the economy enough to pay down the debt. The president of my company says we missed 1st and second qtr. sales so even if we hit or exceed 3rd qtr sales we will still be in the hole.
If we can lock in higher rates now we should be good short term. But I am not so sure about banks that have a get out of jail free card that they can suspend dividends and they are not cumulative.
I’m looking around myself. I have the 2 Wintrust and the one UMBF being called and a good chance my WSBCP gets called
Maybe I’ll just move my “P” to O shares..seems good if can get it a bit lowerr than todays price.
Chuck—I also bought some UMBFO and paid $25.40, which is more than I wanted to pay. If it goes back closer to par, I will buy more.
Whedbey; Please tell me if I’m wrong but I went thru different metrics and read alot on their website. They may not be the biggest but they seem like a pretty rock solid bank to me. I bought 4,000 shares and actually am thinking about adding another 1,000. On a slightly different topic I keep reading about these retailers wanting to issue their own “stablecoins”. But after reading about them I guess I just don’t see or understand the point of them. I see articles about how Walmart & Amazon want to issue their own stablecoin so they can “bypass” both V & MA but if folks can’t use their cards they are going to rebel big time. The whole thing just seems kinda silly to me as I don’t see the point. My apology, I just realized I spelled your name wrong.
I also had two. Small positions but now I am hunting for new hidey holes.