Previous articles on Pinetree Capital can be found with this link.
Today, they announced a redemption of $3 million in their senior secured debentures out of a total of $9.716 million outstanding. Interest accrued will be another 1.07% on principal. The redemption will be effective January 8, 2016.
The only wrinkle in this announcement is that $1 million of the $3 million principal will be redeemed in equity of Pintree Capital (TSX: PNP) and based on 95% of the weighted average price of trading from December 2 to December 31. So debentureholders will have 10.3% of their debt redeemed in equity of Pinetree Capital.
Based on Pinetree Capital’s equity, they have 201.9 million shares outstanding and are currently trading at 5 cents per share. If trading is around the 5 cent level, Pinetree will be issuing 21.05 million shares, representing a dilution of approximately 9.4% to existing shareholders. If the common shares start trading lower as a result of this announcement, each incremental decrease in trading will result in more dilution to shareholders – a mildly toxic convertible situation. For example, if the weighted average price is 4 cents a share, Pinetree will issue 26.3 million shares with 11.5% dilution. At 3 cents, the issuance is 35.1 million shares (14.8% dilution).
My guess at present is that the common shares will trade around 4 cents as a result of this announcement, but after the issuance of shares there will likely be a supply dump.
What was peculiar is the following quote in the news release:
The issuance of common shares in partial payment of the redemption amount is subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions contained in the indenture governing the Debentures, including the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange, failing which the total redemption amount will be paid in cash.
I have guessed the motive of the company to do this redemption was to reduce interest expenses, but if they are opting to not deploy cash in exchange for (nearly worthless at this point) equity, then it is constructively like doing a secondary offering in the marketplace at a very low share price.
The other motive for this partial redemption might be management bracing for impact when they take an impairment expense on their Level 3 assets when they do the year-end audit. The deadline for the year-end annual report is the end of March 2016. They still have to abide by a debt-to-assets covenant of 33%. They are at 28% as of the Q3-2015 report. If there is a mild asset impairment then they will breach their covenant. There might be a temporary breach of the covenant (between the December 31, 2015 reporting period to January 8, 2016) which will be cured by this redemption, but investors will not know about this breach until the issuance of the annual report itself as they no longer report monthly NAV.
Pinetree also received a serious setback when Aptose Biosciences (TSX: APS) suspended a clinical trial, taking its stock price down 50% on November 20, 2015. This probably destroyed another $2.5 million in Level 1 assets (of which $14 million was remaining on September 30, 2015!).
In terms of estimating the shareholder value, the primary variable at this point is whether the board of directors has any plans on executing on a recapitalization-takeover of the company, utilizing its massive capital losses for an acquiring entity. I’m guessing this would be worth about 8-10 cents a share, but first they need to get rid of their remaining debt.