Enterra Energy Trust – Rising for no reason at all

Enterra Energy is a typical small-scale energy trust that has miscellaneous properties in Alberta and Oklahoma. They are not too remarkable other than the fact that they have been very diligent at reducing their balance sheet leverage over the past couple years – their unitholders received their last distribution in August 2007.

Today they announced that they will be converting to a corporation and changing their name. One would think this is typical considering that income trusts that do not give distributions to should change to corporations before the end of 2012 deadline. Income trusts that give out distributions in 2010 still have their tax shield for one more year – although the majority of them after 2010 should convert to corporations in either 2011 or 2012.

For whatever reason, the market decided that the announcement to convert to a corporation from a trust was worth a 25% mark-up in their unit price, as of the moment of this writing.

There is fundamentally no reason for this announcement to cause such a price spike. Either something else is going on, or the market is behaving very, very irrationally. Spikes like this make the market feel very bubbly.

Disclosure – I do own debentures in Enterra Energy Trust (the ones maturing in December 2011). They have been inching up closer to par over the past month and hopefully will continuing bubbling up above par, where I will proceed to dump them. If not, I keep collecting 8% coupons, which is a good reward to wait for a good price.

Don’t invest in corporate largesse

Putting a long story short, the board of directors of Cheasapeake Energy, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it was worth $12.1 million of its corporate assets to purchase antique maps from its CEO.

The only thing you can do when you see such a waste of corporate resources is selling your shares if you own them, and not buying them if you don’t.

I should take this opportunity to point out it was exactly the same company and its CEO that in November 2008 faced a margin call on his own stock, forcing him to liquidate 5.4% of the company in a very rapid transaction.

I said the following back in November 2008:

Some might think this would represent the best buying opportunity – cashing in on the misfortune of somebody’s financial errors. Unfortunately in the case of Chesapeake, the last company I would want to invest in would have a CEO that got caught by a massive forced liquidation like this one – first of all, his incentive to perform well has just disappeared (having no more equity stake in the company) and secondly, one would wonder whether he’d make a similar miscalculation with the company’s finances.

It appears that the CEO is just as reckless with the company’s finances as he is with his own – any prudent investor should blackball the entire Board of Directors of Chesapeake Energy – if any of them serve on a corporate board (or heaven forbid, management) of a company you are invested in, it would be a yellow flag.

This is why the iceberg theory of bad news is applicable – if there is a small piece of bad news, chances are there is a lot more to go with it. In the case of Chesapeake, this is the last energy company I would want my dollars invested in.

Taiga Building Products resumes interest payments

Taiga Building Products has resumed paying interest on their notes. I have written about the notes earlier and pointed out the risks associated with the notes. At that time the notes were trading between 45 and 50 cents on the dollar.

After the closing of trading on January 13, 2010, Taiga announced the following:

BURNABY, BC, Jan. 13 /CNW/ – Taiga Building Products Ltd. (“Taiga” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that due to strengthening cash flows, it will be resuming interest payments on its 14% subordinated notes, including monthly interest on deferred interest, as per Section 2.04 of the Note Indenture dated as of September 1, 2005. Interest deferred from March 1, 2009 through November 30, 2009, including interest on deferred interest, will be paid by September 1, 2010 as per Section 2.04 of the Note Indenture. The Board of Directors may choose to pay interest prior to September 1, 2010 subject to cash flow considerations.

The first reinstated interest payment date will be January 15, 2010, with respect to interest, and interest on deferred interest, accruing for the month of December 2009.

… and on the following day, announced:

BURNABY, BC, Jan. 14 /CNW/ – Taiga Building Products Ltd. (TSX: TBL & TBL.NT) announces that it will be paying the monthly interest payment of $11.6667 per $1,000 principal value subordinated Notes. Taiga will also be paying the interest on deferred interest, accruing for the month of December 2009, in the amount of $1.1233 per $1,000 principal value subordinated Notes. The payments will be made to shareholders and noteholders of record at the close of business on December 31, 2009 and will be payable on January 15, 2010.

The question for the noteholders will continue to be how the company will pay the deferred interest in light of the fact that their credit facility, as of September 30, 2009 was around $53 million and without any cash on the asset side of their balance sheet. The equity in the company is negative $82 million at this date. At the September 2010 date is the expiration of the bank credit facility, which would be senior to the notes and secured by most of the company’s remaining assets.

The market, however, didn’t seem to care. Taiga equity went up 15 cents to 60 cents a share (so its market capitalization is roughly $19.5 million) and for noteholders, the market value went from 60 cents to a high of 92 cents, closing at 91 cents.

It appears that the market is applying a very rich valuation to the notes in response to this news. If I held notes, I would be dumping them if the market rate was 91 cents.

I suspect within a year there will be some sort of recapitalization of the company’s debt balance, and the issue for the noteholders will be one of recovery, rather than yield.

Just an item of disclosure; I have never had a position (equity or debt) in Taiga Building Products. They are interesting to track, considering that they are a (relatively) local company to where I live and wish their business the best of luck in slaughtering their debt issues with a minimum of pain for everybody involved.

Bank of Canada on Canada’s real estate bubble

The Bank of Canada is very correct in saying they won’t raise rates because of the obvious real estate bubble.

The interest rate is a very crude tool which affects many more facets of the economy than just the real estate market.

Right now you can cool down the real estate market by changing the minimum leverage ratios required to purchase – the subsequent decrease in available credit will accomplish this.

Right now the law permits you to take out a mortgage with a 35-year amortization and a 5% down payment. The primary concern is the down payment fraction, and not the amortization rate (although a longer amortization will allow for a larger purchase due to a decreased payment to principal). Essentially you can buy a house on 19:1 “margin”. The most leverage you are legally allowed to use with equities is 30% down.

A simple mathematical example will demonstrate why a 5% down payment requirement is ridiculously low.

With a 5% down payment, you can buy a $400,000 house with a $20,000 down payment, so you would be borrowing $380,000. In the event you couldn’t actually afford the down payment, banks have developed convenient “cash back” mortgages that give you cash up front, but in exchange for a higher rate of interest throughout the mortgage. An example is TD’s “5% cash back mortgage“, where instead of paying a posted 4.24% 5-year regular mortgage rate, you can pay 5.49% for the cash-back option.

Let’s say you purchase this place, and then your house appreciates 5% – so you have $40,000 equity in a $420,000 home. In theory, you can then get a second mortgage on the home for $20,000, cough up another $1,000 from your VISA or Mastercard (since 5% of $420,000 is $21,000) and then buy another $400,000 home with a $380,000 mortgage. If your two homes appreciate another 5%, then you can afford two more $400,000 homes, etc.

One can see how a single person can leverage a lot of money with a 5% down payment requirement. It becomes ridiculously easy in a rising real estate market. Of course, when the real estate market goes down, your ability to borrow money stops, and you then have to face the music when it comes to paying the mortgages (or just calling it a day and default).

With a 10% down payment, it becomes a little more difficult to perform this operation – your fictional $400,000 home requires a $40,000 down payment. Your home will have to appreciate just over 10% in order to be theoretically eligible for a second mortgage that would give a a sufficient down payment to buy another equal-priced place.

The legal minimum down payment before a mortgage should be granted is set to a number higher than what it is currently. Ideally it should be linked to the Canadian government 5-year bond – a lower interest rate should require a higher minimum down payment, while a higher interest rate should require a lower minimum down payment. A more simplistic solution (and much easier to market) is just to increase it to a particular rate. The Canadian government has hinted it may increase.

While in theory people should be left alone to select their preferred debt leverage ratio, it was shown in the USA that the actions of a lot of fiscally irresponsible people (and their banks) caused genuine impact to those that could actually manage their affairs properly – savers in the current environment are basically being punished by the actions of the squanders. As such, it is an easy decision to raise the minimum down payment percentage required to obtain a mortgage.

As a matter of personal finance, people that don’t have at least 20% squirreled up for a down payment should likely not be purchasing a place. This is the minimum amount required to avoid paying any CMHC home mortgage insurance premiums, which is an absolutely unnecessary expense since you are not receiving any benefit out of the insurance (other than the ability to get cheap credit in the first place) – the bank is getting the benefit, while the public is securing it with federal taxpayers’ money.

Debt investing advice

The reason why debt is valued more highly than equity, thus giving off a smaller yield, is because of its higher ranking in the seniority chain. If the company fails to pay interest and principal according to the terms of the debt agreement, then the debtors will usually be able to take some equity stake in the firm after a bankruptcy proceeding.

The tip of the day is not to invest in an entity where it is mandatory for the existing equity owners to maintain control of an organization in order for it to operate. The leverage the debtholders have in such a situation is precisely none – if they force the organization into bankruptcy, they will be left with nothing, while if they do not, they will still be left with nothing except a promise to be paid.

A debtholder needs more than a promise to be paid – they need the ability to force the company into bankruptcy or liquidation if a default occurs.