Teekay Corporation – Debt

Over the past couple months I have accumulated a substantial position in Teekay Corporation’s (NYSE: TK) unsecured debt, maturing January 15, 2020. The coupon is 8.5% and is paid semi-annually. I am expecting this debt to be paid out at or above par value well before the maturity date. The yield to maturity at my cost I will be receiving for this investment will be north of 20% (and obviously this number goes up if there is an earlier redemption).

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I was really looking into the common shares and was asleep at the switch for these, especially around the US$7-8 level a month ago. Everything told me to pull the trigger on the commons as well, and this mistake of non-performance cost me a few percentage points of portfolio performance considering that the common shares are 50% above where I was considering to purchase them. This would have not been a trivial purchase – my weight at cost would have been between 5-10%.

However, offsetting this inaction was that I also bought common shares (technically, they are limited partnership units) of Teekay Offshore (NYSE: TOO) in mid-February. There is a very good case that these units will be selling at US$15-20 by the end of 2017, in addition to giving out generous distributions that will most likely increase in 2018 and beyond.

The short story with Teekay Corporation debt is that they control three daughter entities (Teekay Offshore, Tankers, and LNG). They own minority stakes in all three (roughly 30% for eachUpdate on April 26, 2016: I will be more specific. They have a 26% economic interest and 54% voting right in Teekay Tankers, a 35% limited partner interest in Teekay Offshore, and 31% limited partnership interest in Teekay LNG), but own controlling interests via general partner rights and in the case of Tankers, a dual-class share structure. There are also incentive distribution rights for Offshore and LNG (both of which are nowhere close to being achieved by virtue of distributions being completely slashed and burned at the end of 2015). If there was a liquidation, Teekay would be able to cover the debt with a (painful) sale of their daughter entities.

Teekay Corporation itself is controlled – with a 39% equity stake by Resolute Investments, Ltd. (Latest SC 13D filing here shows they accumulated more shares in December 2015, timed a little early.) They have a gigantic incentive to see this debt get paid off as now do I!

The mis-pricing of the common shares and debt of the issuers in question revolve around a classic financing trap (similar to Kinder Morgan’s crisis a few months ago). The material difference that the market appears to have forgotten about is that Teekay Offshore (and thus Teekay Corporation’s) business is less reliant on the price of crude oil than most other oil and gas entities. The material financial item is that Teekay Offshore faces a significant cash bridge in 2016 and 2017, but it is very probable they will be able to plug the gap and after this they will be “home-free” with a gigantic amount of free cash flow in 2018 and beyond – some of this will go to reduce leverage, but the rest of it is going to be sent into unitholder distributions assuming the capital markets will allow for an easy refinancing of Teekay Offshore’s 2019 unsecured debt.

At US$3/share, Teekay Offshore was an easy speculative purchase. Even at present prices of US$7/share, they are still a very good value even though they do have large amounts of debt (still trading at 16% yield to maturity, but this will not last long).

The absolute debt of Teekay Corporation is not too burdensome in relation to their assets, and one can make an easy guess that given a bit of cash flow through their daughter entities, they will be in a much better position in a couple years to refinance than they are at present. They did manage to get another US$200 million of this 2020 debt off at a mild discount in mid-November 2015, which was crucial to bridging some cash requirements in 2016 and 2017. The US$593 million face value of unsecured debt maturing January 2020 is the majority of the corporation’s debt (noting the last US$200 million sold is not fungible with the present $393 million until a bureaucratic process to exchange them with original notes) – I’d expect sometime in 2017 to 2018 this debt will be trading above par value.

The debt can be redeemed anytime at the price of the sum of the present values of the remaining scheduled payments of principal and interest, discounted to the redemption date on a semi-annual basis, at the treasury yield plus 50 basis points, plus accrued and unpaid interest to the redemption date.

This is a very complex entity to analyze as there is a parent and three daughter units to go through (and realizing that Teekay Corporation’s consolidated statements are useless to read without dissecting the daughter entities – this took a lot of time to perform properly). I believe I’ve cherry-picked the best of it and have found a happy place to park some US currency. I still think it is trading at a very good value if you care to tag along.

Bombardier bond yield curve

Bombardier’s bond yield curve has gone much more favourable over the past couple months. Their March 2018 bond issue (the nearest maturity) is trading at par (coupon is 7.5%), while going out to January 2023 the yield to maturity is trading just north of 10%.

(Update on April 18, 2016: After rumours of Delta Airlines close to purchasing C-Series jets and the rejection of the Canadian government’s bailout offer, the yield curve has compressed even further – the January 2023 yield to maturity is now at a bid of 9.5% – the rejection of the bailout offer has to be a positive signal for the company, i.e. they have the financial wherewithal to go on their own without further equity injections).

So while the company isn’t completely out of the woods yet, the market is giving them an opportunity to refinance debt if they choose to do so – However, it is unlikely a bond offering will be made until 2017.

On the preferred share component of their capital structure, their BBD.PR.B series (floating rate) is trading a shade under 10% eligible dividend yield, while the BBD.PR.C series is at 12.7% – somewhat reflecting an increased relative risk of dividend suspension, coupled with a conversion risk (as the company has the right to redeem for equity at the greater of $2/share or 95% of VWAP).

Also muddling the market news is the proposed federal government investment in Bombardier which would likely cement its ability to maintain its credit rating and dividend-paying ability of its preferred shares.

I continue to remain long on the preferred shares.

Pengrowth Energy Debentures

This will be a short one since my research is done and my trades have long since executed. I will not get into the sticky details of the analysis.

Pengrowth Energy has CAD$137 million outstanding of unsecured convertible debentures (TSX: PGF.DB.B), maturing March 31, 2017. The coupon is 6.25%, and the conversion rate is CAD$11.51/share (which is unlikely to be achieved unless if oil goes to $200/barrel in short order).

Because of what has been going on in the oil and gas market, the debt has been trading at distressed levels. It bottomed out in January at around 47 cents on the dollar (this was a one day spike on a liquidation sale), but generally hovered around the 60-65 level. It is trading at 88 cents today.

It is much, much more likely than not it will mature at par.

There are a few reasons for this.

The debentures are the first slice of debt to mature. Pengrowth’s capitalization is through a series of debt issues with staggered maturities.

Pengrowth has a credit facility which expires well past the maturity date and is mostly under-utilized and can easily handle the principal payment of the debentures.

Pengrowth’s cost structure is also not terrible in relation to the operations of other oil firms.

Today, Seymour Schulich publicly filed his ownership of 80 million shares of Pengrowth, which equates to just under 15% of the company. Seymour Schulich owned 4% of Canadian Oil Sands before it got taken over by Suncor, so I’m guessing he was looking for another place to store his money in the meantime. I think he picked well. Schulich also owns 42 million shares (28%) of Birchcliff Energy (TSX: BIR), so with these two holdings, he owns a very healthy stake in both oil and gas.

This last piece of information seals up the fact that barring another disaster in the commodity price for oil that the debentures will mature at par. The only question at this point is whether they’ll redeem for cash or shares (95% of VWAP), but I am guessing it will be cash.

Even at 88 cents on the dollar, an investor would be looking at a 13.6% capital gain and a 6.25% interest payment for a 1 year investment. This is under the assumption there is not an earlier redemption by the company.

I was in earlier this year at a lower cost. I will not be selling and will let this one redeem at maturity.

Pinetree Capital will undergo a change of control

A company that I used to write about in the past, Pinetree Capital (TSX: PNP), will finally be undergoing a change of control.

I own a small portion of their senior secured debentures (TSX: PNP.DB). This holding was much larger earlier in 2015, but they were mostly liquidated through redemptions throughout 2015. By virtue of the last redemption (which was partially paid out in equity) I also own a small amount of equity in Pinetree Capital that I have not bothered to selling yet as they were trading below my opinion of fair value.

I anticipated that the final liquidation of the public entity would be in the form of a constructive sale of its sizable ($500 million+) capital losses. Instead, it comes in the form of a rights offering. I’m not sure what the formal terminology of this is, but I would call it a passive takeover.

Pinetree will issue rights that are exercisable at 2.5 cents per share (which is about a penny, or nearly 1/3rd, below their existing market price). If no more than 40% of these rights are exercised, then a numbered corporation entity controlled by Peter Tolnai will exercise the remaining unexercised rights and take control of approximately 30-49.9% of the company. Tolnai also receives $250,000 for his efforts (probably paying for a lot of legal and advisory fees to structure the rights offering) (Update: Only $250k received if there was a superior offer, see the comments below).

Considering only 22 million shares (of approximately-then 200 million shares outstanding) were voted in their last annual general meeting, it would be a reasonable bet that investor appetite to purchase further shares in Pinetree will be most certainly less than 40% of the existing shareholders. A 30% stake in the company is akin to effective control. I have some fairly good guesses why Tolnai would not want more than 50% ownership of the company.

The rights will be traded on the TSX, but my analysis would determine the price would trade at bid/ask $0.005/$0.01 assuming the common shares are trading at bid/ask $0.03/$0.035. As a result, the rights would not be easy to liquidate after transaction charges and would probably remain relatively illiquid.

Peter Tolnai, judging by his website, feels like somebody I could relate to personally. My guess is that he is taking a strong minority stake in the company for the purposes of obtaining a functional, inexpensive, and public entity to raise capital and utilizing the rich reserves of capital losses to grow capital tax-free. I would deeply suspect he has a team in mind and will be raising capital after the April 22, 2016 special meeting that will authorize a (much needed) 100:1 reverse split.

The net proceeds of the rights offering is to pay off the senior secured debentures, which mature on May 31, 2016. The amount outstanding on the debentures is not huge – $6.7 million principal plus six months’ interest (another $335,000). However, Pinetree has disclosed in its filings that if it is unable to raise money with these rights, they would have to liquidate its remaining privately held investments, implying it does not have anything liquid anymore.

Considering Pinetree Capital has not released any financial information since the end of their September 30, 2015 quarter, it remains to be seen what their current balance sheet situation looks like on the asset column. I’m guessing they sold off all of their liquid publicly traded securities in 2015 (the largest of which was PTK Technologies). Pinetree must release their audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015 by the end of March.

Shareholders as of March 23, 2016 will receive the rights to buy at 2.5 cents per share (which means March 18, 2016 is the last day to purchase common shares if you wish to receive rights), but somehow I don’t think the market will be bidding up Pinetree common shares.

This leaves the last question of the valuation of the final entity, assuming the rights are exercised in full. With the senior secured debentures paid off, there is likely a non-zero value in the company, but a better snapshot can be obtained after the release of the year-end 2015 statements. Another question will be how Peter Tolnai’s team will plan on making capital gains and utilizing the huge tax assets left in Pinetree, but considering he will likely have a 30-49.9% stake in the company, his incentives are well geared towards the passive shareholder base.

Utilizing Pinetree’s capital losses is actually a problem that I would like to help him solve, to quote a line from his “Giving Back” section on his biography, if I was so privileged!