Reviewing one of my year-end predictions

For my December 31, 2015 new year’s predictions, I said the following:

* Next US President: Donald Trump will be elected as the next president of the United States, by a considerable margin. This prediction is not an endorsement of him, but it is a reflection of my political analysis and my take on what is happening in the United States at present.

I’ve been telling people since September 2015 that Donald Trump would not only win the nomination, but the presidency of the United States. The general election result is not even going to be close – Trump will get at least 350 electoral votes.

Best places to park short-term, nearly-risk free Canadian cash

As a result of the Bank of Canada’s decision to hold the overnight interest rate target at 0.5%, options for Canadian dollar cash balances are bleak.

Cash can always be held at zero yield and would be immediately available for deployment.

There are also financial institutions that will allow you to lock your money in for a 1-year GIC and earn around a 1.25% risk-free return. However, the sacrifice in liquidity in the event that you would want to deploy such capital is unacceptable from an investment perspective. One can also purchase a cashable GIC (typically redeemable within 30 days after purchase) that earns slightly less yield – my local BC credit union offers such a product with a 0.85% yield.

I was curious as to the best exchange-traded products that would offer some yield at the lowest risk.

There are basically two options. They are (TSX: XSB) and (TSX: VSB). Both are short-term government bond funds. VSB is significantly cheaper on management expenses (0.11% vs. 0.28% for XSB), and both portfolios offer similar durations (roughly 2.8 years), and VSB has slightly better credit quality (55% weight to AAA instead of 50% for XSB). VSB should eventually have a better net yield after expenses (roughly 1.1%) due to the smaller MER. While the 1.1% net return is small, it is better than zero and is nearly risk free – there is anti-correlation between general market movement and the likely price movement of this fund – the capital gain on VSB should rise if there was some sort of crisis due to the heavy government bond exposure of the fund.

Another alternative which is deceptively cash-like but will not serve any purpose if you wish to save money for some sort of financial crisis is the high-quality corporate bond fund also offered by Vanguard (TSX: VSC). Although VSC will offer you another 80 basis points of yield, it has the disadvantage of likely having a liquidity premium in the event there was some adverse financial event – i.e. your cash-out price will likely be materially less than NAV.

All three ETFs trade at modest premiums to NAV.

Bombardier update

It is virtually a given now that Bombardier will announce that Delta Airlines has ordered a bunch of C-series jets. The announcement will probably be Thursday as there is no reason for them to move back the earnings announcement unless if they want to have a huge feel-good party for their annual general meeting on April 29th.

However, in terms of pricing of securities, “buy the rumour, sell the news” is the cliche to follow here. Most (if not all, or even an over-reach) of this news has been baked into current market pricing, which means that investors will now have to focus on the finer details, such as: how much of a price concession did Bombardier make in order to ink the sale on the contract?

These price concessions inevitably will affect profitability of the overall entity, and while it is nice to sell jets at a near break-even profit margin, the corporation needs to eventually make money.

However, Bombardier has solved one of their massive problems which was a chicken-and-egg type matter: they now have an American purchaser of their jets, which is a lot better than how things were portrayed for them half a year ago. More importantly, they are current in a position to raise capital again from the public marketplace.

I will point out in a reduced profit scenario that the security of income from the preferred shares (or even the bonds) looks more favourable from a risk-reward perspective than the common shares. Back in February, investments were selling preferred shares (the 6.25% Series 4) at 18% yields, but today it is at a much more respectable 10%. I’d expect this to get around 7-8% before this is done.

My investment scenario is pretty much resolving to my initial projections – just have to continue to be patient and then the decision is going to be whether I sell and crystallize the gain, or just be content to collect coupons and sit on a large unrealized capital gain.

(Update, April 28, 2016): As expected, Bombardier has announced that Delta has purchased 75 C-Series jets with an option to pick up another 50. This is a huge win for the corporation, but again, the question remains: how much money will they actually be able to make when they produce these things? Let’s hope they’re able to actually get the production lines going and crank them out without issues, unlike their Toronto street cars…

I’ve glossed over their Q1-2016 financial statements, and as expected, they still show an entity that is bleeding cash, albeit they have a lot of liquidity available – US$4.4 billion in cash and equivalents when you include Quebec’s $1 billion investment. They’ve got US$1.4 billion due in 2018 on their March 2018 debt (coupon 7.5%) but this is trading at around a 6.5% YTM at the moment so they can refinance it.

The company expects the C-series program will consume $2 billion further cash for the next five years, of which the province of Quebec has generously chipped in a billion. After that they expect things to be cash flow positive. Who knows if this will happen!

(Update, April 29, 2016) The market has “sold the news” as I expected. I generally believe the common shares will have a significant drag compared to the historical charts due to dilution, but the preferred shares and debt should normalize to “reasonable” yield levels simply due to their standing being in front of line on the pecking order. This is assisted with the Beaudoin family’s very rational self-interest in maintaining their control stake with the Class A common shares which will translate into outwards cash flows being paid as scheduled. If the Government of Canada decides to chip in a billion dollars, it is icing on the cake, but it is not required as Bombardier will be busy for at least the next four years producing C-series jets. Assuming they can actually execute on the production and the jets live up to their reported (superior to competition) specifications, they should be good to at least pay off debts and preferred share dividends.

Each additional order of C-Series jets will be making profitable margin contributions and as these orders continue to come in, the common shares, preferred shares and debt will ratchet up, accordingly. I still believe they are under-valued but not nearly as much as they were late last year when everybody was in doom and gloom mode! The preferred shares are the sweet spot in terms of risk-reward.

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).

tk

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.