Category: Canada

Canada Interest Rate Projections – March 2010 – Effect on mortgages

With all the talk about the Bank of Canada wanting to raise rates, it is instructive to look at what the futures market is saying about the issue. It should be noted that the next scheduled rate announcements are as follows:

April 20, 2010
June 1, 2010
July 20, 2010
September 8, 2010
October 19, 2010
December 7, 2010

A rate increase on or before the July 20, 2010 meeting is a guarantee. The question is how much?

The markets currently say the following:

Month / Strike Bid Price Ask Price Settl. Price Net Change Vol.
+ 10 AL 0.000 0.000 0.000 99.480 0.000 0
+ 10 MA 0.000 0.000 0.000 99.440 0.000 0
+ 10 JN 0.000 99.320 99.325 99.360 -0.040 21736
+ 10 SE 0.000 98.870 98.880 98.910 -0.040 33614
+ 10 DE 0.000 98.400 98.410 98.450 -0.050 19923
+ 11 MR 0.000 97.980 97.990 98.030 -0.040 6402
+ 11 JN 0.000 97.630 97.640 97.690 -0.050 3215
+ 11 SE 0.000 97.320 97.350 97.410 -0.080 1445
+ 11 DE 0.000 97.040 97.060 97.140 -0.090 707
+ 12 MR 0.000 96.810 96.840 96.910 -0.080 50

The three-month interest rate will be:

June 2010: 0.68%
September 2010: 1.13%
December 2010: 1.60%
March 2011: 2.01%
June 2011: 2.37%

Reading my tea leaves, this would suggest that the Bank of Canada will raise per the following schedule:

April 20, 2010 (No change – 0.25%)
June 1, 2010 (No change – 0.25%)
July 20, 2010 (+0.75% to 1.00%)
September 8, 2010 (+0.25% to 1.25%)
October 19, 2010 (+0.25% to 1.50%)
December 7, 2010 (+0.25% to 1.75%)

It is also likely that by June 2011 that interest rates will be around 2.5%.

The only effect these rate increases will have on mortgages are for floating rate mortgages (ING Direct offers them at prime minus 0.4%). This would mean that rates would go up from 1.85% to 3.35% by the end of the year and roughly to 4.1% by the middle of 2011. For most borrowers on floating rate mortgages, they will likely see their interest payments at least double over the course of the year. As an example, for somebody borrowing $300,000, their interest payments will increase from roughly $450/month to roughly $1000/month by the middle of 2011.

In terms of fixed rate mortgages, rates are essentially set by the bond market, and the bond market has already “baked” in these projected rate increases. The best available 5-year fixed rate mortgage is 3.69% currently. Given a choice between these two options, it is a rare time where taking the 5-year rate would be the prudent option.

It is likely once interest rates start to increase that banks will increase the “prime minus” spread from a typical 0.4% currently to around 0.8% – the peak discount which was seen in the last housing rush.

Either way, the lack of ultra-cheap credit will have an effect of slowing down the housing market considerably.

Canadian Taxes – Waiting for the T3

Anybody invested in income trusts should know that the T3 slip, a statement of income from trusts, is required for applicable trust holders by March 31 of every year. This is usually the last tax form to come in, and it will explain how much income (and what type of income) you received over the year.

The reason why the T3 slip comes so late is to give trusts sufficient time to finalize (and audit) their financial statements for the fiscal year.

Impatient investors that want to get cracking at their personal income taxes, however, can go to CDS Innovations’ website and get a sneak preview of most publicly traded entities’ allocation of income. T3 statements for the 2009 tax year can be found here. Just note, in theory, a trust can change the reported allocation on March 30, 2010 and one should never submit their income tax return using the preliminary data.

First Uranium raises expensive capital

The financial soap opera continues at First Uranium. On Friday morning they announced they have agreed to a private placement of between $125 to $150 million of senior secured notes. There are a bunch of stakeholders that are getting into this offer, including the major shareholder, Simmer and Jack, and also Gold Wheaton, who has a stake in the gold production of First Uranium.

The notes are convertible at $1.30/share and this will represent a substantial amount of dilution for existing equity holders, assuming conversion – about 48% dilution.

I was informed that the notes will have a 7% coupon attached to them.

Also in the announcement is that the CEO, Gordon Miller, will depart and be replaced by another CEO, Deon van der Mescht, who is currently the CEO of Simmer and Jack.

A relevant quotation is the following:

In addition, the Company is relying upon exemptions from the minority approval and valuation requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 – Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions, on the basis of financial hardship. The Company’s current payables do not, in the Company’s estimation provide comfort to wait for 21 days to begin closing the Offering. As previously announced, the Company’s financial situation has been severely compromised by the termination of discussions regarding certain financing options as a result of the decision to withdraw and subsequently reinstate the Company’s environmental authorization for the new Tailings Storage Facility designed to accommodate future tailings deposition at the Company’s Mine Waste Solutions tailings recovery project.

First Uranium, therefore, is very close to bankruptcy. If this deal falls through, then bankruptcy is guaranteed. There would be a process where creditors (including the debentureholders) will be able to make their claim on the assets in accordance with Canadian law. Simmer and Jack’s investment would have been completely destroyed in the process, which is why they had to take this very unpalatable deal in order to save their interest in the company – which by all means should be able to produce a substantial amount of revenues once the core operation commences.

If you are holding equity in First Uranium, you have virtually lost most of your value over the past couple years. This deal should probably stop most of the blood-letting, but it is at a huge cost to shareholders.

The market, seeing certainty on the horizon, bidded up First Uranium shares 13% to $1.68. This also provides a substantial conversion cushion for the private placement component of the convertible offering to succeed.

The convertible debentures also rose 12% to 77 cents on the dollar with this news. The convertible debentures are a $150M issue, with a 4.25% coupon and maturing on June 2012. I happen to own some of these and am not afraid of dilution – in fact, I prefer dilution.

If this deal succeeds, it is more likely that I will receive payback on my investment, especially since the maturity date of this new deal is later than the existing convertibles. It is not clear, without reading some sort of prospectus statement, whether the secured nature of these new notes would interfere with the payment of the unsecured debentures.

Of note in this press release is no quotations from any officers in question – probably because this deal was entirely organized without the management of First Uranium consenting to it.

Morneau Sobeco Income Trust announces corporate conversion

Morneau Sobeco specializes in outsourcing HR services. They have an annualized distribution of $0.94/unit, but they recently announced a corporate conversion which will take effect in 2011:

“Today, we are announcing our plans to convert to a corporation at the end of 2010,” said Bill Morneau, Executive Chairman of the Fund. “We intend to maintain our current distribution level for 2010 and provide an effective 10.6% after-tax increase in 2011 for unitholders taxable at the highest marginal rate.”

The conversion is being undertaken in response to the legislative changes enacted by the federal government that will apply a tax at the income trust level on unitholder distributions commencing January 1, 2011. The current monthly distribution level of $0.07871 per unit (or $0.94 per unit annualized) is expected to remain unchanged for the balance of 2010. Starting in January 2011, the monthly dividend level is expected to be $0.065 per share (or $0.78 per share annualized) with a sustainable payout ratio of 65% to 80% of cash flow. This dividend policy will facilitate the repayment of debt, while providing investors with an attractive yield. Going forward, the Fund’s intention is to continue to reward its investors with dividends in line with business performance. A special meeting of unitholders will be held in the second half of 2010 to obtain unitholder approval of the conversion.

A 94 cent to 78 cent reduction in distribution is a 17% decrease in distributions, and is somewhat less than what would otherwise be expected on an after-tax basis. It is not surprising that trust units are not trading too far down – about 3% at the time of this writing.

My valuation exercise on the company indicated they are trading at their fair value range, so I have not even bothered to place any orders for the units. The units are trading at $10.19 a pop, which is a 9.22% yield on their current distribution, or 7.65% in 2011. Given the risk involved, this is appropriate.

Federal Budget 2010 – brief thoughts

The budgetary cycle this year from both the federal and provincial government can best be described as “nothing changing, we are staying the course”.

The federal government, in particular, managed to crunch 424 pages of relatively little of political substance in their budget document. A lot of the documentation (as always) discusses the fiscal outlook which is interesting from a macroeconomic standpoint. In terms of government operations, the summary table, as follows, is what one really needs to look at:

Once you remove the effects of the stimulus package, spending continues to increase at a slow rate. This rate is actually a faster rate of spending when you compare it to the equivalent in the 2009 budget (the tables are different sizes in the documents so you will have to click on this image to see the numbers more clearly):

It is obvious that the non-action is highly political – if the government decided to slash and burn spending and government programs, the opposition would likely topple the government and force an election about “providing government programs to Canadians”. In a minority government, the status quo is the safest political approach, to the detriment of the rest of the country. It is only until a clear majority of the public and/or the Liberal opposition starts calling for real spending cuts (compared to the Mickey Mouse “we made tough choices” line given by the Finance Minister) will it be likely that we will see less largess in the present government.

Some commentators have noted that the government is heavily depending on revenue increases to balance the budget in 5 years (which is such a far-off time horizon that nobody will be kept accountable for this plan) – I think the revenue ramp is actually reasonable, not aggressive but not conservative either. It really depends on whether companies will start to hire people, but considering the government sees the big picture with respect to investment capital and corporate tax rates (which, federally, will be dropping from 18% to 16.5% in 2011 and 16.5% to 15% in 2012), this, combined with a reasonable stability in commodity markets, should help the country get back on track economically.

The last note is that interest rates will have a large effect on the bottom line – however, the government has assumed an accounted for a 3-month T-bill rate of 0.7% for 2010 and 2.4% in 2011, both reasonable projections.

“Wait and see” seems to be the message for this budget. It has been the least exciting budget so far in this government’s administration, but this is probably a good decision given the political constraints in the House of Commons. I am not happy with the huge expense ledger, however.