Divestor – Page 168 – Canadian Finance and Economics

Mortgage insurance concerns

The provincial government in British Columbia is trying to balance the politics of housing prices in the Greater Vancouver Regional District and the fact that housing and housing-related economic activity is our #1 source of economic activity.

The government knows that if they take policy decisions to snuff out the fire that is currently raging in real estate that they will collapse the economy into recession – our other industries (mining, forestry, oil and gas) have been withering away and this leaves real estate as our number one export.

Managing a “controlled landing” will be an interesting feat. I’m not sure whether the government can do it, but we will see!

CMHC released a report (July 27, 2016) confirming something almost anybody on the ground here knows: in real estate, there is “strong” evidence of problematic conditions in the Vancouver and Toronto regions of Canada.

This has implications for mortgage insurance. While rising prices is great for mortgage insurance (i.e. there is a much lessened chance for mortgage defaults), the residual concern is one of regression to the mean – if insurers write policies for people taking mortgages at the peak of pricing, insurers will have a considerable amount of downside exposure in the event there is a deep decrease in real estate pricing.

The last time that real estate prices fell for any significant period of time in the region was back in the early 1980’s:

Interest rates at that time were in the double digits. Real estate from the beginning of 1981 to the end of 1982 dropped by about 40%, but you would never detect it by looking at the chart above – this is why stock charts use a y-axis that is logarithmic scaled, not linear like the one you see above.

Retail investment in long-dated fixed income securities

When I read headlines like the following: “Investors hungry for returns are piling in Canada long-bond ETFs at a record pace“, I’d start to get concerned if I held these instruments. Investing in long-term government debt at this time feels like return-free risk compared to just stuffing the cash underneath the mattress.

Canada 10-year government bonds are barely trading above a percent:

The US 30-year treasury bond exhibits a similar characteristic – yields have crashed:

The prototypical Canadian long-bond ETF is TSX:XLB and they have done reasonably well. Since long bond yields have plummeted, investors have seen capital gains.

This leaves a few questions. Will yields go negative in North America? How will pensions actually be able to realize their assumed 7-7.5% net returns when they have to maintain a bond allocation with a 1.1% YTM? How much has quantitative easing programs outside of our borders affected our bond yields? What effect will this have on our currency?

Lots of questions, but few answers. Instinctively, I’d rather want my cash in cash rather than long-term treasury bonds. This has not been a winning attitude, but unless if you’re anticipating negative yields like Western Europe, it is tough to imagine rates going lower from here on in.

US Presidential Election Update

The Republicans are having their national convention this weekend. Donald Trump will be nominated as their candidate for president, something that most pundits saw as a joke when he announced last year.

Readers should be cautioned that the national polling figures for the USA are nearly useless in determining the closeness of the presidential race. Three major states with huge populations, California, Illinois and New York, are very heavily Democratic-leaning and they will not be seriously contested during the election. These states will involve lop-sided victories and will skew the numbers.

Instead, readers should be looking at the following states (electoral votes in brackets):

Florida (29)
Pennsylvania (20)
Ohio (18)
Michigan (16)
North Carolina (15)
Arizona (11)
Wisconsin (10)
Iowa (6)

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Note it is very probable that Hillary Clinton requires 270 to win, while Donald Trump requires 269 to win.

I will be reverting my previous prediction of a “landslide” to a moderate victory for Donald Trump. As readers can infer from this map, the Republicans have much more “work” to do to win these swing states than the Democrats. That said, the nature of elections in Canada and the USA depend on a factor of voter turnout, something that polling does very poorly – the primary component of this assumption is that Trump has the ability to get out previous non-voters due to his non-political methods.

I will also state that I do not endorse the policies of either candidate. It is simply a prediction of what I believe will happen given what is going on in the USA political landscape. From a market investment perspective, it is likely the fruition of Donald Trump’s policies will cause considerable volatility in the markets and the markets are not sufficiently bracing for impact.

Re-examining Teekay Corp

Back in April 2016 I stated I invested in the unsecured corporate debt (January 2020) of Teekay Corp (NYSE: TK). Yields have compressed considerably since then:

Part of this is due to a $100 million equity offering that was purchased by certain insiders, including the 37.7% holder Resolute Investments, Ltd. They paid US$8.32 for their shares which are trading at a market value of about $7.15 as I write this.

Teekay also significantly rectified a capital funding gap in their Teekay Offshore (NYSE: TOO) daughter entity with the issuance of preferred shares, conversion of preferred shares to common units, and other generally dilutive measures to their common unitholders. This will also involve TK with a higher ownership of TOO and the solving of TOO’s liquidity issue will serve to be positive to the payment of TK debt.

The last few trades of TK debt going on today (volume of roughly $400k par value) has been around 90 cents on the dollar, corresponding to a yield to maturity of about 12%.

What I expect to happen is the market will continue to normalize and ideally then we will see yields compress to result in above-par prices. In the meantime I get paid interest income. This is a reasonably heavy portfolio weighting.

Genworth MI update

I did not write an update to Genworth MI’s first quarter as it was relatively routine (albeit a slightly negative quarter in terms of premiums written). This decrease was due to the corporation being more conscious of what they were underwriting, in addition to slowdowns in oil-producing regions. Financially they continue to be wildly profitable, with a combined ratio of 42% and continuing to build book value (sitting at $37.23, about a 10% discount to market).

The company’s stock price has not gone anywhere over the past couple months:

I look at peer companies, both in the financing and REIT domains and see nothing catastrophic occurring there.

There are a few interesting undercurrents that Genworth MI is facing, including:

1. Issues at the Genworth Financial parent company (this may result in financial pressure on their holdings – indeed, one scenario for Genworth MI is that they will be liquidated, hopefully at book or a premium to book value!);
2. The new Liberal government elected in Canada may introduce some curbs or regulatory burdens (via OFSI) which would encumber the insurance operation and/or empower CMHC;
3. Impact of oil prices and on the Alberta/Saskatchewan housing markets, although delinquencies have not risen beyond expectations to date;
4. The general insanity that can be found in the Vancouver/Toronto housing markets;
5. Provincial governments enacting curbs on transaction volumes and generally suppressing volumes that would otherwise stimulate the mortgage insurance market.

In addition, there are known regulatory changes concerning portfolio insurance transactions that were effective July 1, 2016 which would serve to decrease premiums received in what would be a fairly low-risk insurance market (such loans have loan-to-values ratios of less than 80%). Fortunately, these transactions have typically only been 10-20% of the premiums written in any single quarter.

About CMHC, they continue to deliver worse results than Genworth MI (quarterly reports for CMHC here) and their fraction of insurance covered in the Canadian market continues to decrease – a question remains whether they will attempt to take more market share, which would serve to deflate Genworth MI’s future premiums written.

With their present insurance book, as long as there is no general property market crash, they will continue to book revenues as mortgages are amortized and converge to at least book value. They also will be generating an excess of capital which management can decide to repurchase shares or declare a special dividend (which they typically do in the second half of the year). At present prices both are acceptable options although I really thought they should have bought back shares in January and February.

Genworth MI is still valued cheaply, but of course was not the screaming bargain it was when it was below $25 earlier this year. There is still capital appreciation yet to be had. In the meantime, shareholders are paid to wait.