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Investment Q&A

Not investment advice or solicitation to buy/sell securities. Do your own due diligence and/or consult an advisor.

Q: Good morning,

My holding of XLF is down quite a bit and although I[m still positive on the US Financial sector in the long term, I'm thinking of selling XLF in my US Non registered account to harvest some capital losses for the 2022 tax year. I would appreciate your thoughts on the following two questions:

Q1. What are your thoughts on the US Financial sector for the next few years;

Q2. Would you kindly recommend a suitable proxy for my XLF holding that I could purchase on the US stock exchange.

Thank you and I'll await your sage advice.
Read Answer Asked by Francesco on December 15, 2022
Q: hi,
following up on question/answer on CM recently. you mention CM has a way of getting into trouble eg 1990's. are you saying you see trouble in CM specifically somewhere now? excluding dividend, CM is up 15$ over 10 years( 37%), and over 5 years CM is down 3$ and change(-7%). BNS is up $10 over 10(16%), down 14$ over 5(-16%). at least over these specific time frames, CM "outperformed". depends on timing for sure. but I am curious about your comments? do you have faith in the CM CEO?? is there a wave of loan losses coming??
I own both presently.
cheers, chris
Read Answer Asked by chris on December 14, 2022
Q: CM is approaching a 52-week low following disappointing quarterly financial results. On the other hand, it is one of the big six banks with a ~6% dividend that it just increased. All things considered, is CM a bargain that should be picked up for a long term hold? Or, would it be better to buy a slightly better performer like BNS that is also value priced and offers a similar dividend.
Read Answer Asked by Jean on December 14, 2022
Q: The new BAM stock price dropped 7% on Tuesday. Is there something that an investor should be aware of ? Is this an opportunity ? I wanted to purchase this one post-split.

My understanding was that the yield for this stock would be in the 3.25%-3.75% range. Would I be correct in assuming that it could quite likely now be above 4% based on the Tuesday $41.60 close?

Is it true that the company plans to raise the distribution by between 15-20% per year ? That seems high to me. Maybe I misunderstood.
Read Answer Asked by James on December 14, 2022
Q: I was surprised to see BMO announce a rather large stock issuance after market close today, at about $4 a share below today's closing stock price. They said it was due to the increase in the DSB from 2.5% to 3.0%. I thought all of the big Canadian banks were very well capitalized. Is this going to be an issue for the other big banks? Are we now going to see them all make large stock issuances? Are some more likely than others to need to do this?
Read Answer Asked by Dan on December 14, 2022
Q: I have an overweight in these 3 insurers, and think it might be wise to fix an underweight in CAD banks, by selling one of these and then adding to my banking exposure. Which one would you sell here (and why) and which Bank(s) would you add? I hold RY, CM, and BNS and was thinking of simply adding to my positions, but can be talked into something else here. Thanks
Read Answer Asked by David on December 13, 2022
Q: Lots of stuff on this in questions but not crystal clear. In simple form, what happens to bam.a shares? New symbols? What do you suggest doing, if anything?
Read Answer Asked on December 13, 2022
Q: I'm trying to understand the new Brookfield Asset Management Ltd spinout. I have two questions:
(i) It seems to act like a royalty on the asset management business. Am I correct that it does not have to add any additional capital to the business as time goes on?
(ii) On its web-site it claims a 90% payout ratio. However, from the recent Investor Day presentation (page 62), it states that there is 4.9B of distributable earnings for the original company for 2022, which would mean about 1.2B for the new spinout. As I calculate it there are around 450M shares, which means a projected dividend of over $2/annum. However, in the announcement of Dec 6, it stated that the starting dividend is about .28/quarter, or 1.12/annum. What am I missing?
Read Answer Asked by Daniel on December 13, 2022
Q: AQN's dividend is now 10%. There is a lot of talk that AQN will cut its dividend to be in-line with its peers. That would be around a 50% dividend cut. [In the past you have said many times that the first dividend cut is never the last.]

I have seen it mentioned here and elsewhere that during the financial crisis Manulife Financial cut its dividend, and it appears investors from that time have never forgotten that, or forgiven them for it. By the way what was the dividend cut they made? Was it only 1 cut, or was it several cuts?

Do you think that if AQN cuts its dividend, the stock will languish for a very long time as investors (like me) will not forget, and will never forgive?

Has AQN ever cut its dividend before? If yes, what were the cuts and when?

Are there other high profile examples of dividend cuts (excluding energy stocks in 2020) where the company has been penalized for doing that for a very long time?
Read Answer Asked by Paul on December 13, 2022
Q: Hi Peter and 5i,
Sorry if this has been asked before. I also can't find anything in the previous questions either.
Would you be able to provide us how the Adjusted Cost Base of the previous BAM.A shares should be divided up between BN and BAM?
Thanks so much.
Read Answer Asked by Dennis on December 13, 2022
Q: With the split of BAM.A into BAM and BN now complete, I am considering whether to sell the BAM spinoff shares and redeploy the cash into BN, or sell BN and buy more BAM, or use some cash and add to both. What do you think of the long term outlook for each company? Is BAM going to be mainly a dividend payor, or there some growth there too? I know you like BN for long term growth.
Read Answer Asked by Dan on December 13, 2022
Q: Hi, After market close, BMO announced a secondary offering of 11.8 mln shares to public and 14.8 mln shares to CPP, Caisse, OMER etc, by private placement, concurrently, at a price of $118.60. Does it seem like a good deal to buy/add these shares, at this price, despite dilution ? Thanks
Read Answer Asked by rajeev on December 13, 2022
Q: With the new BAM configuration will the new yield rise significantly, or stay the same for an equal amount of investment?
Read Answer Asked by Mark on December 13, 2022
Q: hi,
are you able to provide the expected price split for BN and BAM based on the closing price of 58.88$ on Friday ? I am trying to figure out where the prices of the 2 entities are now compared to prior split. thanks, chris
Read Answer Asked by chris on December 12, 2022