Investment Q&A

Q: Dear 5i,
I currently hold BIPC and BEPC in my NonReg, TFSA and Pension accounts.
In your opinion, which new split entiity; BN or BAM offers the least overlap with my current two holdings? Which entity gets the fees from BIPC and BEPC? These new entities are very confusing and it would be great if you published a special article about them and how we might use them.
thanks

Q: Good morning,

I'm considering adding a Financial ETF to my overall portfolio and would appreciate your thoughts and preference between a US ETF and a Canadian ETF along with your best idea/recommendation for each.

Thank you.

Q: What is your current view on ING? Is the dividend safe?

Q: POWER CORP. stock has been in the doldrums for the past 20 years as the second generation Desmarais family seemed content to basically live off what their father had developed. Now that the third generation is involved we have significant moves with the simplifying of the corporate structure and then the creation of Wealthsimple and also their involvement in tech joint ventures.

When younger, I felt the stock did not offer enough growth for my purposes ; now that I am retired I am looking at it as a solid dividend paying company having a new management with more of a growth oriented focus. Is this an accurate take on Power ? Thanks. Derek

Q: Apologize for another Brookfield question, but like many others on here I'm confused with what happened with BAM.A
If this was a reverse split of 1-4, shouldn't the price of the stock have gone up (before trading)?

I had 400 BAM.A and now have 100 BAM for under $40 and BN isn't showing up in my account yet. The Investorline trader says he sees 100 BN in my account, so it should show up soon.
So 400 shares turns into 200 shares and unless BN is a lot more than BAM, this split is not looking right.

I know I'm probably missing something, but so far I don't get it.

thanks for any help,

Paul

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.

Q: I am a Brookfield fan but a retired income investment. However I mamage two RESPs which will not need to make withdrawals for at least 12 years. It seems a no brainer to invest in BAM in these two accounts right now given the misunderstandings about them. My question is should it be BAM or BN?

Q: hi
any idea what is going on with the price of BAM. it continues to slide down? are investors waiting for price decline enough for a larger yield??
cheers, chris

Q: hi, which do you like for a buy today, brookfield asset management or brookfield corporation? both ? can you briefly compare/contrast each of them as investments for long term hold. could you provide the new dividend for each too.
cheers, chris

Q: Re the Adjusted Cost Base for BN and BAM (still no symbol comes up), I set mine at 1/4 of the ACB of the original BAM.A. However InvestorLine set my ACB for BAM at less than half that and BN higher than 3/4. I have not seen any discussion anywhere including the BN website for how to establish the ACB. Do you have any information to help?

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

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.

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.

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?

Q: can you give me an analysis on coinbase and your thoughts on cryptocurrency

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

Q: Would you mind providing your opinion and assessment on Royal Bank in particular in light of their purchase of HSBC and the potential of positive results going forward or the converse. Thank you

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?

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?

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?