Market ends firmer; Allstate's 6.75% preferreds hit NYSE; Box Ships, Campus Crest price

By Stephanie N. Rotondo

Phoenix, Oct. 4 - Preferred stocks were trading up on Friday, though sources lamented a lack of activity.

"Liquidity was very poor," said one market source. He attributed the low volume to a combination of it being the end of the week, the "government problem" - referring to the partial government shutdown - and the fact that the Standard & Poor's preferred stock index was rebalancing at the end of the day.

"Some people like to play in front of that, some people like to pull back and wait," he said of the rebalance, noting that there is a large ETF that uses the index as its benchmark. "Given the tenor of the market, people are probably preferring to pull back."

The Wells Fargo Hybrid and Preferred Securities index was up 10 basis points by noon ET and ended 14 bps better, according to a market source.

"Everything has listed," a trader noted, as Allstate Corp.'s $350 million of 6.75% series C fixed-rate noncumulative perpetual preferreds - which came Sept. 23 - hit the New York Stock Exchange.

The issue was the last of the recently priced deals to be admitted to the exchange.

The ticker symbol is "ALLPC," and paper was trading at $25.02 by the end of business, up 4 cents from the previous session.

Early in the session, Box Ships Inc. announced that it had priced an $8.5 million follow-on offering to its 9% series C cumulative redeemable perpetual preferreds.

The preferreds were sold at $24.00 per share, which compared to Thursday's closing price of $24.35. The company originally sold $13.95 million of the preferreds on July 26 at a discounted price of $24.00 each.

The issue (NYSE: TEUPC) traded off 40 cents, or 1.64%, to $23.95 on Friday.

Late Thursday, Campus Crest Communities Inc. brought its own $85 million add-on to its 8% series A cumulative redeemable preferred stock.

The company originally sold $50 million of the preferreds on Feb. 2, 2012. The total issue size is now $135 million.

The reopening was initially slated to be $50 million.

The preferreds (NYSE: CCGPA) were among the day's most actively traded, moving up 16 cents to $24.77.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.