Brookfield Office Properties Inc T.BPO.P.A

NCIB Purchases - My Takeways

[Carena]

Good morning,<br /> <br /> Here are my takeaways/thoughts from the NCIB purchases that wynner let us know about on Friday:<br /> <br /> (i) BPO had a trader in the market on their behalf every day in the month of January subsequent to their press release on January 10 to announce the renewal of the NCIB.<br /> <br /> (ii) There did not seem to be any price limitation as they bought the entire way up.<br /> <br /> (iii) I do not know exactly what the rules are with respect to block trades, but 2 significant block trades of 150,000 and 200,000 were completed on January 31.&nbsp; Anyone know the specific rule?<br /> <br /> (iv) It looks like they filed the report with SEDI on Feb 2 to report all the January activity.&nbsp; So if they do not plan to file again until Mar 2, then one would think February should be quite interesting?<br /> <br /> (v) If all this buying was news to all of us, it was certainly not news to some people.&nbsp; But now that all us peasants are in the know, what do things look like starting tomorrow?&nbsp; Lol.<br /> <br /> (vi) In total, BPO repurchased 610,092 shares in January for a total value of $7.3 million. Over half of these shares were absorbed in the 2 block trades referenced above.&nbsp; For the record, there are&nbsp; 9 series of prefs outstanding totalling 95 million shares (and the w, x, y totalling another 8 million shares). Buying 300,000 shares per month siting on the bid will take forever.<br /> <br /> (vii) In the big picture, $7 million in January extrapolates to like only $100 million for the year.&nbsp; I guess the serious signal here from BN/BPY/BPO is they have no intention on suspeninding the dividend or ever letting these BPO securities go to zero.&nbsp; That is, they are officially standing behind these securities.&nbsp; As I have said in previous posts, these securities are part of the BN permanent capital base.<br /> <br /> The entire DTLA fiasco, which triggered the massive decline in the BPO prefs starting last February, was a venture backed by a preferred share that has since gone to zero.&nbsp; BPY made no effort to stop the bleeding on the DTLA pref.&nbsp; It is a crystal clear fact now that BN views the BPO prefs very differently from the DTLA pref.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> <br /> (viii) I am wondering if BPY has been doing the same pn their prefs....I can&#39;t find anything.<br /> <br /> Looking forward to this upcoming week,&nbsp;<br /> Carena<br /> <br /> <br />