TSX:STB.DB.A - Post by User
Comment by
ffhwatcher3on Dec 16, 2015 11:09am
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Post# 24388159
RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Drip - response from IR
RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Drip - response from IRSNCF had 15M shares. Sold 4M. Hold 11M. If 96-97M outstanding, that is more than 11% of the shares outstanding. They used to represent about 60% of the DRIP, according to SEDI and company reports. As recent as Oct. SNCF were still receiving about 85k shares/month from the DRIP, so something had to happen after Oct with the SNCF shares or the 5% number was an error.
Pet Peeve - Denis comes off as a raging bull for STB and being the CEO, that is not surprising. I will commend him and buying 400,000 shares of STB over the past 6 years or so. That is a serious commitment!! Bravo. They recently issued a press release saying that executives have been recently buying at these low prices and they have. What bugs me is that Denis isn't even reinvesting his dividend checks into STB. My math shows him receiving about $450k in annual dividends (common and Class B shares) and he is issuing press releases notifying people he is buying. He has purchased $180k or so in shares this year, so he isn't even reinvesting 50% of his dividends. He has also received $3.3M in Class B shares in share awards the last 3 years yet he currently has just $1M in Class B shares...meaning he is 'putting' (company is buying back shares for cash) almost every share he possibly can back to the company and taking the cash (I can't come up with any other explanation as to how he only has $1M in Class B shares, but they have declined in value too).
Lastly, STB cash dividend is about $33M/yr (but sounds like it could be going toward $40M now!!). That is what shareholders are receiving. Other than that, there hasn't really been material improvements at STB over the past 5 years even with all these acquisitions (if they are accretive, dividends should be going up materially). My beef is that the top 3 guys at STB earn about $3.3M/yr in total vs. the company paying out $33M in cash dividends. The top 3 guys are taking 10% of the 'net'. Is that fair? I am undecided on this.