Knowing when to sell if that's your jamWhen ENB was going up day after day, the share price of ENS was not following. The net result was that the Premium to the NAV dropped all the way down to 3% on January 8th.
The ENB share price got punched in the mouth a bit yesterday and it is down again today. The ENS share price outperformed ENB yesterday and is again today. As a result, the live Premium to the NAV is about 8.6%.
The fact that the ENS share price continues to remain sticky around $12 per share is neither a good thing or a bad thing. The Premium to the NAV moves up and down but that is pretty much irrelevant until the Premium gets so high that Middlefield does another Raise.
The trigger point on the Premium to the NAV was 20% in the past, but Middlefield changed the rules with the last Raise as the Premium was only 16%. What I mean by changing the rules is that in the past, Middlefield wouldn't do a Raise where the Pref component was under $10. That made sense as the Pref shareholders are always entitled to $10 per share before the Common shareholders get paid anything upon dissolution of the entity. For the last Raise, Middlefield sold the Pref component for $9.80. By doing so, Middlefield ignored the $10 preferential payout upon dissolution which in turn made it possible to do a Raise when the Premium to the NAV for the Common shares was only 16%.
What does any of this matter?
Not much unless you want to know when to sell in advance of a likely Raise event. We all know what happens every time Middlefield does a Raise.
It is highly unlikely that Middlefield will announce a Raise if the deal won't close before the next ex-dividend date.
The most likely time for Middlefield to do a Raise takes place at the start of a month following an ENB ex-dividend date. When ENB goes ex-dividend (typically the 15th of February/May/August/November) the ENB share price typically drops a couple bucks per share for about two weeks. If the ENS share price remains sticky despite the ENB share price drop, the Premium to the NAV for ENS jumps up. That is exactly what happened at the beginning of January.
I got caught off guard for the January Raise because Middlefield changed the rules. I hope that won't happen again as there is usually a nice trading opportunity around each Raise event.
Or, we can just "set it and forget it" as ENB is always going to be reliable which means ENS will continue to pay its monthly dividend.