Miracles Happen – First BanCorp Restarts Preferred Dividends

In what we term a “miracle” First BanCorp (NYSE:FBP) of Puerto Rico has restarted the monthly dividends on their monthly income preferreds with the first payment to be made on 12/30/2016.  After the market close Monday the company declared a dividend to be paid on all 5 preferred issues outstanding. It should be noted that there are just about 1.5 million shares in total outstanding.

First Bancorp suspended their preferred dividends in 2009 during the financial crisis and being non cumulative investors that have held the shares for the last 7 years do not receive dividend payments that were missed.

We had removed these issues a couple of years ago from our listings as we thought this bank was dead–but obviously they are not.  We have started to add them back into the various spreadsheets and should have them populated in all areas before the week is out.  For now we have them in just the alphabetical listing.

This is not a recommendation to buy these shares (as we never make recommendations) as we have not done due diligence on the company–but with current yields of 7.75% to 9.2% maybe some adventurous investors will find them of interest.