i think Coutu has said they aren't interested in one. maybe there are some regulatory hurdles, i don't know. also, they have been rather explicit in saying they don't want to attract too many US investors, and in fact they keep track of the percentage of Canadian investors. a US listing with an 8% dividend would probably overwhelm the Canadian investor percentage, and that might deviate from COS' original "mission" as a Canadian royalty trust.
of course, with the government's betrayal of royalty trusts, COS may just get sold off to the highest bidder in a few years, once the trust status has no tax advantage.
anyway, that's my best guess as to why COS has no US listing. of course, that doesn't stop anybody in the US from buying COSWF, but you don't see anybody touting them on CNBC like SU gets touted by Pickens, Gartman, maybe even Creamer from time to time. i would guess a US listing would pop COS 15-20%, maybe more given the sick dividend (i continue to think it should be capitalized to a 5% dividend, given its RLI).
but, a US listing wouldn't increase the SIZE of the dividend, and in the long run a liquidity event such as sale to a major will be priced on some metric like flowing barrel or reserves, so i'm not too worried. |
