Conversion Price

  

Categories: Bonds, Stocks, Trading, Investing

The amount of money that you’d pay to turn into something else. Maybe you really want to be a giant. Or perhaps you want to sell the devil your soul to give you magic home run hitting powers. There has been no shortage of Faustian stories about converting a soul into payment for what the person wishes to become.

In finance, a conversion price is the amount of money for which a convertible bond or other convertible security can be exchanged for common stock in a company. Typically, conversion prices are higher than the current value of the common stock when issued. This makes converting from debt to equity attractive only if the amount of common shares has pushed higher.

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Finance: What are Convertible Bonds?9 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what are convertible bonds? okay there's a joke about the

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Inquisition in here somewhere or maybe something about Cossacks and 17th

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century Russia what do you think animated musical or maybe a King Henry [King Henry VIII appears]

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thing but yeah all that's different kind of conversion way more pedantically a

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company might be having a hard time selling or issuing its bonds to Wall [Man with company briefcase for head meets man with Wall Street briefcase for a head]

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Street in order for them to close the deal with their stock trading today at

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25 bucks a share they might say well these bonds are convertible into 20 [Man with company for a head discussing bonds]

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shares of our stock that is they would have a single thousand dollar unit of

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that bond and it would convert into 20 shares which would then value the shares

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at 50 bucks either thousand divided by 20 there's 50 it's an advanced calculus

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sorry if you didn't have it which would sort of be you know the over/under price

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at which bondholders would start to seriously look at converting their nice

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safe bonds into those risky pesky equities well why would a company offer

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convertible bonds instead of you know just vanilla bonds well if they were [Man discussing convertible bonds]

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stuck paying 6% interest on just bonds but really could only afford to pay 4%

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well they might get the interest rate discount by throwing in that equity

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kicker in the bonds having that convertibility feature yes they would

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suffer dilution at 50 bucks a share but that price is double and change where

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the stocks out here so the company is probably thinking that it wouldn't mind

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some dilution from these bonds being converted up there in stock price right [Arrow points to stock value mark on graph]

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and remember the bonds pay the 4% interest along the way until they are

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converted the moment those bonds are converted into equity well then the debt

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on the balance sheet of the company and its obligation to pay that 4% yearly [Company balance sheet and interest highlighted]

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interest goes mercifully away they print 20 more shares for each bond converted

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and yes those shares may pay a dividend but as far as the convertible bonds go

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they are thereafter converted and saved and remember Jesus Saves but Moses

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invests

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