Merging securities

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Cary
Cary Member ✭✭
This one has me confused. I have two investing accounts (call them A and B) that had Exelon stock. Each account was doing dividend reinvestments for Exelon so there are multiple lots (over 80.) On 2/1/22 Exelon spun off Constellation Energy. Account A correctly handled the spin off and added the individual entries for each lot as CEG. For Account B, Quicken would not let me choose CEG as the spinoff. I ended up having to spin off the stock as CEG1. It created the 80+ entries for CEG1. Not a problem at this point since the Constellation shares are in two separate accounts.

Later last year, I transferred the Constellation shares from account B to account A. From Quicken's point of view I have two separate stocks in account A. As dividends are reinvested they are downloaded from broker A as CEG transactions. The problem is that the individual lots of CEG1 are no longer being updated.

I tried fixing this a couple of ways. First I tried redoing the spin off in account B. However the same issue still comes up where Quicken won't spin them off as CEG. Then I tried changing the entries in account A where the shares were transferred in. Quicken won't allow me to change the name of the shares on any of the transfer entries. If I could get the renaming to work it would allow me to keep the data intact for each of the transferred lots.

Can anyone help on how to fix this?

Answers

  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2023
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    As I just tested, a Corporate Spinoff action initiated in one account should have been replicated in other accounts holding that parent security. Wondering why that did not happen for you?!?

    Moving on from your situation, in account B I would have entered a Corporate Acquisition also dated 2/1/22 with CEG acquiring your CEG1 security at a 1:1 share ratio. I would have then deleted the now extraneous CEG1 Adds (from the spin-off) and the Remove (from the acquisition).

    You should be aware that the current (dating back to late 2021) spin-off action does not apply the RtrnCap distributions correctly to the parent shares for a multi-lot holding. The differences may or may not be significant; I cannot generalize on that aspect. In your case the Cost Basis of each lot of Exelon (all 160+ lots) are incorrect although the total is (or should be) correct. More info on that here:

  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    Perhaps I should have added, your other option was to edit each one of the 80+ Add Shares of CEG1 to change the security name to theCEG version. With a paste action, that is not as daunting as it might seem. I think I would still opt for the 80+ delete actions.
    And using a Banking Transactions Report therein selecting the transactions to delete, the deletion effort can also be greatly reduced.

  • Cary
    Cary Member ✭✭
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    Thank you for the suggestion. I'll give the 1:1 spinoff a try this weekend and let you know how it goes.
  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    To be clear I was suggesting a 1:1 CORPORATE ACQUISITION action, not another spinoff.

  • Cary
    Cary Member ✭✭
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    Thank you for your help. The 1:1 corporate acquisition did the trick. I chose a date that made sense to me which was 1 day after I did the transfer between accounts. That grouped the entries in the ledger. I used the price history from date chosen. Quicken created 80+ additional "added" entries, one for each lot with the correct basis for each lot.
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