Equitable Holdings, Inc.'s 5.25% Series A Noncumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, traded under the symbol EQH-A and listed with a $25 liquidation preference, closed at $17.50 on October 23, 2026, roughly 30 percent below its par value even though the security has been callable by the issuer since December 15, 2024. The gap between the preferred's market price and its redemption value first stood out in data tracked on Preferred Stock AI, a Madison Labs research site, which shows the issue carrying a current yield of 7.50 percent against its original 5.25 percent coupon.
The arithmetic behind that yield is straightforward. The preferred pays a fixed $1.3125 per share annually, distributed quarterly on the 15th of March, June, September and December. Divided by the $25 face value, that works out to the stated 5.25 percent coupon. But at a market price of $17.50, the same dividend stream equates to a 7.50 percent current yield, the mathematical result of the shares trading well under par.
Being callable does not mean a security will be called. Equitable Holdings has had the contractual right to redeem the Series A preferred at $25 per depositary share since the end of 2024, but it is under no obligation to do so, and nothing in the company's public disclosures indicates an announced redemption. One reading of the discount, drawn directly from the mechanics of how callable preferreds are priced, is that the market is not assigning a high probability to near-term redemption: if investors expected the company to call the shares imminently at $25, the price would typically trade closer to that level rather than 30 percent below it.
For holders, the dynamics cut both ways. The depositary shares represent a 1/1,000th interest in a share of preferred stock originally issued in November 2019 by AXA Equitable Holdings, Inc., the company's name at the time, with 29 million shares offered plus an additional 4.35 million through an overallotment option, according to the registered prospectus. The stock is noncumulative, meaning that if a dividend is ever skipped, Equitable Holdings is not obligated to make it up later, a structural feature of this class of preferred that distinguishes it from cumulative issues. The dividend history shows the quarterly $0.328125 payment has been made consistently from the December 2023 ex-date through the June 2026 ex-date logged in the data, though no series of past payments guarantees future distributions will continue uninterrupted.
Equitable Holdings operates as a diversified financial services company founded in 1859, spanning retirement products, asset management through AllianceBernstein, and wealth management via Equitable Advisors. The company reported roughly $1.1 trillion in assets under management and administration as of year-end 2025. Equitable's common shares, which trade under EQH, closed at $52.75 on October 23, down 4.16 percent on the day, while the broader insurance and financial sector saw mixed moves; American Express shares fell 3.7 percent the same session, according to the referenced market data, underscoring that financial names broadly faced pressure that day rather than EQH alone.
Preferred securities with discounts to par are not unique to Equitable Holdings. Across a basket of 34 insurance preferred issues referenced in the same dataset, the average discount to par stood at 24.2 percent, meaning EQH-A's 30 percent discount is wider than the group average even as its 7.50 percent current yield also runs above the comparable average for that cohort. Preferred stock prices broadly have been sensitive to interest rate expectations in recent periods, since fixed coupon instruments compete with prevailing yields on newly issued debt and other income securities.
Investors tracking the issue are likely to watch several things going forward: whether Equitable Holdings makes any public statement about its intentions for the Series A preferred now that the call window has been open for nearly two years, whether the company's upcoming earnings disclosures reference capital management plans involving preferred equity, and how the dividend history evolves at each quarterly ex-date. The 52-week range for EQH-A, between $17.14 and $21.65, shows the shares have traded in a relatively narrow band below par for an extended stretch, a pattern market participants can continue to monitor as new pricing data arrives, without any assurance of how the discount will move from here.