The Fine Print

tpltblogger5 Comments

Two items brought up by readers in the past 24 hours:

#1: White card lays down a footnote to make clear their opinion on where the vote stands.  We start with an excerpt from the letter that Barry and Norris sent to HK and Tessler:

While we were pleased to receive the recommendation from ISS yesterday, we understand that this will remain a close election.1

Here is the corresponding footnote.

1         SoftVest, L.P., Horizon Kinetics LLC and ART-FGT Family Partners disagree with this statement.

 

#2:  The following two statements can be found in the recently published 10-Q.  The two, when read together, indicate that the Trust didn’t repurchase any shares in all of April.  A few possibilities come to mind: 1) the Trust is somehow restricted on the stock due to the pending vote, 2) the Trust is dedicating marginal cash to PP&E, or 3) Trust management is avoiding further concentrating the ownership stakes of those that they consider dissidents.  Must be a pretty big deal to deviate from a capital return strategy that is decades/centuries in the making and we know the balance sheet is anything but cash poor.

Sub-share Certificates in Certificates of Proprietary Interest, par value $.03 1/3 each; outstanding 7,756,156 and 7,762,414 Sub-share Certificates as of March 31, 2019 and December 31, 2018, respectively

As of April 30, 2019, the Registrant had 7,756,156 Sub-share Certificates outstanding.

5 thoughts on “The Fine Print”

  1. Regarding the 0 share repurchases in April, I find it hard to believe they are restricted in any way because of an upcoming vote – that being said, they could use that as an excuse. My main concern is they may significantly slow down repurchases going forward to avoid a bigger concentration of ownership for HK (though HK is buying shares on a daily basis anyway).

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  2. A fourth possible reason: They are spending so much of our shareholder money to law firms, proxy solicitation firms, PR firms, and whatever side deal they cut with the general, there simplly is no money to spend on share repurchases. My sense its a 7 figure number.

    When you look at how few shares were purchased in q1 2019, its a very small number with a lot of zeros after the decimal as far as impact on the HK controlled shares. So I don’t think the further concentration worry of management is at play. More likely its the existential threat they might all be bounced out in the near future.

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    • Who started the proxy war? Oh yeah it was HK/EO. Who’s also paying for the HK proxy fight if they win which it looks like they might? Oh yeah that would be us, the shareholders! I really wish someone would address the conflicts I just finished reading in the latest TPL letter to shareholders.

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  3. I am buying more stock as well. Once this nonsense is over u will not be able to buy the stock at these prices again. Think it through Step 1 Change Governance Step 2 Spin water Co. ( retain water ownership get royalty) Step 3 ) gus cash for the next 100 years

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  4. Don’t worry, the management/trustees conscience is clear. They also donated $0.3m of our money to charity. They didn’t want to waste their time on share buyback mambo jambo. They are so noble in their ways:

    General and administrative expenses. General and administrative expenses increased $1.5 million to $2.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2019 from $0.7 million for the same period of 2018. The increase in general and administrative expenses is primarily due to expenses related to land transactions and a contribution of $0.3 million to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation to benefit the Balmorhea State Park in West Texas during the three months ended March 31, 2019. No such contributions were made during the three months ended March 31, 2018.

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