Tag: Activist!

Houston Chronicle Covers

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Houston Chronicle: How a sleepy Texas trust turned into Permian oil proxy war

The trust also hired a public relations firm and proxy contest lawyers, paid for advertisements in support of Cook, and launched a website, TrustTPL.com, to state the case for keeping the trust intact.

Kai Liekefett, Texas Pacific Land Trust’s attorney, blamed the proxy fight on the rise of investor activists — the hedge funds and other large investors who take large stakes in companies and pressure management to take steps to boost share prices. The hedge funds, he said, are interested in selling the water business or even the entire trust to reap a short-term financial windfall.

“It makes perfect sense for them. It may not make sense for the other 75 percent of shareholders who enjoy the out-performance and ongoing appreciation,” said Liekefett, who recently represented financially struggling Luby’s in the Houston restaurant operator’s fight against a hedge fund. “This is not mere luck. This is the result of very seasoned and strategic leadership.”

 

 

Activist?

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Bloomberg: Hedge Fund Challenges $6 Billion Texas Land Bank in Activist Play

Not sure I’d qualify a party that 1) has a 20yr+ history with a stock and 2) controls ~25% of the float as an “activist”.  Term seems too strong.  The rest of the article linked above is a good recap of what we’ve seen play out in recent SEC filings.

Horizon Kinetics LLC, which owns a 23 percent stake, has urged the trust to modernize its structure and appoint Eric L. Oliver after the previous trustee stepped down due to ill health. Texas Pacific said March 4 that its trustees nominated Preston Young for the position.

Chief Executive Officer Tyler Glover, in an email Monday, defended the company, pointing to a more than 40 percent increase in its stock price in the last year. He called it an “impressive market performance” he credited to “active management of our expansive asset base and other steps taken to position the Trust for continued growth.”

In its filing, Horizon Kinetics wrote that it wants to make Texas Pacific a Delaware corporation “subject to modern governance principles” and better develop a division that supplies the oil fields with water, it said.

Oliver, Horizon’s choice as a trustee, is one of the shareholders who signed the cooperation agreement through his SoftVest Advisors LLC, as is financier Allan R. Tessler, who owns stock through several entities. Horizon also wants management to provide more information to shareholders such as drilling updates, water production and engineering reports.

The fund “believes that the Trust should be more transparent and frequent on its updates to holders of securities,” it said in the filing. A Horizon spokesman declined to comment beyond the filing.