Post by
mrmoribund on Dec 26, 2021 12:42pm
NCIB
Would be nice to see the NCIB crank up again.
Tom Caldwell clearly has a thing for round numbers. Surely not a coincidence that the NCIB has been paused for a while now with the non-voting share count at exactly 33,000,000.
But the NCIB allows for almost 3.4 million shares to be bought back during 2021-09 through 2022-09. The NV share count in early September 2021 was about 34.1 million and so Urbana has only done 1.1 million shares so far. Thus there's room for about 2.3 more.
It could be that this is not just about staying at a round number. Maybe Tom and his helpers are fearful of the market going forward. That would be fair enough, though then you'd have to ask why they are not also pushing a little harder to pay down the credit line with BMO.
In the meantime the discount to NAV per share continues to bounce around 50%, which continues to amaze me, especially given that Urbana has shown itself to be a pretty good stock picker over the past few years.
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An aside. And I may have suggested as much in the past. I've long assumed that the extended Caldwell family must be very close, good functionality, etc.
Why? The shares are held in many branches of the family (see SEDI) and I'm sure none of them can be entirely happy with that huge discount. Plus, this is a situation where one single-sentence press release could make the stock almost double. Like "Urbana to initiate strategic review."
With some families in such a situation it wouldn't shock anyone to see dissatisfaction with the size of discount (somewhere in the family) erupt in public dissagreement. But here it never does.
I'm not trying to engage in mischief here. I'm as patient as Tom himself. But I think it's an interesting observation to attempt.
Comment by
mrmoribund on Dec 30, 2021 9:43pm
In fairness, it seems Urbana HAS in fact been paying down the BMO credit line. I see on November 5 the balance was $29,000,000. As of December 24 it stood at $23,700,000. Given the current scares about inflation and rising interest rates, I'd say that looks prudent.