RE:Market capHi FLG,
I have it closer to $71 million, so the Bridal Path home will have to be more of a fixer-upper....
There is absolutely no doubt that cleaning house will be in order when a new owner assumes control of Torstar. It is like Harold Ballard has been running Torstar for the last 20 years and no one should be surprised by the results. There is a fundamentally good business with good people working in the trenches, but there are too many levels and too many people running around in tiny circles accomplishing nothing if we are lucky.
I say lucky because I will go back to my favourite Harold Ballard example - VertigoScope. The Board invested $180 million in a business that has done nothing but increases its debt level and destroys shareholder value. Debt net of cash on December 31, 2015, was $120 million. Less than three years later it was $173 million. In the meantime, total equity has shrunk from $205 million on December 31, 2016, to $169 million on September 30, 2018. The total comprehensive loss for year-end 2018 I would estimate at $35 million. Tell me how you take $180 million and produce those kinds of results?
They could have paid every shareholder $2.20 per share with this money. Instead, they flushed it down the same drain they have used with every discretionary investment. That's why the shares are heading towards $.50 and the Voting Trust is headed towards the trashcan of corporate history.