RE:Not so vg Not so at Quarterhill.
There is overhead included in each business unit. The 5 SVPs, CEO and CTO of WiLan take whatever is not billed by external counsel, leaving only a few million of EBITDA in 2021. WiLan doesn't even cover the 2021 dividend.
Then IRD and ETC have their own overhead in each of their business units.
THEN, before the profits for each business unit are distributed to shareholders there is another take by the Quarterhill parent, corporate structure. All the people like Paul, John, Prashant, etc. get their cut too.
Then the Board of Directors get their indirect cut by issuing themselves options at a low strike price, further diluting any profits that get through to the shareholder. This is why the fullly diluted EPS is the best proxy for actual value creation.
They keep taking about EBITDA, but the reality is they added $3 million of interest cost with the debentures annually. The depreciation of patents is a real cost as shareholder money was invested into patents that don't generate any real value. So, the decline of book value of 10% this year is a good reflection of the actual value created for shareholders.
The crazy thing is that even with the addition of ETC and the growth of the ITS business Cannacord still projects a (0.02) loss to shareholders next year.