RE:Urbana renews NCIBI've been a shareholder of Urbana on and off since 2011. In 2018 I made a large investment after cashing out of something else. I've held it consistently since then. It's basically my only investment.
Tom Caldwell is a class act. He actually might call you if you send a message to investor relations. He's very old school like that. He's returned my messages personally and even once invited m to their office. He doesn't care if you are a big or small shareholder.
As far as the investment goes, it's widely misunderstood. You certainly cant go too wrong buying a dollar for 50 cents, albeit the caveat is that the discount will continue so if markets go down, it will follow, and vice versa. The discount does not protect you on the upside or downside. A few other observations:
1) You do get protection on the downside (and the upside is limited) by the private investment. They are not revalued weekly, necessarily. They are not intended to fluctuate in vaue the same way as the public stocks. So you will get less volatility as now 60 percent of the portfolio is private. So you are only going to get share price movements based on what the public 40 percent is doing, or when the privates are revalued in a material way.
2) The discount increased based on the private vs public mix. Privates are illiquid and the market trusts the valuation less. That is why as the private component of the portfolio has grown, so has the discount. If the privates went public or were disposed of, and the cash or marketable securities component of the portfoli went up, the discount would decrease. Hence lies the opportunity if you are cofident the privates are worth what they company values them at, and will eventually become liquid by way of buyout or public offering. CBOE, NYSE, Real Matters, are a few exampes of private investments that went public. Intergrated Grain there is talk about a sale. Blue Ocean, CSE, have the potential to go public (although Robinhood could maybe buy out Blue Ocean).
3) The dividend is a great way to reinvest your funds and leverage the discount. Obviously the dividend is a cash payment. Every divident you get you can use to buy the shares back at a discount. It's an easy way to compound your investment at a faster pace. You get paid a dollar from the company and can buy 2 dollars worth of shares. It's a no brainer.
4) I would support using the NCIB but the reality is the company doesnt have that much cash sitting around. To buy back shares they would need either some of the privates to go liquid or sell the public securities to buy back shares. The publcs account for only 40 percent now, so it would make no sense to sell the liquid portion of the portfolio to lower the share count and make the privates an even higher percentage, which will actually tend to increase the discount. So I dont see how they can buy back material shares currently. The dividend is just as accretive for shareholders because the shareholders can take that money and buy more shares.
Overall, I am bullish. I hope to never sell.