B O S T O N O M A H A – Form 8-K
B O S T O N
O M A H A
CORPORATION
2023 Annual Letter
To the Shareholders of
I could not be more excited to lead
Over the past nine years,
As recently announced, my Partner in building
Our focus in the near term will be less on new investments; instead, our team will concentrate on cost savings and efficiencies in our current businesses while continuing to scale them through internal investment or tuck-in acquisitions. Our internal reinvestment opportunities are both large and attractive while at the same time our balance sheet has limits, making it difficult for any new idea of scale to compete.
I am thankful for the nine years Alex and I spent together building
Now, let me update you on the foundation built to date and the changes at
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Since early 2015, the market value of a share of
Your management believes our stock price performance is likely to mirror changes in underlying business value in the long term, but in the short term there will always be periods when the two are not at all reflective of each other, both on the upside and downside. At present, we do not believe our stock price has kept up with the business value created at
The team at
Our billboard business grew revenue organically by approximately 4%, free cash flows (operating cash flow less our judgment of maintenance capital expenditures) by double digits, and again lowered land costs. Our broadband business grew to 43K subscribers (9.6K fiber subscribers) and now owns over 26K fiber passings. Finally, our surety insurance business generated record profits while growing premium and further set the stage operationally for scalable growth.
Within our other business interests and investments, often minority interests, the news in 2023 is also mostly good.
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Our investments and general partner ("GP") ownership in real estate funds obtained a range from decent to great returns on capital for its investment partners in 2023, increasing the value of both our own limited partnership interest as well as the value of our GP interest. |
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At |
We believe our present revenue and cash flow run-rate in our three wholly owned businesses will grow organically and, as importantly, will do so without the demand for large capital investments. At the same time, we believe we have several opportunities to lower our costs looking forward whether it is the announced wind down of the asset management business or efficiency gains in broadband.
As management, we then have the responsibility to employ cash flows generated and our cash and investments already held, into new assets whether that be additional billboard faces, fiber passings, surplus additions, or new opportunities. Organic growth within existing assets coupled with disciplined capital allocation in adding to our asset base, is the growth algorithm that will power
With that, let's dive into greater detail on the businesses we own and their 2023 performance.
Operating Businesses at
Below is a breakout of the net1 assets of our operating businesses. This table includes everything except the investments at BOAM, which we break out separately.
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($ in millions) |
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
2020 |
2019 |
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Cash2 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Billboards3 |
176.4 |
176.5 |
165.9 |
139.2 |
147.3 |
|
Insurance4 |
36.0 |
32.9 |
36.1 |
34.0 |
29.5 |
|
Broadband4 |
166.7 |
121.4 |
51.3 |
43.5 |
- |
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Total |
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1 Assets (excl. cash balances mentioned below in note 2) less liabilities.
2 Includes short-term
3 Excludes cash balances held within billboard and broadband operations as they are captured in "Cash" as shown above.
4 Includes cash balances held within UCS, our wholly owned underwriting business.
In terms of debt obligations, there are still none at the parent company and a modest amount at our billboard business, which is non-recourse to
We keep the majority of our businesses' excess cash at headquarters, almost always in the form of rolling short-term
Billboard Operations at
In calendar 2023, Link grew revenue organically just over 4% and lowered land costs to 18.6% of revenue. The result was another year of record performance by
Below we provide our annual chart of Link's progress.
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($ in millions) |
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
|
Revenue |
|
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|
|
Land Cost %5 |
18.6% |
19.7% |
20.5% |
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Overhead %6 |
6.7% |
6.6% |
8.5% |
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EBITDA7 |
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Tangible PP&E, Net |
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5 Land lease expense on billboards where we do not own the land as a percentage of revenue.
6 Overhead is Link Media expenses related to corporate employees, office and software as a percentage of revenue.
7 EBITDA is defined as net income before income tax expense (benefit), noncontrolling interest in subsidiary income (loss), interest expense (income), depreciation, amortization, accretion and gain or loss on disposition of assets.
8 Adjusted for current portion of lease liabilities related to ASC 842 implementation and assumes a certain maximum level of cash in business for operational purposes.
The value of Link over the years to
First, is the business's capital value, which one could refer to as its intrinsic value or private business value to an acquirer. This bucket is affected by some factors outside of our control such as interest rates and inflation. However, this aggregate value of Link, all else the same, grows at something close to the organic rate of growth of its free cash flow. As an example, if Link can organically grow at 5%, without much need at all to reinvest cash to obtain that growth, the capital value is also growing at approximately the same rate. As a result, this value creation for
The second bucket of value to
As a result of this second bucket, the free cash flow coupled with conservative debt levels, Link has funded other investments at
One last attribute of Link is we have utilized approximately $54mm in depreciation and amortization expense that we believe is far above any economic value loss of our assets. These "expenses" over time, as reported in our income statement, have generated cash benefits to
During 2023, we were able to deploy some capital into Link, mostly in the form of purchasing perpetual easements to eliminate land costs and also in converting some static billboards to digital.
Insurance Operations at
Here is GIG's track record of premium, revenue and operating performance.
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($ in millions) |
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
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Gross Written Premium |
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Revenue |
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EBITDA |
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( |
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Operating Income |
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( |
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Net Income (Loss) |
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( |
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In the past, we focused on controlled premium as we built scale at the company. We are now achieving scale so, going forward, we will focus less on controlled premium and more on revenue growth while maintaining positive operating income.
Calendar 2023 was a record year for GIG in terms of revenue, gross written premium and operating income, due to the efforts of
The amount of investment and progress GIG has made in both business development channels and systems has enabled us to have a scalable business looking forward. Dave estimates that we can now effectively double written premium over time without a commensurate increase to our cost structure given our investment and efforts over the last few years.
9 EBITDA is defined as net income before income tax expense (benefit), noncontrolling interest in subsidiary income (loss), interest expense (income), depreciation, amortization, accretion and gain or loss on disposition of assets.
Of course, doubling premium generally is of little value in insurance, anyone can do that if they underwrite poorly. Our goal is to always grow thoughtfully and profitably. We look forward to seeing what GIG produces in 2024 and have plans to invest incremental capital into the business.
Broadband Operations at Boston Omaha Broadband
Boston Omaha Broadband ("BOB") is the parent company of four now wholly owned broadband businesses: Utah Broadband, AireBeam,
Though each business retains its own management teams, brands, and operational autonomy in its markets, internally BOB companies increasingly work as a cohesive enterprise, benefitting from shared resources, procurement, planning, increasing build opportunities and critically, capital.
Recently, we took another important step in forming this cohesive enterprise by purchasing the remaining minority ownership stakes in Utah Broadband and InfoWest, through the issuance of
Before we get into the results, a quick reminder as to what we observed in the broadband business that triggered
Historically, overbuilding fiber to the premises had mixed results. If anything, the average experience was quite poor for investors. Not all that many years ago, after following the major cable companies' operations over the years, we started to observe some changes in the landscape of broadband usage by the consumer. Although there are plenty of variables to observe, two factors stood out the most.
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Broadband usage continued to increase and compound at high rates, yet the in-place last mile networks supporting that usage in many geographies, were not adequate for this compounding to continue. |
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Content viewing options developed to where a consumer could directly purchase what they desired, as opposed to relying on the cable provider to aggregate content for them. |
Many other factors exist both positive and negative, but we believe these two developments were important to think about in terms of the future economics of the broadband business. In other words, some facts changed, and when the future may look different than the past, opportunity could be knocking.
Outside of the changing landscape and the insatiable demand for better broadband, even if one is correct on that outcome, the underlying asset must be financially attractive and competitively advantaged to eaabove average rates of return. Here are some of the attributes we like about the asset itself.
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Fiber is expensive upfront to build out, but enjoys a long economic life coupled with often materially lower maintenance costs than competing non fiber networks. |
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A fiber build can be an advantaged asset relative to competitors depending on a host of variables that must be judged on a project-by-project basis. Some considerations could be that the project is contractual (such as an HOA deal), the costs to operate the asset after deployment are materially lower than the competition due to the reliability of fiber compared to traditional copper delivery, and/or there are competitive, geographic or structural constraints for others to come in and overbuild our fiber. |
Below is a BOB level report on our recent progress.
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($ in millions) |
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
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Revenue |
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EBITDA |
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Net Income (Loss) |
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Total Subscribers |
42.9k |
39.6k |
18.2k |
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Fiber Subscribers |
9.6k |
4.9k |
1.8k |
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Fiber Passings |
26.6k |
14.9k |
5.5k |
10 EBITDA is defined as net income before income tax expense (benefit), noncontrolling interest in subsidiary income (loss), interest expense (income), depreciation, amortization, accretion and gain or loss on disposition of assets.
Here EBITDA is used as a rough figure for cash flow before the very real expense of maintenance capital expenditure, and just as last year, the reported figure above includes our losses at FFH, which were
Important to understand is although we have increased fiber subscribers to 9.6K in 2023, our fiber passings that are not yet customers have also grown significantly. When thinking about our passings, shareholders should understand that capital invested is not yet producing revenue or cash flow but has the prospect of doing so in the future. How many and the timing of those potential new customers depends on where these builds are and the type of fiber projects they are. Project types can vary from a greenfield HOA deal where we expect an exceedingly high penetration rate once homes are finished and sold, to brownfield projects where we believe ending take rate will be attractive, but not 90%+.
Now to some possible mistakes made by your management team. We invested capital in an attempt to improve our fixed wireless business in order to keep current customers longer and to add new customers, and it is now less clear to us if that was a good use of capital relative to investing that same capital into more fiber.
In addition, within our FFH segment, we have invested capital in a small number of projects where we have good contracts, but it is not as clear when we could achieve scale in those specific geographies. It simply takes a significant period of time at FFH to build scale, as we are subject to the pace of homebuilding per geography. Time could be working against us in terms of obtaining the returns we expected given we have to carry the operational cash buas we wait for customers. We will report back as our hand plays out in these instances, when we can give you a more definitive answer. In the meantime, we are looking at every way we can lower our burate at FFH in an intelligent manner, and for that matter, reviewing all possible efficiencies within our entire broadband operation.
The good news is, in the aggregate, we have plenty of great projects we are funding, and we believe they should overcome the mistakes we inevitably make along the way. When we underwrite projects, we are typically looking to eaan unleveraged double digit retuon our capital after achieving targeted penetration rates, with possible upside depending on your view of what the ending intrinsic value is of a fiber customer relative to its cost basis. We will not always hit our retugoals as cost overruns and delays will inevitably occur during construction. However, that is our goal when we consider whether to take on a new project.
In our judgment, broadband is a compelling opportunity to deploy larger sums of capital within
Investment Operations at Boston Omaha Asset Management
Boston Omaha Asset Management ("BOAM") has historically been our catch-all for investments we have made over time that we do not control, as well as our asset management business. Below is a breakdown of those two segments with the first section showing our aggregate asset base according to GAAP and the second section outlining the asset management business specifically.
Boston Omaha Asset Management Investments
GAAP asset values as of
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($ in millions) |
2023 |
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Boston Omaha Build for Rent12 |
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24th Street Asset Management12 MyBundle TV |
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Logic |
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Breezeway |
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Total BOAM Assets |
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As mentioned in past letters, we generally won't be providing specific commentary on the passive minority holdings in BOAM unless there is something new or material of note to report to
In regard to our ownership of
11 Includes 13,118,474 shares of Sky Harbour Class A common stock and 7,719,779 warrants. If our investment in
12 Includes only BOAM's invested capital and GP interest.
As of
We believe that the overall intrinsic value of the investments listed above is higher than our current carrying value. However, we have little control on the timing of any future realization events in most cases, especially within the privately held interests.
For the investments that are publicly traded, we have more flexibility and can compare the underlying business prospects to our alternatives within
Boston Omaha Asset Management Funds Managed
Within asset management, we own the general partner plus have an investment in the underlying funds of both
In our recent 10-K, we announced that we will be winding down this segment over time. Keep in mind this will have no effect on our investment in
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($ in millions) |
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Total Fund Assets13 |
Fund IRR (net)14 |
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24th Street Fund I |
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~20% |
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24th Street Fund II |
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~20% |
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BOBFR |
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BORE Hirsch |
- |
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BORE Fourth |
- |
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Total Assets Under Management |
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The decision to wind down the asset management side of BOAM is directly attributable to our inability to launch a broadband fund on acceptable terms, lack of investment opportunity for our cash within the BOBFR fund, and the costs to carry the business that would remain. The remaining business of commercial real estate funds simply does not require three managing partners and a team to support it.
When we entered the asset management business we were solely a manager of real estate funds. We were both investors in these funds and we brought in partners who wanted to invest alongside us. Investing in real estate is something
13 As of
14 Past performance is not indicative of future results. Returns are net of expenses, asset management fees, and carried interest and are audited through 2023. Performance reflects the retusince inception and is based on the actual management fees and expenses paid by fund investors as a whole. Performance for individual investors will vary (in some cases materially) from the performance stated herein as a result of the management fees or other fees paid or not paid by certain investors; the timing of their investment; their individual participation in investments and/or carry rates.
Unfortunately, after a huge amount of effort and time from a dedicated team, we were simply unable to raise a broadband fund or broadband capital at terms that we found acceptable when combined with the value of our own broadband assets and in a structure that would net add value for
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To pour more salt on the wound, BOBFR, which started in 2021, was unable to find enough opportunities in residential real estate to invest its aggregate capital at returns we found acceptable for the risk incurred. Roughly half of our capital base in BOBFR was invested in real estate assets we found attractive, but the other half remained idle in cash.
We bid on a large number of assets over the past few years at prices that we believed would lead to good to great returns for partners. Unfortunately, time after time, another buyer was willing to underwrite purchases in a more aggressive manner than we were, and we were not successful in deploying all of the fund's capital. Rather than holding investors' capital for an even longer period, in the hopes that a good opportunity would materialize, we decided to retuthe cash held in the fund to partners and are now working on maximizing the value of the real estate assets we were able to buy.
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Lastly, continuing to manage commercial real estate funds alone at historic fund size levels would demand significant time and attention from
Combining all of the above factors, we had to make the difficult decision to either continue to incur the meaningful costs associated with the asset management business or thoughtfully wind down the operation while maximizing returns for partners.
It is extremely disappointing that your management was not able to make a larger success out of the asset management business at BOAM both for shareholders and the team that worked so hard to try to build it. Shareholders should know it was not due to a lack of effort.
Now to the good news.
We still expect a good retuon
Inception to year-end 2023, we have received approximately
We will report figures to date in next year's letter as they come to fruition so shareholders can easily see what we paid and what we received in the end. I continue to believe the ending retuon our investment is likely to be somewhere between reasonable and attractive.
Executive Compensation
The current management incentive plan at
For the first several years after
In 2018, the original management incentive plan was adopted and it provided that for the first 15 years a bonus would be paid to management based on a formula tied to financial performance, but importantly, the total amount that could be paid out was capped in dollars for that time period. I believe the thought process was that the performance bonus would be earned in incremental amounts over many years until the cap was reached. For instance, if the capped performance bonus was earned evenly over the 15 years, it would have amounted to $1mm per year or
Looking forward, under the current plan, the initial bonus cap having been met in 2022 means that the bonus paid in 2022 is not a recurring annual cost as I think some may incorrectly believe. In addition, any future potential performance bonuses will likely be half of what they would have been now that we have just one CEO.
Annual Meeting and Closing Remarks
With recent announcements, we believe it is important to reverse course on a virtual only annual meeting and instead have it in person. We thoroughly enjoy the chance to meet shareholders in person and it is a great reason for our managers to get together with the entire
Looking forward, we are working on supplying shareholders with more supplemental information on a quarterly basis in addition to our normal quarterly reports. We are in the midst of working on this but expect it to be a few slides showing a basic update of our three operating businesses and any update on our investments. Stay tuned.
Between the employees of
The
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Chairman of the Board |
Safe Harbor Statement:
This Annual Letter contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act and 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 regarding the future financial performance, business prospects and growth of
In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date hereof. The Company anticipates that general economic conditions and subsequent events and developments may cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date hereof.
Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures:
Key business metrics and the use of EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, are presented for supplemental informational purposes only, should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with
Our non-GAAP financial measure consists of EBITDA, which is defined in the text of this letter. Investors are encouraged to review the related
Disclosure:
Boston Omaha Asset Management ("BOAM") is the business/trade name for certain asset managers that are owned and controlled by
The opinions expressed herein regarding BOAM and its investments are based on the views and research of BOAM as of the date of this letter and are subject to change. BOAM reserves the right to modify its current investment strategies and techniques based on changing market dynamics. It should not be assumed that any of the transactions or real estate assets discussed will prove to be profitable, or that the decisions we make in the future will be profitable or will equal the investment performance of the funds discussed herein. All fund returns, unless otherwise notated, are net of expenses, asset management fees, and carried interest. Inherent in any investment is the potential for a total loss of the investment. There can be no assurance that any fund investor will receive retuof their capital.
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