Chit Chat Stocks - BONUS Interview - Steve Symington - Boston Omaha (BOMN) Shareholder Meeting Wrap Up

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Steve Symington joins us to discuss the Boston Omaha annual shareholder meeting. The company often gets referred to as a mini conglomerate. Boston Omaha invests in various businesses. Listen in to hear more information about the company and some details from the shareholder meeting. Enjoy the show! We will conduct Bonus Interviews periodically whenever Brett and Ryan are eager to speak with a certain guest but know that the discussion wouldn't fit our traditional show format. This episode is sponsored by Stream by Mosaic, the highest quality expert network library. Sign-up here:  https://streamrg.co/CCM Want more of Steve Symington? Find him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/7investingSteve?s=20 Want updates on future shows and projects? Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chitchatmoney Rather watch us on video? Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG5Ni-SI-jyrEsoNUhqftNQ Contact us: [e-mail] Timestamps Shareholder Meeting | (4:24) New SPAC | (35:49) Disclosure: Chit Chat Money hosts and guests are not financial advisors, and nothing they say on this show is formal advice or a recommendation. Brett Schafer and Ryan Henderson are general partners and portfolio managers at Arch Capital. Arch Capital and its partners may hold securities discussed on this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Chit Chat Money. Today, we have a bit of a unique show. So it's not following our typical not so deep dive or deep dive structure. It's a bonus, I guess you could say. And it's a follow up to our shareholder meeting that we attended for Boston, Omaha. Do you want to explain what Boston, Omaha is for any listeners that don't know? Yeah. Basel Omaha is a small cap conglomerate there. They don't really have any headquarters in a certain area. They don't have any, they're not in any certain industry, but they own different assets, minority stakes. They're in billboards, fiber to the home, insurance. We go through all that during the discussion, but suffice to say they're a diversified holding company and the management does a Berkshire type meeting where they go through the business and then do a Q and A. We went to it. They didn't have a recording or anything. So for anyone that is invested in it, we thought it would be interesting to kind of give our thoughts, any little tidbits that they gave out about these businesses. Exactly. And before we get to the discussion, we have a new sponsor alert. It is Stream by Mosaic. We're actually quite familiar with the company, but for any listeners that aren't, Stream is an expert interview transcript library. And so So basically, if you don't know, there's, and usually it'll be investors, they interview

experts on a company or an industry or something like that. And the industries cover everything from TMT to consumers, industrials, real estate, plenty more. If you're invested in any companies, which most of you, I assume, are, I'm sure they have your companies somewhere in there. There's more than 8,500 call transcripts altogether, and they provide 300 expert interviews per week, and 70% of their experts are found exclusively on stream. So basically, you can get really good color on the industry or the company, and sometimes it's ex-executives. Sometimes it's just people that really understand the industry well.

It's a great way if you are missing. It's like a channel chat. If you are unsure about some part of a business, it's a great way to do a check on that. It's a great way to get up to speed on some of the nuances of an industry. It's like Phil Fisher's scuttlebutt. It's something that he talked about that's been part of his investment process. This is a great supplement to anyone's investing process. So if you want to check them out, go to streamrg.com and you can sign up for a free 14-day trial

using promo code CCM. So go ahead and use that. Now, last mention before we get to the show, this is Steve from 7investing. So as always, you can use our code CHITCHAT at 7investing. This is actually a limited time offer, but use CHITCHAT for your annual subscription to get $50 off. Without further ado, let's get to the discussion. Welcome to Chitchat Money.

On this show, hosts Ryan Henderson and Brett Schaefer interview industry experts and riff on the world of investing. As a quick reminder, Chitchat Money is a CCM Media Group podcast. Ryan and Brett are also general partners at Arch Capital, and Arch Capital may have positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Anything discussed on Chitchat Money by Ryan or Brett or any other podcast guest is not formal advice or recommendation. Now please enjoy this episode.

All right, today we're welcomed by Steve Symington. This is a different kind of show structure. It's something we've never really done before. Basically, we all went to the Boston Omaha Annual Shareholder Meeting, and the goal here is to do a follow-up, discuss what the meeting consisted of, what they talked about as far as the businesses go, maybe our takeaways, and then we'll do some thoughts on the business currently and maybe Boston Omaha as an investment. But before we get to any of that, I wanted to give some context around the itinerary because some people were really curious what the meeting actually consisted of.

So it was in Omaha. They occasionally move it around. I think it's previously swapped between Boston and Omaha, but apparently they're thinking about moving it to different locations. Omaha was really cold in the winter, if anyone was wondering, and they held it at a zoo. So it was like an indoor place, sort of an event center at the zoo. They gave us discounted rates on a hotel, nice hotel. And then Omaha had some really good food. They had a tour.

They gave us a bus tour of the city, kind of went sightseeing in Omaha. Am I blanking on anything? Nope. I think that's it. Okay. Then we can talk about the meeting, what actually went down there. They did a great presentation, which we can go through. And then they did a Q&A.

We didn't transcribe everything. It's kind of tough over, say, like two, three hour period to get everything held down. So hopefully we made a few notes. We can talk about what we, you know, thought in general. But first, we're going to go through these each segments here. We're going to start with someone and then move around just through different topics about what they talked about and then about Boston Omaha's business. But first, we're going to just do a general one.

So thoughts on the meeting in general. We'll start with you, Steve. Oh, man, I was super impressed. just meeting them, Adam and Alex in person was fantastic. I think just to see how kind of calm and collected they are speaking with confidence about their various businesses and not just broad, like kind of, well, you can tell when you're speaking to management who doesn't know just the ins and outs of every piece of the business. And you could tell no matter what question they threw at them and there were some some there's some like slow balls right but

they they also had some pretty pretty tough questions that they answered without hesitation and uh to everyone's satisfaction so it's kind of neat to to listen to them um they're obviously just exceptionally sharp um really nice to be able to meet uh so many people that uh you know not only management and a bunch of the board members i think i ended up sitting in the family section or something i was talking about you were in the family section yeah like all the board members start standing up around me and it turns out i was sitting i think next to alex's wife he's like my wife yeah like he's joking with me about it like uh afterward but um yeah it was it was really interesting to to kind of get that perspective uh just such a um such a kind of

an intimate setting you know there were there they said it was the most people they've ever had an annual meeting but there weren't really that many people there a couple hundred folks probably what uh so it was really neat and um yeah i do wish you know we could have been recording stuff but obviously no recording devices allowed you know they're not allowed to do that so um but yeah some some great uh connections and uh and just to see their wisdom at work was was fun yeah maybe we could pitch them to do a video just a video recording you know put that online uh but I don't know. I don't know that defeats the purpose of this follow-up. That's true. That's true. They're helping us. Yeah. Now we can provide the good info. What

about you, Ryan? Did you have any other thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I really enjoyed it. That's my first shareholder meeting that I've been to in person. Also first time in Omaha. Was that your first time in Omaha, Steve? It was. It's funny because it felt like the weather was worse than it was when I left Montana. Like even now I'm like, wow, it is windy and really cold. I didn't bring my my heavy jacket, but I wish I would have, but I liked Omaha actually, uh, pleasantly kind of surprised by the city and, and, uh, you know, a lot going on there, you know, obviously a lot of money flowing through there, but sort of in a, uh, uh, a sneaky kind of way. Like you don't realize the assets that are flowing through that town and in the business they have. And, and, uh,

wish I would've gotten to see the zoo though. That was a, that was a no-go for me with the snow. i know i know it's too cold we took a little lap and we're like uh this is not uh not today not today but i don't know other than that i i really enjoyed i i guess it really it's nice to talk to or kind of see someone present the businesses in person it kind of gives me different perspective on the business and it reminds you that like they are crucial i guess to the investment because they're the ones that are going out and acquiring the businesses. And so it's kind of a people's business where they are taking ownership in other people's companies. So it's important to see kind of how they work together or work well with others. And yeah, I thought the whole event was

pretty well run. What about you? I agree with what you guys said. I also liked how they gave a lot of candor on some of their minority investments. We know about DreamFinders homes. That's public investing now, so you can know about that. But the other stuff like Crescent Bank, Logic Real Estate, and some of the other stuff, they gave a lot of candor about what they're earning from that and kind of how much they're earning, at least from off of their original investments. So I thought that was good. They're not afraid. I guess they don't hide anything, at least I don't think. It seems like whenever they ask something, they're going to be open about it and say, all right, this was a mistake or this didn't do that well. This one

extremely well i think they talk about how logic even though it's a tiny investment has been their best performing asset by far um so that was good to hear but besides that let's move on to so this is a conglomerate a bit so we're going to go through some of the different parts of the businesses kind of what we think about them first one is going to be billboards then we're going to move to fiber insurance and then some of their minority investments and then the exciting part which is the sky harbor spac we'll probably talk about that that's the most exciting it has the in those pieces. But first, we're going to talk about billboards and we'll kick it off with Ryan. What were your thoughts on that part of the business and any updates from it?

Yeah. Well, I should also mention that you are more of a Boston Omaha shareholder, but I wanted to go to the meeting as well. So I bought a share and went. But getting some color on the business, the billboards were, it's interesting to see how what seems like such a boring business could be so valuable. And they said that they're approaching a million dollars in cashflow a month from that business. And they projected four to 7% organic growth. I didn't really have any huge takeaways on it. I guess that probably wasn't the part of the business that I liked the most. I think I was the most fond of the fiber component, but I don't know. Do you guys have any takeaways on the billboards? We went on our tour. We got to see some.

Oh, we saw one. We saw one. Yeah. Steve, any thoughts on the billboard stuff? Yeah, billboards are one of those kind of sneaky outperformers, right? It's kind of funny you look at it. Even in my portfolio, there's some really relatively unexciting companies on the surface that seem to be some of the biggest outperformers. And billboards are kind of neat because they're relatively low overhead. It's a super fragmented market. There's a lot of room for them to strike strategic acquisitions when the price is right. And they say they won't just overpay for the sake of pulling in new assets. But billboards are just super, super interesting because they tend to earn favorable returns on equity capital. Right. And we're kind of seeing that now as the cash flows start to come back.

And outdoor advertising in general is one of those really kind of underestimated niches in Boston, Omaha. That's one of the things they do really well. Adam and Alex, as they recognize these these niches that they can kind of muscle into without a lot of resistance. And, you know, so you've got this what is it, a seven billion dollar market in the United States overall for billboards and outdoor ads. and uh super super fragmented bunch of little tiny operators that are all regional and they can just kind of gradually buy them up when the price is right and um you know the established industry players tend to benefit from supply constraints because most of the meaningful locales uh for billboards will only allow a limited limited number uh kind of crowding their streets so that's why they love the market and and uh so it's no surprise to kind of see you know it's

is sort of bread and butter. Once they're in, the returns are pretty healthy. Yeah. And I think a lot of people talk about this with Boston Omaha, but I love how billboards can kind of be the base where they're generating say 12 million a month, or sorry, 12 million a year in cash off of these now, and possibly bump that up slightly over time and then make these tuck-in acquisitions. They actually just did one. And I believe it was in Oklahoma and Kansas where they're going to make maybe, they said, don't expect them to be as aggressive as they once were right? If I'm remembering that correctly, they used to have, at the start, they made some aggressive investments in billboards, but now they said it's going to be small tuck-in ones

and just maybe slightly increasing the number of faces they have. But I do love how, I mean, this isn't going to be a high growth business. It's not going to be hyper growth. They're not going to have insane levels of pricing power. You can't just triple the number of faces you have without buying any. But I mean, it seems like extremely dependable cashflow. And hopefully over time this can be one of the things that can help them you know invest in the fiber which i guess we're going to talk about next but also just provide that cash flow so they don't have to raise uh and do the common stock offerings as much as they happen this was their this was their original business wasn't it this is first big one yeah okay right am i wrong am i right there's

like a food place too it wasn't there's like a tiny thing yeah well there's that and it was the, they basically transitioned the business, you know, they, they reincorporated it and renamed it Boston Omaha for their hometowns. And yeah, billboards was kind of their, their basis. And what happened, uh, was they put a lot of money into billboard acquisitions. I think it was like even 2018 alone, it was like $140 million. They, they put to work in acquisitions because they said there were quote an abnormally large number, I think, uh, is the terms they used a couple of years ago, uh, abnormally large number of billboard assets that came to market. So they took advantage of it. You know, they raised capital and did some share issuances at, I think

above book value or at or above. And, and, uh, yeah, so, um, that that's, that was their first big one. So healthy. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It looks like, uh, they have a nice little thing on their website. Just give a reference on that. Yeah. In 2018, they really bumped up. They made an $84 million acquisition and a $38 million and a $16 million acquisition for billboards that year. But every year they've done these tiny ones that have just tucked in on that. And if anyone's interested, they do have a great overview. It's a nice little chart with all these bubbles. I don't know if you guys have seen that one to see all the different types of businesses it's on, on boss and omaha.com, but let's move on to fiber. What's the next one? Fiber. That's the exciting

part that is the one that everyone loves um i think maybe i'll just give an overview and then see what you guys uh think of it so the update they have is they have about 20 000 customers in fiber right now and they believe there's a ton of room to reinvest uh more say growth capital unlike billboards and then they say that their favorite targets they're not in say big cities competing with the big dogs uh they're trying to go after rural places that are more dsl and satellite homes. Those are their favorite targets to replace with. And then they basically track each dollar because I think someone asks them, or maybe they talked about this themselves, about how they track how they do it or how successful the fiber business is.

But they track each dollar invested into fiber basically for a return on invested capital, pretty standard one. I'm sure a lot of people can understand that one with all the big cable businesses out there. It's very similar. And then the other thing I would mention is they're starting what's it called fiber fast homes yeah um i think that's the name and they're partnering with dfh which is dreamfinder homes that's the company they own a big stake in that's a home builder to hopefully do new fiber builds for the homes they're building so that's a partnership that just started and hopefully you can grow the amount of customers they have in fiber vertical integration uh yeah kind of yeah steve do you have any thoughts on the fiber business

I don't know what were your thoughts about it after the meeting? Yeah, there's just a lot, you know, in Fiber to the Home, they raised some cash. I think it was, I'm just poking it up, back in April, I think was the last time I wrote about that, when they actually sold, it was a few million shares, right about where they trade now, actually, maybe a little, 25 bucks a piece, so maybe a little lower. But they raised cash to kind of help fund that growth because they had identified, one, some opportunities to make some acquisitions and billboards, which we saw them follow through on. But two, they said even in fiber to the home, you know, they were looking at incremental investments for diving into those areas. right and fiber is one of those really interesting businesses because um it's one of those things that you know the the ceiling for the speeds that fiber can support is much higher than even uh cable and you know dsl is just like pulling teeth now for anyone who still has it you

transition even a cable from dsl and that's a world different but fiber is a completely different level and the ceiling is so high and one of the things they hammered home during the meeting was that um you know bandwidth requirements are growing rapidly and that's not all going to be served by you know uh spacex is like internet like satellite service what says starlink uh there's only so much you can do at least at this point in time and the ceiling is so much higher for fiber and uh the demand for these houses you know once they have a house that's the other thing they mentioned once they have a neighborhood hooked up and ran they're not going back like they're not getting rid of their fiber. And one of the things that they're getting from this

partnership, uh, with DFH and, and, uh, you know, fast fiber is, is basically you're going to have these new neighborhoods that are just prebuilt with fiber included. And, uh, it's, it's just sort of a captive audience and really, really healthy cash flows, uh, after you kind of put up that upfront investment, but you know, it's a certain, like they said, they're not going to go in and compete with already permeated like fiber networks like there's way too many places in this country little rural areas they're still being served by satellite and dsl and they said one of the favorite places uh one of their favorite things to do is drive through neighborhoods and spot satellite dishes they're like yeah we like this market and uh because satellite internet

stinks and and uh you know from most offers anyway and so that it's it's kind of kind of fun to watch because this was their third line of business, right? After surety insurance and billboards, fiber was the one that they kind of branched into after that. And that only just happened in the last year and a half or so. Yeah, let me just give a reference on that just because I have this up. They first bought the first one, AirBeam, in March of 2020.

Wow, right during the middle, March 10th, 2020. I think they did joke about how they closed that right when the world was shutting down. And then they bought Utah Broadband in December of last year. this is a relatively new business for them, but they think they're going to reinvest a lot of capital. Ryan, what were your thoughts on fiber? Well, something they mentioned, I think, in the shareholder letter is that the economics are very attractive to the business. It's pretty intuitive, I guess, but they said, I think they get a 30% yield on the fiber that they lay.

I remember them saying basically the only constraint right now, and they also seemed very excited about fiber they seemed like that was the one place they look forward to like investing in moving forward um and they they said the only constraint was labor if i'm not mistaken it's just getting getting enough people out there to build as fast as they can it seems kind of like a green field opportunity there's just so much market out there to build yeah and the best thing about fiber is it's really easy to track i believe in the 10q they just outline, they separate how much capital they invest in each segment or each business segment, each quarter. So, I mean, you have to take it with a bit of a grain of salt because

we have to get the returns of that eventually. But typically with Fiverr, it seems like the more they invest in that, if that increases, I mean, it's almost not, you can't guarantee anything, but it's pretty easy to track how much of capital you're investing in Fiverr. You're going to almost get a guaranteed return on that, which I like the dependability of that. the other thing i found funny was someone asked i think like what got you in get what got you into fiber to begin with i think at the meeting and they were like well uh we had a competitor down the road in lincoln that was doing really well with it and which is a company we're super familiar with and the chairman happened to be there and uh yeah it's kind of they just stole stole a good idea

from their competitors i guess yeah all right let's move on to insurance who's starting with that one uh steve yeah they have uh i don't know maybe you want to give an overview of what because they they're not like typical insurance do you want to give a slight overview of that and then we can talk about what anything they said there right so uh surety insurance is one of those things so when you think about a surety bonds for example like a licensed and bonded contractor or insurance to guarantee rent payments by consumers and private businesses like these are the kinds of insurance uh that we're talking about here the um boston omaha has put capital to work i think as of last year was like they'd only put like 30 or 40 million into to general

indemnity group gig is the surety insurance subsidiary that they have and gig is comprised of a licensed carrier which is ucs united capital casualty and surety insurance and a few surety only agencies. But what was interesting at the meeting was they mentioned, you know, that was one of, they were asked about kind of their mistakes and some of the assumptions. And they said, you know, it was a lot harder. We kind of assumed it would be a lot easier to generate policy originations kind of by going through this agency process. So they've kind of shifted how they approach that. But, you know, the surety insurance business remains potentially huge. It's a massive market for them. And it's one of those things that it's it also kind of has really healthy loss ratios and returns on capital.

I mean, I think the industry broadly averages like a 30 percent loss ratio. Right. So where you get into like auto and home, you're looking at like 70 percent loss ratios. and uh you also command higher agent commissions between like 30 and 40 percent um so they can kind of collect on that that's like triple the auto insurance market um so really attractive unit economics um but we're looking at like a six billion dollar market here in the us and i mean i don't think we're going to be looking at them expanding beyond the us anytime soon because there's so much kind of low-hanging fruit here but it should they choose to do it globally it's an absolutely enormous market and uh you know they just continue to strategically put capital to

work as they need to expanding gig but i think that's one of those places where they said yeah we've made some mistakes along the way um but it continues to be you know a profitable business with relatively healthy underwriting so um not not too much exciting going on on the insurance side right at this point a lot of the capital's kind of going into other opportunities uh like billboard acquisitions and, you know, fiber expansion and then the Yellowstone SPAC. And they've had their attention kind of busy in a lot of different, you know, a lot of irons in the fire, but not too much excitement on surety insurance, but a really healthy kind of core business for them. And also, you know, something that can allow them to collect, you know, an insurance

flow to be able to kind of invest some of that at relatively low overhead capital too. Yeah, and that should hopefully get easier and easier to do as a scale. That's kind of the advantage of the conglomerate. As everyone knows, whenever you bring up the insurance and the conglomerate, everyone makes the Berkshire Hathaway comparison. It's not exactly the same, but that part is fairly similar. Ryan, did you have any thoughts on insurance? No, I don't have much more color I can add than what Steve provided. I guess it was probably an area that they seemed less enthusiastic about deploying capital to.

um, as opposed to like their other opportunities. Yeah. And that that's been kind of the case, um, for the last couple of years too, right. They'll, they'll put, they'll, they'll deploy capital. Um, but I think there were so many ripe opportunities to expand, you know, a, into those other businesses, fiber and billboard acquisitions that, um, it's just one of those places where they've consciously put less capital to work than they have in other markets, but still a really huge ceiling for what they can accomplish there. And just collecting those policies and it remains kind of the challenge for them on the insurance side, but didn't focus as much, I think, on insurance during the meetings or didn't emphasize it as much anyway. They did have some

some feedback during that part of it. But yeah, they only talked about it maybe 10 minutes or so. Yeah. A lot of other stuff was more exciting. I guess maybe for reference, the only thing I had took away was they did share that they have about 40 million in assets at the insurance entity with about 45% of that in equities. I can give a reference maybe for people about the size of that. It's still a fairly small part of the business. And they also said they talked about the struggles to expand it, how it's still a good business, but they made a lot of mistakes, but they still believe that they're going to have some operating leverage when they scale, but it just might take longer than they thought. All right. Let's move on to the next one. What

is that? It's the, whatchamacallit, the outside investments, all the minority ones. Yeah. Ryan, do you want to talk about that? We can kind of, there's a few of them. Ryan, do you want to kick up anything you highlighted from that well this is the part where this is what surprised me is that it kind of shocked me the depth of their business and how they've grown to be much more than they used than they were even a year ago which was they had all these different minority investments and some of them it's not just like i think they have a public equity portfolio um that they it's not disclosed but steve tried to ask steve that was steve wanted to know what was in there. But I guess the things, they had several real estate investments, I think that are centered

in Vegas, if I'm not mistaken. So, I mean, that was kind of interesting and the way they're tying it together with the asset management firm that they've started, which I think has outside funding or has- They said it might. Okay. I mean, it's just showing that there are much more opportunities than deploying capital just in the businesses that we've already talked about. There's tons of opportunities out there. I don't know. There wasn't any huge takeaway for me. I guess they have the DreamFinder home stake, but that's a public company now. So you can kind of monitor that. Isn't there some rule that they're not, like if they cross a certain amount of money invested in the public equities, they

have to disclose what they are? Yeah. A hundred million is when they have to file a 13F. So So that's, and I kind of asked them because I watched that. I really want them to file a 13F so I can see what they invest in. You know, so far to date, you know, you look at their quarterly filings and the most color they'll give you is that their equity portfolio is primarily invested in mid to large cap stocks, right? So fine, you know, they're relatively conservative in their investing, but that was part of the reason that I asked them that question during the Q&A.

You know, I noticed, you know, they actually released the 10Q, the third quarter report while I was in the air and I was reading through it in the airport on the way there. And I noticed that their marketable equity securities line in that report, it stood at the end of third quarter, had a fair value of $80.3 million with a cost basis of $31.3 million, right? Which, okay, that's interesting because that's really different from their end of 2020 year figures, which if memory serves, the fair value of their equity securities were about 64 million with a cost basis about 68 million. And I was like, okay, so they're sitting on some modest losses on their equity portfolio. So it was like, where did that flip come from? It seems like the cost basis went down, but the fair value went way up.

And so I asked them, you know, kind of their perspective, not only on what's the current state of things, but also just how they think about putting their cash to work and equity securities. And that was my question, because I saw that. So they kind of indicated the big change in the cost basis column was as a result of 40 Act restrictions, right? And that's 40 is a 1940 act restrictions under which they were required to sell a huge chunk of their DreamFinders home stock right before they took it public. There were some 40 act restrictions that so they had to sell. So that was kind of the big changes in their equity securities line. And they kind of still they own a huge chunk of DreamFinders homes anyway, since it went public. But I think they had to sell it.

And then they bought back like another $25 million they allocated at the time of the IPO. So, yeah, some kind of fluctuations there. But, I mean, these guys were both money managers when they met, right? And they were working. You know, they know a thing or two about investing in the stock market and, you know, managing portfolios. And, of course, you know, Alex. One of them still has one, basically, right? Yes.

There's the Magnolia Fund, which is where they hold most of their shares of Boston Omaha stock, right? And that's Adam's kind of vehicle. So they kind of unwound, uh, Alex's Alex Buffett, Rosick. Remember he he's great. He's Warren Buffett's great grandnephew. And you can see, you mentioned earlier when they bring up the, it was inevitable. Someone always brings up the Berkshire comparison. You can see him wins a little bit like, ah, like it's, it's so apples to oranges. That's like, uh, I forgot the, the analogy he used comparing, um, the sizes of their business because it's just like they're a drop in an ocean compared to that. But someone asked him like, yeah, I know you guys build your business a similar way that Warren Buffett

does with Berkshire Hathaway. And Adam is like, Warren who? So of course, everybody chuckles at that. But yeah, I'd really love for their equity securities portfolio, marketable equity securities to go above 100 million because that's the trigger when you get to kind of see their portfolio and kind of see how they invest in and uh maybe see some of the more interesting companies that that maybe uh if it's not just a you know they hold a bunch of fang stocks and and a bunch of berkshire hathaway or something in their portfolio so uh yeah you can't tell i'm enthusiastic about that you think they'll sell it down to keep it below 100 million i don't think they would for the sake of not disclosing i don't think that's the goal just the 1940 act right that's yeah well

there's the 40 act restrictions that kind of forced them to sell certain positions prior to that dream finders IPO. And, and I think that's what he said. If memory serves, I had some light notes, but it's a bit complicated what they had to do. Yeah. I was trying to piece together that. Yeah. So I think it's only a matter of time as they have more money to put to work and stocks. It's going to be a, you know,

a fantastic sort of diversified place for them to just continue to generate shareholder value when they deem it fit, right? You know, first and foremost, Boston Omaha is a story of responsible capital allocation. And, you know, so they put money to work wherever they think it's the best value. And those values and the opportunities kind of fluctuate from quarter to quarter and month to month. And if they have cash and they think this is the best place to put it, that's what they'll do. So I like watching them kind of go to work because they are busy. Yeah. And any other thoughts on the minority investments like Crescent Bank, Logic, or what do they call it, Boston Omaha Asset Management? No, I think it's interesting to watch those minority investments kind of blow up, right? You mentioned, I think it was Logic that you mentioned was maybe their biggest return. Was that right?

Yeah. I have the note here. They said it's a tiny investment, but they have a 500% return on their stake in earnings already. So yes. And that's just an earnings that's going to continue to, to, to build. So I'm pretty impressive this early, you know, it's not like Boston Omaha is an old company where you could say 500% return over 20 years. Like that's, you know, it's something they've achieved over just a few pretty short years. And, uh, I, I think it's kind of fun to watch, you know, I remember thinking about that dream finders homes, what was it? A five, 7% stake or something like that. But then DreamFinders goes public and they pile even more money into it. And just looking at DreamFinders, whoops, what is it?

DFH? Yeah. I think is the ticker. You know, right now, market cap of $1.6 billion, right? And they did not put, you know, their return on DreamFinders is pretty healthy and growing. And so they're going to win with a lot of these minority stakes. uh not everyone's going to turn out like they'd hoped but you know you put a reasonably or a modest amount of capital to work uh and with a really really high ceiling and they have

opportunities that like we don't as individual investors i think that's important to know too right because you know if they were sitting at home and you know stock picking like i do for example you know there's a lot of opportunity there but they have access uh as people with a lot of capital that they can potentially put to work and lots of different avenues to raise capital if need be when the right opportunities pop up to generate outsized returns that smaller individual investors just simply can't. So that's kind of cool to watch. And that's part of the reason that it's a company that I can feel good about holding shares in is because they're so good at what they do. And they've proven over and over again that they're really,

really great deal makers and great capital allocators. Yeah, that's definitely the benefit. I think it was well with these minority investments is you can get exposure as an investor like us into these deals that you would never have a chance of doing. All right. I think that covers it for minority investments. And I think that's going to take us into the advertisement break. So let's hit that.

And then afterwards, we're going to talk Sky Harbor SPAC, which is exciting. Valuation, any worries and what we're excited about for them going forward. All right, let's hit the ad break. This episode is brought to you by La Quinta by Wyndham. Here you are miles from home and ready to start your vacation. Good thing you're staying at La Quinta by Wyndham. They have free high-speed Wi-Fi to stream all your favorite movies. And in the morning, get fresh waffles with their free bright side breakfast.

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To explore their thinking, visit reed.kpmg.us slash opportunities. All right, welcome back. We've covered the basics of Boston Omaha's business. Hopefully, everyone got a good overview and maybe some tidbits from the meeting. Next, we're going to hit the big exciting deal that they just did, which is the Sky Harbor SPAC. I guess I have the one to start off here. So I'll give some notes I took from the deal. If anyone's interested, they do have a big prospectus and they do have a website because it is a SPAC and it is a bit complicated.

But either way, just to kind of sum it up without going all through the intricacies, There's a SPAC that Boston Omaha sponsored. They're also investing. Okay, so they have the SPAC. The SPAC is doing a deal. I laugh because SPACs are always so complicated, but the SPAC is doing a deal with a company called Sky Harbor, which is an airplane private jet hangar startup, I guess. They're pretty early stage.

And then Boston Omaha itself is investing in that as well. So, Boston Omaha has exposure through being the sponsor of the SPAC, and they're also investing in Sky Harbor privately. So, overall, Boston Omaha is investing in Sky Harbor, and Sky Harbor is going public to help them fund it. But what is Sky Harbor? Steve, you can probably help us out here, but they are an airplane hangar. Not out of reach, but like… They buy the hangars. They buy the hangar, and they rent them out.

Yeah. And rich people store their plane there. They say they're sitting on about 1 million square feet of potential campuses or existing campuses. The prospectus that they do hasn't closed yet, and it's going to give them $160 million in financing. Part of that is bonds that are not going to come due for decades that are at 4.27%. They talk about that. They love the funding advantage that it has. They plan to raise the rents of these over time. They think pricing power of the hangers is going to be huge because with ultra rich clients, that's fairly easy since you're, you know, they're not really worried about pricing. Boston Omaha itself has invested $55 million into this business. And they said they're going to be invested in it no matter

what. I think that was a very important point because a lot of times with SPACs, you can kind of be, some guys can be, I guess, investors can be flaky for lack of a better word if they want and leave it. But Boston Omaha says they're guaranteed they're going to do this thing. And then the goal overall is to get to 20 hangars. I don't know if they have a date on that. I'm assuming it's within like four or five years. I hope that gave a good overview. It's a pretty early stage of business.

So we're going to see what it looks like over time. But Steve, did you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So Sky Harbor is really interesting. And at first it sort of surprises you, you know, they, they, they sort of broadly refer themselves as a private aviation infrastructure specialist, right? and um but but more specifically uh sky harbor wants to build a nationwide network of home basing solutions for business jets basically they realize that there's sort of this really

significant growth in um in business aviation and jets that people are purchasing but there was It's really not the infrastructure to store them, to manage them, to basically house these increasingly larger jets, too. Like the size of the jets is increasing, not only a higher number being purchased, but there are a lot of jets when they look at aerial photos of these airports that are just literally sitting outside, just on little side runways and stuff. And they don't want that to happen, especially with a lot of these nicer jets. And and so, you know, they secure land at key U.S. airfields and then they develop campuses of private hangars for business aviation and they generate recurring revenue by leasing those hangars and then managing the campuses and taking care of basically everything they need to for these jets. There's huge demand for this. And and, you know, in retrospect, you look back and be like, of course, this is the kind of business Boston Omaha is involved in because it's it seems so niche, but there's huge growing demand for it. Um, and so it was funny, I think one of the, uh, the, the sky Harbor, uh, founders, who's an old former fighter pilot, and he was walking around handing out, um, flyers for, for sky

Harbor and probably a good place to, you know, muster up some business, be like, this is what we're all about, but, uh, they seem pretty excited about it. And I think, um, the, the spec proceeds basically, um, provide, uh, in a planned bond issuance would be enough to finance the development of its first 20 locations, uh, that they already kind of have secured. And, um, they're targeting, I think, 50 locations to start. Um, so they have basically the SPAC will provide them, uh, enough capital to, to get those first 20 locations completed. And then they're targeting 50, but they say even then fit those first 50 locations, uh, represent under 2% of, uh, all of the countries, uh, NPA, NPIAS, uh, airfields.

Uh, so, I mean, uh, again, huge sky's the limit, right? If Matt was here, he'd kill me for that terrible pun, but, um, yeah, so, uh, it's, it's a big market and, uh, they can, they can kind of, you know, some first mover status, uh, for this really, really interesting company and an interesting place to put the money to work. So a lot of capital required again, but once it's there, recurring revenue, it's going to be fantastic. Yeah. I mean, it's like right up their alley. It's kind of like a Modi business, you know, there isn't, but it's a niche also niche. Yeah. My, I, there was a small part of me when I saw the SPAC deal or that presentation that they put out, that was like, that kind of

worried that it was like other SPACs where there were a lot of rosy projections because they only had one that was fully operational. But then, you know, there's so many SPACs out there that are like, we have one now, but we're going for 50, whatever basis. And so part of me was like that, but then that I saw they had the financing for it, I kind of got to know management, I guess, through that meeting, because they talked about them. And then they talked about the economics and kind of how moaty it can be. And I was like, all right, this is a deal I can get behind. Yeah.

And the best thing about this is it'll be a public company, right? So it'll be easier to track them. It's not like one of their internal businesses where you're going to take their word for it. We're going to see if they're going to make that progress. I'm sure it's not going to be overnight. This stuff's physical infrastructure. It's not like a software program, but-

Get more visibility. Yeah, definitely get more visibility on their funding, their burn rates, stuff like that. I think it's exciting. It's exciting for sure. I mean, Steve, you gave a better overview of the business. I always struggle to describe it, but it's not, I mean, it's more exciting than like billboards and stuff. And I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. It's a low bar. Right. Yeah. From a return standpoint, we'll see if that could be better, but either way, I think it's exciting what they're doing. Something that is interesting is that between the Sky Harbor DreamFinder homes

And if their public or their public equity investments cross 100 million, you're going to get a lot of visibility into where their assets are placed. And you're going to know how those businesses are doing beyond just Boston Omaha's commentary on it, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. And in this, we're going to talk about this in a minute, I think, when we when we touch on valuation, but it's hard to value. There's so many moving pieces, right? And we'll get there in a sec. But I think one of the things that people might be surprised by and pleasantly surprised by is as the sponsor, right? So it's Yellowstone Acquisition Company is the SPAC merger vehicle that Boston Omaha formed in order to then identify a target to merge with and then take it public that way. But as of, I think it was late July, maybe, when the SPAC, the merger was initially announced, they said, okay, we found a merger target at Sky Harbor. In their quarterly report there, they reminded investors that they basically had invested about $7.8 million, a little under $8 million, for 3.6 million common shares of Yellowstone, right? And 7.5 million warrants to buy the shares of the merger vehicle at $1,150 a piece, right? So once it reaches $1,150, they can execute those warrants.

I mean, above that, you can execute the warrants, right? But just the common shares and the warrants they have, if executed, would be worth over $100 million for a relatively modest upfront investment, basically for acting as a facilitator, a sponsor for the SPAC deal and bringing them public. um and that's uh that that also excludes i think um what did they say uh i need to to look back here uh 45 million dollar backstop uh basically they've they've insured assured that there'll be at least 150 million in cash and securities that go to sky harbor at closing right and uh then there's an 80 million dollar private activity bond finance those are the sources of the first 20 Um, but yeah, uh, $138 million of cash held in trust from Yellowstone, $55 million additional investment by Boston Omaha is what they're putting in there. Right. So, um, a hundred

million just for the money that they put in for the initial shares and warrants. And then they're pouring quite a bit more cash into this business. Uh, but it's going to be a pretty hefty stake, uh, you know, a hefty value. And I think a return on that value just for simply being a SPAC sponsor. And that's assuming that Sky Harbor doesn't turn out to, you know, if they execute on their growth story, it could be really, really, really interesting to see the stake that Boston Omaha holds as the owner of Yellowstone Acquisition Company. Yeah. Yeah. Over the next five years, it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. And that does kind of segue us into the valuation discussion. I'll give a bit of a overview here. We have market cap as we're

recording of about $852 million. So when Steve is saying, you know, north of a hundred million, that's a pretty sizable chunk of their market value. Let's kick things off with you though, Steve, how do you think about the valuation with Boston Omaha? I know you said it's complicated and you laugh, but what are your thoughts? So I've had some pretty interesting conversations with members at Seven Investing on our Discord forum about this. Cause they say, you know, how do you, you know, they're trading at this price to earnings ratio. I'm like, oh boy, that's, not going to be a very useful metric right now. And they say, well, what about book value? I'm like, well, that would be normally for a financial holding company. You go over to book value and

say, okay, it's trading at 1.2 times price to book. That's pretty attractive. I do that with Markel or something. You can say, wow, it's actually looking pretty good. Markel is another financial holding company that does something similar way, just larger than Boston Omaha, a lot smaller than Berkshire Hathaway. But the problem is, what metric do you use to try and figure out how to value Boston Omaha. And I don't think you can really focus on any one metric. Usually I'd say book value, but that's not the case because there's so many moving pieces and so many of what Adam Peterson joked during the Q&A portion when a fellow that we also had dinner with, Alex, one of our friends at the meeting asked him the question, well, what was

It was something to the effect of, oh yeah, what price or what metric would you use to determine to buy back Boston Omaha shares, right? So he asked that and they politely declined. They said, yeah, we're not going to tell you how we would determine because that opens up a whole other can of worms about people either following suit in sort of this self-defeating thing by telling people, yes, at this point, but there's so many moving parts. I hate, like, I feel like I'm beating around the bush because I don't think there's any easy way to value Boston Omaha right now. You can come up with this kind of sum of parts valuation,

which I think is sort of the way you do it, uh, to come up with a roundabout, uh, value for the business. But even then, um, you know, I think you change a couple inputs and your range of potential values can vary pretty widely. So coming up with the, you know, it's kind of like coming up with price targets for any, any other publicly traded stock, right? That's it's tricky. um so i think you'll spend a long time coming up with a maybe unreliable uh figure with a lot of the accounting i think that goes into their deals that's what's really complicating this is that they have warrants to account for and they have the spec that's about to go public and they have their dream finder stake and then they have uh you know a bunch of other um depreciation and

amortization uh and you know stuff for the billboard acquisitions that they're kind of riding off that way and and adam referred to those adam peterson the co-ceo co-chair referred to them with their cfo sitting in the front seat mind you uh front row rather he referred to them as accounting fictions and kind of glanced at him like it frustrates him because they seem to skew the business to the downside uh in the near term and um you know that's it's there's just a lot of uh warrants for this back transaction and dream finders i think they're currently being listed as liabilities i think that was another thing they mentioned um the warrants for sky harbor i believe are treated being treated as like a 35 million

liability on the balance sheet but they're actually worth like 65 million so that's 100 million dollar swing right there if you just take it at face value and look at their balance sheet So, um, yeah, it's hard. What do you guys think? I mean, some of the parts is probably, I guess the best solution. Yeah. I like billboards. I think it's pretty easy. They just give the reference about 12 million in cash for a month. You can probably put, I don't know, 200 million on that. That's very simple business. And to reference you, you talk about the depreciation. They said they have depreciated $41 million off their balance sheet so far. And the majority of that so far has been billboards over time.

going to be more fiber but that does show the billboards aren't getting 41 million like they're such a stable asset that the depreciation is definitely overstated um i think billboards fiber is more difficult you maybe could do something on a per customer comparing to what uh public companies trading at a trade at but that's also difficult because they do have the partnership to expand this really quickly so i'm not sure exactly the growth rate on that um dfh is easy to value you kind of just look at what it is valued at uh i think once the spac clears that'll clear things up about what that is worth yeah that'll be nice but besides that i think it's very tough because one thing is their crescent bank investment which they put 19 million dollars

in they said they earned six million dollars on that for their you know off their stake this year um in earnings i don't know if they got it but that was kind of their share of the pie It's hard to identify what that stake is worth without any insights into Crescent Bank's business. Was that like a one-time bump in earnings because they use car sales since Crescent Bank is exposed to that? I don't know. It's hard to value.

I think one thing to note, though, is they did say that they have the at-the-money offering always open and they have the buyback always available. So that kind of gives them a range. If they're buying back stock, that's probably telling you that they think that's undervalued. If they're doing the at-the-money offering, that's probably telling you they think they're above some sort of intrinsic value. I believe they did a tad of it when they were in the $38 to $40 range last quarter or earlier this year. I forget. But they have that open. I think that can give you a range, but even that, it's a wide range. It's more of a bet

on management, but you can kind of sum it up. Rough ranges of what everything's worth. But even with the at-the-money offering, we saw this when... So someone at the meeting asked a question like, you did an offering at a price that was lower than the stock price. I didn't like that. And it's like, it depends what they can invest, what return they can get with that money. If they see a huge opportunity in fiber and they think, well, we should just raise money. And it's kind of like, it's hard to just say it's above intrinsic value if they do an at the money offering, because if they do that at the money offering, because they think it's a great time to invest, then it might not be necessarily above their estimated value.

And if insurance value is going to grow at hopefully 15% a year, which I think they said is some sort of rough target they go after. They said that's a good target. Someone asked them like, how are you going to achieve 15% per year? He's like, well, like, I don't know where we, you know, 15% per year. Yeah. That seems like a reasonable target to hit. I think that's not out of the, out of the question. So, yeah, I would say definitely don't just look at book value. I mean, I think we can say that for sure. Like that can just, especially right now with the SPAC, it can be misleading. And in general, it can be misleading, especially with all the depreciation they do. I mean, with billboard and fiber being so big, but both those businesses

have so much depreciation. It's, it's going to really understate that cashflow is probably a good one though. I think if you look at the billboard and fiber, how much cash those are generating that can be pretty easy to look at it's tough but having it be so difficult the value is kind of an opportunity sure since you can't just screen for it yeah i mean when you get like knee knee-jerk reactions from algorithmic buyers and sellers like when you have high frequency trading firms that are diving into these like sometimes you get some really wild uh yeah kind of runs in boston omaha's shares right where it it's just the last couple of months has been really interesting to watch happen. And I think this is sort of as the market kind of catches up

to the reality of the value of the shares is that you have institutional buyers kind of, you know, gradually stepping in and adding to their stakes. And I think one of the solutions as an investor is to try not to get too caught up in finding a per, you know, in perfectly measuring the value of the consolidated business, right? This is the kind of business that I don't mind just continuously adding to my stake over time, especially, you know, if I see kind of an unusual plunge or, uh, you're just dollar cost average your way. And I don't worry too much about it. And I kind of, I hesitate to use the phrase, but I have a lot of faith in management that they're going to be making moves that are in both their best interest and the interest of

their shareholders, because pretty much most of their personal wealth is tied up in this business and they are in it for the longterm. This is something that they're looking at. You know, they're thinking about what they want this business to be 20 or 30 years from now. And, uh, and this is, this is one of those companies where I think, you know, it'll, it'll almost feel silly in a decade to look back and be like, wow, I was really, I was really tied up about whether to buy at 25 or 30, you know, with, with shares sitting at 600 or something. Um, you know, I think it becomes one of those, uh, one of those businesses that just steadily increases its value. The actual book value of the business, the intrinsic value

of the business is what I was trying to say. Over time, I think just continues to steadily climb as they take advantage of these opportunities to put their capital to work. Yeah. And now we have been pretty bullish. So we should disclose that as we were at the shareholder meeting, we were all shareholders. So you should know that we're definitely biased towards them. However, we should talk about any sort of worries we might have. What's the biggest worry you have with the company right now? We'll start with Ryan. I'm going to steal mine from one of the other shareholders that was at the meeting. And I guess they've kind of overcome this shareholder concern for me, which is like, once you go to the meeting, you really notice that

like this, this is a bet on Adam and Alex, and it's a bet that they are able to create deals from here on out because I mean, yeah, you could just look at the businesses that are already under their umbrella, but really it's, what are they going to do with the capital that they get from those? And so the big concern that this other shareholder express was for a small holding company like this, a huge problem is, are they going to get the deal flow to be able to make opportunities like that and my worries were kind of quelled at the meeting which was i i think they have uh it's kind of the charisma and the capital and the network to be able to keep making deals happen um and so i guess that was my biggest concern but it was it was it's interesting how

they stumbled across these deals too right you know i was in the the lobby of the hotel talking one of their old college friends and he's like oh yeah i run a uh i won't give too many details about that but he was telling me how he introduced them just casually years ago to the ceo of one of the companies that they own a minority stake in and uh it's just sort of how that happens it's like oh hey meet this guy and they say hey maybe we could do business i really like what you do and and i think uh that's part of what's sort of refreshing about the way they do businesses is it seems like they just, they, they kind of let deals happen and it's not like they're making deals because they're desperate for somewhere to put money to work. I think it just happens.

And they've got the, these things, um, you know, given what they do, you know, sometimes you might be approached, uh, you know, I think at a certain point, these deals start to happen because people come to you and ask and let you, you don't have to swing at any pitch if you don't want to, that's to borrow something from uncle warren right uh you don't have to swing you know at any pitch and um at a certain point i think you're gonna have um people kind of taking notice that they are astute deal makers and say i've got a deal for you and they can say yes or no and uh you know markel tom gainer is the uh co-ceo and chief investment officer of markel and he said you know we're in a unique point a couple of years ago he's where people approach us with deals and

sometimes they're very good deals. I think they bought an ornamental plant company that way. And people say, would you like to buy our business? And you kind of become this sort of preferred buyer for a lot of these companies that are looking for a permanent home. And yeah, that's to segue into what we were talking about. Our biggest worry is, for me, maybe it's that key man risk what happens uh you know if something happens to adam or alex right there there's sort of this uh you hate to beat the comparison to death but the the warren buffett and charlie munger uh combination uh and uh it would be really unfortunate if if uh if if either of them were to choose to leave or you know something happened health-wise or something uh that would be that'd

pretty bad, but I think that's maybe my biggest worry. I really, really trust what this company's doing. And I think they, they're very methodical and logical about the way they do business and the way they put capital to work. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I, I know we've already made the comparison too many times, but it's like, I would not have wanted to own some textile mill. Uh, if, if it were just a textile mill, right. People own that because Warren was in charge, or Warren was taking care of their capital. It's like, I don't know how excited I'd be. I mean, I do like the businesses that are under Buss and Omaha's umbrella, but I don't know. They're a little bit better than textiles.

I don't know. I'd be clamoring for it for just a billboard business or clamoring for just a plain old fiber business. I mean, they are good businesses, but it wouldn't have piqued my interest as much as their shareholder letters do. Yeah, for sure. I'd say going off of that key man risk the only thing i worry about is the way they own the company um so if for anyone that doesn't know it's a bit complicated i think i forget the names i forget who is who but uh maybe they have the name on here magnolia magnolia fund uh or sorry magnolia group is where and correct me if i'm wrong here is it's alex right no it's adam that owns it through that right steve adam yeah well yeah so it it is it's both of their like holdings are in that okay um and the i can't

remember the structure exactly but yeah magnolia holdings i think was originally adams uh sort of fund um yeah and uh yeah they they i think alex had one as well but i believe they like transferred the shares over so they're all kind of in one place so if you look at institutional holdings you'll see like wow what's this company that owns you know 80 or 40 you know i can't remember what the percentage is uh and that's that's magnolia and that's because they own so much of it but yeah when with that you know again it would be a bit cleaner if it was through the fund and i don't think it's a big deal and i'm not uh i don't think i'm trying to read the tea leaves too hard here but i did look at their last 13f and they did sell a bit of the bostonoma of bostonoma in that

that was a bit of a concern they never done that before i'm sure it's fine uh that doesn't seem like they have anything but i don't know i'll just be watching the magnolia fund 13f to see what they do i don't think it's a giant concern but that's something i'm watching out for just because it's not as clean of an ownership stake i wonder i also worry about the magnolia fund also owns things that aren't boston omaha so i worry sometimes where their time's focused but I don't think it's a giant concern. Yeah. I think Boulderado holdings or something was the other one.

I think there might still be a chunk of shares held over there too. So if you look, look at their institutional investments and you'll see it pretty evident, which one's there. So, yeah, I guess the other only slight concern that I'd have, and maybe this is my own problem,

not a problem for the company is the complexity of some of the deals and the accounting might lead to me missing something that could be important or uh, or some sort of risk, I guess. Sure. I just don't have a complete understanding for all of them, but yeah, that's where you gotta, yeah. Trust the management. All right. Let's not go too long. Let's wrap things up. What part of the business are you most excited for? It says it's my turn on this one. I, this is a tough one, but I think I'm going to choose fiber. Um, I think that's maybe Ryan's too, but we'll, uh, we'll go with Steve. What's your favorite part of the boston omaha business oh man um you know it's funny but i i think maybe the the most intriguing

piece of boston omaha right now might be um might be the sky harbor deal um yeah both due to a combination of the the the favorable terms they've gotten to own a chunk of this business like And so often we talk about investing in SPAC companies that were, you know, born out of a SPAC transaction, right? A SPAC merger. And seldom do we talk about investing in the actual sponsor of that SPAC transaction. And one of the risks that I talk about when I'm at 7investing and I pick a company that was a SPAC merger is one of my recommendations. One of the risks I talk about is how much of the company did they give away to the sponsor of the SPAC? because it's not a, you know, it's not a free lunch. Right. And, um, so, uh, to be on the

other side of that and say, well, how much of this company did Boston Omaha get? Uh, and, and they're generally pretty favorable terms. So I'm excited about just the fact that they put this capital to work. And, uh, if spy sky Harbor then succeeds, uh, it just gets even better from there for Boston Omaha. So I think maybe that's my, my most exciting, but there's, there's work to be done to prove that they can execute. That's the big risk there is execution risk for Sky Harbor after that. Right. Ryan, what was your favorite? I'm going to go with Sky Harbor also. I think part of the reason I like it is that you're going to get a lot of visibility since they'll be a public company. And so it'll be really easy to track their progress. And it's more fun.

It is more fun. It's a little, I would also characterize it as a little more fun than fiber. Fiber is great though. I wish I had it. Yeah. And their growth plans are ambitious. So you can kind of hold them to that and see like, are they going to meet those metrics that they put out? And I guess we'll see here in the next few years. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going to do it. Steve, thank you for joining us today. Where can people find you? You mentioned 7investing. People that know the show know that we have the promo relationship, so they probably heard us talk about it before. But what do you do there? What's your kind of niche at 7investing? Yeah, 7investing. We pick stocks, right? We provide seven stock recommendations every

single month. We write up detailed reports on them. And then we also pick, we call them our best buys from all of our old recommendations. We tell you which of our old recs that we like the most every month and pretty fun service, provide company updates. So the price for seven investing is 49 bucks a month or 399 a year. And that's what we do. We make recommendations and then we track their performance. So it's long-term stuff. It's not anything that you're going to be focusing on day trading like, okay, buy this stock this week and sell it three weeks later. That's not how we work. We try and generate outsized returns over periods of years. And that's served me pretty well so far. So I love our team. And 7investing.com is where you find us.

All right. Yeah. Great collection of research reports. Maybe north of 100 now. I think definitely north of 100. Yeah. I think we've got 140 maybe on the scorecard now. But yeah. If you go on there and you can't find something you like, I mean, you're just, you got to wind your horizons there. All right. That's going to do it for this episode. Thank you all for listening. Remember, we are not financial advisors. Anything we say on the show is not formal advice or recommendation. Ryan and I are general partners at Arch Capital. Arch Capital clients may hold securities discussed in this podcast. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.

don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life you know the same way you can skip an ad i get it i'm siaya and i live in ice cove i've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow, things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.