Boston Omaha (NASDAQ: BOMN) announced full-year 2017 results late Friday, highlighting the small financial holding company’s early efforts to lay a strong foundation for the sustained, long-term creation of shareholder value.
With the stock up modestly on Monday in response, let’s take a closer look at what Boston Omaha had to say and what investors should expect going forward.
Continue Reading Below
Boston Omaha results: The raw numbers
| Metric |
2017 |
2016 |
Year-Over-Year Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Revenue |
$9.014 million |
$3.844 million |
134.5% |
|
GAAP net income (loss) attributable to common shareholders |
($6.468 million) |
($3.173 million) |
N/A |
|
GAAP earnings (loss) per share |
($0.60) |
($0.53) |
N/A |
What happened with Boston Omaha in 2017?
- Book value per share was $10.25 as of Dec. 31, 2017, up 13.6% from $9.02 at the end of 2016. This increase was driven entirely by stock issued at a premium to book value, which more than offset Boston Omaha’s reported losses.
- Revenue included the following: $5.266 million from billboard rentals, or growth of 180% year over year. $2.032 million from premiums earned, up 12-fold from just under $156,000 in 2016. $1.586 million from insurance premiums, or growth of 213% year over year. $130,802 from investments and other income, up from just under $17,000 in 2016.
- $5.266 million from billboard rentals, or growth of 180% year over year.
- $2.032 million from premiums earned, up 12-fold from just under $156,000 in 2016.
- $1.586 million from insurance premiums, or growth of 213% year over year.
- $130,802 from investments and other income, up from just under $17,000 in 2016.
- As of the end of 2017, Boston Omaha had no debt and $153.5 million in total assets. Roughly 41% of those assets are invested primarily in acquired businesses, with the remaining 59% held as cash as a result of its public offering in mid 2017.
- Cash and short-term investments have since increased to $178 million. This includes $76.9 million received from the first round of Boston Omaha’s recently announced $150 million private placement of Class A common stock, as well as $11.2 million from the sale of Class A common stock in a recent shelf offering.
- Link Media currently operates 479 billboard structures — up from zero in 2015 — offering 864 advertising faces in four states. Boston Omaha has invested roughly $36 million in Link Media since 2015.
- General Indemnity Group (GIG) currently writes over $12 million of surety insurance premium annually. But Boston Omaha only reports the roughly $2 million underwritten by GIG last year, as well as the $1.6 million in commissions its agents earned after sending much of that premium to other insurance companies.
- At the end of 2017, Boston Omaha had invested capital of roughly $11 million toward a number of minority investments, most notably including $10 million for just under 5% of private residential homebuilder Dream Finders Homes (DFH) at the end of 2016. BOMN also acquired a 30% stake in Nevada-based Logic Real Estate Companies for $360,000
What management had to say
Advertisement
In Boston Omaha’s third annual letter to shareholders — which is most certainly worth a read — management offered perspective on the company’s current lack of profitability, writing the following:
Management also reminded investors that they have effectively transformed over the past three years from a small public real estate company with only a single asset to a NASDAQ-listed business “with a large liquid balance sheet to deploy into cash-producing assets and growing business interests in outdoor advertising, insurance, homebuilding, and real estate service industries.”
“More importantly,” they insisted, “Boston Omaha continues to operate with a long-term perspective and a rock-solid balance sheet.”
Looking forward
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Boston Omaha didn’t provide specific financial guidance — nor should it in these early stages of its long-term growth story.
“You are more likely to see Shoeless Joe Jackson play baseball with Kevin Costner than to catch us making quarterly or annual earnings forecasts,” they added.
Rather, Boston Omaha opted to reiterate its “general decision-making framework.” That framework includes goals for ensuring that employee incentives and directors’ stakes improve alignment of their interests with shareholders, decentralizing their operations to allow “the right” managers to excel, and maintaining a long-term focus on enduring businesses “that will send a lot of cash to the parent company.” (“The more the better.”)
In the end, for shareholders who can look past Boston Omaha’s near-term losses to focus instead on the much larger business it plans to become, there was nothing not to love about this report. And I’m excited to see what the future holds.
10 stocks we like better than Boston Omaha CorporationWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now… and Boston Omaha Corporation wasn’t one of them! That’s right — they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
Click here to learn about these picks!
*Stock Advisor returns as of April 2, 2018
Steve Symington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Boston Omaha. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
