Thérèse Byars: Next is Charlie Munger recently celebrated his 99th birthday this January. Unlike Warren Buffett’s permanent capital vehicle, Berkshire, FRMO has not explicated plans for any type of succession. While I’m sure all FRMO shareholders and Horizon clients would wish for current management to remain at the helm of capital allocation for as long as possible. And I recall that in past meetings, management has stated they have no intent on retiring. Could management detail what they see as the most likely outcome for FRMO shareholders once Mr. Stahl and Mr. Bregman are no longer running the show, any succession plans regarding FRMO management?
Steven Bregman: Well, let’s just say this, there are people who could probably do it. Talk to a variety of people that are not FRMO employees right now, but I’m sure they’d be interested in doing it. So it would be someone or some persons, they’re currently active in the investment management realm and obviously going to be younger than us and we want them be active investment management realm. Why don’t we want to make them employees of Horizon or something? Because we want to see what they would do unconstrained by us. So if there were our employees, whether we give them total freedom or not even implicitly. They’re going to be operating on our constraints. We don’t know what they’re going to do. They got to be running their own show.
So maybe a way to do it is they’re running their own show, they’re doing whatever they’re doing. Maybe when the time came, we would take a FRMO merged with whatever their enterprises. Now they’re going to run the show and they’d be unconstrained by us. Other than the fact that we respect what they’re doing but they’re different people and maybe that’s the way it should be. So that’s the way I see it happening. So have people in mind. But they have to be at least 20 years younger than us, maybe more if we can get that. So maybe 25 even, we can achieve that. But then on the other hand, we’re not going to let any 25-year-old young people do it because number one, they’re not seasoned. Number two, we don’t have the experience of seeing them operate in the variety of unpleasant investment environments that happen from time-to-time.
So anybody we’d even consider would’ve to be someone that has, so to speak, they’re battle scars. So that be somebody that’s been around for at least 20 years in the business. So that’s basically the plan.
Thérèse Byars: In the previous earnings call management mentioned that Horizon Kinetics was continually buying shares of FRMO. Could management give some detail on the valuation model that they use to look at FRMO to decide when to buy back share?
Murray Stahl: Well, let’s put it this way. Other than restricted periods, we’re always buying back shares. So we filed one of these programs where we’re able to buy back shares every day. So we don’t have a model that we’ll buy back shares in month one, but then the stock went up and we’re not going to buy it. We’re not buying back shares at that month due. We’re constantly buying back shares. I myself, personally buy a small number of shares to supplement. What Horizon does right now it’s on the restricted list, so I can’t buy it. I think a day or two after this phone call, it comes off to restrict list and I will assure you, I will commence bank. So, but we don’t have a model and we don’t really need a model. And the reason we don’t really need it because FRMO is a company with a lot of optionality and it’s very hard to have a model to embrace that.
