I’m confused as to why they prattle on about inflation at all. Complete joke of a measure. Just allows governments to skullfuck poor people by not adjusting welfare rates ever. House prices up 20% since last year? Nah not inflation losers, go buy some bread and water.
The CEO, Ellen Gordon is 89 years old and earns roughly $5 million in total compensation per year. Tootsie Roll has a dual class share structure, where Class B shares are entitled to 10 times the votes that a Class A share is entitled to. Gordon owns or controls 83% of those shares (as well as 57% of the regular shares), giving her 80% of the voting rights. Which means that there’s basically no mechanism to replace her or make any changes to the company.
And why might you expect there to be changes? Because it’s a garbage company with garbage products that performs terribly financially. Over the last 5 years, they’ve generated <10% ROE and not grown their revenues at all, despite retaining more than half their earnings:
Basically, this company should be trading right around book value (because it earns roughly 8% on its book value, which means investors shouldn’t be willing to pay a premium above that book value). But instead, it’s trading at more than 3 times book and an unfathomable P/E ratio of more than 40.
It is a completely overpriced garbage company and has been for years, and the only reason that price hasn’t been corrected is because of Gordon’s ownership.
Junior Mints and Andes are basically the only things on that illustration that can be defended.
Imagine having a product line so terrible that fucking DOTS are featured prominently on your annual report.
[Every year in the first class after Halloween, I use Tootsie Roll as the example company and I end up ranting about how terrible their candy is and how terrible their financial performance is, and the students can’t really tell if I’m just being funny or if I’m seriously unhinged, and quite frankly I’m not sure either.]
Those candies suck. Junior Mints and Andes only look good because they’re surrounded by crap. I can think of 25 candies I’d grab first as a kid than any of those.
Private equity - fuck these guys so hard. Hey let’s take a brand name like Hertz that still has some cache, and absolutely squeeze every last drop of blood out of it by preying on our customers with bogus $400 cleaning fees.