Mr. Thomas: Texas Pacific Land Trust was created in 1888 due to the bankruptcy of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company. The railroad had sold bonds and pledged the land it earned under the Land Grant system to get money to build the railroad, and therefore the bondholders had a security interest in the land. The bankruptcy trustee gave the land to the bondholders, who converted the bonds to stock and placed the shares on the New York Stock Exchange. There was a reorganization of the New York Stock Exchange in 1888 and Texas Pacific Land Trust was placed as the number three company that year. It still exists there today. The ticker symbol of Texas Pacific is TPL. The Trust indenture provides that the Trust have three trustees who are elected for life or until they resign. The Trustees hire a general agent to operate the Trust for them. The 1888 Trust indenture has never been changed. The land that came into the Trust was approximately 3 million acres in 1888. At present the Trust owns just over 1 million acres of land. The purpose of the Trust was to liquidate the lands. The Trust is a passive seller of land. Land is sold when it gets right for selling for a good price, but it's not advertised or offered through brokerages. The Trust manages the land, collects oil and gas royalties from the properties. The proceeds from sales of land and from income that's produced from the land are used by the Trust to buy its own shares and retire them. The Trust pays a small dividend each year but the main objective is to buy and retire its own shares. By doing this each person owning a share of Texas Pacific gets a larger piece of the pie each year.
Tickers included in this excerpt: TPL
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.