Hacker News Reader

Comment by mfringel | Hacker News Reader

Looking at most of the auctions, this looks like: "these are the deals that don't make the hurdle rate of the typical buyers, so let's make some money selling them to the dentists who like the idea of owning a song and won't look too hard at the return."

I'd love to be wrong, but I'm not seeing a good alternate explanation.

View on HN

I think this is great and not often looked way to diversity. They are selling at 20X annual earnings (or 5% annual returns) and have track record of producing earnings for over 100 years. Additionally, royalty is brand dependent (it seems), not whether Listerine actually uses formula. Also, this is regular consumable that is unlikely to get displaced anytime soon. The best thing about it is that it is inflation protected. Not a bad deal to diversity in low-risk, low-return zone.

I thought the medical consensus these days is aligning on mouthwash being actively harmful? Kills good bacteria in your mouth, increases risk of oral cancer, etc.

You're thinking of mouthwash with ethanol alcohol.

Listerine is 21% to 26% ethanol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listerine

Personally, too weak for me; I gargle with moonshine.

if you're worried, you just need to buy a non-alcohol non-chlorhexidine based one. Listerine offers it too.

https://www.listerine.com/mouthwash/listerine-zero

This may be medical disinfo. Listerine was long considered a great remedy and preventative care against flus and colds for a long time. This was lobbied against, they were sued and the ftc made them stop advertising as such.

Why would a mouthwash be effective against a virus in your nose?

Using alcoholic mouthwash is bad for the same reason taking antibiotics is - and you may actually want to take oral probiotics for the same reason the ones you eat are healthy. Though I don't know the current state of evidence for them.

"Disinfo" by who, exactly?

Mouthwash is a very American phenomenon though, AFAIK it's not used as commonly anywhere else in the world. Which suggests at least part of its American popularity is due to marketing.

I'm not in America and I use it twice a day, non alcoholic one though. Dentists have all told me it's good to use. is it not!?

My dentist has told me it's useless.

I can get a 4.5% cap rate on real estate in a hot market like Los Angeles. I can get a 50% loan on the property as well. The property will likely appreciate on the backend and when it's time to sell I can 1031 exchange in to another property or do an opportunity zone to defer taxes. I can get a conventional loan from a bank against that property if I ever need to pull dollars out.

A 5% return royalty is largely illiquid, can not likely be collateralized at a low interest rate, has limited ability to appreciate in value, etc. etc.

I don't see it as that valuable...especially with the decline of major CPG brands. The remaining risk with this investment is completely unknown to me.

Considering the volatility in the housing market, and the growing populous demand for affordable housing I think you’re valuing real estate extravagantly.

>> and the growing populous demand for affordable housing

Not unless you expect a communist revolution in the next ten years

No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Maybe not a full-blown communist revolution but I expect the rules surrounding residential investment properties to change. Whether that's rent control, eviction moratoriums, increased taxes, or whatever other concessions populists will make. There's considerable regulatory risk going forward.

The worst thing about earning money is the stage where no you longer spend based on reason, but instead based on capital potential. The housing bubble has been building and building and building flames fumed by apparent risk-free-Xing your net worth.

Its a house of cards. When you have 20 properties, you are 20x'ing your risk of getting the lemon. My uncle started down this path 30 years ago and eventually got royally screwed. Its a chain, this choice of investment chains you to a wage.

Genuine question, what happened to your uncle? Was he screwed in the 2007/8 crash? A close family member of mine was nearly bankrupted when the banks tightened lending policy.

I'm not referring to housing--although I think it's anyone's guess what happens to housing. Bonds are currently dead as an asset class and people see RE as an inflation hedge. I do see an upper limit to what individuals can afford and we're beyond that.

The only two groups I'm interested in as tenants are low income housing and corporate tenants. That's why I'm in industrial real estate.

Either way, this royalty agreement by comparison does not look like a good investment. The illiquidity of it means I need much higher returns IMO.

Isn't the current admin trying to stop 1031 exchanges?

idk about the remaining risk, but there's definitely a kind of conservative investor who would be happy for a 6.5% return from a forever holding; also there's no reason to think you couldn't auction it for higher later. (Say, a decade from now when interest rates start falling again). It's a bad time to buy this thing, maybe... if you think you'll fetch higher returns next year. I'm a fan of tobacco, (don't shoot me, I'm a chain smoker, it's my future health plan), but it's just another thing people buy without thinking about what it costs. A lot of people are looking for stability versus maximizing growth. This always gets a bad rap - people think I'm insane for keeping almost all my portfolio in utilities and basic necessary goods. I'm 10% in tech and 10% in retail... the rest is utilities, commodities, real estate, and whatever kicks out at least 4% annual dividends. I'm in my early 40s, and have followed this strategy since my 20s. Could I be richer if I were more aggressive... probably. Although giving my track record in Vegas, maybe not. But I don't try to time the market, I basically never sell anything. I drip dividends and accumulate. I never got struck it rich on a hot ticket but I worked $100k saved in my 20s up to $1m or so now, rotating and seeking dividends.

What I'm trying to say is that for some people, the marginal cost of risk - even from real estate - is worth a few points on a "sure thing". A sure thing is hard to find.

For a $1M property, a 4.5% cap rate would be $45,000 in net operating income (after all expenses).

At least for residential property, you'd be lucky to get $45,000 in gross income on a $1M property in Los Angelas.

Are you talking commercial property?

Yes, I'm talking commercial.

If I’m understanding correctly it’s a “flat rate royalty”, ie: not 5% or 0.5% or whatever but rather is specified in a fixed “$ per units sold”.

It doesn’t seem like it rises with inflation, so it’s value in real terms will decline over time if Listerine’s sales volume remains constant.

This will be particularly noticeable during periods of high inflation, which is probably why it’s on the market right now!

This sounds like it involves a lot of labor and transaction fees, and perhaps some liability. What would be the returns if I paid someone to do all that?

I do commercial (specifically industrial) so there's not that much labor. With NNN leases you shift most of the burden to the tenant. The big issue is, of course, the creditworthiness of the tenant.

The royalty is actually a fixed dollar amount per X weight of product sold - so not inflation protected.

Is it? The finalized says ten per cent of gross apparently.

Surely they sell more that $1.14m worldwide per year

True, though this is an unspecified fraction of the royalties.

Since this has been a thing since the 1800s, wouldn't it be paying out pennies per ton at this point? There has been a lot of inflation in the last 150 years.

I’m looking at this and thinking about how to model the cost of having creating a massive increase in the number of plays of one of these songs and the resulting Roi

Make it viral on TikTok

it's a market. of course the unsold inventory is stuff people didn't want to buy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com