Value Hides In Plain Sight: Understanding Hidden Assets And How To Find Them 02/12/2019

Since I was a kid, I’ve heard my father tell a story about his daily commute to work. Every morning, he’ d walk by Tiffany & Co.’s flagship store on Fifth Ave and 57th Street. He knew investors were attracted to the company’ s strong brand, but were they getting the whole story? In particular, my father wondered whether Tiffany owned it’s iconic Manhattan property. His curiosity finally got the better of him, leading him to dig into the company’ s filings. That task took a bit more legwork in the 1970s than in today’ s digital world, but he finally discovered that yes, the company did own the building. In fact, the company’s real estate was worth more than its entire market capitalization. At The Boyar Value Group, we refer to certain assets such as buildings as “hidden assets” as they can be understated, obscured or even missing from a company’ s balance sheet due to generally accepted accounting principles. In this article, we discuss two publicly traded companies that currently have “hidden assets”.