Most of my large stock positions are tried-and-true large-cap companies, but there is one big exception. The third-largest stock holding in my portfolio is young small-cap conglomerate Boston Omaha (BOC -1.30%). In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on Aug. 9, Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, tells viewers why he's so excited about it.
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Matt Frankel: Diva asks about one of my favorite stocks, Boston Omaha. "Boston Omaha, is this stock recommended by The Motley Fool? Matt, do you start at a small position to increase or not?" Well, the short answer to the first part is, it's recommended by some services. I know that because I'm the one who did the write-up for them. Boston Omaha is a Motley Fool recommendation in certain services, not in others. Do your own due diligence on that if it's not recommended by a service that you are familiar with, make sure it's an appropriate stock for you.
It's one of my largest stock positions, I believe it's No. 3 in my portfolio right now, so a big stock position for me. I like what they are doing, we've been talking about Berkshire Hathaway all show long. I like that they are trying to essentially do that from scratch. They use a lot of Berkshire's rules for building a successful conglomerate. They own some fully owned businesses that they like to grow through bolt-on acquisitions and value-add rather than buying a giant business at once. Their billboard business, for example, they'll buy 50 or 100 billboards at a time and add it up over time which can be a more economical way to grow a business than to just acquire a giant portfolio.
They're willing to buy non-controlling stakes in businesses, which is one thing Berkshire has really done for 50 years very well and a lot of other conglomerates have not. This is how they have the stock portfolio for example, this is where Boston Omaha's minority investment in Dream Finders Homes, which has been a 10 bagger for the company really came from.
I like how they're really taking a 21st-century approach. We recently saw that Boston Omaha started their own SPAC back in October. We recently saw that that has now found its target. There aren't really any ways for investors to get on the sponsorship side of the SPAC business other than Boston Omaha, and that hopefully we'll pay off nicely for investors.
They're really thinking outside of the box to build a conglomerate, they're using the Berkshire method of asset-light businesses like in their billboard portfolio instead of focusing on digital, which are high-cost and high-maintenance billboards, they are focusing on the analog, just really low cost to capital, great steady recurring income, predictable. Their broadband business has over 85% gross profit margin because once they've installed the infrastructure, there's really not much they have to do. It's just a really great approach and so far the results have been successful.
I don't see them necessarily being the next Berkshire Hathaway in terms of building a half-trillion-dollar conglomerate from nothing. But I can definitely see them being successful at what they do and they don't need to build a half trillion dollar conglomerate to deliver great returns for investors. But I could see them growing to many times their current size over the next few years.
