A Dollar for 47 Cents

The Deeply Discounted Holding Company Hiding Gold and NAV Arbitrage

How would you like to buy a dollar for $0.47?

Now how would you like to buy a dollar for $0.47 and the underlying value of this dollar is backed by some sort of real asset?

And this real asset is trading at $0.50 on the dollar?

That is the situation that I am writing up today.

This company trades at a discount to its reported net asset value (NAV), but the reported NAV itself is likely understated.

That’s because two of its key holdings are trading at approximately 40% discounts to their own NAVs.

It’s a layered value play—cheap stocks embedded within an already discounted stock.

One of the most interesting parts about this investment is that one of their holdings owns a significant amount of gold miners.

This underlying is up 78% YTD and the parent company I am writing about is down 9.5% YTD.

If you guys have followed my X account, you know how bullish I am on physical metals in an inflationary environment.

You're essentially getting a double discount—owning a company trading below its cash and investment securities, while those securities themselves trade below the NAV of the underlying gold. It's a free play within a free play.

Winmill & Co. $WNMLA has a market cap of $5.4 million. The balance sheet consists of $1.5 million of cash and $11.1 million of investment securities. If the stock trades up to the value of cash and investment securities, the upside would be 135%.

There are no substantial liabilities or a large operating cash burn. In 2024, the company generated $846k of cash from operations. Backing out of the realized gains on investment securities, the company lost $177k of EBIT.

The biggest red flag is that the company is controlled by the Winmill family through class b super voting shares. The Winmill family also owns a good portion of the A shares as well. Oh, and did I mention, the Winmill family controls all of of the investment vehicles that Winmill owns and operates? The situation is a weird cross holding with significant related party transactions and would take a significant amount of research to understand how everything flows.

However, the company is trading substantially below net cash and investment securities. And that makes the situation worthwhile to dig into.

Here are the assets that we are dealing with:

Investment Securities ($11.1 million total):

• $2.7 million in Bexil Investment Trust $BXSY

• $5.1 million in Bexil Corporation $BXLC

• $398k in Tuxis Corporation $TUXS

• $1.9 million in Foxby Corp $FXBY

• $883k in Global Self Storage SELF 0.00%↑

Funds Operated and Managed:

• Midas Discover ($MIDSX): $24.2 million AUM

• Midas Special Opportunities ($MISEX): $20.0 million AUM

• Foxby Corp. ($FXBY): $14.3 million AUM

Valuing the investment securities is easy. Those are all publicly traded companies and we get a valuation mark every second of the day that the markets are open.

There are a few interesting things to point out about the investment securities:

1. Bexil Investment Trust is a closed end management company with $268 million of total net assets. The portfolio manager is Thomas Winmill. The expense fee is 1.61% and the dividend yield is 7.62%. The fund trades on the OTC and no investor can buy over a 4.99% stake unless they get board authorization. The most interesting part is that the fund is trading at a 36% discount to NAV. The fact sheet on the fund can be found here.

2. Bexil Corporation has a market cap of $25.9 million and $24.7 million of net cash on the balance sheet. The book value is $27 million. Operating earnings have been growing for almost a decade and were at $945k in 2024.

3. Tuxis Corp. is trading on the expert market. The last time the company filed their annual report was in 2022. At the last filing it was a real estate development company. With a $1.50 stock price the market cap is $1.8 million. Book value from the last annual report was $7 million. The company also had $2.1 million of land held for sale at this time and another $3 million of land and buildings on the balance sheet. I have not found any information on what is going on here since the annual report.

4. Foxby Corp. is a closed end equity mutual fund. The market cap is $14.3 million and the NAV is $27.57 million. The distribution rate is 10.45% and there is a 2.5% expense fee. The biggest holding is Alphabet followed by AutoZone.

5. Global Self Storage SELF 0.00%↑ is a publicly traded self storage company. the market cap is $65 million and they own 13 self storage facilities. There is $16 million of debt and $7 million of cash. There was an unsolicited buyout of the company at $6.15 per share by Etude Storage Partners in 2024. The management team rejected the offer.

Funds owned and operated:

1. Midas Discovery Fund is an open ended mutual fund that has $24 million of net assets. The fund is invested junior gold miners. The stock price is up 78% YTD and there is a 5.98% expense ratio.

2. Midas Special Opportunities is an opened end mutual fund with $20 million of net assets. The fund has 24% of assets in Mastercard followed by 22% in Alphabet.

3. I have already written about Foxby above in the investment security portion.

Like I said in the opening to this article, WNMLA is a layered value play—cheap stocks embedded within an already discounted stock.

The company already trades at a significant discount to net cash and investment securities and those securities trade at a significant discount to NAV.

The management is the biggest risk here. They take multiple salaries from multiple entities and they don’t seem to care that their valuations at each entity trades for a significant discount to NAV. In addition, the high expense fees at the mutual funds are borderline criminal.

A final risk is the potential for the company to go dark. A sign this is coming is the recent 1-1000 reverse stock split that the management team is doing at Bexil Corporation. I have seen companies do reverse stock splits, take out the odd lots and then go dark. This would kill the valuation and send the stock price spiraling downward. $5.1 million of the $11.1 million of investment securities is in Bexil.

In summary, Winmill & Co. offers a rare deep value setup—with a market cap well below net cash and publicly traded investment securities, many of which themselves trade at steep discounts to NAV. This is a classic "value within value" scenario: cheap assets inside of a cheap holding company. While the structural complexity, related-party entanglements, and management entrenchment are real risks, the sheer magnitude of the discount creates an asymmetric payoff profile. You're paying 47 cents for a dollar, and that dollar is largely backed by marked-to-market public securities, including funds heavily exposed to gold miners and undervalued real estate assets. For investors willing to do the work and stomach the governance issues, WNMLA may be one of the more compelling mispricings in the microcap universe today.

Disclosure: I do not own WNMLA or any stock mentioned in this article. This is not investment advice. Do your own research.