Inelegant Investor is a collection of real-world investing observations, focused on the edge cases that don’t show up in textbooks — restructurings, CVRs, spinoffs, and the strange outcomes that accumulate in actual portfolios. And whatever else interests me about investing. Investing isn't always pretty, it's usually quite inelegant.
Recent Series: The Portfolio Graveyard
Medtronic ($MDT) has completed its MiniMed ($MMED) split-off, and the odd-lot preference held up under heavy demand. Final results announced October 14 show that qualifying holders of fewer than 100 MDT shares who tendered their entire positions had all their shares accepted, while ordinary tenders received an 18.289133% proration factor. Yet our hypothetical 99-share trade, marked at MMED’s… Read More »
Air Canada’s (TSX: AC) C$800 million substantial issuer bid closed at C$29.00 per share, the bottom of its C$29–C$33 Dutch-auction range. The airline purchased 27,586,206 shares, representing about 9.8% of its shares outstanding before the offer, and ordinary qualifying tenders were subject to approximately 41% proration. Holders of qualifying odd lots were exempt from that reduction. For our… Read More »
Utah Medical Products ($UTMD) has extended its $75-per-share self-tender by almost three weeks, moving the expiration from October 7 to October 27. The company said the extension gives shareholders more time to decide and, specifically, lets them see UTMD’s third-quarter results before the tender closes. Those results are scheduled for October 22, five days before the new deadline.… Read More »
Arbutus Biopharma ($ABUS) completed its $230 million Dutch-auction tender at $5.00 per share, the bottom of its $5.00-to-$5.75 range. The offer was heavily oversubscribed. Ordinary shareholders who tendered at or below the clearing price had only about 55.6% of their shares accepted. Qualifying odd-lot holders were exempt from proration and had all of their properly tendered shares purchased.… Read More »
There may be no more dangerous sentence in investing than “this time is different.” Seritage Growth Properties (NYSE: SRG) deserves that skepticism more than most. Seritage has looked cheap for years. In 2022, when shareholders approved a plan to sell the company’s assets and liquidate, management estimated eventual shareholder distributions of $18.50 to $29 per share. Almost four… Read More »
Medtronic’s final separation from MiniMed has created another odd-lot situation worth watching. Medtronic plc (NYSE: MDT) is offering shareholders the chance to exchange MDT shares for shares of MiniMed Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: MMED). The offer is designed to deliver approximately $107.53 of MiniMed stock for each $100 of Medtronic stock accepted, subject to a maximum exchange ratio of… Read More »
We now have the first real test of our Computer Modelling Group odd-lot trade, and the preliminary result is almost as favorable as it could have been. Computer Modelling Group Ltd. (TSX: CMG) says its substantial issuer bid expired September 21 with a preliminary purchase price of C$4.50 per share, the very top of its C$4.00 to C$4.50… Read More »
Another odd-lot tender has appeared. This one has excellent mechanics and rather less exciting math. Utah Medical Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: UTMD) announced that it intends to repurchase up to 650,000 shares at $75 per share, representing roughly 20% of the company’s outstanding stock. If the offer is oversubscribed, shareholders owning fewer than 100 shares who tender all of… Read More »
Another odd-lot tender has appeared, and this one gets interesting almost immediately. Computer Modelling Group Ltd. (TSX: CMG) is offering to repurchase up to C$20 million of its own shares through a modified Dutch auction. The tender range is C$4.00 to C$4.50 per share, while CMG closed Friday, September 11 at C$3.80. Even better for our purposes, shareholders… Read More »
We recently wrote about odd-lot tenders for fun and profit: those peculiar corporate actions where owning 99 shares can sometimes put you ahead of investors who own 100, 1,000 or a million. The obvious next question is whether there are any actual opportunities to try it on. As of September 10, 2026, there are three live publicly traded… Read More »