Share count
13Mpeak FY2016
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MSB, Mesabi Trust
Metals & Mining REIT
A property business, read on funds from operations and net asset value rather than reported earnings.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$99M
+331.3% YoY · 25% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $99M 5-yr avg $45M
Revenue $2M −52.6% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $1M yr-ago $4M
Net margin 48.4% yr-ago 76.7%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Occupancy, rents, and the cost of debt. Read on funds from operations and net asset value, because GAAP depreciation distorts the earnings, and a property downturn meets a balance sheet built on leverage. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMJan 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $10M | $11M | $34M | $47M | $32M | $26M | $71M | $8M | $23M | $99M | $99M | RevenueRevenue |
| $9M | $10M | $33M | $46M | $30M | $23M | $69M | $5M | $19M | $93M | $93M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $10M | $14M | $26M | $35M | $24M | $23M | $54M | $14M | $27M | $102M | $22M | Total assetsAssets |
| ($3M) | ($14M) | ($315K) | ($882K) | ($10M) | ($13M) | ($48M) | ($14M) | ($24M) | ($100M) | ($20M) | Net debt / (cash)Net debt |
| — | — | — | $17M | $12M | $16M | $31M | $11M | $21M | $23M | $18M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | 13.1M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $0.68 | $0.55 | $1.49 | $2.79 | $3.36 | $1.67 | $2.86 | $3.63 | $0.35 | $1.35 | $1.35 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| — | — | — | $1.28 | $0.90 | $1.26 | $2.35 | $0.87 | $1.60 | $1.78 | $1.40 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +29.4%/yr | +25.2%/yr |
| EPS | +30.4%/yr | +25.4%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +7.9%/yr | −16.7%/yr |
| Book value / share | +5.6%/yr (6-yr) | +14.5%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Gross margin
95%low FY2023
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Will it survive?
- Not enough dataLittle or no interest expense reported
What this means
Operating income wasn't found in the filing data.
- Net cash, debt-freeCash $100M − debt $0
What this means
Cash and short-term investments exceed every dollar of debt by $100M, on net the company owes nothing, and can act from strength when others can't. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Is it a good business?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 3%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 42%
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Cash-backedCash from ops $94M ÷ net income $93M
What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.
How is the cash used?
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
- Investing or harvesting? —Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Graham’s defensive tests · 3 of 4 met
Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.
- Adequate size MissRevenue ≥ $2B · $99M
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
- Strong liquidity —Current ratio ≥ 2× · —
What this means
Current assets / liabilities not in the data yet.
- Earnings stability PassA profit every year (10-yr record) · no losses
What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
- Dividend record PassUninterrupted dividends · paid every year (10)
What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
- Earnings growth PassEarnings +33% over the record · +127%
What this means
At least a third more earnings than a decade ago, averaging three years at each end. Net income (not per-share), so stock splits don't distort it, buybacks and dilution show up in the share-count line instead.
- Moderate price —P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $2.99/share (latest year $7.11), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $1.78/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.
Durability & moat, 2016–2025
Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.
- Profitable years 10 of 10
What this means
Never lost money over the record, the earnings stability Graham insisted on.
- Share count +0.0%/yr
What this means
Roughly flat share count, little dilution, little buyback.
- Dividend record rising
What this means
Paid and raised the dividend across the record, the continuity Graham prized.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Peers, Metals & Mining
The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AIVApartment Investment and Management Company | $138M | — | 22.0% | 2% | -7% |
| CHCTCommunity Healthcare Trust Incorporated | $121M | — | 24.8% | 3% | 49% |
| UHTUniversal Health Realty Income Trust | $99M | — | 33.6% | 5% | 45% |
| MSBMesabi Trust | $99M | 94% | — | — | — |
| OLPOne Liberty Properties Inc. | $97M | — | 55.3% | 5% | — |
| PSTLPostal Realty Trust Inc. | $96M | — | 18.2% | 3% | 39% |
| LANDGladstone Land Corporation | $88M | 100% | 12.9% | 1% | — |
| FVRFrontView REIT Inc. | $67M | — | -8.3% | -1% | — |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFMesabi Trust is profitable, but its owner-earnings base could not be formed from this filing’s tagged data (operating cash flow or capital spending is missing), so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.
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The assumptions
Revenue, delivered9%/yr’20→’25
Enter a price to run it.
Owner earnings it must reach—
Margin the price demands—
Owner-earnings margin today—
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Mesabi Trust (MSB), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/MSB, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← MSA its page in the Manual MSBI →
Industry order: ← MP the Metals & Mining chapter NEXA →