On Friday the S&P 500 was up 0.6% and Toronto was up 0.4%.
Shopify was up another 3.3%. Amazon was up 2.7%.
On Friday afternoon Andrew Peller had some announcements: They are appointing five new directors. (On November 9th all four of its independent directors resigned at the same time and these are the replacements.) John Peller reiterated his intention to retire as CEO by the end of this year. These new Board members have approved a $4.5 million dolalr retirement bones for John Peller AND after his “retirement” he will be paid $2 million per year as a consultant (the time period that lasts was not indicated but there was hint that it might be at least two years). On top of that the company is paying $3.0 million in consulting and legal fees incurred by the controlling Peller family as part of the arrangement. To put these numbers in some context: The company lost $3 million in fiscal 2023, and made $12 million in fiscal 2022 and $27 million in fiscal 2021. This all strikes me as an overly generous payout for John Peller and I don’t see any reason that the controlling family’s legal and consulting costs should be paid. To me it smacks of “legalized theft”. Unfortunately this is the sort of nonsense that can happen at smaller companies controlled by management.
They also announced this news in the middle of the trading day which is certainly not best practice. I would assume the four previous Board members left because they were not willing to go along with this nonsense – but I don’t know. The market so far seemed unperturbed by the news.
I mentioned last week that two Trustees at the Melcor REIT were leaving abruptly. That could also be a case of not being willing to go along with something the controlling family wants to do.