Looking at most of the auctions, this looks like: "these are the deals that don't make the hurdle rate of the typical buyers, so let's make some money selling them to the dentists who like the idea of owning a song and won't look too hard at the return."<p>I'd love to be wrong, but I'm not seeing a good alternate explanation.
Are you getting royalties for use of the Listerine brandname or something in the formula?<p>If they changed the formula to something totally new but kept the Listerine branding are you getting paid? If they kept the formula but gave it a new name would you get paid? Just a new spelling?<p>Also how much has this royalty been subdivided?<p>The numbers and concept seem interesting but the site seems to lack a lot of details.
How does one value perpetual earning investments? The $2.1M is 18.36 times the annual earnings. So after 18 years you’ve paid off your investment and get $100+/year forever. In 36 years you’ve doubled your money and the return would be 2% using the back of napkin rate divided into 70 doubling time.<p>But over time it just keeps paying off, so the stability is good but likely many other investments would give higher returns.
This also peaked by interest, as well as the general concept or royalty investing. But so far, I haven't found anything that seems worth it. First, none of the royalty are guaranteed, so you could buy something that may or may not get the same returns year in and year out. Some of the royalties are small slices of certain songs, like a small writer credit - so you are not clear on exactly what is being bought with out more research. As an example there have been songs like jcole + kanye west workout / workout plan. There were a bunch of songs, three may be considered well known, but you are getting a small slice from one writer in that case. So you really need to dive into what is being bought. Best case I can see on the songs is that maybe one day some movie or tv show uses the music and you get a nice bump in earnings, or there is some popular cover in the future. 100k a year royalties, not guaranteed might make sense at a million which gets you a 10% return which is decent, but this trades more like a bond. Your resale may not be great if interest wanes in this royalty exchange and you can get more stable returns in the bond market in vanguard (trading actual bonds not etf's). I like to invest in what I understand and what is simple, this just so far is not. I do use Listerine zero (less intense / alcohol free) which I'm not sure counds in this stream. I haven't bought the original in a long time, since it has no flouride.
This is a very interesting asset on an interesting site I just found at an attractive FCF yield assuming current bid gets hit. Does anyone have experience in investing in, or securitizing a royalty stream? Quite fascinating.
I'm surprised that Johnson and Johnson wouldn't want to immediately snap up any available royalties that they could. Getting rid of perpetual royalties seems like an absolute no brainer to me if I were the CEO of JnJ.
It a 5.5% cap with nothing backing it. Il take any random real estate deal (which has tons of tax benefits) over this any day of the week, plenty of which exist at the same cap or higher and come with actual assets (land, building, etc..)<p>Dont get me wrong, Listerine is definitely as strong a brand as there is (I cant even name a competitor off the top of my head) so im not that worried about this going to zero, but that said I would still expect a cap of ~8-10% to have this make sense over other options backed by assets.
Related to Listerine: I have a memory of reading a study that had people use mouthwash (possibly Listerine) the night before taking a cognitive test. The mouthwash group did worse than the control group for some reason.<p>I'd really love to find the study again if anyone else knows where it is (my googling is apparently not good enough)
At the current highest bid of $1.51m, it would be 13.2 years before breaking even (not counting taxes).<p>For that amount of money, I can think of better investments.
If this is a good investment, and it’s only $2m, why doesn’t the company that sells Listerine just buy it? They would have more information than anyone.
It's a little different, but buying royalty rights has a very healthy market in healthcare. DRI Capital has done very well.<p><a href="https://dricapital.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dricapital.com/</a><p>It's different than this royalty setup in that most of DRI's royalties are linked to a patent, but since many academic centers will get part ownership of a patent, it's easier for them to sell it off for cash today.<p>You can see who they purchased from: <a href="https://dricapital.com/our-assets/" rel="nofollow">https://dricapital.com/our-assets/</a>
I've just seen some of the pop music royalties - I hope someone doesn't think buying royalties for singer X and then bumping them off is a good way to boost their earnings.
This kind of asset is exactly what NFTs (backed by real-world contracts) would be ideal for. I'd love to buy 1/100th of that asset just by interacting with a smart contract.
On the subject of (antiseptic) mouthwash, there have been studies linking it to diabetes in overweight adults [1] and mortality in hospitalized patients [2]. Nothing that conclusively proves causality AFAIK, but it does give one pause...<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.1020" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.1020</a><p>[2] <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33067640/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33067640/</a>
> ABOUT THE ASSET<p>The history of Listerine brand royalties is one of contract law legend.<p>In 1879, Dr. JJ Lawrence invented Listerine and in 1881, licensed the secret formula to J.W. Lambert and Lambert Pharmaceutical Co., ultimately settling on a royalty based on the number of ounces sold, to be paid to him and his “heirs, executors, or assigns” for as long as Listerine was sold.<p>For the next 75 years, the Lawrence family collected these royalties, with the ownership stake splintering between various heirs, some of whom sold portions of their stake to additional owners (such as New York real estate broker John J. Reynolds, who acquired half of the share of these royalties from the Lawrence heirs in 1950).<p>After Lambert Pharmaceutical merged with Warner-Hudnut in 1955, the newly merged management contested the $1.5 million a year they were paying in royalties in court… a case they famously lost in a decision that remains cited in contract law cases and classes today.<p>As a result of this decision, the Listerine royalty payments will remain in force for the lifetime of the brand, paid to whoever owns a share. Today, those entities include not only the heirs of the Lawrence family, but also various pension funds, universities, hospitals, and multiple individuals.<p>This is your chance to be part of this exclusive group.
Not directly related, but Listerine and other broad antimicrobial mouthwashes have been shown to have a negative impact on the oral microbiome similar to how antibiotics cause dysbiosis in the gut.<p>At Bristle Health, we advocate for products that foster an environment that supports your oral microbiome rather than destroy it, as it’s crucial to both your oral and systemic health. You can find more about our research here:<p>www.bristlehealth.com
Stoped used it due to hypogeusia:<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypogeusia" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypogeusia</a>
Never seen this kind of thing before, but I wonder if there's a decent way to scam the music side. Invest a few months of return into click farms to buy streams for some of your licensed music, see if any of the algorithms decide it's popular now and you get more money in your pocket.