Answers from the CEO of Harris & Harris Group

In the comment thread of a previous post ("Harris & Harris as an Obama Stock") a commenter asked if Harris & Harris (Nasdaq: TINY) would spin off shares of a portfolio company that goes public or distribute a cash dividend after selling its shares. According to Harris & Harris CEO Doug Jamison, with whom I spoke this evening, after a portfolio company goes public, Harris & Harris typically has a 180-day lock-up period before it can sell its shares. It wouldn't spin off shares to shareholders, but would sell portfolio company shares after the lock-up period expires and either use those proceeds to reinvest in other opportunities (among current portfolio companies or new ones) or potentially distribute proceeds to Harris & Harris shareholders as a cash dividend. Of course, this is an inauspicious time for any company to attempt to go public, so it may be a while before the next IPO of a Harris & Harris portfolio company.

I also asked Jamison about the investment thesis mentioned in the Forbes article, that some of TINY's clean tech portfolio companies may benefit from Obama infrastructure spending. That's their hope, Jamison said, and he noted that the clean tech portfolio companies have been liaising with their Congressional Representatives about that.

Another question that came up in the comment thread of the previous post on Harris & Harris concerned the company's liquidity. According to Jamison, the parent company has about $53 million in cash and no debt on its balance sheet, and it expects parent company operating costs to be about $6 million in '09.

Descriptions of Harris & Harris's portfolio companies, along with their respective website addresses can be found here.

On Being a Recovering Political Junkie

My father got me a subscription to Time Magazine when I was in elementary school, and that was the beginning of the addiction. The op/ed page was always my favorite part of the newspaper, whether that paper was our local Bergen Record, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal. In recent years, RealClearPolitics, which aggregates opinion pieces from various newspapers, magazines and websites, became a favorite website of mine. I spent a lot of time reading editorials and op/ed columns, occasionally commenting on them, and engaging in vigorous debates with those who held different points of view. I enjoyed these debates, but most of the time I was simply frustrated, reading ideologues trade volleys on issues while (for the most part) avoiding the seemingly obvious (at least to me), pragmatic compromises.

Recently, I had two epiphanies I should have had a long time ago:

1. As much as I enjoyed a good argument or debate, this wasn't a profitable use of my time.
   
2. Instead of being frustrated by policies I disagreed with, I could find ways to profit from them through investing.

Since then, although I still glance at the op/ed pages of the WSJ and the NY Times, both of which I subscribe to (the NY Times just on weekends), I avoid political websites and blogs. Occasionally, when politics comes up on an investing website, I'll enter the fray, but otherwise, I've gone cold turkey. Good riddance. This has freed up time to research investment ideas, pursue business opportunities and otherwise make better use of my time. I still vote, of course, and have my own opinions, and I'd be happy to engage in good-natured debate others over drinks, next time the opportunity presents itself, but mostly avoiding politics has freed up a lot of my mental energy that I can put to better use elsewhere.