Subject: Re: Some Thoughts - Maybe Too Many
The first one that comes to mind isn't great: Icahn Enterprises - IEP

Something weird was going on there - but they had that distribution structure.


That's true, excellent example, I hadn't thought of them. Yes, I believe all shareholders have had the option to receive the dividend (although it is really more of a return of capital than a dividend). Icahn himself owns most of the shares, about 406m of the 486 implied shares outstanding, and he has consistently taken shares in lieu of dividends, while most other shareholders have taken the dividend which has been $1 per share for each of the last 5 quarters, with $359m in dividends paid out in the last 4 quarters according to cash flow statements.

Hmm, Icahn, maybe not the best company to keep. I asked perplexity.ai to give me some examples, but it couldn't find any (including IEP...), although it did mention that many companies offer DRIPs, where cash dividends are reinvested. This does not avoid the tax that many of us wish to delay, so for the moment, apart from Icahn, Perplexity and I are drawing a blank, probably because it really is rare.

But why would it be rare? It seems like any company that pays dividends must have investors that would rather reinvest PRE-TAX rather than post-tax, and if tax laws allow it, why wouldn't more companies offer this possibility?

dtb