Wednesday, February 2, 2011

ACAS Exits triVIN Above "Fair Value"

ACAS just announced the details of its sale for cash of its portfolio company triVIN Holdings, Inc. to DealerTrak Holdings. The exit netted ACAS $11m in realized gains and returned $72m of ACAS' capital for investment use. (Not just for ACAS: the results here are ACAS' fraction of an investment in which funds under management also participated. The aggregate proceeds received in Q1 from the transaction were $108m, including $19m of gain.)

Maybe "returned" is the wrong word here; ACAS never put $72m into the company. In fact, according to the immediately-prior 10-Q, the last FAS-157-compliant "Fair Value" ACAS was able to claim on the company was $56.8M. ACAS realized 41% more than that "fair value" – $15m more than the SEC's yardstick allowed ACAS to claim the thing was worth. In other words, FAS 157 had the investment pegged as a loser when it was, in fact, a winner.

Imagine that.

This isn't the first time ACAS has announced a result that suggests that FAS 157 understates its ability to generate results from investments. ACAS might do better to improve the transparency of exited investments' returns, as previously mentioned here. After all, if ACAS' list isn't updated regularly, people will suspect that it's because it's ashamed of those results.

1 comment:

ADL said...

Just stumbled across this blog, and am enjoying it greatly (perhaps because your views comport with mine, at least so far).