One-glance verdict
Undervalued
$12.35 our estimate vs market $10.66
14% below our estimate, below the bear case
Fundamentals snapshot
CKX Lands, Inc.
CKX · ASE · Energy · Oil & Gas E&P
Current price
$10.66
52-week range
$8.66 - $12.44
Market cap
$21.89M
Balance sheet
Healthy
0.25x Concerning
Net cash $15.30M. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
0 Risks
3 rewards · 0 risks
- Reward Returns 14.4% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 4/10 years.
- Reward Trades at 7.5x P/E vs peer median 16.6x (54.7% cheaper).
What this company does
CKX Lands, Inc.
CKX Lands is a landowner that makes money by leasing its property for various uses, primarily in Louisiana. The company generates revenue (the money it brings in from sales) from three main areas: leasing to oil and gas companies, selling timber, and renting out land for activities like farming and hunting. This variety of income sources means the company's business can be more stable, as it doesn't have to rely on just one industry's success.
How the company got here
CKX Lands started in 1930 as Calcasieu Real Estate & Oil Co., Inc., when a Louisiana bank spun off some land interests into a new company. Initially, it just held rights to potential oil and gas discoveries. Over the years, as some of that land produced income, the company used the money to buy more land. In 2005, it changed its name to CKX Lands, Inc. to make it clear that it's a land management company, not an oil and gas driller.
What it actually does
Think of CKX Lands as a landlord for large plots of land in Louisiana. Instead of renting to people, it leases its property to other companies for business use. These companies pay CKX for the right to explore for oil and gas, harvest timber, or use the land's surface for things like farming or hunting. CKX doesn't get its own hands dirty with drilling or logging; it simply owns the land and collects payments from the businesses that do.
Oil and Gas
This is the company's largest business. CKX leases its land to energy companies that want to explore for and extract oil and natural gas. In return, CKX receives royalties (a share of the money made from selling the oil and gas found on its property) and lease payments. The company isn't drilling the wells itself, but rather collecting a fee for letting other, more specialized companies do the work.
Timber
A significant portion of the company's land is forested. In this part of its business, CKX makes money by selling the rights to harvest and sell the trees on its property. Timber companies pay CKX to come in, cut down the trees, and take them away to be turned into wood products. This provides a different stream of income from the land besides what's underneath it.
Surface
This segment covers all the other ways the company makes money from the surface of its land. This includes renting out land for farming, which is a steady source of income. It also includes granting rights-of-way (letting other companies run things like pipelines or power lines across CKX's property for a fee) and leasing land to people for recreational activities like hunting.
What management is betting on now
The company's leadership is currently exploring a major shift in strategy. In 2023, they began a formal review of their options to increase value for stockholders (the people who own shares of the company). This could include selling off more pieces of the company's land or even selling the entire company to another buyer. They already sold a large chunk of land in late 2025 and have set a deadline for interested parties to make offers on the rest of their assets.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
Revenue
$168.31K
Net income
$122.23K
Diluted EPS
0.06
Operating cash flow
$-411.89K
Free cash flow
—
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Sources
Revenue
$170.66K
Net income
$55.24K
Diluted EPS
0.03
Operating cash flow
$-52.33K
Free cash flow
—
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Sources
Revenue
$121.78K
Net income
$2.57M
Diluted EPS
-2,027,030.69
Operating cash flow
$123.33K
Free cash flow
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Sources
Revenue
$232.64K
Net income
$166.30K
Diluted EPS
0.08
Operating cash flow
$242.27K
Free cash flow
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Sources
Revenue
$135.94K
Net income
$161.04K
Diluted EPS
0.08
Operating cash flow
$-24.64K
Free cash flow
—
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Sources
Revenue
$348.18K
Net income
$115.57K
Diluted EPS
2,027,032.00
Operating cash flow
$118.66K
Free cash flow
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Sources
Revenue
$180.57K
Net income
$32.16K
Diluted EPS
-1,991,337.18
Operating cash flow
$97.36K
Free cash flow
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Sources
Revenue
$171.27K
Net income
$54.12K
Diluted EPS
0.03
Operating cash flow
$-246.50K
Free cash flow
—
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Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $12.35 vs current price $10.66
Our most-likely fair value is $12.35 a share — about 15.8% above today's price of $10.66, so the stock currently looks cheap (undervalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Healthy
Net cash $15.3M - more cash than debt. Interest coverage 0.2x.
Net debt
$-15.30M
Interest coverage
0.25x
CKX Lands, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 0.2 times over. which is weaker than most peers shown here.
Healthy
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
CKX
BASELINE
CKX Lands, Inc.
Total debt $0.00 Interest coverage 0.25x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $196.00M Interest coverage 29.21x +11,665% vs CKX Carries about 117.6x more debt cushion than CKX.
Total debt $0.00 Interest coverage 154.66x +62,200% vs CKX Carries about 623.0x more debt cushion than CKX.
Total debt $0.00 Interest coverage 89.39x +35,910% vs CKX Carries about 360.1x more debt cushion than CKX.
Total debt $483.27M Interest coverage 3.50x +1,311% vs CKX Carries about 14.1x more debt cushion than CKX.
What you should know
The case for and against CKX
3 Rewards
0 Risks
Rewards
-
Returns 14.4% on equity, ahead of 16% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 4/10 years.
-
Trades at 7.5x P/E vs peer median 16.6x (54.7% cheaper).
Risks
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
7.51x
Forward P/E
—
P/B
1.01x
P/S
31.57x
EV/EBITDA
-142.14x
PEG ratio
1.25x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
95.4%
Operating margin
13.7%
Net margin
419.8%
ROE
14.4%
ROA
-0.2%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
—
Current ratio
124.62x
Quick ratio
108.20x
Total debt
$0.00
Total cash
$15.30M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$693.40K
Revenue 5Y CAGR
3.0%
EPS TTM
1.42
EPS 5Y CAGR
—
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$-98.62K
Free CF TTM
$459.63K
FCF margin
66.3%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
—
Payout ratio
0.0%
Last ex-div date
2018-04-04