LDS Church's Market Value

[_moksha]

Here is an interesting post on the LDS Church's market value.

https://newordermormon.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3137

[_moksha]

(Sorry if this is actually old outdated information that has been previously posted. In that case, then nevermind.)

[_I have a question]

I haven’t seen it before.

His assumptions seem to be logically sound, and his ‘guess’ range on the valuation of between $400-800 billion - based on the stock holding of $32 billion being at least 20% of the Church’s total wealth, seems as sound an estimate as is necessary at this point.

$40 million a year on humanitarian programmes is 0.01% of the minimum end of the valuation scale.
The Church finance department won’t even ‘round’ to two decimal places.

[_Dr Exiled]

God wants his holy portfolio to rise to $1 trillion.

[_Fence Sitter]

You have to think about the mentality of the men at the top. These are men who lived through the cold war and were part of a leadership group that strongly encouraged every member family to have on hand enough food to feed their families for a freaking year. The amount of money and resources my low middle class parents wasted buying and storing enough food to feed a family of 9 for a year is staggering. Why no one pointed out back then that people who had this stored food would just die from thirst or disease or be killed by others stealing their food, is beyond me. Yeah, we were just going to sit hunkered down in our house living off 50 pound cans of wheat and dry powered milk in 50 gallon drums and no potable water for a year while the world outside was going to hell and no one would notice that we had food. The whole concept was just stupid

So these men are of the mindset that they need to store up their reserves for dire times for themselves and the organization they manage, missing the fact that there are a lot of people in this world who live in dire times right now. But rather than feed the poor and sick they have now, they are saving up so they can feed themselves if the need ever arises. I can just see a world wide depression with billions starving, and these guys bragging about how they are able to keep the temples running while people die.

"Hey isn't it great we have all these new potential converts to baptize for the dead? Trylu the Lord is blessing us."

[_Analytics]

His basic assumption is that the $32B is 20% of the Church's U.S. stock portfolio (the other 80% being passively invested (e.g. index funds) for a total of $160 Billion in the U.S. stock market, and that this $160 Billion invested in the U.S. stock market is only 20% of its total invested wealth, for a total wealth of $800 Billion.

Personally, I don't see any reason to jump to these conclusions. An insurance company will likely invest 90% of its assets very conservatively and the remaining 10% aggressively, but there is little reason to think the Church takes this approach.

I would divide the church's revenue-producing assets into 3 chunks: businesses it owns, stocks, and cash. The businesses would include all of the ranches, farms, insurance companies, radio stations, TV stations, news papers, books stores, malls, etc. It's hard to value all of that at more than, say, $18B. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is that order of magnitude.

It's then going to hold on to enough cash to fund ongoing operations and serve as an emergency fund. That could be another couple of billion.

It's then going to invest the rest in the stock market. I can't imagine why they would say, "let's actively invest 4% and put the remaining 96% in index funds, bonds, and oversees investments!" Rather, they are going to say, bond yields suck, and we aren't experts at international investing. Since we have a long-term investment horizon, the best returns for the least amount of risk is the U.S. stock market.

They might diversify and invest 20% in bonds and internationally. But in general, people either buy into John Bogle's philosophy about index funds, or they do not. If they do, they'll invest in index funds. If they don't, they'll pick stocks. The Church picks stocks.

So I'd guess they have a total of $32B/.8 = $40 billion in stocks and bonds, including their international investments. Another $20 billion for cash and the businesses they operate, and the business portfolio is up to maybe $60 billion.

That is a much more realistic number.