[ppml] ARIN investment returns

At 12:22 AM -0400 5/24/07, Dean Anderson wrote:
>The 2005 financials state that ARIN has about 19 million in investments. 
>But reports only $366,597 in interest and dividends. This is less than
>2%.  That seems to be a pretty poor return on over $19mil.  The
>investing cash flows suggest some turnover, but its hard for me to tell
>what's happening.  Are there unrealized capital gains in this value? 
>What is the realistic total worth of the investments? Who is managing
>these investments?

The actual gain from investments is the interest ($366,597)
plus gains-realized and unrealized ($506,133), for a total of
$872,730.   This is earned against investment assets which
were $15,371,039 at the start of the period, for a yield of
approximately 5.6%.   These numbers are in the published
report, but I admit it can be challenging to read it that way.
FYI - The investments in that period where managed by
Legg Mason/Citigroup.

>ARIN had about 9 million in revenue, and about 7 million in operations
>expenses, so ARIN made about 2million in 2005 (before investments) and
>made about 1.3million in 2004. Good work folks!

ARIN has also reduced fees 3 or 4 times since its inception, although
the members have historically asked us to focus on more services
and more outreach rather than fee reductions.

>So, yes. ARIN is making a small boatload of money, has been for a while,
>and ARIN has been saving it up. But it is unclear if ARIN has been
>investing wisely. Perhaps some more transparancy on the investments
>would be helpful.

I hope the above helped clarify the 2005 yield; as the one who gets to
sign the annual report each year, I'm more than willing to answer any
questions you have (although I also reserve the right to hand off any
particularly complex queries to our Treasurer, who presents our results
at each member meeting and heads the board finance committee.)

/John

John Curran
Chairman, ARIN Board of Trustees

p.s.  With respect to the right forum for this, arin-discuss at arin.net
        is normally where this topic would be handled.