Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) is often called a mini-Berkshire Hathaway, but how does this diversified holding company-with its fingers in outdoor advertising, broadband, and surety insurance-really make money and create value for its shareholders?

The company's unique, long-term value investing approach is evident in its latest financials, reporting a trailing twelve-month revenue of over $111.57 million as of late 2025, even as it navigates the high growth costs that led to a $4.36 million net loss in Q3 2025.

With co-founder Adam K. Peterson holding a significant 42.76% insider stake, its mission is clearly focused on long-term capital allocation, so you defintely need to understand the history and strategy behind this $387.5 million market cap entity.

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) History

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) is a diversified holding company that operates with a long-term, decentralized capital allocation strategy, often compared to a mini-Berkshire Hathaway. The company's current form and strategic focus on non-correlated, durable businesses-billboards, broadband, and surety insurance-was cemented in 2015 by its co-founders. This approach seeks to build intrinsic value over decades, not quarters, a key differentiator in today's market. Breaking Down Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors is where you can see the results of this strategy.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

While the corporate entity existed earlier, the current strategic holding company model and management team took effective control and began its core strategy in 2015.

Original location

The company is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, a location that deliberately signals its value-oriented, long-term investment philosophy.

Founding team members

The strategic direction was established and is led by Co-Chairmen and Co-Chief Executive Officers, Adam K. Peterson and Alex Buffett Rozek.

Initial capital/funding

The company's initial significant public funding event was its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2017, which raised approximately $100 million in capital to fuel its acquisition-driven growth strategy.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The most defintely transformative decisions for Boston Omaha Corporation centered on its deliberate choice of operating model and capital allocation philosophy, which is the engine of its growth.

The shift to a decentralized holding company model, rather than a traditional private equity fund, was critical. This structure allows BOC to hold investments indefinitely, using a permanent capital base that avoids forced sales or fixed investment horizons. It changes the entire incentive structure for management and capital allocation.

• Disciplined Niche Acquisition: The company's focus on non-correlated, cash-generative niche industries-billboards, broadband, and surety bonds-was a major deviation from the tech-heavy investment landscape. This led to the three core segments that generated a combined revenue of over $84.67 million in the first nine months of 2025.
• The IPO Capital Raise: The $100 million raised in the 2017 IPO was the fuel. It allowed the company to move beyond small, private transactions and make the foundational acquisitions in outdoor advertising and later in broadband and insurance.
• Focusing the Core Business: More recently, the company has worked to separate its asset management activities, which included sponsoring Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), to allow management to focus intensely on operating and growing the core billboard, broadband, and surety insurance businesses.

Here's the quick math: BOC's book value per share stood at $16.80 as of September 30, 2025, which is the long-term measure of value the company targets, even as quarterly net losses, like the $4.36 million loss in Q3 2025, fluctuate due to investment volatility and growth spending. What this estimate hides is the inherent value of the long-life fiber and billboard assets, which are difficult to replicate.

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Ownership Structure

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) operates with a concentrated ownership structure, where a small group of insiders and institutional investors hold significant sway, though the majority of shares are held by the public.

This dynamic means key strategic decisions, like the allocation of capital across its diverse holdings in billboards, broadband, and insurance, are heavily influenced by the perspectives of its founders and largest funds, which is defintely a factor for any investor to watch.

Given Company's Current Status

Boston Omaha Corporation is a publicly traded holding company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol BOC. Its public status subjects it to the rigorous reporting and governance standards of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the filing of quarterly reports (10-Q) and annual reports (10-K).

As of November 2025, the company has two classes of common stock outstanding: 30,872,876 shares of Class A common stock and 580,558 shares of Class B common stock. The Class B shares typically hold greater voting power, which is a common mechanism for founders to maintain control even when they don't hold a majority of the economic interest. If you want to dive deeper into the company's long-term strategy, you should review the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC).

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership is a mix of insiders, large institutions, and a significant percentage of public and individual investors. The table below details the breakdown of who owns Boston Omaha Corporation's equity as of the 2025 fiscal year, based on the latest filings.

Here's the quick math on control: Co-Founder and CEO Adam K. Peterson holds a substantial individual stake, reported as high as 42.76% of the company's total shares in some filings, which underscores the high degree of founder control over the company's direction. This concentration of ownership means management's long-term vision is strongly entrenched.

Given Company's Leadership

The company's strategy and capital allocation are steered by a small, experienced executive team, with an average management tenure of 4.6 years as of mid-2025. The leadership structure is lean, focusing on the holding company's core mission of acquiring and operating diversified businesses.

• Adam Peterson: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He co-founded the company in 2015 and is the primary driver of its capital allocation strategy, which is often compared to a mini-Berkshire Hathaway model.
• Joshua P. Weisenburger: Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Secretary, and Treasurer. He has been in this role since June 2017, providing financial continuity and oversight.
• Max Meisinger: Chief Accounting Officer (CAO). He oversees the company's accounting and financial reporting, having been promoted to the role after starting as Corporate Controller in 2019.

The Board of Directors also saw a key addition in January 2025 with the appointment of David S. Graff, founder and CEO of Agile Sports Technologies (Hudl), who brings significant experience in technology and finance to the board.

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Mission and Values

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) operates with a clear, long-term value investing philosophy, aiming to build a diversified holding company that generates significant, sustainable intrinsic value for its shareholders. This foundation is less about quarterly profit targets and more about a disciplined, decades-long approach to capital allocation and business development, which is why their book value per share was $16.80 at September 30, 2025, a slight dip from the end of the prior year, but still reflecting a focus on balance sheet strength.

Boston Omaha Corporation's Core Purpose

The company's cultural DNA is built on a framework of patient capital and operational autonomy, which is crucial when you look at their diverse segments-billboards, broadband, and surety insurance. For instance, while total revenue for the third quarter of 2025 climbed to $28.73 million, the net loss widened to $4.36 million, a sign of continued upfront investment in scaling businesses like broadband, which is a key part of their long-term strategy.

Official mission statement

Boston Omaha Corporation's mission is fundamentally about creating long-term shareholder value through a combination of growth, productivity, and a prudent acquisition strategy, primarily targeting real estate, insurance, and investment management. They're not chasing short-term wins.

• Acquire and develop businesses with strong, durable fundamentals.
• Allocate capital efficiently across diverse sectors to mitigate risk.
• Maintain a disciplined and opportunistic investment approach.

Here's the quick math: their cash inflow from operations for the nine months ended September 30, 2025, was $12.1 million, which shows the operating businesses are generating the cash needed to fuel this long-term, opportunistic investment cycle.

Vision statement

The vision is straightforward: to become a diversified holding company that consistently builds significant and sustainable intrinsic value. It's an approach that values the quality of the asset over the speed of the return, honestly.

• Build a diversified portfolio to capitalize on varied opportunities.
• Focus on investments that generate sustainable, long-term returns.
• Leverage decentralized operations for better sector-specific execution.

This is why they hold an investment in Sky Harbour Class A common stock and warrants valued at $82.7 million as of September 30, 2025-it's a strategic, long-term bet outside their core operating segments.

Boston Omaha Corporation slogan/tagline

Boston Omaha Corporation doesn't use a catchy, public-facing slogan. Instead, they operate by a set of core principles that act as their internal tagline, guiding capital allocation and management decisions across all subsidiaries. You can see this framework on their investor site, and it's defintely what matters.

• Long-term Thinking: Think in whole seasons, not in quarters.
• Decentralization: Give a talented person a job to do and leave them alone.
• Focus on Cash: Over time, a business needs to produce more cash than it consumes.

Their operational framework is their slogan. If you want to dive deeper into the ownership structure and who's betting on this long-term view, you should read Exploring Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) How It Works

Boston Omaha Corporation operates as a diversified holding company, not a single operating business, focusing on acquiring and growing companies with durable competitive advantages across three core areas: infrastructure (billboards and broadband), financial services (surety insurance), and asset management.

The company's strategy is to allocate capital to these decentralized businesses, which together generated a trailing twelve-month (TTM) revenue of $111.57 million as of November 2025, and whose operations resulted in a cash inflow of $12.1 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025. You can get a deeper look at the numbers in Breaking Down Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Boston Omaha Corporation's Product/Service Portfolio

Boston Omaha Corporation's Operational Framework

The operational process is built on a decentralized, holding-company structure, which is defintely a key differentiator. Instead of running a single, integrated P&L, Boston Omaha Corporation's headquarters acts as a disciplined capital allocator for its wholly-owned subsidiaries, including Link Media Outdoor and General Indemnity Group.

• Capital Allocation: Management prioritizes reinvesting capital into existing businesses like the fiber build-out and new acquisitions that promise long-term, durable cash flows.
• Decentralized Management: Each operating company has its own leadership team responsible for daily operations, allowing for faster, more focused decision-making in their respective markets.
• Cash Flow Focus: The goal is to generate cash from mature, stable segments (like Billboards) to fund the growth of capital-intensive segments (like Broadband).
• Investment Management: The company holds significant minority investments, such as its stake in Sky Harbour Group Corporation, which was valued at approximately $126.9 million as of September 30, 2025, if accounted for at fair value.

The whole point is to let great managers run their businesses without corporate bureaucracy.

Boston Omaha Corporation's Strategic Advantages

The company's success hinges on a few clear, structural advantages that protect its businesses from the fiercest competition and underpin its long-term value creation.

• Infrastructure Moats: The billboard business benefits from regulatory barriers to entry (new billboards are often illegal), which creates a permanent, high-margin asset base. The broadband segment targets underserved, non-competitive markets, which makes the fiber infrastructure a long-lived, essential utility once built.
• Long-Term Capital: Unlike private equity, Boston Omaha Corporation uses permanent equity capital, meaning there is no pressure to sell successful assets on a fixed timeline. This allows for long-duration projects, such as the multi-year fiber network build-out, to reach full maturity.
• Diversification and Optionality: The conglomerate structure mitigates risk by not being reliant on a single industry's cycle. If advertising slows, the surety or broadband segments can still perform, providing a stable platform for opportunistic capital deployment.
• Insurance Float: The surety insurance business generates an insurance float (premiums collected but not yet paid out as claims), which the parent company can invest. This provides a low-cost source of capital to fund other business acquisitions and growth initiatives.

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) How It Makes Money

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) operates as a diversified holding company, generating revenue primarily through three core, distinct business lines: leasing outdoor advertising space, providing subscription-based broadband services, and underwriting surety insurance policies. This conglomerate structure means no single business accounts for a majority of the revenue, which diversifies risk but complicates valuation.

Boston Omaha Corporation's Revenue Breakdown

For the third quarter of 2025, Boston Omaha Corporation reported total revenue of $28.73 million, a 3.7% increase year-over-year. The revenue mix clearly shows the company's reliance on its billboard and broadband segments, which together make up over three-quarters of the total. Here's the quick math on the breakdown for Q3 2025:

The remaining revenue comes from Insurance Commissions (around 2.2%) and Investment and Other Income (about 1.8%). The Investment and Other Income stream, which includes interest and dividends, actually saw a slight decrease in Q3 2025 compared to the prior year.

Business Economics

The economic fundamentals of Boston Omaha Corporation's segments are a classic study in durable, low-maintenance assets paired with high-growth, infrastructure-heavy services. The company is built on the idea of acquiring businesses with long-term, predictable cash flow, a strategy often called compounding intrinsic value (investing for long-term growth, not short-term profit).

• Outdoor Advertising: This is a high-margin business driven by long-term leases on the land and multi-year advertising contracts. Once a billboard is built, the operating costs are low, so revenue of $11.79 million in Q3 2025 translates to excellent cash flow. It's a great inflation hedge.
• Broadband Services: The fiber-optic networks are a capital-intensive utility business, but they generate stable, recurring, subscription-based revenue. The Q3 2025 revenue of $10.15 million shows the power of this model, but the initial capital expenditure (CapEx) is massive and depresses near-term profitability.
• Surety Insurance: This segment, which earned $5.64 million in premiums in Q3 2025, is less about volume and more about underwriting discipline. The float (the money collected in premiums before claims are paid) is a source of capital the company can invest, which is a key component of the holding company model.

The pricing power is strongest in the billboard segment, where prime locations are irreplaceable assets. Broadband pricing is competitive but benefits from the high switching costs once a customer is connected to the fiber network.

Boston Omaha Corporation's Financial Performance

While the revenue growth is positive, the company's financial health presents a mixed, but honest, picture of a growth-focused conglomerate. The strategy requires heavy investment, so you see revenue gains but also widening losses.

• Profitability Challenge: For Q3 2025, Boston Omaha Corporation reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $4.36 million, or $0.08 per share. This is a significant widening from the prior year, mostly due to increased operating costs and investment-related expenses, including an unrealized loss on Sky Harbour warrants.
• Liquidity and Leverage: The balance sheet remains solid. The company's current ratio of 2.05 indicates strong liquidity, and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.2 shows very conservative leverage. They aren't overextending themselves to fund growth.
• Cash Flow vs. Accounting Loss: For the nine months ended September 30, 2025, the company's cash inflow from operations was a healthy $12.1 million. This is critical: the accounting net loss is heavily influenced by non-cash items like depreciation and investment losses, but the core businesses are still generating real cash.
• Book Value: The book value per share as of September 30, 2025, stood at $16.80. This is a key metric for holding companies and gives you a tangible floor for valuation, though it was slightly down from the end of 2024.

The Altman Z-Score of 1.57 places the company in the distress zone, which is a red flag you defintely can't ignore, but it must be viewed in the context of a company intentionally spending heavily on CapEx for long-term infrastructure assets. For a deeper dive into these metrics, check out Breaking Down Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Market Position & Future Outlook

Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) maintains a unique position as a diversified holding company, leveraging stable cash flows from its billboard and surety insurance segments to fund high-growth infrastructure plays like rural broadband and strategic investments. The near-term outlook is characterized by continued capital deployment into these growth areas, even as the company manages short-term net losses, which widened to $2.59 million in Q3 2025, reflecting its aggressive expansion strategy.

You can see the long-term value thesis is tied to the book value per share, which stood at $16.80 as of September 30, 2025, and the market's belief in management's capital allocation skill, evidenced by a 60.4% institutional ownership.

Competitive Landscape

Boston Omaha Corporation operates across four distinct, often fragmented, sectors: outdoor advertising, broadband, surety insurance, and asset management. Its billboard segment, Link Media Outdoor, competes with national giants, while the broadband and insurance arms face more regional or niche competition. To be fair, BOC is a small-cap player with a trailing twelve-month revenue of $111.57 million as of mid-2025, which is dwarfed by its primary outdoor advertising competitors.

Here's the quick math: the US outdoor advertising market is estimated at $8.7 billion in 2025, so BOC's estimated annualized billboard revenue of around $45.6 million makes it a niche consolidator, not a market leader.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company's model is built on using the cash-generating segments-billboards and surety bonds-to fuel its capital-intensive, long-term growth projects, like fiber-to-the-home. This strategy, while sound, creates a near-term drag on earnings, as seen in the Q3 2025 net loss.

Industry Position

Boston Omaha Corporation is defintely a conglomerate, which means its industry standing is fragmented. It is a small-cap holding company that acts like a permanent capital vehicle, not a pure-play industry competitor. The company's strength lies in its capital allocation strategy, not its current market share in any single sector.

• Broadband: Positioned as a rural infrastructure play, focusing on fiber deployment to unserved communities, which is a high-growth, federally-supported area.
• Billboards (Link Media Outdoor): A regional consolidator with 7,570 advertising faces, primarily in the Southeast, competing on cost and local market density against national REITs.
• Surety Insurance (General Indemnity Group): A niche, high-margin business that provides a consistent, growing source of cash flow for the parent company.
• Investments: Holds a significant, though volatile, investment in Sky Harbour Group, valued at $127.2 million as of June 30, 2025, which diversifies its exposure into private aviation infrastructure.

The market is betting on the long-term compounding of intrinsic value, not on immediate profitability. Exploring Boston Omaha Corporation (BOC) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?