Other company run by Paul Novelly
I did find some more on the inital IPO for FF, Future Fuel. FF is another company that was run by Paul Novelly and a large holder current here at WTLC. At the time it was Viceroy Acquisition Corporation. Here is a link the the original IPO document. If I am reading this correctly, it looks like new shareholders were treated as I would expect. People were being offered shares at $8 and the after offering book value looks like it would be $7.60, so shareholders were being given the chance to invest with them for a charge of $0.40 or 5% of the offering price, which seems fair to me.
Viceroy Acquisition Corporation - IPO document:
http://bit.ly/2wQGVWA
I note that since the IPO the shares current pay a $0.24 per year dividend or 3% based on the original $8/share IPO price and are trading above the IPO price at around $13, even with the slump in oil and gas prices.
I think the main thing that is holding things up for WTLC is the slump in oil and gas prices. I would expect that once oil get back to $60+ that deals will start getting made.
The hope is that someday Paul will use the cash to do a lot of deals and the net operating losses to shield the new profits from taxes, giving everyone better after tax results than if they generated the profits without the net operating losses 'shield' on taxes.