The story
Texas Pacific Land Holdings was created in 1888 in the wake of the Texas and Pacific Railway bankruptcy, as a means to dispose of the T&P's vast land holdings. Over 3.5 million acres were put into the trust, and bondholders exchanged their bonds for shares. Trustees were to sell the land and repay shareholders, eventually liquidating the trust, though there was no timetable for liquidation. The certificates were later divided into "sub-share" certificates on a 100 for one basis, which have been traded on the NYSE since January 1927. One such bond, No. 390, was not exchanged for stocks at this time. In 1979, a bank officer at Wells Fargo tracked down its ownership to Dutch sailor Joseph Raphael De Lamar. Worth $3,000 in 1888, the bond had been provided to De Lamar as partial payment for a debt. In 1979 its value was $3.2 million.
In 1954, shareholders approved the transfer of mineral rights on the land to a new entity, TXL Oil Corporation, who could engage in the exploration, drilling and development of oil and gas properties. At the time, TPL’s holdings included approximately 1.8 million acres across 28 counties in Texas. Between 1980 and 1995, TPL bought back stock more quickly than it sold land, reducing its outstanding shares by 34% and its land inventory by only 8%, to 1.1 million acres.
In 2010, the introduction of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling unlocked oil and gas within the Permian shale, where TPL owned approximately 909,000 acres of land. In 2016, there was a significant discovery of oil and gas reserves in the southern portion of the Delaware Basin in Reeves County where the company owned substantial land. Subsequently, the company’s annual revenue rose from $66 million in 2016 to $451 million in 2021.
In 2019, TPL settled a months-long proxy fight over the election of trustee Eric Oliver. As part of the settlement, the company established a committee to explore whether Texas Pacific should be converted to a Delaware corporation. In 2021, the company reorganized from a trust to a corporation, was subsequently renamed Texas Pacific Land Corporation, and appointed a board of directors to govern.
From Wikipedia’s article on Texas Pacific Land Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6