Welcome. Welcome everyone to the LGL Group's, May third investor update webinar presentation. This immediately follows the spin-off of MtronPTI. Let's start off with a safe harbor statement.
Thank you, Marc. Good morning. I'm Patrick Huvane, Executive Vice President of Finance and Business Development at LGL Group. I would advise you to read our safe harbor statement and note further that any investor or potential investors should ensure they have read the risks outlined in the Risk Factors section within our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 17th, 2023. I now take it back to you, Mark.
Thank you, Pat. The LGL Group, thank you all for joining. We'll move through a review of the company, post the spin-off of MtronPTI and outline a going-forward template. Clearly the precision time and frequency business is our primary operating platform, and we'll talk a bit about that business. Today, on the call, Marc Gabelli, Chairman and CEO, will be presenting along with Tim Foufas, a longtime director and incoming CEO of the company. Patrick Huvane, our Executive Vice President of Finance, and James Tivy. Also on the line, we have Michael Ferrantino, who is and has been a Co-CEO of the business. Let's move to the next slide. Just a bit of background.
The LGL Group, formed in 1917, has been publicly traded since 1946 and really has a long history of various forms of investments across a multitude of industries, including financial services, industrial manufacturing, transportation, and communications. I encourage all investors to review the website and look at the history of the business. The PTF operating subsidiary, acquired in 2016, continues to perform well and really is a gateway to what we believe is a very defendable niche business in the time and frequency systems space, and we'll talk again about that. As of December 31st, again, we published our results just a few months ago, on a pro forma basis, post-spin, about $1.6 million in revenue.
The stock price as of just before this call last week was $4.1, with a range adjusted somewhere in that high threes, $3.90 to $6 range. We have 5.35 million shares outstanding with 1 million warrants adjusted. Again, encourage everyone to look at our public filings for the details. Roughly $38 million of cash and marketable securities, and a book value per share of about $7.20. The adjusted warrant strike, as you can see, and you again, encouraged to look at our filings, is just north of $4.75. Next slide. Thanks. The company has repositioned itself for renewed momentum and focus.
The financial engineering, which was the spin-off of Mtron Industries, was completed in October 7, 2022. This really created a pure play aerospace and defense frequency control business oriented around robust applications and over the last several years with much more of an emphasis on aerospace, satellite, military, and medical. The symbol is MPTI, and we encourage investors to look at and understand Mtron in its own right. The company pro forma today has operating flexibility that we're excited about. We have a net cash position, no debt on an ongoing basis. We're profitable, and we have a line of new business initiatives both around PTF as well as new and outside of market. The business itself, PTF, is showing some organic growth, and we think the pipeline of new business is encouraging.
There's a handful of new products and in the existing product line, new customers where we believe we can grow both by taking share, as well as growing into new product lines. Next slide, please. The company today is a business traded on the NYSE American with a long value creation heritage. Since 1985, this team broadly has acquired over 32 businesses, sold 11 and spun off three. You may have seen this illustration before, and we're presenting it again as we view the relationship between these four quadrants as important elements in growing value for shareholders. Beginning with our operating businesses at 12 noon, coupled with mergers and acquisitions, new initiatives both around existing businesses and new, and special purpose vehicles, which will be designed to build scale, utilizing the broad team strengths in its network to build value for shareholders.
Strong network effects to grow value. Now, before we move forward, I'd like to introduce Timothy Foufas. Timothy Foufas has been a longtime director of The LGL Group. He had a career in both private equity as well as in public market research, where he was an analyst many years ago at Gabelli & Company. Tim comes with great acumen in deal flow and M&A. Tim will join me in helping lead The LGL Group going forward. Now I'd like to pass it to Tim so he can outline some of the business dynamics.
Yeah. Thank you, Marc, for the introduction. I do look forward to my expanded role with the company. As Mark said, I've been a long-serving board member, over 15 years, with a background in private equity and investing in general. Most recently was one of the partners in our last SPAC. Our goal is to continue to broaden our business franchise. Gonna do that by expanding the PTF's engineering excellence, leveraging its core strength in engineering leadership, expanding client access, adding new capabilities, and continuing to deepen its product offerings. We'll do so by employing either organic R&D, strategic partnerships, JVs, or M&A.
Also, we're gonna leverage LGL's management team's expertise and network, which is evident by our recent SPAC investment, where we brought in a very broad seasoned team to kinda help us add value there. Continue to work with our existing and future portfolio companies management to assist with operations and any growth initiatives, kind of bringing our level of expertise to the fold. In building a multi-industry investment portfolio vis-à-vis direct investing with businesses utilizing various structures. You can go to the next page. Specifically, we're pursuing direct M&A, lift-outs and tuck-ins. Looking for undervalued companies in the Graham and Dodd tradition. Companies with EBITDA from $5 million-$15 million.
Clearly, we would consider deals that are higher or lower on a special basis. Companies with strong cash flow generating capabilities, backed with competitive products or services, with defensible market positions or IP. Opportunities in a wide range of industries such as consumer products, services, media and communication, industrial equipment, manufacturing and business services in general, in line of what we have been doing since 1985. We'll be looking at tuck-in opportunities for our portfolio companies, including PTF expansion. We also in the first quarter formed and funded Lynch Media Merchant Fund with $10 million initial capitalization with a $100 million fund target size.
Generally, what that would do would bring in some fee income, success-based incentives, as well as return on invested capital to the LGL fold. With the goal of leveraging our extensive corporate relations across many sectors, as well as our broad LGL-affiliated team. I think that the fund will also provide our team with a much deeper insight into other opportunities and industries as we go forward. On the PTF, just a little blurb on our sole operating company right now. The operations were founded in 2002. We acquired it in 2016. It has roughly a 3,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Wakefield, Mass.
The company designs, manufactures, and markets time and frequency instruments, serving computer networking, satellite ground stations, electric utilities, broadcasting, telecommunication systems, just to name a few. The broad market is relatively small and niche, but it's growing. With the time and frequency market estimated to be roughly $160 million in 2019, projected to grow to just under $260 million.
By 2027. The PTP, which is the Precision Time Protocol subsector, that's expected to grow to $25 million by 2026 from $11 million in 2019. Some of the major opportunities we're looking forward to in the coming years, follow-on programs from Leonardo DRS, a Raytheon program with their phased array radar system. Interesting opportunity within the Indian government to do various follow-on systems, coming back off of the 2022 contract win where we're now considered a made in India supplier. Any potential of PTF as being a supplier of choice with the NASA countdown system. That's a program that we've been working on for some time.
I will now let Pat Huvane , our Executive Vice President of Finance, walk us through the financials.
Thanks, Tim. Okay. What we're looking at here is the balance sheet. I'm gonna walk through briefly the financials, both the balance sheet and the income statement. Of note, these amounts do agree to our 10-K, which as I mentioned earlier, we filed on April 17th. However, I do wanna point out these are condensed and simplified for this presentation just for easier consumption. Looking at the balance sheet here, as noted earlier and as evidenced here as well, the biggest components of our balance sheet are currently cash equivalents of $21.5 million at the end of the year 2022, as well as marketable securities of $16.6 million.
Taken together, that's $38.1 million that will provide a lot of flexibility for us as we pursue our M&A and strategic initiatives. Moving on to the next page, we'll be speaking about the income statement now. Here again, it's condensed, but otherwise consistent with what we've reported on our 10-K. At the top line there, you'll see operating revenues. In the case of 2022, here, it's $1.6 million or $1.7 million, and that's all coming from our PTF. That, as you can see, that's a increase, 14% year-over-year increase, compared to last year, 2021.
Toward the middle of the page, you'll see the biggest component of the income statement, the line on it being realized and unrealized gains and losses. For 2022, we are showing -$4.5 million. However, I'd like to point out that that's really a reversal of the prior year's unrealized gains that we reflected. Just to provide a bigger kind of story on this item, this item is basically driven by our SPAC investment that we made, initial investment being made in 2019. We footnoted here this line item just to better describe the results here.
taken for the life of this investment, as you can notice in the footnote on the bottom, if we include the period from 2019 to present, we've experienced an overall economic realized gain of about $14.7 million on this one investment. just wanna highlight that given the fact that we are in fact showing this negative $4.5 million reversal in the current year. These are basically the highlights of the income statement. if I could now hand it back to Marc, maybe to summarize the next step.
Thank you, Pat. Thank you everyone for listening for this broad outline. We'll soon go to questions. Just in summary, LGL Group, we're a New York Stock Exchange-listed microcap pure play, again, with a balance sheet, a going-forward position of profitability and a important platform that plays in a niche that we believe is quite defendable for growth. It's a fragmented market, a handful of very strong leaders at the top and an important fragmentation below the top 3-5 players. We think there's great opportunity for that business. The platform of LGL itself is well positioned for expansion along the 4 quadrants that we outlined earlier. With that, thank you for your time. We'd now like to open this up for questions.
We have a handful of questions from, Vishal Alisha and some others. I'll go live, and I believe there's a way to manage this. Unfortunately for those on the line, we'll try our best to try to get everyone in. There's a feature as well to send them in by text, but we're gonna try to go live now. Thank you very much again. Can someone on our lead team please take these questions live? Is there a way to please do that?
Marc, I'll just read off the first one.
Are we not able to open this up for the speaker?
No, you can't. You have to just read off the Q&A, and then hand it off appropriately.
Let me see if this is the way. Okay. First question is from Michelle Mishra. I apologize, I'm trying to get this technical feature so everyone can speak. I guess we don't have this set up for this, so it's gonna be quite awkward. What is the current level of acquisition multiples? Would an acquisition be accretive in one finances at current rates? I believe also Michelle Mishra asked the question earlier regarding profitability. First, let me address the latter, Michelle, and again, apologies to those on the line. I did not realize we could not go live. So we're getting these questions in typed, so I encourage you to figure out on the line how to do that, and then we'll answer them accordingly.
In terms of the pro forma, if you just take a run rate, there's significant SG&A savings from what you saw from previous year. We're not gonna give any specific guidance, the pro forma business is profitable based on its current balance sheet operations and cost structure as adjusted. Again, the Q will come out soon, that'll be your first Q2 comparison, going forward, you'll get some more pure play numbers. Our current model and template shows this company being profitable into 2023. Going to the first question, Michelle, thank you for the question. What is the current level of acquisition multiples? Of course, this depends on the industry and prototype business. We have a pipeline which includes, as Tim outlined, businesses with positive EBITDA.
You know, certainly we're looking at structural change, where founders, working for transition, management teams staying in place, and we're under our historical model where we can help add value and add growth. The multiples really are dependent on the industries, but we're looking at roughly in the 5 times range. That'll be just give a plus or minus, but right in that standard deviation around 5 times EV-EBITDA. Okay? I hope that satisfies, Michelle. Please ask another question if you have one. The next question comes in from Andrew Ryan. Can you clarify what's going on with corporate overhead cost structure, now that LGL is complete? There's another question as it relates to, again, costs.
The outline and input that we're giving you is that the numbers come down significantly. We're running the corporate really at a minimum. We don't have a broad staff. We're still finding synergies and efficiencies everywhere possible, including negotiating all related vendor agreements. With that said, even if we don't make any more changes in costs, we're moving forward on a profitable basis for 23. Few more questions around M&A. We just touched on it with Mr. Mishra's question, including some analysts. Anya, I know you have a question on M&A. We will have future presentations that will talk about more of the pipeline. Let me just give also a little bit more along the lines of the graphic that we've outlined. There's a merchant fund.
Merchant fund is multi-industry, looking to raise capital, make acquisitions where we have a position of influence and/or control. We will raise capital also per individual investment alongside the fund, and that'll help you get a sense of scale. Secondly, we have acquisitions around the operating platform of PTF. Thirdly, acquisitions that are outside of the fund and don't meet per se the criteria of the fund, and those again will be done prudently. We're not looking to put the money to work immediately. We will put the money to work prudently, and when the time is appropriate. Obviously in a rising interest rate environment, not only does the cost of capital and opportunity costs change precipitously, but with that said, it also is freeing some opportunities.
We think there's a very big opportunity in what we can call orphan deals. Those are private equity funds that don't have their traditional exit of either an IPO or a sale to another private equity fund. Many of the private equity funds that we're in front of in the kinda smaller company range are also subject to the fact that it's hard to raise additional capital now, that the environment has quite changed. We think that there are orphan deals that will find itself into the LCI IV. Orphan deals are those that are kind of at the end of the fund's life, and generally, we see them across industries, traditional. I hope that helps with Anya's question.
We think that the broad market environment, and this is for Peter Sidoti, who's asking the question, how does the market conditions affect our investment strategy and return expectations? We're looking to buy a business at a discount of where we believe it really is worth to either a forcing transaction 3 to 5 years out, with the added element of where we believe we can add some growth, at a discount of around half. Kind of the old classic, trying to buy a business at a discount of 50%, looking forward kind of 3 to 5 years. There is the moving part of where the broad equity markets are, and we're taking that into account, of course, as one element and input.
More importantly, it's looking at traditional measures of the returns, the overall net present value of our investment and the returns on the investment capital vis-a-vis, which is of course, you know, an attractive 4.5%-5% yield on the short-term rates. We're not in a rush, and we think that time actually plays in favor, that there will be more opportunities coming loose, including from family-owned businesses. I have a question coming in related to the discount to book value and at what point do we consider a stock repurchase plan. This is from Greg Greenberg. Thank you, Greg, for your question. It's an excellent question. The opportunity to, of course, buy back stock is important.
As you know, there's also thresholds that Congress has put in place with regards to stock buybacks, and a quote, unquote, toll tax on that. We're cognizant of that, of course. With that said, it's not material in the broader context of the discount. If we look at the overall calculus, we think that, as the stock is absorbed in the market now and there's a better understanding of what the pro forma looks like, we will consider all opportunities again for shareholder value. We are cognizant of the alignment mechanism of the buyback, but we don't have anything planned at this moment. You know, with that said, it is clearly the math is interesting for the for consideration.
We've got a few questions around what are we doing with the merchant fund, and I believe we just outlined it in terms of broad strokes. The materials and documents for that fund and an investor presentation. Right now, we're in a quiet period for this. They will eventually become available, at least at the broad retail level, in broad strokes, will become available on the website. This is a traditional management fee and performance fee structure. The performance fee is at 20%, and it is of course, based on realization of returns. The fund also is focused on both private and public companies. We do believe that there's opportunities in public microcaps as well. This is a question coming in from Brian Boyd.
Brian, I hope that helps answer some of your questions. Are we modeling our strategy from Marc Gabelli on another public company? You know, Mark, there are multiple companies in the marketplace that look to deploy their cash in both new companies, new industries, and use those as platforms for growth. We're a microcap in that sense, and we don't want to approach this with any hubris towards the larger companies. Of course, as Tim outlined in the Graham and Dodd tradition, we have the grandfather of all the greats this Saturday presenting. You know, of course, that's an important model.
You know, Brian, you had another question around the $5 million-$15 million range of targets. I believe we outlined that, you know, we will use other outside capital and financing on a deal-by-deal basis under SPVs. According to my technical capabilities of understanding how to use this service with questions that have come in, with unfortunately this system of typing in questions and friction, I believe I've captured most of the categories of questions and certainly please type. We'll give another few minutes if there's any more. Thank you. Doesn't look like there's any other questions at this time. We appreciate everybody's time today.
We plan on having a few more of these webinars. We'll improve the technical capabilities both with video as well as with the ability to actually verbally ask your questions. We're joined on this call today by some of our colleagues at MtronPTI, Bill Drafts, and Michael Ferrantino that are helping lead the PurePlay Mtron business. You know, we encourage everyone on this line to also look at the sister company post-spin as I mentioned earlier on PTI. With that, Linda, I believe we're not gonna have any more questions. We can conclude today's call. Thank you everyone for joining.