Rivco (ASX:RIV), formerly Duxton Water sole purpose is to own government mandated water rights and leases these back to others, mainly agricultural users. It’s business is centred on water rights in the Southern Murray-Darling basin of NSW. A pretty useless business model really that arguably does not add much benefit to society.  Though maybe you could say the same for many real estate landlords, royalty businesses or lots of other stuff we do.

 With changing climate we all know to expect more frequent and more severe droughts.  Roughly speaking, Western NSW has had now four above average rainfall seasons in a row.  You don’t have to believe in the science of climate change, maybe just the seasonality of rainfall to appreciate there is a fair chance there will be another drought.   And of course, less rainfall means the water assets RIV controls are more in demand and more valuable.    

With RIV currently selling at a 10% discount to post-tax NTA with little debt and sending out a fully franked dividend of around 5%, then there must be a lot of seasonality deniers out there.  Unlike climate change deniers, these seasonality deniers have cunningly managed to operate under the social denouncement radar. I have never heard of anyone being publicly ridiculed or condemned by their fellow citizens for being a seasonality denier. Yet they clearly must exist.

There is a lot of crisis out there to choose from: the climate crisis, housing crisis, mental health crisis, obesity crisis - and more crisis’s piling up every month.  Then there is Scoonie’s bank account crisis, which no one seems to care much about.  

Maybe the easiest one to observe is the obesity crisis.  Just take a look around any Westfield shopping centre.   The strange thing is these fulsome people do not appear to be in any form of obvious distress and are clearly not suffering from a calorie deficiency. They all seem pretty content.    Maybe there isn’t an obesity crisis just a lot of fat people around.