Immersion Corp ($IMMR) is a haptics technology royalty and holding company. Let's get the fundamentals out of the way.

Operating business: Haptics royalty, generating 20-40M of revenue at year at ~95%+ gross margin.

Holding company: 33% stake in $BNED (330M market cap) + 90M net cash, 64M in bonds, and an extra 45M in other public marketable securities = ~309M in tangible book

Market cap: 186M

Trading under tangible book with an operating business is basically unheard of. On fundamentals, the company is a clear 3-5x.

So why is it trading where it is?

After IMMR acquired BNED, they discovered audit discrepancies and had to restate financials. A former payment processing employee "knowingly circumvented" internal controls through unsupported manual journal entries that reduced cost of sales in fiscal 2024 and 2025, overstating accounts receivable by approximately $23M. Relative to the combined market capitalization of IMMR and BNED, this is immaterial. BNED filed restated 10-Ks in January, resolving the issue. Importantly, this misconduct occurred under prior BNED management. Current management identified and corrected it promptly. The market's reaction appears overdone, with IMMR down over 55% from its 2024 peak despite the restatement representing a minor accounting irregularity at a subsidiary, not a fundamental impairment of IMMR's core royalty business or balance sheet strength.

That didn't stop the market from taking IMMR to the shed. The stock is down ~60%+ from peaks. The company has received several delisting notices because it's so behind on its earnings reports. Understandable, considering the royalty holding company only has ~9 employees that were suddenly tasked with restating an entire year's worth of earnings.

Management has been dead silent. The company has released only one press release in the past year. It got to the point a major shareholder wrote an open letter lambasting management, in which management responded by adopting a poison pill. Crazy. But the shareholder later settled with management positively.

Where's the insider buying?

You would think that trading at ~0.6X TBV would get management buying the stock, but there's been no market purchases in nearly a year. It's not like management isn't paying attention - the Chief Strategy Offer runs a hedge fund and X account (@ragingventures) and is obvously aware of the stock price. So why aren't they buying?

My main theory right now is that the company is in a blackout. They can't buy back shares because they hold material information - they need to release the earning report backlog first. They can't communicate likely because they're out of compliance and counsel is instructing them to lay low. The lack of communication might also help the stock price remain low so that insiders are able to acquire as many shares as possible in the future.

Overall, the company is clearly trying to make right with its earnings restatements. Two restatements were completed in just the past month, with more inevitably on the way. When this company regains full compliance, I can't see the share price remaining where it is. I would anticipate massive insider buying and a rerating.

Lastly, there's some open market evidence that this stock isn't being appreciated by the market correctly. Look at the yearly performance of $BNED vs. $IMMR. $BNED is the company with the accounting issues - $IMMR just has to restate earnings because they consolidated $BNED's numbers onto their earnings reports. However, $BNED is significantly outperforming $IMMR - even though more than half of $IMMR's market cap is the $BNED stake! Day to day you would expect the two equities to move in lockstep, but they don't at all. It leads me to believe there's little attention being paid by investors to make sure the price is rational.