Will the Florida real estate depression kill St. Joe?
It was being killed by a bad CEO, who is no longer there. The new guy, Britt Greene, is good. The company owns more than 600,000 acres of land in northwest Florida. About 50% of it is within 15 miles of the Gulf Coast. It is the largest piece of good, privately owned land left in the U.S. And the first new international airport since Denver is right now being plunked in the middle of St. Joe’s land in Bay County, about 41 miles from Tallahassee. And St. Joe owns everything around this airport? Yes. The weather is great, the beaches are gorgeous, and the ecosystem is comparable to the rainforest. Every real estate guy in the world would love to own this land, but they all depend on borrowed money, and they don’t have it now. Granted, the company doesn’t have the free cash flow, but it’s debt-free and we’re buying beach land for swamp values. We paid, on average, $32 or $33 for our shares, and I know Joe is worth more than what we paid. It has a stock-market capitalization of $2.6 billio
