The St. Joe Company JOE
St. Joe's Florida real estate empire is a value trap: developments are ghost towns, the airport catalyst is a bust, and the land is worth $7-10/share, not $24.54.
Thesis
St. Joe Company owns 577,000 acres in Northwest Florida and has been sold to investors as a development story anchored by the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. Greenlight argues this story is a 'Field of Schemes': over the past decade JOE generated only $1,102 per acre in retained earnings plus dividends, its flagship developments like RiverTown, WindMark and WaterSound are 5-15% built and should be impaired by hundreds of millions, and JOE's land sits 'outside the fence' of the new airport while the Airport Authority controls the prime parcels. Management is now distracted by Deepwater Horizon litigation hopes. The rural land is worth only $650-950M ($7-10/share) versus the $24.54 stock price, implying ~60-70% downside.
SCQA
St. Joe is a Florida land-holding company sold to investors as a development story, with 577,000 acres in the Panhandle and a new international airport positioned as the catalyst that will unlock billions of value.
Over a decade of heavy development spending JOE earned just $1,102 per acre sold; flagship projects like RiverTown and WindMark are <15% built ghost towns; carrying values massively exceed observable market values, yet impairments have not been taken.
Take substantial impairments, stop development spending, sell off the rural land base to fund overhead, and retreat to JOE's pre-Rummell identity as a rural land company rather than a developer.
The rural land is worth $650-950 million, or $7-10 per share, against a $24.54 stock price — implying roughly 60-70% downside as the development premium collapses.
The three reasons
- 1
JOE generated only $1,102 per acre over 10 years despite selling its best coastal land
- 2
Major developments (RiverTown, WindMark, WaterSound) are <15% built and ghost towns
- 3
Rural land is worth only $650-950M ($7-10/share) vs. $24.54 stock price
Primary demands
- JOE should take substantial impairments on its real estate carrying values
- JOE should stop wasting capital on further development
- JOE should retreat to its pre-Rummell roots as a rural land company
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Precedents cited
- JOE's own Victoria Park sale (Dec 2009): $78.8M carrying value impaired to $11M sale
- JOE's Seven Shores impairment ($42M to $7M)
- JOE's St. Johns Golf Course impairment
Notable slides (6)
Notes
Iconic Einhorn short presented at the Value Investing Congress, October 13, 2010 — title 'Field of Schemes: If You Build It, They Won't Come' plays on Field of Dreams. Distinctive Greenlight house style: black background, lime-green titles, and unusually rich evidentiary visuals (Google Earth overlays, county-recorder deeds, photo collages contrasting glamorous Hilton Head/Napa with ghost-town Port St. Joe). Document is a short thesis but schema lacks an 'overvaluation' enum — used 'fraud_exposure' (Einhorn questions why impairments have not been taken) plus 'other'. No explicit position size disclosed. Closing ask is implicit (short JOE) rather than a direct call-to-action slide.