St. Joe's Largest Stockholder and Main Beneficiary Agree to Sell Back Shares to Build Up Company's Value

ORLANDO-St. Joe Co., Florida’s largest real estate operating business and parent of locally-based St. Joe Commercial, feels its current $20 per-share price on the New York Stock Exchange is too low for the earnings the 60-year-old organization is currently generating and is doing something about it.

St. Joe is contracting with its largest stockholder, the Alfred I. DuPont Testamentary Trust and its primary beneficiary, the Nemours Foundation, in a weekly stock repurchase program that will total one million shares per quarter.

The buy-back of the company’s common will increase the stock’s per-share value by spreading increased earnings over fewer shares, St. Joe chairman/CEO Peter S. Rummell Sr. says in a prepared statement. “We feel the company’s value is not fully reflected in our current stock price,” he says.

The Trust will continue to own about the same percentage of St. Joe. Through Dec. 5, the company repurchased 945,700 shares at an average price of $20.04 per share. The stock was at 19-15/16 in early trading today.

St. Joe completed its initial $150 million stock repurchase authorization in the first quarter of this year. The company’s directors then approved a second repurchase program for the same amount.

As of Dec. 5, the company had 84,553,792 total shares outstanding. The duPont Trust held 49,643,292 shares; the Nemours Foundation, 2,232,408 shares. The Trust was created in 1935 to benefit the Nemours Foundation, a charitable hospital organization. St. Joe Co. is headquartered in Jacksonville, 230 miles north of Downtown Orlando.