The Jacksonville Jaguars may be financial world beaters, once again making Forbes magazine’s annual list of most valuable global sports franchises.
But the football team’s value pales in comparison to Jacksonville’s big public companies.
Forbes estimates the Jaguars’ value at $4.6 billion, making it the 43rd most valuable sports franchise in the world, according to a Dec. 12 report.
However, six Jacksonville-based public companies are worth more, based on their market value.
CSX Corp. leads the way with a market value of $63.5 billion as of Dec. 16, calculated by the trading price of its stock multiplied by the number of shares outstanding.
Jacksonville’s other two Fortune 500 companies are far more valuable than the Jaguars. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. had a market value of $44.7 billion as of Dec. 16 and Fidelity National Financial Inc. had a value of $16.4 billion.
The other three are Regency Centers Corp. at $13.7 billion, Landstar System Inc. at $6.5 billion and Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc. at $5.4 billion.
The Jaguars don’t publicly report financial data but the estimates of its finances by Forbes show the team has far less earnings power than Jacksonville’s big corporations.
The magazine estimated the Jaguars had $567 million in revenue and operating income of $139 million in 2023.
CSX produced $14.7 billion in revenue and $5.6 billion in operating income last year.
The Jaguars’ earnings power isn’t enough to justify the $4.6 billion valuation, but the prestige of owning a major sports franchise inflates its value.
The best comparison of NFL teams to public companies is the Green Bay Packers, a shareholder-owned company, although its stock is not publicly traded. The Packers issue annual financial reports to the public.
The Packers reported net income of $98.1 million in 2023 and Forbes values the team at $5.6 billion, about 57 times its earnings.
That’s about twice the current price-to-earnings ratio of S&P 500 stocks, and stocks have been trading at historically high ratios this year as the market reached record highs.
The value of NFL teams has been skyrocketing since the Jaguars first took the field. Wayne Weaver and his partners paid a fee of $140 million to the NFL when they were awarded the Jaguars franchise in 1993.
Weaver sold the team to Shad Khan in 2012 for an estimated $770 million. That investment has quintupled in value for Khan, according to the Forbes estimates.
The value of all NFL teams grew by 11% in the last year, according to Forbes, and it dominates the magazine’s list with 29 of the league’s 32 teams ranking in the global list of 50 most valuable franchises.
While public companies go up and down with the markets, you can expect the value of the Jaguars to only continue growing.
Since selling the Jaguars, Weaver’s most visible business is his controlling stake in Shoe Carnival Inc. and he recently increased his investment in the footwear chain.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Weaver bought 285,000 shares of Shoe Carnival for $33.91 each on Dec. 6.
That brought Weaver’s total holdings to 4.17 million shares, and his wife, Delores, owns another 5 million shares.
The Weavers control about one-third of the Evansville, Indiana-based company’s stock with their 9.17 million combined shares.
Weaver, who remains chairman of Shoe Carnival’s board, acquired the company in 1989 when he was CEO of another footwear company, Nine West Group Inc.
He took Nine West and Shoe Carnival public at about the same time in early 1993 when he also became the lead investor in Jacksonville’s pursuit of an NFL expansion franchise.
He left Nine West after its February 1993 initial public offering but continued as chairman of Shoe Carnival after its March 1993 IPO.
Two weeks from New Year’s Day, Dream Finders Homes Inc. CEO Patrick Zalupski sent shareholders his annual letter – for 2023.
“While this 2023 letter is long overdue, I promise that will not be the case for future letters,” Zalupski said in his Dec. 14 letter.
“2024 has been a busy year and I look forward to reporting on our accomplishments,” he said.
The accomplishments include the February acquisition of Crescent Homes, which expanded the homebuilder’s footprint into Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee.
“While we will cover this acquisition more in depth in the 2024 letter, most of our underwriting and due diligence was completed in the second half of 2023,” he said.
Dream Finders does not hold quarterly conference calls to discuss earnings, so the letter did provide more details to shareholders about the company’s performance than the company has been disclosing.
The company stopped reporting specific results for its Jacksonville division in 2023. But the letter said the division closed on the sale of 1,504 homes and produced $618 million in revenue last year.
Dream Finders had reported closings of 1,439 homes and revenue of $679 million for the Jacksonville division in 2022.
“For the first time in the history of the Company, it (Jacksonville) did not lead in revenue or profitability” in 2023, Zalupski said.
“On one hand this is a positive as our other divisions have grown considerably, but I also hope this stokes the competitive spirits in Jacksonville and motivates them to regain their former title,” he said.
Dream Finders builds homes in eight states and the Washington, D.C., area.
Dream Finders closed on 7,314 homes in all of its markets and produced revenue of $3.7 billion in 2023.
In the first nine months of 2024, closings rose by 8% to 5,575 and revenue rose 10% to $2.6 billion.
Earnings per share rose by 23 cents to $2.06 in the first nine months of this year.
Zalupski said he expects Dream Finders to continue growing its operations, including possible acquisition opportunities.
“We have historically grown organically and believe we will continue to do so for numerous reasons (opened organic divisions in Tampa and SE Florida in the past year), but we have also completed five successful acquisitions that have effectively returned all invested capital (other than Crescent which closed in 1Q24), or are on target to do so, in under three years from acquisition closing,” he said.
Dream Finders’ stock quadrupled in price in 2023 and was the best performer among Jacksonville-based companies, but the stock has leveled off in 2024 and was down 6% in the first 11 months of the year.
J.P. Morgan analyst Michael Rehaut is not expecting big gains to return for homebuilding stocks in 2025.
“After maintaining a positive sector stance over the past two years, we shift to a more cautious, less constructive approach towards the homebuilders for 2025,” he said in a Dec. 13 report on the industry.
“We anticipate a significantly less supportive demand/supply industry backdrop, while the builders’ fundamentals will likely feature margin and ROE contraction during the upcoming year, and lastly, valuations remain full, in our view,” said Rehaut, who does not cover Dream Finders.
“Overall, we view the group’s valuation as reasonable if not somewhat full, given our outlook for a relatively stable if not moderate housing backdrop over the next year,” he said.
In what has become an annual holiday season tradition, Landstar said Dec. 10 its board of directors declared a special dividend of $2 a share.
The special dividend is in addition to its regular quarterly dividend of 36 cents a share.
The trucking company has paid the $2 special dividend for six straight years and has been increasing its quarterly dividend every year since 2014.
The quarterly dividend was raised from 33 cents to 36 cents in July.
“Landstar’s strong balance sheet and free cash flow generation enable us to continue to return value to our stockholders,” CEO Frank Lonegro said in a news release.
Landstar said it has paid cash dividends of $120.5 million and spent $82.1 million to repurchase shares of its stock so far in 2024.
The company had $531 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet at the end of the third quarter.
Jacksonville-based Redwire Corp. said Dec. 10 it was awarded a $45.469 million five-year contract that will be funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate to research and develop new spacecraft technologies.
Redwire, which provides space technology for a variety of government and commercial programs, said the Air Force contract includes development of large deployable structures, thermal management capabilities, payload accommodations, and improved analysis and testing methods for in-space and terrestrial national security applications.
The company has been projecting total revenue of $310 million this year.
Redwire said work on the Air Force contract will be performed by its team in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
OmniMax International said Dec. 11 it acquired Millennium Metals Inc., a Jacksonville-based manufacturer of roofing accessories.
OmniMax is an Atlanta-based company which manufactures products for the residential roof drainage and roofing accessories markets.
The company has 12 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Canada.
OmniMax is owned by funds managed by affiliates of investment firm Strategic Value Partners LLC.
“We are delighted to welcome Millennium to OmniMax, and strengthen our leadership position in the residential roofing accessories market in Florida and the broader Southeastern U.S.,” OmniMax CEO John Krause said in a news release.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.