In a generally dismal first quarter for stocks, Fidelity National Financial Inc. defied the market, rising 16%.
At least one analyst expects the Jacksonville-based title insurance company to continue outperforming the market as the housing outlook improves.
“At a high level, we view our housing-related stocks under coverage as proverbial ‘safe havens’ in the market now given our view that the negatives of a slowing economy/weakening consumer trends would be more than offset by the housing lift that would accompany lower rates and the potential for greater inventory,” Stephens analyst John Campbell said in a research note.
“In our view, the affordability constraints and lack of adequate inventory have served as the two biggest impediments to housing over the last handful of years, which has translated into a multi-year backlog of would-be buyers,” Campbell said.
“Further, we view the title stocks as some of the best plays within that housing related group given the additional exposure to commercial + refi, favorable valuations (FNF is the cheapest) and capital allocation optionality,” he said.
Campbell’s report followed a March 20 virtual investor meeting hosted by Stephens with Fidelity CEO Mike Nolan and Chief Financial Officer Tony Park.
“As highlighted on its recent earnings call, FNF has a fairly constructive outlook for its title end market in ’25,” he said.
A nontitle issue hanging over Fidelity this year is the fate of its 85% stake in F&G Annuities & Life Inc.
Fidelity acquired F&G in June 2020 and spun off 15% of the annuity and life insurance company as a separate public company in December 2022.
Some investors are expecting Fidelity to spin off the rest of F&G as the five-year anniversary of the acquisition approaches, but Campbell doesn’t see it happening.
“While many investors want to see this spin-out happen, we see a low likelihood of it happening given the counter-cyclical earnings support (F&G accounted for nearly 40% of FNF’s ’24 earnings) and given the substantial free cash flow contributions (which, we think, is eventually earmarked for a higher FNF core dividend),” he said.
Cannae Holdings Inc., an investment company spun off from Fidelity in 2017, is expecting its shareholders to benefit from the pending sale of Jacksonville-based Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc.
Cannae is Dun & Bradstreet’s largest stockholder with about 16% of the shares, and its 69.1 million shares represent the largest asset in Cannae’s portfolio.
Dun & Bradstreet announced an agreement March 24 to be acquired by private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group for $9.15 a share in stock.
Cannae would receive $632 million from the sale and the company announced March 31 it plans to use at least $300 million of those proceeds to repurchase shares of its stock.
Share repurchases are used by public companies to reduce the number of their shares outstanding, making the remaining shares more valuable.
Cannae also plans to use about $60 million of the proceeds to pay
dividends to shareholders. The company did not say whether it will increase the size of its quarterly dividend, which has been 12 cents per share.
Additional proceeds from the Dun & Bradstreet sale will be used by Cannae to pay debt.
Cannae has been under fire from activist investment firm Carronade Capital, which sent a letter to the board of directors March 20 saying it will nominate a slate of four directors to the board if changes aren’t make to improve operations.
“The DNB sale transaction allows Cannae to monetize our largest asset and continue to execute the plan I laid out in February 2024 when I assumed my role as CEO,” Cannae Chief Executive Bill Foley said in a news release.
“We believe these share repurchases, debt repayment, and continued dividends, in addition to the other actions taken over the past 13 months, will drive significant value for our shareholders and help close the discount to net asset value,” said Foley, who is also chairman of Fidelity and executive chairman of Dun & Bradstreet.
Carronade has not made any public statements about Cannae since the Dun & Bradstreet deal was announced.
Cannae is headquartered in Las Vegas, where Foley relocated after being awarded a National Hockey League expansion franchise in that city.
Two analysts expressed caution for freight shipping companies heading into the second quarter, including the two big Jacksonville-based carriers, railroad company CSX Corp. and trucking company Landstar System Inc.
“We’re lowering estimates as March freight is not showing typical seasonal improvement. We haven’t seen material slowing, but rather a lack of seasonality from uncertain trade policy,” Wells Fargo analyst Christian Wetherbee said in a March 27 report.
“Defensive positioning seems appropriate in the current environment,” he said.
“We entered 2025 with early-cycle enthusiasm for truckload-related transports, upgrading several names on our view that progress on pricing and margins would put a three-year freight recession in the rearview enroute to ‘mid-cycle’ in 2026,” Susquehanna Financial analyst Bascome Majors said in a March 26 report.
“Three months later, retailer pre-stocking and tariff and geopolitical uncertainty turned ‘animal spirits’ macro enthusiasm into pessimism, with higher-frequency data closing 1Q with a whimper into the critical spring bid season,” he said.
Majors maintained a “neutral” rating on Landstar but lowered his price target from $150 to $130, with the stock trading at $149.28 at the time of his report.
“Near term, the truckload cycle likely gets worse before it gets better,” he said.
Wetherbee maintained an “equal weight” rating on CSX but lowered his price target from $34 to $31, with the stock trading at $29.90.
“We expect 1Q volumes to be down 1.7% year over year and costs will remain elevated due to challenging operating conditions” at CSX, he said.
“Across our coverage we are pushing out the expected freight recovery to 2H25/1H26, as we now expect tariff and policy uncertainty to be a near-term overhang to industrial freight improvement,” Wetherbee said.
Most Jacksonville stocks performed poorly in the first quarter, with 14 of 19 publicly traded companies headquartered in Northeast Florida registering declines.
Perhaps surprisingly, the worst performer in the quarter was the biggest gainer of 2024.
Space technology company Redwire Corp. soared in late 2024 after the election of Donald Trump, helped by the new administration’s focus on space travel, rising 478%.
It rose further in mid-January after announcing a big acquisition but it dropped last month after reporting disappointing fourth quarter revenue and finished the quarter down 50% since Dec. 31 and down 69% from its mid-February peak.
Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Baliff expressed optimism about
Redwire’s revenue growth under the Trump administration at a March 18 Roth Capital Partners conference.
“Government is roughly 85% of our revenue, either directly or through some of the larger primes,” he said, according to a transcript of the conference posted by the company.
“What we’ve seen in the previous administration change in 2021 is usually, whether it be Republican-Democrat, Democrat-Democrat, there’s usually a bit of a delay that happens as the administrations change, at least from what we saw in 2021,” he said.
“We are not a seasonal company, right. Getting space infrastructure is not based on weather. What we do see is that the sales cycles have a tendency to be longer. So we’ve seen a lot of our sales more in the second half of the year than the front half of the year. And I think that’s what we’re going to see.”
ParkerVision Inc. reported a 2024 net loss of $14.5 million, or 16 cents a share, as the Jacksonville-based developer of wireless technology continues to push forward with patent infringement lawsuits against several major telecommunications device manufacturers.
ParkerVision had no revenue in 2024 and is focused on the lawsuits, including an ongoing case involving Qualcomm Inc. after a favorable appellate court ruling for ParkerVision in September.
“The most impactful event of 2024 was the Federal Circuit’s agreement with ParkerVision’s appeal, reversing the Orlando district court’s 2022 rulings that had ended our prospect for a jury trial in our patent infringement case against Qualcomm,” CEO Jeff Parker said in a March 24 news release.
“This coming May will mark the start of the 12th year since this case was
filed as it has faced numerous delays due to, among other things, patent validity challenges, two years of a pandemic, and, ultimately, a trip to the appellate court,” he said.
“We are eager to receive the district court’s rulings on the remaining pending motions, after which the court has indicated it will hold a pre-trial conference and establish a trial date.”
Parker said the company is also making progress on several lawsuits pending in Texas.
“We are anticipating at least two jury trials in the Waco court in the second half of this year, with additional trials scheduled in 2026. We are confident that juries will find our story compelling as we explain the benefits our innovations brought to the accused infringing wireless products,” he said.
Despite years of losses, ParkerVision said it had $4.9 million in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of the year following an equity financing.