Redwire Corp.’s stock rocketed to new highs Jan. 21 after announcing a big acquisition that will nearly double its annual revenue.
If that wasn’t enough to spark investor enthusiasm, Redwire’s Jan. 20 announcement when the market was closed coincided with President Donald Trump’s push for a manned mission to Mars in his inaugural address.
The Jacksonville-based space technology company’s stock jumped $7.58 to $22.33 on Jan. 21.
Many space-related companies rose on Trump’s comments, but CNBC reported Redwire’s 51% gain led the pack.
Redwire announced a deal to acquire Edge Autonomy for $925 million in cash and stock.
The company projected the combined companies will produce revenue of $535 million to $605 million this year, up from Redwire’s expected 2024 revenue of about $310 million.
Besides increasing the company’s size, CEO Peter Cannito said in a conference call with analysts the addition of Edge Autonomy’s uncrewed airborne system technology broadens Redwire’s business.
Uncrewed aircraft systems are commonly called drones, but are more advanced than what is used by the public.
“Redwire is a leading provider of space-based platforms to national security, civil, and commercial customers, and currently brings five space-based platforms to market,” Cannito said, according to a company transcript of the call.
“With a combination of Edge Autonomy, we extend our platform strategy to become multi-domain, which is critical to our national security customers as they start moving towards the future of their investment in advanced warfighting concepts,” he said.
“Like our customers, we believe in a future where autonomous space and airborne vehicles collaborate using multi-domain operations to provide strategic advantage,” he said.
“The combination of Edge Autonomy with Redwire will support integrated operations from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon and beyond,” he said.
Three analysts who maintained “buy” ratings on Redwire’s stock gave the deal positive reviews.
“We like the transaction as the market moves to multi-domain (space, cyber, air, land, and maritime) with strategic advantages to operating across domains, including immediate scale, domain knowledge, and broader market recognition,” Jefferies analyst Greg Konrad said in his research note.
“EA’s customer base includes several branches of the U.S. armed forces as well as overseas governmental entities. We are encouraged by the combined entities’ relatively even revenue exposure across national security, civil space, and commercial coupled with its newest end market, international defense,” Roth Capital Partners analyst Suji Desilva said in his note.
H.C. Wainwright analyst Scott Buck expects the addition of Edge Autonomy to create cross-selling opportunities for both companies’ customers.
“In particular, we believe leveraging Edge’s relationships in the International Defense space could be a meaningful driver of incremental revenue, beginning as early as 2026,” Buck said in his note.
Redwire’s stock had performed poorly since the company went public in 2021 and was trading at just $2.85 at the beginning of 2024.
However, the stock rose throughout last year as its business picked up and was boosted over the last two months of the year as investors anticipated Trump’s focus on space exploration.
Redwire is buying Edge Autonomy by paying $150 million in cash and issuing stock valued at $775 million as of Jan. 20, based on Redwire’s average price of $15.07 in the 30 trading days before the agreement. That means Redwire is issuing 51.43 million of its shares to privately owned Edge Autonomy stockholders.
The initial market gains after the announcement pushed the value of the stock issued up to $1.16 billion, making the total value of the deal about $1.3 billion.
All three analysts raised their price targets for the stock, with Desilva setting the highest target at $30.
“We believe the significant combined profitability improvement positions for Redwire can better support execution and further incremental inorganic activity,” he said.
Johnson & Johnson Vision’s sales picked up in the fourth quarter but are facing headwinds in 2025, said Tim Schmid, executive vice president and worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s MedTech businesses.
The Jacksonville-based subsidiary of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson produces Acuvue-brand contact lenses in Jacksonville and another facility in Ireland and makes eye care surgical products in other plants.
Johnson & Johnson Vision’s sales in the fourth quarter rose 9.1%, adjusted for foreign currency rates, to $1.3 billion, with contact lens sales rising 7.4%.
However, with slower sales in the first half of the year, Johnson & Johnson Vision’s sales for the full year rose only 3% to $5.15 billion, with contact lens sales rising 2.6% to $3.7 billion.
“We’re encouraged by the continuous improvements in vision, another core business, and as you know we had a slower start to 2024. But we saw that (improvement) throughout the year, culminating in an operational growth rate in the fourth quarter of 9.1%,” Schmid said in Johnson & Johnson’s Jan. 22 conference call with analysts.
“That said, as you know too well, we do have some short-term headwinds,” he said, which include competition in the U.S.
Schmid also said the company faces continuing headwinds in China but he didn’t give details.
“As we look to the year ahead, we don’t provide guidance by sector, as you know, but we’re confident that continued growth will be driven by our tremendous portfolio of new products,” he said.
Dream Finders Homes Inc. announced Jan. 23 it expanded into the Atlanta market with the acquisition of Liberty Communities LLC.
“Atlanta – the sixth largest homebuilding market in the U.S. and the largest in the Southeast – has been one of our highest-priority expansion markets,” CEO Patrick Zalupski said in a news release.
“Atlanta had over 27,000 estimated single-family permits in 2024, and was, effectively, the only Southeastern market where we were not active,” he said.
Liberty also has operations in Greenville, South Carolina.
Dream Finders said the Greenville operations include an off-site manufacturing and component import business.
“Liberty’s offsite manufacturing operations provide us with a unique and differentiated opportunity to explore incremental cost and production efficiencies for our homebuilding operations,” Zalupski said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Fifth Third Bank opened three new branches in the Jacksonville metropolitan area in 2024 and more are expected this year, according to CEO Timothy Spence.
The Cincinnati-based bank is targeting growth in the Southeast, he said in parent company Fifth Third Bancorp’s year-end conference call.
Fifth Third had 14 branches in the area as of June 30, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.
The company’s year-end report said it had 1,089 branches in 12 states.
“The 31 de novo branch locations we opened in 2024 and the 60 new branches we expect to open in the Southeast in 2025, should set us up well to continue to gain market share,” Spence said.
“The first wave, the new branch builds were disproportionately concentrated in Nashville, North Carolina, and Southwest Florida,” he said.
“The next wave here, when you look at the branches coming online this year and next year (will be in) the Southeast Coast. So not Dade County, but Broward North, Central Florida, and North Florida will all see a material increase in branch activity along with South Carolina.”
Fifth Third entered the Jacksonville market in 2007 by acquiring Casselberry-based R-G Crown Bank, which had nine Northeast Florida branches at the time.
The bank added three new branches in St. Johns County in 2024, giving it four in that county with nine in Duval and one in Clay.
Fifth Third has not filed any applications with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the last six months to open new branches in the Jacksonville area but it did file in November to close a Jacksonville branch at 14420 Beach Blvd.
St. Johns County issued a building permit Jan. 7 to Fifth Third to build a new branch in the Murabella master-planned community, and Fifth Third filed a site plan to build its first Nassau County office in the Wildlight master-planned community.
While Shad Khan’s Jacksonville Jaguars moved up the ranking of most valuable NFL teams last year, his British soccer team slipped in an annual ranking of biggest revenue producers in the sport.
Fulham FC produced 212.2 million euros (about $221 million) in revenue in the 2023-24 season, according to the Deloitte Football Money League, an annual ranking of global soccer teams.
Fulham’s revenue rose 1.1% from the previous season but its ranking fell from 26th the previous season to 28th, Deloitte said.
The accounting firm publishes a list of the top 30 teams. Fourteen of the 20 teams in the British Premier League, including Fulham, made the list.
AFC Bournemouth, a Premier League team owned by a group led by Fidelity National Financial Inc. Chairman Bill Foley, did not make the list.
All of the top 30 teams are in Europe.
Forbes magazine’s annual list of most valuable NFL franchises, published in August, placed the Jaguars at 26th among the 32 teams with an estimated value of $4.6 billion, up from 28th the previous year.
Deloitte’s analysis published Jan. 23 said some soccer teams are focused on growing revenue through development projects.
Just as Khan is developing properties adjacent to the Jaguars’ EverBank Stadium, he is developing an entertainment destination called Fulham Pier next to the soccer team’s London stadium along the Thames River. The venue is scheduled to open this summer.
Deloitte said there are more than 300 stadium projects including renovation and rebuilding underway among global teams in different sports.