JOE hit a new 52 week low today during the trading day.
My understanding was that Brady was forced out in a power struggle with Bienvenue, as how often do you see CEO's retire "immediately". If you go back and review their business strategies over the past four to five years, you will note that they tend to change around every 15 - 18 months, and when unsuccessful, it changes again. It began with focusing on development of the commercial land around the PCB airport, which has been a complete disaster, then onto real estate development, which went nowhere, then to developing the Port of St. Joe which is a total non-starter for any number of reasons, to a resort program, which to be fair has had limited success, and now to developing out Watersound North (Origins). They have plenty of cash to execute as they have bulk sold over half of their real estate portfolio, yet the question continues to be if they have the expertise to pull it off, and the conventional wisdom appears to be that they simply do not. While the resort program has had limited success, even with giving away free memberships to the Watersound Beach Club and access to the Camp Creek and Shart Tooth golf courses, they have made little inroads into securing market share. Several reasons for that, include their refusal to use VBRO, the most commonly used vacation rental search engine in the country, as they believe that their proprietary system is better, even though that few people know it exists. I have yet to talk to a single person who went with them since launch that didn't a) see a measurable decline in revenue, and b) experience terrible customer service. The ulitimate head of their resort program, whom has defined himself in their brochures as "a real estate visionary", has a criminal justice education, coupled with being a beverage and cigar distibutor. The fact that they elected to not do a call with analysts at the end of the third quarter, which is the first time that this has happenned as far back as I know, is quite telling, even though they are only followed by I believe two firms. Despite spinning every earnings press release, the fact of the matter remains that on a pure operating basis, I do not believe that they have been profitable for more than two quarters over the past four to five years. They even went so far this year to try to cheat during the Watersound Beach Board elections, where they have the option to either a) appoint a member to the Board, or b) submit a vote for each of their lots/homes. Instead, they attempted to do both, and luckily, one of the homeowner's charged with counting the ballots caught them in the act.
