Good morning, everyone. I'm John Mills, Managing Partner with ICR, and it is my pleasure today to welcome with us John Kiernan , President and CEO of Alico, a company with certainly deep roots in Florida agriculture spanning more than a century. John joins us today to discuss the company's important strategic transformation, which we announced last week, into a diversified landholding company, which marks a very pivotal moment in the company's 125-year history. Now I'll turn it over to John to tell you more about that transition.
Thank you, John. We appreciate it, John. Dear Gerry, Tyler, thanks for taking care of us this week. Most importantly, thank you all for taking time to join us today. Alico is a publicly traded company, so that's a little unusual for your schedule, but we've been trading on the Nasdaq since 1971. We've been public since 1960. Our ticker is ALCO. Our market cap right now is about $225 million, with about $100 million of debt. Public company stuff. So from a historical perspective, we've been an agribusiness in Florida. Everything's always been in Florida for about 125 years. We own about 53,371 acres of land, all here in the state of Florida. In addition, we own about 48,700 acres of oil, gas, and mineral rights. So those are the assets of the company, and that's really what we are as a land company today.
We currently operate two divisions: Alico Citrus, which is, we think, the actual largest citrus producer in the United States, and our land management and other operations, which includes land leasing and other related support operations. We've repositioned the company over the last several years to provide investors with the benefits and stability of a conventional agricultural investment, combined with the optionality that comes with active land management. F rom a snapshot perspective, you'll see that 53,000 acres is all not contiguous. We're in 31 different locations, and we're spread across eight different counties. From the top, that's Polk County. If you go up about two inches off the top of the page, that's where you are right now in Orlando.
W e're primarily in the center of the state, and our properties go from about 4,700 acres to about 15 acres in lots of different areas of the state. We, over the past 10 years, have strengthened our leadership team. And although I have the best picture, Mitch Hutchcraft is probably our strongest employee. So Mitch, in the center of the page, we hired last May, and he has spent the last 35 years mastering the entitlement process all within the state of Florida. And entitlement is a code word in Florida that basically means rezoning. So his expertise is taking agricultural land and working with the federal, state, and local authorities to transition it from agricultural purposes and permissions to something other than that. H is specialty really is residential and commercial transitions.
We're very, very lucky to have basically recruited Mitch, and he is clearly a key leadership team member. As John had mentioned, last Monday was kind of busy for the company. On January 6th, we announced that we were winding down our citrus division after this current harvest season, which we expect will end probably somewhere around April or May of this year. That was a dramatic announcement because we're somewhere between 20% and 25% of the production for the industry here in the state of Florida. We'll get to the specific reasons why, but we think it is a very critical decision that's going to reward shareholders and really serve to unlock value for the assets that we currently own. What this will do is transform our company into a diversified land company.
R ather than primarily operate just citrus, which is weather-dependent and is subject to a disease called greening here in the state, and we've seen diminishing financial returns, we'll be able to focus on less volatile streams of income, such as leasing land to other agricultural operators with diversified crops, which will bring in revenue streams that are very, very predictable, as well as monetize some of the land that we currently have in our portfolio, which we think is substantially more valuable than really what the stock is reflecting today. L ast but not least, the development work does take multiple years. W hat we've done is ensure that there's adequate liquidity to operate Alico until we're able to realize kind of highest and best use top dollar on some of those commercial and residential development opportunities. This did have an immediate impact last week.
We did substantially reduce our workforce by about 90%, which gave us all a very heavy heart. We did our best to take care of the employees, and we've transitioned them. They did get severance payments, t here are some other assistance, but pleasant news is quite a few of them have actually been able to secure additional work, so they were able to transition to new career opportunities with extremely short notice, and we're going to work with the remaining workforce to make sure that they land on their feet as well. We're subscribing to the principle of highest and best use, and that doesn't mean that we're totally biased against citrus. We're certainly holding no grudges for recent past financial performance, but we think that next year, about 3,400 acres of the land we currently are harvesting citrus on will be suited for citrus going forward.
We just will not basically have an in-house team to caretake for that. W e obviously own all the land. We own all the trees, but we're going to hire third-party caretakers, which will be more efficient and a little more certain for us to basically harvest citrus for one more season on about 3,400 of those acres. T hat'll fall under the existing revenue contracts we negotiated with Tropicana. T hat frees up the management team to really focus on optimizing all of the land opportunities that we currently have in our portfolio. The reasons really on the strategic rationale side is there's been some significant industry challenges over the past 25 years from a disease perspective.
T he disease weakened the trees to the point where when recent hurricanes came through in 2017, which we seem like we recovered from, but more importantly, in 2022, Hurricane Ian was devastating. T hen we just got a final knockout shot from Hurricane Milton in 2024. The trees are just not producing more fruit year over year over year. They're declining in their production. We think this transition will reduce our operating volatility, we'll no longer be weather-dependent. And we believe we'll unlock shareholder value as we monetize these assets. I f you look at our graph, and I've got a couple of pages in a second, our production has declined 73% over the last 10 years, which is a horrifying statistic in any vacuum. But more importantly for us, we've replanted 2.5 million trees in the last 7 years.
We've treated 4.5 million trees last season alone with a treatment called oxytetracycline that was expected to boost production by 30%, and more importantly, we've acquired 3,200 acres of land since 2019 as well, and we still are seeing diminished production on our citrus side. It was with a heavy heart that we made this decision, and it's not something that's going to be easily reversed, the trees will die relatively quickly, unless we can transition them to other buyers, which we do not think is likely, this basically is going to take Alico away from the citrus industry in one fell swoop. What that does do is allow us to basically reduce our capital requirements. It's going to reduce our working capital requirements, and again, allows us to really focus on profitable, lower risk, lower volatile opportunities.
H ere's the charts that, again, we're not proud of. But you'll see the first chart is the state of Florida's cumulative, not cumulative, annual production for citrus. Y ou'll see the curve sloping down. In 2015, they had about 91 million boxes of fruit, and a box has about 90 pounds of oranges in it. This year, they're predicting about 12 million boxes of fruit. One, the trees that are actually producing fruit are producing less fruit year over year. But also, there's fewer acres from 2015 to where we are today that are active in citrus. I t's been uneconomic for several years. A lot of our competitors have already left the market. Y ou're seeing clearly a diminished supply. Our path reflects basically the same trend.
W e basically give you a chart that shows our Adjusted EBITDA, which is only our citrus operations, as well as the blue lines are actually showing you what our production was. I n 2015, we did about 10 million boxes of fruit. T his is relatively the same acres, so it's acre to acre. This season, we're forecasting somewhere around 2.6 million boxes of fruit, which is a horrifying statistic. Last year, we did 3 million boxes of fruit following the hurricane in 2022 and 2023. W e're seeing diminished production. It is uncontroversial. W e've determined that citrus in Florida for Alico, citrus for Florida in Alico is not economically viable. We are all about creating shareholder value. B y making the strategic decision, we are basically pivoting to the future.
We've calculated through third-party appraisers and some other data and local experts that the unlocked value of our land for highest and best use purposes is somewhere between $650 million and 750 million. By making the strategic decision to basically not further invest in citrus going forward and monetize the crop that's currently on the trees, we think we will be cash flow positive for the rest of this fiscal year. T hat's January through October of this year, cash flow positive, which we haven't done in several seasons. Also, at the end of this fiscal year, we will have cash reserves with things that are already in place and underway.
That includes land sales, some very small asset sales, as well as the harvest that basically is on the trees that we're active right now that will sustain us for at least two years without any additional activity going into the next fiscal year, which clearly is not going to happen. But if we basically just put our pencils down, we've got cash for two years. W e think we've got very ample liquidity to deliver on the strategy. I t does reduce our working capital as well as our capital requirements because there won't be any additional investments into trees. We've made a pledge based on all this analysis that about three quarters of the acres we have, which are very, very strategically important to Florida, will remain tied to agriculture in some way.
This does not mean that Alico through this strategic transition is going to become a commercial and residential developer. That is not our business. That's not what our intention is going to be. O ur 53,000 acres of land is not all going to have houses on it. We're expecting at least 40,000 of those acres are going to be tied in the very long term to agricultural purposes. The other 25%, yes, will most likely go into commercial residential, of which 10% within that 25 are going to be probably in the next five years. And that's because we've got entitlement work that started on two large properties a couple of years ago. And again, rather than citrus production, our new mission really centers on the core concept of highest and best use.
We're going to unlock value for shareholders by focusing on the highest and best use of the assets that we have. T o be really specific, in the next five years, we think we've got 5,500 acres of land. Again, everything is in Florida. They're worth somewhere between $335 million and 380 million. We think the remaining parcels of land, of which it's about 7,100 acres, will be monetized after five years. We'd instead of an end time on it, somewhere it's not six years, but it's somewhere after five years, in the longer term, somewhere between $140 million and 170 million. T he remaining parcels, which will be tied to agriculture, is about 41,000 acres. We estimate a price somewhere in the range of $175 million to 200 million. W hen you add all that up, that's going to get you $650 million to 750 million.
We've always maintained our focus on shareholders, especially over the last 10 years. But we monitor and strengthen our relationships with our lenders as well. W e renegotiated our line of credit with MetLife in the summer. They're our lender for about $95 million on a revolving line of credit. W e've got a very strong relationship with that. This strategic transformation doesn't trigger any issues with that line of credit at all. T hat gives us additional liquidity capacity to basically see our mission through. On the shareholder value as well, we are going to maintain most likely through thick or thin the common dividend that we've had in place since 1974. It actually went to 1960 if you want to be specific, but we did miss two quarters in 1974 because people were freaking out over the oil embargo back in the Nixon administration.
W e've had 50 years of consistent returns there. What this will allow us to do is focus purely on profitable, lower risk, non-citrus agricultural opportunities to bring cash flow in. W e'll reinvest that cash flow internally on entitlement efforts and to maintain properties until we can deliver highest and best use for you as the shareholders. We've done this in the past. This is not something that we're radically changing, and we're just starting today. Our dividend history over the last 10 years, we've paid out $41 million of dividends. We've repaid voluntarily $113 million of debt. We have done almost a $10 million buyback program previously, and we've done a tender offer that's almost $26 million. W e have been aggressively returning capital to the tune of about $189 million over the last 10 years.
W e expect that that will continue going forward. I f we're going to summarize why to invest in Alico, it's really this strategic vision. You no longer have to bet on weather-related risks. You no longer have to bet on pricing. You no longer have to bet on whether management can actually execute. This really comes down to what is the land worth, and can it be monetized, and what cash flows can basically be there to sustain the operations of the management team until we can start to realize some of this value. T hat increases our financial foundation and strengthens the company going forward. We think that unlocks shareholder value. W e go back to where we started. We said this in 2023. We're here to provide a conventional agricultural investment. That's our land and our operations combined with the optionality of active land management.
That's the monetization of key assets. The strong foundation really determines the future of the company, but we've built all the pieces over the last 10 years, and they're going strong. That's the management team. That's recruiting Mitch Hutchcraft to join us and also really focusing on profitability to improve our cash flow profile and ample liquidity resources so we can sustain the company through thick or thin. W e are going to be positioned to capture upside. As far as the financial excellence side goes, we have a track record of providing $189 million of return to capital and paying dividends since 1974. We think if you look at our share price today versus potentially the value of the assets that we've just described, we're somewhat undervalued.
M y job is to basically narrow that gap through meetings like this, but more importantly, to deliver on the promises that we're making and to execute on the strategy that we tried to be very transparent about and to basically keep you as the investors informed every step of the way as we make progress. This is not anything like a fire sale. We are in no rush to liquidate assets. We have ample liquidity to sustain for as long as necessary because we do have an obligation as stewards of land in Florida to basically benefit the local communities at the same time we're benefiting our shareholders. T here is a balance there. W e live here. We work here. W e've been operating here for more than 125 years.
That's something that we're proud of and something I need to make sure we're going to be able to continue to do for generations to come. With that, I'll see if we can take one or two questions, and then I'll thank you for your time. Anything I can answer for you today? Sir. Yes, sir. What other, since your land is mostly in agriculture, what other crops and what else can be used alongside the oranges, I guess, if there's another? That's a very good question. The question is, what are some of the alternative crops that may be suited for the land that we own in Florida because we've been doing citrus for generations? Other alternative crops in this area would be something like sod, which is used all over the place for new construction or other people's homes or even roadsides.
Sugar is actually quite popular. We've seen vegetables like green beans. We've seen fruits like berries and watermelon. Cattle is actually kind of popular. Sand mines, if you can believe that, are agriculturally based here in the state of Florida. I got a few chuckles when we spoke yesterday, some people. Corn has potential. N one of these operations will Alico launch in the foreseeable future on our own. But we've got interest from several parties that have basically inquired over the last week or so on leasing opportunities for some of the crops I just mentioned right now. Got time for one more question. Peter. Has the decision been made on the dividend this week? We just paid one last week. O bviously, dividends are quarterly. We look at them quarter to quarter to quarter.
But I had mentioned earlier in the presentation that our current intention is to continue paying the common dividend. Ladies and gentlemen, Alico, thanks for your time. We appreciate your support. We'll be available for additional questions after this. Have a good day.