Good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to introduce you to John Kiernan, CEO of Alico. Very fortunate to have worked with John for many years, and we're going to be talking about the transformation that he's leading Alico through this morning and get into some more details about what they've done to date and what they expect to do going forward. So, John, Alico, 125-year-old company. I guess about a year ago, you introduced the idea of moving away from c itrus and transforming the company, really, quite frankly, more into a real estate opportunity. What was the thinking behind that? Why did you decide to do that?
Well, like all good things, it had to do with money. We have always been a land company for 125 years. We've been public since 1960, and we were the largest citrus producer. We grew the oranges for, I can't say a majority, a substantial amount of Tropicana's fruit that they turned into juice for more than a decade. And for decades and decades before that, we were a majority producer, not majority for the entire industry, very, very large. Let's leave it at that. The economics for us changed substantially due to a disease called greening, where the citrus trees themselves were just producing smaller quantities of fruit and slightly lower quality, and it was falling off the trees faster. And the cost actually to caretake all those trees and on all those acres was increasing. So, for the two preceding years, we were losing money.
About a year and a half ago, we took a very, very hard look at our operations and realized that that was no longer sustainable. It was a very, very difficult decision because we had been tied to this industry for so long, but it was just not economically viable for Alico to compete. There are still citrus growers today, and we keep our fingers crossed that they succeed and thrive and prosper. For our company, we just could not meet the expectations that we set for ourselves or our shareholders based on the economic profile that was in front of us. We turned inward and said, what do we actually do? In Florida, we own land. At that point, we owned more than 50,000 acres of land, all located within the state in 31 different locations in seven or eight different counties.
And we went even deeper, and we said, what potentially could be the highest and best use for every single one of those acres? So, we developed a plan using some outsiders and some internal intelligence as well, but a plan for every single acre. And we looked at potentially where valuations could appreciate over time, where there were infrastructure trends, and potentially where people were moving to. And we determined on an acre-by-acre basis that about 25% of our land eventually could go for something like residential or commercial real estate development. And it wouldn't happen overnight. Everything in Florida has to be rezoned. It's called entitled, and that is not a simple process. It takes a high degree of skill and a little bit of time and patience and some money. But we brought some experts in that kind of helped with that.
So, we are still operating every acre that we have in the agricultural framework today because, one, it's necessary, but two, it's generating cash for us. And we've been working very hard over the past year to really kind of increase that level of utilization for leasing activities. So, instead of us bringing in a team to determine the best way that Alico could dominate the sod industry, we simply lease the best sod land to the best sod operators, and they pay us lease payments. And that actually seems to work very, very well. We're doing that across a number of different industries. So, we've got diversified revenue streams, and hopefully, we'll give you some updates soon on kind of what the material numbers are for something like that.
But we are very active in agriculture, but our eyes are more towards the value creation, which is how do we repurpose the land for something better. And 25% of those acres is probably going to be residential, commercial.
Okay. Yeah, I was curious about that. So, the 50,000 acres, it's split up between 75 ag, which you're leasing right now, and then you've earmarked 25% for development.
Yeah. When we had started, it was about 12,000 acres would go towards residential, commercial. A big chunk of that would be in the first five years and then subsequent to five years. So, two different buckets there. And the remaining bucket was about 40,000 acres. And we thought that would probably stay for a long, long time to come in the agricultural space. And what we've seen is really distilling down to three main priorities. One, be as aggressive and as efficient as we possibly can on that entitlement process for those entitlement acres. And so far, we haven't really made too many missteps. We've got a fantastic team. We've got local professionals in each of the areas and counties that were working on some of these entitlement projects. And we're really, really focusing on how to be as efficient as possible.
Well, and that's something that I commend you on, quite frankly, when you announced this. A lot of companies will make an announcement like that. You made immediate enhancements to your management team to focus on that. And I think something else that would be very helpful, if you could walk us through some of the transactions, quite frankly, that you've already made happen over the past year.
So, from a milestone on the entitlement side, that's probably the easiest way to do this. We've got a very large property in Collier County, which is in Southwestern Florida. It's the county that has Naples, if you actually know that as kind of a landmark. And there's a lot of kind of residential and commercial development that's been going on in the vicinity. It's at a higher level. So, we developed some plans and brought in some teams and experts for what we call our Corkscrew Grove Village Project. And that will eventually turn into about 9,000 houses in two different villages, so 4,500 houses in an east and 4,500 houses in a west. It has about 1,200 acres of a wildlife corridor that's going to connect a wildlife preserve to another wildlife preserve.
And that'll serve as kind of panther habitat where the endangered species, the Florida panther, can migrate unencumbered back and forth. And we think that's great to basically protect it from any sort of traffic risk. But there'll be a lot of kind of commercial space. There'll be a lot of open space. So, what we're trying to do is create an environment where people can live, people can work, and people can play. And it's gone very well. So, from a milestone perspective, it has to be approved at kind of the county level. It's got to get some approvals at the state level, and it's going to need to have some approvals at the federal level. And they told me I had to read this because if I misspeak, it's going to blow up, and we don't want to do that.
At the county level, we're in Collier County, and we're part of the Collier County Rural Land Stewardship District, which is a whole program that's on our website where I can talk to you afterwards about this, but we have basically been looking for approval from Collier County to take basically some acres that we're going to be designating as a sending area and have them bless it so that we have rights to basically do some development. Effectively, what we're doing is we're putting up about 7,000 acres for conservation purposes against 3,000 acres that we want to develop. That's the sound bite, and the county actually is the one who's going to approve that, so we've completed a fiscal impact study, and that seems to have gone well at the county level. They found it sufficient. They're completing their staff review right now.
And when that is all kind of wrapped, we expect that we'll be at the Planning Commission at the end of March, and we should be in front of the County Commission itself probably by the end of April. So, fingers crossed, 2026, hopefully, we'll get some approvals at the Collier County level. At the state level, it's really the South Florida Water Management District that really kind of looks at the different impacts that we have. We've submitted our application for a Conceptual Environmental Resource Permit, and that is going through the mechanisms there. No big issues that we can see. We anticipate that probably is either the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027. So, that is definitely within the expectations that we had set with you a year ago.
And then at the federal level, clearly, there's been some disruption in Washington through no fault of our own. But the Army Corps of Engineers, working in conjunction with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, has to review the project as well as far as some of those impacts. And the first step for that was we would do a public notice. That has now happened. And then the Army Corps is going to issue a formal public notice. We anticipate probably by the end of March, which, fingers crossed, really starts the process on that side. So, all told, that project is basically going. We've got another project called Bonnet Lake, which is a little further north in Highlands County. We have basically filed a comp plan and done some other paperwork.
Most importantly, and this is what we're most proud of, we've had a lot of community outreach, and we've met more than 400-plus residents to hear their concerns and educate them about the project itself. We think that'll pay some huge dividends over time. There'll be additional public hearings for that project in Q1 and Q2 of this year. There's some other projects we're working through, but those are kind of the big milestones.
Well, and I imagine you're bringing up a very important point. You have a history, Alico, of being very strong in the state of Florida as far as conservation efforts.
We are.
I would imagine that goes a long way on the county, state, and federal level. You talked about, and if you could, for everybody in the audience and on the webcast, maybe talk a little bit about specifically these different areas. What does it consist of? Is it going to be just housing? Do you have, I'm sure you have open space there as well. What is it all, what all does it entail?
Each property is going to have its own particular mix. But we'll take our Corkscrew, which is kind of our crown jewel and is a little further along and certainly is the most high-profile project that we have. Right now, it's about 4,600 acres. We've been operating as a citrus grove for decades and decades. It's on two major roads. One's a big highway. The first thing we did is we carved out those 1,200 acres for the wildlife crossing, for the wildlife corridor. So, literally, I said this, this is not my real estate team. We're creating the largest dog park you've ever seen. It's a 1,200-acre dog park. It's two miles in the widest part, and it's free rein. So, technically, that's open space, but you do not want to be walking your dog in the middle of a panther crossing. So, that's great.
But the property itself is going to border a very large conservation area, which, coincidentally, decades ago, Alico actually donated to the county. It's called the CREW. And that is open space where people can kind of go and play and recreate. More importantly, in 2025, we put our money where our mouth is. Without any permits whatsoever, we made a decision that we would fund a little more than $5 million privately to actually construct a wildlife crossing. And if you've driven through southwest Florida, you see kind of the road go up a little bit, and you see a whole bunch of fencing, and there'll be a tunnel that goes underneath the road for wildlife to come across. Well, that's expensive to actually build. We're building a very large, very solid one where our property is on spec that this project will get approved.
But at the very least, it's great for the wildlife. And that will actually connect from one wildlife preserve onto the other without having to cross the road. And that'll eventually be hopefully refunded to the company through the Stewardship District that we created, which was approved last year by the Florida Legislature and the executive branch, which we're very, very grateful for. But that will also help fund some of the infrastructure. But we've done everything from restoring wetlands and uplands. We have a long, long history of stewardship, sustainability, all sorts of good stuff like that. But that's the best example I can give you of really putting our money where our mouth is because real estate, particularly in Collier County, is extremely valuable in putting 1,200 acres right there. And that's just on the adjacent property. We are also basically restricting through this program another 5,500 acres.
All told, it's about 7,000 acres. You potentially could develop about three. It's not a bad trade.
No, that's very impressive. Well, and I think also, like we've talked about before, I think if you look at the assets of your company right now, valued at a present value of around $700 million. And your market cap, I think, is around $250 million right now.
280.
And so, if you have some of these, what you expect to certainly happen this year, like last year, I think it was you sold $23 million of land assets. And can we expect more of that to come this year? I know you can't be specific, but.
So, this could actually turn into a commercial for ICR if you would like to talk to Mr. Mills and Deirdre and Tyler about the benefits. Alico's stock last year was up 40%. That's a four and a zero.
It was all due to Deirdre.
That's the best year we've ever had in 65 years. And we think a clear, concise message was critical to that because we took this company through a very complicated transition, and we managed the press very well by being transparent. But the guidance that we got from this team was extraordinary. So, I could talk to anybody about how great this team is right here. Him pressuring me to give you the forecast isn't going to work because I have earnings in two weeks, so that's not going to happen. But I will say it's going to be more or less. Here's the more. We had basically promised a year ago that we would find ways that we can monetize every single acre through leasing activity. You're going to see those utilization rates hopefully go up. That's more.
You're going to see more milestones on the entitlement because we're getting better traction, but it's also been sitting on the stove long enough. Now you're going to actually see these milestones be achieved. That's more. Last year, we did about $23-$24 million of land sales. That was part of that agricultural pool where the land really didn't have a place other than agriculture. We've been selling land to other agricultural operators, and last year, we did about $23-$24 million. If you actually peel back our 10-K that we released in November, you probably see about $34 million of assets held for sale. And so far, we've done about seven of that that we have already announced in this fiscal year. So, I would stay tuned on that because obviously 34 is bigger than 24.
But the bigger is what do you do with kind of the cash? Well, since we don't have a robust operating structure like when we were running citrus and making $100 million of revenue, you have to watch the bottom line. So, the less part is how do we continue to tighten our G&A belt as best we can without disrupting any of the progress on the leasing activities or any of the progress that we're making on the entitlement and still have the upside where we have available cash that we can return to shareholders. And that's why they pay me. That's the trick.
Yeah. And so, when you think about returning cash to shareholders, what are you looking at? Everything? Potential stock buybacks? Dividends? All the above?
Well, there's only two. So, yeah. So, we love efficiency. So, in the event that we have discretionary cash, we potentially would look at everything across the board, and the board looks at this every quarter. We're maintaining a common dividend. It's small, but we've been paying common dividends since the day we went public in the Pink Sheets in 1960. We did miss two quarters in 1974 through some sort of oil embargo with OPEC that freaked everybody out for a few months, but they got right back on track. It probably is not going to be raised. The common dividend is probably going to stay where it is because we're not going to get any credit. We raised it years ago, and then when we had a bad hurricane, we cut it, and the stock got massacred. So, there's not a lot of upside there.
We do have a 10b-5 program already approved by the board. We announced that last April. And when and if there is discretionary cash flow, one of those options for the board would be to do some sort of share buyback program with an investment bank over a period of time. The number on that was $50 million, and that would expire at the end of 2028. So, that's a pretty decent window, and it's a very sizable amount of stock potentially to buy back. But again, it would have to be discretionary. Third is if we get a very, very large, somebody comes and buys one of our large developments, it's probably hundreds of millions of dollars. That's a lot of stock for me to buy back. I would probably consider something like a tender offer at that point and basically return capital that way.
And other than that, we're more than open to any other suggestions people can come to. But we've returned about $200 million, give or take, over the last 10 years, either through voluntary prepayments of debt or through tender offers, buybacks, common dividends. And our shareholders have rewarded us. That's really why the stock has rebounded over the last year.
Well, and I think you have to certainly take credit for that. The feedback from the investors, from the analysts, is you have been very proactive. And I think, one, also your background lends its hand to that as well. Going back to the developments, okay, so next few years, we're going to continue to look at land sales. But if we look at the value, have you put a potential approximate value on the developments that we expect to receive from those?
Ooh. I mean, the book value of our assets today to potentially what we think the market value is is the delta that you had just mentioned, which is the analysis that we had performed was we looked at acre by acre, and we figured out potentially if it could be monetized, when it could be monetized, what would be the carry cost to get to there. And then if it wasn't going to be monetized through some sort of real estate or development entitlement, it could potentially be monetized through some sort of asset sale as agricultural property. And we put a relatively low bar on the agricultural sales because it was a very large number. It was about 40,000 plus acres. And then, as you had said, we discounted all that back to present value. And the present value was somewhere between $650 and $750 million.
We are going to have to tweak that slightly as we're having some of the land sales that I'm alluding to, when and if those are realized, but we're certainly still within that ballpark, and if you divide that by 7.6 million shares, we're trading at $37 today. We do have a little bit of runway if you want to get up there, but someone asked, like, how do you measure yourself? Well, I measure my stock by stock price every day, but I also measure myself by kind of investor satisfaction. And many, many times, it's tough to measure the satisfaction part. It's real easy to measure the unsatisfaction part. And the dissatisfaction would be mixed messaging. We don't do that. Lack of transparency. We return calls. We're easily accessible. People know where we are.
If you're in the neighborhood, we'll drive you around and we'll show you all these properties from our pickup trucks. So, we're easy to find. We're easy to speak with. It's a relatively simple story now. We like to track cash. At this point, we can go through a whole bunch of metrics on total shareholder return. I could talk to you about EBITDA growth. I could talk to adjustments. We can talk to a whole bunch of things. I'm a treasurer by trade back in the day. Before that, I was an investment banker. So, how do you create value? You basically maintain the fundamentals. And the fundamentals in any business is going to be cash. We posted at the end of our fiscal year, which ends September, cash balance of about $38 million.
When I joined the company 10 years ago, we had $210 million or $215 million worth of debt. Our net debt last November when we posted earnings, which would have been for the September balance, was $48 million, so we are going to continue to basically manage this balance sheet as tightly as we can. We want to really de-risk any sort of liquidity concerns for anyone at a shareholder level because we are going to stay in the game long enough that we can entitle these properties. We're going to maintain our cash flow that's coming in through all those leasing activities that we described, and we want to be cognizant and in a position to be patient when and if anybody wants to basically prop us with some sort of sale bid for any of the agricultural land.
Those are really the three big things that you should pay attention to as a shareholder or a potential shareholder. Our track record says that we're doing a decent job of that.
Yeah. Well said. You took my last question. So, but thank you. We'll open it for any questions. If the audience has any questions, we have about two minutes remaining. And also, we do have breakouts today. So, look at your schedule, and John would be more than happy to go into more detail with you. And that's a wrap. Thank you, John.
Thank you, John.