Pleasure to be here. Alico is traded on the Nasdaq. We've been a Nasdaq company since 1972. We've been public since 1960. Our company's been around for about 128 years, all located within the state of Florida. Our market cap right now is about $300 million. We're carrying about $45 million in net debt. Our stock was up 40% last year. We're up about 10%+ this year, and that has a lot to do with the transition that we were able to do for our business model, which I'm gonna talk about today. Some eye candy for the lawyers. Let's get to the bottom of who we are. Traditionally, Alico has been an agriculture company.
We own land in Florida, and we basically create a return on that land by having people grow crops on it. Up until 2025, we grew the crops ourselves. We grew oranges on trees, which take about six to seven years to reach maturity. We would sell those oranges to orange juice producers in Florida, specifically Tropicana the last seven, eight, nine years before that. We made a strategic decision that that was no longer profitable, and we'll go through that on another slide of why that was true, and transitioned really into a diversified real estate company. We still believe that we have agricultural roots that we try to honor every day. About 72% of the land that we currently own we believe will always be suited for agriculture.
We're basically forming relationships and have leased out land to some citrus, but specifically non-citrus agricultural growers, and we get lease payments in exchange for that. What we try to do is provide you, the investor, with the benefits and stability of conventional agricultural investments. Combine that with the optionality that comes with active land management. Active land management really is how do you monetize the true value of land in Florida, and I think you may know where this is going. We own about 46,000 acres of land. It's in 27 different locations across seven different counties. The counties are important because local rules can be different for neighboring counties. Everything that we currently own has been zoned for almost a century for agricultural purposes.
To do anything other than the current agricultural uses, we need to have it rezoned or entitled, and the local rules actually change from county to county. All this is gonna be up on our website if you'd like to get a copy. Our DNA, our history over those 129 years has really been as a steward of the land. We have respected the conservation roots from our founders and have been really, I think, kind of, conscientious about making sure that the highest and best use doesn't necessarily conflict with the ultimate purpose of what that land can go towards.
You've seen on this page right here, specifically over the last four decades, we've been very careful to make sure that a majority of our land, when we had sales, went into proper hands that would treat it for the long-term better use of kind of our friends and neighbors down there, and everything from different wildlife preserves to putting up money for the 11th university in the state system in Florida Gulf Coast University. We try to be a good steward of our land and also a good neighbor. I've been with the company about 11 years. It'll be 11 years next month. Mitch Hutchcraft, the gentleman in the middle, has been active in Florida entitlement work for four decades now, and we consider him to be the best in the business.
He's been with us for about two years. We previously hired him after 17 years from King Ranch, Inc. That's relevant because our largest property, our most prominent property, and certainly the highlight and jewel of our business, is right next to a King Ranch property that he actually helped entitle. Bradley Heine is our CFO. He joined us about three years ago and has done a great job of basically helping to manage our accounting and finance infrastructure as we kinda downsize from a very, very, very large, the largest citrus producer in the U.S. with 350 employees down to where we are today.
The strategic transformation is kinda historic for a company like Alico, but specifically, we made a decision in January of 2025 that after two years of losing about $30 million a year, in our citrus operations, primarily from a disease called citrus greening that significantly weakened the trees and lowered the output, but also those weakened trees took tremendous damage from hurricanes that came through Florida, specifically affecting our properties in 2022 and then in October of 2024. We really did not think that they would recover. We made a very dramatic pivot or a shift. We shifted away from a traditional agricultural operation to more of a diversified real estate company.
What that did is it really lowered our overhead, it lowered our risk profile, it certainly lowered our cash burn rate, and increased the visibility for profitability and focused us laser-like on what the monetization real estate strategy that we've been talking about for a couple of years looked like in daylight. What we've done is we went acre by acre. When we started, we had 54,000 acres, but we went acre by acre with outside consultants, internal expertise. We looked at comparable transactions and really determined every acre of every inch of the property that we have, what is its highest and best use, and what would that entail? When we did that, we figured it into three different buckets.
We had about 5,500 acres, which is about four properties, that we thought could be developed in the next five years, and we estimated, again, management's estimated in present value dollars today would have a value of somewhere between $335 million-$380 million. Keep in mind that I just said our market cap today is $300 million. We still have another 7,100 acres that we think can also be developed. It'll be outside of five years, but in more the mid to long term, that's another $140 million-$170 million. Add on to that, the residual land that we retain for agricultural purposes is about 33,400 acres today. We think that's going to be worth somewhere between $175 million-$200 million. We're monetizing all of those acres through lease operations with other crops today.
When you add all that up, we think as a management team, and we've been able to actually put up some comps over the last year and a half, that the value of our land could be somewhere between $650 million and $750 million, which is a 2x from where we're trading today, which gives you a little bit of upside if you want it to be a mid to long term investor. We went acre by acre, plan by plan. It was not just management wishfully thinking, I really hope I can get a double on the stock. It was acre by acre, where in which counties is the development trends coming. We brought in outside experts to see kind of what the value of potential houses or developments or commercial would be. We added all that up. That literally broke out county by county.
DeSoto at 44% is actually a 21,000 acres parcel that we have. It's almost entirely contiguous. It's in Arcadia in DeSoto County. It is the largest citrus grove in the U.S., it got hurt the worst in 2022 and 2024 and is no longer really viable as a citrus. We're exploring alternative uses for it. Potentially that could be done down the road for development, it's outside of those first two buckets. That's in the agricultural pile. The other ones, again Highlands and particularly in Collier, we've got significant acres that are already down a development path. The first bucket, the $335 million-$380 million potential pool, 5,500 acres. We said within the next five years, we've got one property in Collier County. Collier is where Naples, Florida is.
I know we're all the way over here, if you go to the other side of the country, Naples, Florida is a little famous. It is near Naples. In that county, we've got 4,660 acres that we are intending to develop. We've just crossed a very, very significant county approval milestone last month. We still have state and federal approval to go through, but it is on a very good track. We've made some significant investments to kind of ensure its success. We've got a couple other properties to talk about. One in Bonnet Lake, which is a little further north in Highlands County. That's about 600 acres. We've got Polk County, which is the furthest north for us. That's the Saddlebag Grove, which has a very nice lake view. It's about 240 acres.
In Hendry County, we have something called Mobley Plant World outside of the town of LaBelle. That's about 80 acres. We'll break out a little what that's going to look like. The Collier County piece, this is the jewel that I was referring to. We're going to break that really into two different villages that'll be side by side. We'll develop them. Basically, we're getting approval at the state and federal level up front, but locally we'll get the west side approved once the east side starts to sell. We'll know how the right mix for the buyer universe potentially would be. It'll have a whole bunch of commercial at the same time. The big strong, the big yellow straight lines going across and then going up like this. Don't think I could do this. Nope, can't do this. Nope, right there.
Those are very significant major roads. This is a major state highway that's being developed into, I think it's going to be eight lanes. We're very well located. There's other development that is actually taking place further east, sorry, further west heading towards the shore. We're optimistic that not only will this sell, but it's moving smoothly along a very nice approval cycle. Again, I just said a few weeks ago, it was approved in May of 2026, a couple of weeks ago, to basically get SRA, which is the Rural Land Stewardship Program, which is a county specific. Remember I said each county has their own rules? This is a set of rules that Collier County put into place about 25 years ago. We met all those rules.
Didn't really matter what the press said or anything like that against people that are not in favor of development. We got local approval. We've had paperwork that's been filed at the state and the federal level since last year. That's proceeding on an approval track as well. We actually have a stewardship district, which in Florida, think of it as like we have our own homeowners association. Why is that important? When it comes down to roads, water, sewer treatment plants, things like that, the stewardship district will actually raise the money. It's not all going to go on Alico. All good.
Lest anybody walk away to think that we've gone to the dark side and are only concerned about real estate, the way this works is we've got about 3,000 acres in this project that will be developed for residential or commercial. Alico is putting up about 7,000 acres for conservation purposes specifically tied to this project. About 1,500 acres are actually adjacent to the property that'll go in a panther corridor. The panther is an endangered species. It's prime panther habitat. There's a wildlife preserve above us. There's a wildlife preserve below us. 1,500 acres is actually going to connect the two spots. To facilitate that transportation even further, Alico put $5 million of our own money up about six months ago to create an underpass, one of the largest underpasses that's out there that'll go across the highway connecting those two free spaces. That's actually under construction.
It's going quite nicely, but it literally is Alico putting its money where its mouth is that we're serious about conservation. That's been positively received by a whole bunch of different NGOs. East Village is what's gonna come up first. Again, that'll have about 1,500 acres. It'll have probably 4,500 homes. Again, when we said once that begins to sell, it'll already have been approved at the federal and state level. We will go back to Collier County for local approval to basically get that West Village approved, and we'll be able to start developing that as well. All told, it'll be probably close to 9,000 homes. Going further north, we've got our Bonnet Lake property. Bonnet Lake obviously is a little closer to Disney World, to Orlando, to Tampa.
We believe it potentially, out of those 600 acres, could generate about 2,000 homes. It'll have some civic space, so some open space, something for the community to participate in. It will not have any commercial space. It is near a very popular town called Sebring, which if you've been on TV is one of those revitalizing towns on HGTV, I believe, as part of a series. We're continuing to get good news through that approval process as well, and it really does not have an environmental species problem as far as panthers and such go. That approval may actually come first. That's moving along quite nicely. Saddlebag, as I mentioned, we've got a nice lake that's right here, and here's our properties.
You basically are converting citrus groves into something that's highest and best use into an alternative. Right now, potentially it could be 450 homes. TBD on if we're gonna have any sort of commercial, but right now it looks like it's probably gonna have some community space for 5,000 square feet as well. Then a little closer to LaBelle, which is a little further south. LaBelle is a very populous town. Potentially those 83 acres could turn into 250 homes, there are some other residential communities that are being built around it. That should be a relatively easy sale. All well and good, man. You're up here talking about houses. You're gonna do this and that. What have you done for us lately?
I've been with the company since 2015. I joined in June of 2015. Since 2015, this company has returned $209 million to shareholders or have repaid voluntarily some prepayments of debt. Since 2021, we've done $107 million of that total. What did that look like? We've been paying common dividends primarily since 1960. We missed two quarters in the oil embargo in 1974, but we've always paid a common dividend. It's small, but it's consistent. We've made $120 million of voluntary prepayments and mandatory pre as well to reduce $200+ million of acquisition debt to right now we've got our net debt down to kind of mid-40s.
We announced last week that we just completed $10 million of a buyback program under Rule 10b5-1. We've got another $40 million that's still authorized between now and May of 2028. As we get discretionary cash flow, we have been using it to buy back shares. We did a twenty-five and a half million dollars tender offer in the past as well. When you add all that up, we wake up every day on how do we basically deliver highest and best use? How do we maintain our cash for liquidity, so we can fight another day? How do we return the capital to shareholders? That is our mission, and that's what we've been delivering.
That's how we got you a 40% return last year. That's why our stock is still continuing to trade up. If you're looking for a thesis, we've wound down our operations on the citrus side, so we're slightly lower beta. We don't really have a lot of weather risk. Frankly, we're a lot easier to see on a cash flow. Our land diversification, we've built out this model. We've been very transparent. People can come down and ride. We'll show you what this looks like. None of this is in the middle of nowhere, where if you build it, they will come. There's a lot of development that's kind of in the vicinity. It's not as if we're playing catch-up. We just have better suited land that's closer to roads because that's how agricultural operations evolved over the last century.
We are optimistic, cautiously optimistic that we will continue to be able to be opportunistic. Opportunistic means if someone calls up and says, "I really want this particular property for my portfolio. What will it take?" We will entertain any reasonable offer. Nothing that we're talking about we're gonna be wedded to because we're gonna try to hold out. We know how to work a calculator. All those numbers that I've talked about is present value dollars today. Time value money says if we can execute a sale sooner rather than later at the right price, shareholders should be indifferent if we strike the correct price, and that's basically been our mantra. We still do have that mix. Any of the agricultural land that we can get a decent price for that we can keep into agriculture, but it's a decent price.
Again, we weigh in potential development and what the time value for that would be. We have no issue with monetizing that either. Our management team, like I said, I've been there for more than a decade. The management team that's in place today are the people that have actually seen through this transition. We've been very, very careful on managing all of our G&A and our costs because we believe that cash is not only king, it's the oxygen and lifeblood that sustains a company like us all the way to the finish line of when you can monetize all these assets. We talked about returning capital. We talked about being responsible with land management. We just posted results. We did $19.6 million for the six-month period and continue to exceed expectations.
We announced that we had $53 million worth of debt at the end of the quarter, net debt of $32 million, and we have continued to monetize some relatively big land sales, and we posted those in January. From a guidance perspective, we think we'll finish the year with $14 million of EBITDA. Basically, we burn cash once the harvest for the crops comes through after May. May through the end of September, we're gonna burn a little cash. We still think our cash balance will be $40 million at the end of this fiscal year, which should get us for at least two more full fiscal year. We pushed our easy visible transparency. We think we've got enough flexibility without doing a single other thing to get through at least fiscal 2028, which ends in September.
We said our net debt potentially could be $45 million at the end of this year. I'll stop there and see if anybody's got any specific questions. Yes, sir.
What discount rate are you using for those credit values?
We've said publicly it's between 10% and 15%.
Sir. On the commercial development side on the first project.
Yep
Are you gonna be a seller of developed commercial properties, or owner, landlord?
I didn't give you any money for that, right? We've been very consistent the last 2 and a half years that the company is retaining the option to make 3 different choices. 1, we would develop things ourselves, so we'd develop the commercial or we would build it ourselves on the housing, and we would take all kind of the risk. The stewardship district is a big help for the infrastructure, but we would need to bring in-house capabilities in, so it'd take a little upfront investment to do that. That's step 1. That's category A. Category B is, someone comes in and actually buys the entitled land outright. It's been approved to do X. A national or a local regional homebuyer or home builder comes in and buys it for cash on the barrel head. We hand them the keys.
We get the money. You guys get a big chunk of that. The third, so that's actually B, and then C for any scenario is, those same guys say, "Hey, we'll give you a little bit up front, and then we'll partner, and as we monetize, you'll get a piece of it," and we can do that. I'm not really crazy about C. We're prepared for A. Most of our peers typically go down the B route. I like the cash flow generation of the commercial side. It does just take a lot of money up front if you're gonna build all those kinda, 'cause it's not just in one spot. It's like a little strip mall. We're talking, I have 5 or 6 miles of potential road frontage on that highway where I can use for commercial.
It remains to be seen. We had said last week at our earnings call that within the next year or so, we probably as a board need to kinda narrow down A, B, and C into maybe two scenarios. We've had conversations with national and regional home builders for years. Now that we've got our local approval at that big one, the conversations are becoming a little more substantive. I have nothing to report, and we maintain optionality.
Good. Sir.
On the $70 million balloon due November 2029.
Yep
Where is your LTV today against the 50% covenant?
Do you have an idea by what date in 2027 or 2028, do you refinance the term sheet?
Yep. Good question. We've got $70 million of debt with MetLife. All of our debt is now consolidated with MetLife. MetLife is traditionally an agricultural lender. You asked what the loan to value is. We think the loan to value is $70 million against potentially $600 million-$700 million. One big question is, do we refinance it early? That would be at a higher interest rate than what we're currently carrying. I think we're sub 3. Do we wait to sell a couple other properties so it'll come out of the collateral pool, but also give us the ability to say, again, "Do you want us to basically refinance something at a smaller principal?" Instead of 70, it could be a smaller number.
You just wanna roll the whole 70 over at something comparable and go out another 10 years. They've been very generous to us. I think they applaud our confidence, but they just rolled over some debt out to 2033 and to 2035. We think as a partner, they would still like to continue to do business, but in the next two years, we'd have to kinda make that call. That's a good question for looking at the balance sheet. Thank you. Probably have time for two more questions. We gotta go with you.
What kind of pricing are you guys realizing per acre, on average, you know, on agricultural land that you're selling?
We in our model have actually estimated somewhere in the high $4,000s, low $5,000 per acre. All of the sales we've done in the last year and a half have been around $9,000 per acre or higher. I'm not guaranteeing that we'll continue to get that high a number. We negotiate pretty well. We sold to some strategic partners. We believe that the thing that's in the model is a good baseline, and it's very conservative. That's how the numbers support themselves. One more question.
Just curious, Florida in general, in terms, how would you rank them in terms of, you know, business-friendliness the way that approvals, permitting, and so forth compare to other states that you're aware that?
Compared to California?
Compared to California.
Night and day. Night and day. We have a relatively business-friendly government. You pay no state income tax in Florida as an individual. All of the counties we've talked about have their different rules and regulations, but we found everything to be above board and transparent, and business friendly. We're quite pleased to be in Florida, and can't say enough great things about the state. Y'all should come and visit anytime you want. Come on by. All right, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.