St Joe cutting jobs and land

Florida’s largest private landowner, St Joe Co, is planning on eliminating 75 percent of its work force and selling off 100,000 acres of land.

St Joe will be cutting over 260 jobs, transferring 500 workers to its development partnerts, selling 190 homes, and sell about 1,200 developed home sites. St Joe’s upcoming quarter earnings will be reduced by $30 million.

“This is not a fire sale,” Chief Executive Officer Peter Rummell said Monday on a conference call. “We are not dumping stuff on the market and we are not going to make stupid decisions, but there are things that we believe have reached their height in pricing. I firmly believe that we would be doing this whether the market was good or bad.”

St. Joe stock fell 11 cents to $34.  The company has a market value of $2.53 billion. The stock has fallen 36 percent this year. St. Joe will replace its dividend with a share buyback program. It has paid a quarterly dividend of 16 cents a share since the third quarter of 2005.

Earlier this year, St. Joe sold 31,000 acres of rural land in the Florida Panhandle and 15 office buildings as part of a strategy to quit home construction and building management. It also sold the Sassy Burbank home-building operation in the Mid-Atlantic states.