Praetorian Capital, an investment management company, released its fourth-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. For the full year, the fund lost 10.55% net of fees. The fund was down by 14.76% net of fees in the fourth quarter. It compounded capital at a 41.76% annual net rate, since inception. The core portfolio positions mostly declined in the quarter, while the event-driven book produced a slightly positive return. The core portfolio positions overall decreased over the course of the year, but the losses in the core book were offset by the event-driven book. For more information on the fund’s top picks in 2024, please check its top five holdings.
Praetorian Capital highlighted stocks like The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE), in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) is a real estate development, asset management, and operating company. The one-month return of The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) was -1.51%, and its shares lost 16.93% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 13, 2025, The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) stock closed at $45.74 per share with a market capitalization of $2.67 billion.
Praetorian Capital stated the following regarding The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Since I’m doing book reports this quarter, I want to briefly mention The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE), which comprised 12.5% of our capital at year-end, and was our third largest detractor on a Dollar basis. I tend to focus on hard assets with strong tailwinds, as those assets offer downside protection, with plenty of upside in what I believe to be an inflationary decade. JOE has both of these aspects in spades (tailwinds and asset value).
Let’s look at the tailwinds. As JOE owns a disproportionate percentage of the undeveloped land in Southern Bay, Gulf and Walton Counties, in Florida, along with substantial business operations there, let’s discuss those counties’ growth briefly, as real estate is tied to population and economic activity. I believe that there is no better, nor cleaner metric for both population and economic growth, than the growth in passenger traffic at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP). Since 2019 when 1,275,488 people flew through the airport, traffic is up by 30.1% as of 2023 when 1,660,479 people flew through ECP, with traffic up an additional 13.5% this year over 2023, as of November. Clearly, this is impressive growth, and it doesn’t even track the rapid growth of private planes, which tend to be core JOE customers. The Florida Panhandle is a rapidly growing part of the nation, and JOE is in the driver’s seat in terms of how it is developed. By developing it intelligently, JOE doesn’t only add value to each development, but they add value to their massive landbank and all future developments that they undertake. There is a real multiplier effect here and I think that many investors miss this…” (Click here to read the full text)
Aerial view of a newly-developed residential community with homesites and golf courses.
The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 18 hedge fund portfolios held The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) at the end of the third quarter which was 17 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed The St. Joe Company (NYSE:JOE) and shared Night Watch Investment Management’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and A New Dawn Is Coming to US Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.