As home furnishings retailer RH reported quarterly earnings last week, its CEO mentioned Jacksonville as a “target secondary market” for a new concept of smaller Design Gallery stores.
RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, opened an outlet store in 2016 at The Shoppes at Southside at 9950 Southside Blvd., north of The Avenues mall. That’s the company’s only Jacksonville store.
The company’s typical Design Gallery averages 33,000 square feet. However, in a letter to shareholders accompanying the earnings report, CEO Gary Friedman said RH is working on a new concept for secondary markets with 10,000- to 18,000-square-foot stores.
“We believe these smaller expressions of our brand will enable us to gain share in markets currently only served by smaller competitors,” he said.
When asked for more details on RH’s plans for Jacksonville, a spokeswoman said by email the company has no additional comment at this time.
Besides Jacksonville, Friedman said RH is looking at Fort Worth, Texas, and Hartford, Connecticut, for the smaller stores.
“Our plan is to test a few of these Galleries over the next several years, and if proven successful, this format could lead to an increase in our long-term Gallery targets,” he said.
RH had 86 Galleries and 37 outlet stores at the end of its third quarter and is hoping to open five to seven new Gallery stores a year.
RH, which anticipates about $2.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2018, could see $10 million to $15 million a year in revenue from its smaller Design Galleries, Friedman said.
The company is seeking to develop stores itself, with potential sale-leaseback arrangements, or in joint venture partnerships. That would enable it to recoup its capital investment in new stores in a shorter time.
RH anticipates it can recoup its investments in the smaller Gallery stores within two years after opening, Friedman said.
A Jacksonville-based company called LocatorX last week appointed a new CEO which it said will help take the company to a public offering.
LocatorX, which is developing logistics tracking technology, hired Scott Fletcher as president and CEO. Fletcher retired in June as vice president of Ultimate Software and has more than 30 years of experience with information technology and new business programs, the company said.
LocatorX said Fletcher will focus on bringing the company’s first product to the market and moving the company toward a Regulation A+ Direct Public Offering.
Regulation A+ is designed to help smaller companies sell stock to the public through a more streamlined process than a traditional initial public offering.
LocatorX filed an offering circular with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May seeking to sell up to $25 million in stock.
The company says it is developing a location tracking device based on technology it licensed from the University of Oxford for a solid-state miniature atomic clock.
LocatorX is affiliated with another publicly traded Jacksonville-based company called MV Portfolios Inc. LocatorX refers to MV as its “parent company” in its offering circular but in MV’s last annual report, it said it has a noncontrolling interest in LocatorX.
Besides its investment in LocatorX, MV has a subsidiary called 1st Rescue Inc. which is developing technology to deliver emergency medical equipment by drones.
MV trades in the OTC Market under the ticker symbol “MVPI.”
Two years after selling Jacksonville station WCWJ TV-17 as part of a large merger deal, Nexstar Media Group Inc. last week announced another acquisition that will make it the largest owner of U.S. television stations.
Nexstar announced a $6.4 billion agreement to buy Tribune Media Co. in a deal that would give the Texas-based company 216 stations in 118 markets. However, to get regulatory approval, Nexstar expects to have to divest some stations in 15 markets where the two companies overlap.
Nexstar has been through that before. The company acquired Media General Inc. for $4.6 billion in January 2017. But as a requirement for Federal Communications Commission approval of that deal, it had to divest 11 stations, including WCWJ.
Graham Holdings Co., longtime owner of WJXT TV-4 in Jacksonville, bought WCWJ and has been operating both stations for nearly two years.
Another company leaving Jacksonville, American Outdoor Brands Corp., reported higher-than-expected earnings last week.
American Outdoor announced in August it will close its 100,625-square-foot Jacksonville warehouse at 7720 Philips Highway next year. The facility employed about 50 people.
The marketer of firearms and outdoor gear reported adjusted earnings of 20 cents a share for the second quarter ended Oct. 31, 9 cents higher than last year and 7 cents higher than the average forecast of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.
American Outdoor changed its name from Smith & Wesson two years ago, shortly after the company announced the acquisition of Jacksonville-based outdoor gear company Ultimate Survival Technologies. The company bought UST as part of a plan to broaden its business beyond the firearms market.
The Massachusetts-based company is closing the former UST facility as it consolidates its outdoor gear business into a single warehouse in Missouri.
American Outdoor said second-quarter sales rose 8.9 percent to $148.4 million, helped by its outdoor gear business.
“Our outdoor products & accessories segment, a strategically important market that we first entered just four years ago, generated approximately one-third of our revenue in the quarter,” CEO James Debney said in a news release.
American Outdoor’s stock rose as much as $3.11 to $15.32 Friday after the earnings report.
A “strategic partnership” between two aerospace companies with operations in Jacksonville, Boeing Co. and Brazil-based Embraer S.A., is moving forward again after a Brazilian court temporarily blocked it last week.
After months of negotiations, the companies in July announced the partnership where Embraer will sell 80 percent of its commercial aviation business to Boeing.
The deal has been controversial in Brazil because many people oppose a Brazilian company giving up control to an American company. A Brazil federal court issued an injunction last week to stop the deal.
However, Embraer said Monday an appeals court revoked the injunction.
Brazil’s attorney general also asked the court to revoke the injunction. While the Brazilian government has veto power over any deal involving Embraer, the attorney general argued it is unconstitutional for the court to interfere in a business negotiation between private companies.
A deal involving Embraer’s commercial business would not affect its facility at Jacksonville International Airport, where the company builds military aircraft.
Boeing has a repair and modification facility at Cecil Commerce Center.
A week after Deutsche Bank’s CEO dismissed talk of a merger for the Germany-based bank, rumors about a pending deal are persisting.
Focus, a German magazine, reported over the weekend that Germany’s Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is pushing for a merger between Deutsche Bank and another major German bank, Commerzbank.
The magazine said Scholz wants at least one strong German bank in place to assist German companies doing business abroad.
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing publicly has stated opposition to any merger talk, saying his company’s turnaround plans are working and the bank soon will be profitable.
Focus reported Commerzbank CEO Martin Zielke is open to the idea, however.
Deutsche Bank employs about 2,000 people in Jacksonville in its second-largest U.S. operations center, after New York.
