The National Hockey League is officially remaining silent on the timetable and process for expansion but according to reports from hockey writers, Bill Foley will soon have his NHL franchise for Las Vegas.
After a meeting of NHL general managers in Boca Raton two weeks ago, several reports said the league is expected to announce the new Las Vegas team in June and it will begin play in the 2017-18 season.
Foley, chairman of Jacksonville-based Fidelity National Financial Inc., is the lead partner of a group that filed an application last year for an expansion team that would play in a $375 million arena under construction near the Las Vegas strip.
Investors in Quebec City also applied for a franchise, but reports from the general managers meeting said the league might only award one franchise for 2017 in Las Vegas, which would leave it with an odd number of teams.
The hockey writers seem to believe Foley’s team is a sure thing.
The NHL released a statement by Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly at the meetings saying “no final decisions have been reached and no recommendation of any kind has been made” about expansion.
However, a story on the league’s website, nhl.com, from the meetings quoted Commissioner Gary Bettman saying if a team is granted for the 2017-18 season, “we’ve got to do something by June.”
The NHL has conveniently scheduled its annual end-of-the-season awards ceremony for Las Vegas in June, which would make it the perfect time to announce an expansion franchise for the city.
While the league did not officially announce a schedule for expansion at the Boca Raton meetings, it did announce procedures for an expansion draft of players, another hint the decision is coming soon.
Also, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Foley is finalizing plans for a practice facility on the outskirts of Las Vegas so it will be ready for the team’s first season in 2017.
Foley, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is expected to name the team the “Black Knights,” which is also the nickname of Army’s sports teams.
The expansion application was filed under the name Black Knight Sports and Entertainment LLC.
Of course, Foley already used that name for Black Knight Financial Services Inc., the mortgage technology company that was spun off from Fidelity.
Foley has homes in several states but when he started working on the NHL expansion process in 2014, he told the Daily Record he still considers Jacksonville his primary residence.
Shoe Carnival finishes year strong
Speaking of Jacksonville businessmen who are past or future major league sports team owners, Wayne Weaver’s footwear chain finished its fiscal year on a strong note.
Shoe Carnival Inc. reported earnings of 21 cents a share for the fourth quarter ended Jan. 30, 6 cents higher than the previous year and 7 cents higher than the consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Sales in the quarter rose 2.7 percent to $233.7 million and comparable-store sales rose 1.8 percent.
Comparable-store sales are sales at stores open for more than one year and are considered the key indicator of a retailer’s sales performance.
Shoe Carnival ended the year with 405 stores across the country.
Weaver, former majority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, is chairman of Evansville, Ind.-based Shoe Carnival and its largest shareholder, controlling 24.6 percent of the stock along with his wife, Delores.
Shoe Carnival expects comparable-store sales to rise by 1 percent to 3 percent in the current fiscal year and projects earnings of $1.58 to $1.65 a share, up from $1.45 in fiscal 2015.
Shoe Carnival’s stock rose as much as $2.38 to $28.05 on March 18 after the strong earnings report, its highest level in seven months.
Arizona Chemical results drop
Before its acquisition by Kraton Performance Polymers Inc., Arizona Chemical Holdings Corp. recorded a 14 percent drop in revenue to $807.3 million in 2015 and a 44 percent drop in earnings to $55 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Kraton.
Arizona Chemical was a privately held specialty chemicals company with headquarters in Jacksonville and in the Netherlands. Kraton completed the $1.37 billion acquisition in January.
In the SEC filing, Arizona Chemical said the sales drop in 2015 was largely the result of currency fluctuations, which lowered sales of many U.S. businesses with international operations. Lower sales prices also contributed to the decline in revenue.
The big drop in earnings was due in part to large insurance recoveries that boosted 2014 earnings.
Houston-based Kraton, before the merger, reported a 16 percent drop in revenue to $1.04 billion last year, also due in part to currency movements.
Kraton also said lower raw materials prices drove sales prices lower.
Despite the drop in revenue, Kraton’s adjusted earnings rose 65 percent to $63.5 million, or $2.02 a share.
Rayonier AM locks up three largest customers
Falling prices for cellulose specialties products, driven by oversupply in the market, have impacted Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc.’s results for the past couple of years.
Despite the pricing uncertainty, Jacksonville-based Rayonier AM has locked up new contract agreements with its three largest customers which together accounted for more than half of the company’s $941 million in sales last year.
In the latest agreement this month, Rayonier AM announced a new contract with Daicel Corp. extending through the end of 2018. Daicel is Rayonier AM’s third-largest customer, accounting for 13 percent of total sales last year.
The Daicel deal follows agreements announced last year with Nantong Cellulose Fibers Company, which produced 18 percent of sales, and Eastman Chemical Company, which accounted for 28 percent. Both of those contracts extend through 2019.
The Eastman negotiations were contentious, as both sides went to court to try and resolve disputes over language in their previous contract.
But the two companies settled their differences and announced the new contract in December.
Sports Authority closings have little impact on Regency
The Sports Authority Inc. filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy organization this month and announced plans to close up to 200 of its 463 stores, but the closings should have minimal impact on shopping center operators such as Jacksonville-based Regency Centers Corp., according to one analyst.
Actually, it will have almost no impact at all on Regency, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Ki Bin Kim said in a research report last week.
Regency, which has 318 retail properties across the country, has Sports Authority stores in only three of those and so far, only one of the stores in a Pennsylvania mall is scheduled to close, according to Kim’s report.
“We are not overly concerned with Regency’s exposure,” he said.
Kim looked at a number of real estate investment trusts that operate shopping centers and determined that while some will be hurt a little more than Regency, the Sports Authority closures will not be a problem for the industry.
“Overall, shopping center REITs are well situated, in our view, to absorb store these store closures,” he said.
In fact, some of them will see this as an opportunity to bring in a new retailer.
“A high quality shopping center should easily be able to replace an anchor tenant,” Kim said.
However, a struggling shopping center could be hurt, as has already happened in Jacksonville.
Sports Authority two years ago closed its store at the Regency Court center on the Arlington Expressway, across from the Regency Square Mall, and that anchor space remains vacant.
U.S. Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the Georgia-based owners of the mall last year and the property is scheduled for sale in a foreclosure auction on April 13 in Duval County Circuit Court.
Regency Centers Corp. has no connection to Regency Court or Regency Square Mall, although a predecessor company was the original developer of Regency Square a half century ago.
There are no Sports Authority stores in the Jacksonville metropolitan area.