Jacksonville-based Florida East Coast Railway LLC filed a lawsuit last month to stop an expansion by Brightline, which operates a commuter rail service on FECR’s tracks in South Florida.
The suit filed July 11 in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court against Brightline Trains Florida LLC alleges the commuter rail company has been conducting clandestine negotiations with government officials to expand its service on FECR’s tracks.
FECR offers freight service on its 351-mile rail line from Jacksonville to Miami, and Brightline began its commuter service on part of those tracks in 2018.
“The cooperation and transparency between FECR and Brightline that made Brightline’s passenger service a reality has, unfortunately, long disappeared,” the lawsuit said.
“Rather than gratitude for the use of the FEC Corridor, Brightline wants more – more trains and more profit. And to obtain it, Brightline colluded behind FECR’s back to dispossess FECR of its own property and load the railway tracks with passenger trains at a volume that the tracks cannot safely handle without significant investments that Brightline cannot afford,” it said.
The lawsuit said Brightline “sunk into a financial malaise from which it has not recovered” after the coronavirus pandemic.
The Miami Herald, which first reported on the lawsuit Aug. 1, said Brightline lost more than $500 million in 2024.
Brightline filed a motion to dismiss the case July 29 that said FECR’s claims are “demonstrably frivolous, but this is not the proper forum to resolve them.”
The motion said under its joint use agreement with FECR, disputes should be settled by binding arbitration.
The FECR is a railroad built along the state’s East Coast by Henry Flagler in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
It was acquired in 2007 by private equity funds managed by Fortress Investment Group LLC, which sold the railroad to Mexico City-based Grupo México Transportes in 2017.
The railroad continues to operate as a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico.
Landstar System Inc. reported lower second-quarter results as the Jacksonville-based trucking company continues to feel the impact of slumping freight trends.
“The freight environment in the 2025 second quarter was characterized by relatively soft demand from a seasonal perspective, admittedly coming off a seasonally strong first quarter,” CEO Frank Lonegro said in a July 29 conference call with analysts.
“The impact of accumulated inflation remains a drag on the amount of truckload freight generated in relation to consumer spending,” he said.
Landstar’s revenue fell 1.1% in the quarter to $1.21 billion while earnings dropped 10.4% to $41.9 million, or $1.20 per share.
“Notwithstanding the political and macro uncertainty thus far in 2025, our focus continues to be on accelerating our business model and executing on our strategic growth initiatives,” Lonegro said.
Lonegro saw several positive developments for Landstar in the quarter.
“Our second-quarter revenue per truckload outperformed pre-pandemic typical seasonality and the number of trucks provided by BCOs was approximately equal to the 2025 first quarter, representing the best sequential net BCO truck performance in 12 quarters,” he said.
Landstar contracts with business capacity owners, or BCOs, who own their own trucks to haul freight around the country.
Analysts maintained a cautious outlook on Landstar after the earnings report because of the weak freight environment.
“Truckload seems to be stabilizing, but we see no signs of a true market turn as we wait for consensus to fall further,” Susquehanna analyst Bascome Majors said in a research note.
“Overall business trends appear to be stabilizing after a prolonged period of sequential softening from the early 2022 peak,” Evercore ISI analyst Jonathan Chappell said in his note.
“But there is still a lot of cyclical wood to chop,” he said.
Dream Finders Homes Inc. reported higher revenue but lower earnings in the second quarter, as the costs of a mortgage program increased the Jacksonville-based homebuilder’s expenses.
Dream Finders reported earnings fell 30% to $56.6 million, or 56 cents per share.
Revenue rose 9% to $1.15 billion but selling, general and administrative expenses jumped 39% to $135 million.
The company said the higher expenses were mainly attributable to forward mortgage commitment programs that allow homebuyers to lock in loan rates at the time of sale.
“The industry continues to be faced with challenges from elevated interest rates straining housing affordability and weakening consumer confidence,” CEO Patrick Zalupski said in a July 31 news release.
Despite the challenging environment, Zalupski said he is confident in the company’s ability to grow organically and through acquisitions.
Zalupski has been in the news recently as the lead investor of a group seeking to buy the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Rays confirmed in June the team is negotiating with Zalupski and Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred indicated last month at a pre-All Star Game briefing with baseball writers that the group is getting closer to a deal.
“I have no reason to quibble with or dispute the rumors that are out there about the Tampa sale,” Manfred said, according to sports business site Sportico, which first reported the negotiations in June.
Zalupski has not commented publicly on his interest or whether his purchase of the team would affect Dream Finders. Zalupski is founder and CEO of the company and also its largest stockholder.
Dream Finders does not hold conference calls to discuss its quarterly earnings and take questions from analysts and investors.
Regency Centers Corp. reported higher second-quarter earnings and increased its forecasts for the full year, as trends are positive for the Jacksonville-based shopping center developer.
“We continue to outperform on all metrics, demonstrated by strong same-property NOI growth and total NOI growth,” CEO Lisa Palmer said in a July 30 conference call.
Net operating income at shopping centers open for more than one year jumped 7.4% in the quarter, with core operating earnings rising 6.8% to $202.2 million, or $1.10 a share.
Regency’s portfolio of 483 properties, mainly grocery-anchored shopping centers, was 96.2% leased at the end of the quarter.
After the strong earnings growth in the second quarter, Regency raised its NOI growth forecast for the full year from a range of 3.2% to 4% to a range of 4.5% to 5%.
Regency announced the acquisition of five centers in Southern California July 24, and analysts asked if more deals may be in the works, possibly in new markets.
“We really like the markets in which we operate. We really like the diversification, national exposure,” Palmer said.
“We will continue to invest incrementally in the markets that we like if, again, if it checks all of those boxes, if we are able to find compelling opportunities that are accretive to earnings, accretive to growth, accretive to quality. And again, we are confident and comfortable with our portfolio diversification.”
Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s $11.9 billion acquisition of Jacksonville-based Black Knight Inc. was held up for 15 months as the companies tried to satisfy antitrust concerns raised by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
But after reaching an agreement with the FTC and completing the deal in September 2023, ICE continues to dominate the mortgage technology business.
“For nearly a decade, ICE has been building an end-to-end digital mortgage platform that spans from customer acquisition all the way through to the secondary capital markets,” ICE President Benjamin Jackson said in a July 31 conference call, according to a company transcript.
“We have a touchpoint to nearly every US home mortgage connected to more than 3,000 lenders, 48,000 settlement agents, and closing attorneys, 2,500 county governments, the GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises), 80,000 notaries, 100 loan servicing companies, 1,000 mortgage-backed securities investment firms, and thousands of third-party data and service providers,” he said.
“Our comprehensive platform automates workflows throughout each stage of the mortgage life cycle resulting in lower costs to originating service loans for our clients who can then pass those savings on to the end consumer, all while helping lenders and servicers better recapture and identify new business opportunities.”
Atlanta-based ICE, best known as operator of the New York Stock Exchange, said in December 2024 it would establish the headquarters of its mortgage technology business in Jacksonville.
ICE said the mortgage technology business increased revenue by 5% in the second quarter to $531 million, with adjusted operating income rising 22% to $221 million.
The Fortegra Group’s adjusted second-quarter earnings rose 12% to $45.2 million, according to a July 30 news release by parent company Tiptree Inc.
Fortegra, a Jacksonville-based specialty insurance company, is the major holding of Connecticut-based investment company Tiptree.
Fortegra’s revenue, excluding a one-time assumption of a block of premiums the prior year, rose 4.5% to $513 million in the quarter.
Tiptree acquired Fortegra in 2014 and has twice tried to take it public again since then. But Tiptree called off initial public offerings in April 2021 and February 2024 and has not said if or when it will try again.
Duos Technologies Group Inc. said July 30 it priced an offering of 6.67 million shares of stock at $6 each.
Jacksonville-based Duos said the net proceeds from the $40 million stock sale will be used to expand its artificial intelligence data centers business it launched last year.
Duos also operates a subsidiary that provides railroad safety technology and another that installs power systems.