I haven’t been keeping up much with Volusia County’s companies with publicly traded stock lately, so I thought everyone might be interested in how they’re doing these days.

What I found is they’re doing ridiculously well.

For example, Brown & Brown Inc. (NYSE: BRO), the big insurance broker with the shiny new headquarters in downtown Daytona Beach, reported revenue in the first quarter of 2021 of $815.3 million, up $116.8 million, or 16.7%, compared to the first quarter of 2020. It’s lifeblood, commissions and fees, was up by 16.9% and organic revenue (meaning its revenue minus other firms it has acquired in the past 12 months) was up 9.8%. Net income was $199.7 million, increasing $47.3 million, or 31%.

Putting it mildly, in a news release about its first quarter results, J. Powell Brown, B&B president and CEO, noted, “We had a great quarter.”

TopBuild Corp. (NYSE: BLD), the building insulation seller based on Williamson Boulevard in Daytona Beach, just released its first quarter 2021 financial results Thursday, May 6, so we’ll have to go back to the fourth quarter when its net sales increased 8.9% to $721.5 million and net income was $70.8 million, or $2.13 per diluted share, compared to $46 million, or $1.36 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Robert Buck, TopBuild president and CEO, may be a fun guy in real life, but comes across really boring in the company’s news releases. “Looking ahead, housing fundamentals remain robust and our company should continue to benefit from strong demand for new housing construction. Our focus remains on driving top line growth and improving operational efficiencies throughout the company,” he stated in the release.

CTO Realty Growth Inc. (NYSE: CTO) was created out of the former Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. and left an unfathomable mess that would take days to explain. But what we do know is that it’s now a Real Estate Investment Trust and reported first quarter revenue of about $14.7 million, up 14.6% from about $12.8 million in the first quarter of 2020. Net income was at about $7.8 million compared to a loss of about $12.3 million last year when it was doing a whole lot of financial strategizing and dealing with a lot of tenants who didn’t know if they’d be able to pay rent with a pandemic starting up.

It also created another company, Alpine Income Property Trust Inc. and a joint venture that holds its developable land. A company with this much confusion, you could probably guess what a statement from its CEO would be like, but I won’t make you guess.

“The first quarter was a strong start to the year as we completed our uplisting to the NYSE, continued to opportunistically sell legacy single tenant properties at attractive cap rates, and reinvest into high-quality, multi-tenanted properties at higher yields in the growing Salt Lake City and Las Vegas markets,” said John P. Albright, CTO president and CEO, in the earnings news release. “These transactions resulted in approximately 130 basis points of spread between the weighted-average cap rate of our dispositions and the comparable reinvestment yields of our acquisitions, which has been a consistent theme of our portfolio repositioning efforts as we continue our evolution into a best-in-class, diversified REIT. As we look to accelerate our pace of dispositions in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, we expect to continue this trend, which should drive increased earnings per share growth and further support our attractive 7.6% dividend yield.”

Now I remember why I don’t try to closely follow the public companies in Volusia.

***

I don’t know whether it’s the time of year or what, but there isn’t a lot of business news to report this week.

There were no big commercial real estate transactions to report, but Tanger Factory Outlet Center in Daytona Beach is getting a shop called The NY Platter. Plans were submitted to the St. Johns River Water Management District for the Allure on Enterprise, a 130-unit apartment complex at 2841 Enterprise Road in Orange City, which we previously reported was coming.

The mixed-use development at Williamson Boulevard and Oak Water Lane in Port Orange will now become a Halifax Health medical complex. Plans were submitted to the City of Daytona Beach for the second phase of Mosaic with 146 residential lots. Another 44 lots are planned at Gray Hawk at LPGA International in Daytona Beach, according to plans filed with the city.

While the plans say mini-mart, redevelopment of a former KFC at 1079 Mason Ave. in Daytona Beach will be a restaurant with no drive-through. A cigar shop is proposed for 400 Myrtle Ave. in New Smyrna Beach, according to plans filed with the water management district.

Managing Editor Cecil G. Brumley has been tracking business and the economy in Volusia County for more than 24 years. Contact him at cbrumley@hometownnewsmediagroup.com (no hyphens) or follow him on Twitter @cecilbrumley.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.hometownnewsvolusia.com/business/volusia-business-news-ceos-can-be-boring-without-even-trying/article_ab1657f4-ac17-11eb-bbde-ff0b4ae74c2d.html