In a roller coaster first half of 2025, the stock market rebounded strongly in the last two months of the second quarter, leaving the major indexes with net gains for the year so far.\n\nHowever, Jacksonville companies were largely left behind.\n\nOnly four of the 19 publicly traded companies headquartered in Northeast Florida registered gains in the first six months of the year and two of those, CSX Corp. and Fidelity National Information Services Inc., eked out just a 1% increase.\n\nDream Finders Homes Inc. rose 8%, increasing the wealth of founder and CEO Patrick Zalupski as he attempts to buy the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.\n\nBut the big winner was Duos Technologies Group Inc.\n\nIts stock rose by $1.17 to $7.15 as of June 30, a 20% gain since the beginning of 2025.\n\nDuos has provided safety technology for railroads and had been expecting revenue growth as the rail industry focused on safety. However, the company has produced mostly disappointing results since the coronavirus pandemic.\n\nLast year, Duos expanded with two new business lines, one which provides artificial intelligence data centers in rural markets and another that installs power systems.\n\nThe company’s revenue jumped from $1.07 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $4.95 million in this year’s first quarter, and it projects total revenue of $28 million to $30 million for the full year, up from $7.3 million in 2024.\n\nDuos continues to lose money, with a net loss of $2.08 million in the first quarter.\n\nBut investors often focus more on growth potential than net results. The Wall Street Journal reported July 5 that the 858 companies in the Russell 3000 index that aren’t profitable rose by an average of 36% since the market bottomed out in April.\n\nThat beat the 24% overall increase in the entire index.\n\nThe Russell 3000 consists of the largest 3,000 U.S. companies based on market capitalization. Duos announced July 1 its stock had been added to another index from FTSE Russell, the Russell Microcap Index.\n\nAccording to FTSE Russell, that index “is constructed to provide a comprehensive and unbiased barometer for the microcap segment trading on national exchanges.”\n\nDuos is hoping Wall Street will notice its addition to the index.\n\n“ This inclusion increases our visibility with institutional investors and highlights the progress we’ve made in building a financially disciplined, innovation-driven company,” Chief Financial Officer Adrian Goldfarb said in a news release.\n\nRYAM has the biggest loss, falling 53%.\n\nAlthough many unprofitable companies are registering stock price gains, Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc., or RYAM, had the biggest loss among companies trading above $1, dropping 53%.\n\nRYAM, which makes cellulose specialties products, has lost money from continuing operations for six straight years and reported a first-quarter net loss of $32 million.\n\nThe company also lowered its full-year forecast for adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in its May 7 earnings report, keeping the stock down while the overall market rebounded.\n\nThe second-biggest decline came from Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc., which fell 27%.\n\nDun & Bradstreet’s drop may seem surprising because the business data company agreed to a buyout by Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. in late March. But the purchase price of $9.15 per share was disappointing.\n\nDun & Bradstreet’s stock rose in late 2024 after news of buyout talks was first reported, and it finished 2024 at $12.46.\n\nBut the stock was dropping in early 2025 before the agreement.\n\nClearlake’s acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet is expected to close during the third quarter.\n\nRayonier completes $710 million New Zealand timber sale.\n\nRayonier Inc., which split with RYAM into separate public companies in 2014, completed the previously announced sale of its New Zealand timber interests June 30.\n\nThe company sold its 77% joint venture interest in the New Zealand properties to investment funds managed by The Rohatyn Group for $710 million, and Rayonier said it expects net proceeds of $699 million from the sale.\n\nThe proceeds are expected to be used in part to pay a special dividend of $1 to $1.40 per share in a combination of cash and stock. Rayonier said details of the distribution will be announced later this year.\n\nThe sale is part of an asset disposition program announced by Rayonier in November 2023 that has resulted in $1.45 billion in dispositions.\n\n “The success of this plan has allowed us to achieve our new leverage target in a manner that has been accretive to both CAD (cash available for distribution) and NAV (net asset value) per share, as well as better position Rayonier to create long-term value for our shareholders going forward,” CEO Mark McHugh said in a news release.\n\nDespite those benefits for shareholders, Rayonier’s stock dropped after announcing the deal and it ended the first half of the year down 15%.\n\nWith the New Zealand sale, Rayonier’s timber business is exclusively in the U.S., with 1.75 million acres of timberland in the South and 308,000 in the Northwest.\n\nRayonier also has a real estate development unit with projects including the Wildlight community in Nassau County, where the company is headquartered.\n\nThe company is also looking at ways to use its land holdings for alternative energy uses such as solar panels and carbon capture and storage.\n\nAnalyst says Trump bill could help transportation stocks.\n\nWhile CSX recorded a minimal gain in the first half of 2025, Jacksonville’s other big freight transportation company, Landstar System Inc., dropped 19%.\n\nBaird analyst Daniel Moore, who rates both companies at “outperform,” thinks President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill could help transportation and logistics companies.\n\n“While still advancing through the legislative process, the House version offers a blend of business and household incentives that aligns with the kind of stimulus that has historically marked the beginning of a freight recovery,” Moore said in a July 1 report before Congress passed the bill July 3.\n\nMoore thinks the bill could trigger bigger stimulus in the first year than some estimates are suggesting. The reasons include investment incentives that could encourage near-term capital spending and some business benefits that phase out after 2028.\n\nAlso, he cited “targeted household tax relief designed to boost discretionary income among middle-income consumers; and conservative scoring models that likely understate behavioral response and may not fully capture freight’s role as the conduit between policy incentives and real economic activity.”\n\nMoore has a $38 price target for CSX, which closed June 30 at $32.63, and a $166 target for Landstar, which closed at $139.02.\n\nGTCR called big winner in FIS/Worldpay deal.\n\nFidelity National Information Services, or FIS, took a bath on its 2019 acquisition of payments processing company Worldpay for $43 billion.\n\nBut GTCR, which agreed to buy a majority interest in Worldpay from FIS two years ago, stood out as a big winner among private equity firms for its Worldpay deal, according to a July 2 report by Forbes magazine.\n\nGTCR agreed to buy 55% of Worldpay in July 2023 in a deal that valued Worldpay at $18.5 billion.\n\nIn April, GTCR and FIS (which retained 45%) agreed to sell Worldpay to Global Payments Inc. for $24.25 billion.\n\nSo GTCR is selling Worldpay at a profit less than two years after agreeing to buy the majority stake.\n\n“ It was a slow first half of the year for private equity, but there are always going to be winners and losers on Wall Street, and GTCR is one under-the-radar firm that seized the spotlight,” said Forbes staff writer Hank Tucker in the magazine’s daily newsletter.\n\nFIS said two years ago it expected net proceeds of $11.7 billion from the sale of its majority stake in Worldpay and is selling its remaining 45% interest to Global Payments for $6.6 billion in pretax value.\n\nHome Depot continues to expand its Pro division.\n\nHome Depot Inc., which began expanding in the professional contractor sector 10 years ago with the acquisition of Jacksonville-based Interline Brands Inc., continues to grow that side of the company.\n\nThe Atlanta-based company announced a $5.5 billion agreement June 30 to buy GMS Inc., a specialty building products distributor.\n\nThe company best known for selling do-it-yourself supplies to homeowners does not break out data for its professional contractor division, called Pro. \n\nBut the company has said sales growth is faster in that side of the business than the DIY customer, and reports say it accounts for at least half of Home Depot’s $159.5 billion in sales last year.\n\nHome Depot began growing the contractor business with the $1.625 billion acquisition of Interline, announced in July 2015. \n\nInterline provided maintenance, repair and operations products to professionals.\n\nThe company continued to grow the Pro business with additional acquisitions, including an $8 billion purchase of HD Supply Holdings Inc. in 2020. Home Depot integrated Interline into HD Supply in 2021.\n\nHome Depot expanded the Pro business again with an $18.25 billion acquisition last year of SRS Distribution Inc., which serves the roofer, landscaper and pool contractor businesses.\n\nThe company plans to integrate GMS into SRS.\n\n“ The Home Depot’s growth strategy includes growing its share of wallet with professional contractors (Pros), and the company is building differentiated offerings and capabilities to better serve Pros across their entire project – from large, complex jobs to smaller renovations and repairs,” the company said in a June 30 news release.\n\n“ The acquisition of GMS will accelerate SRS’s vision of becoming a leading, multi-category building materials distributor, adding a new vertical that is adjacent to its existing business,” it said.

Jacksonville stocks mostly left behind in market rebound

In the first half of 2025, the U.S. stock market rebounded, but Jacksonville-based companies underperformed. Duos Technologies Group Inc. saw a 20% stock gain, while RYAM fell 53% and Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc. dropped 27%. Rayonier Inc. sold its New Zealand timber interests for $710 million, and Home Depot expanded its Pro division with a $5.5 billion acquisition. The Trump tax bill could benefit transportation stocks, and GTCR profited from its Worldpay stake.