JOE Bulls Hold the Wheel Into Q3 Earnings

The St. Joe Company reports Q3 results today with options traders positioned more bullishly than usual and short sellers offering little in the way of a contrarian challenge.

The options market is leaning noticeably toward calls heading into the print. The put/call ratio of 0.27 is roughly 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.30, and well below the 52-week midpoint, making it one of the more bullish-skewed readings of the past year. That tilt has built steadily over the past few weeks, with the ratio grinding lower from above 0.39 in late September. The stock itself is up 4.3% over the past month to $68.13, though it has given back a fraction of that in the past week.

Short sellers are not pressing their case into earnings. Short interest at 1.9% of free float is modest by any standard, and while it has risen around 8% over the week, that follows a period of relative calm and leaves the absolute level well below anything that would characterise a crowded short. Borrow availability is vast, with over 21 million shares still available against roughly 1.1 million sold short, meaning the lending market imposes no constraint on new positioning either way. Cost to borrow at 0.45% is negligible. The short score of 36 similarly reflects limited bearish conviction.

The most structurally interesting feature of JOE's ownership is the presence of Bruce Berkowitz on the 13D register. Berkowitz, through Fairholme Capital Management, holds 31.9% of shares and has filed a Schedule 13D/A, signalling active engagement with the company. His stake has edged down from 32.8% as last disclosed, consistent with the $65m-plus of open-market sales he filed across June 2026. Those sales, made at prices between $65 and $66, occurred below the current stock price of $68.13. Stakes are as last disclosed around the 5% threshold, and positions can change without further filings until another threshold event occurs. Still, a single holder controlling nearly a third of the company is an unusual concentration, and how Berkowitz responds to today's figures is a backdrop worth watching.

The debate around JOE sits between two credible positions. Bulls point to the company's momentum and quality scores, a five-year EBIT CAGR above 25%, and a real estate footprint in Northwest Florida that has few direct peers in the listed market. Bears lean on valuation: an EV/EBITDA of around 73x and a P/E above 130x leave no margin for disappointment, and any softness in land sales or residential development timelines would be hard to absorb at these multiples. Correlated US real estate names such as JLL and CBRE have both fallen 3% to 9% on the week, flagging some sector-level pressure that JOE has so far avoided.

Today's print is ultimately a test of whether St. Joe's premium valuation can be sustained by the operational detail, particularly the pace of real estate monetisation in its Florida land portfolio, at a moment when the broader property services sector is visibly retreating.