The privately-held owners of Newhall Land, the developers of Valencia who hope to build another planned community of equal scope at Newhall Ranch, are going public.
On Friday, Five Point Holdings LLC, commonly known as FivePoint, filed documents with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission saying it will conduct an initial public offering. If the IPO is successful, the company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FPH.
As a standalone company, Newhall Land was listed on the NYSE from 1970 to 2004. That year, Emile Haddad, then Chief Investment Officer of Lennar Corp. a Miami-based development company, put together a joint venture that bought Newhall Land for about $1 billion, the filing said.
Aliso Viejo-based FivePoint is the largest owner and developer of mixed-use, master-planned communities in coastal California, the filing said, “based on the total number of residential homesites permitted to be built under existing entitled zoning.”
Locally, the company is seeking state and Los Angeles County approval to begin construction on the first two of nine phases of Newhall Ranch on 15,000 acres of land it owns west of the interstate along state Route 126.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife are reviewing a revised environmental impact statement for the project, and their verdicts could come as early as this summer, the company said earlier this year.
The ultimate value of the IPO is unknown, as the filing did not indicate how many shares the company will issue or their share price. Citing an SEC-imposed quiet period that began with Friday’s filing, FivePoint spokesman Steve Churm declined to speculate on what those final numbers might be.
While the company valued the IPO at $100 million, that number is a placeholder. The company was worth about $1.4 billion on Dec. 31, 2016, according to the filing.
In the filing, two investment firms, Third Avenue Management LLC and Castlelake, L.P., each indicated an interest in each buying up to $25 million of FivePoint shares.
Newhall Ranch accounts for about half of the 43,000 housing units that FivePoint is developing, and 87 percent of its land.
In addition to Newhall Ranch, FivePoint also owns San Francisco Shipyard and Candlestick Point in San Francisco and Great Park Neighborhoods in Orange County.
The company is filing as an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, the JOBS Act.
This status would reduce some of the company’s reporting requirements going forward, including some related to executive compensation.
Over the last seven months of 2016, Emile Haddad, FivePoint’s Chairman, President and CEO, received total compensation of $34.4 million, the filing said. This included salary of $759,615, a $10.9 million bonus and stock awards of $22.7 million. Half of the stock awards are not payable until next January and are subject to Haddad remaining with FivePoint.