TIMO

Earth Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on renewable energy, has hired a sustainable agriculture and forestry investment team from IBIS Capital Management and EMP Global.

The Walt Disney Company intends to invest US$7 million in forest conservation projects in the U.S.A, the Amazon  and the Congo Basin in an effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Major timberland transactions have slowed considerably but some continue to close. I wrote an article for Forest Landowners Magazine (THE TREND IN TIMBERLAND PRICES) that was supposed to be published in October but the publishing date was postponed until late November so I thought I would do a little update on transactions to date for this year. From the list below, you can see that there are quite a few transactions but relatively few large ones.

The issue in today’s post concerns why the transaction price of timberland has shown little or no decline in value but the stock price of the publicly traded companies that own timberland has declined dramatically. I will also look at what I think is happening in the timberland market today and how I see the market for timberland investment. But first, let’s set the stage.