It didn’t turn out to be the blockbuster IPO that metal distributor Earle M. Jorgensen Co. was hoping for.
Jorgensen sold 17.6 million shares at $10 in its initial public offering on Friday. When the company initially filed for its offering with regulators, the onetime Orange County company said it hoped to raise about $300 million by selling 20 million shares at $14 to $16.
Yesterday, Jorgensen scaled back its expectations by lowering the IPO range to $11 to $13 a share. Shares were trading at $9.2 Friday afternoon.
Market watchers said a weak outlook for the metals sector hurt interest in the IPO.
Jorgensen was one of OC’s largest private companies before shifting its headquarters from Brea to Lynwood in late 2003.
New York-based buyout firm Kelso & Co. owned 70% of Jorgensen prior to the IPO. Affiliates of Kelso bought Jorgensen in 1990 and combined it with another distributor, Kilsby-Roberts Holding Co.
Jorgensen counts annual sales of $1.5 billion. The company is profitable but is feeling the squeeze of higher prices on the metal tubes, pipes and bars its distributes to automakers and other manufacturers and companies.
The company is named for founder Earle Jorgensen, who died in 1999 at 101. He started the business in 1921 selling steel bars and scrap steel out of a rundown Los Angeles office.
With the growth of the company, Jorgensen became influential in politics. A Republican, he was a close friend of Ronald Reagan and served as a member of the former California governor’s “kitchen cabinet.”
Jorgensen remained a familiar fixture at the company he started, coming to work daily up until his 100th birthday.
The Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren counted Jorgensen as a stepfather after he married Bren’s mother, Marion Jorgensen.
The shares are trading as “JOR” on the New York Stock Exchange.
