SCANA stock surges on news of buyout

SCANA stock surged Wednesday on news the South Carolina-based power company is selling itself to Dominion Energy.

SCANA’s stock price surged to $49.18 a share when trading opened Wednesday morning, after news of the sale broke. SCANA shares closed at $38.87 each on Tuesday.

The opening rally Wednesday added $1.5 billion in value to the embattled Cayce-based company’s shares.

But some of that value was lost as SCANA shares closed at $46.65 a share. Still, the stock was one of Wall Street’s hottest Wednesday, rising more than 22 percent.

The deal announced calls for SCANA shareholders to receive 0.669 Dominion common shares for each SCANA share that they own. That is the equivalent of $55.35 a share, based on Dominion’s average stock price over the past 30 days.

SCANA’s stock price collapsed from a 52-week high of $73.81 a share after it and the state-owned Santee Cooper utility announced they would not complete two new reactors that they building at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County.

Some $9 billion had been invested in the plant over a 10-year construction process.

Subsequently, SCANA’s stock hit a 52-week low of $37.10, a loss of some $5 billion in value from its high within the last year.

Stock for Virginia-based Dominion was down slightly in early trading Wednesday from its close at $80.28 a share Tuesday. Dominion’s stock closed at $77.19 in trading Wednesday, down more than $3 a share.

As of June 30 of last year, about 8 percent of SCANA shares were owned by SCANA employees, directors and retirees, the company said. That works out to about 11.4 million shares owned by employees, directors and retirees.

Early Wednesday morning, those shares gained $102 million in value to be worth $544 million. However, that’s still less than the $841 million value of those shares earlier this year.

This story was originally published January 3, 2018 at 8:28 AM with the headline "SCANA stock surges on news of buyout."