Overland Park company decides to pull itself off the New York Stock Exchange
Overland Park-based Ferrellgas, which has spent the last five years shouldering a burdensome debt load, will remove itself from the New York Stock Exchange where its shares are publicly traded.
Ferrellgas, a propane supplier best known for its Blue Rhino brand of outdoor propane tanks, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday that “after much discussion and deliberation” among its board of directors, the company chose to delist its shares from the NYSE by Jan. 9 for an indefinite period.
The NYSE told Ferrellgas in July that the company was not in compliance with the exchange’s listing requirements, namely that its shares were trading below $1 apiece for too long a period of time. Ferrellgas was told at the time that it had six months to get back into compliance with NYSE listing requirements by boosting its average stock price above $1 for a 30-day trading period.
Ferrellgas stock traded for $1.02 a share on Oct. 2, the most recent time the shares traded above a dollar. Ferrellgas stock opened trading on Monday at $0.37 a share.
The company said on Friday that it viewed its delisting from the NYSE as a temporary measure while it resolves its balance sheet issues. In the meantime, Ferrellgas shares will trade on the OTCQB, a middle tier exchange on the OTC Markets Group.
Ferrellgas employs about 4,200 workers, including about 380 corporate employees. Its corporate headquarters are in Overland Park.
The company focused itself for decades on propane supply, a steady business of providing the natural gas for outdoor grills and home water heaters, among other uses.
In 2014, Ferrellgas launched itself in midstream operations — industry lingo for transportation and storage of natural energy like oil and gas. In 2015, Ferrellgas bought Bridger Logistics, a crude oil midstream outfit in Dallas, for $837.5 million. The Bridger transaction and others lavished debt on Ferrellgas’ balance sheet.
Ferrellgas’ midstream endeavor didn’t work out; in 2018 Ferrellgas sold the Bridger operation for $92 million, a steep discount from what it paid to buy the business three years earlier.
When Ferrellgas released its quarterly earnings report in October, it sounded serious warnings about the condition of its business. In particular, it grappled with $357 million in unsecured debt that was due on June 15, 2020.
In November, Ferrellgas managed to work out terms of parts of its debt with TPG Specialty Lending, which had claimed that Ferrellgas was in default on some of its debt.
This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 11:01 AM.
