THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 1, 1997 TAG: 9702010301
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
LENGTH: 25 lines
Shares of Trigon Healthcare Inc. climbed sharply in heavy trading Friday on the insurer's first day as a publicly traded company.
After being priced at $13 a share Thursday, Trigon's stock jumped $4.75 Friday to close at $17.75. More than 7.7 million shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange.
Trigon's shares traded as high as $19 during the day.
The biggest health insurer in Virginia, Trigon had an initial public offering of 15.5 million shares as part of its conversion from a policyholder-owned company to a company owned by investors. Trigon also is distributing shares to most of its policyholders and paying cash to others.
Its shares were priced at a moderate level because of some uncertainty about the outlook for Trigon's earnings, said David West, an analyst with Davenport & Co. of Virginia, a Richmond brokerage firm.
``The general environment for health maintenance organizations and health-care stocks has been fairly difficult because their (profit) margins have been under pressure,'' he said.