O'Reilly makes offering of 3.3 million shares

by Paul Flemming

SBJ Staff

O'Reilly Automotive Inc. had a secondary stock offering of 3.3 million shares March 26, initially priced at $37.25, netting the company about $106.9 million.

"We ended up getting a little less than we'd hoped for," said Jim Batten, vice president of finance and chief financial officer of Springfield-based O'Reilly. "The stock is up now."

He said the company priced the offering at a time when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped more than 200 points, depressing O'Reilly's asking price. Subsequently, market indices jumped, as did the price of O'Reilly's stock, traded on the NASDAQ market under the symbol ORLY. O'Reilly stock closed March 31 at $44.75, up 87.5 cents from its previous day's close.

Of the shares in the offering, 3 million were sold by the company and 340,000 were sold by selling shareholders.

Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corporation, George K. Baum & Company and William Blair & Company were the managing underwriters for the offering.

O'Reilly had its initial public offering in 1993 and a previous secondary offering in 1995 prior to the March offering.

The $106.9 million net proceeds from the common-stock offering will be used to repay debt in order to facilitate future expansion of operations, according to a company release.

O'Reilly in 1998 acquired Hi-Lo Automotive Inc. in a stock transaction valued at about $47 million. The acquisition added 188 stores in Texas, Louisiana and California, along with a distribution center in Houston, Texas.[[In-content Ad]]