Four companies in the process of being acquired rank among the state’s top-performing stocks from April to June, all posting double-digit share-price gains during the second quarter, which ends today.
Longmont-based Applied Films Corp. is up 46.6 percent; Arapahoe County-based Navigant International is up 32.3 percent; Denver-based Western Gas Resources Inc. is up 24.1 percent; and Denver-based TransMontaigne Inc. is up 13.7 percent.
“You need to have a good reason, like a buyout, to move a stock (upward) during a down market,” said Dennis McAlpine, an independent analyst in Scarsdale, N.Y.
The four companies’ share-price jumps have come amid an up-and-down quarter on Wall Street. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down 1.7 percent during the quarter. The index did move into positive territory for the year, gaining 26.87 points, or 2.16 percent, on Thursday after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter-percentage point.
The Colorado Bloomberg Index, a price-weighted average of the state’s 111 publicly traded companies, has slumped by 4.3 percent during the quarter. The index is up 4.9 percent for the year.
Among Colorado companies with market capitalizations above $250 million, Applied Films is the state’s second-best performing stock so far during the quarter. Shareholders are due to vote today on a $464 million takeover bid from Applied Materials, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor-equipment maker.
Navigant is the fourth best performing stock; Western Gas is sixth best; and TransMontaigne is ninth best. The state’s top performing stock, Denver-based Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp., is up 60.4 percent for the quarter so far, closing at $3.85 Thursday.
Other stocks that have soared include Sirenza Microdevices (up 29.2 percent), Qwest (up 17.3 percent) and Chipotle (up 9.8 percent).
TransMontaigne agreed last week to be purchased by Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment bank, for $634 million. Shares have jumped 50.3 percent since the takeover bid began in March.
Western Gas, which Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum plans to acquire for $4.74 billion, announced the deal June 23. Since then, shares of Western Gas have gone up 46.4 percent.
Companies being acquired often command premiums of 20 percent or more compared with where shares are trading when a deal is first announced, said Jerry Paul of Greenwood Village-based Quixote Capital Management.
The buyouts of Western Gas and TransMontaigne represent the latest deals in an ongoing wave of consolidation for the oil and gas industry, said David Tameron, an energy analyst in Denver. He said other potential takeover targets among local companies include Forest Oil Corp., Gasco Energy Inc. and St. Mary Land & Exploration Co.
Another takeover target, Vail Banks Inc., is up 3.8 percent during the quarter. The Avon-based company said June 1 that it would be acquired by U.S. Bancorp.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
