Colorado’s newest public company, its feet firmly in the heartland’s gravel pits and cement kilns, soared more like a tech stock on its first day of trading.
Shares of Summit Material Inc. priced at $18 a share Wednesday evening and closed Thursday at $20.97, near their high point for the day. Shares, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SUM, were up 16.5 percent.
Proceeds of the $400 million offering will be used to pay down debt the company took on to buy out suppliers of aggregates, cement, concrete and asphalt.
Summit represents the first IPO in the heavy construction industry since July 2010 and the largest of an industrial company in the country since early 2014, according to Ipreo, a market intelligence firm.
CEO Tom Hill started the company in 2009 with the private-equity backing from private-equity firms Blackstone Group and Silverhawk Summit and .
