HERMITAGE F.N.B. stock moving to NYSE as spinoff nears

By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- F.N.B. Corp. stock will debut on the New York Stock Exchange next week.
The switch from NASDAQ comes as the banking and financial services company prepares to divide its Pennsylvania and Florida operations into two separate entities with separate stocks. F.N.B. stock moves to the stock exchange Dec. 17 at a price that will be determined that morning on Wall Street.
The stock exchange will improve the visibility of F.N.B. and the liquidity of its stock, the company said.
Clay Cone, a company spokesman, said the stock is expected to be valued at about the same price it has on the NASDAQ. The price will then be determined by open trading.
Spinoff in January
Investors have some new wrinkles to consider when buying or selling F.N.B. stock, which will trade under the new symbol FNB.
In January, F.N.B. intends to spin off its Florida operations into a new company called First National Bankshares of Florida. That company is to remain based in Naples, Fla., while F.N.B. is to return to Hermitage, which was the company's headquarters until 2001.
Each F.N.B. shareholder is to receive one share of stock in the new company for each F.N.B. share owned. The new stock is expected to begin trading in January under the symbol FLB.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has approved the spinoff, but further regulator approvals are needed.
Cone said the creation of two companies is designed to help industry analysts see the strengths of each company. The company thinks its operations are hard to evaluate because the northern and southern markets are different and the banking divisions have different goals.
The Florida operation will be a growth company that reinvests earnings to expand. F.N.B. will be a value company that pays a larger dividend to shareholders because it doesn't need to invest as much in expansion.
The market will decide whether the stock of the two companies will be worth the same as the current F.N.B. stock or more.
"The hope would certainly be that the [combined] price would go up, but that's up to the market to determine," Cone said.
F.N.B stock dropped 5 percent to $29.48 when the Florida spinoff was announced July 10, but quickly rebounded. Lately, it has been trading at more than $33 a share. F.N.B., which will operate 127 First National Bank offices in western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio, has about 1,700 employees, including 125 employees at its headquarters and 250 at a data processing center in Hermitage.
First National Bankshares will have 59 bank branches in southwest and central Florida.
shilling@vindy.com