WHEELING-PITT STEEL Stock value declines after trading resumes

Creditors are selling the company's stock as a way to pay off old debts.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. stock is trading on Wall Street for the first time in 15 years, but its value has dropped steadily in the first three days on Nasdaq.
Trading began Tuesday at $9.30 under symbol WPSC, with 295,000 shares changing hands. The value slid throughout the day, closing at $8.90, down 6.3 percent.
That slide continued Wednesday, with 43,700 shares changing hands and the value dropping 13 percent to close at $7.75.
By Thursday, the value had fallen another 26 percent, or $2.01 per share, to close at $5.74. A total of 120,913 shares were exchanged.
Wheeling-Pitt emerged from nearly three years of bankruptcy protection Aug. 1, becoming the first major integrated steel producer in the nation to successfully reorganize through Chapter 11 since the current steel-import crisis began in 1998.
The nation's sixth-largest integrated steel producer had been a subsidiary of New York-based WHX Corp. but is now independent.
Not concerned
Chief Financial Officer Paul J. Mooney said Thursday he had consulted with Nasdaq's market intelligence desk, and neither was concerned about the rapidly changing price. There had been no previous market price, and the starting point was just an estimate, he said.
Also, many of Wheeling-Pitt's creditors had been waiting a long time for the payment of old debts.
"They've been waiting for any money, and this is their opportunity to get some," Mooney said, "and that's putting some downward pressure on the market."
Wheeling-Pitt employs about 3,100 people at plants in Follansbee and Beech Bottom, in Allenport, Pa., and in the Ohio towns of Steubenville, Mingo Junction, Yorkville and Martins Ferry.
Wheeling-Pitt is focused on construction, using a $250 million federally guaranteed loan to upgrade and build a massive, $115 million electric arc furnace that will let it make steel from either scrap or raw materials.
New stock
When it emerged from Chapter 11, it issued 10 million shares of common stock. Forty percent has been dedicated to a Voluntary Employee Benefits Association, which provides health care for retirees.
Fifty percent went to various creditors, and the remaining 10 percent went to salaried employees.