Finance History|11 Wall Street — Thirteen Dollars to Buy Twelve Heating Shops

People treat Comfort Systems as a Houston mechanical contractor that always printed FIX on a single book.

The 1997 issuer was a roll-up vehicle incorporated in December 1996 to buy heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning firms.

The company's 1998 Form 10-K recorded that on 27 June 1997 it sold 6,100,000 common shares to the public at 13 dollars each in 1997 currency.

Net proceeds after commissions and expenses were 68.8 million dollars. An overallotment of 915,000 shares at the same price brought the printed total to 7,015,000.

Closing of the offering and of twelve concurrent mergers fell on 2 July 1997.

The cash leg paid to those founding companies was 45.3 million dollars. The stock leg was 9,720,927 shares, plus assumption of 20.4 million dollars of their existing debt.

The common listed on the New York Stock Exchange under FIX.

A later prospectus restated the same 13-dollar print and the same founding-company consideration.

The mechanism is a consolidation IPO. Public cash and new paper bought twelve separate HVAC books on one closing day and folded them under one ticker.

Holders bought commercial ductwork and service contracts, not a residential franchise chain.

The pin is the Broad Street facade of the Exchange, where the 1997 common printed. Interior trading is not visitable from the sidewalk.

Photo: Arild Vagen, August 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. New York Stock Exchange from Broad Street.