New Algoma stock closes at $2.75

Newly listed shares of restructured Algoma Steel Inc. closed today at $2.75 after a day in which less than 3,000 shares traded.

The shares, offered for the first time on the Toronto Stock Exchange, closed sharply down from the opening price of 13 dollars.

For the first 89 minutes after trading started, only one share sold.

Trading was very light until early afternoon, when the price fell to $2.25 and most of the day's sales took place at that level and at the $2.75 closing price.

"We don't have a recommendation on it," Ford Upton, an investment advisor with the Sault office of Edward Jones, told SooToday.com.

The restructured company has no track record, so any decision now to buy Algoma shares would be speculative, Upton said.

"In the short term, we're probably going to see some volatility. It will be more opinion than fact."

The 20 million new Algoma Steel Inc. common shares, issued under the company's plan of arrangement and reorganization, were posted for trading under the symbol AGA.

Former holders of the Algoma's first mortgage notes received 15 million new common shares, employees received 4 million new shares and unsecured creditors who did not take cash for their unsecured claims got 1 million shares.

Algoma's old stock is worth nothing and holders of it are not entitled to receive new stock in exchange for their shares.

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