Moving Metal

On September 16, 1994, Gimbel, Crider, and Hannah traveled to Wall Street to watch Reliance’s shares hit the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Doug Hayes remembered that it “went off without a hitch,” and that there was great excitement when the Reliance listing “RS” flashed on the Big Board soon after the opening bell. The share price opened at $14.50 and went up and down throughout the day, but always within expected parameters. When the closing bell sounded at 4:00 p.m. some 3,450,000 shares had been sold, for a net yield of $46 million. After fifty-five years, Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. was now a public company. In the short run, the IPO brought little noticeable change. Bill Gimbel and Florence Neilan still held a controlling interest in the company, owning 15.4 percent and 18.2 percent of the shares, respectively. Nor did management pour all of that new equity into acquisitions: $26 million went to pay down Reliance’s line of credit and some of it went into capital improvements. The IPO took Reliance decisively out of the minors and into the majors, and the company had no trouble performing in the big leagues—to the delight of the holders of those new public shares. Reliance split its common stock 3-for-2 in 1997 and again in 1999; there was a 2-for-1 split in 2006. “That’s not too bad in our industry,” Hannah later said. “We’re pretty proud of that.”

Bill Gimbel (left), Joe Crider (right), and an official from the Edward Jones investment firm (center) celebrate on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on September 16, 1994, the day Reliance became a public company.

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