Tuesday was a strong day for the stock market, as the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite all set fresh new record highs. Investors have their sights set squarely on the Dow 20,000 mark, and barring serious negative news, it appears the market seems inclined to accommodate their wishes. Yet even though the market was higher, many stocks didn't do as well. Among the worst performers on the day were Patterson-UTI Energy (PTEN +0.09%), Pacific Ethanol (PEIX 1.76%), and National Storage Affiliates (NSA +0.79%). Below, we'll look more closely at these stocks to tell you why they did so poorly.
Image source: Patterson-UTI Energy.
Patterson falls on acquisition
Patterson-UTI Energy dropped 7% after announcing Monday night that it had agreed to a merger agreement. The contract drilling and pressure-pumping services provider said it would acquire Seventy Seven Energy in a deal worth an estimated $1.76 billion, with shareholders in Seventy Seven Energy receiving an estimated 1.7725 shares of Patterson-UTI for every Seventy Seven share they own. Patterson also agreed to assume about $336 million in debt net of cash, and after the transaction, legacy Seventy Seven owners will hold about a quarter of the combined company. Patterson anticipates that the deal will be accretive to cash flow, and it expects synergies to produce more than $50 million in savings. The all-stock nature of the deal had a predictable downward impact on the stock, but those who are bullish on Patterson-UTI anticipate that the strategic move could help the combined company if the current uptrend in the energy industry persists.
Pacific Ethanol gives back its gains
Pacific Ethanol fell 6%, reversing course after a strong performance in Monday's session. Yesterday, the ethanol specialist said it had entered into agreements to refinance about $155 million in debt and to form a joint venture with the Aurora Cooperative Elevator Company in Nebraska. The debt refinancing was particularly important because the existing debt was due next September, and the refinancing provided a five-year term loan and a three-year senior note offering that extended its debt maturity schedule dramatically. Yet Tuesday's decline pretty much wiped out most of the gains the stock had made after Monday morning's announcement, suggesting the possibility that optimism about the company's prospects might have gotten ahead of realistic projections.
National Storage makes an offer investors can't refuse
Finally, National Storage Affiliates declined 5%. The real estate investment trust said Monday night that it had priced a secondary offering of 4.5 million shares to produce total gross proceeds of $94.5 million. Doing the math, that works out to $21 per share, which is almost exactly where the stock closed on Tuesday, and roughly $1 per share less than its closing price Monday, before the announcement. The REIT says it intends to use the proceeds from the offering to pay down debt on its revolving line of credit as well as for other corporate purposes, and it's likely that underwriters will exercise their option to purchase an additional 675,000 shares. The stock has performed quite well since the REIT's early 2015 IPO, and share-price advances plus a dividend yield above 4% have made National Storage shares look attractive to many investors.
