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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Business news

Compiled from staff and wire reports The Spokesman-Review

Key Tronic shares trade heavily, rise

A strong earnings report Thursday launched shares of Spokane contract manufacturer Key Tronic Corp. to its best days in recent memory on Friday.

After releasing impressive third-quarter earnings and projected sales, the Spokane-based manufacturer saw its share price rise 52 percent, from $2.23 to $3.40.

Friday’s trading volume hit 1.5 million shares, more than 100 times the daily average volume, according to Yahoo.com.

Company Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Ron Klawitter said Friday’s trading may be “one of the highest ever, if not the highest volume.”

Despite the heady sales, Key Tronic doesn’t compete in total volume with its more potent Nasdaq neighbors. Friday’s trade leader, Sun Microsystems, saw volume of 150 million shares, 100 times more than Key Tronic had.

Avista completes sale of California operations

Spokane-based Avista Corp. said it completed the sale of its operations in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., and transferred its accounts there to the buyer, Southwest Gas.

Avista had served about 19,000 natural gas customers in South Lake Tahoe since 1991, its only California service area.

Avista announced last summer that it would sell those operations to focus on its core utility business in the Northwest.

Southwest Gas paid about $15 million in cash for the operations, Avista said.

Other airlines follow American’s fare hike

A fare increase launched by American Airlines appeared to stick on Friday, as Northwest Airlines Corp., Delta Air Lines Inc. and Continental Airlines Inc. said they, too, would raise fares in most U.S. cities.

American blamed fuel prices when it announced fare increases of $5 one-way and $10 round-trip on most domestic and U.S.-Canada flights on Thursday. It was the latest among several fare hikes by U.S. airlines in recent months. Some stuck when competitors matched them; others were abandoned.

Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch said the airline matched American except in markets where they offer fares to compete with Southwest Airlines Co. and JetBlue Airways Corp. Northwest also didn’t raise its higher-priced walk-up business fares, he said.

Continental and Delta also acknowledged matching the increases Friday afternoon.

American said it needs the higher ticket prices to offset high fuel costs. American, a unit of Fort Worth-based AMR Corp., has said that each $1 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs it about $80 million a year.

Rising fuel prices have bedeviled most airlines this year. Southwest has been an exception, making heavy use of financial hedges to lock in lower prices, including 85 percent of its fuel for the rest of this year at prices that are about half the going rate. Northwest and Delta both said they have no fuel hedges in place.

Northwest Chief Executive Doug Steenland blamed fuel prices as one of the factors in the $458 million loss it reported last week — its largest quarterly loss ever. Several other airlines also blamed fuel prices in reporting results this month, when combined losses at the six so-called legacy carriers reached $33 billion since 2001.

NYSE seat sells for near-record price

The market for a seat on the New York Stock Exchange heated up Friday, with a seat selling for $2.6 million, up $200,000 from the previous sale Thursday and close to an all-time record.

The highest price ever paid for a seat on the NYSE was $2.65 million, in August 1999.

The NYSE is a private association owned by its members. Membership is conferred by the 1,366 tradable seats.

The recent bullishness is a big change from earlier this year, when seat prices fell to a multiyear low of $975,000 in January. But prices then began to recover, spurred in part by hopes that the NYSE would turn itself into a for-profit company.

The seat recovery went into a higher gear last week when the Big Board announced its plans to merge with Archipelago Holdings Inc., the Chicago-based operator of an electronic market.

NYSE seat prices now are up nearly $1 million from where they stood before the merger was announced on April 20.