Hecla celebrates 40 years on NYSE

Hecla Mining Co. will celebrate 40 years of trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange by having three officers ring the exchange’s closing bell on Tuesday.

Hecla joined the NYSE in 1964. The 113-year-old company first traded publicly on the Curb Exchange, which was a precursor to the American Stock Exchange.

“It’s not often that a company rings the bell at the NYSE to celebrate four decades of trading,” Hecla President and CEO Phil Baker said in a statement. “In this era of mergers and name changes, there are few companies that have been continuously listed for this long on the world’s premier stock exchange.”

Hecla Chairman Art Brown, and William Griffith, Hecla’s former chairman and chief executive officer, will join Baker in ringing the bell.

The Coeur d’Alene-based company was founded in 1891 with a $150 hillside-mining claim. Of the pioneer mining companies incorporated in Idaho before 1900, Hecla is the only one left still in business, company officials said.

Hecla’s financial struggles in recent years make the NYSE anniversary “that much sweeter,” said Vicki Veltkamp, the company’s vice president of investor and public affairs.

In early 2001, Hecla was in danger of losing its NYSE listing. The company’s stock price had plummeted to 50 cents per share, reflecting a bear market for metals and a rapidly approaching due date for a $55 million bank note. Hecla managed to pay off the debt and boost its stock price. The next year, the company’s stock was one of the NYSE’s top performers in terms of percentage gains.

Hecla’s stock closed at $7.20 per share Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of about $800 million, and operations in North Idaho, Alaska and Latin America.