PCG PG&E Corporation

By Patrick Thomas 

Shares of PG&E Corp. plummeted a second straight day as concerns about what role a transmission-line malfunction may have played in Northern California's Camp Fire mount.

Shares of California's largest utility company closed down another 30% Thursday to their lowest price since 2003. The stock closed down 22% Wednesday. For the week, PG&E is down about 55%, its worst week on record.

Meanwhile, some of the company's bonds were doing better Thursday after falling sharply the previous two days. A 6.05% note due 2034 changed hands in the afternoon at 93.25 cents on the dollar, up from 89.5 cents late Wednesday, according to MarketAxess. The yield premium of the bond relative to U.S. Treasurys was still elevated at 3.40 percentage points, up from just over 2 percentage points at the end of last week.

As of Thursday morning, the fire had destroyed more than 8,700 residences and killed at least 56 people, according to state records.

The San Francisco-based utility reported in a securities filing Tuesday night that it had exhausted its revolving lines of credit. It had $1.4 billion of insurance coverage for wildfires occurring between Aug. 1, 2018, and July 31, 2019.

In the regulatory filing, the company said the transmission-line outage happened in the area of Butte County near the city of Paradise where the fire is believed to have started. State investigators have yet to determine whether PG&E equipment caused any current wildfires, or whether the company was negligent, findings that could trigger state fines as well as fuel lawsuits from homeowners and others who lost property.

PG&E contacted the California Public Utilities Commission to report a power failure in a Butte County transmission line at 6:15 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Nov. 8, the day the fire was reported. State records indicate the Camp Fire started around 6:30 a.m.

PG&E's Pacific Gas & Electric Co. unit serves about 16 million people from Santa Barbara almost all the way up to the Oregon border.

The company owns and operates hundreds of miles of electrical wires that crisscross an increasingly dry region at rising risk of fire. State investigators have already concluded PG&E equipment helped spark at least 16 fires last year, generating hundreds of lawsuits.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 15, 2018 17:35 ET (22:35 GMT)

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