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Flashback Fridays: A Look at Early Southwest Stock

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Aviator C

Normally, we rely upon the great folks on our Investor Relations Team to bring you current news about our stock.  But for this week’s Flashback, I found some "really ancient" stock events that may have happened before some on that Team were even born.

 

The first time I really heard about Southwest stock was when I transferred back to the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Airport for Delta back in 1990.  One of my coworkers there was bragging about the Southwest stock he bought back in 1971.  In the early 1970s, if Southwest had any airline “friends,” it was Delta.  Delta had provided two of their gates on the old North Concourse at Love Field for Southwest to use, and the original Southwest ticket counter was carved out of the Delta counter.  In fact, Delta had set aside two of their gates in what is now Terminal E at DFW for Southwest’s use.  Of course, Southwest never moved to DFW.  Anyway, my Delta associates in 1990 would talk about Southwest Employees coming into their breakroom in 1971 trying to sell shares of Southwest stock.  In going through our files, I found a photo copy of the prospectus for that original offering of over-the-counter stocks (above).  At the top of the page, it carries a warning:  “These securities involve a high degree of risk.”  That probably was an understatement for a brand new airline with three planes taking on big established names on one hand and fighting for its life in the courts on the other.  The par value of the stock is shown at $1.00 and the public sale price was $11.00.  June 8, 1971 (ten days before we began flying), is the date of the prospectus, and the initial public offering was for 650,000 shares.  I’m sure the original documents are filed somewhere here at Headquarters, but seeing a photo of one of the key documents of our founding gave me goose bumps.



On October 25, 1975, our stock was listed on the American Stock Exchange, and the word “LUV” was born as the symbol of our stock.  Then on June 27, 1977, our stock moved over to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and the image above is a photo of the document certifying that listing.  With that move, Southwest stock was for sale where companies like General Electric, Ford, and other household company names listed their stocks.

That was a very big event in our history, and President Lamar Muse was on the floor of the exchange with NYSE Chairman William Batten (left) and a representative from a brokerage company on the right.  Almost six years to the day after we first began to operate, we had graduated to the “big league” of financial markets.  More than that, these photos represent another progression of how Southwest began to change and mature during the 1970s.