Source: Houston Chronicle
Stock prices for Houston pipeline company Kinder Morgan shot up on Friday following news that ones its co-founder bought hundreds of thousands of shares.
In a Friday morning filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Kinder Morgan reported that Rich Kinder bought 300,000 shares of stock. Purchased at roughly $20 per share, Kinder is investing more than $6 million back into his own company.
Traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker symbol KMI, news of the purchase sent shares higher. KMI started trading on Friday at $20.09 per share and closed at nearly $20.50 per share.
The stock started the year trading at $15.80 per share and has gained following favorable returns and outlook for the natural gas market, for which the company owns 70,000 miles of pipelines and a liquefied natural gas export terminal.
With an estimated net worth of $7.5 billion, Kinder is regarded as the wealthiest man in Houston. Kinder and William Morgan founded Kinder Morgan in February 1997, creating one of the largest pipeline companies in the United States.
Kinder served as CEO of the company until June 2015 but remains as chairman of the board.
A well-known philanthropist, Kinder now owns more than 242 million shares of the company while he owns another 11.8 million shares through a limited partnership and his wife Nancy Kinder owns more than 61,000 shares.
[contextly_sidebar id=”vZuMoNmfPSgcLoh6zMkKS1tpaPiJnsLk”]
With an estimated 2.6 billion shares of Kinder Morgan stock on the market, Kinder owns around 10 percent of the company.
Headquartered in downtown Houston, Kinder Morgan has nearly 11,000 employees across the United States and Mexico.
The company reported a $1.48 billion profit on $14 billion of revenue in 2018.
