GEORGIA GULF: Firm’s NYSE listing at risk

Georgia Gulf Corp., which is being battered by the housing downturn, is in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

The Atlanta-based company, which makes chemical and plastic products used in home building, is at risk because its total market capitalization in the last 30 consecutive trading days was below $75 million.

Georgia Gulf also is out of compliance with an NYSE requirement that shareholder equity be at least $75 million.

It has 45 days to respond to exchange officials with a plan for how it plans to get back into compliance within 18 months. In a news release after the close of markets Tuesday, the company said it will submit a plan.

Georgia Gulf’s stock, which had been trading as high as $8.16 in the last year, plunged more than 21 percent on the news to close Wednesday at 67 cents, a 52-week low. Last week, the company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $198.7 million.

Georgia Gulf is the second metro Atlanta based firm to get a delisting letter from NYSE officials this month.

Graphic Packaging of Marietta is the other. The company, whose shares closed Wednesday at 75 cents —- unchanged from Tuesday’s close —- did not return a telephone call seeking comment about its talks with the exchange. It will report fourth-quarter and full-year 2008 earnings today after the markets close.

With 3 percent of the roughly 1,950 publicly traded firms on NYSE being listed at below its $1 minimum, the exchange is considering temporarily nixing that policy.

An NYSE spokesman said Wednesday no decision has been made. If the exchange decides to ease enforcement and gets approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it would join the Nasdaq stock market, which suspended its minimum share price and market cap rules in October.

NYSE and Nasdaq officials already have removed five metro Atlanta companies in the past year: Spectrum Brands, Vyyo, Omni Financial Services, Atherogenics and Verso Technologies.

Companies usually fight delisting because it makes their shares more speculative and can make it more expensive to borrow money.