PG&E Stock Has Another Wild Swing After California Fire Rumor

(Bloomberg) -- PG&E Corp. shot up the most in three months on a rumor it had been cleared of causing a deadly California wildfire. About 45 minutes later, the shares were back where they started after California authorities said their investigation wasn’t over.

It’s another day in the life of the newly volatile utility owner’s stock. PG&E has lost more than $13.2 billion in market value since officials said in October they were looking at the utility’s equipment as a possible cause of fires in Sonoma and Napa counties. The stock, which normally only moves a percent or two each day, has become prone to sudden swings, with intraday prices rising or falling more than 10 percent on five occasions in the past three months.

PG&E rose as much as 11 percent in about 10 minutes after a trade publication said on its website it was “hearing chatter” that the company had been exonerated in the Santa Rosa fire probe. PG&E didn’t return a request for comment.

“Cal Fire hasn’t released any findings on the wine country wildfires,” Scott McLean, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said in a phone interview. “All the fires are still under investigation.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net, Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Ryan at jryan173@bloomberg.net, Tina Davis

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