This Day In Market History: Electronic Data Systems Goes Public

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that occurred on this date.

What Happened

On this day 51 years ago, Electronic Data Systems went public.

Where The Market Was

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 915.65 and the S&P 500 traded at 100.52.

What Else Was Going On In The World

In 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray. Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel Corporation INTC. The average American earned $7,850 per year.

Electronic Data Systems IPO

H. Ross Perot founded Electronic Data Systems in Plano, Texas in 1962. The company was a pioneer in facilities management and early IT services. In 1967, Morton H. Meyerson proposed a business model that would later become known as “outsourcing,” which led to major business growth for EDS.

In September 1968, EDS went public at a price of $16.50 per share, which was about 118 times its EPS at the time. The modest IPO sold roughly 650,000 shares of stock, half of which belonged to Perot, and raised a total of $10 million. By early 1970, EDS shares had topped $160.

Perot leveraged the success of EDS to amass a net worth of $4.1 billion. Younger Americans may remember Perot best from his 1992 presidential campaign, in which he earned 18.9% of the popular vote as an independent candidate.

Today, EDS is a subsidiary of DXC Technology Co DXC.