Shares of Pennsylvania utility PPL fall on reports that it will buy 2 Kentucky utilities

PPL shares fall on reports of deal

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Shares of power company PPL fell sharply Wednesday on reports that it has won an auction to buy two Kentucky utilities owned by German power company E.On.

Shares of PPL, based in Allentown, Pa., fell $2.01, or 7.3 percent, to $25.72.

CNBC and the Wall Street Journal report that E.On has been shopping Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities Co. The company said last year that it wants to sell assets worth more than $10 billion.

Both companies declined to comment on the reports.

Louisville Gas & Electric has 318,000 natural gas customers and 390,000 electric customers in the Louisville, Ky., area. Kentucky Utilities has about 518,000 customers throughout Kentucky and the western edge of Virginia.

PPL has 4 million customers in Pennsylvania and the United Kingdom.

The deal would be the latest in a string of acquisitions in the power industry in the past two months.

FirstEnergy, based in Akron, Ohio, announced plans back in February to buy Pennsylvania rival Allegheny Energy in a deal that will create a company with customers from Ohio to New Jersey. This month, independent power producer Mirant Corp. and RRI Energy Inc. said they would combine to create a power company with operations from coast to coast.