Centreville, Virginia-based Parsons Corp. made its Wall Street debut Wednesday, raising $500 million in its initial public offering.
Its stock soared as much as 16% in its first day of trading, giving the company a market valuation of about $3 billion.
Parsons Corp., a defense, engineering and IT security contractor founded in 1944, completed the relocation of its corporate headquarters to Northern Virginia from Pasadena, California, in March.
Parsons already had a large D.C.-area presence. Acquisitions over the past decade made the D.C. region Parsons’ largest concentration of employees.
Parsons, whose customers include NATO, has 2,400 employees spread across several D.C.-area locations, and about 16,000 employees worldwide.
The company had $3.6 billion in 2018 revenue.
Parsons trades under the ticker symbol “PSN” on the New York Stock Exchange. It sold shares to investors at $27 a share. It was just over $30 in afternoon trading.
