How sweet it is: Shares of Aflac, Synovus, TSYS taste 52-week highs

June 09--Friday was a very solid day on the New York Stock Exchange for the three publicly traded companies headquartered in Columbus, with Aflac, TSYS and Synovus all reaching new highs for the past 12 months.

For Aflac, which finished up $2.82 per share at $78.02, a gain of 3.75 percent, the results could be classified as excellent. The supplemental health and life insurer, which does business in the U.S. and Japan, jumped out of the gate in trading. Shares touched $78.15 at one point -- creating a new 52-week high -- before dipping a few cents by the close.

(Aflac surges higher on Fortune 500, stock closes above $78 per share)

The overall stock markets have been riding high thus far this year, pushing company stocks higher and farther away from their low marks for the past year. For Aflac, it is up from a 12-month low of $66.50. That gives it a 17.5 percent gain from that level as of Friday.

Global credit-card and payment process TSYS has seen an even larger surge -- about 31 percent -- from its 52-week low of $46.22 per share to the high of $60.64 it reached on Friday before settling for a 12-cent gain, or 0.2 percent, for the day at $59.47.

Even Southeast regional bank Synovus Financial Corp., parent company of Columbus Bank and Trust, got in on the upward action Friday. Its stock moved steadily higher from the start of trading, briefly hitting a high of $44.10 for the past 12 months in the early afternoon, then giving up a small portion of the gain. Shares closed up 99 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $43.70 before the closing bell.

Synovus stock shares are up a whopping 64 percent from the past year's low of $26.90 to the high of $44.10 on Friday.

Trading volume for Aflac was very heavy, while it was moderately higher for Synovus and TSYS as the Dow Jones Industrials finished up slightly, with the S&P 500 dipping slightly and the Nasdaq exchange retreating nearly 2 percent.

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