Presley Cos. Plans First Public Offering Since ’84 : Stocks: The Newport Beach home-building firm plans to sell 8 million shares to U.S. investors and 2 million abroad, at a price of $14 to $16 apiece.

The Presley Cos., a big Newport Beach home builder, said Monday that it will sell shares to the public for the first time since 1984.

The company, which says it is one of the oldest and biggest building companies in Southern California, plans to sell 10 million shares, or about half of the total issued, late next month for as much as $160 million.

Analysts said it will be one of the largest recent public offerings by an Orange County-based company.

Presley plans to offer the shares at $14 to $16 apiece. Eight million will be offered to investors in this country and 2 million abroad.

A prospectus describing the company’s finances and its operations is not yet available.

The company, now private, would not disclose those figures Monday, but it does say that, in terms of sales, it ranks among the top five home builders in Southern California and the top 15 in the nation. That would put Presley’s sales between $300 million and $624 million, the revenue range for the region’s five largest home builders that do disclose annual sales.

Presley was a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange until 1984, when Pacific Lighting Corp. bought the company for $100 million in stock.

For 1983, its last full year as a public company, Presley reported earnings of $4.4 million on sales of $109 million.

Pacific Lighting divested its real estate subsidiaries, including Presley, for $325 million in 1987.

The utility said the subsidiaries--although profitable--were depressing the price of its stock.

Presley was sold in 1987 for an undisclosed sum to William Lyon, whose William Lyon Co. in Newport Beach was already one of the region’s largest builders. William Lyon Co. reported sales of $624 million for last year, making it Southern California’s largest builder.

President Wade H. Cable and other Presley executives also bought part of the company in the leveraged buyout, a type of transaction in which a company pledges its future cash flow to repay the loans used to purchase it.

Presley builds homes in all price ranges, mainly in California but also in Arizona, New Mexico and Illinois.

The housing market has been weak lately in most places because of the recession and, in California, because of high prices.

The financial services firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. Inc. will manage the stock offering.