Oct. 20--Plymouth-based AGA Medical has cut the expected price range for its initial public offering of stock by about 20 percent, the company said Tuesday in a regulatory filing.

Earlier this month, the medical device manufacturer said it expected to sell 13.75 million shares of stock at a price between $19 and $21 per share. But the company now expects to sell the same number of shares for $15 to $16.

"The reduction in price is an indication that the market is not as strong as the company and the underwriters thought it would be," said Tom Letscher, a partner with business law firm Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly in Minneapolis.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the company's initial public offering was scheduled for today. That timeline would makes sense, said Letscher, who is not involved in the company's initial public offering.

Public offerings typically close three trading days after a final price on shares is set, Letscher said. Underwriters typically don't like this three-day window to extend over a weekend, said Letscher, who advised Minnetonka-based American Medical Systems on its initial public offering in 2000.

The last group of Minnesota companies to go public by way of initial public offerings of stock came in 2007, said Dan Carr, president of the Collaborative, a networking group that tracks IPOs in the state.

Earlier this year, New Brighton-based Cardiovascular Systems Inc. went public by way of acquiring a publicly traded shell company -- a necessity given the weakness in the IPO market.

AGA Medical plans to offer more than 6.9 million shares as part of the offering, while existing stockholders plan to sell more than 6.7 million shares, according to the filing.

Assuming an initial public offering price of $15.50 per share and optional purchases by underwriters, the company estimates net proceeds of about $126.2 million, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

AGA Medical will not receive proceeds from the sale of shares by the existing stockholders.

With about 470 employees as of June, AGA Medical makes a variety of "occlusion devices" that work like stoppers to plug structural heart defects and abnormal blood vessels. In 2008, the company saw profit of $9 million on sales of $167 million.

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