Uranium enrichment company Usec announced it has reached a deal with its creditors and will emerge from bankruptcy under a new name later this month.
In a release Friday, the company confirmed a court has approved a reorganization plan following Usec's Chapter 11 filing in March. The deal replaces $530 million in debt and its preferred stock with $240.4 million in new debt and common stock. The new debt will come due in five years and will be issued with a conditional five-year extension beyond that. Usec will change its name to Centrus Energy Corp. and issue stock under the symbol LEU. The company had $123 million in cash on hand in the second quarter and will not require additional financing upon exiting bankruptcy.
The Department of Energy spun off Usec as a private company in the 1990s to develop a centrifuge-based enrichment technology that could produce reactor fuel much more efficiently than earlier methods. That technology is the basis of the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. Its future remained in question for years as the DOE declined to provide it with a large loan guarantee, although limited work has been ongoing under a DOE research and demonstration project. Usec also operated the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant that created fuel from surplus Russian uranium during the Megatons to Megawatts program that ended last year. Major investors in Usec at the time of the bankruptcy included Babcock & Wilcox and Toshiba.