Centrus Energy Corp. closed out 2019 by boosting revenues and trimming its losses from the prior year, but management said the COVID-19 pandemic has for now dimmed the company’s hopes of returning to profitability in 2020.
On Tuesday, the Bethesda, Md.-based uranium-fuel broker and centrifuge developer reported a 2019 net loss of about $16.5 million, an improvement over its $105 million loss in 2018. Revenue rose to nearly $210 million from less than $195 million on a year-over-year basis, according to a company press release.
However, Centrus suspended its earnings guidance for 2020, citing unpredictability in the foreseeable future due to catastrophic economic fallout from the COVID-19 viral pandemic.
In its third-quarter 2019 earnings report in November, the company predicted it would turn a profit this year. Centrus is the former U.S. Enrichment Corp., which rebranded after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2014.
Revenue in the company’s bedrock LEU segment, which includes brokerage of uranium fuel and natural uranium, rose to about $170 million in 2019 from roughly $165 million in 2018. Separative work sales, representing enriched uranium sold to utilities, dipped a little for the year, but sales of natural uranium to traders and utilities compensated, Centrus reported.
Centrus sells fuel refined by TENEX to nuclear power plants, generally returning the feed component to TENEX.
Meanwhile, in the technology-developing Technical Services segment that includes work on a new centrifuge cascade, Centrus’ 2019 revenue was $40 million, up from around $28 million.
Overall, Centrus managed a gross profit — a figure that excludes taxes and other expenses to approximate the viability of the core business — of more than $30 million in 2019, compared with a gross loss of about $18 million in 2018.
Editor’s note, 03/26/2020, 2:55 p.m. Eastern time. An earlier version of the story mischaracterized Centrus’ revenue sources.
