MXenergy restructures finances

After exploring an outright sale this year, MXenergy Holdings Inc. instead reached a complicated agreement to restructure debt and equity held by multiple investors.

Stamford-based MXenergy sells natural gas and electricity in Connecticut, New York and a dozen other states in the East; it has 215 employees.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, MXenergy lost $100 million, despite sales rising 5 percent to $790 million.

After natural gas prices dropped sharply in the second half of 2008, the value of MXenergy”™s natural gas inventories also dropped and with it the ability to borrow funds against the value of those stores. That in turn strained its ability to post letters of credit as collateral with suppliers and prompting downgrades from rating agencies.

The natural gas industry has hit the airwaves recently with a plan to tap gas locked within shale deposits between West Virginia and New York”™s Southern Tier. New York City opposes any such activity in the vicinity of its vast watershed in part of that swath.