LSB Industries Closes Sale Of $210 Mln Of Securities; Expands Board

(RTTNews) - LSB Industries Inc. (LXU) said that it has completed the sale of $210 million of preferred stock and warrants in a private placement to an affiliate of Security Benefit Corporation that it had previously announced on November 6, 2015. LSB intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the securities primarily for the completion of construction of an ammonia plant, nitric acid plant and nitric acid concentrator at its chemical facility located in El Dorado, Arkansas.

LSB also announced that at the El Dorado Facility, its new nitric acid plant is fully operational and that its nitric acid concentrator has successfully passed all performance tests. Additionally, construction of the 375,000 ton per year ammonia plant is currently approximately 85% mechanically complete, as compared to approximately 70% as of September 30, 2015.

As previously announced, the ammonia plant is expected to be completed during February 2016 and remains on schedule to begin production in the second quarter of 2016. The total cost to complete the El Dorado expansion projects remains in the range of $831 million to $855 million ($564 million spent as of September 30, 2015 and $197 million to $216 million to be spent in the fourth quarter of 2015, and between $70 million to $75 million to be spent in 2016).

In connection with the private placement per the agreement with Security Benefit, the Company has appointed Mark Genender, Jonathan Bobb and Joe Reece to its Board of Directors, effective immediately. Concurrent with these appointments, Charles Burtch and Robert Butkin have resigned from the Board, effective immediately. With the addition of these three new independent directors, the size of the Board has increased from 13 to 14 directors.