Consumables

NewPage Announces Closure of Whiting, Wisconsin Facility and Revises Guidance for Fourth Quarter 2010

Thursday 09. December 2010 - NewPage Corporation today announced that it will close its Whiting, Wisconsin mill at the end of February 2011. The Whiting mill currently operates two paper machines, which produce approximately 250,000 tons annually of coated paper used by the publishing and printing industry, with a primary focus on mail-order catalog, magazine and retailer end uses.

“This remains a difficult time for the paper industry, for NewPage and for many of our customers,” said George Martin, NewPage president and chief executive officer. “While we have seen modest recovery in our coated markets, we continue to monitor the supply and demand balance and make the difficult choices needed to avoid oversupplying those markets. NewPage has the capacity and operational flexibility to produce both coated groundwood and coated freesheet on the same machines at other facilities. Therefore, we do not expect any interruptions in service to our customers while closing the Whiting mill, which is our highest cost-per-ton coated groundwood mill.”
Approximately 360 employees will be affected by the shutdown of the Whiting mill.
Revised Guidance for Fourth Quarter 2010
NewPage also announced today that it expects Adjusted EBITDA (net income (loss) attributable to the company before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and adjusted to exclude certain items such as non-cash expenses and gains and losses on sales of assets) for the fourth quarter of 2010 to be between $125 million and $135 million and that it expects net income (loss) attributable to the company for the fourth quarter of 2010 to be between $(275) million and $(315) million compared to Adjusted EBITDA and net income (loss) attributable to the company of $88 million and $(55) million, respectively, during the fourth quarter of 2009. Net income (loss) for the fourth quarter of 2010 includes the estimated one-time effect of asset impairments (principally Whiting) of $215 million to $240 million and other closure costs estimated at $10 million to $15 million.
Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of our performance under accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (“U.S. GAAP”), is not intended to represent net income (loss) attributable to the company, and should not be used as an alternative to net income (loss) attributable to the company as an indicator of performance. Adjusted EBITDA is shown because it is a basis upon which our management assesses our performance and is a primary component of certain covenants under our revolving credit facility. The use of Adjusted EBITDA instead of net income (loss) attributable to the company has limitations as an analytic tool and should not be consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of the NewPage results under U.S. GAAP. See our periodic filings for a further discussion of the limitations on the use of Adjusted EBITDA as an analytic tool as well as a reconciliation of net income (loss) attributable to the company to Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2009.