As of this Friday, CenturyLink (CTL +1.79%) will cease to exist...as the name of a publicly traded company, anyway.
The company announced on Monday that, effective before market open this Friday, Sept. 18, it will be known instead as Lumen Technologies, or more briefly, Lumen. It will also receive a new ticker symbol for its shares that currently trade on the New York Stock Exchange: LUMN.
The name change is being made in order to emphasize CenturyLink's involvement in what the company terms the "Fourth Industrial Revolution."
Describing this as "a time when smart, connective devices are everywhere," CenturyLink said that "Lumen brings a new focus to how it views the marketplace and the world with the purpose to further human progress through technology."
Image source: Getty Images.
The CenturyLink name won't entirely disappear. It'll be used for the legacy, fixed-line telecom business that was once the core of the company. The other consumer-facing unit will be Quantum, its fiber-internet operations. Meanwhile, the Lumen name will also headline the company's enterprise business.
Outside of the name change, it seems that little about CenturyLink's business will be modified. The company said no financial changes will result from the move.
The transformation into Lumen is the company's latest attempt to move away from those legacy fixed-line assets. This accelerated in late 2017 with the acquisition of fiber-optic network operator Level 3 Communications.
That, combined with a recent "deleveraging" program that has made its debt less burdensome, has better positioned CenturyLink to operate in the highly competitive and challenging field of modern telecoms.
Investors seem hopeful about the rechristened company's prospects. On Monday, they bid CenturyLink stock up by 2%, exceeding the gains of the wider equities market.
