Some would consign the Tokyo utility embroiled in Japan's worst-ever nuclear plant disaster to the corporate graveyard.
Its share price has collapsed by 80 percent, regaining control of the leaking reactors may take a year or more and compensation claims could run to an eye-watering $120 billion.
Yet Tokyo Electric Power Co. will probably survive and the company better known as TEPCO might even prosper. Plenty of companies have emerged from past major disasters - even self-inflicted ones.
Just think back a year to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one of the world's biggest environmental calamities.
The share price of the culprit, BP PLC, has largely recovered since the April 20, 2010 explosion, which spilled more than 200 million gallons of crude oil in the four months it took to cap the burst Deepwater Horizon well a mile (1.6 kilometers) beneath the sea.
Despite an estimated $40.9 billion in costs from the disaster, the energy giant is forging ahead with new ventures and seeking to explore again in the Gulf of Mexico, after a moratorium on deep-water drilling was lifted in October.
TEPCO's path to recovery looks somewhat less certain, but analysts say the position the company holds make the government likely to do what's necessary to keep the company afloat - even if in a new guise. For one, TEPCO is the main source of power for the Tokyo region - home to 30 million people and a heartland of Japanese manufacturing.
"Government support will be forthcoming because TEPCO is really too big to fail," said Thomas Grieder, analyst for Asia-Pacific energy at IHS Global Insight.
That's not to say the utility won't end up paying in some form for the radiation leaks and other disruptions from its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that are estimated to have killed 27,500 people.
"For TEPCO, this is obviously going to have a very long lasting financial impact, and also hurt its reputation as a leading electricity generator," Grieder said.
Investors dumped
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