Protection One Inc., a Lawrence-based provider of monitored security services, continued its climb out of debt Tuesday by announcing closure of a $275 million refinancing plan.

Annual interest savings: $20 million.

“This really puts us on solid footing,” said Richard Ginsburg, the company’s chief executive officer. “This company doesn’t have any short-term triggers that it’s facing right now, other than to grow the business.”

The new financing — a $250 million loan and $25 million in revolving credit — won’t come due until 2011. That’s a big change from the higher-interest debt that it’s replacing, which would have come due in August.

The savings and extended term will allow the company to continue whittling away at its debt while working to add customers to its nationwide network, which already has more than 1 million customers in 65 markets who rely on Protection One to keep their homes, offices and other properties secure.

Before a recapitalization in February, the company had $550 million in debt, at an average interest rate of 8.2 percent. Now the company has $360 million in debt at an average rate of 6.7 percent.

Annual interest costs now sit at $25 million, down from $45 million, and the company is responsible for paying only 1 percent of principal a year through the first six years of the loans.

“This gives us a lot of runway to achieve liftoff,” said Darius Nevin, chief financial officer.

Protection One’s corporate headquarters has 70 employees at the I-70 Business Center in North Lawrence. The company has another 630 employees in Kansas, spread out among a monitoring center in Wichita and branch offices in Topeka and Lenexa; nationwide, Protection One has about 2,400 employees.

Protection One shares were unchanged Tuesday at $23 in over-the-counter trading. Quadrangle Group LLC — a private investment firm that manages about $2.5 billion in assets through an equity fund focused on media and communications companies, and another group that invests in financially troubled companies — owns 97 percent of Protection One, while the remaining 3 percent is available to individual investors.

The company intends to release its first-quarter financial results May 13.

In February, Quadrangle closed on an out-of-court debt restructuring for Protection One, a company Ginsburg earlier had warned was teetering on the brink of seeking bankruptcy protection.

Those days are gone, Ginsburg said Tuesday. He sees the market for monitored-security services growing by 7 percent to 10 percent a year, offering fertile ground for growth while paying down debt.

Ginsburg wouldn’t divulge specifics of the company’s growth plans Tuesday, but he did emphasize that recent financial moves had positioned the company for long-term success.

“We think we’re in the right place at the right time,” he said.

The debt refinancing announced Tuesday was issued through a consortium of lenders led by Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. and Lehman Brothers Inc.