Avaya Emerges from Bankruptcy Again, Gains $650 Million in Liquidity

Avaya has come out of chapter 11 bankruptcy with approximately $650 million in liquidity. Company officials said Avaya emerges from bankruptcy focused on advancing innovation with their long-range product road map.

The debt Avaya carries is now at a “healthy level,” analysts said. Currently, the assets of the business are financed mostly by the capital coming from investors, which they get equity in return. Before, Avaya was carrying too much debt, and the primary reason for the first chapter 11 six years ago was that the company couldn’t service that debt. Now Avaya has little debt but also less equity. This makes Avaya less risky, and customers and partners will now be more confident in doing business with them, analysts said.

Avaya’s Alan Masarek

Alan Masarek, CEO at Avaya, said the company has turned the page and entered a new future.

“We are excited to fully realize the hard work we’ve put into our business transformation,” Masarek said. “We are moving ahead with significant financial resources to accelerate investment in our portfolio as we continue delivering innovation without disruption to our customers. Our customers are at different stages of their cloud journey. They want to move at a pace that meets their business needs — and in a way that allows them to adopt advanced functionality without business disruption.”

He added that Avaya’s new streamlined product road map incorporated input from its customers about the capabilities most meaningful to them.

Avaya is focused on building on what it says is an iconic brand, global customer footprint and partner ecosystem to deliver product innovation investments that will continue to focus on the Avaya experience platform. The platform enables organizations to enhance their customer experience capabilities across a myriad of communications channels, officials said.

As Avaya Emerges from Bankruptcy, More than 150 Product Features

Since the start of the year, Avaya has rolled out more than 150 new product features and enhancements across its portfolio. It launched Avaya enterprise cloud, a dedicated instance of Avaya’s core contact center, collaboration and unified communications software solutions for large enterprises. Masarek said Avaya remains poised to capitalize on its product development momentum and address the current and future needs of its customers.

“I appreciate the strong support that our investors have demonstrated throughout this process, and I thank our customers, partners, team members and other stakeholders for their unwavering commitment and trust in Avaya,” Masarek said.

J Arnold & Associates’ Jon Arnold

It took Avaya one year to come out of bankruptcy when it filed the first time for chapter 11 in 2017. This time around, the process was much quicker, noted Jon Arnold, principal at J Arnold & Associates.

“Compared to last time, this emergence from chapter 11 was much faster and on more favorable terms, which is great to see given how capital markets are tighter now,” Arnold said.

He added that Avaya is in a more advantageous position when it comes to growth than they were several years ago.

“Having [CEO Masarek] in place now, this process could be structured more as a win-win than last time. Avaya gives up some financial control, but they gain a clear runway of liquidity to build on for growth. This is reflected in the makeup of their board, where four of the nine members are on the investment side. They include the addition of experienced industry executives who Alan can build a growth plan around.”