Avaya has “significant financial resources” in place to drive growth after completing its restructuring and exiting bankruptcy protection, CEO Alan Masarek has said.
Avaya confirmed its exit from Chapter 11 today, claiming to have a new growth-oriented capital structure that will see $650m in cash made available to fund Masarek’s future growth objectives.
Masarek said: “We are excited to fully realize the hard work we’ve put into our business transformation. We are moving ahead with significant financial resources to accelerate investment in our portfolio as we continue delivering innovation without disruption to our customers.”
The company’s focus and innovation will be on its Experience Platform, which it says helps organisations build power customer experience capabilities.
Masarek added: “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. Avaya’s new, streamlined product roadmap was intentionally designed to do just this, incorporating input from our customers about the capabilities most meaningful to them. At a time when innovation has never been more important to an organization’s success, we are proud to be an answer to our customers’ most pressing challenges.”
The newly restructured Avaya also has a new Board of Directors to drive Masarek’s growth ambitions.
Masarek added: “Our incoming Board members bring decades of relevant expertise, insights and skillsets to support Avaya as we invest in driving the next wave of innovation in enterprise communications and providing our customers and partners with true omnichannel customer experience solutions.”
The Avaya Board of Directors now comprises nine directors, including:
· Alan Masarek is an industry innovator with over 30 years of experience leading communications, information technology and business services companies.
· Patrick Bartels, Managing Member of Redan Advisors, LLC, brings over 20 years of experience driving value for stakeholders of private and public companies through governance, incentive alignment, management evaluation, finance, capital markets and M&A.
· Patrick Dennis, Chief Executive Officer of ExtraHop, brings nearly 25 years of experience leading high-growth public and private companies in the software and information technology industries, including as CEO of Alvaria and Guidance Software and in leadership roles at EMC and Oracle.
· Robert Kalsow-Ramos, Partner in Private Equity at Apollo Global Management, Inc., is an experienced investment professional with deep expertise in the technology and services sectors and a successful track record of working with management teams to drive growth, innovation and stakeholder value creation.
· Marylou Maco, most recently Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations at Genesys, brings three decades of industry experience and expertise in driving revenue and expanding market share in enterprise software, cloud services and network computing for global organizations.
· Aaron Miller, Partner in Private Equity at Apollo Global Management, Inc. and Head of Apollo Portfolio Performance Solutions, brings three decades of operational expertise driving successful company transformations across sectors.
· Donald E. Morgan, III CFA, Chief Investment Officer, Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager at Brigade Capital Management, LP, co-founded the firm in 2006 and has been instrumental in driving the firm’s growth, which has approximately $26 billion in assets under management.
· Tod Nielsen, most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of TalkWalker, is an industry veteran with decades of leadership experience connecting customers to SaaS and software platforms, including in executive roles at Salesforce, VMWare, Heroku, Oracle and Microsoft.
· Jacqueline Woods, Chief Marketing Officer at Teradata, is a technology and marketing executive with a strong track record of leading corporate transformations and growing successful businesses by enriching customer experiences.
The Saga Ends?
Avaya, led by Jim Chirico, successfully emerged from bankruptcy in 2018 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Initially, the company boasted of its successful transition towards becoming a cloud-first business.
However, financial troubles arose due to delayed deals, leading to Chirico’s dismissal and the implementation of a cost-cutting plan that included layoffs.
Alan Masarek, former Vonage CEO, took over and implemented a simplified product portfolio. Avaya has hinted at further product line reductions.
Amidst these changes, investors are pursuing legal action against Avaya’s board for alleged fraud relating to the company’s financial struggles.
