Avaya rises from ashes of bankruptcy with $650m in liquidity

The unified communications giant is trying to resurrect itself again after going to the wall for the second time in six years

Avaya has announced it has successfully completed its financial restructuring and emerged from the Chapter 11 process with $650m in its back pocket in liquidity.

The vendor said this "growth-oriented capital structure" also includes a net leverage ratio of less than 1x.

Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February following months of speculation of a bankruptcy declaration after its 2022 cloud subscription accounting problems that led to substantial earnings and revenue target misses.

In its bankruptcy court filing, Avaya listed total assets of between $1bn and $10bn and total liabilities of between $1bn and $10bn.

It's not the first time Avaya's channel has seen the vendor go to the wall. It also filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

Next chapter for Avaya

"Today, we turn the page and enter a new future for Avaya, our people and our customers. We are excited to fully realise the hard work we've put into our business transformation," said Avaya CEO, Alan Masarek.

"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 Avaya boss added its customers are at different stages of their cloud journey and want to move at a pace that meets their business needs.

"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," Masarek said.

As part of the announcement, Avaya said its product innovation investments will continue to focus on the Avaya Experience Platform, which enables organisations to enhance their customer experience capabilities across several communications channels.

Since the start of the year, the company claims to have rolled out more than 150 new product features and enhancements across its portfolio and launched Avaya Enterprise Cloud, a dedicated instance of Avaya's core contact centre, collaboration and unified communications software solutions for large enterprises.

New board members at Avaya

"We are also pleased to welcome a new board of directors with extensive industry and financial leadership experience that will help Avaya usher in a new era of growth and operational excellence," 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."

Avaya's new board is now made up of several industry leaders, including ExtraHop CEO, Patrick Dennis; Apollo Global Management private equity partners Robert Kalsow-Ramos and Aaron Miller; Genesys executive VP, Marylou Maco; and Jacqueline Woods, chief marketing officer at Teradata.