This morning, leading Business Communications provider Avaya rang the Opening Bell to celebrate their company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange. This news comes as a little bit of a surprise, after Avaya is now emerging from their Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection filed back last year in 2017.

In fact, the provider is now establishing a new path forward after a successful balance sheet restructuring, with $300 million in cash flow for investments for both technological innovations and company growth. This is really interesting news, and something that caught my eye as I have been following Avaya, and their climb back from bankruptcy, for the past year or so now.

It will definitely be curious to see where the provider goes from here, and how they can leverage their new public standing to continue their innovation in new products and services, as well as overall company growth. Despite filing for Ch11, we had already seen Avaya introduce some new products, so it will be interesting to see how far they push from here. But lets take a closer look at the move, and what Avaya executives had to say.

The New Avaya

Just a few months ago, Avaya came out announcing that they have managed to emerge from their Chapter 11 Bankruptcy status following a successful balance sheet restructuring. As we already saw, this cleared up roughly $300 million of cash flow for the provider to play around with. In fact, Avaya had also established and secured a deal back in August and shrink its pre-filing debt by roughly $3 billion. From there we saw Avaya carry out a simple plan to stay not only afloat, but also ahead:

  • Avaya kept doors open and business operating as usual
  • Avaya cut debt by about $3 billion
  • Avaya leadership saw some large changes, with Jim Chirico acting as the new President and CEO

Overall, executives are signaling that the provider has emerged from Ch 11 not as a shell of its former self, but rather an entirely new Avaya, with the power behind it to push out new technological innovations. Jim Chirico, of course had positive thoughts to share in Avaya’s official announcement surrounding this latest news:

“On behalf of our entire team, our customers and partners, it is an honor to mark this first day of trading on the NYSE for the new Avaya, which is more focused than ever on leading the industry’s digital transformation,” said Jim Chirico, president and chief executive officer of Avaya. “Building upon our history of innovation and expertise in deploying globally scalable solutions, Avaya sits today at the strategic nexus of connectivity for the enterprise — with more than 130,000 customers in 220,000 locations worldwide, 90% plus of the Fortune 100, and more than 100 million users.”

Overall this just seems like a step in the right direction for Avaya, now with a more secured future thanks to its new public listing on the Stock Exchange, under the ticker symbol AVYA.

Still a Strong Player in the Market

Despite their rocky year or two, Avaya still remains as a strong option in the Unified Communications and even Contact Center market. We saw the provider to continue to push out new innovations and technologies even during their restructuring, and now that they have managed to secure their future a bit further by going public, it will be interesting to see how the provider continues to mix up the market with new products and solutions.

Overall, Avaya is still in a good position, with Chirico’s estimate of 130,000 customs around the world. In fact, Chirico said that “Avaya is also the largest pure play Unified Communications and Contact Center provider in the cloud,” and went on to further explain how Avaya has “unparalleled opportunities ahead.”

“For example, only about 10 percent of our contact center customers have migrated to the cloud. We are passionate about providing the flexibility, open architectures, and deployment options that our customers need to exceed expectations, move ahead of the competition, and quickly take advantage of such new technologies as artificial intelligence, blockchain and the Internet of Things.”

So, after what could be considered a rough year or two for the massive provider, Avaya is still managing to hold on, and even possible emerge as a stronger option than they once were in the past. As I said already, it will be interesting to continue to follow Avaya throughout the months to see what type of innovation and growth they truly are able to push.