Market-Leading Customer Experience Company Avaya Enters Next Chapter of Accelerated Growth and Innovation

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Avaya Holdings Corp. (“Avaya” or the “Company”), a global leader in customer experience solutions, today announced that it has successfully completed its financial restructuring and emerged from the Chapter 11 process with a growth-oriented capital structure that includes approximately $650 million in liquidity and a net leverage ratio of less than 1x. This milestone completes a critical step in the Company’s business transformation.

Alan Masarek, Avaya’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “Today, we turn the page and enter a new future for Avaya, our people and our customers. 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. 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.”

Avaya is focused on building on its iconic brand, global customer footprint and massive partner ecosystem to deliver innovation without disruption on a global scale. The Company’s product innovation investments will continue to focus on the Avaya Experience Platform, which enables organizations to enhance their customer experience capabilities across myriad communications channels. Since the start of the year, the Company has 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 center, collaboration and unified communications software solutions for large enterprises. Avaya remains poised to capitalize on its product development momentum and address the current and future needs of its customers.

Mr. Masarek continued, “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. 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.

Mr. Masarek added, “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.”

Advisors

Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to Avaya, Evercore Group L.L.C. served as financial advisor and AlixPartners, LLP served as restructuring advisor.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, Centerview Partners LLC and Alvarez & Marsal LLP served as legal counsel, investment banker and financial advisor, respectively, to an ad hoc group of Avaya’s first lien lenders. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP served as legal counsel and FTI Consulting, Inc. served as financial advisor to an ad hoc group of Avaya’s first lien lenders. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP served as legal counsel to certain holders of Avaya’s secured exchangeable notes.

About Avaya

Businesses are built by the experiences they provide, and every day, millions of those experiences are delivered by Avaya Holdings Corp. Avaya is shaping the future of customer experiences, with innovation and partnerships that deliver game-changing business benefits. Our communications solutions power immersive, personalized, and memorable customer experiences to help organizations achieve their strategic ambitions and desired outcomes. Together, we are committed to helping grow your business by delivering Experiences That Matter. Learn more at http://www.avaya.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements discussed in this release as well as in other reports, materials and oral statements that the Company releases from time to time to the public constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the “PSLRA”). Generally, words such as “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” “could,” “intend,” “believe,” “plan,” “target,” “forecast” and similar expressions or the negative thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect management’s current expectations, strategic objectives, business prospects, anticipated economic performance and financial condition and other similar matters. Forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected by the management of the Company. Such factors include, but are not limited to: the Company’s ability to maintain relationships with suppliers, customers, employees and other third parties and regulatory authorities; market opportunities may not develop for the Company’s solutions and services in ways that the Company anticipates and the Company may not succeed in developing new innovative solutions and services to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and customer preferences; the impact and timing of any cost-savings measures and related local law requirements in various jurisdictions; the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures, and the potential for additional material weaknesses in the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting or other potential weaknesses of which the Company is not currently aware or which have not been detected; and the impact of litigation and regulatory proceedings. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual events or results may differ significantly from these statements. Actual events or results are subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the Company’s control. It should be understood that it is not possible to predict or identify all such factors. Given these risks, investors and analysts should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of the document in which they are made. The Company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to provide any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. These statements constitute the Company’s cautionary statements under the PSLRA.

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