Mitel to merge with Avaya?

[ralph]

Did anyone else see this?
Mitel is making a bid to merge with Avaya.

Ralph

[acejavelin]

Did anyone else see this?
Mitel is making a bid to merge with Avaya.

Ralph

Wow... I hope not.

A couple years ago I was a Mitel round table event, the Steve Spooner and Todd Abbott where there and they both said they would never consider dealing with Avaya... Todd said "I wouldn't want to touch that sinking ship with a 10 foot pole. It is a disaster waiting to happen and it will pull everything around it to it's knees when it finally ends."

I don't think Avaya has gotten better... Has Mitel gotten dumber?

[v2win]

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/mitel-offers-to-combine-with-avaya-in-stock-deal-worth-more-than-2-billion-11556213302

[acejavelin]

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/mitel-offers-to-combine-with-avaya-in-stock-deal-worth-more-than-2-billion-11556213302

Wow... That is very surprising, especially after hearing some comments from Todd Abbott a couple years ago, and he used to work for Avaya. In his mind it seemed like any company that acquired or merged with Avaya would just be pulled into the gutter right along with them.

Something has obviously changed, as that was only two years ago.

[bojo387]

I wonder if it is to kill Avaya as they did with Toshiba or continue with the products? avaya does have good market share (despite the financial issues) in certain regions...

[acejavelin]

I wonder if it is to kill Avaya as they did with Toshiba or continue with the products? avaya does have good market share (despite the financial issues) in certain regions...

Mitel didn't buy Toshiba to kill them, it was already dead... Toshiba had already announced they were discontinuing developing and supporting all telecom products, Mitel bought them purely for the customer base.

I have to believe this is also about that, buying the customer base... Let's face it, if this all goes through as expected, what choices to customers have in big name premise based systems? Cisco and Mitel?

The next question is, does it matter? Gonna be honest here, over the last 10 years we have seen a dramatic shift in our sales from premise based to hosted (we sell both, aggressively)... In 2010 I would guess 98% of all handsets we installed were premise based Mitel, ESI, and Avaya systems, and in 2018 it was like 15% but the only reason it wasn't under 10% was we had a fairly large Mitel install go in last summer. I would say 15-20 hosted phones go in to one premise based.

It seems like the premise based market has become niche now, if there isn't a good reason to avoid a hosted product, most customers go that way.

I have to admit this situation might not be typical... Hosted does well in our market because our Internet service is quite good in North Dakota.

[Tech Electronics]

Guys,

Didn't the a private equity firm put a bid on Avaya for $5 Billion last month?

Also, doesn't Searchlight Capital, a private equity firm, already own Mitel by making them a private held company again; I wonder if it is was them?

Do you think Avaya will go at a cheaper price since Mitel's bid was only $2.2-2.4 Billion?

I can see a lot of benefit for Mitel, but not much for Avaya who has already completed its debt restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They are still bleeding out while they try to figure out what to do, but from what I can tell it would be best for them to go for more money than to merge with Mitel; unless the other bidder backed out.

Thanks,

TE