VoIP Bids Coming Soon

By Mark Evans | Published: December 18, 2009

According to Network World, Nortel is expected to receive bids for its carrier VoIP and application solutions business next week with an auction taking plan in January.

Catharine Trebnick, analyst with Avian Securities, said in a report that the potential bidders include GENBAND, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Sonus, or a consortium organized to divide up the assets. “Our dark horse bidder is NEC. Our unlikely candidates are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Huawei,” she said.

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  • beenawhile

    Avaya purchase passed it's final hurdle this morning. Nortel Enterprise is now Avaya

  • oneofthefewremaining

    Word on the street is the stalking horse is Genband, don't seem like a likely winner though, sounds like they are just the starting point,

    NSN needs the access to the NA market but may not have enough cash. E/// maybe a suitor

  • nolongerbelieve

    Huawei has the cash, but I don't think they will get it because of sensitive security issues. I think it's only down to NSN and E///.

  • NortelGal

    The Network World article, if accurate, almost implies that there will be multiple stalking horse bidders for CVAS, that it might be broken up. Could this be, or am I reading too much into the article? Nortel has repeatedly said they will not break up business units, so this would be an interesting turn of events if it happened.

  • Troller

    Sounds more like an open auction similar to GSM, rather than the stalking horse process seen with Ericsson, Avaya, Ciena.

  • wasthere

    No worry for Nokia. In the recent optical auction they were teaming up with private equity firm One Equity Partners who has big, very big pockets !

  • jabjab

    I imagine it's more a case of a poorly written article.

  • heavencanwait

    It will be a Stalking Horse. The article is not accurate and the analyst does not know much

  • stillatnortel

    As indicated below, the rumor is the stalking horse will be Genband and they will be taking at least 75% of the cvas employees.

  • oneofthefewremaining

    So lets start the speculation about price for CVAS, how much do people guess?

    $600mil maybe?

  • zuperman

    word on the streets, Ulker will pay $733 mil. for Netaş which is an important part for CVAS. word says it will be announced monday morning. for the rest of the CVAS, i don't know. i hope everything turns best for CVAS employees.

  • sonuserectus

    NEC, Genband, Sonus might form a consortium to bid together for the whole of CVAS. They would only split it into pieces after completing a sale. This is different than NT doing the breaking it up to sell things seperatley.
    The article uses the term”dark horse” to discribe NEC, and their possible bid. The confussion may be “Stalking vs Dark horse”. Maybe they are selling a stable?
    I heard that NSN was facing a lot of internal issues and possible breakup?
    I putting my bet on the consortium, out lasting and disiring this more.
    495mil stalking horse, with a 575million final price….

  • felixmk

    $100 million. If it was worth more, it would have been sold by now.

  • jabjab

    $733 millions US dollars?!

    Not sure streets you're walking, but that seems a stretch just for Netas.

  • wasthere

    I think we are reaching the culminating point on these Nortel businesses auctions.
    CVAS, #1 in his category should be viewed as a Rembrandt or a Michelangelo. Bids should go through the roof ;-) ))

  • XPM_guy

    Since CVAS has been generating both cash and profit (the only Nortel division to do so in quite a while), they have held it back to sell last, after all the divisions bleeding red ink have been sold. It is also the only Nortel division that actually lives up to their hype (i.e. it's a recognized global leader according to actual outside analysts). If CVAS were the relatively worthless dog you seem to think it is, they would have sold it long ago (e.g. Alteon to Radware). Instead they have been using it to trigger (and fund) executive bonuses…

  • scalppeeler

    My prediction is CVAS will sell for 625 million.

  • Nortel watcher

    With the Nortel asset sale winding down to the end with CVAS, can anyone confirm how many employees make up CVAS worldwide and how many countries they are in? The reason being should the auction winner with an international presence be more desireable to CVAS employees for the sake of job continuity.

    Lastly, much has been said about cronyism in Nortel over the past 8 years and multiple rounds of layoffs. Is it an accurate statement to say that some in CVAS mgmt today are recent transfers (less than one year) and therefore don't have the knowledge and experience the auction winner will come to expect?

  • RichardCranium

    Too bad they shitcanned most of their MCS developers. Almost one half of the ones that they *didn't* shitcan have left the company for somewhere else.

  • wasthere

    Worldwide : Americas, EMEA, Asia
    2500 employees as per the article, which I would think is a little too much for a 800 millions business. This employee number could easily be cut by 20-25 % from an acquirer.

    My 2 cents

  • exnt2

    there was a lot of shuffling so a lot of overhead ended up in CVAS. probably will go for 300 mill. 2500 employees is too much and would think anything more than 50% is a ton of overhead that the new company will get.

  • ex_roadtrash

    Very True, we really screwed ourselves laying off all the MCS/A2E design. CVAS needs a strong SSL component to make sense for DMS replacement, so we laid off all the experienced designers and shipped it overseas.

  • oneofthefewremaining

    Do you think these 'Analysts' get their news from AAN?

    http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id…

    I am suprised how little chatter there is on AAN and in the news sites about CVAS compared to the other sales, do people view CVAS as a small entity of a lesser value?

  • heavencanwait

    Actually it is the same analyst who was talking but she does not know much.

  • wasthere

    Since all these months of delay, this title should be changed :

    'VoIP Bids Coming Late'

    'This is the way',This is Nortel'

  • Pingback: Things are heating up in the Nortel CVAS sale. Somebody stop the sale ! — TheTelecomBlog.com

  • Zmad
  • wasthere

    Genband has big partners : ''GENBAND has teamed with one of its existing shareholders, One Equity Partners (OEP), to purchase the Nortel assets. Established in 2001, OEP manages $8 billion of investments and commitments for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in direct private equity transactions''

    They are also talking about a cost of ownership above 400 millions. Would this mean they would take some debt, pension liabilities ?

    http://www.advfn.com/news_GENBAND-Signs-Agreeme…

  • Zmad
  • wasthere

    Genband has big partners : ''GENBAND has teamed with one of its existing shareholders, One Equity Partners (OEP), to purchase the Nortel assets. Established in 2001, OEP manages $8 billion of investments and commitments for JPMorgan Chase & Co. in direct private equity transactions''

    They are also talking about a cost of ownership above 400 millions. Would this mean they would take some debt, pension liabilities ?

    http://www.advfn.com/news_GENBAND-Signs-Agreeme…

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