Thread regarding Windstream Corp. layoffs

Link to judge's order today:
http://www.kccllc.net/windstream/document/1922312191223000000000002

New exclusivity deadline:
April 22, 2020

New solicitation deadline:
June 22, 2020

It's just a shame that the fate of so many is guided by the hands of the few who only care about themselves.

Its not theft lol. The engineering documents either say “ship to warehouse” or “dispose of locally”. You would be fired immediately if you sc-apped something they want back. Windstream can write off whats disposed of for much more than the money from sc-apping it. I believe the point of the post was that there is no point in liquidation as its not worth anything and is just sc-ap at this point. Only thing of value is the little bit of new equipment and the customers. Zero chance of liquidating as creditors would lose far too much

”I want to get this straight:
When you talk about sc-apping the stuff in co-los and central offices, you say the techs are getting cash for some stuff. You mean they pocket it themselves??
Then you talk about selling stuff and management getting the money - as in the company gets it or the managers themselves?

If people are pocketing the money themselves, that’s theft!l

I’m an Ilec customer. I’ve spent a bunch on Windstream.

Somebody needs to report this.”

I my areas, we have a warehouse full of cardboard pallets/boxes. All CO equip, if it’s end-of-life, goes in the boxes, or anything we have too many of, in the boxes. Then we pay to ship it to a third party that pays Windstream penny on the dollars, to strip the bad equip and sc-ap it, or resale the good stuff to third world countries.

All the copper cables that are wrecked out, go to the dumpster. What happens to it after it goes in the dumpster, they don’t care. We have done our job at that point. We have sc-appers that come by from time to time and dig through the dumpsters and we will even set aside old destroyed pedestals, etc.... for them to haul off. Our drop contractors even keep and sc-ap all the temp drops that they pick up as well.

And a little insight on the copper cables we wreck out. A lot of the old equip in the CO’s were not even cat3 status and can’t even pass dsl or hardly any other modern services no. So when new equipment gets installed, so do new cables that can handle whatever is going to be deployed through them. So instead of having cable after cable getting piled on top of each other that’s no longer in use, we strip out all the old cable that no longer has any value to what we are doing in today’s world.

The judge has decided to extend the exclusivity period for Windstream management until a date in April, not until May 31 as management had requested.

Here's a Bloomberg item. You need a subscription to see the whole article but the first several paragraphs gives the gist:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/windstream-to-retain-exclusivity-in-ch-11-through-april-hearing

First time I went to a Windstream ILEC site I saw c-ap all over the floors and power cables poorly spliced and uninsulated. ILEC tech seemed disturbed that people were milling around his site as he read the newspaper. So he left....we then drove a few miles to check on another site and guess who happened to now be at the next site reading his newspaper.

@Mike LaTorris , well said!

Dismantling sites and shipping spares to a warehouse used to be the
way things are done. Contractors, shipping, and storage all cost money.
Disposal of battery banks was the only thing we were concerned with.
It's cheaper/easier for the techs to take care of it themselves vs
dealing with a 3rd party. In some cases it was a going away present, after
we closed a site a few techs lost their jobs. This was their "separation package"
since there wasn't one offered at the time. No golden parachutes for us
bottom feeders keeping this network afloat with duct tape and bubble gum.

@No liquidation

The ILEC portion is considered a utility and is regulated by both the FCC and state PSC.
You cannot just shut off the lights today. Most ILEC's are not doing well these days because they
are carrying a lot of debt on a business plan that does not work. As long as the government is involved
nothing will change. I think you will won't see an ILEC business sometime in the next 10-20 years, there is no inherent value long term. Next gen wireless technologies will superseded the copper plant.

"The CO, no clue what management does with that money, but they never ask for a check to be written to windstream, they always want cash."

That's criminal theft right there.

Report it to law enforcement.

When you shut down a collo and sc-ap everything you dont get $1k for all if it. And its usually split between a few techs. Its this or they can pay a contractor $10k to remove it and then pay shipping to a warehouse where it will sit.....then be removed years later and sc-apped by another contractor who you have to pay again.

The CO, no clue what management does with that money, but they never ask for a check to be written to windstream, they always want cash.

@1rmn

There are dozens of people among all these consultants and lawyers, each billing 100s of hours. The liquidation analysis is just a small part of all this. I don’t see the whole company getting liquidated; the ILEC will be kept even if it takes stiffing most of the creditors.

The ILEC serves people across many dozens of Congressional districts and over a quarter of the Senate seats. You shut off service to 4 million people and it’ll zoom to the top of the national agenda. The poor people that got battered and forgotten in Puerto Rico don’t vote but Windstream customers sure do.

A liquidation analysis is a necessary part of a big bankruptcy even if you plan on continuing operation. You can’t just say you’re worth more alive than dead, you have to document it.

I’m surprised they spent over 1000 hours on it but then there’s a lot of money for consultants in those hours if nobody’s controlling costs.

We still have a LARGE install of VoIP equipment. hELNK has alot of Metaswitch/Permimeta installations east of the Mississippi. hWIN has alot of GenBand/Ribbon. A smattering of Broadvoice/Cisco along with others. There is still some inherent value just not in the TDM network.

SD WAN infrastructure does not have a large investment and doesn't have a value other than the
install base. Customers don't really need a carrier to use the technology.

If this were a fire sale pricing next June it would be for millions not billions.

”Not theft.”

”That's the way we do business.”

The way it’s described, it sounds like felony theft from Windstream, and by extension, its creditors, especially the unsecured creditors, a lot of them vendors.

A person could do serious time in prison if law enforcement found out.

If management’s involved, somebody needs to tell the FBI.

(It’s bad if techs steal, but if it’s mostly copper, it’s probably a state crime and not sold across state lines)

Tell the public service commission, too.

Not theft.

That's the way we do business.
Please pay your bill on time.
Thank you.

@
I want to get this straight:
When you talk about sc-apping the stuff in co-los and central offices, you say the techs are getting cash for some stuff. You mean they pocket it themselves??
Then you talk about selling stuff and management getting the money - as in the company gets it or the managers themselves?

If people are pocketing the money themselves, that’s theft!l

I’m an Ilec customer. I’ve spent a bunch on Windstream.

Somebody needs to report this.

The equipment is worthless. I have shut down several Central Offices and collocations for windstream. You sc-ap the collocation equipment and the net techs keep the money from recycling the copper and equipment. In the Central Offices you sc-ap everything or someone like PICs gives you a small credit for a 5ESS or 5500/1631 but its basically come get it and its yours. Management takes the money from recycling the copper, halon/fm200 and the batteries as you get a large sum for sc-apping that stuff in a CO, usually $30-40k, so management always gets that cash. But 95% on the equipment is EOL TDM c-ap......nobody will buy it

Liquidation? Nobody wants what win is selling.

EVERYTHING is losing money. NOTHING IS DOING AS WELL AS IT ONCE DID.

Now, It's just a matter of which part of the business has the best half-life!

Stock is 12 cents!

You can't stop a terminal disease....
IT'S OVER!!!

"Liquidation Preparation of hypothetical liquidation analysis"
Total Hours: 1,179

So roughly if you spent 8 hours a day for 147 days on preparing hypothetical liquidation that would amount to 1179 hours.
Number of days since declaring BK -230. 64% of their time has been spent preparing for a hypothetical event.
Of course they hired Kirkland Ellis as consultants in April so that eats just about 55 days. Which would make it 84% of the time.
I get that these are billable hours and not actual hours but that still represents a substantial amount of time planning on liquidation.

Very simple, the Arkansas 5 knows they will be gone, all they care about is collecting all of that bonus now.

The business plan is to get all of the $20 million from the KEIP.

Lots of good feedback and comments on here today!

@Blankrup

I half agree with your analysis. We are debt ridden and UNITI is still the
X factor I don't see mentioned in any of this. They are life support and Achilles
heal at the same time. We don't need the copper network to hold us down, It's
degrading and loosing value faster than we can generate revenue.

If we run out of cash on June 1st of next year. Then we goto Chapter 7, the creditors will take over and kick out the existing executives and board. At that
point the ILEC portion will stay and the CLEC portion will be sold for cash.
That is when you will see the fire sale and mass layoffs.

@12y1p2hV-unb

I agree, "Business as Usual" will only last so long.
When I have asked my managers or director they have no idea.

Babble - what a great term! R.I.P. Windstream....

"Windstream is keeping a tight lid on their strategy.....if they have one lol"

I'm concerned management either doesn't have one or if it does, that the "plan" is basically just a financial forecast spreadsheet with platitudes and magical assumptions but with no specific actionable, tangible changes identified.
Buzzworthy babble such as:
"Monetizing synergies through business process transformation, agile development, high bandwidth datafication in order to leverage Insight-as-a-Service (IaaS) and increase our Return on Relationship (RoR). A closely curated disruption of old network paradigms providing best-in-class solutions architecting."

The key executives can't just count beans – somebody's got to complete calls and route packets.

Management doesn't have to wait to begin implementing a plan. This is a good time to start it while the company has bankruptcy protection. A bankrupt company I worked with made all kinds of productive, fundamental changes in its business during bankruptcy.

Even if the full business plan is confidential, I'd expect to see actual changes already underway – visible execution of changes that looks systematic, coherent and not a repetition of previous failed approaches.

@ What's the plan
The board and C level have done NOTHING! Why do you ask?
Because they hire consultants to do all of the work. If you look at the line items from A&M and others in this link below you will see where they are concentrating their efforts on:

http://www.kccllc.net/windstream/document/1922312191216000000000019
pages 4 & 5

This is a BIG one that sticks out in the top 5
"Liquidation Preparation of hypothetical liquidation analysis"
Total Hours: 1,179

Breaking up the company in some fashion IS in the near future. There are
alot of moving parts and they are trying to buy time they don't have.
I think the expectation was to shop the various assets around and that
isn't going as planned.

Remember our burn rate with our cash runs out as of 6/1/2020.
This is WAY more than a coincidence.
When everything is said and done we will have spend approximately
$100M on attorneys and consultants. They are the only ones that
benefit from Chapter 11.

I am worried what this plan will mean for employees. Normally companies share their strategy with employees as it boosts moral and keeps them engaged. Windstream is keeping a tight lid on their strategy.....if they have one lol

"Has anyone seen the business plan they refer to in their list of accomplishments?"

TT's dog ate it. They have to start over now which is why they need more time. It was a big, beautiful plan..."

Has anyone seen the business plan they refer to in their list of accomplishments?

Does it say anything about the CLEC? Selling off or shutting down parts of the business? A change in strategy?

Thanks

If they couldnt come up with a plan to run the company prior to bankruptcy (experience shows they have little skill in this area) how in the heck does anyone reasonably think they can somehow miraculously know how to run a company now? Its no wonder they have nothing after 9 months, running a company, having a plan, its just not their thing. Distracting people, drawing things out, and extending the time for them to enhance themselves, now that they are exceptionally good at.

Those explanations for what we have been doing for the past 9 months (other than what we were supposed to be doing, coming up with a plan) does reek of something my teenage kids would come up with for why they havent cleaned their rooms. weak.

So..... NO concrete evidence that they can show the court they have done anything.
Got it!

“Sent out some emails to our creditors that we still won’t pay them.
And, posted some stories on Stream that we will once again be a Fortune 500 company, giving management something to click the ‘thumbs up’ button on, to break up their day of 8 hr surfing”

‘Now get off my back until Aug!’

These jokers can have 8000 years and not turn this around. Time to put this sick dog down.

Time to pay, The Bar Tab. Lol.
The Dance is Over.

Here are excerpts from the list of accomplishments Windstream included in its earlier request.

http://www.kccllc.net/windstream/document/1922312191204000000000002

1. In the approximately nine months since the Petition Date, the Debtors have made substantial progress, including securing $1 billion in debtor-in-possession financing, stabilizing their business operations … Since the Petition Date, the Debtors have been working toward as swift an exit from chapter 11 as possible under the circumstances, and intend to continue this effort. Indeed, while significant work remains, the Debtors are working diligently—and in close coordination with their key creditor constituents—towards emergence from these chapter 11 cases.
2. Among numerous other steps the Debtors have made toward a successful restructuring, the Debtors have…

[a partial list]:

• prepared a business plan and related materials and distributed to the lender groups and other key constituencies, including the creditors’ committee, and undertaken a financial analysis of major contracts and contingent liabilities…

• engaged with the creditors’ committee and lender groups, including providing extensive diligence, with the ultimate goal of building consensus around a restructuring and reducing administrative costs…

• addressed numerous diligence requests, questions, concerns, and issues raised by employees, vendors, customers, and other parties in interest…

3. Despite this significant progress toward a successful restructuring, given the size and complexity of these chapter 11 cases, work remains.

Impressive list.