Avaya plans $1bn IPO

Avaya has filed for a stock market flotation in the US.

The company has proposed a total share value of $1bn (£613 million). Avaya lodged the initial public offering (IPO) filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, saying in a statement that it expects to "use the net proceeds it receives from the offering to, among other things, pay down certain long-term indebtedness". The company lost $871m on revenues of $5bn in 2010, and had debts of $6bn as of 31 March, 2011.

Avaya specialises in enterprise networking and telephony technology, and is currently aiming at expanding its datacentre switch business. It sells unified communications and collaboration equipment to the enterprise through its partnership with HP.

This will not be the first time Avaya is a public company, as it became one soon after being spun off from Lucent Technologies in 2000. In 2007, it was bought by two private equity firms, TPG Capital and Silver Lake, for £8.2bn. The private equity firms pipped rival telecoms kit-maker Nortel at the post — ironically, as it turned out, because Avaya ended up buying Nortel's enterprise business when that firm went under in 2009.

According to Avaya's statement on Thursday, the new flotation will be jointly handled by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, UBS Investment and Credit Suisse.