Thread regarding Windstream Corp. layoffs

This company could f#_k up a wet dream...

I wondered what that smell was.

I can smell what the Rock is cooking!

i agree that the leadership team was trying to grow revenues and cash flow in an inorganic manner, i.e. via M&A, since the ILEC business was/is fading fast. In hindsight, it was a flawed strategy but no worse than Frontier's strategy of buying more ILEC territories from Verizon and AT&T.

Who I really fault are the Windstream due diligence team and the investment bankers. They simply underestimated the poor network data integrity of their acquired companies. For example, they should have known that much of KDL's network inventory resided almost in the head of JG, along with all of the fiber swaps he had made. And remember when TT got so excited to learn years later that PAETEC/Cavtel had metro fiber Roanoke, VA? How does the DD team not know this information at the time the deal closed?

And don't get me started about systems! How can you not know how long and how much it will cost to integrate AS400 into M6, or M4 or M5 into M6? Ridiculous.

I also think middle and lower management is to blame. So much sh*t gets whitewashed up the chain. You can make sweeping decisions when you don't have all the facts. These jackholes can take a turd and turn it into a brick of gold before it gets to the executives...

Earthlink and Birch are where bad leaders go to die.

Windstream bought the House of Cards called Earthlink and is now doomed.

Earthlink shareholders would like to thank the WIn CEO. They all got out at $7 a share after the close.

Well Put!

Windstream's problems are not the fault of the companies it has purchased. Its problems are the direct result of the former & present CEO's trying to "buy" their way out of debt. The status of, or probability of success of any of the companies that have been s---ed into the Windstream vortex is not a direct reflection of those companies. Once those purchases were completed, they along with the rest of us could do nothing but go along for the ride. The previous & current leadership at Windstream is simply criminal. Whatever happens to Windstream, the damage is done, and nothing can be salvaged from this cesspool of bad management, poor spending habits, and pure unadulterated narcissism & megalomania. The Windstream Board of Directors is just at responsible. They are the ones that have given these men the free reign to do as they pleased.

Don’t forget that the CEO put the incompetent leadership team in place from companies like EarthLink and Birch Telecom.

It’s over!

Paetec and then Earthlink doomed this company. Windstream bought the most incompetent CLECs with the most imcompenent people in industry and is doomed. Everyone but Windstream new EarthLink was worst in class with no talent or assets.

There are more people are leaving on their own than Windstream is firing each month. It’s a bloodbath.

Windstream executives don’t want to hear or acknowledge bad news.

KDL was not the issue. Norlight was a hump of #### but kdl had some good buildout that was wasted potential. Paetec gets a bad wrap but it brought LDMI McLeod and USLec to the table which were in dire straights

@KDL poster

PAETEC and it subsidiaries were profitable and cash flow positive until the credit crisis of 200o. That is when they had to sell out all because of wall street. I am sure if you had asked the board they would have kept the company private if it were up to them.

I think the real issue I have seen over the past 5 M&A's I have been thru is the back office. Most of the executives take all of this for granted. Post merger they pull back the Curtin and then see how broken things are. Theren8s a 1-2 year road map to fix those issues. Before you know it we are going throughit all over again.

I remember what it cost the Company to provide FttT in the CLEC exchanges utilizing their so called CLEC fiber network...the upfront capital costs were exuberant and the return revenue would take decades. This type of leadership is part of this financial catastrophe!

Not fired, I decided to leave on my own!

Sounds like more imcompeltent engineers with too much time on their hands after being fired by Windstream.

This comments above are totally wrong with the exception Windstream is doomed.

When Windstream purchased these CLEC companies, the financial troubles began! They spun these purchases off by saying they just expanded their fiber network and Windstream included maps showing their fiber network after these purchases...what they failed to communicate was the fiber network was leased and not owned...in this fiber network Windstream leased these fibers equating to monthly charges for this network. In the ILEC world we own whatever fiber we put up making the upfront cost the initial capital investment however the return in revenue was all 100%. No monthly fees. The other down side is through many government initiatives, i.e. CAF, many of these areas were never fully deployed therefore, resulting in loss of revenue, when I left the company in November much of our capital investment was sitting idle or still not fully deployed! The records in this company are a total wreck which in turn creates loss of revenue. In my opinion the leadership and lack of direction has crumbled this company, it is a sad situation.

It grows tired always seeing KDL mentioned as some Windstream problem child footnote that helped contribute to their demise. At KDL we regularly achieved something that Windstream never could. We actually turned a profit. There was none of the silo, red tape, and constant roadblock mentality that Windstream brought to the table. I’ll admit that it wasn’t always pretty but the job always got done and the customer was turned up. We had a cash cow running fiber to VZW towers until WXN decided to contract out the installs and the contractors and our own engineers repeatedly knocked down service at all hours of the day.

The OP is playing pretty loose with the facts in order to paint Windstream as some sort of utopia before they started writing bad checks. KDL didn’t offer managed service, Iowa Telecom was a LEC doing the same thing as Alltel, Nuvox barely had a network doing mostly resale and Paetec was a loser just like every company it swallowed.

Buying these companies was nothing more than Windstream looking to pick up “assets” to use to refinance their debt and push the payments farther out.

Very interesting I LOVE being able to read posts like this.Thank You.

That was a good read. Thanks