Frontier Communications Corp. -- a telecom, SD-WAN and cloud service provider with $17.5 billion in debt -- could file for bankruptcy as soon as Tuesday night, Bloomberg reports.
This is the second potential service provider bankruptcy ChannelE2E is tracking this week. The other involves Intelsat, a global satellite service provider that offers SD-WAN and managed mobile services.
Frontier offers video, Internet, voice, and cybersecurity solutions to residential and business customers over its fiber-optic and copper networks in 29 states. The telecom service provider expanded into managed SD-WAN services in November 2019, and cloud managed IT services in September 2019.
Frontier's financial troubles started long before the current U.S. economic shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. The debt-laden service provider skipped an interest payment on March 16, and at the time entered a 60-day grace period to renegotiate its debt with bondholders.
Frontier has also been evolving its executive team. The company in December 2019 hired DISH Network veteran Bernie Han to succeed Daniel McCarthy as president and CEO. Frontier's board retained Han as a financial advisor in October 2019, leveraging his expertise to "strengthen the company's financial position.
And in February 2020, Frontier hired Windstream veteran Mike Shippey as Senior Vice President, Wholesale Services. He oversees sales and marketing, innovation in new solution, and the customer experience.
For its fiscal year 2019, Frontier says preliminary results include:
- total revenues of $8.11B, down 5.9 percent
- a net loss of $5.91 billion -- larger than a 2018 loss of $750 million.
