Monday, July 18, 2011

Birch Buys Cordia

Winter Haven, FL-based Cordia Communications Corp. [OTCBB: CORG] filed for bankruptcy in May of 2011. Today it sold for $8M to Birch Communications, which has been in BK a couple of times too. Today, Birch, an original UNE-P CLEC, is a roll up of 12 acquisitions in 5 years.

"Judge Karen S. Jennemann signed an order Thursday that enables Cordia to sell its business -- and its 56,000 consumer accounts -- to Atlanta-based telephone and Internet provider Birch Communications, marking the latest deal in a string of acquisitions that have stretched the company's reach across 38 states in recent years. "Birch had offered to buy Cordia's retail, wholesale and long-distance-only lines and associated customer contracts, plus thousands more lines associated with two Cordia affiliates, according to court documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Orlando, Fla. The deal is set to close within three months." [TotalTelecom]

The company press release adds little detail: "announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the U.S. CLEC assets of Cordia Communications Corp., My Tel Co, Inc. and Northstar Telecom Inc. (“Cordia”), a competitive local exchange carriers based in Orlando, Fla. Included in the acquisition are approximately 55,000 business, residential and broadband access lines across 24 states.

VoIP, POTS, LD, wireline voice, DSL, Resi, Small Biz - 55K accounts in 24 states for $8M - that's about $145 per account, a commentary on the ROI of strictly rebilling voice and broadband.

No comments: