Successful IPOs for LinkedIn and Yandex should bolster confidence for West Corporation as it gets set to re-introduce itself to Wall Street. If Groupon, which is not much more than an electronic couponing company, can position itself as a “social platform,” West Corporation with a long-standing emphasis on network-based collaboration, marketing and support services can lay a stronger claim to the social sobriquet. Even though it describes itself as having “evolved into a predominantly automated processor of voice and data transactions and a provider of network infrastructure solutions,” such a generic description could easily apply to the place where Google, Facebook, Twitter and others are moving as they add voice services and transaction processing.

After Thomas H. Lee and Quandrangle Partners took “recapitalized” West in 2006 (for $3.34 billion), they initially planned a $500 million stock offer in October 2009. The filing was amended in April of this year, but no date has been established for its formal introduction. As outlined in this S-1 Filing, with the Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Barclay’s and Wells Fargo, as lead underwriters, it looks like the leveraged buy-out specialists Thomas H. Lee and Quadrangle are ready for a liquidity event. The timing is very good, the company is profitable and positioned to provide core technologies that can help the telephone, voice processing and contact center agents assume their rightful positions along the critical paths of conversational commerce.

Their recent alliance with Radian6 (which Opus Research will be discussing in some depth in a forthcoming report on “The Social Contact Center) makes it clear that the company is ready to work with its clients to help them do a better job of helping existing clients “listen to feedback from clients and prospects across multiple talkpaths in order to respond quickly and strengthen social bonds.

There is no “time certain” for the IPO. It was amended in April 2011 with the notation that an offer would happen “As soon as practicable after this registration statement becomes effective.” But we would think the success of Linked, with an anemic topline and negative bottom line, would signal a hunger from buyers for companies with positive operational results. What’s more, annual interest expense in excess of $250 million should give THL and Quadrangle incentive to recapitalize in an expeditious manner.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Contact Center, hosted services, conversational commerce, IPO