CAMPBELL, CA, Sept. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - About one month
ago, IP licensing and innovation company Inventergy Global, Inc.
(NASDAQ: INVT) struck a deal to amend a debt agreement with
Fortress Investment Group, allowing Inventergy to retain most of
the cash from a recent license installment payment and hold off on
making a debt amortization payment to Fortress. Looking back,
it was an omen of bigger and better things to come.
On Thursday morning Silicon Valley-based Inventergy disclosed
deepening its relationship with the investment manager giant,
signing a letter of intent under which Fortress will provide
financial and other resources to monetize the roughly 760
telecommunication patent assets Inventergy previously acquired from
Panasonic, Nokia and Huawei. In short, Fortress has switched
from being simply a finance partner of Inventergy to a
comprehensive business partner.
Per the LOI, Fortress, a NYSE-listed company with approximately
$70.2 billion of assets under
management as of the end of June, has agreed to fund an enhanced IP
enforcement program and make moves that position Inventergy in a
much stronger financial position going forward. Fortress
agreed to eliminate approximately $21
million in liabilities on Inventergy's balance sheet that
stem from an existing agreement between the two firms and deliver
$2.2 million for Inventergy to
pay-off other debt related to monetizing the patents.
The partnership is a game changer for this company and
shareholders on multiple levels. Getting Fortress in
Inventergy's corner gives the company the power to aggressively
defend its intellectual property, effectively leveling the playing
field with larger telecommunications and mobility companies that
are widely known for stepping on smaller players that lack the
financial muscles to fight to protect patents.
For its efforts, Fortress will take the higher portion of a
70/30 split with Inventergy on all future net revenue resulting
from monetizing the patents, as will be defined in a new revenue
sharing agreement. The split goes into effect following
payments being made to the previous patent holders, payment of any
other monetization costs and Fortress collecting approximately
$30 million.
In line with the aforementioned agreement in August, Fortress
has agreed that Inventergy doesn't have to make a scheduled
amortization payment at the end of this month and waived a
liquidity requirement for another month ahead of a definitive
revenue sharing agreement between the companies.
While the headline benefits of the partnership are obvious, the
subliminal message further supports the value of Inventergy
IP. It's assumable that Fortress thoroughly vetted the
intellectual property and decided that it ought to be of high
enough quality to warrant an investment.
Independently, Inventergy has generated about $8 million in completed transactions related to
the telecom patents. In 2016, the company is ramping up its
efforts, including launching a new technology licensing business
initiative, called the Inventergy Innovations program, during the
second quarter. With this program, Inventergy has hired
Ken Cannizzaro, reuniting him with
Joe Beyers to build-out a technology
licensing business model similar to the one the two successfully
created at Hewlett-Packard that generated hundreds of millions of
dollars annually.
The program is already bearing fruit, with four partnerships
already penned in the past five months and more being negotiated
that are expected to result in definitive deals. On Tuesday,
Inventergy announced that 10 weeks after striking a partnership
with Pabalon the two have established an engagement with a Fortune
100 company to demonstrate Pabalon's wireless charging
technology, thus proving the value of Inventergy Innovations
business strategy
Interested parties are encouraged to read the complete
Inventergy press release and learn more about the company at
www.inventergy.com.
SOURCE Inventergy Global, Inc.