The last six months have seen spectacular returns for investors in French-American telecom equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)
After being effectively priced for bankruptcy and seeing its share price sink all the way to $1 a share, Alcatel-Lucent has since proven it won't go down without a fight.
Alcatel-Lucent's attempt to engineer a major comeback in the brutally competitive telecom equipment space has certainly come with its fair share of costs. To its credit, Alcatel-Lucent realized it simply needed to grow more efficiently if it were to survive. However, seeking out those efficiencies has come in the form a several brutal rounds of layoffs and cost reductions for Alcatel-Lucent.
The company has also made major strides to improve its balance sheet. Alcatel-Lucent received a critical round of financing from a consortium of lenders led by Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse in 2012 that bought Alcatel some much-needed times. Alcatel-Lucent recently made waves by announcing it would seek a fresh round of financing, both debt and equity, as it attempts to further solidify its balance sheet.
In this video, tech and telecom analyst Andrew Tonner talks about the controversial move for Alcatel-Lucent and how long-term investors should interpret this recent news.