(Bloomberg) — Armstrong Flooring Inc. submitted for bankruptcy security, indicating it could not elevate price ranges large ample to maintain up with soaring offer and transportation expenses.
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The Chapter 11 submitting arrived soon after the firm spent months hoping to come across a customer and haggling with loan providers, according to court papers submitted in U.S. Personal bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Armstrong mentioned it owed creditors $317.8 million and had property well worth $517 million.
“Simply stated, the company’s increasing fees considerably outpaced its pricing ability,” Armstrong Main Government Officer Michel S. Vermette stated in a courtroom submitting.
The maker of vinyl sheets, planks and tiles is the latest business to search for courtroom security from lenders to deal with spiraling fees and weak revenue lingering from the Covid-19 pandemic. Past thirty day period, Sungard Availability Products and services LP, a technologies organization that will help company customers recuperate from disasters, laid element of the blame for its bankruptcy on better power rates that strike its U.K. affiliate.
Rising Expenditures
Armstrong was strike final 12 months with $85 million in supplemental solution and transportation fees, Vermette explained, and increasing prices for retail buyers by 10% and for professional clients by 15% was not sufficient to preserve its funds afloat. A Chapter 11 filing makes it possible for a firm to continue to keep running when it operates out a recovery strategy.
Armstrong, based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, options to proceed operating with advisers at Houlihan Lokey Capital to find a consumer.
As it struggled with better prices, Armstrong haggled with creditors who imposed severe limits that hampered its turnaround efforts, the CEO reported in courtroom papers. The business had commenced to modernize operations early 2020 as the pandemic commenced to hit.
Armstrong Flooring was spun out of Armstrong Planet Industries, which exited personal bankruptcy in 2006 just after successful courtroom acceptance for a approach to deal with lawsuits relevant to asbestos. The material can cause fatal lung conditions together with cancer. Armstrong Flooring grew to become a different, publicly traded firm in 2016.
The case is Armstrong Flooring Inc., 22-10426, U.S. Personal bankruptcy Court docket, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
(Updates with inflation impact on other corporations in fourth paragraph and firm historical past in eighth paragraph)
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