Catalina, the market leader in shopper intelligence and personalized digital media that converts shoppers into buyers, today announced that the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (“the Court”) has confirmed the company’s Plan of Reorganization (the “Plan”). Catalina expects to complete its restructuring and successfully emerge from Chapter 11 in the coming weeks.
“The Court’s approval of our Plan will enable Catalina to move forward as a stronger company that is well positioned to succeed in a competitive marketplace,” said Catalina CEO Jerry Sokol. “Through this process, which took less than 60 days, we have significantly reduced the debt on our balance sheet. With this solid financial foundation in place, we are accelerating critical investments in technology, advanced analytics and data science to transform the in-store experience for buyers and deliver innovative new solutions to solve our customers’ challenges.”
The company’s successful financial restructuring is another step forward in its omni transformation, led by an experienced team of thought leaders and innovators, including Chief Data and Analytics Officer Dr. Wes Chaar. Dr. Chaar and his team are focused on fortifying Catalina’s buyer intelligence data in a variety of ways to provide an increasingly dimensionalized view of buyers.
“We are leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to power new solutions around consumer preference modeling, measurement and ID mapping, providing buyer behavioral understanding,” Dr. Chaar said. “And, our growing team of data scientists is creating new algorithms to enhance personalization offerings to drive greater ROI.”
Catalina’s visionary Chief Product Officer, Kevin Hunter, and team are strengthening the company’s commercialization structure to test and bring powerful new products and solutions to market.
“We just launched a groundbreaking attribution solution that provides CPG marketers with a granular, real-time view of national campaign performance in stores at the UPC-level. Multi-Touch AttributR utilizes Catalina’s proprietary ID graph, which maps millions of digital IDs to shopper IDs to definitively close the gap between digital engagement and in-store sales,” noted Mr. Hunter. “In the weeks ahead, we will introduce additional offerings that add dimension to our existing personalization capabilities.”
Catalina is also gaining traction with new partnerships across its global retail network, including new multi-year contracts with the Edeka, famila, and Combi banners in Germany, as well as Inageya in Japan. These new partnerships will add 100 million transactions to the Catalina network.
Mr. Sokol concluded, “Today’s confirmation is a testament to the hardworking employees of Catalina who have continued to deliver exceptional service and value to our customers. I thank them for enabling us to quickly implement our restructuring. I also want to thank our customers, business partners and other stakeholders for their continued support throughout this process.”
Upon emergence, Catalina will have reduced its debt by more than 80 percent from approximately $1.9 billion to approximately $280 million, facilitating continued investment to enhance the company’s capabilities for the benefit of its customers.
Additional information is available at Catalina’s restructuring website at catalinateam.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is serving as legal counsel, Centerview Partners LLC is serving as financial advisor and FTI Consulting is serving as restructuring advisor to Catalina.
