UCaaS M&A: 8×8 Sells Callstats Business; Complete Company Sale Coming?

8x8 has sold its Callstats business to Spearline of Ireland for an undisclosed sum. Callstats is a solution for testing and monitoring business telecommunication services. The move comes as 8x8 explores potential opportunities to sell some or all of its businesses to undisclosed suitors.

8×8’s stock has declined 75.9% over the past year, and 68% over the past five years, according to SeekingAlpha. Among the reasons: Standalone UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) providers are struggling to keep pace with Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Salesforce Slack and Zoom — among other enterprise-scale collaboration platforms, ChannelE2E believes.

Faced with fierce competition, 8×8 cut roughly 200 employees in October 2022. Then, 8x8 terminated Dave Sipes as CEO in November 2022, and named CFO Samuel Wilson as interim CFO. Layoffs are a familiar pattern for 8×8. The company had job cuts in 2020.

UCaaS Market Under Pressure

Rival UCaaS providers such as Mitel, Fuze and RingCentral all have had layoffs over the past two years or so. (8×8 and Fuze ultimately merged in December 2021). Another key player, Intermedia, canceled an IPO in 2021 and then lined up some funding from NEC.

Amid that competitive backdrop, M&A activity in the UCaaS market has generally slowed down over the past two years or so.