(Bloomberg) — Armstrong Flooring Inc. filed for individual bankruptcy safety, stating it could not raise prices significant ample to preserve up with increasing offer and transportation expenses.
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The Chapter 11 submitting arrived right after the organization invested months striving to obtain a consumer and haggling with creditors, in accordance to court docket papers filed in U.S. Personal bankruptcy Court docket in Wilmington, Delaware. Armstrong stated it owed collectors $317.8 million and experienced assets truly worth $517 million.
“Simply said, the company’s escalating expenses appreciably outpaced its pricing electric power,” Armstrong Main Govt Officer Michel S. Vermette mentioned in a court filing.
The maker of vinyl sheets, planks and tiles is the newest business to find court docket safety from lenders to deal with spiraling costs and weak product sales lingering from the Covid-19 pandemic. Very last month, Sungard Availability Solutions LP, a technological innovation business that aids company shoppers recover from disasters, laid element of the blame for its personal bankruptcy on greater vitality charges that hit its U.K. affiliate.
Mounting Costs
Armstrong was hit previous year with $85 million in further solution and transportation prices, Vermette reported, and elevating costs for retail shoppers by 10% and for professional consumers by 15% wasn’t plenty of to retain its funds afloat. A Chapter 11 filing enables a corporation to hold functioning whilst it functions out a restoration approach.
Armstrong, based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, ideas to go on working with advisers at Houlihan Lokey Cash to find a consumer.
As it struggled with higher charges, Armstrong haggled with creditors who imposed severe limitations that hampered its turnaround efforts, the CEO mentioned in courtroom papers. The business had started out to modernize functions early 2020 as the pandemic began to hit.
Armstrong Flooring was spun out of Armstrong Earth Industries, which exited individual bankruptcy in 2006 immediately after profitable court docket approval for a system to offer with lawsuits similar to asbestos. The substance can induce fatal lung disorders like most cancers. Armstrong Flooring became a separate, publicly traded enterprise in 2016.
The circumstance is Armstrong Flooring Inc., 22-10426, U.S. Individual bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
(Updates with inflation influence on other corporations in fourth paragraph and organization history in eighth paragraph)
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