Managed network services provider TPx is eying partner experience improvements as it starts its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan, CEO Shaun Andrews told Channel Dive.
“We're able to remove about a billion dollars of debt — a real number — and that really frees up a lot of capacity to grow and to invest in the channel, our customers and our employees,” Andrews said in an interview.
The company and its creditors on Wednesday received approval for their plan from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The plan to trim some $1.1 billion in debt went through minimal revisions since the parties originally filed it June 28, 2026, according to Andrews.
“The judge accepted everything that we had put forward in the plan, full stop,” he said. “Since we had nearly unanimous support, it makes it a little easier for the judge's job if there isn't someone screaming and kicking, saying, ‘This isn't fair.’”
TPx moved to cancel a scheduled stalking horse bidder auction less than a month ago, saying it had not received qualifying bids. The US Bankruptcy Judge Alfredo Perez later agreed that the amended Chapter 11 represented the “most value maximizing transaction available to the debtors.”
TPx will remain backed by private equity firm Siris Capital. The biggest change in ownership, Andrews said, is that the creditors in the bankruptcy case have all become equity holders.
“Especially in the channel with all the PE activity and everything, having a stable long-term ownership base is super helpful these days,” Andrews said. “It's helpful with recruiting. It's helpful with long-term planning and business cases.”
Maintaining channels
As a managed service provider and reseller that works with major OEMs and sells through agents, TPx has had to reassure two different sides of its partner community in the last three months.
Throughout the bankruptcy process, agent sales commissions have kept flowing, though Andrews said a pause was never on the table.
“We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot,” he said. “We did right by the channel. We held the contracts even. We were super clear; we're going to pay everyone the same,”
For the IT equipment manufacturers and connectivity providers whose products TPx buys, Andrews said the MSP ensured it was paid up prior to the June 28 filing.
“Even if it was in the middle of a bill cycle, we just went and paid everybody, got them current, and then we communicated to the vendors in the same way that we communicated to the channel and to our customers with complete transparency,” Andrews said.
TPx signed an agreement with SentinelOne on August 3 to add a managed endpoint security service. Managed security has been one of TPx’s biggest areas of investments since it commenced a decade-long transition into managed services in 2017. Putting funds to the transition — even to the point of taking on debt — has distinguished TPx from other telecom aggregators that tried to rebrand themselves.
“There's a lot of networking-first people who put themselves out there as an MSP, but they're really a networking reseller,” Andrews said. “We're actually a secure managed network services MSP, and we're further along than many of those folks. We did put quite a lot of money in the ground to get there. Now we have been able to restructure so that we're more nimble and we don't have that debt hanging over our head.”
Andrews said TPx will expand its services to a degree but “stay within our lane” going forward.
“We'll continue to lean into secure managed network services,” he said. “We'll continue to offer managed endpoints, and we'll continue to offer collaboration. All of the things that kind of float around that hub of secure managed network services.”
But the biggest investment, Andrews said, will go into employee and partner experience. The firm has added off-the-shelf capabilities, including from Salesforce, to arm its employees with better tools in the sales process. Andrews said employees previously tended to rely on manual processes for quoting, but partners are demanding that quotes be turned faster.
TPx aims to give its employees data and tools to calculate the best quote in one move. Investing in APIs for platforms like Connectbase are key for the “digital handshakes” TPx is trying to promote for its partners.
“We just want to be the easiest MSP for the channel to work with,” Andrews said. “When they have a secure managed network services deal, I'd like to be their default.”
