Friday, February 4, 2011

Looking at Distressed Debt Opportunities

I put together a list of corporate (non-financial) bonds that have traded in the past 30 days at less than 50 cents. These are in ascending order of price:

Issuer Name Coupon Maturity Callable Price
TOUSA INC 7.5 03/15/11 Yes 2
BLOCKBUSTER INC 9 09/01/12 Yes 2.5
MAGNA ENTERTAINMENT CORP 7.25 12/15/09 Yes 3
TMST INC 8 05/15/13 Yes 4
TRICO MARINE SERVICES INC 3 01/15/27 Yes 7
TRICO MARINE SERVICES INC 8.13 02/01/13 No 12
FAIRPOINT COMMUNICATIONS INC 13.13 04/02/18 Yes 14
TRANS-LUX CORP 8.25 03/01/12 Yes 19
GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA CO INC 9.13 12/15/11 Yes 27
GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA CO INC 6.75 12/15/12 Yes 33
GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC TEA CO INC 5.13 06/15/11 No 34
RASER TECHNOLOGIES INC 8 04/01/13 No 35
TOUSA INC 9 07/01/10 Yes 35
EVERGREEN SOLAR INC 4 07/15/13 No 36
WOLVERINE TUBE INC 10 03/31/12 Yes 36
AMBASSADORS INTERNATIONAL INC 3.75 04/15/27 Yes 38
SUPERVALU INC - 11/02/31 Yes 39
ANGIOTECH PHARMACEUTICALS INC 7.75 04/01/14 Yes 47
NASH-FINCH CO 1.63 03/15/35 Yes 49

Most of these are in bankruptcy. Great Atlantic & Pacific is still trading on the pink sheets despite filing for bankruptcy last year (although the market cap is only $12 million).

Evergreen Solar (ESLR) is interesting because the common stock hasn't "gotten the message" - the market cap is still $81 million. Management is doing the distressed debt exchange dance where they make a ridiculous offer to the bondholders, which gets rejected and so management goes back to the drawing board and sweetens it.

Two years ago this list was much longer and more interesting - that's what a credit bubble will do.

3 comments:

Taylor Conant said...

Evergreen's CEO had an editorial in the last page of the most recent (a recent?) BusinessWeek, complaining that the federal government wouldn't bail him out of his crappy entrepreneurial decisions (factory 4x too big, HQ in the People's Commonwealth of Massachusett's, falling prices in his industry, no real, free market for his products without subsidies) and about how as a result he's taking the company and the jobs to China.

Good riddance, jerkoff!

whydibuy said...

Due to a credit bubble???

How about due to a recovering economy.

Finding the dark cloud within the silver lining again are we??

EconomicDisconnect said...

For a break stop by my site for Friday night entertainment.

Great work all week here.