In looking at the distressed-bond market today, Marty Fridson suggests: Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to get very bumpy. But investors who remain rational will profit extravagantly from the foreseeable disconnect between value and price in the lower-quality end of the corporate bond market.
Investors are concerned that the products of the company featured this month are on the wrong side of history and condemned to permanent decline. This report will explain how the company is reinventing itself – and will remain a survivor – and propelling the price of its bond higher.
As distressed-debt analysts, we have to keep tabs on the developments with the bankruptcy code. Typically, our most likely case is that the bond issuer will manage to make all the required interest payments and repay the principal at maturity. But not always.
This month’s recommendation reminds us of our very first recommendation in March 2023, when we wrote about Diversified Healthcare Trust’s 9.75% bonds. We believe that in both cases, investors were looking backward rather than forward, creating an opportunity for high, risk-adjusted returns.
Many beaten-down bonds deserve to be beaten down and never to recover. A smaller number of issuers, also beaten down, do have the wherewithal to make good on their obligations and strengthen their balance sheets.
A noteworthy entrant to the distressed ranks is Xerox (XRX) – in the 1980s, the copier producer’s stock was one of the greatest performers ever, registering an astounding 4,500-fold gain in the 50 years through its all-time high on May 3, 1999. Xerox’s senior debt is now on the watchlist for downgrading.
In April, we recommended selling the bonds of this e-commerce business at $878 – which we had recommended buying four months earlier at $840. They have since fallen dramatically. In this report, we are recommending buying them back. And we explain why the price of the bonds has dropped and why we think it will rise again.
Innovations of the past few decades have created many outstanding opportunities in distressed investing. To ease the pain of distress, financial entrepreneurs created new procedures to reduce the cost of fixing broken balance sheets – all to the benefit of individual investors.
The company whose bond we recommended in February and whose stock we are recommending in this issue has made a strong turnaround – plus, it has recently made three related purchases that should further help its profits… and share price.
Asymmetric information is something you must avoid falling prey to as an investor. There are laws protecting individual investors, but there are still ways to get caught on the wrong side of a transaction.