$26B of assets, mostly highly illiquid (e.g. cars, property)
So this bankruptcy is not a situation where the company has negative net value, it’s a situation where the company doesn’t have the revenue to cover its debt-servicing costs in the short term, because their assets aren’t liquid. But the company’s assets are still worth substantially more than their debt, so it seems reasonably likely that stockholders will still end up with a fair bit of value. Indeed, assuming Hertz isn’t forced into a fire-sale, their assets are (supposedly) worth $7B more than their debt, and their market cap is only $900M as of the OP, so there’s an awful lot of space for good things to happen there just based on fundamentals.
I just got around to actually looking at Hertz’ most recent financials. Short version:
$19B of debt
$26B of assets, mostly highly illiquid (e.g. cars, property)
So this bankruptcy is not a situation where the company has negative net value, it’s a situation where the company doesn’t have the revenue to cover its debt-servicing costs in the short term, because their assets aren’t liquid. But the company’s assets are still worth substantially more than their debt, so it seems reasonably likely that stockholders will still end up with a fair bit of value. Indeed, assuming Hertz isn’t forced into a fire-sale, their assets are (supposedly) worth $7B more than their debt, and their market cap is only $900M as of the OP, so there’s an awful lot of space for good things to happen there just based on fundamentals.