Why Would Debt be Valued at Discount in Waterfall Technical Question?

Hello, could someone please explain the following technical: 

There's $150 cash on BS, why would $400 in debt be trading at 25 cents on the dollar.

A basic waterfall response would be that the debt is trading a bit above 37.5 cents on the dollar due to the possibility of a turnaround, but why may debt be trading the other way?

3 Comments
 

1. Maybe some of that cash is restricted.

2. Maybe there are other tranches of the capital structure (likely above but theoretically also below) that will receive some of the cash.

2a. More senior tranches obviously have priority.

2b. More junior tranches could have a covenant that requires some level of pay down.

3. Maybe these debt holders decided to give some recovery to more junior tranches like the equity.

There are definitely more reasons that I’m not thinking of, but here are a few off the top of my head. 

 
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