Let's face it, The Bears, aka, Short Sellers, aka, connections to "SELL SIDE INVESTMENT
FIRMS" like MS, and analyst, Simon Sayz Lumen can't grow Flannery, in our case, have historically and today been the absolute winners in keeping these valuable ASSETS DEPRESSED through those "debt windows" especially by trading shenanigans through their trading pits with hedges derived from illegal na--d short selling, market maker exemptions and more.
But there is always room for STORY TELLING to overconfident, greedy, destructive "shorts" in Financial History, especially for VALUABLE, COMPELLING, IRREPLACEABLE ASSETS that are owned by Lumen today.
Those assets still equate to greater than $150B "Cost New," and their PRODUCTION VALUE--pipes to be filled with high margin revenues-- has never been greater since it was built.
Glad you mentioned BR and VANGUARD who use public capital especially retail investors money to run their SHOW. They're the ones who just cost the same 1,200 people whose assets they are entrusted to manage their jobs creating undue stress on their families at this hour.
Initially, I had thought this recent bondholder CRAM DOWN might have included Warren Buffett in a large way, but I seem to be wrong by reading some of the press, so it just may be him who teaches the rest of Wall Street a lesson as one of his final acts, since he has direct involvement in creating this NETWORK from the BEGINNING.
He gets especially excited over Railroad History and "Corners" between Titans in that Industry's past with The Great Northern Pacific Corner being one of his all time favorites.
Today, he owns the ROW's for Lumen's fiber traversing the Good Ole U.S.A. The outer lying years still in front of us are more expensive "leases" than is current, and it was stated he helped his friend, the builder of the Level 3 Network, Walter Scott, in earlier days when he purchased it, escape the competition and higher costs different owners may have attempted to levy against them as one factor as well as to protect the long term moat by controlling its path.
So, let the BIDDING WARS begin since you must also know Bill Gates created the vision for building this network, and we know Kate has direct relationships there.
Maybe Buffett will just offer to pay $20-well below fair value and still a steal--but the stock will go to $100 or maybe $1,000 since "shorts" will never find the shares to cover, mostly because there are an indeterminable amount that were NEVER borrowed or located "legally" so they've been selling VAPORWARE for decades still!
Is that enough Story Telling for you? Too optimistic? O.K. we'll take $10.00 from Uncle Warren tomorrow, but that Corner Effect discussed before the deal closes is still in force!