Hertz car rental has the #1 product in its industry, even its major competitor Avis agrees (“We’re number two“:-), and yet Hertz stock is plunging towards zero even as we speak. Stock price has nothing to do with product quality. Theranos, for example, had
a completely fictional product, yet it stock price skyrocketed.
I agree with the sentiment that stock value cannot be used to glean ~anything, certainly not something specific like 'marketability of product'. I'd be interested in reading paper where stock value is determined to be more reliable than random metric on anything except stock value.
However Hertz depreciation is caused by the anticipation that debtors will receive almost all of the equity, diluting the current owners by massive ratio. The value tries to reflect post-dilution value. My Stetson-Harrision analysis tells that current owners will end up owning less than 20% of Hertz and more than 80% goes to debtors.
So by that logic, 80% of Hertz value is currently not trading.
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