Well I guess its all academic @sharks37 Companies are "valued"...

Well I guess its all academic @sharks37

Companies are "valued" all the time and in the end it always ends up with cash generating capability of the assets and what they are ultimately worth.

Investment Banks, Capital Funds, Commercial Banks, Private Equity all do some kind of analysis on the basis they all have a required rate of return to make an investment and have to figure out the expected returns of the company asset.

Did AKK mgmt do no analysis before deciding to buy IOG Florence property for the amount offered? Maybe it was discussed over a beer and back of the envelope discussion but I would hope for shareholders sake it was more than that. Clearly not something you'd hire Goldman Sachs for but nonetheless you need to do some analysis. The result in some fashion will come from PV analysis of cash flows and discount rates appropriate to their WACC.

Fast forward to the "debt funding" being "proposed". If you are thinking Reserves Based Loan from a bank then think again. There are many forms of corporate debt the question is the terms. Only to use as an illustration lets say AKK was going to offer $10M in corporate bonds paying a Qtrly coupon of 10% over a term of 5 yrs and each note has face value of $1,000 and they hired an investment broker to sell the deal. Buyers of junk bonds would look at it but they wouldn't pay $1,000. They would look at it in the light of what is comparable (and also comparable risk).

AKK would be committed to paying approx $25/Qtr in interest (the 10% coupon) and $1,000 in 5 yrs
Bond purchaser who requires 15% return will offer $826.30 for the bond
Bond purchaser who requires 20% return will offer $688.44 for the bond
As you see there is a significant discount to the cash price that the issuer is receiving.

So its all academic. Just like their cash flows

I do agree that it rapidly becoming a purely binary outcome - unless as @dianella68 suggests rinse and repeat occurs.