Losing even a bad parent can be rough, as SunEdison’s (NYSE: SUNE) abruptly orphaned yieldcos are discovering.

The fledglings are hurriedly learning to do for themselves what their bankrupt sponsor can’t or won’t, from operating the solar arrays and wind farms to producing the required financial filings.

They’re doing so under the watchful eyes of vultures looking to punish signs of weakness. These include the yieldcos’ own creditors as well as SunEdison’s; hedge fund managers and regulators have their own agendas.

Financial media is on the case as well, questioning the very survival of TerraForm Power (NASDAQ: TERP) and TerraForm Global (NASDAQ: GLBL). This is based on little more than the boilerplate cautions the Terraforms have offered while explaining why they haven’t yet filed either year-end or first-quarter financials.

In addition to the self-help, the yieldcos must sort through the accounting disarray bequeathed to them by SunEdison, including material weaknesses in internal controls, allegations of misconduct made by former employees and the resulting Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

Until they do so, dividend payments last made in November are likely to remain on hold. For an income vehicle without recent yield or a viable sponsor, Aggressive Portfolio recommendation TERP has done pretty well just to tread water over the last month, and since December.

In fact, the drift lower since April’s end has come on negligible trading volume. That suggests that sophisticated institutional investors like David Tepper’s Appalloosa Management are not among the sellers. In fact, Tepper’s firm added to its TERP stake during the first quarter while also initiating a position in GLBL.

Such investors know that the yieldcos are largely shielded from creditors’ claims on SunEdison,  while their cash flows are protected by long-term, fixed power purchase agreements with investment-grade counterparties. 

Source: TerraForm presentation, May 5, 2016

SunEdison’s minority but controlling stake in the yieldcos represents the bulk of the asset value available to its creditors. As such, the most plausible outcome remains that these assets are sold to a party that would find them most valuable, likely another renewable projects developer. The buy might then either merge TERP and GLBL with its own yieldco or else use them as separate financing vehicles. In either case, the share prices should then reflect more typical industry yields, which are in the 6% range versus more than 15% for TERP based on last year’s payouts.

Complicated bankruptcy cases can be unpredictable and of course there can be no assurance that a buyer able to grow TERP’s asset base will be found. But we believe the discounted share price more than fully reflects such risks.

Aggressive pick TERP is the #8 Best Buy below $10.