If the bankruptcy filing from Century Communications Corp., a unit of Adelphia Communications is any indication, any additional filings from crisis-ridden Adelphia, which has many layers of debt, will prove long and arduous for all parties involved.

The likelihood that Adelphia will file for bankruptcy protection remains high, as the Century bankruptcy automatically triggers additional defaults across most of the companies' other credit and debt instruments. Late last week in the wake of disclosures of accounting irregularities at the embattled MSO (see page 20), certain Adelphia bond issues traded at less than half their face value, as investors digested the possibility that Adelphia has fewer, less valuable assets than previously believed.

Now, according to several news reports, Adelphia is trying to line up as much as $1.5 billion in financing to continue operations under bankruptcy protection. The company is already in default on as much as $7 billion in bank debt and as of Friday was expected to default by the end of a June 15 grace period an interest and dividend payment of about $45 million. Under a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Adelphia would be afforded the time to line up assets sales in an orderly fashion. If it fails to obtain the financing and is forced into bankruptcy by its creditors, it may enter into a Chapter 7 liquidation.

At this point, the banks have an impetus to provide additional loans under a debtor-in-possession scenario, as they would then be moved to the head of the creditor line. The Financial Times reported that Adelphia had approached Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney unit and JP Morgan, among other banks, for the financing.

With all the new disclosures, ?the question is, ?What are the subscribers worth??? queried Todd Bernier, a cable analyst at Morningstar. ?You've seen cable values come down.? Estimates for Adelphia's subscriber base range from about $2,500 to $3,500 per subscriber. Bernier says there may still be buyers willing to pay up to $3,500 per subscriber. Larger acquirers looking for scale would be able to reduce costs, thereby increasing the value of a system's cash flow.

Under the Rigas family, Adelphia pumped up the asset value of the company by reporting inflated revenue, cash flow and systems upgrade figures. Uncertainty still prevails: Even with Friday's appointment of PriceWaterhouseCoopers as Adelphia's new independent auditor, the company has given no firm date for when it will file its 2001 financials. Adelphia has been under fire since disclosing at least $3 billion in loans to the Rigas family in late March. Its shares have lost nearly their entire value since then. The company and the Rigas family still face investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal regulators as well as nearly two dozen suits seeking class-action status.

But under its new management, the company is trying to at least stay in favor with local franchise boards. It is now fully caught up on its payments to the city of Los Angeles, according to Liza Lowery, the chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles.

Last week's filing by Century Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of another Adelphia subsidiary that bears the same name, is just one of the many recent developments in the ongoing saga that has headlined business news pages for weeks and wreaked havoc on investor confidence in the cable sector. Adelphia dismissed its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, restated financial results for the past two years and introduced more conservative accounting policies.

Century, which filed for bankruptcy protection late last Monday after a 2 p.m. board meeting, filed to protect the units' assets, according to minutes of the meeting included in the filing. Those assets consist solely of 140,000 cable subscribers in systems in Puerto Rico that are held in a joint venture with Merrill Lynch called Century-ML Cable Venture, according to Eric Andrus, a spokesperson for Adelphia at Robinson Lerer Montgomery, a public relations firm specializing in corporate image building, crisis management and litigation support. Merrill and Adelphia have been in litigation since March 2000 over the sale of the systems, and Merrill had recently threatened to seize the systems if Adelphia didn't pay $275 million to buy out its stake in the joint venture.

The filing shed no light on the company's financial position and actually highlights how complicated the process could become should other Adelphia entities follow suit. Late Tuesday Adelphia's bankruptcy lawyers, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, filed a motion on behalf of Century asking for more time to gather the information it needs to file an affidavit explaining the specific conditions that led to the bankruptcy. That affidavit, typically required as part of an initial bankruptcy filing, should include the top 20 unsecured claims against the company, the five largest secured claims, a summary of assets and liabilities and a listing of the securities held by the entity, along with lists of property and senior management.

Due to the ?voluminous books and records and complex accounting system of the debtor and its various nondebtor affiliates,? the motion said, Century estimated it would take at least 30 days to gather the information for the affidavit.

Andrea Figler also contributed to this story.

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