knife catcher schreef op 29 januari 2015 19:02:
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deel II
Mesnik, the managing partner at São Paulo-based Humaitá Investimentos, which has 180 million reais under management. “When it didn’t [announce a write-down], the credibility went down the drain and nothing else matters. We need to see, as investors, a credible statement with the numbers.”
Shares fell more than 11% in morning trading in São Paulo and more than 12% in New York. Shares have fallen 44% in the last three months.
The corruption scheme involves three former Petrobras executives, some of Brazil’s largest construction-companies, and a group of money launderers that allegedly colluded to inflate the cost of Petrobras contracts, and then pocketed the difference. The three former Petrobras executives have been charged with money laundering and corruption. More than 30 people have been indicted so far, and more arrests are expected in the case, which is known as Operation Car Wash.
Petrobras had indicated that it would include a write-down based on the cost of those inflated contracts in its earnings report, and the company says that it has been working since November to tally the financial damage from the alleged corruption scheme, but that doing so now is “impracticable.”
“The testimonies examined by Petrobras have indicated the commission of unlawful acts, such as cartelization of suppliers and former employees taking bribes, indicating that the payments to such suppliers were improperly recognized as part of the cost of our fixed assets, therefore requiring adjustments,” Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster said in a statement on Wednesday.
Ms. Foster said disclosing a specific amount wasn’t possible “since the [illegal] payments were made by external suppliers and cannot be traced back to the company’s accounting records.”
Petrobras said it considered two possible approaches to quantifying the alleged corruption. The first would include alleged improper payments specifically mentioned in the probe as well as 3% of the value of contracts signed with the companies under investigation. That methodology resulted in “an estimated loss of BRL4.06 billion.”
‘The testimonies examined by Petrobras have indicated the commission of unlawful acts, such as cartelization of suppliers and former employees taking bribes, indicating that the payments to such suppliers were improperly recognized as part of the cost of our fixed assets, therefore requiring adjustments.’
—Petrobras Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster, on Wednesday..
The other approach Petrobras considered was to have certain assets appraised by independent auditors to determine the difference between their fair value and their book value.
Ms. Foster said Petrobras and its independent auditors appraised 188.4 billion reais in fixed assets—about one-third of the company’s property, plant and equipment—that were contracted with companies mentioned in Operation Car Wash between 2004 and April 2014, when the corruption allegedly took place. The assets’ fair value was determined to be 61.4 billion reais less than their book value.
“Everyone acknowledges that quantifying the impacts of corruption on the value of assets is difficult. The problem is the lack of transparency,” said Rogerio Freitas, a fund manager at Rio de Janeiro’s Teórica Investimentos, which has around $100 million under management. “The range is so big that it shows how little transparency the process has.”
ENLARGE
Petrobras Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster at a meeting with journalists in Rio de Janeiro last month. She said on Wednesday that Petrobras and its independent auditors had appraised 188.4 billion reais in fixed assets—about one-third of the company’s total. Photo: Reuters
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Petrobras’ balance sheet wasn’t entirely without impairment charges, however. The company wrote off a total of 2.71 billion reais related to the construction of two refineries, Premium I and Premium II, in northeastern Brazil, after deciding not to move forward with them.
The company also provided more details on a slowdown in its ambitious spending program, saying that it would reduce the pace of investments in certain projects, though it declined to say which projects, and its new budget for this year would be between $31 billion and $33 billion. Previously, the company was averaging around $44 billion a year as part of a plan to spend more than $220 billion by 2018, primarily on ramping up offshore oil production.
The delay in reporting its earnings had effectively shut off Petrobras’ access to capital markets, a major concern for investors since Petrobras is among the most indebted oil companies in the world, with some $170 billion in debt, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
On Wednesday, Petrobras said it would not need to access debt markets in 2015 “due to steps that will increase cash flow.”
That contrasts with a report by Fitch Ratings earlier this week that said Petrobras would likely require “at least” $15 billion to $25 billion of financing in 2015. The amount included $11 billion in debt maturing this year as well as the expected gap between the company’s cash flow and its capital expenditures.
Fitch said it expected the Brazilian government to step in with loan guarantees or direct financing from state development bank BNDES to cover the shortfall.
Financial ratings firms have threatened to downgrade Petrobras' credit if it continued to delay reporting its earnings.
In addition to Brazilian authorities, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department are conducting their own investigations into alleged wrongdoing at Petrobras.
Petrobras is also the target of more than a dozen class-action lawsuits in New York, where Petrobras shares are traded. The suits allege that Petrobras willfully misled investors about the alleged corruption.
Petrobras says that it is cooperating with these investigations, and has set up an internal compliance division to deal with possible issues of impropriety going forward.
—Rogerio Jelmayer contributed to this article.