Americanas will need more capital, says Rial, after leaving the company’s presidency

The former president of Americanas Sergio Rial participated in a conference this Thursday (12) with investors, organized by the BTG Pactual bank and accompanied online in part by Sheet. The executive tried to explain the accounting problems disclosed the day before by the company, which indicate a deficit of R$ 20 billion in the company’s accounts, related to debts with suppliers.

Rial stated that, despite being in charge of Americanas for only nine days (he was announced in August, but only took office on the last 2nd), he found failures in identifying bank financing that should have been reported as debt.

In Americanas’ financing contracts for the payment of suppliers, the amount did not appear as a debt.

According to Rial, he identified “signs that perhaps the level of transparency and perhaps the willingness of management itself to want to talk about problems and challenges was not as fluid in the organization as it should be.”

The last two years of Americanas balance sheets will need to be adjusted, he said, to reflect the total expenses with suppliers. “There is no doubt that the company will need to be capitalized,” said Rial, in the investor presentation.

This Wednesday (12), the company disclosed a material fact stating only that in a “preliminary” analysis it identified accounting “inconsistencies” that add up to R$ 20 billion, but that it believes that “the cash effect of these inconsistencies is immaterial” – that is , which at first, at least, the effect is accounting, not financial (no cash will come out of the cash to pay the debt).

Americanas’ market value hovered around R$11 billion until yesterday.

Rial and the then director of investor relations at the company, André Covre, then resigned in view of the “inconsistencies” in the balance sheet.

Shares of Americanas indicated a strong fall on Thursday. The movement dragged other companies down, such as Ambev, Via and Magazine Luiza.

(With Reuters)

AMERICANAS SA X-RAY

3rd quarter of 2022
Net Revenue: BRL 5.4 billion
EBITDA: BRL 582.3 million
Net loss: BRL 211.6 million
Shops: 3,601
Employees: about 40 thousand