Lula el Socialista
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El riesgo de la deuda de Petrobas sube a sus niveles mas altos en 18 meses debido a la preocupacion de el aumento del control por parte del gobierno.
Petroleo Brasilero esta perdiendo la confianza de los inversionistas debido al temor de que su deuda sea rebajada.
Los swaps de cinco anios de Petrobas subieron a 177 puntos basicos o 1.77% comparado con 117 que es la deuda de Brasil. La semana pasada el spreads subio a su punto mas alto o 61 puntos basicos y es el mas grande desde Julio del 2009. La deuda de Petrobas es mejor a la de Brasil de acuerdo a Moody's en dos niveles.
Petrobras Debt Risk to 18-Month High on State Control Concerns
By Tal Barak Harif - Aug 2, 2010 8:17 AM EDT Mon Aug 02 12:17:08 UTC 2010
Jose Sergio Gabrelli, chief executive officer of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, speaks during an interview in Sao Paulo. Photographer: Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg
Petroleo Brasileiro SA is losing investor confidence on concern its credit rating will be cut after a Brazilian plan raised the relative risk associated with the state-run oil producer’s debt to the highest in 18 months.
Five-year credit default swaps on Petrobras, as the company is known, cost 177 basis points, or 1.77 percentage points, compared with 117 for contracts on Brazil debt, according to prices compiled by CMA DataVision. Last week the spread reached 61 basis points, the widest since January 2009. Petrobras is graded two levels higher than the government by Moody’s Investors Service.
Investors are growing more convinced Petrobras’s debt ratings will be cut as a planned share-for-oil swap with the government and energy policy changes undermine the company’s autonomy, said Eduardo Suarez, an emerging-markets strategist at Royal Bank of Canada. The exchange, part of a strategy to finance a $224 billion investment plan for developing the largest oil discovery in three decades, may lead the government to take a bigger stake in the Rio de Janeiro-based producer.
“The two bonds should be rated the same especially since over time their dependence of each other increases with the government’s control increasing in Petrobras,” Suarez said in a telephone interview from Toronto. “There’s a risk that their rating will be downgraded.”
‘Upper Limits’
Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli, 60, said in an April 30 interview in Sao Paulo the company doesn’t plan to sell bonds this year because it’s reaching the “upper limits” of debt ratios before putting credit ratings at risk.
Credit default swaps for Petrobras shouldn’t be viewed in isolation because oil companies with deep water exposure have seen these contracts rise following the BP Plc spill in April, according to an e-mailed statement from the press department at Petrobras.
“The business plan announced in June is consistent with the goal of creating value in the long term, while the capitalization aims at allowing the company to maintain a sound financial position and its investment grade status,” Petrobras said in the statement.
Standard & Poor’s cut Petrobras one level to BBB-, the lowest investment grade and the same rating as Brazil’s government, a year ago on concern the investment program was too big. Fitch Ratings Ltd. grades Petrobras one level higher than the government at BBB while Moody’s rates the company two levels higher at Baa1.
Growth Prospects
Moody’s said its rating on Petrobras reflects the company’s future prospects.
“There aren’t that many companies that have the growth potential,” Thomas Coleman, a Moody’s analyst, said in a telephone interview from New York. “Corporates can pledge export revenues to service their debt and Brazil wouldn’t allow the company to be compromised by a debt moratorium.”
Oil regulations introduced by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 64, late last year include plans to exchange as much as 5 billion barrels of deepwater reserves for stock in Petrobras, where the state currently holds a 32 percent stake.
The value of the oil will determine the size of a planned equity offering to minority holders, which was delayed in June until September pending a valuation of the reserves by a government agency.
Yield Widens
The size of the stock sale will determine to what extent Petrobras needs to issue more debt, “and that could impact its credit metrics,” Jose Luis Villanueva, a director at Fitch, said in a phone interview from New York on June 25. Villanueva has since left the company. Fitch spokesman Brian Bertsch and S&P spokesman Marcos Viesi said analysts weren’t immediately available to comment.
The extra yield investors demand to own Brazilian government dollar bonds instead of U.S. Treasuries widened 10 basis points on July 30 to 214. The spread has increased from 196 at the end of April.
The real rose 0.48 percent to 1.7466 per dollar at 9:12 a.m. in Sao Paulo (8:12 a.m. in New York) after a gain in July of 2.8 percent. The yield on Brazil’s interest-rate futures contract due in January, the most active in Sao Paulo trading, rose 1 basis point to 10.77 percent after dropping 60 basis points last month.
Petrobras’s 5.75 percent bonds due in 2020 have rallied this year, sending yields down 68 basis points to 4.87 percent. Yields on Brazil’s 12.75 percent bonds due in 2020 declined 93 basis points in the same period to 4.23 percent.
Higher Expense
The yield on Petrobras’s 2020 bonds hit a record 110 basis points over similar-maturity Brazil government notes on May 6.
At 177 basis points, it now costs $177,000 to insure Petrobras debt against default for five years, an increase of 55 basis points since Dec. 31. Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a government or company fail to adhere to its debt agreements.
The cost of protecting Petrobras debt against non-payment has surged on concern that deep-water drilling costs will jump after BP’s rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The contracts on Petrobras, the largest oil producer in waters below 1,000 feet, climbed 47 basis points since April 20, when the explosion occurred. Contracts for Brazil’s debt rose six basis points during the same period.
Lula’s administration will have the “final word” on the price of the reserves to be exchanged in the Petrobras offering, Energy Minister Marcio Zimmermann said in a telephone interview from Guarulhos, outside of Sao Paulo, on July 16. The government may set a different price on the deepwater reserves than what was recommended in an audit by the National Petroleum Agency, he said.
Rule Changes
If the swap “changes the rules, from oil companies paying royalties, to where the oil belongs to the state, and Petrobras is the operator, that means Petrobras will increasingly become asset light and then the default rate will be more tied in with Brazil’s,” said Esther Chan, who helps manage $5 billion of emerging-market assets at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc in London.
The Mines and Energy Ministry declined to comment in an e- mailed statement. The press office at the Presidential Palace forwarded Bloomberg’s request to the Finance Ministry, which didn’t respond.
Tupi Field
Petrobras plans to double output to 5.38 million barrels a day by 2020, mainly from deepwater oil fields in Brazil including Tupi, the largest discovery in the Americas since Pemex found Cantarell in 1976.
The stock tumbled 27 percent in the first half of 2010, its worst start to a year since 1995, compared with a 47 percent drop for London-based BP, which faces billions of dollars in damages from the explosion that led to the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. BP said last week that it booked a pretax charge of $32.2 billion related to the oil spill. The company’s default swaps have surged to 321 basis points from 43 on April 20.
“What’s happening is a reflection in the capital markets that Petrobras has uncertainties and bondholders are looking for some protection,” Christopher Palmer, who oversees $5 billion as head of global emerging-market stocks at Gartmore Investment Management Ltd., said in a phone interview from London. “Investors are worried that the government is looking to strengthen its hand vis-a-vis Petrobras and may be taking some of their revenues.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Tal Barak Harif in New York at
tbarak@bloomberg.net.