Almacenes Internacionales S.A. (RAISA)

What it is

RAISA was founded in May 1992 to provide general warehousing and deposit services, including the custody and conservation of goods pledged as collateral, and the issuance of the negotiable warehouse receipts that represent them. Think of it as a bonded custodian: a borrower deposits grain or merchandise at a RAISA warehouse, RAISA issues a certificate (called a warrant or certificado de depósito), and the borrower takes that certificate to a bank as collateral for a loan.

RAISA is constituted as a corporation under the direct regulation of Bolivia’s financial-services regulator ASFI, and is legally empowered to issue negotiable warehouse receipts — Certificados de Depósito and Bonos de Prenda Warrant — as well as Control Prenda documents. Its operations span the departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz.

Who owns it

Until October 2017, Banco BISA S.A. was the direct controlling parent of RAISA and of the wider group; from November 2017, control passed to a newly created holding company, Grupo Financiero BISA S.A., which now controls all group entities. At 30 June 2024 — confirmed in Grupo Financiero BISA’s own audited half-year accounts — Grupo Financiero BISA S.A. holds 9,649 shares in Almacenes Internacionales S.A. RAISA, representing 87.72% of the company’s capital.

The remaining ~12.3% is a free float traded on the BBV.

Grupo Financiero BISA is Bolivia’s largest private financial conglomerate, combining Banco BISA (one of the country’s biggest commercial banks), two insurance companies, a leasing arm, a broker-dealer, a mutual-fund manager, and RAISA itself. The holding company’s paid-in capital stands at Bs 1,540,335,700 (~USD 224.5 m), represented by 15,403,357 ordinary shares.

Who runs it

Lic. Leonardo Cronenbold G.

serves as General Manager (Gerente General) of RAISA, a position he has held continuously across the financial statements from at least 2018 through the audited 2024 Memoria Anual. Lic.

Sergio Oropeza V. serves as Contador General (chief accountant / CFO-equivalent).

The company’s supervisory syndic (an independent fiscal officer required by Bolivian corporate law) is identified on the RAISA corporate-governance page as Patricia Urquieta. Board directors’ and the syndic’s fees are approved annually by the General Shareholders’ Meeting.

The money, in plain words

RAISA earns fees for holding other people’s goods and issuing the paper that lets those goods serve as loan collateral — a toll-booth model with very little capital at risk. At year-end 2022, the total value of merchandise held in custody across Bolivia’s formal warehouse system was approximately Bs 972 million (~USD 142 m), of which RAISA’s share was around 28% — roughly Bs 272 m (~USD 40 m) of goods under its roof.

That custody volume, not a large balance sheet, is the engine of revenue.

The company is deliberately small: it employs 28 people. Its paid-in capital is only Bs 11 million (~USD 1.6 m), which means every boliviano of equity works hard.

For 2025, management is targeting average custody values above Bs 350 million, driven by agroindustry and commercial clients, with particular attention to the agricultural harvest cycle. In 2024, a specific fee line grew by Bs 432,011, a 2.91% increment year-on-year.

The full 2024 revenue and net-profit totals are contained in the audited Memoria Anual PDF but were not extractable from available web sources; readers requiring exact income-statement figures should consult the filing directly at raisabisa.com.

What it is doing now

RAISA’s 2024 Memoria Anual — covering the financial year ended 31 December 2024 and carrying an unmodified (clean) audit opinion — was published in July 2025, confirming the company’s financial position, results, and cash flows for the period. One material disclosure in that filing is a legal contingency: a criminal investigation by Bolivia’s public prosecutor into drug trafficking charges involves a field-storage site leased by a third-party client (Indubolma S.R.L.), where merchandise was seized in a raid; RAISA is a party to the proceedings, which remain under investigation.

Management has stated this does not materially affect the financial statements.

After 31 December 2024 and up to the date of the financial-statement issuance, no events or circumstances arose that significantly affect the 2024 figures. On the ownership side, Grupo Financiero BISA transferred its 99.91% stake in BISA Sociedad de Titularización S.A. to Mateo Kuljis Cochamanidis in September 2024 — a group restructuring that does not affect RAISA’s ownership but signals the conglomerate is actively managing its portfolio of regulated entities.

What to watch

• Agricultural cycle: RAISA’s custody volumes — and therefore its fee income — move with Bolivia’s soybean and commercial import seasons. A poor harvest or disruption to Santa Cruz’s agro-export corridor is the single biggest revenue risk.
• Legal contingency: The drug-trafficking investigation involving a RAISA-managed field site is unresolved. An adverse finding could carry reputational and regulatory consequences for a company whose entire business model rests on being a trusted, ASFI-licensed custodian.
• Parent-group health: With Grupo Financiero BISA owning 87.72%, RAISA’s strategic direction and dividend policy are effectively set in La Paz, not Santa Cruz. Any pressure on the parent group — from Bolivia’s ongoing foreign-currency squeeze or tighter ASFI capital rules — flows straight down to the subsidiary.
• Liquidity: The shares trade on the BBV but the float is thin (~12%). Price discovery is limited, and any investor wanting meaningful size will move the market.

This is news, not investment advice.