Fábrica Nacional de Cemento S.A. (FANCESA)

What it is

FANCESA was authorised by the Bolivian government on 21 January 1959 as a joint venture among the Universidad Mayor de San Francisco Xavier, the Municipality of Sucre, and the Bolivian Development Corporation, with its legal domicile in Sucre and the primary purpose of mining limestone and other raw materials needed to make cement. It is today Bolivia’s largest single cement plant by capacity, selling under the FANCESA brand nationwide and beginning to reach into export markets.

The company holds roughly 28% of the national cement market, with Santa Cruz historically accounting for 52% of its output — though that has recently shifted as the company now sells more directly from its Sucre plant. Its product range runs from standard 50-kg retail bags to bulk deliveries by tanker truck for large construction projects.

Who owns it

The three shareholders each hold almost exactly one-third of the company: the Gobierno Autónomo Municipal de Sucre (33.33%), the Universidad San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca (33.33%), and the Gobierno Autónomo Departamental de Chuquisaca (33.34%) — together making up 100% of the 207,243 shares outstanding. There is no private or foreign capital and no free float; the company answers entirely to three Bolivian public institutions.

This fully public structure was cemented in 2011 when the Bolivian government reversed, by Supreme Decree, a 33.34% stake that Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento (SOBOCE) — whose shareholder is businessman Samuel Doria Medina — had held in FANCESA. The buyout price remained disputed for years, underscoring how politically contested control of this company has always been.

Who runs it

Néstor Guido Calvo Miranda, a representative of the Universidad San Francisco Xavier, serves as President of the Board of Directors. He assumed the chairmanship in September 2024, at a moment when the factory owed four months of unpaid wages to its workers.

Jorge Camargo serves as General Manager (gerente general). Javier Agrada is the Finance and Administrative Manager, whose team has focused on renegotiating the company’s bond debt and stabilising its cash position.

The money, in plain words

In its gestión fabril 2023 (July 2022 to March 2023), FANCESA sold just under 15 million bags of cement and generated Bs 646.6 million (~USD 94.4 million) in revenue. The following year — gestión 2023–24 — the consolidated group reported a net loss of Bs 90 million (~USD 13.1 million), part of a run of losses stretching back a decade.

The gestión fabril 2024–25 (July 2024 to March 2025) produced the worst single-year result in the company’s six-decade history: a consolidated net loss of Bs 96.6 million (~USD 14.1 million), bringing total cumulative losses since 2022 to more than Bs 202 million (~USD 29.5 million). Crucially, most of that reported loss came not from weak trading but from writing down long-ignored accounting adjustments: without those corrections, the group would have shown a profit of Bs 38 million (~USD 5.5 million).

To finance a new production line, the company took on total debt of Bs 1.39 billion (~USD 203 million) through bank loans and bond issuances; by mid-2025 roughly 46% had been repaid, with the remainder due by 2031. The annual debt-service burden (principal plus interest) was running at roughly Bs 13–14 million per month before a successful renegotiation eased the schedule.

The company’s total net worth (equity on the books) stands at Bs 1.474 billion (~USD 215 million). For the gestión fabril 2025–26 (ending March 2026), FANCESA projects revenue of approximately Bs 858 million (~USD 125.3 million), a growth of roughly 25% year-on-year (our calculation).

What it is doing now

FANCESA reported a projected net profit of more than Bs 58 million (~USD 8.5 million) for gestión 2025–26 — its first positive result in roughly seven years — confirming that a financial recovery is under way. The company has not distributed dividends to its three public shareholders since 2018, but management says reinstatement of a dividend is now on the table.

FANCESA also abandoned a formal request to restructure its bond repayment schedule — having concluded it now has sufficient cash flow to meet its obligations on the original terms. A new export channel to Chile is also in preparation, with regulatory permits nearly complete and a 25-kg reutilisable bag designed specifically for the Chilean market.

What to watch

• Audit track record: Years of unresolved audit qualifications drove the headline losses of 2024–25; clean financial statements in 2025–26 would be the clearest signal that governance has genuinely improved.
• Bond repayment runway: Of a total bond and bank debt of more than Bs 1.5 billion (~USD 219 million) tied to the new production line, roughly 60% had been paid by early 2026, with the balance due through 2031. Any demand slowdown or fuel shortage could tighten cash flow against those fixed payments.
• Export ambitions vs. domestic politics: Chuquisaca (38%) has overtaken Santa Cruz (27%) as FANCESA’s biggest market — a structural shift. Success in Chile would diversify revenue; but road blockades and fuel scarcity have repeatedly disrupted production, and Bolivia’s macroeconomic strains show no sign of easing quickly.
• Governance stability: All three shareholders are government bodies with different political principals; board-level instability has historically been the company’s biggest operational risk.

This is news, not investment advice.