FARMACIA CHÁVEZ S.A.

What it is

Farmacias Chávez is a Bolivian company whose core business is selling medicines, hospital supplies, and personal-care products to the public. From a single outlet, it has grown into one of the country’s most important pharmacy chains, with more than 120 active branches, over 9,000 products, and more than one million customers served each month.

The chain holds the largest share of the retail pharmacy market in three departments: Beni (75–80%), Oruro (50–55%), and Santa Cruz (60–65%). In 2019 it became the first pharmacy company in Bolivia to list securities on the Bolsa Boliviana de Valores.

Who owns it

The company was founded by Dr. Ana María Chávez Hurtado — a biochemist-pharmacist who graduated with honours in 1980 — and she remains the majority shareholder; what began as a personal venture grew into a national chain from 2006 onwards.

The business is the property of the Salvatierra Chávez family. The group is defined by its deep family roots, and the exact percentage held by each family member is not disclosed in publicly available sources.

No outside institutional shareholder is identified in the filings reviewed.

Who runs it

Leonardo Salvatierra Chávez serves as CEO (Gerente General) of the chain. He holds an MBA from the Adolfo Ibáñez School of Management (USA), specialisations in project management and retail management, and a bachelor’s degree in economic engineering from UPSA, Santa Cruz.

He is supported by his siblings Ana María and José Eduardo Salvatierra in running the business. The CFO and board chair are named in the ASFI prospectus filed July 2025, but those pages of the document were not accessible for parsing; they are not disclosed in the sources reviewed here.

The money, in plain words

In the nine months to September 2021 — the most recent period with publicly verified figures — sales reached Bs 310.6 million (~US$31.5M at the prompt rate), up 15.4% from the same period a year earlier. No full-year 2024 audited revenue figure was accessible in the primary sources parsed for this profile.

For every boliviano of assets the company held, it earned about 1.4 cents — a return on assets (ROA) of 1.37%; for every boliviano of owners’ equity, it earned about 6.3 cents — a return on equity (ROE) of 6.31%. Those are thin margins typical of high-volume, low-margin retail pharmacy, where the real competitive advantage is scale and branch density, not pricing power.

Bond covenants require shareholder meetings to approve any dividend distribution, capped at a maximum of 10% of annual profits — meaning the company retains nearly all its earnings to fund expansion, a conservative posture that supports its investment-grade bond ratings.

What it is doing now

With nearly four decades of history, Farmacias Chávez is evolving from a single-brand retailer into an integrated business group — “Grupo Chávez” — that consolidates assets and organisational culture under one holding structure, announced in January 2026.

In 2025 alone, the company launched three capital-market instruments: a commercial paper programme of up to Bs 105M (~US$10.7M), bonds of Bs 120M (~US$12.2M) authorised by ASFI resolution 652/2025 of 29 July 2025, and a second bond issue — “Bonos Farmacias Chávez II” — of Bs 173M (~US$17.6M), registered as ASFI/DSV-ED-FCZ-006/2026. That is roughly US$40M raised across three instruments in under a year, a heavy push to fund its next expansion phase.

What to watch

• Full-year financials. The 2025 bond prospectus contains audited financial statements (referenced as pages 77–97 in the document index) that are not yet accessible for public parsing — when available, revenue and net margin will clarify whether the 2021 growth trajectory held through Bolivia’s dollar-shortage crisis of 2023–24.
• Bolivia’s hard-currency shortage. The country has faced acute US-dollar scarcity since 2023, pushing up import costs for medicines; as a retailer that buys from importers and distributors, Chávez’s margins are exposed.
• Grupo Chávez holding transition. The move from a single operating company to a holding group is structurally significant — watch for new subsidiaries, governance disclosures, and any change in bond covenant terms.
• Debt load. Three capital raises in 2025–2026 add up to ~Bs 398M (~US$40.4M) in new obligations. With thin ROA and a historically constrained cash position, debt-service coverage ratios will be the number to watch.
• Bond rating from Pacific Credit Rating stands at investment grade with a stable outlook — any downgrade would raise the cost of the company’s next round of borrowing.

This is news, not investment advice.