Forestal Cholguán S.A.

What it is

Forestal Cholguán grows and manages renewable forestry resources, with a commitment to sustainable environmental practices and community dialogue. In practice, the company’s entire output — 100% of ordinary revenues come from the forestry segment, with all product sales denominated in US dollars — goes to a single buyer: its parent.

At the start of its activities the company held 11,059 hectares of forest land, mainly radiata pine. It has grown into a substantial land manager: as of 2022 the total estate covers 86,432 hectares, of which about 57,399 hectares are company-owned plantations — roughly 49,718 ha of radiata pine and 7,605 ha of eucalyptus — plus 17,634 hectares of native forest protected and conserved.

During 2022 the company planted 4,990 hectares and harvested 4,277 hectares, producing 1,877,553 cubic metres of logs from its own estate. It holds dual sustainable-forestry certifications — FSC® and CERTFOR/PEFC — maintained through annual external audits.

Who owns it

The single shareholder controlling more than 10% of the company is Forestal Arauco S.A., which holds 98.64% of all shares; the remaining 1.36% is in minority hands. That near-total concentration is why the shares are illiquid and the DCV (Chile’s central securities depository) cancelled their registration in April 2018.

Forestal Arauco S.A. is itself controlled by Empresas Copec S.A., which holds 99.978% of its parent Celulosa Arauco y Constitución S.A.; ultimate control traces to Roberto Angelini Rossi and Patricia Angelini Rossi through Inversiones Angelini y Cía. Cholguán is thus several layers deep inside one of Chile’s most powerful industrial families.

Who runs it

The board is chaired by Álvaro Saavedra F., with directors Iván Chamorro L., Jorge Garnham M., Jorge Serón F., and Robinson Tajmuch V. The general manager (CEO equivalent) is Juan Pablo Ventura A., who also serves as manager of the three agricultural subsidiaries — Agrícola Ranquillón, Agrícola Siberia, and Agrícola Trupán — all created in August 2022.

The company’s external auditors are PwC Chile. No CFO is separately named in the available annual report.

The money, in plain words

The company reports in US dollars because its functional currency is the US dollar — all log sales and the bulk of its plantation costs are dollar-denominated. In 2022 it earned an operating profit — the amount left after running the forests — of US$21.8m, and after tax it kept US$18.1m (roughly CLP 16.7bn (US$18 mn) at today’s rate — our calculation).

That is a sharp drop from US$41.3m in 2021, when timber markets were stronger.

Revenue as a standalone figure is not publicly itemised in the annual report; all sales flow under a private log-supply contract with Forestal Arauco S.A., so net margin and return on equity cannot be independently calculated from available public sources. The balance sheet, audited by PwC Chile and prepared under IFRS, is filed with Chile’s financial regulator CMF but the detailed income statement figures beyond the profit summary above are not extracted in publicly accessible form.

In May 2022 the company paid dividend №45 of US$0.100 per share (charged to 2021 earnings), totalling US$37m; in December 2022 it paid an extraordinary dividend №46 of US$0.249 per share, totalling US$92m — charged to accumulated retained earnings. Together those two payments in a single year dwarfed the year’s own profit, drawing down reserves built up over prior years.

What it is doing now

A Trupán–Cholguán modernisation and renewal project was announced by the Arauco group in mid-2024, with an estimated investment of US$92m; operations are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2026, with an average workforce of 200. This investment runs through Cholguán’s sibling entities and suggests the Arauco group is upgrading the processing infrastructure that depends on Cholguán’s log supply.

The company was established in January 1979, taking on the forestry assets and liabilities of Maderas Prensadas Cholguán S.A. From April 2000, Forestal Celco S.A. — part of what is now the Arauco group — took control, moving the registered headquarters to Constitución. After more than four decades of majority ownership by Arauco, the company operates as an integrated forestry-supply subsidiary rather than an autonomous listed entity.

What to watch

• Log-price cycle. The entire top line is driven by timber prices paid by Forestal Arauco S.A. under a privately set contract; movements in global pulp and sawn-timber markets flow straight through to Cholguán’s profit.
• Trupán–Cholguán capex. The US$92m investment due on stream in Q2 2026 will test whether the log-supply contract terms improve for Cholguán or simply cement its role as a cost-centre inside Arauco.
• Wildfire risk. Constitución and the Maule region are high-fire-risk zones; a major fire event would hit the asset base — the standing timber — directly and durably.
• Minority shareholder value. With 98.64% held by the parent, dividends to the 1.36% minority depend entirely on decisions made upstairs at Arauco and Copec; the 2022 extraordinary dividend was large, but there is no structural compulsion to repeat it.

This is news, not investment advice.