Investors More Optimistic About Brazil’s Petrobras in 2017

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – After two years of pessimistic outlooks for one of Brazil’s largest companies, investors are starting to regain some confidence in the country’s oil giant, Petrobras. Earlier this week the company was able to raise US$4 billion on the international market, double what it had predicted.

“They couldn’t have picked a better time,” Ricardo Navarro, a portfolio manager at Noctua told Reuters. “We are probably near pre-Trump levels.”

According to Petrobras officials, the funds raised will be used to repurchase bonds due until 2020. Officials say there is approximately US$10 billion worth of bonds maturing between January of 2019 and March of 2020.

In addition to selling off non-core businesses, Petrobras announced in December that it had received US$5 billion in financing from the China Development Bank (CDB). At the time the Company stated that there would be no further need for new net funding for the 2017-2018 period.

Furthermore, last week Petrobras announced it had received the remaining US$380 million from the US$470 million sale of Petrobras Chile Distribuición Ltda (PCD) to the Southern Cross Group.

The Petrobras-Southern Cross deal is part of the 2015-2016 Petrobras Strategic partnership and divestment plan, which aims to optimize the Brazilian company’s business portfolio. According to officials, the divestment program has brought in over US$13.6 billion during two-year period. For the 2017-2018 period the target volume of the partnership and divestment program will be of US$21 billion.

Additionally, investor confidence is also expected to react positively to data released data on Wednesday morning (January 11th), which shows that the average monthly oil output in December 2016 surpassed 2.3 million barrels per day for the first time, up by three percent from its previous record in September 2016.

With the December data, Petrobras’ average oil production in Brazil reached an annual historical record in 2016, of 2,144,256 barrels per day (bpd).