Oi S.A

What it is

Oi is a Brazilian telecommunications company that once carried the country’s landline voice traffic and later built mobile and broadband networks. Today it is a shadow of that former self, focused mainly on fiber-to-the-home broadband and corporate digital services under the Oi Fibra and Oi Soluções brands.

It still operates legacy fixed-line and mobile infrastructure, but the company has been selling off major assets for years. The core business now is connecting homes and businesses to fiber-optic internet.

Who owns it

Oi’s ownership is fragmented after its long restructuring. Insiders hold roughly 15.3% of the shares, and institutional investors only about 0.2%, leaving the vast majority in the hands of retail and dispersed holders.

The company emerged from Brazil’s largest-ever judicial recovery process, which converted much of its debt into equity. That means former creditors — including banks and bondholders — became shareholders, but no single controlling family or state entity dominates the register today.

Who runs it

Oi’s executive leadership has changed repeatedly through its crisis years. The company’s investor-relations pages list the current board and management, but the precise CEO and CFO names were not independently confirmed in the sources opened for this profile.

What is clear is that the board operates under the oversight of the judicial recovery plan and its creditors, which limits management’s freedom more than at a typical listed company.

The money, in plain words

Oi’s revenue has collapsed. Sales fell from R$ 10.49 billion (US$2.0 bn) in 2022 to R$ 4.26 billion (US$827 mn) in 2023, then to R$ 3.18 billion (US$617 mn) in 2024 — a drop of about 70% in two years, mostly because it sold its mobile business and other units.

The 2024 net profit of R$ 9.61 billion (US$ 1.87 billion) is misleading. It came from a debt write-off, not from selling services.

The operating business lost money: gross profit was negative R$ 1.45 billion (US$281 mn), and operating income was negative R$ 3.89 billion (US$755 mn).

On a trailing twelve-month basis, the company keeps losing money. Its net margin is -65.1%, meaning for every real of sales it spends about R$ 1.65.

(US$0.32)Return on equity is -4.0%, and shareholders’ equity is deeply negative at -R$ 16.3 billion (US$3.2 bn), because liabilities of R$ 36.0 billion (US$7.0 bn) far exceed assets of R$ 19.8 billion (US$3.8 bn).

Oi carries R$ 14.8 billion (US$2.9 bn) in total debt against only R$ 2.4 billion (US$466 mn) in cash. The market values the entire company at just R$ 33.4 million (US$ 6.5 million) — less than the value of a single mid-sized office building in São Paulo.

What it is doing now

Oi is executing a court-approved plan to sell non-core assets and focus on fiber broadband. It has already disposed of its mobile operations, data centers, and towers to raise cash and cut debt.

The company is also converting legacy copper networks to fiber and trying to grow its Oi Fibra subscriber base. But the financial statements show the operating business is still burning cash, and the balance sheet remains heavily negative.

What to watch

The key question is whether Oi can reach a stable, cash-generating fiber business before its remaining assets are exhausted. Every quarter of operating losses pushes it closer to another restructuring.

Watch for any announcement of new asset sales, changes to the judicial recovery plan, or a capital injection from creditors-turned-shareholders. The share price is so low that even small news moves it sharply, but the long-term direction depends on whether the fiber strategy works.

This is news, not investment advice.