VILLA OLIVA RICE S.A.

Note on financials: Villa Oliva Rice files quarterly balance sheets with the BVA (available at bolsadevalores.com.py/listado-de-emisores/263) and audited annual accounts with the Superintendencia de Valores (siv.bcp.gov.py). Paraguay’s securities law (Ley 5810/17) requires listed issuers to publish periodic financial statements, and VOR complies by filing PDFs on the exchange portal.

However, those individual quarterly and annual PDF files were not accessible for direct download during this research, so precise revenue, net profit, net margin, and return on equity figures cannot be verified against the audited source. The figures cited here come from FIX SCR’s April 2025 rating report, which is based on audited statements provided directly to the rating agency.

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What it is

Villa Oliva Rice is a Paraguayan agroindustrial exporter combining three businesses: growing rice and soy, then drying and milling that rice, and raising cattle. It produces more than 70,000 tonnes of rice a year, making it one of Paraguay’s largest rice producers.

The company started in 2014 with a USD 35 million investment to buy 18,000 hectares of farmland in the Ñeembucú department. The entity was originally constituted as Ganadera Marca Plancha S.A. in 2001, sold in late 2014 to a group of Brazilian-Paraguayan institutional investors, and renamed Villa Oliva Rice S.A. on 30 December 2014.

Rice production, storage, and processing represented 99% of the company’s sales in 2022 and 100% of its gross margin. Its main export market is Brazil, with additional sales to other international markets.

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Who owns it

Rice Paraguay S.A. — itself a holding vehicle for Brazilian-Paraguayan investors — bought out a prior 50% shareholder (Eladia S.A.) and now holds 80% of Villa Oliva Rice; the remaining 20% stays with Capital Inversiones S.A.

That ownership structure is now in transition. On 5 September 2024, Villa Oliva Rice announced that Luciano Quartiero — chairman and controlling shareholder of Camil Alimentos S.A., one of Brazil’s largest food groups — signed a share purchase agreement to buy a majority stake in Rice Paraguay S.A., which would make Camil the indirect controlling owner of Villa Oliva Rice.

Regulatory approvals for the transaction were still pending as of April 2025, and FIX SCR stated that confirmation of the deal would trigger an upgrade of VOR’s credit rating.

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Who runs it

The board chairman is Marcos Alex Silva Dos Santos, listed as President by the Superintendencia de Valores; Raúl Asterio Enciso is named alongside him as an officer. Silva Dos Santos was appointed as an independent chairman — representing no shareholder — after the board was expanded to five members; he previously served as general manager of Banco do Brasil in Paraguay until August 2020.

Not published: the names of the chief financial officer or other board directors are not disclosed in the exchange filings or the Superintendencia de Valores page reviewed for this profile; VOR’s corporate governance disclosures extend only to the President and one designated officer.

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The money, in plain words

From the operating investments completed in 2022, the company raised its sales and kept about 22 cents of cash from every dollar of revenue — an EBITDA margin of 22% — in 2023; that fell to 11% in the year through September 2024, and FIX SCR projects it at roughly 5% for full-year 2025, with projected revenue of about USD 48 million.

The company sharply cut its total debt — from USD 34 million in September 2024 to USD 10 million by February 2025 — by selling assets worth more than USD 22 million to a company called Q2PY S.A. Those assets are now free of mortgage liens, which gives VOR the ability to use them as fresh collateral for new credit lines.

Despite the debt reduction, the company still depends heavily on short-term bank financing — particularly at planting season when cash needs are highest — and liquidity remains tight. Banco do Brasil, VOR’s second-largest lender, cut renewal of its credit lines by up to 80% and raised the interest rate it charges the company.

The rice business itself is inherently lumpy. Rice prices are set in spot markets with no futures contracts available, which means the company cannot lock in prices in advance — adding uncertainty that FIX SCR flags as a structural vulnerability.

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What it is doing now

At its Annual General Meeting on 21 January 2025, shareholders voted to begin a formal financial restructuring: the company will transfer real-estate assets and use the proceeds to repay its debts. This is the operational follow-through of the asset sales that halved the debt load.

In April 2025, FIX SCR (a Fitch Ratings affiliate) upgraded VOR’s credit rating to BB+py with a Positive Outlook — still sub-investment grade on Paraguay’s national scale, but a step up that reflects the lower debt. The pending Camil transaction remains the single biggest variable: if it closes, a further upgrade is likely; if it collapses, a downgrade is possible.

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What to watch

• Camil deal closing: The reorganisation after the deal would separate the rice-processing operations from the rural land holdings — a structural change that would reshape VOR’s risk profile and asset base entirely.
• Debt refinancing: If the Camil deal does not close, VOR’s rating could be cut, depending on how its parent company resolves its own debt with Banco Itaú and the knock-on effect on VOR’s liquidity.
• Revenue trajectory: FIX projects USD 48 million in 2025 sales but an EBITDA margin of only 5% — the thinnest in recent years — so any fall in rice prices or export volumes would quickly erode the cash the company needs to service even its reduced debt.
• Full financial disclosure: VOR files quarterly balance sheets on the BVA portal; investors should track the December 2024 and March 2025 statements for confirmation of the debt figures cited in the rating report.

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This is news, not investment advice.