Debt-ridden Petrobras sells $587m worth of petrochemical assets
Brazil's biggest company, the scandal-hit Petrobras, has sold its stake in sugar and ethanol company Guarani and chemicals subisidiaries PetroquímicaSuape and Citepe  for a total of $587m as it continues with its partnerships and divestments programme. Despite the successful sales, the $13.6bn total for the 2015-2016 period falls short of its $15.1bn target, which means the company must achieve $21bn for the 2017-2018 period. Petrobras blamed the failure to meet the target on an injunction by the Sergipe Court, which blocked the sale of its Tartaruga Verde and Baúna oil fields.

Brazil’s Petrobras closed two asset sales for the total sum of US$587 million. Petrobras subsidiary Petrobras Biocombustível (PBio) sold to Tereos Participations—a company in the French Tereos group—its entire stake in Guarani, representing 45.97% of the company’s equity capital, for US$202 million. The Petrobras Board of Directors also approved the sale of Companhia Petroquímica de Pernambuco (PetroquímicaSuape) and Companhia Integrada Têxtil de Pernambuco (Citepe) to two subsidiaries of the Mexican company Alpek, for US$385 million.

Guarani is one of the leading companies in the Brazilian sugar and ethanol market, ranked third among the largest sugar producers in Brazil. The company has eight industrial units: seven in Brazil, in the state of São Paulo (Andrade, Cruz Alta, São José, Severínia, Mandu, Tanabi and Vertente mills, the last in a joint venture with the Humus Group, which owns 50%) and one in Africa, in Mozambique (Sena mill).

PetroquímicaSuape and Citepe are fully-owned subsidiaries of Petrobras and form part of the company’s Chemical-Textile Industrial Complex in Ipojuca, in the state of Pernambuco. These companies bring together three integrated industrial units: PTA (purified terephthalic acid), polyester fibers and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) resin.

With these latest transactions, the Petrobras partnerships and divestments program has chalked up a total of US$13.6 billion in the period 2015-2016—below the US$15.1-billion target set for the two-year period. Petrobras acribed its failure to meet the target to its obligation to comply with the preliminary injunction of the Sergipe Court that blocked the completion of the negotiations for sale of the Tartaruga Verde and Baúna fields, located in the Campos Basin and the Santos Basin, respectively, which were already at an advanced stage. The target for the partnerships and divestments program in the period 2017-2018 will automatically be increased by the respective amounts, to the sum of US$21 billion.

The two newest agreements are among the five transactions that may see their contracts signed in accordance with a precautionary decision handed down by the Federal Audit Court (TCU). All the transactions were conducted through a competitive process and the sale prices were appraised by several financial institutions, by means of independent opinions regarding the fair value (fairness opinion) and the valuation report.

Tereos, which is a partner of PBio (Petrobras Biofuels) in Guarani, with a 54.03% equity stake, is the world’s third largest sugar producer. The group specializes in transforming raw materials into sugar, ethanol, alcohol and starch and has 24,000 employees at 42 industrial units across Europe, South America, the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia.

Alpek is a listed Mexican company, owned by Alfa, S.A.B. de C.V. (Alfa), which operates in the petrochemical segment and is a world leader in the production of polyester (PTA, PET and fibers).