Americanas presents 2022 balance sheet – 11/12/2023 – Market

Americanas will present its 2022 financial results this Monday morning (13), ten months after one of the biggest accounting scandals in the country’s history came to light.

Information from last year and the review of the 2021 balance sheet will be released.

The retailer postponed the publication of last year’s balance sheet three times — originally scheduled for the end of March, then May and then the end of October.

According to a statement from Americanas in October on the subject, the company will conduct an online event this Monday afternoon, aimed at investors and the market in general.

The objective, according to the company, is “to discuss its results, update the market on the evolution of its judicial recovery plan, as well as present the company’s strategic plan that is already being implemented and which will guide its future operational and financial performance “.

The event will be attended by the president of Americanas, Leonardo Coelho, and the financial and investor relations director, Camille Loyo Faria.

On Wednesday (8), B3 suspended Americanas from the Novo Market, where companies with the highest level of corporate governance are, theoretically, located. The company stated that it will file an appeal.

Remember the case

On the night of January 11, Americanas released a relevant fact to the market informing about “accounting inconsistencies” of R$ 20 billion, which led to the resignation of the then CEO Sergio Rial and the main finance executive, André Covre, both recently sworn in.

On January 19, the company entered into judicial recovery, with declared debts of R$42.5 billion. The country’s largest banks are the retailer’s main creditors, which in June admitted fraud on its balance sheets.

Report prepared by legal advisors who have been following Americanas since it entered into judicial recovery pointed out that the retailer’s financial statements were being defrauded by the company’s previous management, which inflated its results by R$25.3 billion — this was the fictitious accumulated profit over the last few years (the company has not yet stated how many years).

Suspicions fell on the former management of Americanas, who spent decades at the company. With the exception of former CEO Miguel Gutierrez, who retired at the end of 2022 to pass the baton to Rial, the other directors were removed weeks after the scandal came to light.

The actions of the retailer’s three main shareholders — the trio of billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira and Marcel Telles, partners at the private equity firm 3G Capital — were also under scrutiny.

Advisor to the company, Sicupira was appointed as the representative of the trio directly linked to the day-to-day operations of Americanas. But, in a statement to the CVM (Securities Commission), he said he was ‘in shock’ when he received a call from Rial to discuss the accounting scandal.

At the end of September, the CPI (parliamentary commission of inquiry) that was investigating Americanas ended its activities without finding any culprits.

The company’s operations throughout the year were severely impacted. In the first seven months of the crisis, more than 9,000 employees were laid off.

Between January 19, when its judicial recovery began, and September 17, Americanas closed 95 stores — which means closing the operations of one point of sale every 2.5 days, on average.

Today, the retailer has 1,785 stores. In January, there were 1,880.

According to a monthly monitoring report by the company’s judicial administrators, sent to the CVM at the beginning of October, Americanas has 16 eviction actions underway due to non-payment.