Read this Thursday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (6) – 06/04/2023 – Market

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Uber + Tembici

Uber and the Brazilian startup Tembici announced this Wednesday (5) an agreement for the orange bikes to appear as a transportation alternative in the app.

• The partnership will start in Recife and will expand to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Salvador, Porto Alegre and other Latin American cities where Tembici operates.

How will it work: when entering the app, the user will see the option to rent the bikes among the transport alternatives. When choosing the “skinny” route, the route to a Tembici station and the route to the destination will appear.

• Payment will be made within the Uber app itself. The amounts were not disclosed.

the rental option of bicycles in the way they exist today, through Bike Itaú, is still valid. The partnership between the bank and the startup completed ten years last year, when it was renewed for the same period.

• Tembici hopes to end 2023 with 30,000 bicycles on the streets of Latin America, a third of which are electric.

In numbers: earlier this year, she arranged a loan of BRL 160 million with BNDES to expand the capacity of its factories in the cities of Manaus and Extrema.

• Founded in 2010, the startup announced its last funding in 2021, when it raised US$ 80 million (R$ 400 million, at current prices) in an investment led by the Crescera fund.

• In all, Tembici has already raised US$ 173 million (R$ 872 million), according to data from the Sling Hub platform.

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Exxon pulls out of project in Brazil

Oil company Exxon Mobil has ended a costly project to find oil in Brazil after failing for the third time in an attempt to find commercially viable quantities of the commodity, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Understand: the American oil and gas giant stopped drilling in an offshore area it acquired with partners for $4 billion (BRL 20.3 billion) in 2017.

• The engineers and geologists who were in Brazil were relocated to other countries where the company operates, such as Guyana, Angola and Canada, according to the American newspaper.

• The company said it is still looking for exploration opportunities in Brazil.

The decision surprises because the country was considered a strategic location for Exxon and was even mentioned by the company’s CEO, Darren Woods, when he commented on territories with great growth potential, last December.

• Brazil was one of three geographic areas the company relied on for most of its future production. The other two are Guyana and the USA.

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Interview surprises Petrobras – and investors

Statements by the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, about changes in the fuel price policy irritated Petrobras’ leadership and even impacted the company’s shares this Wednesday.

Understand: in an interview with GloboNews, the minister said that Petrobras will change its commercial policy after the election of the new board of directors. According to him, the change would result in a reduction in the price of diesel by up to BRL 0.25 per litre.

• The statements caused discomfort and took the company’s leadership by surprise, both the management and the board of directors.

• Relevant changes in Petrobras’ strategies, after being deliberated and approved internally, must be informed to the market to guarantee equal access to information.

Reaction: after the minister’s speech, the company’s shares fell 4%but ended the day slightly higher.

• The market’s fear was quelled after Petrobras confirmed in a note that “it has not received any proposal from the Ministry of Mines and Energy”.

• The company also said that any proposed pricing policy “will be communicated to the market in due course, and conducted by the company’s usual internal governance mechanisms”.

In numbers: the Stock Exchange closed down 0.88%, to 100,827 points, following the US market. The dollar retreated 0.66%, to R$ 5.04, with the currency losing strength around the world after signs of weak activity and the job market cooling in the US.

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Light CEO resigns and goes to board

The energy distributor Light, one of the companies trapped by the level of its debts, communicated to the market this Tuesday that Octavio Pereira Lopes resigned as president of the company.

• He will remain with the company as chairman of the board of directors. Alexandre Nogueira Ferreira, who was already a member of the executive board, takes over as CEO.

• “The change has no implication in the ongoing strategies of readjustment of the group’s capital structure”, said the company in a statement, reinforcing that Octavio Lopes remains in charge of the distributor.

• Ex-Equatorial, the executive was CEO of Tok&Stok before arriving at Light, in August last year.

‘Perfect Storm’: the distributor is going through a delicate moment and sees its shares sinking about 60% on the Stock Exchange in the accumulated result for the year.

• The company’s shares had a sharp drop in February, after it announced the hiring of Laplace, known for restructuring companies with financial problems, including Oi.

Folha showed how the company faces a series of challenges, ranging from public safety problems in Rio de Janeiro to the difficulty of credit generated by the crisis in Americanas.

• The main one is related to the term of the concession. The company serves 4.5 million users in Rio, whose contract expires in June 2026.

Last week, Octavio Lopes told analysts that the company started talks to renegotiate debts and, in parallel, tries to anticipate the renewal of the contract with a “differentiated” treatment for its concession area.

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