In the midst of the water crisis affecting Uruguaythe consultant Exante made a report on the economic and financial performance of SBI in recent years, where he highlighted that he had an average billing of 400 million dollars per year and warned that the return on assets and equity was “systematically greatly reduced”.
Through a survey that aims to provide figures to the debate on the investments that the state company has to make or should have made, as well as how to finance them, Exante revealed that OSE invested, on average, about 105 million dollars annually for the last seven years, maintaining a debt of almost 400 million dollars.
The consultant specified that the company that today seeks to combat the water deficit invoices some 400 million dollars per year, although that figure fluctuated between 2016, when it contributed the lowest amount ($357 million) and 2022, the year in which he disbursed the highest sum (456 million dollars).
Based on data from OSE’s Individual Audited Financial Statements, The report indicated that with this invoicing the firm obtains a EBITDA, that is to say, the indicator that measures the result before interests, amortizations and taxes, of about 100 million dollars annually.
However, from Exante they highlighted that EBITDA is “a first approximation” to the operational generation of funds. They highlighted that, in order to arrive at the operating result, it is necessary to deduct amortizations and depreciations, considering the effect of the results.
The return on assets and equity was “systematically very low”
At the same time, SBI It has assets of about $1.8 billion and his assets amount to a little more than 1.2 billion dollars. As calculated by the consultant, with these operating results, the return on assets and equity was “systematically very low”, specifying that in the last two years “It was only 5% and 8% respectively”, against average inflation of the last two years of 8.4% per year.
Meanwhile, it was shown that since 2016 the company invested, on average, about 105 million dollars per year, a value slightly higher than the generation of funds measured by the EBITDA, although with a significant drop in 2020 and 2021.
Finally, Exante indicated that the financial debt was, prior to the investment adjustment, at unsustainable levels, with a ratio of more than 5x EBITDA. With all this, it was reported that, at the end of the last fiscal year, SBI kept a debt of almost 400 million dollars and a ratio of 3.8x EBITDA, It went down, but it’s still high.
Source: Ambito
