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June 7, 2008
SouthAmerica: Some people on this forum sent me a private message and others sent me an email asking me how I could help them reach Petrobras, for them to participate on the oil business in Brazil.
I posted the following on this forum about a month ago, but I would suggest that you guys contact Francisco Gros and his new company directly and take from there since he is involved in the oil business in Brazil and I am not.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1949356&highlight=OGX+Petroleo#post1949356
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One year later:
âBatista Tested as OGX Doubles on Brazil Oil Outlook: Week Aheadâ
By Alexander Ragir and Diana Kinch
Bloomberg News â August 24, 2009
Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian billionaire Eike Batistaâs OGX Petroleo e Gas Participacoes SA will show in the next two months whether the eight-month rally that made the company the priciest of the worldâs biggest energy stocks is justified.
OGX surged 127 percent this year on speculation Batista, Brazilâs richest man, will be successful in extracting crude from one of the largest oil prospects. Rio de Janeiro-based OGX began drilling last week, 14 months after its share sale marked Brazilâs biggest initial public offering at the time. OGX said it plans to tell investors by October whether it found oil.
All four companies that Batistaâs Grupo EBX mining group took public since 2006 more than doubled this year, and each faces a juncture in the next two months that may cause shares to rise or fall as much as 20 percent, said Eduardo Favrin, head of equity at HSBC Global Asset Managementâs Brazil unit.
âIn September and October, youâre going to have critical definitions for the businesses,â said Sao Paulo-based Favrin, who oversees about $4 billion in stocks, including Batistaâs OGX, MMX Mineracao e Metalicos SA and MPX Energia SA.
MPX, a utility, should give a âclearer pictureâ for results of a Colombian coal mine by September, according to UBS AG. EBX is in talks with Chinaâs Wuhan Iron & Steel Group to sell a stake in mining company MMX, and Itau Unibanco Holding SA said a deal or refinancing âseems urgent.â LLX Logistica SA, Batistaâs logistics company, may benefit from talks between MMX and Wuhan because it provides services for mining projects, Favrin said. All of Batistaâs companies are based in Rio.
A delegation from Wuhan will meet with representatives from EBX in Brazil this week to discuss the MMX stake, according to Paulo Gouvea, an EBX director.
âNo Room for Errorâ
Batista, 52, declined a request for an interview for this story. Gouvea said the coming months âare full of good thingsâ for Batistaâs companies. MMXâs ânegotiations are progressing,â he said in a telephone interview from Rio.
âMother Nature always brings surprises but we are very optimisticâ about the OGX drilling, Gouvea said.
OGXâs rally this year sent shares to 63 times reported earnings, the most expensive of the worldâs 50 biggest oil and gas companies by market value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MPX fetches 29 times reported earnings, the most expensive of Brazilâs 20 biggest utilities, Bloomberg data show.
âAt these levels youâre betting that the guys will deliver, so thereâs no room for error,â said Eric Conrads, a Mexico City-based hedge fund manager at ING Investment Management, which oversees $12 billion in emerging-market assets. âItâs make-it-or-break-it at this stage.â
HSBCâs Favrin expects Batista will come through.
âThese are the types of things you canât anticipate, but everything is leading us to believe that the results are going to be positive,â he said.
âKing of IPOsâ
Batista jumped to 61st from 142nd on Forbes magazineâs annual list of billionaires in March after the OGX offering and a $5.5 billion sale of two MMX iron ore mine projects to London- based Anglo American Plc last year.
âEikeâs the king of IPOs,â said Joao Carlos Cavalcanti, a Sao Paulo-based mining rival who was Batistaâs partner five years ago in Rio-based IRX Mineracao Ltda., an iron-ore prospecting company that later became a part of MMX. âHeâs a paper salesman. Now heâs going to have to prove what heâs got.â
Batista, whose father was chief executive officer of the company now known as Vale SA, the worldâs biggest iron ore producer, got his start in mining in the early 1980s when he struck out into the Brazilian Amazon to join a gold rush. He says he bought a mine at age 24, made a $6 million profit in the first year and once had a bodyguard kill a man who drew a gun during a money dispute.
âIâm a massive creator of wealth,â he told reporters in Rio after the Anglo sale was announced in January 2008.
Value âUnder the Groundâ
OGX raised 5.87 billion reais ($3.21 billion) in its June 2008 IPO as investors bet Batista could match Brazilâs state- controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SAâs success at finding oil. OGXâs current valuations arenât reflective of the company because it has yet to record any revenue, Gouvea said.
âIâm surprised we even have a P/E,â he said. âThe value of our business is under the ground.â
OGX has an estimated 4.8 billion barrels of oil in the 2,625-square-mile concession it won from the government in November 2007 in four of the nationâs offshore basins, according to the companyâs press office. The estimate uses a so-called success rate of 27 percent, meaning it considers most drilling attempts will not find oil or gas deposits sufficient to merit development.
Santos Basin
OGX and Copenhagen-based Maersk Oil started drilling the BM-S-29 field on Aug. 16 in the Santos basin, about 174 miles from the Tupi field. Petrobras, as the Rio-based state energy company is known, estimates Tupi contains as much as 8 billion barrels of oil, the largest find in the western hemisphere since Mexicoâs Cantarell in 1976.
âWe have several prospects of very low risk in Santos and in Campos,â OGX Chief Executive Officer Paulo Mendonca said in a meeting with journalists on Aug. 17 at his office in Rio. âThat makes us very optimistic.â
INGâs Conrads said he doesnât own any of Batistaâs stocks because the potential for declines in the event OGX drilling comes up dry or MMXâs Wuhan deal fails. On Aug. 6, Lima-based Maple Energy Plc plunged 46 percent after saying it found no oil in its first well in Peruâs Santa Rosa prospect.
âIf they deliver, the stocks will keep going up,â Conrads said. âBut if they donât, theyâll go down pretty nicely and I wouldnât want to be there.â
Markets
Brazilâs Bovespa index climbed 1.9 percent last week, the sixth straight advance. Gafisa SA and Cyrela Brazil Realty SA Empreendimentos e Participacoes, Brazilâs largest homebuilders, rose 18 percent and 13 percent, respectively, for the biggest gains in the measure.
The real increased 1 percent last week to 1.8299 per U.S. dollar. The yield on the zero-coupon local-currency bonds due January 2011 climbed two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 9.75 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=ahrS51Z5lD.M
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