High interest rates and the caution adopted by many companies caused a Collapse in the placement of private debt bonds during 2022up to $2.5 trillion, the lowest level in 16 years.
(Read: Agriculture is still in suspense due to the shortage of fertilizers).
According to the Colombian Stock Exchange, these operations that constitute a financing instrument so that companies in the real sector, financial or territorial entities can carry out their activity or that also serve to replace financial liabilities, only 13 entities resorted to this mechanism.
In 2021, the placement of debt bonds amounted to $10.5 trillion, therefore, the amount with which it closed last year ($2.5 trillion) meant a drop of 76.3%.
Likewise, nine entities are from the financial system and four from other sectors.
The most important operation due to its size was the one carried out by Bancóldex on May 11 for $500,000 million with social bonds and the smallest was that of Finanzauto for $10,760 million with sustainable bonds.
For its part, Banco Popular placed tthree ordinary bond issues at the beginning of March and in two of them it achieved rates of 3.84% EA and 2.68% NMVone of the lowest of last year and one of Cementos Argos’ commercial paper issues was placed at a rate of 18.70% EA on December 1st.
(In addition: Inflation is no longer dragged only by food and energy).
Arnoldo Casas, investment director of Asset Management at Credicorp Capital, said that the sharp drop in the placement of debt securities had to do with high interest rates which began to intensify from the second semester, after the start of the monetary normalization policy of the Banco de la República from September 2021 .
“The truth was that the credit was cheaper and they would not have gotten the amount”, assured the Credicorp Capital executive.
On the other hand, for Edgar Jiménez, professor of Finance at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, many entities had already taken credit or debt with bonds at low rates, especially large companies so the need for resources was not so great.
But the academic agrees that the main factor behind the drop in corporate debt placements was the high cost of money, after the economy enjoyed a long period of low interest rates.
The reason for the precaution that entrepreneurs take, according to Jiménez, is that when considering new businesses and profitability, they have to find a good margin and “if it does not give, those decisions are postponed”.
(Read: Colombia, among countries with the highest and most static inflation in the OECD).
He said that the policy of the Bank of the Republic to cool the economy plus the high Inflation also causes many projects to be postponed, but he considered that the end of the rate hikes is near and possibly at the end of 2023 10% will be reached, taking into account that the current level of 12% will possibly increase at the end of January and in March.
Opas were salvation
According to the statistics of the Colombian Stock Exchange, during 2022 made takeover bids (opa) for $11.29 trillion.
The main ones were due to actions by Grupo Sura and Nutresa, operations carried out by the Gilinski Group, although it must be remembered that these processes had begun at the end of 2021.
Other takeover bids were for Acerías Paz del Río, Productos Familia and BAC Holding International.
Another special operation was the reacquisition of shares in Almacenes Exito, for $314,640 million.
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