Information regarding the business sector.
Telecom Argentina accelerated its digital transformation plan with the implementation of several programs that involve both the company’s operation and the necessary experience of its 29 million customers. To date, the company has invested 515 million dollars in technological platforms: Cloudification, Big Data, and open digital architecture are the enablers of this transformation.
With no income and with the planes on the ground, the expense account of this conglomerate of five state-owned companies with 12,000 employees is an enigma: their managers assure that they still do not have a concrete dimension of how much their losses will be during this year, although they are sure that they will be more than 700 million dollars. In 12 years, the accumulated loss is $7.3 billion.
Metrotel and Silica Networks are two essential players in the telecommunications sector. The companies partnered in a joint investment of 10 million dollars for the construction of a new route of their networks to link Buenos Aires with the mooring stations of the submarine cables of international connectivity that arrive at the town of Las Toninas, in the Municipality of La Costa. The work included the construction and lighting of a high capacity fibre optic line of more than 450 kilometres.
After investing $10 million to expand production capacity, Rabieta completed yesterday the shipment of the first container of the three scheduled to export 150,000 cans of craft beer to China and already has in its portfolio the next destinations: The United States, Uruguay and Spain. The brewery is in Pilar and can produce more than 200,000 litres per month and the possibility of canning 33,000 cans per day. The company is part of the Dagma group, owner of Mega Alfalfa, Federal Energy Company (Efesa, in La Rioja) and with the concession of the Palermo racetrack.
A judicial setback stopped YPF to save at least $70 million on a new river contract to transport fuel to northwestern Argentina. The case in question has to do with a bidding process carried out by the oil company last year, which awarded the service to the Horamar Shipping Company, which had offered a contract of $67.2 million, which implies a saving of $72.8 million concerning the previous rate of the National Shipping Company, worth $140 million per year.
Garbarino, the leading company in the sale of electrical appliances and technology, launched this week the 158 Series of Financial Trusts, which generated strong demand, up to 180%, in what was the first debt placement after the change of shareholders of the company. Garbarino received offers for up to 2.8 times its VDF A Trust. The cut-off rate was a nominal 27.1% per annum.
There is tension between gas producers and distributors. The oil companies will send a letter to the government warning that they will cut off the supply if the state-run distributor Metrogas does not pay its bills. Yesterday, the French company Total sent a letter to the government urging it to pay 514.8 million pesos ($6.84 mn) within five days.
The Argentinean laboratory ProinVet Innovations, invented an early ovulation system to increase the pregnancy of cows by 20% and obtained patents in the United States and New Zealand. It is now preparing to export the technology.
Mauro Stabile, CEO of Opulens, says that it is a company that was born in the early nineties, developing its lens design technology, which today they export as a service and with which they produce around three million pairs per month worldwide. Opulens manufactures lenses only for Argentina because they make it one by one from the medical orders that arrive from the opticians, but it sells the technology with which it produces them to the whole world. The company charges for each order around 1% of the final value of glasses, and invoices around $5 million a year.
Falabella’s Argentine operation recorded a 60% drop in sales in the second quarter and announced the closure of four locations, two of Falabella’s stores and two of Sodimac’s stores, where it sells construction materials. Falabella shares lost 43.85% in the last 12 months, and yesterday recorded a 2.86% decline after the news about Argentina.
