The two worked together at Americanas for more than 2 decades.
Americanas announced this morning that it found “accounting errors” in its balance sheet with potential materiality of R$ 20 billion. CEO Sergio Rial and CFO André Covre resigned after the initial investigation revealed the issue. Both had only been in office for 9 days when this happened.
An Americanas board of directors appointed Joo Guerra, a longtime employee who did not work in the CFO area or report to the CEO, to the roles of interim CEO and director of investor relations. Americanas' debt to its suppliers, which may have been underestimated in recent years, is the main highlight of the survey.
In this scenario, the bank pays the supplier on behalf of the company, which then owes money to the bank. The corporation believes that the cash impact of the discrepancies is negligible. The preliminary amount of BRL 20 billion will not necessarily be withdrawn from equity, although Americanas has a net worth of BRL 14 billion.
To discover the true value of the problem, further analysis is required. This value may include ciphers that can still be activated. Americanas assured its employees in a memorandum that it had R$8 billion in cash and will continue to pay its suppliers on time. Americanas balance sheets for recent years were audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).
Internally, a committee of the board of directors is looking into this, with the help of pwc. Former CEO Miguel Gutierrez, Anna Saicali, head of Ame Digital, Timotheo Barros, head of physical stores and CFO, and Márcio Cruz, head of B2W, worked together at Americanas for more than two decades before the recent leadership change. According to a source close to the company, it has not yet been determined whether the entries in question were in a gray area of accounting regulations or whether they constituted fraud.
Whatever the situation, the discovery of the “inconsistencies” should lead the market to wonder whether similar accounting methods are being used by other companies. CFOs in all sectors of the economy need to start thinking about the future today. Due to the preponderance of foreign investors such as Blackrock, Vanguard and Wells Fargo in the Company Free Float, this incident is also a setback for the Brazilian capital market.
Over the past two years, Americanas shares have steadily lost value, becoming one of the worst retail stocks. The corporation's market value at the close of the day was R$11 billion. “The corporation is expressing what it knows at this point,” said a source close to the situation. The three main shareholders of Americanas, all with more than 40 years in the company (named Carlos Alberto Sicupira, Marcel Telles and Jorge Paulo Lemann), stated that they will continue to support the company and that Rial will advise them on how to correct the problem.
