Ira Sohn Conference: Eike Batista on What He is Doing in Brazil

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May 26, 2011
Eike Batista, a native of Brazil, is one of the leading players in the natural resource and infrastructure sectors in Latin America. In the 1980s he began the first mechanized alluvial gold plant in the Amazon Region. He also created and became CEO of TVX Gold, a company listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange. Since 2005, he has structured and listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange companies in mining (MMX, Financial), energy (MPX, Financial), oil and gas (OGX, Financial) and logistics (LLX, Financial). He has raised $18 billion to support these ventures and plans to invest approximately $40 billion over the next 10 years. Eike graduated from the University of Aachen (Germany) with a degree in metallurgic engineering. He is fluent in five languages.


From his talk:


(Note the speaker talked so quickly I missed a lot of what he said. It seems like he is building and doing everything in the world).


Brazil: The demographics the population growth is helping growth. Two hundred and fifty thousand jobs were created last month. 100 million out of 200 million Brazilians are middle class. CDSs on Brazilian debt are now the same level as Germany! They have decreased dramatically since 2002.


The success started about 30 years ago, when I started mining there. There was $5 billion mine of silver; there was 90% profit margin. I built nine mines in the next 20 years. I learned the bankers take away a lot when you do an IPO.


My performance over last nine years has been 763% return!


We have $1 trillion of coal. It is a nice healthy profit selling commodities.


Oil and gas will start producing in October. And it will ramp up at 70% CAGR over next few years.


Brazil is bigger than America without Alaska.


We have very favorable regulation. In Brazil, they only tax oil fields at 47.5% as opposed to other countries where it is closer to 85-90%.


We are ramping up iron ore and coal production. Our supplies are some of the biggest companies in the world like Halliburton.


We are building Acu Seaport, the third largest port in the world. It is a digital revolution in Brazil. The Brazilian government just provided a 3 billion real loan to us. We are building 20 ships; each costs $1 billion.


We are building power plants.


To transport resources you need to own the ports.


It is all about “the idiot proof assets” like commodities.


When you study our companies, look at underlying assets and the capacity. These are assets that you do not sell; you build cash flow. I invest all my excess cash back into the shares.


Disclosure: None


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