São Paulo – Randon group should boost its production capacity by 8% to 10% by the end of this year, according to figures disclosed by the company on Tuesday (9) during the presentation of the results for the third quarter of the year. According to the Investor Relations executive at the company, Emerson Fernando de Souza, the boost in capacity will be due to investment of 200 million Brazilian reals (US$ 118 million) scheduled for this year.
Up to late September, when the third quarter ended, the company had already invested 111 million reals (US$ 65 million). "Most of the remains of the 200 million reals have already been provisioned and, if the investment is not made now, it will be in early 2011, to support potential growth next year," said the executive. Randon is currently operating at above 90% of capacity in the area of trailers and semitrailers and at around 90% in auto parts.
The group had a third quarter of positive results, both on the domestic and on the international market, and also presented good figures for the accumulated result up to September. "The foreign market has been returning to purchases and orders of products," said the financial director in the Holding Division, Geraldo Santa Catharina. Exports grew 49% in the quarter, to US$ 66.5 million, and 52.4% in the accumulated result for the year, to US$ 179 million.
"The country has presented good economic growth and a reflex of this was the increase in our sales in all markets, mainly the domestic," said Santa Catharina. The performance was reflected in the grater gross revenues, which reached 1.49 billion reals (US$ 877 million) in the third quarter and 4.08 billion reals (US$ 2.4 billion) from January to September, with growth of 68.1% and 55.3% respectively. Net consolidated revenues grew 65.5% in the quarter, to 984 million (US$ 579 million).
Randon S.A. Implementos e Participações controls nine companies that operate in the production of vehicles, road equipment, auto parts and financial services. Apart from production in Brazil, the company has operations in other countries, like Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, where the group has assembly lines for its products.
The company is listed and preferred shares had appreciation of 16.4% from January to September, according to data disclosed by the company. They ended September traded at 11.90 reals (US$ 7). In the first nine months of the year, average daily trading totalled 5.8 million reals (US$ 3.5 million) against 3.3 million reals (US$ 1.9 million) in the same period in 2009. In late September, 40.6% of shares were in the hands of the controller, 27.4% in the hands of institutional investors and 21.7% in the hands of foreign investors.
*Translated by Mark Ament
