Efacec with €60M losses

The public-owned electrical and transport systems company Efacec has recorded losses of more than €60 million.

The company managed by Ângelo Ramalho closed 2021 with a fall in turnover of €90 million and revenues of €96 million, while its net debts amounted to €195 million by December.
The Government did try and find a buyer for the company, but the only sole interested party, a Portuguese civil engineering and construction company, pulled out because it did not want to take on both the debts and the cost of restructuring the company.
Amid past industrial strife over management style, and the newly created Portuguese development bank Banco de Fomento at risk of being saddled with the debts, Efacec’s debts are worse than had been imagined.
The company had a negative net result of €62.7 million, and a EBITDA of €31.8 million (when the target has been to bring the debt down and get the company into positive terrain of €22 million. The numbers are provisional and the final accounts should be closed in the next few weeks.
The privatisation plan of more than 71% of Efacec was suspended by António Costa during the election campaign, but the minister for the Economy continued to try come up with a financial rescue deal for the company with a €100 million loan from the Banco do Fomento over 25 years and convertible into capital.
But the suggested buyer, Braga-based DST, did not agree with the terms laid down by the government and pulled out of the rescue deal leaving the Banco do Fomento and government saddled with the loan, and a company up to its eyes in debt, in desperate need of restructuring, and rapidly becoming a mill stone around the executive’s’s neck. The company is currently held by a public holding called Parpública which manages Portuguese public companies. The Ministry of the Economy still plans to privatise Efacec.