Gradiente ends reorganization after five years
Gradiente ended the court-supervised reorganization process started in 2018. The case was closed on Tuesday by a court in the state of Amazonas. For the first time in more than a decade, the company, once a leading electronics manufacturer, can make plans again.Earlier this month, the company made a public offering to delist its shares, the last step required to complete its reorganization and go private in the second half of the year. Other items in the plan, such as the sale of assets, including real estate and tax liabilities, and the renegotiation of debt with the federal government, have been completed in recent years."We consider that this was an exhaustive process, but very successful because we left without any debt and with some cash," Eugênio Staub, Gradiente’s chair, told Valor."We see a lot of potential in the solar power industry, which is growing at 50% per year, requires little investment for installation, and is still a pulverized market," Mr. Staub said. "Another sector we are also evaluating is drones for agriculture, given Brazil’s potential in this field."But the businessman reiterates that there are no decisions or timetables regarding investments."We always seek to combine technology, innovation and quality, we have mapped these two segments that bring this, but we are unlikely to make them ourselves. If we go ahead, we will seek partnerships with international companies that have the best technologies, as we have done in the past with other sectors, to bring these products to Brazil," said Ricardo Staub, CEO of Gradiente.The company’s problems began in the early 2000s. After the peak of its trajectory in the 1980s and 1990s, mainly in the audio-visual segment in a market closed for imports, Gradiente failed to adapt to market changes and made decisions that Eugênio Staub now considers wrong."There was a management error and I take the blame," the chair said. He cited the purchase of Philco in 2005, then part of Itaúsa, as one of those mistakes. "I decided to double down on TVs, a market that was contaminated by foreign competition, at a time when I should have reduced the size of the company and looked for other solutions."Three years later, the company began an out-of-court reorganization that dragged on for 10 years until the court-supervised reorganization began, in April 2018. The company started the process with a debt of R$976.5 million to 312 creditors. At the end of the process, it paid R$138.8 million. "We...
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