The Bloomberg article goes through what bonds and interest payments are coming up. On October 27th, Friday, the government run oil company PDVSA owed $985 million, which it made. On November 2nd, it owes another $1.17 billion. It is also late on $350 million of interest payments, but has a 30 day grace period.
The Zerohedge blog post has a nice table that shows what interest and principal payments are coming up. From October 2017 through June 2018, they owe about $6 billion. Now how much of this will be eventually resolved via issuing of additional debt, I don't know.
In my opinion, here are a few issues that would impact the decision to buy additional bonds from Venezuela. First, their reserves are dropping fast. In 2011, they had $30 billion. In 2015, it dropped to $20 billion. Now it stands at only $10 billion (I've read that a lot of this is in gold so one thought is to keep track of news items regarding Venezuela having to sell off their gold reserves). Second, per IEA data, Venezuela's oil output has been dropping since 2014. Third, according to Visual Capitalist the fiscal breakeven requires oil to be priced at well over $200 per barrel. (I've never come across Visual Capitalist until I was doing research on this topic. The $200 per barrel number is based on IMF data. I tried to locate this data so I could source it directly, but wasn't able to locate it. As a cross reference, in 2015 CNBC listed the break-even at $117.50. Considering the crash in the currency, above $200 per barrel seems like a possible number.) This fact alone would seem to indicate that Venezuela needs to go to the debt markets just to meet budget needs or the country must provide far less to their citizens. Fourth, we all know the political situation isn't stable.
There might be some good new for Venezuela (though I'm thinking not). Per Bloomberg, their external breakeven as of 2016 was $54.40. From what I've read, the external breakeven is essentially the point where the price of oil is high enough so that you can generate enough foreign currency to cover needed imports. Currently, Brent is trading at around $60. Let me say; however, based on the chart in the link, the breakeven point is very volatile. In 2012, the external breakeven was $108. So it is possible that Venezuela doesn't really have much control of this external breakeven point and may still be underwater. (As a side note, the article also states that $5 billion is due in 2017. The Zerohedge table has it at around $3.7 billion. The discrepancy is probably timing as the Zerohedge table starts in October.)
What is probably good news either way is the fact that the price of oil is currently at $60. That's got to be better than oil at $40.
Essentially, Venezuela is in a rock and a hard place until oil prices improve. Based on their foreign reserves of $10 billion, it would seem they can make all their debt and interest payments up to June 2018. Yet, based on trend, from 2011 to 2016, it looks like they probably need at least $2.5 billion a year for just other necessities. They'll likely make their November 2nd payment along with their past due interest payments. Beyond that, it's probably all based on oil prices and even that might not be enough due to continued deterioration of their oil production.
Note: I watch Bloomberg and there was mention (I may not be doing a perfect paraphrase here) that this socialist country appears to be putting more emphasis on paying down debt versus helping their citizens. It was also mentioned that if they did default, it could result in even more harm for their citizens as there would be other financial ramifications.
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