Brazilian Currency Fluctuates Before Petrobras’s Audited Results

Brazilian Currency Fluctuates Before Petrobras’s Audited Results

By Filipe Pacheco/Bloomberg

10:21 AM BRT
April 22, 2015

Brazil’s real swung between gains and losses as the state-controlled oil producer at the center of a widening corruption investigation was due to publish audited financial results for the first time since August.

The real dropped 0.1 percent to 3.0350 per dollar at 10:16 a.m. in Sao Paulo after rising 0.6 percent. Swap rates on the contract maturing in January 2017 decreased 0.01 percentage point to 13.32 percent.

Publication of the delayed results by Petroleo Brasileiro SA before the end of April is credit-positive, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report Tuesday, when trading in Brazil was closed for a holiday. Petrobras said in an e-mailed statement April 20 that it will release third-quarter and 2014 audited earnings on Wednesday after markets are closed.

“Investors are eager to know how Petrobras will account for the losses it has had with corruption and how big the damage might be,” Joao Paulo de Gracia Correa, a currency trader at Correparti Corretora de Cambio in Curitiba, Brazil, said in a telephone interview. “We should see a lot of speculation in trading during the day related to that.”

The real has rallied 3.2 percent since April 13, when Petrobras said it would present its long-delayed results to the board Wednesday and release the information after its approval.