Portugal Telecom acquires Brazilian GPTI
Valor Econômico
Portugal Telecom announced yesterday the acquisition of the Brazilian GPTI, specialized in software and information technology (IT) services. Under the deal - entirely made in shares -, GPTI will be absorbed by Dedic, a call center company of the Portuguese group. The value of the deal is not revealed, but the agreement will give Fábio Pereira, the founder of GPTI, participation between 5% and 20% in Dedic, depending on the results reached until the end of 2011.
With the acquisition, Portugal Telecom plans on increasing the area of operation of Dedic in order to compete closer with rivals such as Tivit, of the Votorantim Group. Dedic, said Zeinal Bava, Chief Executive of the operator, already had two areas considered essential to a company of such profile: the service area (call center) and the area of outsourcing of processes, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, etc. With GPTI the company now has the part that was missing, information technology, said the Executive. The company resulting from this agreement has 22 thousand employees - in late December, GPTI had 2.5 thousand professionals - and earnings of R$ 555 million (US$ 281.7 million).
GPTI was formally created in June 2008 with ambitious goals since its beginning. The plans included doubling the earnings until the end of 2008 and raising investments of US$ 100 million - that might come from an investment fund - to purchase five companies in segments considered strategic. The wider goal was to give muscles to the company in order to make it attractive to potential investors in an initial public offering. The originally planned time to take the company to the exchange market ended in April 2009.
Yesterday, in an announcement that disclosed the deal, Portugal Telecom informed the earnings of GPTI last year amounted to R$ 140 million (US$ 71.1 million). The amount represents less than half of the earnings disclosed in mid-2008. "In the past two years, the world changed a lot and access to liquidity has changed significantly", said Bava. "But what concerns us is the future of the company, not its past". One of the most relevant points, said the Executive, is that 75% of the businesses of GPTI are habitual, that is, they are based on contracts that foresee periodic payments, which generates regular cash flow.
The business also opens opportunities to take the technology of GPTI overseas, in the customer service of Portugal Telecom in countries of Europe and Africa. "Brazil has extraordinary conditions to compete in outsourcing with countries like India, Indonesia and Malaysia", said Bava. "There is personal and technology for that".