Brazilian meat and poultry company JBS SA has again withdrawn its initial public offering (IPO) for JBS Foods. JBS Foods is the company’s newest subsidiary, producing value-added poultry and pork products.
The company opted to withdraw the IPO, which would have spun off its Brazilian pork, poultry and food operations into a separate company, because of unfavorable market conditions, the New York Times reported.
The IPO was expected to raise as much as BRL3.5 million (US$1.22 million), and the company had earlier revealed that it hoped to use the money raised through the IPO to help pay down debt and make investments.
This is not the first time JBS has withdrawn the IPO. The company had previously announced an IPO in May 2014, but withdrew it in October because of poor market conditions. It would later refile an IPO, hoping that market conditions would improve. However, recent forecasts indicate the financial situation may not improve any time soon.
Brazil’s central bank’s most recent survey of local financial institutions gives a consensus forecast that the economy will contract 0.5 percent in 2015 and that inflation will top 7 percent. Brazil’s currency, the real, has fallen nearly 30 percent against the U.S. dollar since the JBS Foods IPO was first announced in 2014.
