Contax Plans to Add 12,000 Jobs in 2012 to Grow Outside Brazil
Contax Participacoes SA (CTAX3), Brazil’s largest call-center company, plans to step up hiring and add 12,000 jobs this year to expand in Latin America and into technology help-desk services, Chief Financial Officer Marco Schroeder said.
The hiring plans represent a 10 percent increase in workforce from 115,000 employees currently at Contax, a Rio de Janeiro-based company spun off of Tele Norte Leste Participacoes SA (TNLP4) in 2005. About 5,000 of the new positions will be outside of Brazil to serve Spanish-speaking clients, Schroeder said.
“The main industries we service, telecommunications and finance, continue to grow and create demand,” Schroeder said in an interview in Sao Paulo Jan. 24. “The goal now is to expand into other areas as well as call centers.”
Contax is seeking to expand in parts of Latin America where demand is growing faster than in Brazil. The company paid as much as 332 million reais in May to buy Allus Global BPO Center, a contact-center company with operations in Argentina, Peru and Colombia, and clients in Spain and the U.S.
Contax surged 36 percent in the past three months in Sao Paulo before today, the best performance within the BM&FBovespa Small Cap Index. The index gained 5.5 percent in the period. Contax was little changed at 22.98 reais at 12:03 p.m.
The stock has 3 hold recommendations, one sell and one buy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Contax is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 28, Schroeder said.
An expansion into technology help-desk services would help boost profit margins, according to Schroeder. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as a share of revenue probably fell to 8.4 percent in 2011 from 12.4 percent the previous year, according to analysts’ estimates and data compiled by Bloomberg.
Higher Margins
“Latin America is still a market with little consolidation and with higher revenue margins,” Schroeder said.
Investment will increase to 160 million reais this year from 150 million in 2011, Schroeder said. Contax will focus on consolidating assets that it bought recently and has no new acquisitions on its radar at the moment, he said.
In January 2011, Contax acquired Portugal Telecom SGPS SA (PTC)’s Dedic/GPTI unit, which provides contact-center services in Brazil, for 116 million reais.
Contax is in talks with Brazil’s development bank, known as BNDES, for a 300 million-real credit line, which should be approved by the end of the first half, Schroeder said. The funds will be used to finance its investment plan. The company’s gross debt was 898.2 million reais in September 2011, according to a statement reporting its third-quarter earnings.
To contact the reporter on this story: Taís Fuoco in Sao Paulo at tfuoco1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Helder Marinho at hmarinho@bloomberg.net
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page