Venezuela

“A five foot five inch second baseman slap hitting guy who got 15,000 dollars to sign out of Venezuela only after seven teams had passed on him.”

“What probably will happen is those countries that have the most reckless policies will find that there is a greater check on them.”

“We've been long Venezuela through an indirect play on sovereign bonds for three plus years, and the underwriting has been perfect, and we've made no money.”

“I mean, we believe the biggest probability event is softening of sanctions and better behavior democratically, and independent of who wins the election, you're gonna have a big economic recovery after the sanctions are softened.”

“When you look at the per capita consumption of medicines in Venezuela, they've dropped like 80%.”

“So the economy contracted since 2012 until 2020, like 85%. That is the biggest drop in economic activity in any country that is not in a war.”

“Venezuela was traditionally one of the most profitable markets in Latin America in every industry. When we were working in telecoms, margins in telecoms company was like, 40%. The rest of the region was 25. Food was the same, and we still see it to date.”

“It's most likely to go up, then go down, particularly because it's beginning to normalize, and multiples are a third of what you have elsewhere in the world.”

“OFAC just authorized two European oil operators who operate in Venezuela, ENI and Repsol, to begin exporting back to Europe that had been sanctioned earlier. And they allowed Chevron, the US company who's operating in Venezuela, to have a dialogue with the gov…”

“The government eventually made the dollar legal tender, and currently over 60, 70% of transactions in Venezuela are done in dollars.”

“Actually, in all our projections, when we began buying assets in 2020, was for like two or three years of more economic hardship. And it really, the dollarization was an impressive catalyst to create increased performance.”

“We also lived in Venezuela, where it was at that moment in time, one of the wealthiest countries in the region, and it had one of the longest democratic traditions in the region.”

“The transactions that we're looking at, I would say they range between three and a half to five times EBITDA, three and a half to four and a half times EBITDA.”

“Because we want the least micro risk that we can, because what we want is the exposure to the macro risk. So we don't want any turnaround situations. We don't want any company in crisis. We don't want a company without management.”

“So you could gain exposure to some of the companies in the public markets, but the volume is probably less than 5000 dollars a day, so you can't build a position.”

“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. It has more oil than Saudi Arabia. It's got like, 20% of the global share of oil. Saudi Arabia has 17.”

“So our employees and the companies in Venezuela, I think we've Can tuple the average compensation since we began four years ago.”

“We have seen growth in that oil production up to a million barrels of oil.”

“Health is one of the priorities, and the rate of growth of that market has been 20, 30% per annum for the past three, four years in Venezuela.”

“So we followed that playbook and we began acquiring a company that was the number six in the market. And in the span of a little bit less than three years, it's become the number two pharmaceutical manufacturer. So that's meant about a tripling or quadrupling …”

“Our portfolio has grown about 40% per annum the last four years”

“Within the scope of a year until today, in fact, all of the pricing of all of the assets is dollarized. They may not be listed in dollars, but the underlying amount for pricing everything is in dollars.”

“Now the valuations are sub four times EBITDA.”

“For Venezuelan assets, what we believe is the necessary condition for exits is that it becomes a geography where foreign investors are willing to come back in and acquire these strategic assets. What we're looking to do Build those strategic assets in anticipa…”

“It was a situation where there was a perceived risk much greater than the real risk, in our view, and a country that was overlooked by investors for understandable reasons, and that created an opportunity where you could find very High quality assets at very a…”

“And then we subsequently acquired the assets of Pfizer in Venezuela. And then we subsequently last year acquired local assets Of a company called Vivas Pharmaceuticals, and the multiples were all around there.”

“Argentina is a great opportunity too, and they're well ahead of where Venezuela is.”