DIFFERENTIATED FINANCING SOURCES: THE IMPACT ON THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE OF BRAZILIAN SUGAR AND ALCOHOL COMPANIES

Abstract

This paper analyzes the debt composition of sugar and ethanol companies from the center-south area of the country in five year-harvest (01/02, 02/03, 03/04, 04/05 and 05/06). It is tried to incorporate institutional factors to the capital structure analysis of the companies, such as the access to different sources, as well as to know the importance of those resources in the capital structure of the analyzed companies. Thus, it is tried to understand the participation of different financing lines used by the firms in their indebtedness, which are grouped in four categories: differentiated lines in national currency, differentiated lines in foreign currency, market lines in national currency and market lines in foreign currency. The research also tries to identify whether the companies used, in the analyzed period, the strategies of low debt and/or high liquidity to compensate the high interest rates of the national market. The sample is composed by 35 companies that process around 33% of the sugar cane of the country. The main results showed that the companies used mainly resources from differentiated lines in national currency and from market lines in foreign currency. It is also verified that, on average, the companies presented a debt level around 30%, in which prevails the use of long-term debt, and high liquidity levels through the period. It is noticed that the access to differentiated financing lines have influenced the financing decisions taken by the companies, since the use of these lines prevailed in all of the years, which ratifies the importance of including institutional factors in the capital structure analysis of the companies.