Brazil: “Telcos Off the Hook During Earnings Season”

Downloadable PowerPoint from Vivo's earnings day today.

Teles restringem discussão de balanços com a imprensa: The Estado de S. Paulo carries this trend story from Táis Fuoco of Reuters. I translate an excerpt.

SÃO PAULO – As operadoras de telecomunicações, em sua maioria de capital aberto, estão cada vez mais “silenciosas” quando se trata de discutir o balanço de desempenho trimestral com a imprensa.

Telecommunications operators, most of them publicly traded, are getting less and less “talkative” when it comes time to discuss their quarterly results with the press.

The pending BrasilTelecom-Oi merger — which has generated a lot of attention from regulators to potential cases of improper disclosure and nondisclosure, and has big strategic ramifications for the entire sector — could explain a lot of this conduct.

O exemplo mais recente desse movimento veio da Vivo, que pela primeira vez em pelo menos sete anos não concedeu entrevista coletiva à imprensa em sua sede na data da divulgação, nesta quarta-feira, resolvendo atender a pedidos individuais de jornalistas.

The most recent example of this is Vivo, which for the first time in at least seven years did not hold a press conference at its headquarters when it released earnings today, opting to answer individual queries from journalists.

A imprensa ficou restrita a uma participação como “ouvinte” na teleconferência da Vivo com analistas, onde os executivos da operadora evitaram comentar perspectivas para o ano.

The press was restricted to participating in “listen only” mode in Vivo’s conference call with analysts, in which executives avoided comment on the company’s prospects for the year.

I Saw it on the TupiTube: Datena on Life (and Death) in Gringo Heaven

I saw on the Tupi boob tube yesterday evening: on TV Bandeirantes, between 5pm and 6pm or so, Brasil Urgente host José Luiz Datena runs footage of a police shooting in Massachussetts involving a Brazilian man with a history of scrapes with the law.

Shows it over and over and over again. And over and over and over and over. And again.

The police steps in front of the young man’s vehicle, pistol at the ready, and when the man insists on moving forward, he fires eight rounds at him, hitting him once in the heart. Pop pop pop pop pop pop! Over and over again. Pop pop pop pop pop pop! The guy drives off.

This was not, I believe, footage of the incident in question, by the way, but I have to check that.

Datena’s comment: “You see? In the United States, police who behave this way are treated as heros! Here in Brazil, they end up in jail!”

This struck me as being the opposite of true on a number of different levels.

Where’s My Motoboy? Current Sambodian Content Downloads

The sort of newsflow I said I would sort through in exchange for (not really all that much) money -- paid in US$, also known as "the West Texas peso"

The Gazeta Mercantil and Valor Economico were supposed to start home delivery to our cafofo — our crib, as the young people of today like to say — here in the Vila Maddá today. Have not shown up yet.

The way things are going, I would be better off driving down the Av. Jaime Fonseca to the Praça Panamericana, near the Cidade Universitaria stop on the CPTM commuter train line, to the only newsstand that carries all the business papers outside of the Av. Paulista (where traffic is first-degree murder, thanks to the eternal “beautification” project underway there under the auspices of Kassab and Matarazzo) and getting them that way.

The DCI business daily, on the other hand, which is very hard to find on newsstands, was waiting in the driveway when I conducted my royal levée at 5:30 pm. I was impressed.

In a sinister development, one of DCI’s special subscription offers includes a free Editora Abril publication of your choice with a six-month subscription.

With its acquisition of the Chinaglia print distribution network, the Editora Abril controls 100% of print distribution in South America’s largest city. Which is kind of scandalous, if you ask me, given the journalistic vandalism Abril regularly commits.