Bear Stearns Upgrades Brazil Stock Weighting To 'Overweight'
Dow Jones Online News, 06/22/2001 10:37
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Bear Stearns has liked what it's seen coming out of Brazil the last couple days, and raised its equity recommendation on the country to "overweight" from "cautiously overweight."
In a report Friday entitled "All The Right Moves," Bear Stearns said Brazilian monetary authorities have taken "steps toward more explicitly stabilizing exchange rates," which constitute "steps in the right direction."
The investment bank said the defense of the real through raising the interbank rate by 150 basis points to 18.25% and other measures to beef up international reserves should "break the negative momentum in the currency," which has depreciated some 20% so far this year."
"An eventual reduction in local rates, although not imminent, would help foster positive sentiment on growth, enabling long-term currency strength via the nexus between prospective growth and capital inflows," it said.
The central bank may have indicated that it is concerned with growth after changing its bias to "downward" from "neutral," Bear Stearns noted.
For now, though, the investment bank recommends eyeing defensive Brazilian stocks such as jet-maker Embraer (ERJ), paper and pulp company Aracruz (ARA), telecommunications giant Telemar (TNE) and beverage giant AmBev (ABV).
In other ratings changes, Bear Stearns cut Brazilian power generator Eletrobras (E.CEB) to "neutral" from "attractive" as soon-to-be-approved laws "may exempt the company from its 'deregulation upside.'"
Chilean wine company Cristalerias de Chile (CGW) was also demoted, though not quite as much as Electrobras. It's now labeled "attractive," down from "buy" previously, due to "persistent concerns surrounding weakening wine export growth and losses at its cable unit."
-By Charles Roth, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2226; charles.roth@dowjones.com
(This story was originally published by Dow Jones Newswires)
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