Risks and uncertainties manifested in the economic value of an investment: a case study of OGX Petróleo e Gás

Abstract

The Brazilian financial and capital markets provide several investment options for an investor. However, the decision behind such options will depend on both investor profile and the investment returns. Having in mind that such return can be seen as the investor’s expectations of future cash flows from an investment, added to several risks and the uncertainty from such investment, macroeconomically speaking and even from the invested company itself, one could affirm that the subjectivity used in the valuation of an asset or a business would be one of the items considered in the definition of its economic value. In this sense, the main objective in this paper is to analyze how risk and uncertainty, allied to the formation of expectations in an investment valuation, can be manifested in its economic value. The research made for this paper was focused on the analysis of OGX Petróleo e Gás, a Brazilian publicly traded company, related to the period from 2008 to 2015. Some years after its IPO process, this company assessed that the assets once recognized could not be realized given the infeasibility on the exploration of oil and gas, resulting in the impairment of such assets and its recognition as losses by this company, contributing for the decline of its stock prices at the local exchange. Based on the results presented in this paper, the authors inferred that risk and uncertainty, allied to the formation of expectations, had strong influence on the valuation of the economic value of the OGX share.