Análise de comportamento dos indicadores de desempenho financeiro: o caso da Petróleo Brasileiro S/A - Petrobrás.

Abstract

In the management process of companies there is a great need for timely information in order to support the decision making. The planned and controlled information must be collected, stored and processed so that the users can know and feel that they are working with data that reflect the business reality. Considering this, the performance indexes are a set of indicators capable of helping in this decision making process. Taking the above into consideration, it can be seen the importance of using performance indexes (financial or nonfinancial) in the business evaluation process. These indexes are technical data that were transformed in useful information to the business management. Thus, the following question is defined: What is the behavior of the Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobras Company? In order to answer the proposed query, this study aims at verifying the behavior of the financial performance indicators of Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobras during the period of 26 trimesters, from the first trimester of 2002 to the second trimester of 2008. The approach made use of factor analysis techniques, describing each index in details, and comparing them to the reality of the company, what contributed to form a critical point of view of Petrobras' actual situation in accordance with its financial reports. Descriptive statistic techniques were used from statement reports obtained in the Bovespa (Sao Paulo Stock Exchange) website and at CVM (Portuguese abbreviation for Securities and Exchange Commission). The software applied to the factor analysis was the SPSS, version 8.0 for Windows, with the purpose of reducing the number of indicators to factors capable of explaining the correlation among most of them. The study utilized 22 indicators, which were divided into four groups. Three of them form the tripod of the analysis: Liquidity, Yield and Indebtedness. Besides these indicators, the Turnover indexes were also analyzed, assuming they are very relevant to the study. This work may be used as basis to other studies, comparing their results to those found here, always evidencing the occurred facts that might generate financial and economic changes to the analyzed company.