Roger Aguilar discusses treasury management and currency risk exposure across regions, covering hedging programs, working capital strategies, and automation plans for manufacturing and oil industries.
In those markets, we were very largely exposed to local currency. We had very large customers in the market and to a very good extent was related to the government. So the government buying in local currency. So we had, we were exposed to the local currency. And that was in my role as a Treasury manager for the region, was about working with our FX team as well in treasury, trying, seeking to mitigate. Well, first of all, understanding the risk and seeking to mitigate that risk. The company had a formal and very large hedging program in place. So it was a matter of expanding that program. In those days we had a hedging program for Mexico, but it was about going into Brazil. And that understanding of the local market was critical for that. In technology, in manufacturing, working capital management is key. Cash flow and strong cash position is a key factor for success. The margins are much lower than in the healthcare or pharmaceutical industry. So taking care of accounts payable, accounts receivable, but not just taking, I mean, truly becoming a business partner and understanding the working capital management is key. I'm not saying that that is not key. In the healthcare industry, it is key as well. However, margins are higher. It's a slightly different position, but in manufacturing that part is key. We are in the process of recovering basically the industry as a whole. So the expectations are that the oil price starts going up little by little. So upon that we expect that the recovery will start. And then as part of that, we truly expect from a Treasury perspective, to start migrating from where we are, which is with a lot of manual processes and some manual products, start moving more into automation, start moving more into seeking for efficiencies and controlling the cost in a better way. So I think that I have the opportunity to compare also the treasury management in this company, this industry, against other industries that I have worked for. And I think we have some long hanging fruit. We have some quick wins, but also to some extent we need to invest in that and we need to invest money and we need to invest time from the people. We need bandwidth for that. So we have faced some constraints in the past couple years, but we have a plan in place and we have a plan that we expect. We launched actually that plan some time ago, but we are developing that plan little by little.
