Speaking during the segment Conversas Diárias – Especial Covid-19 (Daily Talks – Special Covid-19), he recalled that, for now, «CMVM (Portuguese Securities Market Commission) instructed appraisers to continue with their normal activity and keep carrying out their periodic assessment reports, mentioning that, due to Covid-19, they were not able to visit the locations».
It remains to be seen «how assessment reports are to be carried out in a market which lacks reference values due to the scarce volume, evidence and conclusion of transactions», since «market evidence» is a fundamental factor to establish correct indicators and not just future cash-flows. And right now, there is no market».
Manuel Puerta da Costa believes that «appraisers will need to be very cautious when looking upon the assessments carried out during this period, and resist the temptation of establishing hypotheses. Their hypotheses need to be confirmed by reality, and that reality is currently non-existent». But he also predicted that «it shouldn’t take too long for some transactions to be announced. The «deconfinement» which should start on the 2nd of May will allow for some of those transactions to take place» and despite having been initiated «before the pandemic, we will not extract much information on their impact» over the market.
Industry «relatively quiet»
According to Manuel Puerta da Costa, the Portuguese UCI industry «has been relatively quiet. So far, the only change was the suspension of some subscriptions which took place regularly for open-ended real estate funds, representing around 3.000 million euro».
Currently, «we have relatively high liquidity levels, and that shows the funds’ caution within this market», he completed.