You are Marcela Sáenz, the first CFO from outside the family at Lácteos del Altiplano, a dairy processor in Tunja, Colombia. A national supermarket chain is offering a three-year private-label contract, but only if a financing and governance package is signed by 21 May — 45 days from now. This morning you must decide what problem your first memo names.
The situation
Aníbal Rojas founded the company in 1991. Today it employs 410 people, buys milk from some 340 farmers on the Boyacá plateau and sells yogurt, fresh cheese and arequipe through about 2,100 outlets. In 2025 it billed COP$96,000 million at a 13% EBITDA margin (about COP$12,480 million), and its financial debt equals 1.1 times EBITDA. The contract would bring in COP$40,000 million a year: 42% more revenue.
The chain sets two conditions. The plant and cold chain must be expanded within twelve months, an investment of COP$22,000 million. And it will pay at 75 days instead of 30, which leaves about COP$6,200 million more sitting in receivables for as long as the contract runs. Today, 6 April, the company has COP$5,500 million in cash. It generates COP$6,800 million of free cash flow a year, and roughly COP$6,000 million of it goes out to the family as a dividend.
Here, no question about money is only about money. Aníbal, 71 and chairman, still signs every major expense; he calls the contract the recognition the company has waited 35 years for, and will not hear of outside partners. Jorge, the third of the Rojas siblings, lives in Madrid with shares and no role, and has written that he will vote against any cut in the dividend: it is his only income. The bank has set a ceiling of 3.0 times EBITDA and ties its best price to credible governance reform; the chain's buyers want to see the board before they sign.
Aníbal expects you at eleven, and María, the general manager who hired you, has called her two brothers to a meeting on Thursday. Your diagnostic memo will open with a single reading of the situation, and the bank, the chain and the family will read everything else through it.