Brazilian tour operator CVC delivered its worst performance as a publicly traded company on Thursday, June 11, when its shares closed at R$ 1.32, representing a 7.04% drop and the lowest price since the group went public in December 2013.
A day later, the shares rebounded, closing the day at R$ 1.39, up 5.30%, valuing the company at R$ 723.9 million. Even so, according to Elos Ayta, these prices are close to the previous all-time low of R$ 1.38, reached on December 30, 2024, when the group's value was R$ 725.3 million.
Other indicators that only reinforce CVC's unfavorable situation in the capital market show that the company's shares have accumulated a 35.6% drop in 2026. And, over 12 months, the decline is even more significant, at 44.8%.
“This drop is mainly linked to macroeconomic issues,” says Fabio Mader, CEO of CVC, to NeoFeed , when questioned about the reasons behind the negative performance recorded by the company on the B3 stock exchange. “When we started the year, we had a different scenario. And suddenly, an external factor called war came in, which completely changed the context, in matters such as the Selic rate, which, evidently, put pressure on our results.”
Mader reinforced the discourse adopted since the release of the first quarter 2026 balance sheet, about a month ago, by attributing a good part of the turbulence reflected in the results to the impacts of the conflict in the Middle East, among other factors.
The crisis faced by CVC, however, goes far beyond the external factors cited by the company itself. Although the war in the Middle East and the rise in the Selic rate have pressured results, managers and experts interviewed by NeoFeed point to more serious structural problems.
The situation includes instability in management, with four CEOs in seven years; the "phygital" model, which was supposed to integrate digital and physical channels but ended up increasing costs without efficiency gains; and competition from 100% digital agencies, such as Decolar and Booking, which reduced the company's market share.
Added to this is the financial deterioration, marked by recurring losses, increasing debt and a sharp cash burn, factors that have undermined investor confidence and explain the historic drop in stock prices.
“The tourism market is booming. They said that sales were affected by geopolitics, but nobody bought it, since competitors grew significantly during the same period. And, at CVC, sales related to the Middle East don't even reach 1% of the total,” says a manager interviewed by NeoFeed .
Mader counters by arguing that CVC has no "perfect peer " for comparison on the B3 stock exchange. He also says that even the shares of the airline Latam, which could be a closer proxy, have been falling in recent months. He prefers to use retail companies as a reference, where the group also fits in.
“In the retail sector, even the darlings of the stock exchange are falling,” says Mader. “If you exclude a hard core of B3, which are five or ten companies, commodity companies and Brazilian blue chips , the rest are really going through a very difficult period.”
The same manager, however, adds that "CVC is burning through cash non-stop and, at the current rate, in another four months they will have to raise capital." "In the end, it's a combination of growing debt, falling EBITDA, increasing losses and expenses, enormous cash burn, and loss of market share and take rate ," says this source.
In the first quarter, CVC reported a net loss of R$72.3 million, compared to a loss of R$7.4 million a year earlier. Net revenue grew 0.5% to R$377.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA fell 10.5% to R$93.7 million.
Other indicators disappointed the market – the release of the financial results was followed by an 11.27% drop in the stock price. Among them were the increase in operating and financial expenses, as well as the rise in operating cash burn, which went from R$ 53.2 million a year ago to R$ 121.6 million.
As a result, net debt was R$ 241.8 million, an increase of R$ 140 million compared to the end of 2025. Meanwhile, net debt with receivables stood at R$ 1.52 billion, compared to R$ 1.26 billion on the same basis of comparison.
CVC's CFO, Felipe Gomes, in turn, emphasizes that, traditionally, the first quarter is already a month of higher cash consumption in the sector, since companies sell fewer tickets and transport many passengers. He stresses that the increase in airfare prices, in the wake of the conflict, only worsened this scenario.
In addition to highlighting that CVC is already beginning to see a recovery in its cash flow with the receipt of vacation payments from the beginning of the year, the CFO points out that airlines in Asia and the Middle East are resuming their capacities. And he rules out, for now, the need for a capital injection.
“Today, when we look at what we have to pay and what we have in cash, we don’t need a follow-on offering ,” says Gomes. “That option could be good for restructuring the balance sheet, but, with the share price today, we are much more focused on restructuring the debt we have internally.”
In addition to negotiations to extend the debt repayment period, the CVC duo cites other measures adopted to balance the operation. Among them are the cuts, made two weeks ago, which reduced the company's workforce by 14%, primarily at the vice-president, director, and general manager levels.
“This was a mandate I had from the board since the beginning of the year, when I took over,” says Mader. “And we took advantage of this moment to carry out this restructuring, making the company more efficient, leaner and less bureaucratic, in addition to renegotiating contracts and working on working capital.”
Musical chairs
Mader's appointment as CEO in January of this year, however, signals that CVC's problems are not limited to external factors, nor to short-term impacts. In a change that was not expected by the market, he replaced Fabio Godinho , who had led the company since June 2023.
More than the surprise generated by the announcement, the change in leadership only reinforced a dynamic that does nothing to foster market confidence in the operation. Mader is the fourth CEO of CVC in a seven-year period. And, in that interval, there have been quite a few reversals in the group's direction.
“There have been very frequent changes in leadership, and the company has alternated between various new strategies and narratives,” says Daniel Utsch, manager at Nero Capital. “And the fact is that, after these last 4 or 5 years, the results haven't improved or changed at all. And profitability is still far below expectations.”
Among so many changes, one of the most significant came with the return of Guilherme Paulus , the founder of CVC, as a reference shareholder in 2023. He had left the company's management and sold his stake in the operation five years earlier.
The businessman's return, following a capital increase of R$ 226.2 million, was accompanied by the appointment of Fabio Godinho as CEO and a broad restructuring plan based on a "return to the roots" narrative.
As part of this recovery, CVC divested or terminated operations of a series of assets it had acquired to also operate in the model known in the sector as OTA ( online travel agency) . Among them, the brands Submarino Viagens and Almundo.
The group began to focus on a strategy dubbed "phygital"—a blend of offline and digital—aiming to generate and capture leads through digital channels, which were then redirected to the network's franchises. The network has once again aggressively invested in expansion—approximately 480 stores have opened in the last three years.
However, the execution of this strategy is also the target of criticism. "The company created a narrative that it now had a phygital model, with 50% of store sales made remotely," says another manager interviewed by NeoFeed .
“But now the market has realized that either this isn’t true, or, if it is true, it only served to increase inefficiency, since they sell remotely but continue to pay the franchisee,” he adds.
According to this manager, CVC discarded remote sales initiatives before even launching them. Among them was an app that allowed sales not tied to the network's franchisees. And it went ahead and opened stores and reinforced its old model, which has resulted in a bill that is now being collected.
"In fact, worldwide, the companies that are doing very well in tourism are those that were founded as technology companies," says this source, drawing a parallel with the retail sector and citing names like Amazon and Mercado Libre.
“In tourism in Brazil, we have two great examples: Decolar and Booking,” observes the manager. “They are foreign companies, 100% digital, and have completely dominated the market here.”
In this context, just over a month ago, journalist Lauro Jardim published on his blog in O Globo that Prosus, the holding company of Decolar , was evaluating a public takeover bid (OPA) for CVC, which, at the time, denied having received any proposal. This is now reinforced by Mader.
“We had a conversation with them last September. It was constructive. But it was just a conversation,” he says. “Since then, no proposal has been put on the table.”
Meanwhile, Mader argues that the strategy of expanding physical stores was the right step. He emphasizes that this expansion was made in smaller stores and in cities in the interior of Brazil, where CVC did not have a presence. These stores now serve as hubs for providing phygital service in their respective regions.
“Opening a store was important because this is a game of scale. In tourism, size matters,” he says. “With this expansion, CVC has returned to the size it was in 2019, which gives us an advantage to compete with companies like Trip.com and Expedia,” he adds, citing some OTAs.
Mader notes that the operator continues to invest in improving its phygital strategy. Among these steps is the launch, in October, of a new website and app. In addition to recent initiatives, such as joining aggregator platforms like Skyscanner, Google Flights, and Kayak 30 days ago.
According to Utsch of Nero Capital, the debut on these platforms and the investment in new strategies to compete with online travel agencies signals, once again, a shift in discourse that exacerbates the market's perception of risk regarding the group.
“They always said that OTAs wouldn’t dominate the entire market and that CVC had its place. And, at this moment, it sounds a little strange to start doing this,” says Utsch. “In short, it’s a whole context that culminates in this drop in the stock price after many years of delivering very poor results.”
