Agribusiness is changing the profile of Brazil’s stock market

The Brazilian stock exchange is slowly changing its face. In addition to having more individual investors, more women, and an increasingly strong presence of the technology sector, B3 — as the bourse has been called since 2017 — now features more investors and companies than ever from outside the Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo axis, where approximately half of the capital market is concentrated. In a country of continental proportions, the stock market is finally spreading to other regions. And this movement is due, in large part, to the agribusiness sector.

A prime example is Boa Safra, the largest soybean seed producer in Brazil. In April of this year, the company carried out its initial public offering (IPO) on the Brazilian stock market, breaking a drought of nearly 15 years without new listings from the agro sector. 

In just a few months, the company attracted an array of investors — from large fund managers to small-timers — who decided to expand their regional portfolio. Now, the company’s shareholder base consists of 39,095 individual investors, the second largest in the country’s agribusiness sector.

Boa Safra stands out in other ways too: it is the third-largest company in the Center-West state of Goiás. The second-largest, soy producer Jalles Machado, arrived on the stock market just a few months ago. 

Further evidence of the subtle changes in B3’s profile was the IPO of retail giant Grupo Mateus, one of the biggest in 2020. In an operation led by financial...