Good morning, and welcome to Grupo Rotoplas conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded, and all participants are currently in listen-only mode to prevent background noise. The host will open the floor for questions later. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the environment as we currently see it, and as such, there may be certain risks and uncertainties associated with such statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information on the specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please allow me to remind you that the company released its earnings press release yesterday after market close. It can be found in the Investors section of its website.
Also, the presentation for the call can be accessed in the Materials section. Today's call will be hosted by Mr. Carlos Rojas Aboumrad, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Mario Romero, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Carlos Rojas.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for joining our call. After a strong close in the last quarter of 2021, we have observed a very challenging beginning of the year, as January and February growth of sales volumes, so the core business and the cash flow generating side of the business were affected by various factors. We have seen that people made most home repairs and renewals during the social distancing phase of the pandemic. Government subsidies in some countries have been eliminated to reduce, in some geographies, diminishing the disposable income, while families are prioritizing key categories spending. For example, kids going back to school, traveling, eating out, et cetera.
Additionally, in some countries and categories, when we announced December price increases, distributors decided to anticipate purchases and build up inventories, boosting last quarter's sales and creating the hangover for the first quarter demand of 2022. The positive note is that March was in line with our budget, and we have seen the improvement in demand in April. During the quarter, we saw a strong performance of our operations in the United States of America, driven by the e-commerce platform and in Argentina. We have been able to protect margins with a marginal pricing strategy. As for the services platform, it is still affected by zero-revenue water fountains business due to the impact in Mexico schools, and a slow recovery in Xitla's water treatment and recycling plants sales after new industrial and commercial projects were halted because of the pandemic uncertainties in Mexico.
While in Brazil, Xitla's pipeline is developing given the recent changes in water legislation. Finally, VeDa maintains an accelerated growth, adding 8,000 new subscribers in the last three months. Given that it is a developing business, it does not offset the low revenues from the other divisions. 2021 was an inflationary year, and our price increase strategy played well to gain market share. However, as you can see this quarter, gross margin is just 110 basis points below the first quarter of last year, which was mainly impacted by lower fixed cost absorption related to the weakness in sales volumes and not necessarily price levels.
The expansion of our e-commerce platform and the septic businesses in the U.S. and the accelerated growth phase in VeDa undertook significant investments and affected our margins, but will contribute to growth and profitability in the medium term. We need to keep a close eye on expenses as they grew more than sales during the quarter, affecting EBITDA margins that stood below guidance. It is my priority to correct and adjust as necessary to recover the margins for the coming quarters. For that, it is going to be crucial to control travel expenses and expenses related to face-to-face activities that have been suspended during the pandemic. To monitor spending allocated to developing businesses such as Aquania in the United States, Xitla Brazil, as well as VeDa in Mexico.
We continue to track our market share in addition to raw materials, logistics, cost behavior in order to maintain a consistent pricing strategy and achieve a healthy balance between growth and profitability. We will also have to do our best to manage the demand for filler tanks in regions with high water stress, such as Nuevo León in Mexico. For example, in March, we have moved machinery to Monterrey plant in order to increase local capacity. Drought is a major issue going forward. In Mexico, it is estimated that over 50% of the country is currently experiencing a drought. Because of La Niña, the meteorological phenomenon, there are fewer clouds, heat waves, and the seasonal rains are delayed.
Monterrey, one of the country's biggest urban centers, is heading towards water rationing as two of the three dams that supply the city have run dry, and the metropolitan area has less than 60 days left of available water. Also, Mexico City has less than two years of water availability. In fact, according to the World Resources Institute, water available per capita across the country has fallen to half of what it was 20 years ago to 3,000 cubic meters, which is considered below availability. Just thinking about the outlook of the coming years facing climate change effects in Latin America and the U.S., and the fact that water is going to priority issues for mankind such as energy, food security, health, and hygiene, we continue to expand the vision of water digitization.
Specifically, water digitization for Rotoplas means innovating to incorporate data and analytics in our products and services to bring about modern, more efficient solutions for our customers. Aquanta in the U.S. and in Mexico, businesses in which we have heavily invested in the past years, showcase the potential impact of digitization for improving resource use. For instance, by merging our e-commerce operations with our septics businesses, we have been able to reach a broader customer base in the U.S., and in Mexico, we have introduced online maintenance scheduling and instant messaging to communicate more quickly and accurately with customers. Although we have paid the tough quarter, March results showed us that the transition expenses related to developing businesses can be absorbed by the other divisions when the expected levels of sales is reached, keeping EBITDA margins above 16%.
We continue to be on track towards our goal of doubling sales by 2025 and to create value by obtaining returns on invested capital greater than our cost of capital. We are working to ensure that our solutions and our operations are actually addressing the needs of our customers, our people, and our communities. Flow, which started as a transformational program and has now become the way we conduct our day-to-day business, is going to be key for achieving our goals. We have launched more than 1,800 initiatives, 160 during this quarter. Moreover, by embracing this new way of doing things, our team has been able to overcome the severe disruption of a lack of storage. We continue to invest in and apply the technology we have and develop the necessary capabilities to build the world's best water tech.
I am confident that with the execution discipline and the alignment we have reached, we can overcome difficult situations. As a company that is committed to the best ESG principles and practices, we have both the ability and the responsibility to play a major role in helping to address the water crisis. Part of that is innovation in the water solutions that I just mentioned. The other part is ensuring we do everything we can for our stakeholders. To do that, to that end, we have continued to make significant progress in the adoption of ESG frameworks. As detailed in our annual report, which will be published next week, we invite you to read the report to learn more about our performance, and hope you find it interesting and informative. Thank you very much for your time.
I'll now turn the call to Mario, so he can go over the results in further detail. I look forward to your questions.
Well, thanks, Charly. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us this morning. Our quarterly results in some ways reflect new challenges that all of us are experiencing now that the COVID pandemic is almost behind and a new normal is emerging. This was certainly a challenging quarter, but we believe that we have a clear path forward, and we maintain a firm commitment to contributing to value generation and the well-being of our stakeholders. A brief note about COVID and our operation status. This quarter, we carried operations without interruption and continued to comply with the strictest safety and hygiene protocol in our manufacturing operations in the field. As to our financials, quarter sales increased 9% year-over-year, driven by the double-digit growth in the United States of America and Argentina, and a 3% increase in Mexico.
We compensated for the sales decrease in the other segment that comprises Peru, Central America, and Brazil. Sales of products grew 11% year-over-year. The first quarter of 2021 was a relatively high watermark due to the effects of the pandemic by storing water, which we are no longer present this quarter as people start to switch their lifestyles. Plus, as a relatively high rate of home repairs and renewals, as well as subsidies and transfers to the population in some of our markets have fallen. Nevertheless, we registered growth across all three categories, storage, water flow, and water treatment, driven by the pricing strategy we have been executing for the past few months and the droughts and heat waves in different regions in Latin America.
Products, the heart and soul of our core business and represents 97% our total sales, continue to compensate for the lack of revenue in the water pumping businesses and the absence of traction in successive water treatment plant business, both as a result of the pandemic, as many industrial and commercial projects are delayed or temporarily suspended, and schools group to not reactivate on program shift.
As Charly pointed out, we expect the accelerated growth rate of Ayga, our drinking water business, and the growth of our e-commerce and septic business in the United States will increase its contribution to our growth in the medium term. Our gross margin decreased by 110 basis points, as lower sales volumes in some markets resulted in a lower fixed cost absorption rate, in addition to the fact that we continue to face cost increases in raw materials and logistics when compared to last year's quarter. Our operating income decreased 27% year-over-year. This is partly related to the development of the e-commerce platform and the pre-operating expenses of the septic business in the U.S., as well as the higher expenses related to new users of Teria in Mexico.
Travel reactivation, on-site events, and sales and marketing strategies that were paused during the pandemic also contributed to the increasing expenses. Our operating expenses grew 21%, while sales only grew 9%. This resulted in a 12% EBITDA margin. It is important to note that we are no longer adjusting EBITDA to account for the expenses associated with the implementation of the Flow program. In the coming months, we will focus on the recovery of our margins by paying attention to these key aspects of the business. First, volume growth, both in legacy and new products. Second, as Charly mentioned, expenses control. Third, we need to keep a close eye on raw materials and logistics costs. Now, moving forward to our geographic breakdown. Sales in Mexico grew 3%.
Product sales were really in single digits, and we continue to adjust our pricing strategy and boost the growth in the northern states of the country, as we mentioned earlier, offsetting service and Flow recovery. We remain focused on investing in our manufacturing technology and the continued improvements to our analytics and operations, and think about the next generation of our solutions and keep our water tank leadership and innovation. Sales in origin grew 34%, and we continue to execute an efficient pricing and commercial strategy that resulted in double-digit growth across all three product categories, storage, water flow, and water heaters. We also completed the migration of our water heater production to a bigger and more modern facility. Sales in the United States grew 30%, and we continue to expand our e-commerce and septic business there.
It is worth noting that we opened a new store in North Carolina and now we have 15 units in the country. We have also increased our partnership with hardware stores and service providers, which has increased our customer reach and our ability to provide a comprehensive service. Sales in Central America decreased slightly, partially because some consumers built up inventories ahead of the December price increase. Sales in Peru decreased as the government fought the pandemic so seriously to families, affecting the population's disposable income. Furthermore, spending priorities shift as schools and back to normal lives reopened. Finally, the water treatment business pattern in Brazil continues to look very attractive, and we expect a significant positive effect from the new water regulatory framework in the country. In terms of our portfolio mix, sales of products were 87% of total sales, growing 11% year-to-year.
Sales of services decreased 18% despite the accelerated growth of Teria because of the effects that we have already described before. Our cash conversion cycle increased by 26 days due to an increase in inventory to maintain operational stability as we continue to address our supply chain disruptions, as well as a decrease in accounts payable days due to a change in the purchasing mix. Our net debt to EBITDA is 1.6x . It's worth noting that our debt position considers only the sustainable bond, AGUA 17-2X, which as we have discussed in the previous quarter, net MXN 4 billion, has a maturity date of June 2027 and with 8.65% fixed rate. Moving to the next slide. CapEx was 5% of total sales, amounting to MXN 129 billion.
This aligns with our five-year business plan. The CapEx was directed towards improving our production and customer outreach, and a focus on investing to create the water tap of the future. It is worth highlighting that the investment for new technology in Mexico is to ensure the sustainability of our manufacturing operations, reducing our energy and raw materials used, as well as R&D for the next generation of products. It is also focused on increasing and improving our product production capacity. Our CapEx also includes investments in the digitalization of operations, including those that directly impact our customer reach and our users experience. Our ROIC reached 13.1% at the end of March, 100 basis points above adjusted capital, which also increased 160 basis points in the past 12 months.
Nevertheless, the creation of sustainable economic value is carried on in order to maintain a positive impact in our stakeholders. Charly has already mentioned our progress in the adoption of the key ESG frameworks and the annual report we will be publishing next week. As you can see in the heat map, we are now in compliance with almost all of the major frameworks and methodologies and are working towards ensuring our alignment with science-based targets.
This is a significant milestone for us as it helps us ensure that our operations contribute to the well-being of our stakeholders. With this framework, we can communicate our performance in an effective and comparable way to all of our stakeholders. Additionally, it's also worth mentioning that during the quarter, we launched a solid water, energy, and sanitation project with ACCIONA, installing 25 water collection systems in an extreme poverty community in Oaxaca. We also installed 50 handwashing stations in the largest market of Mexico City in alliance with the Red Cross. We held the first of three diversity and inclusion sessions with the leadership team and the entire company focused on tolerance, inclusion, and gender equality. Finally, we defined the ESG evaluation framework for our suppliers. Now, as for our guidance, we had a challenging first quarter.
We believe that the discipline and agility we have achieved with the Flow program will allow us to stay close to our annual goals. Therefore, we are continuing to set revenue growth to something greater or equal to 15%. However, we will be adjusting our spread of return on invested capital over our total capital and the EBITDA margin by 100 basis points in both cases, leaving the ROIC minus WACC at a positive 100 basis point spread and the EBITDA margin at a range of 15.5%-16.5% and keeping our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio below 2x . We also remain on track and focused on achieving our 2025 objectives.
There also will be a shareholders' meeting on April 29th, and we will propose a cash dividend payment in cash of MXN 0.25 per share and the ratification or appointment of the members of the board and the audit, corporate practices, and compensation committees. All details can be found in our website. Finally, before we open the floor to your questions, we would like to share with you that Appalachia Analysis started coverage of Abraji's stock in March with a target price of MXN 39.40 and a buy recommendation. That's all from me now. Thank you very much for your time and attention. We look forward to your questions.
You can submit a question by pressing the Q&A button. Please include your name and the name of your fund and company. The first question is from Liliana De León, GBM. Good morning. Thank you for the call. I have three questions. I will only read the first one, and then I'll go back. Volumes recovered by the end of the quarter, given current water stress and heat waves, do you think that volumes recovery will be enough to offset profitability pressures?
Hello, Liliana. Thank you for joining. Thanks for your question. It is part of the thesis of water stress that water stress is gonna be a driver for water plus going forward. It's not the first time we see water stress driving results for water plus, and we imagine it will continue to be the case, not only in Mexico but in other countries. We're seeing water stress situations in other relevant markets such as Brazil and even the U.S. It's not something that's only happening to developing countries with very undeveloped infrastructure, but also countries that are leading many practices such as the U.S. We do think that the rest of the year demand will be much stronger. Fortunately for this call, we were able to see that recovery in March and in April.
April is showing even further. We're comfortable to think that this will offset a big part of the gap we generated in January and February. Now, we do foresee some other surprises, macroeconomic surprises, potentially happening this year. Hopefully that does not affect demand, but we will keep a close eye to see how markets are affected by other potentially surprising events in the year. Mario, do you think that you'd like to add?
No, I think you have said. I will just add on that we recently have some access to some research and a lot of infrastructure problems, lack of investment in infrastructure in the water space will create a further stress in the coming months and years.
Just by the way, in some of our bigger markets such as Mexico, we have not seen significant spend in infrastructure to make sure that this water stress will be corrected. We continue to see that the participation of individual homes and businesses will have to take responsibility in making sure that they have enough of this resource. That really plays to an advantage to the decentralized water approach.
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm gonna read the next question. SG&A well below sales. Could you give us more color on why SG&A are growing faster and if this trend is temporary or related to specific projects?
We're gonna go ahead, Mario.
Sure. I think the question was more about the, because it grew above sales, not below. Maybe it is below. It started mainly due to three projects, which are very clear. One is bebbia. As you all recall, acquiring a customer in bebbia has a cost of around $200, and all that flows into the P&L. As the business is standing and we added 8,000 new subscribers, that's a big component of the increase of the SG&A. The second one is the septic business in the U.S. So you might recall the productivity in the U.S. for the septics was huge. We started to gain some traction.
We are a high-level new team, and we're very happy about the promising future of that business. Obviously, there are some pre-op expenses that we have to do early on to achieve that opportunity. That's the second component to it. The third one is inflation. You know, logistics, which is recorded at the SG&A level in Rotoplas, has experienced inflation from different sources. Energy prices and freights are being highly affected by inflation as well as others. Those three things, one, it's marketing that we are managing with the pricing, and those are very interesting projects that they start to achieve a scale.
Obviously, now the expenses should become lower than the increase in sales. That's the key three elements of expense expansion. I don't know, Charly, you want to add something else too?
No.
Okay. Well, the third question from Liliana was about the guidance. I think you already commented on that, but there are also some other analysts and people asking about the pricing strategy for this year. Is there still more room to increase prices?
We will prioritize gross margins. If needed, we will continue to increase prices. It will depend based on cost increases and inflation. I think there is lots of variability today in regards to pricing. We will be deciding on pricing in a natural, agile way. I don't know, Mario, if you'd like to comment anything regarding pricing.
Just to complement what you say. As you might recall, last year the strategy was to gain market share, secure raw materials, and do that, and we did that. This year is more about creating profitability on what we did last year. As Carlos mentioned, we are very, very focused on growth margin targets. And then in terms of guidance, just to complement what we just said through our presentation, we adjusted a couple of items. One is the spread. As you all know, interest rates are coming up.
The cost of capital is coming up, and we are seeing that in the WACC. On the other hand, the first quarter was always very challenging, as we have presented. All in all, we believe that spread will still be positive, but now we are reducing the guidance to 100 basis points instead of 200 basis points. The EBITDA margin, we reduced it as well by 100 basis points to a range of 15.5%-16.5%. That's mainly due to the first quarter earnings performance that nobody likes. There was another question around the EBITDA margin, what to expect in the next three quarters. We are targeting a range between 17% and 18%.
That's what we're gonna be seeing in the coming quarters. When you add up the 12% of this quarter and that performance in the next three quarters gives you that 15.5%-16.5% range that we guided earlier.
Thank you, Mario. We have another question from Carlos Alcaraz at Palatio Analysis. Do you expect the normalization in inventory days during the second quarter?
Mario.
I don't. Well, thanks, Carlos, for bringing up this morning. Yeah, it's covering the story. I'm pretty much worked up. We don't see that in the second quarter. It might happen in the second half. Because I don't know how much you follow the news, I'm sure you do. We're having some struggles in Asia around COVID shutdowns and so on. We're still seeing some volatility in supply chain. As you know, our priority is to have products and services delivered, not lose market share and serve our end customers. That's our priority.
Having said that, we believe that you start to see some inventory reduction by the second half if things get better worldwide in terms of supply chains. That's something that we'll keep you posted on the priorities.
Well, the second question from Carlos: When do you expect the projects under construction in Brazil to start generating revenues?
That should start happening very soon, Carlos. Again, it's a very new business, so it will not necessarily offset the results of the first quarter from Mexico, but that should be happening in the next couple of quarters to start seeing the revenues. For Brazil to actually generate an impact on the revenues of the company, it will take a few years. We will see the gap between the two. That's the first step of this kind of project. It's a process that takes about a year.
I mean, it takes a little bit longer to get the customer, about a year to get a customer, about a year to build the plant, and then after that, the plant starts generating revenues. Mario, anything else that you'd like to comment?
That's the cycle of the business. Just to complement, as we've been reporting, we have some plants under construction. Second quarter, you will start to see the first revenue coming from those projects that we started last year. As we've mentioned briefly, during our presentation, Brazil, they came out with a new legislation, Law 14026, which it targets that 99% of all the population in Brazil should be served with treated water and 90% of that population needed to collect it and treat it. Well, that's from last year to 2033. The estimated investment, because the problem what they did is everything's gonna be done by private.
The investment in the next 10 years is gonna be somewhere around $100 billion. That's creating a lot of tailwinds within the Brazilian market. The treatment we are seeing there is being very interesting. There's more pipeline in Brazil as a country than skills to supply the demand that we are seeing. That tells you what we are seeing in Brazil at the macro level. At the micro level of the company, we are executing with a lot of energy and focus on the projects we have in hand. You're gonna start seeing revenues, some of it coming in the second quarter and then ramped up throughout the rest of the year.
Thank you.
Of course, Mariana, it will be interesting to share with our investing community. This is just public information about the changes in the Brazilian law, so everyone can take a look at what is happening in that market and why we are interested on building a nice business there.
Sure. We're gonna share that. We will get it posted on our website. We have another question that comes from Laura Malone, Fernandez de Santos Martins. Would you share more details of how to work with specs in terms of cost pressures for the coming months?
Go ahead, Mario.
Well, we started to see some decline for something fixed. Back in January last year, rates were at $1,400 from Asia to Mexico. It went all the way up to $14,000. That's like a 10x in less than 12 months. Now we're coming back to $9,000. We're starting to see that coming back. In the energy side, raw materials, we are starting to see flats. You know, not that ramp up that we saw from February to October. Again, you know, there's a lot of macro variables affecting the environment. On one side you have the Ukraine-Russia story. On the other one you have the shutdowns that come in Asia and so on.
One of the risky elements is to keep a close eye on what happens to raw materials and freights. Be very agile and proactive on price management as Charlie explained.
Thank you. The next question was from Lucila Gómez of Vitru, but it was also related to COGS and what to expect. I'm gonna move to the next question. That is from Liliana De León, GBM. When do you expect the-
Very briefly to clarify. I think it would be just worth going over that question very quick.
Sure. I want to read it. Do you expect the higher COGS that impacted our first quarter 2022 results and caused significant EBITDA decrease as the margin compressed to 12% to continue in the following quarters?
Mario mentioned very quickly that we expect much higher margins of EBITDA going forward. I just want to clarify, Lucila, thanks for joining, good morning. The biggest reason was lower volumes in sales for January and February. The margins were impacted more because of the volumes. We did have aggressive price increases in the second half of last year. Margins or prices in the first quarter were already at the level we would have wanted them for the level of costs that we were seeing. Mario, I don't know if you want to comment that.
No, that's-
Thank you. Thank you, Lucila. Sorry, go ahead, Mario.
Thank you, Charly. The next question is from Liliana De León, GBM. When do you expect the U.S. branch to be profitable, or when should we expect those expenses to normalize?
We've already seen that business in a level of being profitable in the last year. We have been investing very heavily in new business, which is the septics business, where we see tremendous opportunity. I have to say that the retail business is a business that's more mature and that is in self-profitability levels. We would expect to see that business be very close to breakeven throughout this year, as we all continue to leverage the retail business to develop the new business for much higher growth. The retail business, the business that has very interesting potential but there is much larger opportunities such as septics one.
We want to continue to invest in these bigger opportunities, as the U.S. today is just about 10% of our business today, and we want it to be much larger. It is a market where we will continue to invest aggressively going forward. Mario, anything else you'd like to comment?
Just to touch on what you say, Charlie. By year-end, the target that we have today is to post a positive EBITDA in the United States. Right now, what you're seeing is, as Charlie mentioned, the e-commerce retail business has been profitable. We are heavily investing in pre-op expenses in the septic side. The question is good, the parts are good and the team in the U.S. expects, throughout the year, the septic business will become a breakeven. The other side will stay with the retail e-commerce profitable. By year-end, you will be seeing very interesting growth in revenue in the United States with a new business, which is the septics and a positive EBITDA by year-end.
We have another question, it's from Rodrigo Salazar, AM Advisors. Hello, thank you for taking my question. Have you expanded CapEx uses for the year and the impact for each investment?
I imagine, in fact, you're referring to returns on CapEx. Anyways, I'll first answer and then Mario will complement. One of the biggest projects in growth in CapEx is to evolve the capabilities of our water storage business in Mexico, which is one of our main businesses. There's great opportunity to innovate in that product. We've been investing in R&D for multiple years to find which is the best way to ensure the continuity of this business for the next decades. We've identified opportunities in improving the product through new equipment. Most of the CapEx has now gone to that. We will continue to invest CapEx throughout the year in that project.
The second biggest opportunity for CapEx going forward is going to be the wastewater treatment plants. In terms of returns, let's say, continuing to drive our return on invested capital north of where we are today at 15.5% and north so that we can get to the 2025 goal of 200 basis points above weighted average cost of capital. Mario.
No, I think you're just quite right. Nothing to complement or add on to your explanation.
Thank you, Rodrigo.
We have another question from Paulina Perez, Miranda Partners. Can you give us a little more color on the digitalization of water? What specific services could you offer it, and do you have any specific goals for the medium term?
Let me answer first a little bit conceptual, and then we will go to a little bit more specific. In general, the approach that Rotoplas offers to solving for water scarcity is a decentralized approach. Decentralized meaning that we offer many solutions in terms of volume that are implemented in high quantities that are of small scale. This is very different to what the world has done in the biggest investments around water, which is centralized infrastructure. We do this with the intention not of substituting, but of complementing the centralized infrastructure, which today has been proving to be not enough by a wide margin. When you wanna go many solutions of small size, and we're talking about millions of units. You can benefit very much from digital technologies.
We're getting to millions of customers today with our bottles per year. In the manner that we leverage digital technologies, we will be able to service more and more users with our solutions. In a platform play, we will be leveraging existing capabilities that are already out there, such as installation or plumbing capabilities or product capabilities. A lot of the products that we're implementing today in our new services such as bebbia or Sytesa are products that we do not manufacture. That we're just identifying which are the best solutions around the world, and we're being that platform that connects those solutions with the customer needs. In terms of the digitization, this platform play is very relevant for to connect capabilities with the demand side in the most efficient way and to be able to do it at scale.
Means millions of transactions per year. One of the things that we're doing more innovative things such as advanced analytics using wastewater treatment and drinking water to understand better patterns, to advise our customers in a better way in how they can optimize the use of this liquid so that they can do it in a more sustainable way and in a more economic way, and in a way that's a better experience for these users. Mario has been playing a very key role in this project. He's very passionate about it. Mario, please go ahead.
Just to give some color on the examples and that part of what we're trying to achieve. Today we are, you know, coding Veia units in homes and we're doing them annually, and we service them without some information that we have from the client today. The idea with, for example, for Veia specifically is to put some sensors in the unit, sensors in our water chip. Part of our investment in Neutrinco that we did last December, which went very well advanced on software and coding is to build up an app. You know, that app can give very valuable data and analytics information to the end consumer, but also to us.
How to serve or how to do preemptive service. To the end consumer, he can know how many bottles of water he has saved, how much money he has saved, how many tons of carbon reduction in tons or kilograms per year by drinking bebbia water instead of bottled water, and so on. That's the use case of what we are designing in terms of water digitization. Another case in point is for our water tanks. As you know, we manufacture a lot of water tanks per year. Probably this information might not be relevant to more mature markets, but it is for the Latin American markets.
Putting some sensors into the water tanks and tell the end consumer what, how many liters of water left, if there's a leakage or not at home of water, what price bracket are they consuming the water and so on. That's very valuable information to them and to us connecting directly with the end consumer and understanding where the water tank is located, what's the water performance, and what is happening with the water relationship within that family, and our product. That's the sort of things that really keep us very passionate about the future of what it might be the water digitization. Given our big scale, you know, we are in 40 different countries. We sell a lot of these products per year. We are accelerating the Veia units.
The amount of data that we might end up having can become very interesting for the future of the business. That's kind of just a couple of two use cases of what the company is facing and what, that is what we're trying to achieve with this idea of water as a decision.
Thank you. We have a question from David Seaman of Citi. Thank you for the additional debt disclosure. If you are now comfortable accelerating the acquisition of new subscribers, suggesting metrics have stabilized, are you potentially planning more comprehensive disclosure about debt metrics?
Do you wanna take the first one, Mario?
Well, David, good morning, and probably you might hear, you know, Sergio laugh. We were precisely discussing this yesterday. We've been discussing this with the board. Charlie, please tell your view on that because we really enjoy our yesterday conversation around that.
Let me be very frank about this. We understand, we appreciate how much this would help you in understanding the potential future value of the business. On one hand, we are one of the first players in this space for water as a service subscription model. We wanna continue to have sort of very short term confidential information, still confidential, to protect our business and having this first player's advantage in terms of our competitive environment, no? On the other hand, I understand how difficult it is to understand this business with a mix of another services business which has not generated cash and has not driven sales, which is wastewater treatment plants and water balances, or water balances even, is decreasing revenues.
I would ask in general the investor community to bear with us. We understand the need that you have for clarity in this information. We want to get to that point, but we also wanna make sure that we generate the biggest potential success for this business going forward. Mario?
No, I think you said it perfectly. Nothing to add. Really.
Hello, David, and thank you for your question. I hope we can connect in person soon.
Sure. Actually, he just mentioned. Thank you both. That is perfectly reasonable. I think that's the last question for the time, and I will get back again to Rodrigo Alonso for the M&A strategy, but I can tell you that it hasn't changed from the past quarter. But I'm gonna read last question. It's from Mariana Cruz with BBVA Actinver. Good morning, all. Thanks for taking my question. I would like to know what are your expectations in terms of volumes and pricing for the Central America and Peru markets for the second half of 2022.
Hello, Mariana. Thanks for joining us. In terms of pricing, it's very similar throughout all of our products markets. Both Peru and Central America are mainly regional products. In those businesses we will be agile in pricing, and we will be prioritizing gross margins. In terms of volumes, it is slightly different even throughout Central America. Each country has their own strategy. Peru is one of the countries where we have support from the government and has been coming down, so that is affecting volumes. In terms of what we see for volumes going forward is different to Central America and Peru.
We saw shrinkage in terms of the demand throughout the first two months, but similarly to the rest of our countries, we saw much better performance in terms of volume in March and April. We expect volumes to become stronger throughout the year. These are other countries where we are also facing water shortages and water stress. Mario, any more specific information you'd like to give?
No, I think that's pretty much the same situation as Mexico, Charly mentioned. Again, we will be very focused on gross margin achievements and that's going to be the main story going forward.
Thank you everyone for joining.
Yeah. Thank you guys, and have a nice day. We'll keep you posted on the next quarter.
Thank you very much, all, and thanks for joining us this morning. Have a great one.