Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the earnings call for the first quarter of 2024 at Ambipar. We want to highlight that if you do need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on our platform. To access, please select the Interpretation button through the globe icon on the bottom part of your screen, and choose your language of preference: Portuguese or English. For those listening to the earnings call in English, there's also an option to mute original audio in Portuguese. Selecting Mute Original Audio. So we'd like to let you know that this earnings call is being recorded and will be provided on the company's IR website, ir.ambipar.com, where you can also find the full material of our earnings call. You can download our presentation as well on the chat icon as well in English.
During the call, all of the participants are going to have their mics off. Soon after, we'll begin the Q&A session. To submit a question, select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of your screen. Write your question to enter the queue. As your name is announced, a request to open up your mic will appear on the screen. Then you must enable and activate your mic to submit your questions. We'd like to instruct you that all questions should be submitted at once. We want to highlight that the information in the presentation and possible statements that could be made during the earnings call related to prospects in the business, forecasts, and operational and financial targets represent assumptions from the company's management, as well as based on information that's currently available. Future considerations are not a guarantee of performance.
They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as they involve future events and thus rely on circumstances that could occur or not. Investors must understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors may affect the performance in the future of Ambipar and lead to results that differ materially from those listed in future statements. Today, we have the presence of the company's executives, Thiago Silva, the CFO; Fábio Castro, the IR Director; and Pedro Petersen, the IR Director at Ambipar Response. I'll pass the floor on to Mr. Thiago Silva.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm honored to begin the presentation of the first quarter of Group Ambipar. This quarter had growth in our revenue and expansion of our EBITDA margin in both business segments, as well as an increase in our recurring net income.
The year of 2024 sets a new phase in the company with a focus on deleveraging, efficiency, integration, and increasing cash generation and organic growth. Another highlight here was the completion of our first green bond issue, reaching $750 million, with a bullet maturity for 7 years, setting a new level of access to capital in the group. With this operation, we can improve the debt profile, and the duration went from 3 to 5.5 years. And alongside this, we were able to confirm this with the cost of the CDI plus 1%. We just elected two new board members, Victor Almeida and Felipe Gueiros, with a board that is mostly independent, and they will definitely contribute with their experience in efficiency, integration, and financial excellence.
I want to thank our clients and partners for their trust, and our employees as well that have been working tirelessly to achieve our targets. Now we'll move on to some of our slides. We're going to start off with the main financial highlights in the first quarter of 2024. When it comes to the net revenue, we had $1.3 billion in growth, an 11% growth in regards to the first quarter of 2023. The EBITDA was $375 million, and a growth of 28% compared to the same year of the previous year, and a margin of 29.6%, an increase of four percentage points. The recurring net income represented $42 million, 280% higher than the first quarter of 2023. The operational ROIC was 24%. We also had a reduction in the CapEx levels, demonstrating our discipline in capital employment.
As I already highlighted in our intro, in this quarter, the main highlight was the issuance of our first green bond in the corporate market for seven years' term, extending our debt schedule. Moving on to the highlights per segment, in Response, the gross revenue had a growth of 17.5% in regards to the same period in the previous year. Brazil is the main highlight in the regions that had this level of growth. Brazil grew 60%, especially with the emergency divisions in the railway and airway, and also in the environmental services segment. The drop on the international front is mainly due to the currency effect when we look at the same period last year. Now we want to illustrate a little bit of the occurrences we've been working with in the first quarter of 2024.
We're going to show you a video of our operation, of an important occurrence we had in this first quarter, which was the Baltimore Bridge in the U.S. This really ensures our technical and operational capacity globally. The North American and European teams were involved. We had over 30 specialists of Hazmat crisis training to get involved in this contract. It came with a ship from Singapore that originated this service. We're going to show you some of the videos that can express a little more details about this operation. Now moving on to our work with Response due to the catastrophe that has been reaching Rio Grande do Sul. We're working there as volunteers, delivering utensils with our planes, ships, and equipment. Now, as we talk about our EBITDA at Response, it kept up with the growth in the revenue with incremental margins.
This was levered mainly, as we mentioned in the graph with the revenue, due to the significance that Brazil represents. It's an important region with an important position in the market. Here, obviously, as we already mentioned, our consolidation, we have better margins. Having said that, there's a margin increment of 23.5%-25.8%, and that impacts all the other regions as well. Moving on to the environment segment, the growth in the same period last year was 7.9%. Here you can see the growth through our Total Waste Management Unit, GVR, that grew 12%, especially in Brazil, where we had many different renewals of contracts in different market sectors. It's important to highlight also our ESG consulting area, where we sign important contracts for consulting services.
On the international front, it's important to highlight the growth of our operation in Chile, where in the local currency there was growth. Here in reais, there was not this growth due to the currency impacts, but over there we had many new contracts and wastewater management contracts. And in environment, we have a pipeline that's really growing. We have important contracts signed this quarter, and we're very optimistic in the short, mid, and long term when it comes to this environment segment. Now, in the beginning of 2024, actually in March 2024, we opened the GIRI. This is a center for circular economy, which is in Santiago, Chile, and it's the biggest recycling plant in that country. And we're going to be able to process over 60,000 tons of waste per year.
This center has the most advanced technologies in the world, cutting edge, and we're following our mission of promoting the ecological transformation. Actually, we're going to show you a quick video about this operation we began. We were really happy as we opened up this GIRI plant after six years of work, which really means a lot to us. First of all, it's the reference at Ambipar as a benchmark in the circular economy in Chile and Latin America, and it also means maybe before and after of what's standard and what's really considered cutting edge in the circular economy industry. It's something that makes us very proud, and we hope that it can become an example for all of the industry as well.
Still in the environment segment, highlighting the EBITDA, we had an increment in the margin of 5.7 percentage points, coming mainly through the synergies of the operations and rebalancing in our contract portfolio with less profitable contracts. Throughout the last quarters, we were able to rebalance, and that led to this margin increment. As we talk about the growth in the acquisitions, we prepared this slide, and we have the last quarters with this growth and the behavior of the M&As per batch. It's worth mentioning that there could be some currency effects here that could make us reach some conclusions. Also, we've been reorganizing search and operations between companies, such as operations we already had in the group that were incorporated in operations and companies we acquired.
When we look at all of this, we must look at the portfolio in its full vision and understand how the group has been capturing all of the synergies through the ecosystem we created. Moving on to the highlights of our consolidated results, we've already summarized this per segment. We can highlight our growth in the net revenue and gross revenue. We added up to BRL 1.4 billion and a growth of 12.8% in regards to the same period last year. Now about the consolidated EBITDA. This is an important highlight with a margin increment mainly due to environment. And that grew. The EBITDA grew in regards to the same period last year, 24.4%, levered mainly by the environment segment. About the net income now, we had a recurring net income of $4.3 million.
The accounting net income had a loss, mainly due to the recognition of the anticipated payments or prepayments we had due to the issuance of the bond and the full recognition of the cost to issue these debts. This effect is more clear here because when you issue a debt, you capitalize the costs and you amortize them throughout the period of the debt. Since we chose to anticipate certain debts, we performed the recognition of the residual value in the date of the prepayment. We also paid off some fees related to these issuances. Throughout the quarter, we had more interest expenses due to the average balance of the gross debt having been greater throughout the quarter.
Now about our debt profile, we're already having BRL 8.1 billion in the gross debt with an increase of BRL 900 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, and mainly due to our green bond fundraising, the prepayment of debts of about BRL 3 billion. Our debt is mostly dollarized with a weighted cost of CDI + 2.7%, which is lower than the cost last year. Below, you can also see the schedule for amortization with the duration now at 5.5 years after the issuance of the green bond. We also have a cash position of about BRL 3.4 billion. We have this as an important buffer for liquidity so that we can operate in our business model with greater confidence in our balance. Here we prepared a bridge of our net debt.
So the net debt varied a bit, and it increased to BRL 435 million, mainly due to the interest accrued and the payment of fees and costs, as we already highlighted in the previous slide, from these prepayments of BRL 187 million and the M&A payments as well, at about BRL 152 million and a CapEx of BRL 124 million. And all of this is offset by our EBITDA generation of BRL 374 million. Now, about the debt, when we look at our annualized EBITDA, we reached BRL 1.5 billion, which represents an indicator versus our net debt of 3.1x. If we consider the EBITDA in the last 12 months pro forma, this indicator reaches 3x the EBITDA. And now about the CapEx. It represented a little less than 10% of our net revenue, and it represents our commitment, as I mentioned in the beginning, with our capital allocation.
We invested about BRL 124 million in the last quarter. This is mainly including BRL 80 million of maintenance and BRL 44 million of expansion. These assets we acquire are normally mobile, operational, and the recycling factories as well. We've been working with in this quarter, which are a highlight in our expansion in the Northeast. Our CapEx was 22% lower compared to the same period in the previous year. It's worth mentioning that this CapEx reduction, it does not in any way compromise our growth for the future. Now, in regards to the cash flow, it's important to highlight that our recurring cash flow is basically balanced out, close to zero, which demonstrates the potential for our cash generation in the future. As if we look at our financial expenses, we had an effect, which was the greater average balance of our gross debt.
And so when you eliminate these effects, you have cash generation. And we are pretty much moving along to this cash generation in the next quarters. Now, when we look at the return on our employed capital, we can see that operationally we had 24%, which is a reduction of 40 basis points versus the same period in the previous year. And of course, this is due to the increase of our capital invested and also compared to the NOPAT growth. Now we're going to move on to our Q&A, and we'll be available on the same platform. And we hope to wait for your questions so that we can all operate in order to eliminate any questions as well.
Thank you very much. Now we're going to start our Q&A session.
I want to remind you that if you do have any questions, you must select the Q&A icon on the bottom part of your screen, write your question. As you're announced, a request to activate your mic will appear on the screen. Then you must activate your mic to submit your questions. We'd ask you to please, if you do want to submit a question, write your name and company that you're representing. Time for the first question. The first one comes from Peter at Bank of America. Peter, we're going to open up your mic so that you can proceed. We're not able to contact Peter. We're going to move on to the next question. The question comes from Vladimir. Please, you may proceed with your question.
Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to submit a question. I'm Vladimir from XP, and thanks for your time. My question was about the M&A payments and how these are, what you have scheduled till the end of the year, and what you guys are expecting also in this batch till the end of the year with new acquisitions.
Hi, Vladimir. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. What we have today for payments for M&As in 2024 are R$119 million. We actually have this disclosure in our release. Our pipeline for M&As was we really reduced our appetite, and we're very much focused on organic growth. If we have any kind of opportunities, it's going to be very occasional and very strategic, but nothing very relevant financially.
Our next question is from Eloisa at StoneX. Eloisa, please, you may proceed. Good afternoon. Can you all hear me?
Yes. Well, I just want to understand all of the non-recurring effects we had in the results in this quarter. And besides this, I want to understand if the exchange and the debt generated in the debt profile had any kind of financial gains and how you guys can measure and qualify this considering the high cost of BRL 200 million in the exchange of the debt profiles. And what's the reason? Because I had understood that it was about BRL 1.5 billion that was a really restrictive covenant, but what I understood from your cash flow, it's about BRL 2.8 billion in the debt changes.
Well, good afternoon, Eloisa. And thanks for the question. We had three main effects that impacted our financial results. The first one was, as Thiago mentioned earlier, the cost of BRL 137 million.
To give you an example, a numerical example, if we have a debt that's BRL 1 billion and there's a cost of BRL 50 million, at day zero, when you account for this new debt transaction, you're going to have BRL 950 million in the cash and this amount in the debt. The BRL 50 million of costs or fees is going to be paid off throughout the period of the debt. Let's imagine that we reach half of this period and we're going to prepay the debt. We consider BRL 25 million of costs in the debt that went to BRL 975 million, and the other BRL 25 million was going to be considered throughout the remaining period of the debt. As we prepaid it, the amount we have for debt is BRL 1 billion. You have BRL 975 million from the debt plus these BRL 25 million of costs and fees.
So this is the explanation about the BRL 137 million. Thiago , do you want to add on?
No, I think that's clear. And we also had BRL 51 million of costs and fees from prepayments either to debentures. We had a clause that if the debenture was paid beforehand, there was a prepayment fee according to the term. This is BRL 51 million. And we also had about BRL 57 million of costs of doubled interest because within the quarter, we had the payment of the green bond in the beginning of February and the prepayment of the debts at the end of March. So throughout the quarter, our gross debt was greater than at the end of the quarter. So with this, you had more interest, and there was also this additional interest of BRL 57 million. These were the three effects that took place in the financial results.
On your next question, is this clear, Eloisa?
Yes, it is clear. Thank you so much.
Great. Now we're going to mention that the benefit we had from the prepayment of the debts. Well, basically, we have a debt now that's a longer term. You saw our amortization schedule. We were able to postpone or increase the duration of our debt by another 2 years with the transaction. We reduced the cost of our debt. And so from now on, we'll have a accrual of interest that's lower than what we had before. And we also have the covenants. So part of the debts had a more restrictive covenant, and now we're operating with a covenant at a higher level.
Perfect.
And then just to add on, Fábio, and you mentioned that you believed we had about BRL 1.8 billion of debt that was more restrictive because there were 2.5, but we had the liability management of the debts that were not in this level anymore. And we're also going to consider the liability of some debts we have in the 3 times level. It's not that we want to operate with a level higher than 3, but it's going to give us more confidence. And we believe that the company has a whole new level with this bond. And we are sure that we have this mantra in the company that we must have this calmness in our balance sheet. And so we're going to work on the liability management and consider the level of covenants at 375.
Sorry, just to add on to my question about what would be a comfort level for leverage for you guys. Because at the end, I think everyone expected that after the issuance of the equities, you would have maybe comfortably below 3, but that's not what we saw.
Yeah. What we have here is a target to operate with 2.5x-3x because of the interest levels and these external factors that make us move along in this way. So we've been working on efficiency, integration, and especially within the integration, we consider all of the cost mitigation and cash generation. So we're going to work on this from 2.5x to 3x. But within the financial covenant, when we consider local debts, we're going to operate with a level that's a little lower or a little more flexible to have a bit more calm approach to this.
But internally, we work with 2.5x-3.
Okay? Thank you.
Our next question is from Gabriel at Alfa. Gabriel, we're going to open up your mic so that you can send us your question. Gabriel, please, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. How's it going? It's still not very clear why those R$ 52 million financial expenses were calculated as recurring in your net income calculation. We understood you had a gross debt base that was greater, but what's the rationale to say if this is non-recurrent in your calculation? Could you give us more details on this? Thanks.
Well, hi, Gabriel. Since we had the payment of the bond on the 6th of February and the prepayment of the debts at the end of March, we had this period of over 30 business days where we had to operate with the duplicated gross debt.
If this had been prepaid before, then we wouldn't have this additional interest provision.
Oh, okay. Thanks.
The next question is from Eduardo Lazzaretti at GTI. Eduardo, we'll open up your audio so that you can send us your question. Please, you may proceed.
I just wanted to understand if you guys have an updated estimate of the CapEx for maintenance and expansion for this year without considering M&As because this quarter was a little lower than what we expected. And if you have any estimates for costs to renegotiate the covenants as well by 3 times. Thanks.
Well, Eduardo, thanks for the question. What we have been mentioning here is that the CapEx overall in the year should be lower levels than last year. Last year was about BRL 715 million from expansion and renewals.
I want to remind you that last year we had the CapEx for GIRI and other circular economy production plans that we produced that are going to start generating revenue this year but didn't generate last year. So this will help us as well. If you look at the historical level of CapEx, we're at the lowest level ever since the IPO compared to the revenue. And this demonstrates a bit of our capital allocation discipline. And what was your other question, Eduardo? Oh, about the cost? Yeah, exactly, for the covenant. Well, at the moment, we have certain debts we're renegotiating. We actually have an issuance available, which is intending to increase these covenants. And I don't have these costs specifically defined, but I can look into this later and let you know.
Is that considering the prepayment?
Yeah, no, the cost of the prepayment.
Well, we're still going to look into this. Of course, it's going to depend on negotiation, but we are already looking at this. And as I mentioned, we have these options for refinancing. But we also have the option to renegotiate these debts. So it's still something that's open. We understand that just as we did in the first quarter, if you look at the photo and not the film, this is something we have to do if you consider the long term when it comes to the debt duration and the price of these debts. We have improving a lot, which gives us a lot of relief in our cash flow. And if we consider all of these points, we're going to definitely reach better advantage as we saw in the prepayments from the green bond procedure.
Just to remind you that despite having this one-off effect in the results and earnings with the costs and fees and the prepayment effect, if you look at the long term with the reduction of the cost of debt and the extension, financially, it makes sense for the company.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Our next question is from André Sampaio at Santander. André, we're going to open up your mic so that you can submit your question.
Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, my question was actually partially answered already, but I'm just going to hop in with the second part. If we consider that you were able to keep this level of CapEx that was disclosed in this quarter, what's the expectation for the growth of the revenue with this level of CapEx? This was the question that adds on to the CapEx point you've already talked about.
I also want to take advantage of this opportunity to ask you if there's any chance of you guys selling off some assets to reduce your debt in a more structural way or significant way, maybe with some company in the group or operational assets with equipment, etc. Could you talk about this?
Hi, André. Thanks for your questions. So about growth, historically, if you look at our growth organically, it's been around 20% a year. And then you still have the growth from the companies we bought. So if you consider the total growth, it's higher than this. So in our minds, we can deliver this level of growth at about 20% a year. Now, if we look at our portfolio currently, we don't see any divestments.
What we do see is we're working on integration and efficiency to improve our results and our margins and with this, de-leverage the company.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Hi, guys. So Peter Barclay from Bank of America had a question here, and he asked us to answer this in writing as a problem with his mic. So he asked what makes the average ticket year-over-year of the services provided by Response drop? Is there any pressure on prices? And finally, an update on the issuance of BRL 1 million on the local market for debentures.
I'm going to get the first question, then I'll pass it on to Fabio and Tiago. So there's no price pressure at Response. We have a market positioning that's quite protected and a strong brand. And we've been gaining some different work and market share.
And so we haven't seen much of a variation in prices here. But obviously, this is related to the complexity of the services delivered. So we had services with higher tickets in the first quarter last year with services with higher complexity and higher scale. Fábio, feel free to hop in.
So hey, Peter, thanks for the question. This BRL 1 billion in the local market, it really follows this rationale of the bond for liability management, and the cash is 100% geared towards prepayment of debts. We're considering shorter debts that are more expensive.
So in order to submit a question, please send your name and bank that you represent on the Q&A icon on the bottom part of your screen. Our next question comes from Guilherme Costa as a question. Guilherme, we'll open up your mic so that you may proceed with your questions.
Hi, guys.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
My question is in line with the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul and besides the volunteer work that you guys definitely deserve a lot of acknowledgment for. But have you also heard about demands from factories or other services in the Response segment?
Hi, Gabriel. Yes, we have already received some requests. What we're focusing now on is the social aspects and the volunteer work. And we've been really supporting a lot with, and this is our purpose as a company. But yes, we've already received some calls, and there's not much to do yet. But these are customers we have there or non-customers yet, but understand that Ambipar is an important reference. And at the right moment, we're also going to work with these industries that are allocated and going through this moment.
So what we are considering now is operating in the social aspects first.
Our next question comes from Jeff. Jeff, we'll open your mic so that you may proceed.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Yep, great. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a quick question regarding the GIRI plant now that it's been inaugurated in Chile. Could you discuss how that will impact revenue and EBITDA margins in the environment segment as the operations ramp up throughout the year?
Thank you. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for your question. As we mentioned, the volume at GIRI is basically 60 million tons, sorry, 60,000 tons. And what we've seen as potential revenue for this plant as soon as it's in full capacity is about $10 million. So our estimate is that in about three years, it'll reach this level.
Thanks, Fábio.
Do you anticipate seeing the same types of margins that you're seeing at the segment level at this plant?
The margin is higher than what we currently deliver from this production plant. It's definitely higher.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Felipe Botelho. We're going to enable your mic so that you may proceed. Please, you may proceed, Felipe. We were not able to connect with Felipe, so we're going to move on to the next question. Felipe Ramos from Clave Capital, please, you may proceed. We are collecting the other questions. I'd ask you to please give us a moment. Our next question is from Bruce. Bruce, please, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. You burnt cash for another quarter. We saw your debts going up. We see a really complicated tax situation in Brazil. Interests are going to stop dropping soon.
Your ROIC dropped a little bit, very close to the cost of the debt. And I know your guys' plan was to kind of burn cash during this year and start generating cash next year. But we have seen the stock price that the market sees a lot of execution risk. And we've seen quarter-over-quarter that are non-recurring, but they actually seem recurring. So how do you imagine the cash generation of the tax risks in Brazil and this moment with such high level of debt? And we could maybe have a tax issue that's more severe in the next few years. Thanks.
Thanks, Bruce, for your question. Well, we're always keeping our eyes open to any kind of risks. But yes, we had planned all of this.
The company grew, and it grew a lot in the last few years with our own capital and third-party capital with some equity insurance we issued throughout this journey. But this is all in line with what was planned, what we can't plan, of course. Of course, you have these external factors, interest rate, etc. But how we consider all of this and make all of our shareholders and creditors confident with our cash position, for example, where we can guarantee our commitments over time. So we are here till in 2024. We have this mandate of really doing our homework when it comes to efficiency, processes, integration, and capturing synergies that are not obvious. Of course, the obvious ones we already captured. But we are definitely having a portfolio and business that's very potential.
So in the short term, we already have been shifting here with this new guideline, which was the accelerated growth that was executed with success. And we don't see any kind of execution risk from now on. We've been mitigating risks, considering liability management, considering our extended duration, making the cost of our debt lower a bit, and even significantly lower this as occurred. So we've been working on this homework. And operationally, we've been delivering this. So we are sure we'll be able to deliver this. We have a potential that's huge, an addressable market that really increased a lot with our acquisition. So we're very confident that we'll be able to, with this new guideline, have this cash generation shift.
Well, if I can add on to this, Thiago, we even demonstrated this in our release, Bruce, what we call the recurring cash flow.
If you were to consider, the company is very close to break-even. And if we look at the numbers here, we can see that this first semester would consider a high level of cash burning. And we can see this normalizing now for the second semester. So we imagine that in the next year, it will have a positive cash flow. And when we consider the ROIC, we invested a lot. And one example that's really tangible, for example, is the investment we had at GIRI. We invested in the last two years a bit more than BRL 100 million in this production plan. And that led to zero revenue. And now it's going to start generating. So this makes the ROIC grow again. And it also impacts all of these different initiatives to improve our results. I hope we answered all of your questions.
There was a lot of points here.
Yes, thank you. A nyways, the thing is not even your plan. I understand your plan, but it's about the size of your risk you decide to face in such a complicated environment. And you can see this in your presentation with the ROIC compared to the cost of debt. It's very close. And if you were to consider the amount of cash you spent refinancing debts, it would be about five times the value of the profit. So cash is going to banks and funding debt. So it doesn't seem to operate a company with such a high level of debt, of course, the risk. And so if we consider the sustainability of this business in the long term
Yeah, it was a growth phase for the company. The company decided to grow and to really become as big as it did become.
Now we have a bigger size and competitive advantage that no other companies have, which generated a benefit of scale. Now we're going to start benefiting from this. But we want to remind you that we've been mentioning that our focus now is cash generation, de-leveraging, and organic growth. You're going to start seeing this in our numbers.
Our next question comes from Felipe Andrade Itaú BBA. Felipe, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon. I have a cold, so sorry about my voice. But could you talk about a little more details on the field service at Baltimore that you're working with, if you were to consider that Witt O'Brien's was activated and the other companies also that are part of Empreendimentos in North America that are also part of this service? If you could talk about this a little more and give us more color? Thanks.
Hey, Felipe. Thanks for the question. We're really satisfied with the Baltimore service there. It really demonstrates the excellence of our service and how we're positioned in the U.S., which is a real multinational company, Ambipar Response. We've been there ever since the beginning. It's a contract that for a ship to enter an American navigation area, you would have to certify an emergency response plan, a crisis plan. We have a significant part of this market as a customer. Our vision, the form of Witt O'Brien's, is very present. There's a relevant market share in this segment. We are also specialists in crisis management. We have specific expertise. Ever since that moment, we have a team that's been coordinating navigation teams, removals, distribution, and response. Of course, some aspects are confidential, considering how delicate this is.
But soon, there will be a possibility for us to also have more field work using vehicles and removal of hazmat. For now, we're just coordinating the reestablishment of this transit in the channel. So this is what we've been doing. Some teams in Europe already cooperate with the American team. They're demonstrating the strength of the global platform, which is Ambipar Response. That's the nature of the service.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Saul Galahartia from La Mente Capital. Please, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me? All right. So I have a question here, which is about what you guys considered in the QC demonstrating growth for response and environmental demonstrating your growth in the last few years, mainly through acquisitions.
But do you guys also consider any other plans to continue growth this year and the next year, considering that the idea is to slow down on the acquisitions? Thank you.
Thanks for the question. That's exactly what we tried to share during the presentation. We created an ecosystem. So all of these acquisitions made us add on to the service portfolio and our capillarity. And we're trying to explore this. And we tried to potentialize this a few times with our addressable market. And now we need to try to focus on this. We've been hiring some consulting firms to look at all of this, look at the size of the addressable market, potential market, and understand that that's where we need to focus on after a phase with a lot of M&As. And that's, of course, the best strategy to increase the addressable market.
Now we're in phase two, where we really want to target the market we were able to achieve, work with. We're sure there's a huge potential. So this growth will come through exploring this market we were able to achieve. We're certain that we're going to grow, just as we also grew organically despite the M&As. We also grew organically and historically. Now we have a huge potential with this full portfolio of services from now on. If I could add on, this portfolio, first of all, it's really important to consider the longer horizons. If you look at this from other horizons, 2022, 2023, 2021, you always see a crescent. Some of these variations could take place in business. In longer periods, you'll see things grow, just as in the sector, and also our market share in the sector.
So we have really interesting projects going on in different areas. Some of them are focused on wastewater. And some of them are considering the capacity to consider the transformation recycling products throughout Brazil to be able to reach the targets established, as well as in Latin America. And so there's many different greenfield projects. And at the right moment, we'll continue these because they can give us a boost in our organic growth. Can I also add on that, actually, in Environment, we have two interesting examples to mention: circular economy. So the prices of recyclable materials last year suffered a bit because of the virgin materials. So the company chose to not sell. And that's reflected on our revenue. You can see in exchange, this increases our stock. And as prices get back, we can get back to selling. And revenue grows.
Another case that's also important to highlight is we always talked about how we chose to clean up the contracts, look in-house for contracts that were not generating the adequate returns. And that led to a drop in revenue, if you look at that. But we were able to gain more margin. So that becomes a little distorted if we just look at the photograph.
Perfect. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Bernardo Rocha, Aletheia. Bernardo, you may proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me? In the GIRI line, I want to know how significant this is in the projected revenue, the CapEx that's already deployed. But that's not generating revenue yet.
Well, Bernardo, besides GIRI, you have some other circular economy production plans where we're not operating at our full capacity because of the price dynamic of the recyclable materials.
I'm not going to be able to mention the numbers here yet. But I'd say it's very relevant. One thing we have done is we've been verticalizing this circular economy part. And with this, we can add margin and also leave the commodity price range, which is going to help a lot and reflect in our future results as well.
Perfect. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Danielle Delabio. Danielle, please, you may proceed.
Hi there. Well, I just wanted to talk about the costs there and the payment of the debt and the fee for the debenturist. If we consider this, there's a fee. And the rest is considering the placement for six years. But I was a little concerned. And I wanted to understand the cost. That's about 5%, right? About BRL 1.95 billion, which is about 5%.
So the question also about you issued this last year, actually, one year ago. So it's about 5% considering the market. And now you're calling them back and paying the fees. Actually, the fee was already paid. But you're just amortizing the fee you paid to the bank. You're adding new debts. So another 5% considering this. So about 5% of this debt seems to be really high. And the third question, with the debt of the bond, it's cheaper. So it's about $80 or $19. And we consider the swap of CDI plus one. This is the extra cost, right? So there's also the credit risk. So I don't know if this total debt considered with the swap cost would be cheaper than CDI plus two, CDI plus four.
Thank you, Danielle, for the question.
And about the cost for amortization, when you consider this, of course, there was an amount of about 5%. Obviously, we're talking about the first issuance in the company. So there's a whole other level when it comes to credit and how we were behaving. But throughout the issuances, we could have some additional costs. Here, we're just talking about bank fees, though. But here, the IFRS and CPC 08, which is considering this, is 100% of the costs related directly to this. And they should be capitalized and amortized over time. So what we're considering now is the company at a whole new level when you consider costs to compensate the debenturist or the bondholder. It's lower. But of course, these costs related to structure also can be lower eventually. So we are discussing when the company started their journey in the DCM market.
So about the swap, we did consider the cost of CDI + 170 or 168 in regards to the swap. And within this strategy, we have this swap for 3 years for interest and 5 years for the principal amount. If we don't do anything in these 3 years, then from the third year, we'd have then, of course, we're always going to be looking at this year-over-year. And then we're going to have the hedge and redo it to be able to understand and know that we can be using this, considering the size and market moment leading to costs that could be better or not in regards to the swap. So yes, it is CDI + 167 in the first 3 years. We've swapped and hedged 100% of this.
We're going to be monitoring the market also in regards to this year-over-year or every six months. We just approved the hedge policy in our board. This is going to be reviewed regularly. Actually, we ended the hedge of the principal over five years. We don't rely on the market when we have the call period in the end of the 26 months. The strategy was very well set. We were actually really happy with what we were able to achieve when we looked at our current cost of debt versus the hedge cost when you consider the cost with the replenishment. Of course, we had the swap. There's no spread there in regards to how we need to do this. Of course, we're certain that we'll be able to mitigate any kind of currency variations in our balance sheet.
So this is not. This is just CDI plus 170.
Well, thanks.
I want to remind you that if you have questions, you must select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of your screen. Let us know about your name and company to perform your question live. The Q&A session is officially ended. Now we're going to pass the turn to the company for their final comments.
Well, guys, thank you so much. We had our conference call for this quarter. It's a different format than what we had ever since our IPO. We're really happy with the results, and especially with the results in the quarter. Once again, we delivered results that were very important for the company. We're really engaged with the executive team to be able to deliver this.
We had this strategy within our capital structure that will bring this into the short, mid-, and long-term for the cash position that's really important. We have this mandate in regards to refinancing our debt and the green bond and our hedge strategy, bringing in this cash gain for the company with the operational efficiency and financial efficiency to bring this cash generation after the first accelerated growth phase in the company. And we're available in the IR team and executive team and management of the company so you can get to know more about our business and see the potential of our business to deliver results to shareholders. Thank you so much.
Thanks, guys. The earnings call for the first quarter of 2024. And Ambipar has officially ended. The investor relations department is available to answer any of your questions and comments.
Thank you so much to all participants. And have a great afternoon.