Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Auren's conference call to discuss results regarding the second quarter of 2024. This conference is being recorded, and the replay can be accessed at the company's IR website, ir.aurenergia.com.br. The presentation is also available for download. We would like to inform all participants that after the presentation, we will start the question-and-answer session. Further instructions will be provided at the start of the Q&A. Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Auren's management and current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors, analysts, and journalists must understand that events related to the macroeconomic environment, industry, and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Here with us at this conference are Mr. Fábio Zanfelice, Auren CEO, and Mr. Mateus Ferreira, CFO and IRO. The investor relations team is also here with us. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Fábio Zanfelice, who will start the presentation. You may proceed, sir.
Ok, obrigado.
Okay, thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for attending this call for the second quarter of 2024. So here we go again with the highlights for the quarter. On the first slide, we have the highlights related to the growth of the company and also related to the financial and operational performance of the company. The major highlight for the quarter, and probably the most important ever, is the combination of assets with AES Brasil, and we will become the third largest power generator in Brazil and the largest trading company also in the segment. We also announced in the second quarter of 2024 the acquisition of Esfera Energia, one of the largest managers of energy in Brazil, comprising our portfolio of services and products in our trading segment.
In addition to that, in the second quarter, we installed the project of Sol de Jaíba, and up to date, we completed and reached 360 MWAC. It's a project of total capacity of 500 MWAC, and the completion of the project is planned for September 2024. So within one month, one month and a half, we'll have this project fully operational. As to operational and financial performance, we would like to draw your attention to the wind generation with an excellent quarter in this segment, with a generation up 4% of P50 in the consolidated results of our complexes, amounting to 16% year-over-year. This is a result of the wind resource and also the availability of our assets.
As to the financial aspect, we had adjusted EBITDA of BRL 156 million, nearly 5% higher than what we had in the second quarter of 2023, mainly due to higher dividends received from minority stakes and the good performance of our trading activities. Another important aspect was the fundraise in the second half as a preparation for the completion of the acquisition of AES Brasil. So we are making all the organization in the financial terms so that we can complete the transaction, and we are going to discuss more details about the schedule and the acquisition process of AES Brasil, how the transition process has been playing out. Then we have the energy market highlights.
As we present the historic information about the effluent's natural energy in the National Interconnected System, we ended the last quarter at 86% as long-term average, a bit lower than 89% that we observed in the same period of last year. However, it's one of the quarters which has been more recessive in the historical area. We see that the reservoir level is a bit lower when compared to what we observed in 2023. In June, we had a 29% growth in the interconnected system storage levels, and in this period, we only reached 11%, and we ended June with 71% of consolidated lever level, which is still very comfortable considering this period of the year. We see that the performance was below when compared to what we observed in two previous years. In the other slide, the highlight is the consumption.
If on the one hand, we have a more recessive hydrological scenario as to consumption, Brazil reached record levels. Once again, we had a quarter with very strong growth. The second quarter of 2024 presented 8.2% of growth in relation to the second quarter of 2023 in consolidated terms, accounting for 7%. This is due to the temperature. The temperature was 1.5 higher than the historical levels. Of course, the rainfall was a bit below in the area. That is related to the air conditioning that responds to the increase in temperature, and that would account for the consumption, which was higher in the residential class when we compare the periods. Residential class had a growth of 11%.
So on the one hand, we have a very consistent growth of consumption, and on the other hand, the rainfall level was a bit below, and that led to the performance of storage levels a bit lower than the previous years. In the other slide, we would like to discuss the curtailment effect, especially related to renewable sources. In this quarter, the second quarter of 2024, we observed a curtailment which was higher than the average of the previous quarters. And I think something similar happened also in the third quarter of 2023 when we saw the event of blackout in the interconnected system, and the agency limited some areas to increase the system performance. And we can see the effect of the demand, which was below what was expected in the net load that was driven by the distributed energy.
We also had some restriction in transmission in some areas and some new lines that would come into operation in this quarter. We saw some restriction in some areas, especially in Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte, when we observed in the wind segment in particular. In the Rio Grande do Norte, there was a restriction of 9% of curtailment. And of course, in the solar, we see the same effect, and Ceará reached 18.6% of curtailment in relation to the total capacity, and Rio Grande do Norte, 17.5%. When we see the interconnected system, we see that wind accounts for 7.6% and solar for 0.8%. When compared to the numbers of the company, we remained below the domestic levels, and the average national level was 4.8%.
Auren presented a 1.5% restriction due to curtailment, and Jaíba and Sol do Piauí were below the national level with curtailment of 5.8% compared to the 7.6% of the interconnected national system. The lower impact that we saw when compared to the average was due to the geographical location of our complexes, wind complexes. Sol do Piauí, sorry, Ventos do Piauí and Ventos do Araripe are located in the border of Pernambuco and Piauí, and they are connected in the 500 kV. And this is a system that has little restrictions in transmission, and this obviously shows the better performance in terms of curtailment when compared to the average. In terms of commercial performance, the contracting level continues to be very high, so we reached 94% as an average contracting level for the years of 2024 to 2026. And even with this high level of contracting, we continue operating in the trading segment.
We had operations that were performed in the years 2025 and 2027 with average cost of 145, and this was a position that was completed, and this was something that was decided in 2023 at the price of 100 or 105 BRL per megawatt hour. So we continue looking at the windows of opportunities and paying attention to the volatility and prices, in spite of the fact that we have this high level of contracting. So we are still looking at the opportunities in the segment of trading. The high level of contracting is like this because we believe that we see the offer in the system, because the trend is always to have lower prices, especially when the hydrology aspect is better. So we are going to keep this level at high levels because it's a natural way of providing a hedge.
We observed that the second quarter results favored this approach. Then we are going to move on to the operating performance. To start, we are going to discuss the hydro assets. We see here that the second quarter had a generation 84% below that of the physical guarantee, different from what we observed in the same period of last year. This was driven by the restriction of effluents of Porto Primavera that was decided by the ICMSA, and this was put into practice as of the second quarter, where the effluents was 4,600, were reduced to 3,900. That was an impact in the generation, but as all of you know, this is offset by the MRE, and the financial result is not so much impacted.
The availability of this asset continues to be very high, nearly 97%, in comparison to a year reference of 92.3%. So high level availability when compared to what was defined by the regulator. On the next slide, we will discuss the wind asset performance. We had presented, as you can observe in the graph, a performance a bit lower than what we expected for the first quarter because the wind resource was below the average. This was offset and reversed in this quarter when we reached 11% of the percentile 90 of certification and 4% of percentile 50. So it was a very positive quarter in terms of wind generation. We offset the performance that was expected in the first quarter. We reached 1,529 MW average, and practically the performance has been very consistent throughout all our assets.
In Piauí 3, we see that the performance was a bit different from the others, but this was driven by a maintenance that was carried out at the collector substation of the complex. And that's why we have the result a bit lower when compared to the other assets. On the next slide, we give some explanations about the exceptional performance. So we bring you the comparison of the parameters of project of our wind complexes in a consolidated way. So the good performance that we saw in this quarter is due to the wind resource, which was 4.7% higher than what we had as a certification. But it's also important to mention that the generators performed better with availability higher than expected. That helped the good performance of this quarter.
As we said, the electric system was performed a little bit lower due to the maintenance that was conducted. The curtailment also impacted in a negative way on our results, but in a very restricted way, representing 0.2% of restriction of generation in the period. On the next slide, we bring information about the solar assets. Sol do Piauí, which is our hybrid complex, had a spectacular performance in terms of availability. It had impact due to the curtailment. All solar complexes were affected more than the wind assets. It's a relatively small complex, only 48 megawatts. So the result or the impact is very limited. Sol do Piauí continues with a ramp-up step. In this quarter, we reached 300 MWac in commercial operation, 60 MWac in test operation.
In relation to the first quarter, we added about 100 MW in terms of installed capacity, as I had mentioned in the beginning of our presentation. The expectation is that full operation will happen in September 2024, according to the schedule, and considering also the CapEx and the financial and operational performance. Everything has been happening as we planned when we started the project. Now we'll talk about the financial performance, and I'll turn the call to Mateus Ferreira for him to discuss the results. Over to you. Thank you, Fabio. Good morning, everyone. We move on to page 17 to talk about the net revenue of 2024. We reached BRL 1,450, very aligned with the numbers that we reported in the previous period. The highlight is the trading company that increased the revenue as a result of negotiated energy.
As for generation, we had the solar parks in starting operation, and we also saw a better performance of wind complexes, as was mentioned by Fábio, that was offset by lower prices when compared to the second quarter of last year. In relation to EBITDA, the company had a growth of nearly 5% in EBITDA, BRL 457 billion against BRL 436 million in the second quarter of last year, due to two reasons: a higher dividends for minority stakes that paid BRL 41 million in relation to a volume of BRL 27 million in 2023, and also to lower cost of holding and also the development of the pipeline of the company. On the following page, as we did in the previous quarter, we provide details of the PMSO of the company. As you can see, it is aligned with the numbers that were reported in the previous periods.
We had a growth, and there was a reduction with personnel with BRL 5.5 million in the period. On page 19, we had a quarter with net debt of BRL 3.3 billion, with an index a bit lower than we had in the previous period of 1.87 times. Gross debt increased due to the issuance, as mentioned by Fábio. CESP had an issuance of BRL 1.1 billion, and Auren had an issuance of BRL 400 million. This is related to the debt that had already been contracted. When we see the amortization schedule, we see that the schedule is very comfortable, with an average term of more than seven years of duration and a cash of BRL 5 billion, as mentioned by Fábio.
The cash level is a bit higher, and the schedule is very comfortable so that we can make the combination with AES, whose process is going to end in the month of October. When we look at the cash flow, free cash flow, we can see that cash conversion level is still very high. It reached about 70%. We would like to talk about the capture of amounts that I have already mentioned. This all influenced this. Now, with this, I turn the call back to Fabio. Thank you, Mateus. We are going to move on to page 22, providing more information about the business combination with AES, and we're going to discuss the integration process. This is a very well-structured process in the company on the side of Auren and also on AES teams based on four pillars.
So the strategy of the integration, that is, when we announce the transaction, we will look at the operational continuity, capturing value so that we can be a large generator company. So since the beginning, we have been working on this. When we executed the transaction and we waited for CADE to approve, so we created multi-functional teams. We have managers and employees from both areas working on a transition plan so that we can understand which are the critical processes. So this is what we refer to as B plus one, and we map all the attention points that we have to have after the transaction is completed. The governance has already been established in the process. We have a management committee monitoring the evolution of the activities on a weekly basis, and we are looking at the sensitive process that can be specifically focused on competition.
We also have those activities being looked at, such as marketing and greenfield projects. In terms of trading and greenfield, this is being aligned, and we have a green team that has already been formed. The purpose of this team is to see whether everything is going as expected when we started the transaction. Auren is not putting any pressure or is not influencing the marketing of the greenfield projects because we are independent companies. On our side, we make a macro accompaniment so that we can understand how the projects are being developed. We do not have access to the details of the negotiations that AES has been conducting in those two aspects. The process has a methodology that has been adopted and is being followed. We are working with specialized consulting firms to develop a philosophy of operation specific for this new company.
When we made the acquisition, we mentioned that we had topics to be discussed in terms of operational performance. We said that we would have to think about the maintenance aspect. We have companies that are helping us to develop this model. We have also other consulting firms helping us in terms of IT, which is very important for systems and processes. Lastly, we are defining the new organization structure, and we are also evaluating the AES team. When the closing happened, we said that we are going to have a combination of the best of both worlds. Considering this, we also have a consulting firm working in human resources so that we can better establish the new structure. We have details of the process, the mapping of the process, what would be the planning process after D plus one.
We had already visited the assets, especially the wind assets. We believe they are the assets that deserve more attention when we talk about D plus one. The teams are focused on capturing value. The processes are going to continue up to the moment of the closing. After D one, and then we have D 100, and after one year, and we are defining all the plans. All the structure and the information technology deserve all the attention when we talk about mergers and acquisitions, because these are topics that can accelerate our capturing value with a new company. This is how the company has been going on. Everything has been smooth. Everything that we have been observing in the company is according to what we planned at the date of the acquisition.
There is no negative surprise in the process, and we are very confident that we are going to reach October with the closing process prepared for success. On the next slide, we can see the schedule of this process. We can see the steps that have already been completed. We have already the execution of the agreement. We announced the transaction. We signed the BCA. We have the protocol of incorporation, and we have the approval by CADE. We are in the process of approval by ANEEL. We intend to call the AGMs in August this month. The financial teams are working so that we can have the approval by the debt holders and the players. We expect the conclusion of the transaction to materialize in October this year. Next slide, please.
Final remarks, as I had mentioned in the beginning of the presentation. This quarter has been very important for our history. We started a new chapter of Auren's history. Of course, we completed a very important step, which is to provide a transformational aspect. And we did that with the acquisition of AES. We are very happy for having acquired AES and Esfera. And these are the best opportunities we found with those two years of the company. And we are moving forward with those two initiatives. And along the last quarter, we announced the brand GUD, which is the joint venture, our venture of Vivo and our company. And we are very happy with this new association, this new acquisition. And we have seen good results already being produced. And we are very happy with this association with Vivo to operate in the retail segment.
We conclude the presentation now, and we are going to open the Q&A session. I'll be here with our new CFO, Mr. Mateus Ferreira, and all the executives to answer your questions. We will now open the Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, please press the raise hand button. If your question is answered, you can leave the queue by clicking on the lower hand. Please wait while we collect the questions. Uma pergunta que chegou aqui pelo chat. This question from chat asked by Victor Cunha, Itaú BBA. This quarter, we saw relevant energy being sold above 300 MW average. But for longer periods, the pace of sales dropped. So how do you see that, and what would be the price? And how does Auren see the increase in risk aversion after 2025? Victor, thank you very much for the question.
I'm going to share the answer here. Since we have a new CFO with the company, Mr. Mateus Ferreira, we have the head of trading that has been doing a brilliant job. So I will turn the call to Mario, and then I can talk about the models. Thank you, Victor, for the question. Let me start from the first part of your question in relation to the liquidity. What we have seen is an improvement in the liquidity level in all the vertices. The shortest have always been more net. But when we talk about medium or longer term, we can see an improvement in the liquidity level, not only in the brokers, but also when we consider important clients, when we talk about the quotations and the closings. So the liquidity is absolutely preserved as we see it.
In relation to what you mentioned of 300 MW in 2025, this has to do with what Fábio has mentioned. It's related to the purchase of energy that we have been doing since last year. Most of the purchase happened last year, and part of the sale when the price was close to the foundation curves. So the 300 MW that were sold in 2025, a large portion refers to an opportunity sale when we can collect very important results. And another portion is also related to a location of energy to our client base. Let me. I would like Fábio to complement what I'm going to say now, but we have a feeling that this hybrid mode is more restrictive, and therefore the model tends to be more likely to price increases. In this hybrid model, in the new Newave, we saw two important changes.
One is what justifies the number hybrid, which is the number of the plants that compose the MRE. And the other aspect is the statistics of P50 P90 when we consider a higher volume of energy that is analyzed and impacted by the model. In summary, this model is even more sensitive. So when the hydrology is very favorable, when the reservoir levels are very high, this difference between the in relation to the previous model tends to be less sensitive. But when hydrology is close to average, or when we have any reduction in reservoir levels, most likely we are going to see this model respond in a more abrupt way as when it comes to prices, bringing in more volatilities and more opportunities as well. I think the answer was complete. But anyway, I would like to add to what he said.
Our position as a company is based on this principle. The hybrid model represents better the system because we have individual representation of the plants. When the representation is better, we know that the prices will be closer to reality. If you read the release of results, Priscilla made a session showing all the numbers related to the hybrid plant results. We can see that it anticipates the response to prices. You start to dispatch thermal power plants a little bit before, and the price will not respond so quickly when the hydrology is less favorable. It's a model which is much more adjusted to protect somehow the interconnected system. We can anticipate the sign of price, and we optimize the operation.
So whenever we have a methodology that provides more details of the operation of the interconnected system and gets closer to the reality, we will always have a favorable operation as what we saw. Next question comes from Guilherme Lima with Santander. Your line is open. You may proceed, sir. Good morning, everyone. I have some questions on my side. I would like to confirm if the average price that you mentioned in the release is BRL 145 per megawatt, and does it refer to this provisional energy? And I would also like you to talk about the call that was mentioned in the AES call, and this is related to curtailment. They said that they were in a curtailment 2.5 times higher than what was identified by ONS. How do you intend to approach this topic?
And if you identify also this aspect for other assets, and how are you going to approach the system generation, and how do you see this as valuation? And lastly, if you could talk about the new parameters of the new CVaR, and if you see that this is going to cause any impact in the D100. Guilherme, thank you for the question. The price is BRL 150. We refer to the conventional price because we think it's easier for us to represent the average price. We work also with the conventional aspect. We also sell incentivized energy, but for us to be more didactic, we informed the average of the conventional price. In terms of curtailment, we mentioned in the release and also in the material, we announced some aspects of curtailment. We were attending also the AES call. They approached especially when they were discussed the Cajuína.
They said there's obligation to provide this data. If you fail to provide this information, it would affect the ONS decision to dispatch and also affects the curtailment. We didn't get into those details with AES. As we said, AES is operating independently, and we are going to understand better what is happening when the transaction is actually completed. However, we understand this is a moment of a greenfield project that is starting operating. It has the process of stabilizing the farm, and maybe the restriction that AES faced is going to be saved when the farm started to operate at 100%. And this is expected to happen before the closing with us. If not, we are going to apply the same philosophy as we adopt to our own farms because we are going to use the same rules.
Today, we have the capacity to provide the solution to the problem, and we are going to do that when the parks become part of the portfolio of Auren. In relation to valuation, we have to look at the curtailment aspect. What we saw in the last quarter is the following. There is an average term aspect related to net load that has been affected by the distributed energy, especially on the weekend, and especially when we talk about winds. So we have a higher wind generation and stable solar energy. And so you have more solar energy. You will have more curtailment. And how are we going to solve it along the time? We are going to expand the offer, and we're going to increase demand at a rhythm, at a pace which is lower than what we see. So we have already seen this in the new project.
This is something that we have been very vocal since the Auren Den, when you don't have long-term prices aligned with expansion. Obviously, the expansion is not going to take place. So you probably saw that we announced projects at a lower rhythm than we had before. And this is something that's going to be offset as the structure offer decreases. Another topic that affects, I believe, when I was attending AES call, we have some transmission lines that are planned to start operating in the second half of this year. And this is going to provide relief to the system because the curtailment is focused on Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. And this is something that is going to be solved. And this is the question you asked me. Is this going to be diluted throughout other agents?
Yes, this effect is going to be diluted, and it's going to remove some pressure from some agents, especially on those two states when curtailment affected more strongly. When we did the valuation of the transaction, we had already considered assumption of curtailment higher than the assets of Auren. We had already seen or foreseen that the exposure of those assets was higher to curtailment than we see in the farms that we currently operate. Excellent, Fabio. Just a last question. Okay, okay. D100, yes. Guilherme, this is what happens. What do we expect in terms of evolution of price and their models? Related to my previous answer, we always want our models to translate the operational reality. The more evolution, in other words, the more discretized the models are, we see this in a very positive way because it's going to be close to the real life.
So this first effect is going to impact the D100 because you're going to make all the adjustments, and this is going to be translated in D100. So you're asking me, are we going to provide all details? Well, what I can say is that the models have to be aligned, and they have to have the same efficiency. They have to adopt the same parameters. And this is something that's well known by the market. So the natural evolution of the models will lead to this result until we have a short, until this is impacted in the short term. You know that this is more discretized than the Newave. So the representation is much better for the new parts than the Newave. But of course, there are improvements that need to be made. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Next question comes from Daniel Travitzky from Banco Safra. Hello.
Thank you for the opportunity. First, I would like to do a follow-up on the curtailment aspect. I would like to understand about a refund. How do you see a solution for this with a regulator, CCE? When do you expect a solution, and what would be the exact pathway as you see it in order to solve this topic? This is my first question. And my second question, we saw a very interesting movement in the dynamics of costs. We saw an interesting reduction in PMSO. On the other hand, when we look at the operational costs, we saw an increase. So I would like to understand how the two parts of the costs would be related. Por favor, aguardem que o call da Auren retornará em instantes. We'll get back in some minutes. Please wait. Hello. I'm sorry, we had a communication problem. Daniel, hello.
Hello, you may proceed. Hello, let's talk about the curtailment first. We are monitoring the curtailment topic. You know that there are two aspects to it. There is one curtailment related to electrical restriction. So sorry, there's a refund, and then you start receiving, and then the energy-related. Let's go straight to the point. I do not see a quick and immediate solution to that. We need regulations. So we need to discuss the topic of curtailment, and this is something that has to involve the sector to find a solution to the curtailment. I don't think it is not a direct transfer as a burden that would solve the problem. It's a topic that has to be broadly discussed with the regulators so that we can find a solution to the problem. If we evaluate this curtailment topic, there's another point. GSF has the same effect.
So GSF has been discussed for a long time, and curtailment has also to be discussed in relation to GSF. So because the first impact that happened in relation to the new allocation of source was related to the, and this has also been affected by distributed generation. This has to be seen in a systemic way. So if we only look at the solar and wind energy, and we do not see what's happening in the hydro dimension, we will not get a solution. So this is why I believe that this is a discussion that is going to take a while, and I myself believe that the solution that will be found as the system finds a balance. So I see this as a topic that is of structure, not of a scenario.
So, structural change of changing the electric grid in Brazil, it has to be funded based on the price. So the spot price has to respond to aspects of price. So some hours of the day, sometimes of the day, you have to have lower prices, and you will have higher prices in other parts of the day. So this is how the curtailment will have to play in the market. So I believe that this has to be discussed because this is much broader than talking about curtailments for solar and wind energies. I'm going to turn to Mateus for the discussion of operational costs. If we observe the growth between the second quarter of 2024 and the previous quarter, but if we see the reversion of provision, the growth wouldn't reach 2%.
I do not know if I answered your question, but there was a reversal of provisions that happened in the period. Yes, it's clear. I would like to thank you for the answers. The question-and-answer session is closed. We would like to give the floor back to Mr. José Feliz for his final consideration. Thank you very much for attending our call. Thank you very much for the time you dedicated to our company. I believe that along the quarter, we'll have more information about the evolution of the transaction with AES. We'll provide information to the shareholders and to the market as we have them, and we are going to get prepared for the announcement of the result of the next quarter. Auren's conference call has been completed. We would like to thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.