Good morning, everyone, welcome to the earnings call for the first quarter of 2023 at Blau Farmacêutica. Today we have Marcelo Hahn, the Founder and CEO, Douglas Rodrigues, our CFO, and Bruna Gambôa, our IR. At the end of our presentation, we're going to have our Q&A session, we'd ask you to all submit 1 question at a time to make it easier for our answers. Our call is taking place in Portuguese with simultaneous translation to English, the webcast is also being recorded and will be available on the company's IR website. I want to pass the floor on to Marcelo so we can begin our presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Bruna, welcome to our earnings call on the first quarter of 2023. We would like to start the presentation highlighting that we ended the quarter in the first place in the ranking for pharmaceutical industries in the non-retail market for hospital institutional according to the IQVIA MAT, 23 data. Blau is committed to delivering good results. In the beginning of 23, we had important achievements in regards to the strategic projects that support our growth and value generation in the short term, medium term, and long term. We're super happy with the results of the investments we've been working on through our R&D and innovation center in Inventta and the new products. I wanna reinforce that this is a strategy. It's a winning strategy. It's gonna leverage our results in the future.
In this sense, besides the new records and registrations we had in the first quarter, just in the month of April, we had a all-time high of new products registered in a single month with ANVISA, the authority in Brazil. We had 4 new medications. I wanna highlight also the acceleration of our development projects through our partnership with Similis Bio for 4 new monoclonal antibodies that are quite up ahead in regards to the initial schedule. Another important highlight is the license we received from ANVISA in April, authorizing the commercialization and trading of medication produced at building 210 in Cotia at our headquarters. This new production plant will be addressing the bottlenecks in the unit for specialties and will collaborate and contribute to the increment of our revenue in the next quarters.
To end this slide, I would also like to highlight the advances in the Pernambuco project, the P 1,000. In this quarter, we received a license for the environmental authorization of the state authority, CPHR, and the authorization from the Secretary of Finance through PRODEPE to be able to capture these tax benefits. On the next slide, we're going to provide a little more detail on the long-term partnership with Similis Bio to produce 4 monoclonal antibodies that are cutting-edge, that have patent protection at the moment. This is a transformational and disruptive project that will place Blau at a whole another level. Technological, since we are promoting these IFAs that are so complex in Brazil.
We're gonna be producing the IFA all the way to the finished drugs, and we're gonna be exporting this with no borders or territorial limits. These anti-monoclonal molecules under development are in the most addressable market in the world, so we're placing Blau in a scenario of great relevance. In this quarter, we had some important milestones in the project with the of the research cells of the two mAbs, besides receiving the bioreactors with major capacity for production, one with 500 liters, another with 3,000 liters, sorry, that are under deployment at our building 400 for the production of these IFAs in Cotia. Moving on to slide 4, I wanna highlight the achievements in the Bergamo Lab project that should be closing at the end of this quarter.
Bergamo started off in 1946. There is a state-of-the-art production plant in Taboão da Serra, São Paulo, which received recurring investments in the last few years. Bergamo has 2 productive lines besides a oncology portfolio, important products like botulinic toxins and somatropin that will help leverage our results. In the beginning of 2023, we hired an external consulting company to help us with this spin-off project and to incorporate Bergamo in our operations. In the next months, we're gonna have some shared activities between the companies. The decision-making process will continue to take place independently. We wanna highlight also that ever since the signing of the contract in October last year, Bergamo had already had 2 new records with ANVISA, with the tigecycline and Fosaprepitant medications.
There's an addressable market of almost BRL 110 million. With the conclusion of this operation, with the acquisition that Blau will pay below book price, the synergies will bring important synergies and gains operationally, tax aspects, and also the increase of portfolio and penetration in the market. Moving on to slide 5 of this presentation, we're gonna give you more details on our new production plant in this building 210 in Cotia with two important lines for production of injectable drugs with high capacity for production and also already importantly attracted our specialties. On the 5th of April, we received authorization from ANVISA to start trading the medication that's produced in this building. Our expectation is that this plant will increase by 30% our current production of drugs in our specialties division.
We've already hired 200 new employees, and we currently have the production lines with 2 shifts. The new plant will already have a 4.0 concept with cutting-edge equipment, artificial intelligence monitoring, and an integrated system that's an audit trail with a high capacity for production with low operational costs. Now, when we move on to slide 6, we have more details about the industrial complex in Pernambuco. This master plan project, with the specifications for architecture conditions and design, as well as different industrial concepts, are already at very advanced phases. The preliminary schedule, financial schedule is already in a final adjustment phase, waiting for a few definitions.
We already have the environmental authorization from the state authority, CPHR, and the authorization from the Ministry of Finance through PRODEPE, with the certification of the tax benefits for the reduction of almost 85% of the ICMS tax that could be explored from the 1st of January 2024, as long as it is at least 2 years before the beginning of the industrial activities in Pernambuco through outsourcing the productive units in the Blau production plants. At this moment, we are completing the adjustments in the master plan and executive plans, and the idea is that we'll be sharing this physical financial schedule by the next quarter and start the construction work in the second semester.
We're super excited with this construction and this new industrial complex in Pernambuco, which will enable the company to start entering new markets and geographies, expanding our access in the production line with our strategic planning, as well as creating significant value for our shareholders. I wanna thank everyone, and I'll pass the floor back to Bruna. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcelo. Moving on to slide 7. In this quarter, we invested BRL 31 million in R&D and innovation with a growth of almost 100% compared to first quarter of 2022 and 54% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022.
In this slide, I wanna highlight that until the beginning of May, in our pipeline that was expected for 2023, we had already achieved seven of the 13 drugs that will be registered and launched this year, which demonstrates that we have a very precise strategy in the regulatory and R&D segments in the company. During this period, we launched new presentations for ampicillin and sulbactam, which is an antibiotic with BRL 47 million of addressable market. It's important to mention that these R&D investments are an important leverage for our future growth. Every quarter, we have an important shares, even greater, of these new products in our earnings. Moving on to slide 8.
We are gonna go over the main highlights of our plasma collection operation in the United States, our first center is expanding its volumes for collection, and there was a growth of 9% compared to the fourth quarter and almost over 70% compared to the previous year. We've always also registered a growth of about 16% of the new donors compared to the fourth quarter. Now in the beginning of the year, we started the installation of this new system that will manage all of our plasma collection chain. About the new centers, the second center is going through license obtainment, and we're hiring our teams, and we should start the operation by June this year.
The third center in Flamingo is at the final phase, executive project phase, and should start construction work in the next months. Finally, we also wanted to talk about the acquisition of our fourth center. We acquired a stake of 25%, and the center is in Jacksonville. It was a very important acquisition in the company because the center already has the mother license of the FDA, which is from FDA, and this is the authority in the U.S., which will help them achieve the licenses in the new centers built. The center has about 66% of its full capacity of 55,000 liters per year. Moving on to slide 9 of this presentation, we're going to talk about ESG.
Ever since 2021, the company has a committee that's focused on social, environment, and governance things. This supports all of the initiatives related to this topic in the company. In 2023, we set up four commissions led by employees connected directly to innovation, governance, environment, social people, and social clients aspects to direct these topics with ESG and the company better. We continue to strengthen our culture that is based on ESG principles. In this quarter, we were able to evolve in the evolution of our causes, access, innovation, and education. These will be the work bases directing our initiatives and projects over time in the company. In the sustainability front in this quarter, we defined the main initiatives for the year, which will be the reduction of water consumption, energy consumption, waste generation, and gas emissions.
In social in this quarter, we performed our first volunteering work with the donation of food, personal hygiene items, and also other items for the victims of the floods in the coast in São Paulo. We also took the team from the Blau Motorsport to visit the Santa Casa de Janaúba with the patients that perform chemotherapy, so we could have a special event with them. On slide number 10, we're gonna start addressing the issues related to our earnings in the quarter. Here, it's important to mention that due to the lack of definition in the immune scenario, we had an expectation that the first quarter would be the basis for the year with growth at a in a phased out approach throughout the quarters of 2023. We'll have more details about this in the release.
Besides competition in Immuno, a globin in a deregulated market, we're still experiencing an environment that's super challenging with credit crises after the Americanas event in the beginning of the year, along with a high interest scenario that's been pressuring our entire chain. Douglas will get into more details about the numbers in the next slides, but I wanted to highlight that the company is really focused still on its profitability. Amidst this scenario, we were still able to expand by about 50 bps our net margin compared to the 1st quarter of 2022. Besides the earnings in the quarter, we wanna highlight that the drivers for growth in the year did not change, and that we continue to be confident about delivering the results according to our strategic plans.
On slide 11, we have a little more of the challenges, additional challenges and the impacts we had in the earnings in this quarter. About Alpha, this quarter, we had a revenue that was a little lower than what we had in previous quarters, really due to the schedule for the receipts from the Ministry of Health. It's important to highlight also that we already have a significant delivery that should be delivered to the ministry in June. On Immuno, we've already spoken about this a bit, but we're still in a challenging scenario. The company is doing all we can to address these issues, but a lot of them are kind of out of our control zone. On the next slide, I'm gonna talk about this a little more as well.
When it comes to price drops, ever since the 3rd quarter of 2021, we've told you about the scenario with competition, especially for mature synthetic products, and also pressure in our entire chain. This significant price drop does not seem rational. We've been monitoring how the scenario will behave. On productive capacity in April, we were able to unleash this bottleneck for the capacity of production with the release of P 210. This was already mentioned previously by Marcelo.
Finally, in this quarter, we had impacts with the returns of about BRL 20 million above the historical level in the company, especially due to the scenario with credit at the smaller distributors and higher default risks, and also because of a recall with non-registered immunoglobulin, which added to this, and we had to collect these products in the first quarter. On slide 12, we had a bit of a discussion on the Immuno market, which is one of the biggest questions we're receiving when we interact with investors. As you can see in the graph, between 2018 and 2019, we had a normalized market with consumption of about 600,000 units of this product per year.
In the beginning of 2020, we had the pandemic, the plasma, the blood, collection centers were closed due to lockdowns. In the end of this year, we start seeing a reduction of this offering in the market. In the beginning of 2021, we had a lack of supply of Immuno in the market, and ANVISA then, released the imports of this product without the registrations based on the resolution of 203/2017 which covered the criteria and procedures for exceptional conditions with these non-registered projects at ANVISA. In 2021, the reduction we noticed in this market is mainly due to the lack of supply in the market.
When we look at 2022, this drop in the graph is mainly due to an IQVIA issue, that they're not able to capture the products without the registrations in their database. Moving on to slide 13, I wanted to highlight the reduction of the Immuno reliance at Blau because the new sources of revenue in the company have been gaining significance in our revenue, and it's been losing a bit of relevance in our earnings. In the next few years, the idea is that it'll be less significant in the revenue, especially due to the pipeline of launches. It's important to mention that between 2018 and 2022, there's a CAGR in the revenue ex Immuno of 24%, or at least 16% when you look at the total net revenue, right?
In the same period, we have a setback of more than 14% in the market for immunoglobulin. I'll pass the floor on to Douglas. He'll continue here with the next slides in the presentation.
Thank you, Bruna, and good morning, everyone. Moving on to our presentation, we'll get into slide 14, where we'll have the evolution of our revenue in the quarter. In the first quarter of 2023, we had our revenue ending at BRL 258 million, a lower level compared to the previous quarters, due to a combination of factors with immunoglobulin that was already highlighted during the presentation. We also had a occasional effect with the changes in this quarter and the productive units P210.
Of course, based on the schedule for deliveries, with the Alpha delivery contract, we didn't have a significant delivery. It's important to highlight that in this comparative with the analysis versus the first quarter of 2022, the biggest impact is the price variable. This was basically due to the price pressure in our more mature portfolio. When it comes to the comparison with the last quarter of 2022, we can see that the biggest effect is volume and mix. So there's no significant impact in the price. It's important to highlight also that, as Bruna mentioned, the new sources of revenue in the company are performing very well still. Of course, it's gonna gain more efficiency, but they are still not enough for the main impacts we had in the quarter.
We continue to execute our plan and deliver. On slide 15, we wanna show you the gross margin effects and also the EBITDA. When it comes to gross margin, among all of the factors we had in the revenue and among the mix presented, this would be the best margin scenario. Our margin had a bit of a reduction in the quarter, but despite all of these factors, it's a margin that could still be considered positive. It's important to highlight that in the comparison with the costs, we don't have much of an evolution. The company continues to have its financial discipline.
We continue to have high efficiency in costs management, renegotiating with our suppliers. We do expect that in the next quarters, we'll have some positive impacts even, considering that the effect over our timeline with the dilution of our average costs with the new entrances here. Looking at the EBITDA and the effect of this revenue level does not have an SG&N dilution. This impact of the gross margin and greater expenses will lead to a smaller EBITDA margin in the first quarter of 23. On the next slide, we're going to highlight the operational expenses. When you look at the graph, if we don't consider the reclassifications between the third quarter and the fourth quarter of 2022, we are keeping up with the same level of expenses when you look at this from a nominal perspective.
This, of course, reflects this new structure in the company and all of the investments that we had to address the strategic plan in the company. Of course, when you consider a revenue level, the revenue in the first quarter, there's not a dilution of the SGN, there's an increased % of expenses. From a nominal perspective, we continue to keep up the same level. Just as with the cost level, or cost line, the company has been super diligent in looking at and reviewing this internally. Whatever can be managed or reorganized and could lead to inefficiency, then the company is really doing its homework to search for opportunities that possibly reduce its SGN. On the next slide 17, you have the net income effect.
Here it's important to highlight that even with all the adversities and impacts we had, compared to the first quarter of 22, the company has had a net income that's better and higher than the first quarter of 2022, which demonstrates our commitment to profitability. When we look at the financial earnings comparing with the first quarter of 22, we have the effect of the NDFs back then in the first quarter of 22, the adjustment of the closing currency rates, and now we have a positive effect as well in our financial results. When you look at the effective tax rate, it's important to highlight that we had the accounting profit, but our tax profit is smaller than the accounting profit due to all the benefits we have.
The main ones are the Lei do Bem and the JCP payments, which brings an effective tax rate that's lower in this quarter. Then we can deliver better net income, reinforcing our commitments. On the next slide here, we're already heading to CapEx and working capital. Working capital, the company has not been able to have improvements compared to the last 4 quarters, so we're at the same level still. The biggest evolutionary impact when it comes to stock and inventory, if you compare the last quarter of 22 with the first quarter of 23, is the Immuno effect. While the company does not have a normalized scenario for Immuno, we won't be able to demonstrate a better improvement in our days of inventory and our working capital indicators.
When it comes to accounts receivable, considering this mix of the sales with public and private, this is the expected level. An average term of 90 days, and will continue to vary a little upwards, downwards, et cetera. This is the average term expected, which is about 90 days. When it comes to payment terms, what happened was due to a setback or restriction in the US dollar in the last few days of March, we had some negotiations, and we closed some currency rates that should be expiring in April, and that, of course, worsened the indicator. This is a very small, temper-temporal effect. We're looking at the days and a quarter. When you look at the CapEx, the CapEx is for intangibles.
We had some evolution and more investments in this quarter, basically connected to all the payments we had through this Similis Bio partnership that we mentioned during the presentation. The CapEx for fixed assets also. Now we're gonna start accelerating our plan, especially when it comes to bigger investments in Pernambuco, and this should be, like, the basis for 2023. We'll be evolving in the next quarters with investments that are even a little greater than this level that we presented in the first quarter. Moving on to slide 19, so we can end our financial earnings in this presentation of the first quarter. We have our cash position and our gross debt.
Once again, the company has been ending with a free cash flow position, and this is super strategic in a moment where you have more adversity, more challenges, and the company has a cash position that can help address strategic plans and also explore opportunities. We have a gross debt of BRL 278 million, which is our position in the last quarter. For the second quarter, we have been amortizing the first debentures, the last three installments, but the first amortization also of our second debenture. This is gonna position us in this level of BRL 200 million by the end of the second quarter. Our cash position in the first quarter is BRL 621 million, which gives us a position of almost BRL 350 million.
Once again, we reinforce our commitment to keep up this cash position at a healthy level to be able to address our strategic plan. I'll pass the floor on to Marcelo, so he can have his final remarks, and then we'll open up for Q&A.
Well, thank you, Douglas. Guys, before we end, I just wanna thank you all for watching this earnings call and for really trusting this journey in growth. Ever since we started in 1987 at Blau, we've already faced many challenging moments at the political or economic fronts, and we never stopped growing. Actually, we took advantage of the opportunities, and we were able to reinvent ourselves. We searched for new sources of revenue, we invest in new markets, and we continue to grow.
We are included in a resilient market that has already gone through many adverse scenarios and was able to keep its growth. We have a solid track record of over 35 years and a cash position that's very comfortable. That makes it a lot easier for us to go through turbulent moments. More than ever, this highlights the opportunity to search for operational improvements and reduction of costs and expenses and operational gains as well. We're always focused on our portfolio of healthy receivables. I'm really proud to share a bit of this history so far, and I know we have a successful journey ahead. Although I'm not satisfied with our financial earnings in the 1st quarter, they were below our expectations because of everything we can deliver at Blau.
Two years after the IPO, I'm convinced of our strategic plan and of our levers for growth. We've been keeping our eyes open with the opportunities from M&A, and we're very confident about our deliveries in 2023. We're just starting. Thank you, everyone, and I'll pass the floor on to Bruna.
Thanks, Marcelo. Thanks, guys. Now we're gonna open up to the Q&A session. Thank you.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Before we start the session here for Q&A, let me just give you an important announcement. Yesterday we had the CADE, the antitrust body approval. We disclosed this, which is also in the company's website. We're gonna go over the first question from Vinicius Figueiredo in Itaú.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Douglas and Bruna, thank you for taking my question.
I wanted to explore this issue with P210 now with the license from the ANVISA authority. You have the expansion of the productive capacity for specialties, how can we imagine the ramp-up of the volume sold in these 30% additional? Is there already a strong demand? Have you been able to operate with this expansion at full capacity? The second point would be the stock level. You guys talk about a sale in the public channel, this should help with the reduction of the stock levels and normalization as well. Also, I wanted to understand about the level of this variation. I want to know if this is a concern from your guys' side.
Well, thanks for the question. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. I'm going to answer this first question on...
We've been expanding this production, the idea is that we'll have a recurring demand. Over these years, we've been carrying on some orders in our portfolio that we can't service. They go from one month to another. We've been able to place this product in the market. There is a demand for this. We were the ones that weren't able to offer this before. For us, it's super important because as we always mention, we're addressing the bottlenecks in this offering. The demand existed, we were just lacking a bit of the offer. We are going back to achieving this increase in the market share. You're gonna notice we're gonna increase our market share in some molecules that weren't serviced or met as they should be.
Another important aspect is that we have this portfolio of drugs that we also don't trade recurrently, which we have this difficult choice to make, right? Because we don't have the productive capacity. This is another situation, is where we have different products that we're gonna go back to producing with greater offering or greater supply. When we think about the situation with expanding our capacity, we've already anticipated ourselves and expanded these registrations out of the country. Our exports are also growing. The offer for these medications are also growing. We're moving well with this. On the stock question, we have a higher stock ever since the lockdowns and the pandemic. We increased a lot of our stock, and we've been allocating this.
About the validity, we have a lot of active principles or and inputs, right? When you produce this drug, this validity period is renewed, right? Here you have these two valid periods, right, or terms. One is like it's normally like 24-60 months. You have a lot of elasticity with this. After this, you have 24-36 months normally. You have a pretty good guarantee period or warranty period. We should be producing and distributing all of this year. With this, we'll improve our cash position as well. I think this has been a good answer to your question.
Yes. Thank you, Marcelo. Very good.
Next question was from Leandro Bastos from Citi.
Hi, guys. Good morning. On my side, I have two questions also. The first one is about Immuno. You mentioned this a bit in the call with the scenario of lack of definition and competition with products that don't have registration. How are you looking at this market, right, when you look at the public and private markets? What are your perspectives for normalizing this over the year? That's the first question. The second question is I wanted to cover this point with the returns. In the second quarter, it seems to be a little higher. This trend is a little higher. You also mentioned the Immuno issue with your release. Is this a more occasional situation? Also could you talk about the credit situation that you've been noticing in the distribution channel, and what's the situation like now?
What are you looking at up ahead in regards to this dynamic? Thank you. That's it.
Great. Let's start off with this answer. Thanks for the question. On Imunoglobulin in the public market, we continue to see some public bids taking place with drugs that are not registered. We had a question by the TCU. They mentioned that when there would be a lack of product you could buy without the registration, and it was kind of strange because the Ministry of Health, despite receiving offerings from the same public bid or the same emergency purchase, they've chosen to buy products that don't have the registration.
This kind of product is a lot lower than the product with the registration, obviously, because there's not so much trackability, and there's not the, all the regulatory requirements. The production plant's not inspected. These are products that come from China. It's unfair competition, basically. We've been discussing this topic. We've been notifying the court. We actually started a lawsuit from the Supreme Court about this issue, and we've been notifying the Ministry of Health, even, ANVISA on this situation. We've been engaging all of the associations and industry unions because this is generating precedents. We're seeing insulin being imported without a registration in the country. There are other demands also that are appearing with the acquisition of drugs that don't have registration.
This is super bad for a regulated industry, and we're facing this kind of situation with this government. We went through this during the pandemic with a lack of offering due to the lockdowns, but now it doesn't make sense to keep this up, right, after the supply being normalized, with companies that have stock and the Ministry using, creating this perception that there's a lack of product. That doesn't exist. Blau has the medication, and we have been participating in this process, and the companies that have the registration have also been participating, with the same quantities and needs that the Ministry has, but they've still chosen to buy differently, right?
Blau's implementing all of the measures, and we're struggling in the legal front in the different courts with these initiatives and bids that are taking place like this. This is point number one. The second question, I don't know if Douglas or Bruna wanted to mention that.
Yeah, I can talk about the returns. Well, let's just separate this when we go back to this. You see there's an effect. We don't have much of an impact in the net revenue. There was a tax issue, and eventually you may have a process where you go over the cancellation term, and then you have the returns. Let's remove this support team.
Now when you talk about the first quarter, basically you have the effect of the non-registered Immuno, and then we're collecting that, and they have this recall. The last topic, which is more specific, after all of the issue with credit limitations, we were a lot more restrictive and careful with credit analysis now in the first quarter. Especially after Americanas, as everyone noticed, the whole market became a little drier when it comes to credit and liquidity, and we preferred to have the situation with our distributors instead of going through possible risks with non-payment or NPL. We would bring the stock back in-house, but this is a very occasional situation. Okay. Perfect. Just a quick follow-up, if possible. When we get to the Immuno topic, I think this is clear.
Just to mention a bit of the private market. Do you still see a competitive dynamic with a lot of products that don't have the registration, or is this already more normalized?
Good question. Actually, I wanted to mention that here in Brazil, the Imunoglobulin consumption is a lot lower per capita compared to other first-ring class world countries. We've seen a setback from the payers, the health insurance companies, that has been really affecting the financial flows with the hospitals and distributors. We've had a growing demand for Imunoglobulin in the private market that was more stationary in the first quarter due to the economic scenario. The market has been growing, and we've been going back to some kind of normality. There is still...
There are still very few points that have non-registered immunoglobulin, but a lot of hospitals, as they prefer to have the drugs with the registration, they rather buy the product, even if they have to pay a little more to have the registered product. We've seen this normalized, and the sales in the private market have been getting back to normal scenarios, month-over-month, and we've been growing and getting back to this market once again.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to answer about credit. You asked about this. Together with our distributors and hospitals, the company is keeping an eye open.
We've been using tools that are important, there's actually an association with the credit fund, where the pharmaceutical industry mostly exchanges information, then we can view this and see if there's any kind of financial difficulty or postponing payments. This is what guides us to improve this process month-over-month, besides the sell-out. The occasional cases, we're really looking at this loss. We rather receive the product back than have losses. Historically... there's not a non-payment rate that's too high. We're really keeping our eyes open to this. We're a team that really is very focused on this, and we use different tools so that this doesn't happen, and this is what's going on. We're avoiding any kind of loss.
Okay. Thank you, Marcelo. Super clear.
Next question is from Gustavo Miele from Goldman Sachs.
Good morning, Marcelo, Douglas, and Bruna. Thank you so much for this presentation. I have two questions here. The first one is that I would like to get back to the stock level discussion a bit more. When we get into the explanatory notes number 9, we notice that the finished products vary a lot, quarter over quarter, but the semi-finished products and the raw materials are practically flat. What we wanted to know is, besides the impact with restrained immunoglobulin that you mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, do you have any type of concern with an increase in the security or safety stocks up ahead? When you interact with the main suppliers for raw materials, is there any kind of big change in the dialogue in regards to this?
Are you comfortable with the level of stock that you have for raw materials up ahead? Just so we can get a feel and understand if, once you distribute the stock of immunoglobulin, maybe we would have any other kind of impact in this stock level. That's the first question. The second point is about specialties. You talked about the new products. I wanted to hear from you guys about the legacy portfolio. What is it like for the competition in regards to more mature portfolio during the pandemic? You mentioned that important competitors were focusing a bit more on drugs that are more COVID related. How does this number behave compared to the current scenario? Competitors are already in a more regular portfolio from a pre-pandemic period, or do you think this outlook could change a bit up ahead?
Those are the 2 points. Thanks.
Well, about the stocks, I think Douglas could add on to that, but I wanted to say the following. From a regulatory perspective, we need to have these products in a quarantine, which would be the semi-finished period, for 14 days. Most of them have drugs that are, like, 95% produced that are injectable. If we have a stock level of semi-finished products that's recurrent or flat, then this demonstrates that we are always producing, and we're always waiting for this period to be able to release this product and have it as a finished product. Within the lead time, you have all the analysis of the packaging.
After, we'll just change this level of stock with the increase of some semi-finished products like the toxins and the Immuno. Douglas can get into more details about that,
of course. When you look at this and you see this new expectation, you see the raw materials and semi-finished products. Basically, we started noticing that we transformed that producing the finished products in our P 210 that could still not be commercialized. This varied a lot with the raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products. Due to the deliveries of Alpha contracts in the second quarter, we're going to start this productive process as well. There is this kind of variation we're producing.
The net effect of all of this is if you take a look at the major impacts, this was really with Immuno, where we had higher expectations. The rest, the company follows along with this effect. Marcelo already mentioned this, we can renegotiate up ahead, and of course, we'll be distributing this inventory. The biggest impact is the immunoglobulin, we implemented with greater evolution finished products.
Just to add on to that, we are not happy with this stock level today because we have been struggling with our suppliers and service providers to lower their costs and prices, and we've seen an opportunity ahead. Besides negotiating future purchases, we're negotiating opportunities to reduce our costs in our stock today.
We've been working on this discussion with all of our suppliers, and we've had pretty good success in most of the negotiations. We're also recovering and replacing our stock at lower costs. And we see pressure in price from the IFA produce suppliers all the way to the finished product. It's an opportunity we've been searching for to resume our margins historically. Do you wanna answer the second question, Douglas?
Yeah, I think we already covered that. The second question would be about the mature portfolio for specialties and what the competition level is. You talked about the new products that are entering your base. If you could talk about the non-mature competition, it would be great.
We've been suffering a lot of pressure ever since the end of the pandemic, where a lot of people started producing these products again, and we've been compensating or offsetting the price with volume. We've been increasing our market share, and the credit is really focusing on that. We've been offering more products with a lower operational cost and conquering more of market share. Bruna can get into more of this up ahead, but she can show you some of the market shares for some specialty products. We're growing our share to offset the loss in price.
Okay, guys. Super clear. Thank you.
Next question is from Samuel Alves from BTG.
Hi, guys. Good morning, Marcelo, Douglas, and Bruna. We have two quick questions here, which the first one is more like a follow-up based on these two prior questions on Imunoglobulin. You had mentioned that in the private market, you've already noticed better functionality in the market because there's very few commercial stores or spots selling non-registered Imunoglobulin. I just wanted to understand if you have a market share in the private market. If there is kind of a loss of share, even if you just look at the drugs with the registration. You also mentioned relevant delivery for alfaepoetin in the second quarter. Is there any quantitative factors you would like to share, the absolute amount of sale or the flasks?
That would be great. Well, I didn't understand your second question.
Well, you talked about the relevant delivery of Alfaepoetina for the public channel in the second quarter. We wanted to know if you could share how much this could represent from a quantitative aspect, like the volumes or the values. About 100 million BRL would be of this delivery. When it comes to Imunoglobulin, the IQVIA, since Blau is the only company that when we sell Imunoglobulin in the market, the sale is done directly by Blau in Brazil to the public entity. When you see this in IQVIA, you see the market share that Blau has, and you see it's more relevant. We normally have like 65% or 60% with public sales.
When we separate this public sales to the private sector, which is like half-half, 30%, 35% for the private sector and maybe this total market, right? Blau keeps its share. The company keeps the same kind of share it's had historically. This has really made us one of the searches for, which is being closer to hospitals and increasing our share in the private market as well. This is one of our strategies to offset this lack of purchases that we were waiting on, these major relevant quantities sold to the government that we had sold in the past as well.
The next question is from Estela Strano from JP Morgan.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. It's really quick here on our side. When we look at the gross margins, we believe that there is an effect with volumes negatively impacting our margin. Could you maybe disclose the different product mix and how this has led to results in the gross margin in the company? Thanks.
Douglas?
Hi, Estela. Well, we don't disclose this kind of gross margin per product, but maybe to give you a little bit more color on the margin per quarter. We had all these effects, basically volume, and I think it's the mix, and it's important to highlight that what you see in the report between the fourth quarter and the first quarter, we don't have an issue with price once again or cost. The company continues to keep this cost control that's very effective.
This point that Marcelo mentioned, we start renegotiating with our suppliers. Of course, there's a average cost recovery factor, but it's important to mention that we don't see an evolution of the costs between one product and another. It's more like the effect of the actual revenue of the price and sales mix in this first quarter. It's important to mention also that just as we re-reinforced in the last quarter, we still have operations where we could classify as pre-operational that still don't have significant contribution. These are issues we're addressing in the long term. We have the operation in the U.S., P 400, P 210. There are many different factors and these results come over time.
Okay, guys. Thank you, Douglas.
The last question was sent on our chat. It's from José Daroncho . When it comes to R&D, can we annualize the expenses in the 1st quarter to the rest of the year? About the public notice for the purchase of the Immuno by the Ministry of Health, was there any update?
Well, the 1st is about R&D. In this 1st quarter, considering the revenue levels and the payments that we had of JSR, the percentage is higher. Of course, it's fair to think about the percentage of the revenue over the year. The idea is that the company will reach a level of 8% of the revenue over 2023 with R&D investments in intangibles and expenses.
The second one. Do you wanna talk about the notice for the purchase of Immunos?
Well, the idea for the fourth and third quarters is that we'll have the deliveries that are most important at Alpha, and we'll also have the production of the 210 and all of the new launches that the company has been working on during the year that will increment our revenue. We are also disputing along with the authorities and together with the legal front, but we're also applying all of our efforts to be closer to the hospitals and increasing our market share. We are super confident that we're going to improve this in the next quarter as we understand the scenario in the first quarter, and we are not satisfied. We're actually very unsatisfied, and we're implementing all of the measures we can to really make sure we can expand our market share.
we believe that the new products are gonna bring more revenue and more margins to the company.
Okay, guys. Since we don't have any other questions, we are gonna end. Marcelo, if you have any final remarks. If not, we'll end the call here.
I just wanna thank everyone and say that the entire Blau team is engaged in bringing in the expected results and to follow the business plan. We, from a business plan perspective, without considering the financial aspects we've been delivering, and all of our promises and projects are in line with our schedule. The P 1000 that we mentioned in Pernambuco is really advanced a lot, and we plan to share this construction schedule. We're really excited with this project. We're excited with this in this bio project.
These are way ahead of the expected timelines, and we're super happy with the achievements in the R&D and innovation areas that have been submitting new registrations in this month of April. We've been able to have over 4 new drugs registered in Brazil in a single month. Blau didn't have this history before. What we've been doing has been intense work, but we're gonna bring in the expected results, and we won't make you disappointed as investors. We wanna thank you all for your trust. Thank you so much for your time here during our presentation and Q&A.