Good morning, everyone. If you don't know me, I'm Amábeli Silva, and I'm the Investor Relations Manager at CBA. Welcome to another earnings call. This time, we're talking about the third quarter of 2024, and we will have the support of Luciano Alves, our CEO, and Camila Abel, CFO and Investor Relations Director at the company. We'd like to let you know that this event is being recorded, and all participants will have their mics off during the presentation. Soon after, we'll begin the Q&A session, where participants that are present will be able to raise their hand on the platform to submit questions by audio or send the text questions through the Q&A button. The presentation of this event is available on the Investor Relations website at CBA, where you'll also have the available recording after closing.
Before we proceed, we'd like to clarify that some of the information present here may include statements that involve expectations on events and results in the future that rely substantially on general economic conditions, political conditions, and commercial conditions in Brazil and in the global markets, and government regulations existing and in the future. Among other factors, operational data can affect the future performance at CBA and can lead to results that differ materially from those listed in certain future statements. Now we'll proceed to our presentation, and I want to invite the CEO, Luciano Alves. Please, Luciano, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Amábeli. Good morning, everyone. Thank you once again for your participation in another earnings call for CBA. Before we start talking about our earnings, I just wanted to mention that we recently had our CBA Day, and I want to reinforce some of the key messages that we shared at the event. So we've been able to advance significantly and consistently with the deployment of our strategy, and we have positive expectations for the future. So we've demonstrated that we kept the backbone of our strategy pretty intact. We just reviewed some of the pillars strategically that we have in our strategy. We are convinced that this strategy is a champion strategy and that it offers to us many opportunities for growth and greater future value. So if you haven't watched the event, we have this event recorded and available on our IR website.
Connected to this, a bit of what we've been doing with the deployment of this strategy, I want to highlight some of the main messages in this quarter. We are positioned in the first quartile of the global cost curve in the industry, and it's important to mention that this is the vertical integration with aluminum and energy, which are the two main factors that allow us to have this positioning. Although we had an increase in the energy costs, as Camila will mention up ahead in sequence, we certainly did position ourselves in the first quartile.
Movements like this in the market, where we can clearly understand this competitive edge as something material, we've had some ruptures in the value chains for bauxite and aluminum in the last few months that made the prices of aluminum go skyrocket, and they basically doubled in prices in the last few months. The cost of production was higher for most of the aluminum industry, and especially for those buying aluminum. But when it comes to CBA, since we're integrated, we produce our own bauxite and aluminum, we had less volatility in this cost. So it's an interesting moment to look at this and see this materially impacted.
In this quarter, we had the all-time high utilization rate of the pipelines, with an increase of liquid aluminum going over 91,000 tons in the last quarter, which was always the highest level of utilization ever since the third quarter of 2022 to 93,000 tons in this quarter. That reinforces the stability operation we were talking about in the asset and the company overall. In the commercial aspects, we continue to have concentration of our sales mix in more added value products. We also follow along with important EBITDA recovery, and our results suggested EBITDA of $409 million in this quarter, with an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 19%.
These are the highest values ever since the second quarter of 2022 and an important reflection of the stability in the costs and the best prices and premiums we discussed as well, as well as the greater value of the dollar compared to the real. Finally, as part of this strategy for liability management, we had the anticipated payment of BRL 469 million in debts, with expiring and maturing in 2027. Basically, we're talking about the extension of our debt and also improving the cost overall. In the next slide, I'm going to present a bit of the highlights, consolidating our reference position in the market.
And so we should also consider this a gold seal with the GHG Protocol, and this is one of the main tools that identifies the greenhouse gas emissions. This program also measures the climate impacts and also brings seals and recognition of these processes in the inventories with maximum transparency, which is the case of CBA. We are also able to participate in the Climate Week in 2024 in New York, an important highlight by EY presenting the strategy for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and increase of energy efficiency and the importance of the circular economy in this market. On the Alennium, the seal certifies our low carbon aluminum. We signed three new partnerships for this quarter.
Marcopolo also presented the seal on their new roof and floor of the bodies of its buses at Lat.Bus, which is one of the biggest mobility events in Latin America. Alcon Alumínio, an official distributor of our Primor products in Rio Grande do Sul, also announced the use of the seal and its extruded profiles. Schulz, which has over 30 years in the automotive sector, also adopted the seal and its products made with our low-carbon aluminum. As you can see, not only because of these cases, but also all of the other points we presented here on the right side of the slide, we continue to receive awards and recognition from the market for our pillars and ESG, and we continue to be positioned as a reference in this topic.
On the next slide, we're going to talk about the market for global aluminum and also in Brazil, so in the global market, we ended the third quarter with a surplus of 48,000 tons. Demand in China was pretty stable compared to the second quarter, with a slowdown in the real estate market, and that was offset by better results in sectors related to energy and electric transition, and the government there has announced some stimulus packages that are really focused on this if they're successful, so in the rest of the world, we had an increase in demand reaching the highest levels in the last two years, mainly driven by India, with a 31% growth in this third quarter compared to the second quarter, mainly due to the real estate and automotive sectors with high peaks in July and August.
U.S. and Europe still don't have robust signs of recovery, but interest rate cuts in the coming months could gradually have a positive impact in the economic activity. On the supply side, Yunnan Province is operating at full capacity, and after the restart of its operations in the middle of the year and the water flow in the region, it has been better than in recent years, which should avoid the need for closure in 2024, as they've done in the last years. On the other hand, we also don't have relevant new capacity starting in China around the world in 2025. So if we have a scenario with better demand, most likely we'll have a more controlled offering from now on.
Additionally, with the current scenario of a peak in aluminum prices due to the rupture in the bauxite and aluminum supply chains, there's also lower incentives for new capacity to start up, especially for companies that need to buy aluminum or other inputs in the market because of the relevant increases that these costs have presented in the last few months. Moving on to the next slide, we want to talk about this, how even though the market has a slight surplus in the third quarter, the stocks in days of consumption are still 51 days, which is really close to what would be the balance point. In the official stocks, as we've already said in the last quarter, there was an entry of metal into the official LME warehouses from unofficial stocks in May, which caused this peak in the second quarter.
Ever since then, there was a reduction of 23% in the aluminum LME stocks compared to the second quarter. The next slide, I'm going to talk about the LME and how premiums performed in the quarter. In the third quarter, the average LME dropped 5.5% compared to the last quarter, ending the period with an average of $2,382 per ton, affected mainly by the slowdown in the prices that occurred in July due to the worsening outlook in that month. However, the LME rebounded as these monetary policies were announced in China and in the United States and Europe, and this brought back some optimism as well back to the market and boosted prices.
And then, well, I think an important point to mention is, especially on this point with the bauxite and aluminum supply chains, is that they are theoretically temporary, but they've been going on for quite a while, and they're pretty multiple. But they did impact the global cost curve, especially for those who buy aluminum or bauxite in the market. And so we should expect for normalization. The question is just how long it'll take from now on. So the combination of these factors I've shared really made the metal and the LME for aluminum go up in the last few weeks. So they ended the quarter above $2,600 per ton. And about the premiums, the demand is still pretty weak in the U.S., and it negatively impacted the Midwest premium, which is the reference there.
There was a recovery that already started to begin in the month of October. On the other hand, the drop in local stocks and logistical costs still remain quite high. Reflected positively on the European Rotterdam premium, which is the reference we have in that market. The next slide, I'm just going to talk about the Brazilian market. In Brazil, we've been talking about this in the last few calls, also how we remain keeping up with a consistent demand. We exceeded the levels that we recorded in 2023, exceeded industry expectations. The transport segment had the best performance in five years, recovering pre-pandemic levels with a growth of about 19% when we compared to 2023.
In the first chart, you can see that the performance of the light vehicles registered the highest volume in the year, with a growth of 18% compared to the third quarter of 2023, strengthening our demand. The demand for cement was pretty positive, and that was levered by the Minha Casa, Minha Vida program, and that also, of course, improves the indicators for prices. This could, of course, affect a bit of the inflationary pressure and increase the demand for billets, but we still expect a growth of 2.8% for 2024. About the bus bodies, there was another really positive quarter. The best moment in the market, levered mainly by the Caminho da Escola program. The processed goods also had important performance and perspectives.
Then, about the premium in Brazil, we had an increase of 5% of this, and that reflects the scenario of a more favorable demand. As you can see, it's still quite favorable for us in the local market, remembering that over 90% of our sales are concentrated in this market. Now I'm going to call Camila, our CFO and Investor Relations, to talk about CBA's performance, and we'll get back to talking to you guys during the Q&A session.
Thank you, Luciano. Good morning, everyone. So about the sales volumes, we had a strong quarter. We were able to sell 129,000 tons of aluminum and toll with a sales mix concentrated in products with higher added value in all segments of primary, processed, and recycling. The highlights in primary sales in this quarter in regards to the third quarter of 2023 and the second quarter of 2024 were for sales of aluminum silicon ingots, which is mainly used for the transportation sector, and also the sale of the high-voltage cables, and in transformed products or processed products, we had better performance in all of the different segments, with an important highlight to the sheets, which is our product with the biggest added value, and then recycling, the volume of sales for billets that go into the self-construction sector and the ingots as well.
We want to highlight the motorcycles provided by alloys. There was significant improvement, so both of them had very positive behaviors. On the next slide, we have the energy balance, so we talked about the drop in our own volume due to a drought period, considering the seasonality of hydro generation. As we've mentioned, in 2024, it's been a year that's a lot drier than 2023, and that was already an atypical year with good water flows. So with lower generation, we also have less dilution of our fixed costs. That's why we have an increase in the average cost of our own generation in this quarter.
In regards to the volume of contracts, in the first quarter, we had a reduction of 60 MW on average of one contract, and we closed that without any penalties. And in this quarter, we had a reduction of another 18 MW on average, which was the residual volume of the same contract, which is why the lower volume of energy came from contracts in this quarter. Now, on the average cost of contracts, the increase was mainly because of the currency exchange rate variation since we have liabilities in dollars.
Looking ahead, I want to announce that we have hired an additional 500 MW on average with market prices referenced in dollars and with prefixed inflation rates with a total term of nine years, and this contract will begin next year in 2025. This contract intends to offset the capacity to generate its own concessions or that will expire, which still have renewals open under discussion. Moving on to the next slide about the costs now. When we take a look at the number in reais, we can see an increase of 3% in the average cost of production of liquid aluminum compared to the previous quarter.
The main reasons for this were electric power with an increase of 20% due to lower water inflow that had reduced our own generation and led us therefore to use more energy from the portfolio of contracts with the higher average cost and the anode paste with the increase in petcoke and pitch due to the exchange rate devaluation. Also, we had a slight drop in fixed costs due to the volume in the production and reduction in aluminum. This is equivalent to 40% of the cost, and they're 100% integrated in the production of this input. We're not going to be impacted by this significant increase in the current price of aluminum that Luciano already mentioned.
I also think it's important to mention that more recently, the supply was reduced, and with this, price went up besides the effects of the currency variation that could be reflected in the next quarter. So there was a reduction mainly due to the lower volume of energy available. So in aluminum, the CPV was pretty stable. Here in the next slide, we can see this to 19% and an Adjusted EBITDA of BRL 409 million. So that's been a reflection of the good performance and the better prices practiced, bigger premiums, and also the loss of value. And we always want to remind you that 98% of the revenue consolidated in CBA is because of this. And that's why you have the pricing of the dollar, which is positive for CBA. So in this quarter, we have a net income of BRL 124 million.
So on the CapEx, we had a lower concentration of payments, which is something that's a one-off. The reduction is mainly in modernization, but the plan is still the same. So to give you an update on REAL, which is the name of the recycling project that allows us to separate and recycle aluminum and polymers from multi-layer flexible packaging, is close to completion in a ramp-up phase. In addition, we have a number of projects in progress as we presented at the CBA Day, and we'll continue to update you as soon as we make progress.
On the next slide now, on the cash flow, we had a cash generation of BRL 177 million in this quarter due to the strong EBITDA and a divestment in working capital, which was due to the increase in the net balance of suppliers and forfaiting operations, and also the increase in inventory necessary to sustain our heated operation. In the debt profile, CBA's gross debt dropped to BRL 548 million compared to the balance in June this year, mainly reflecting some early debt settlements or payments that I'll discuss in the next slide. In addition, you also have the exchange variation of BRL 67 million considering the currency rates by the end of each period. The net debt also dropped in regards to the last quarter, mainly due to the cash generation in that period.
The improvement in the net debt added up to the strong EBITDA, and the reduction was 5.6 times net debt to EBITDA, which was our position in 2024 to 3.4 times now in the closing in September. So we continue to not have financial covenants connected to CBA's performance. In regards to the amortization program, in this quarter, we had some anticipated settlements of debts with a concentration of maturities in 2027. And this value allowed us to, together with the fundraising we performed last quarter, also have the extension of the total average term of the debt with the maintenance of the costs. And so the average cost went from 4.7, and it went on to a total average cost of 6% per year, sorry, in dollars. So besides this, in October, we had the returns from BNDES from BRL 144 million.
It was already provisioned for payment in 2024. Now, I want to remind you that due to the economic scenario that we experienced in 2023, we chose to extend or postpone the schedule, and that had been funded alongside BNDES in 2022. Now, with the new schedule, we had to cancel this credit facility that was hired and then also give that back. But to wrap up in our presentation, I want to highlight some points. First of all, the strong recovery of the EBITDA every quarter, which continues to reflect the leverage, and that's been the lowest ever since the first quarter of 2023. We still continue to have further reductions.
The demand for aluminum in the domestic market remains strong and consistent, exceeding the expectations in the sector and the main segments of activity on a rise, especially the transportation segment, which demonstrated recovery in its production to pre-pandemic levels and also had the best performance in the last years. We have, as a driver of the price of aluminum, which is the demand for sectors related to the energy transition, which remains consistent, as well as a peak in aluminum prices with the ruptures in the supplies in our supply chain, which significantly increases the cost of production for companies that don't have integration, such as CBA, which is integrated, reinforcing our competitive advantage. The dollar is still gaining a lot of value compared to the real, with positive effects for CBA since all of our revenue comes from the sale of aluminum, and that's dollarized, right?
So as a caution point, the recovery of the real estate market continues to be uncertain and had a slowdown in this quarter. So the Chinese government has announced some packages of stimulus, and that could be a point to be continued to be monitored. So aluminum is in full capacity, and the hydro flow is better than in the last few years, which will lead to an avoidance of payment issues. And here, I remember that there's not major new capacity expected in China around the world for the next year.
And despite the positive demand in the real estate market and the civil construction sector throughout the year, with the expectation of 2.8% in the full year, the sector is still suffering with the inflation pressure, which could slow down the market and affect our demand for billets and extruded products as well. With this, I want to thank you all for your time and attention, and we'll pass the floor on to Amabile as we begin our Q&A.
Thank you. Well, now we're going to start our session for Q&A, and I want to remind you all that you can raise your hand clicking on the raise hand button on the platform, sending your questions by audio, or send them by Q&A. And we already have some questions. The first one comes from Yuri Pereira from Santander. Please, Yuri, you may proceed.
Well, guys, good morning, and thank you for this deleveraging process with aluminum at lower levels than what we expected. In this line, how are you looking at CapEx up ahead? I know the CBA day is just finished, but what are you guys considering for the next year? What do you consider cash initiatives positively good? And also, when it comes to production costs, if there's more reductions to come up, if there's more of an increase in utilization rates or if you're at your maximums?
Okay. Thank you, Yuri. Thanks for the question. And first of all, about the CapEx, we have this plan, which is to really follow the projects that were announced within the portfolio we had. And what we have considered is pretty much BRL 800 million per year, which considers our sustaining costs and also modernization expansion in sequence of the projects that were announced. So a lot of them are lower investments, and so we can have flexibility and either to anticipate or remanage, which was the case of what we saw last year. And now your second question on costs.
We saw the reduction of the CPV, and that affected on the reduction of the inputs and also the hydro seasonality, rainwater seasonality, but it's also worth mentioning cash cost issues, so that was mainly influenced by the loss in value in the currency impacting the costs in dollars, and that's mainly the anode paste, which is dollarized entirely, and aluminum with the price of soda. As I mentioned, there's a reduction in the supply in the market more recently, and that already made prices go up, and that could be a factor that could increase the cash cost as well, then on the other hand, in the more critical scenario or with less hydro influence, with less of a share in high production energy was already in the third quarter.
So from now on, when you can see the cash cost, we'll see natural composition, and that's when we talk about generation. And then the last point is the average cost of our exceeding amounts. So sometimes it's in the energy segment or sometimes in the costs, depending on how much we consume in the aluminum production and how much is actually hydro generation. As we consider this, you have the exceeding amount, which is a swap, and that was reduced in 2023 and 2024, but that, of course, increases from 2025 till maturity. And then, of course, we hired 50 MW on average of a new contract in the market. And so that, of course, was hired with safety. And, of course, that will rely on how this continues in negotiations. And so also how we're doing this year, and that's a significant factor to be considered.
And so that's where I consider the main drivers for this cost, right? So we also have a focus in the short term to deleverage the company. We also have a search for this new reduction if we consider we've actually had a pretty good pace, and we should continue this up ahead, right? We could also consider some projects accelerating, and that's what Camila mentioned. We can accelerate this. It's not something we're doing now in the short term, but I'd say that the priority for acceleration will be the same as presented at the CBA Day. So the schedule for investments is what we believe is the best. If we want to accelerate, that's the schedule we should consider at an accelerated pace.
All right, thank you.
So I think we maybe just didn't answer about the capacity. So we've been moving along very well with the market kind of heating up, and we're at our maximum existing capacity. Ok ay, thank you, guys.
All right, thank you, Yuri, for your questions. Our next question comes from Ricardo Monegaglia from Safra. Please, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on the deleveraging. I think this is going to remain as a trend in the next quarter. So three questions. First, I want to understand what your guys' vision is on the bauxite aluminum supply chain. I remember the CRU analyst talked about more volatile markets, upwards and downwards, and I want to understand what your guys' vision is on this and how you guys have been considering this normalization.
If you think the current problems are more structural, I think it's hard to say this in the long term, but maybe in the next 12 months, right, with the maintenance of this instability in the supply chain and also about the energy, which was a positive surprise. And I want to understand how we can consider the evolution for the fourth quarter and the first quarter. And then, of course, considering that maybe you guys will have a higher exceeding amount. And then there's also a bit of a dividend flow with Enercan, and I want to understand how this evolution will happen, if there's going to be a payment in the fourth quarter and the first quarter. And then if you could explore the evolution of the other cash flow lines.
Yuri's question was about CapEx, but I also wanted to talk about maybe the cash taxes, which is something that called our attention a lot and really helped with the free cash flow in this quarter, and so it was quite low, so I want to know if these very low levels of taxes are going to remain for the next quarter. And then, when it comes to working capital, if you guys already have some kind of an idea what the evolution will be like in the fourth quarter, that would help a lot. Thank you all so much for this opportunity.
Thank you, Ricado. I'll leave this first one to you, then I'll leave the other ones, but about aluminum and bauxite, it's really difficult to understand what's the timing for this, right, but it should be temporary, right?
First, they had a rupture there with an issue with gas supply, and that should be solved till the end of the year, then it was extended a little more, but soon after you had a rupture in India and then another case in the mines and bauxite in China, and then you have the prohibition of this as well in Guinea, so that's also something that we didn't have that much explicit information about yet, but what happened is actually many small impacts in different phases in the chain, and if you look at this from an isolated perspective, maybe they wouldn't impact that much, but when you gather everyone together, that's where you have the more recent impact, so I think that they seem to be temporary impacts.
I wouldn't consider them as permanent or structural, but I would be a little more conservative with how this is solved. So we can see many of them are taking a little bit more time than expected to solve. And I think that affects a bit of this very sensitive market moment. So the aluminum production getting closer to the capacity gap in China, and there's not major supply expected to enter the Western market, right? So if there's any kind of stronger demand, we can see that the market is a lot more volatile and sensitive, and so naturally, this would impact price. So that's kind of like what's happening in aluminum, right? So considering that the market is still pretty sensitive, these small moves kind of impacted prices a lot. And in 2018, we had a situation that was quite similar.
It may be was actually bigger when it comes to volumes than what we expect for this moment. But if you look at the behavior of the price for aluminum, you'll see what kind of happens normally in this year. And so I think we're at an all-time high if you think about this historically, but I think it would be difficult to imagine that this would remain as this for a long time. But going back to the $300 as it was a while back, I think won't be very probable. And we can remember also that the world is really relying on a supply of bauxite from Guinea. So that's a natural risk for this kind of industry. And when most of the industry kind of depends on this, that, of course, creates a risk factor additionally for the industry.
I'll continue here. Thank you, Ricado . First, I want to answer about Energy. And so it's difficult to foresee because normally you're going to have some recovery of these concessions that could expire, but they're still under negotiation. And although we don't have control of the timing of when this will be complete, but it's about 100 MW on average from four plants: Salto, Iporanga, and Alecrim. And we have the volumes and timing specifically for each one. And then finally, that was kind of like a conservative approach to hire this additional volume at this moment. The price was really competitive, and it's worth clarifying that when we're talking about the market, it is a long-term price, not hired in such a high-level volatility that we're having in the short term.
Last month, power was over BRL 400 per MWh . Now it's already dropped quite a bit, but that's not what it's like normally. It's a price of the current market for a contract in this timing. That's interesting, but depending on the periods where you have volatility in the short-term price, since it's an exceeding amount, if the concessions remain, we're going to commercialize this exceeding amount. And with the high prices, we have a trader that is always searching for ways to take advantage of the market opportunities. We can have even more revenue from trading this exceeding amount. And then finally, about the cash flow. First, we have at CBA a tax loss, but we have taxable profits in the investees.
So naturally, if we improve results, we'll have profits and taxes payable. We always have tax planning to optimize this, but even at CBA, we consider the margins that we could have in the fourth quarter or in the next quarters. Then we can see our loss finishing and maybe having to pay for income tax depending on our results. And so then considering other effects in the cash position, I'd say that the working capital is something that we would plan to divest a bit more. It's not as much as we expected in the beginning of the year, but we prefer to operate with a level of stock that's a little greater for safety purposes.
But there's some work that we do constantly, and we can expect possible additional reductions that are not that relevant as what we expected in the beginning of the year now for the fourth quarter. So these are the main effects, cash effects besides the CapEx. Well, very clear, guys. So we saw our balance in the cash position pretty high. So even with the liability management, we were able to capture the second quarter and then prepay as well, improving the portfolio in the average level. There's a lot more to be done. And I think we've also been talking about this.
We have a cash position about BRL 1.5 billion, and we are waiting on some dates to amortize this so we don't have any penalties. Or at least we can reduce the penalties of this prepayment, considering a positive NPV and what makes sense to this profile. That also improves our financial expenses, and the use of this cash for additional prepayments is something on our radar now in the fourth quarter or maybe the first quarter next year.
Thank you for the clarification.
Thank you, Ricado , for the question. The next one comes from Edgard de Souza from Itaú BBA. Please, you may proceed.
Good morning, Luciano, Camila, Amábeli. Thanks for the questions. I must congratulate you also for the results and reinforce that what had been discussed ever since the beginning of the year, operational improvements, and of course, the deleveraging and cash generation, but I have some questions, maybe a bit of a follow-up on previous questions that already came in. The first one is about costs, Camila. Maybe we can see that it's pretty clear that we have this pickup in the net liquid aluminum costs as well, and there's also a positive impact in the energy EBITDA in this quarter, and we're probably going to see this cost of liquid aluminum being a little higher in the fourth quarter and maybe the first quarter of next year.
But if we think about this line of production costs for liquid aluminum, and if we think about this for 2025, we can exclude this issue with the energy, and you can see how it would also have a neutral net effect. But you can understand that there is room for an increase in some other cost lines that had a very good performance, like the anode paste that dropped 36%. And if we look at other variable costs as well, significant drop. So I just wanted to mention if these lines should start increasing in the fourth quarter. And then if you also imagine some magnitude of these lines without considering energy issues. And then my second question is also a follow-up on Ricado 's question, maybe trying to place it in some other format here.
If we were to consider the exceeding contracts that had higher costs than what the market has, and if we consider CBA as a single entity, not splitting into different energy and aluminum divisions or business units, would you be able to think about the scenario and then a normalized scenario that maybe is a little more difficult to discuss considering the volatility of energy prices today? But what's the negative impact you expect in the consolidated EBITDA for CBA in 2025 coming from these contracts if we saw the BRL 200 million in negative EBITDA? Could you help us maybe to have more sensitivity on the impacts of the consolidated EBITDA coming from energy? Camila, I think that would help us also to think about what this dynamic could be like considering the shift in the contract profiles and also the costs of these contracts from 25 onwards.
So the last question here, if possible. I think I'm talking a little too much, but still with the costs, we discuss sometimes the relationship between the mix of liquid aluminum and recycled aluminum for the production of primaries and processed products. But could you help us understand the impact of the addition of the recycled aluminum? Well, my point is if you consider the current levels, which operates about $2,000 per ton, how does this compare with adding recycled aluminum in this mix? How can we consider the cost of this recycled aluminum and what's the discount versus an LME? And if you guys are already operating at an optimum mix. So that would be an interesting point, I think, as well. Thanks.
Thanks, Edgar. Well, first on costs, the main guidelines looking at the fourth quarter, and we have the currency factor as well. All of this is referenced by dollars. And so aluminum is 40% of the cash cost with a price and an increase in the short term. And so although this already affected our cash cost in the third quarter, depending on how things move along, there could be impacts in the fourth quarter, beginning of next year. And so when it comes to the input prices, the main increase is soda related, right? Because it's a market dynamic that we can't really control. But the rest is currency. So on the energy side, what we have is when we see the total amount, just considering the dynamic of what comes into as cost and what's exceeding.
So the total impact in the EBITDA, we really see an increase in the price compared to the swap that we worked on. And that considers the main contract with exceeding amounts from 25-28. And so there's still an impact, an increase in prices, but it can be offset by this trading of positive energy that we can work on from the 50 MW additionally that were purchased if the price of energy continues to be as high as it is today. And so this revenue could also maybe deduct a bit of the from the increase in the mix for this kind of price swap contract. But to expect what each element is is difficult because the swap is also dollarized, right? So if you consider in the third quarter, the average price of the contract is going up.
The price in dollar is stable, but the loss in value, the effects influences. To summarize, we have three factors. We have the currency in the current contract. We have the price of the existing contract going up again, and we also see a minimal impact coming in with a dollarized price that's prefixed or pre-established considering this short-term margin if we're not able to consume it, if we consider that this would remain with a level of production and consumption that's close to what we had now in the third quarter, and to answer this third question about the liquid aluminum mix and the relationship with recycled aluminum, it's really difficult to be clear or too specific on this point, right? Because we have a lot of flexibility in this use.
Since we recycle products in the same pipelines, and this really depends on the scrap mix and the quality we have and how much scrap is added to each product, the 80-20, we can see that per product we have contents of scrap that are different. So it really depends on this relationship with processing and productivity and the recycling considering the mix you would like to have. And as we have more relevance, this factor for the new investments we announced in the business, we will start providing more clarity on these matters.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Edgar, for your question. The next question comes from Rafael Barcellos from Bradesco BBI. Rafael, please, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. Great to see you again. And most of my questions here were already answered, but just maybe get your vision on the strategic perspective, Luciano. You guys have been talking about this, and we've noticed that there's a demand in the local market that has been really strong and even actually above expectations initially. It's with the civil construction segment, auto sector as well. But if you could just give us a bit more of the color and the feeling on what you're seeing and how sustainable it is to have this dynamic for demand. We're seeing interest at a little higher and how you're considering this dynamic. And also, if you could talk about the premium in the local market. So above all, Camila mentioned that you guys are operating at your full capacity, right?
So if you could just help us understand how you're thinking about CBA from now on and if this market is going to get a little better, if you'll have the capacity to service it, what's the local market going to be like? And also, if you could talk about this demand and supply issue, which is something I think could also be very interesting.
Well, Rafael, thank you for the question. But the local market, just getting back to the first point, we're reaching the end of the year in December and January are normally weaker months, right? So it's natural. Most of the market kind of sets collective holiday periods, but these are two months that are naturally weaker. But even with this scenario and this behavior, we still have really good visibility of our portfolio from now on.
So we still haven't seen a slowdown in this demand that's pretty consistent this year. So we consider that for the beginning of the first quarter next year, we should already have most of the scenario come in, right? But on the other hand, the increase of this interest rate and possible increase of interest rates up ahead, this clearly could impact things for us. So it's really going to depend on how these variables are going to be organized from now on. And Brazil is a little different than the rest of the world. So the rest of the world has demand that's not bad, but it's also not too good. So it's kind of stagnant. Let's say, okay, the rest of the world is reducing interest rates.
Of course, these movements, if they continue for a good while, eventually we're going to start feeling the impacts more with the recovery of this demand. Going back to that point, I said, if you have a recovery in the demand up ahead, that's a little more consistent with an offer supply that's controlled for this market at the moment with a capacity cap at China and other non-existing capacities around the world, then you also have an improvement in prices up ahead. But all of this must happen still. How are we viewing this? Well, in a very short term, I think we're already moving along pretty well in Brazil. We've continued to sell with good volumes and margins.
But up ahead, eventually, if we have worsening in Brazil with possible increases in interest rates that could lead to a benefit of an external market scenario that's better than Brazil's. So I think all of these are projections, but in practical terms, it's kind of like how we're looking at this and viewing this at the moment. So about the capacity issue, well, I think first of all, we have our capacity limit in the liquid aluminum issue, but we can add a little more scrap. So I think we can grow the volume of production through more recycled material. We can't do this for all of the products, of course. There's a scope of products we can do more for and others that we can't. So for billets, we can do that. For the sheets, we can do that.
But we can't do that for ingots, for example, that are commodities. But I think we can explore this avenue a bit more if we need more volumes. But on the other hand, we're also at full capacity in certain lines with added value. And there's not much more we can do about that besides just working on reducing bottlenecks in the future. So if we keep up with this pace and the market growing in this way, what we're going to do basically is just work on our portfolio better and profitability. So that's pretty much what we're going to have to do. But there's still room to grow a bit more with recycled material. And I think this could be important. That's also why we've been incentivizing additional investments we can work on in the recycling market as well.
Okay, great. Thank you, Luciano, Camila, and Amábeli.
The next one comes from Guilherme Nippes from XP. Please, Guilherme, you may proceed.
Hey, good morning, Luciano, Camila, and Amábeli. Thank you for the opportunity. Great to talk to you guys about the results as well. But I have three questions here in the energy segment, especially. And I think that there are two main discussions here. There's the reduction of the contracts that we saw. You guys have been reducing in a sequence over the last quarters, as well as switching or swapping to cheaper contracts, but also discussion on the renewal of the plans, right, and the concessions for the plans. So my first question is if you still have space for reduction in these contracts and possibly exchanging them by market contracts that have better conditions as a way to reduce the average cost of the contract. That's my first question.
And the second one is if you could talk about how the discussion is with the renewal of the concessions and the plans, and if you could give us a bit more color on this, and how this renewal has been, how we can look at returns in regards to this. And then my third question about this is if there's an optimal balance sheet of exceeding volumes. And since we had seen volumes that are way above what we had seen in the last quarter, if we compare with what this was in 2023, and considering that this number dropped a lot, these are my three questions in the energy aspect.
Okay, thank you, Guilherme, for the questions. About the exceeding volume, we've already gone over that, completing the 18 MW on average that were missing for all of the contracts that had an exit option without a penalty, right? So that was a matter of advising this. And they were already more connected to the market, etc. But we understood that before making a decision on the timing for the reopening of Potline 1 or the CapEx schedule, that it would make sense to get this from them. The new hire was also really making a lot of sense. And what we hired is in prefixed dollars. So yes, it's a price that's very competitive, and it's natural that it should be better than a contract that was really old and that, of course, grows with inflation.
And then before you had IGP-M, but now in a market moment, you're considering long-term energy, and that's pretty good. So basically, we can see our exceeding amounts kept. In this quarter, we had 86 MW in our final position, 86 average megawatts of volume, exceeding volume. And this contract has a seasonality aspect. So it's going to go up to 100 MW on average from next year onwards. And we add 50 from the new contract. So if everything keeps up and we continue to operate our assets for a bit longer, and let's expect that it's going to be the full year of 2025, the exceeding volume would be around 150 MW on average. Well, maybe about, well, there's not anything that's too different than what you normally do, but they're pretty stable processes. And then, of course, it depends on the regulating authorities.
So maybe the only specific point for us here is you have 21 hydropower plants, and normally they're either PCHs or smaller assets. So they're not that relevant in some cases, maybe even older. So it's not a simple process because it's not about just getting the assets and looking at them in an isolated manner, right? You need to basically, maybe this is one of the only specific characteristics in our assets here, but for the rest of the time, we follow a normal renewal process, right, for the concession. So as we talk about the numbers in the power segment, the costs from this quarter dropped because there was less exceeding amounts in the energy segment, partially consumed.
And of course, when you compare this year with the previous year, it's always a caution point, right? So this is a lot greater. And that's why, besides a worse hydropower year, we have better consumption. And then that was leading to less exceeding amounts. So that's a reduction considering the total CPV. If we look at that, what we consider as exceeding amounts was commercialized for a better price. So we commercialize this more in the mid to long term, but of course, we always leave some time for the short term to be able to keep a long profile. And so that always leads to an exceeding amount for negotiations in the short term. And a bigger price also benefits us in this commercialization process.
Very clear, guys. Thank you.
Thank you, Guilherme, for your questions. Well, we're reaching the end of our Q&A session now. And I think if you guys have any additional questions, you can also send them to our IR web team, and we'll always be available to answer. And I'll pass the floor to Luciano to wrap up here. Thank you so much for your participation, everyone.
Thank you, Amábeli. Thank you, team, for your participation. Now we're going to wrap up here with another earnings call, and I hope you all during the next events and IR activities. Thank you very much.