It goes away if we lose market. This will be a defeat for us, just as all of our victories will show, you know, when people say we want to stay with you. This is the work that our team has to do. There is an old saying that says, you know, if you only know who are your friends if you eat a bag of salt with the other people.
My dad used to say that it takes a long time to eat a bag of salt, so we have a long time to develop this relationship, and I think this relationship that we are going through of process improvement to have at the end that yes from our consumers, our clients who work with us, I think that is our job, and we are working on it. In addition to governance, team, technology and service, another topic that is really important is CEMIG's privatization. All of you know that Romeu Zema, when he was elected and then reelected, he said that he wanted to privatize CEMIG. This is no secret. It was openly said in his election campaign, this is a task that has part of it to be executed by the administration and another part by the state administration.
Because that has to be approved by the administration of the state, we have to convince the congressman that this is good for the state, good for the population, and they have to say yes to this project. Once they say yes, we have to work for that. If they say no, we will continue being a state company and improving always. If you compare CEMIG's results in the last two or three years, you see that we are in an upward trend. We have, you know, another indicator of non-recurring events and sometimes are not that good, but you will see a history of improvements in our results in the past few years being a state-owned company. If it's not approved by results, that's okay.
We'll continue working and dedicating ourselves because we know that working on a state-owned company is not dancing with my sister on the ball. It's a dance with the most beautiful lady of the ball. If we cannot be privatized, we will be a state-owned company that is a very strong one. I do believe that we should convince them because we have arguments, we have data, not only objective data, but the subjective argument as well. Why is it better? The objective data is that, of course, the company will have a greater value. There are different mechanisms here. We have companies that have been sold. We have companies that we sold just a part of that stock.
The market value of CEMIG for the state now it's around 17%, and if that becomes privatized or if that increased capital, it will be worth more, and if this amount is X, it will be X plus 30% or some more percent. That is what this part that the state has will be even more valuable because CEMIG is going to be even more valuable. We're not removing value. We're adding value to people. On the other hand, you know, the state is also part of this, people when I say it. Also we will have agility in management by being a state-owned company. There are several ties that a private company doesn't have because there is a lot of bureaucracy. There are a number of committees to manage state-owned companies.
I'm not criticizing it, and I'm not praising it either. These are things that are there. They exist. Sometimes that takes too long. There are a lot of rules that end up taking to postponed actions, reactions that could be faster. That's a fact. This is not only a speech. You just have to look at it and you will see it. This is a subjective approach, but the objective one is that it's going to value more. The subjective arguments are there is going to be improvement in management, in agility and the administration. We have to take that into consideration because that is important. Finally, I would like to talk about results. CEMIG's results have been very good as we have seen it. Of course, you as investors have to approve that.
We're not, so far you have approved it because we are growing market value in a very relevant, very well. When CEMIG reached BRL 31 billion, BRL 32 billion not long ago, it came down a little bit. It came back. You know, it came down because of the stock market, because it was 110,000 points. It's now 198,000. That's not an excuse. Yes, we could have stayed. It remained on the top, we did suffer a little bit with the drop of the stock exchange. We took 50 steps forward, two back, that's okay. Part of it have to do with our work, part of that has to do with the market. Our results are consistent. More than that, they are repeatable.
These are not one-time off results. Because they are repeatable, that shows that the company is on the right track. The indexes that we have with our regulating agents are all met. What was supposed to come down, came down. What was supposed to go up, went up. We are meeting all the indicators defined by our regulating agents. There are other indicators also such as management and the company's use it, and we are also doing very well in these other indicators. Any company in Brazil with a capital cost of 15%-20%, and most of the companies are there in that range. The level of leverage that companies have a 15%-20% to run a project. The project has to provide you 25% of return.
How are you going to allocate the 15%-20% of capital to have a return of 21%? You would be crazy to do that. We need to understand that we need, in fact, to have that capital allocation done right in a very specific way, and especially in the moment of high capital costs such as now, 15%-20% of capital costs. Right now, it's not easy to have a project that will pay off. If you take a debt to pay at this rate and to have a return that is lower than that, it wouldn't make any sense. We have to be careful, unless it's something needed, or the ceiling is falling, and we have to fix the ceiling, so we will need to do that.
If it's not that, really, we have to choose very well where we are going to allocate the capital to make sure that the company does well. A wrong capital allocation is just like cancer. If you have that, I'm not a physician, but anyway. Well, we don't need to be a doctor to know that. If you have a cancer, it will eat you up. When you find that out, and you are dying because you would not find it out because of the silent symptoms. This is capital allocation. If allocated now, in the return term of the project, if it is four years from now, in the midterm, you already know if you have done something wrong or not.
If you're not doing well, you know that you're not doing well, and you can prepare yourself. Capital allocation is a relevant art, and that's part of this final part of this presentation of mine. To conclude me here, my remarks, I think that the biggest challenges today, this is really something comes to me. A huge challenge is to de-install people. When you take a people away from a position where they are for a long time in a very comfortable way, when you take that, the person has to be re-installed in a better place. That's an art because you want to take people away from that place. The people have to leave the place where they are comfortable installed so that they can be transferred and reinstall themselves somewhere else.
Can you make someone to do that? Of course not. We can provide, you know, a plate full of food, but we cannot make the person eat. Here, this is the a food plate. If you provide the food, provide the plate for someone, we have to do everything, and then we have to do everything that we need so that people that the company really can move to where we want it to be, a competitive company, a company that does a great job. At the end, you know, the private market is over, but people keep choosing to meet. Well, thank you all very much. You have a nice day and a nice event. Yeah. I'm done a few minutes before the time I had allocated. That's my fault. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Márcio, for your presentation. Moving on, I would like to invite our CEO, Reynaldo Passanezi Filho, he's going to talk about our strategic plan from 2023 to 2025.
I could actually talk with no presentation, I think it would make things easier. This is something that we are used to doing. First, welcome. Thank you very much for being here with us. This is the first thing that we would like to say. We would like to thank you very much. I want to thank the investors to congratulate the team, I think the results that we are delivering here, this is good that we can bring results to this amazing team that we have. In fact, we have prepared here for you the best of Minas.
The best of Minas, we understand that to me, is also part of the best of Minas. Congratulations, Carol and Leo, for this events organization. We brought to you a great breakfast. We have cornmeal cake so that we can have a nice conversation. We are bringing to you some of CEMIG that is a symbol of Minas Gerais. I would like to start by saying that Minas Gerais is changing itself. It's transforming itself. This is something that is important for me and for you. Minas Gerais in 2022 had the largest relative share of Brazil's GDP in the last years. Minas reached the largest relative share of 9.2% of the GDP.
Four years ago, it was 8.7, so it's almost 0.5% more of the GDP in Minas Gerais share in Brazil. That, for us, means more market, and it shows how much how important it is our function to develop the state. Administration Minas is doing well. Of course, if Minas is doing well, we can bring even more results, so we can move forward. What do we want to show you? We have this because if we accelerate value creation and CEMIG's transformation, we can have results. Márcio said it very well. We have a strategy that is very clear, and the strategy is the same. It's a strategy to focus in Minas and win. This is our strategy. What we are doing now is we are accelerating this strategy.
You see our new investment plan that doubles our investment value in the next 5 years. We accelerating a transformation process for CEMIG and also for value creation. Our dream, what makes our eyes sparkle really is to keep on generating value, creating value. We have seen it, how the much the stocks are appreciating with a known strategy and the company providing more agility, bringing more results, making more people happy, supporting Minas Gerais development and at the same time, being a machine to create value. We are having happy clients, we are providing results, and we can drive Minas Gerais development, and at the same time, we are accelerating value creation. That's what I am going to show you today. I want to talk about something that Márcio touched upon.
That's a macro scenario, our overview. How do I see the company's management? This is how we see it. First, what is the company's strategy? When I got here, in fact, we reviewed the strategic planning, and this review is still valid. As I said, we are accelerating. This planning was defined in 2021. The first one is to understand the strategy. After understanding the strategy, we wanted to have a efficient capital allocation because it was very inefficient in the past. We were destroying value with minority shareholding outside of Minas Gerais that would just divide the attention of the administration, and we're destroying value for the company. We are aiming for operating efficiency in the company, and we are renewing and revitalizing people, our people area. That's what we are going to see here.
We are going to see a little bit of the strategy, a little bit of capital allocation, the efficiency, and to do all of that, people. That's it. That's what management is about. To know what you want is the strategy. To know how to use your money well, generate value, create value, capital allocation. To look for efficiency in your operation. To do all that, you need people. That's what we'll be seeing here. First, we start with strategy. The strategy, and I like strategy because it allows us to say no, because the number of things that come up to us, then that's good. If I have a strategy, I can say, "No, because that's not in our strategy." Otherwise, everything is an opportunity, it would be crazy. The strategy is to focus on Minas Gerais and win.
This was the first great result. I clearly remember a chart that the consultant guy brought to us, and one of the alternatives was to try again. I said, "No, we are not going to try again," because to try again, it means a risk to see it happening again, which was a wrong movement to have the minority shareholders shareholding the companies outside of Minas Gerais. There is a very clear message to focus in Minas Gerais, and there is an indirect message here, which is not focusing outside of Minas Gerais and not focusing on anything that is not the company's core business. That's why we are leaving action in other minority shareholding areas. We are not going to focus in everything that's outside of Minas Gerais.
It's easier to say, no, it is not interesting for us to invest in anything in Pará. To win means to generate value with this capital allocation. When win, we say to focus in Minas Gerais and to win, it's not only to focus in Minas Gerais, but also we want to add value to the company and to add value to our investors. By a process of result maximization and sustainable management, that's how we are going to do it. That's clearly the way that we are going to concentrate our investments in Minas Gerais and to be concentrated is to be in assets that generate value. That's why we say to focus in Minas and to win. Whenever I invest on something that will provide me greater profitability than the regulatory one, I'm generating value.
If I invest and I have a better efficiency than the regulatory one, I'm generating value. We are focusing in Minas Gerais. We are having constant investment, and we are generating value. I think this slide is very clear. If you consider from 2009 to 2018, CEMIG invested outside of Minas Gerais, and this amount is adjusted.
By IP tape was 60%. We invested outside of Minas Gerais BRL 34.1 billion. We invested three CEMIG in investments outside of Minas Gerais. That's right. Yeah. We, that considering Belo Monte, Santo Antonio, Light, Renova, is if we add all that up, we invested in minority shareholding stakes with no control, BRL 34 billion. That's cash that was flowing out of the company, and it was not coming back to being invested here in our market, in our captive market that will end, and we need to make sure that when it ends, they will continue choosing CEMIG. We did not invest in the main market. We only invested BRL 1 billion in this main market. Unfortunately, these BRL 34 billion did not generate value. They destroyed value.
That's why our strategy is to focus in Minas Gerais and win because this was not only taking up our time of management, but also it was destroying value. This is what we have done. We clearly changed the strategy. The strategy that I believe it's a common sense strategy. What is the main characteristic of CEMIG, what are we pride of? To invest in our core business, distribution, transmission and generation in Minas Gerais with a trading company, a huge trading company, and we will talk more about that. We have already divested and recovered over BRL 6.5 billion in cash. Over two-thirds of our investment plan is already carried out. If we add up Light, Renova, Santo Antônio, Axxiom, Ativas. Are these the ones, Marco? We also have a slide later on.
If you add up that, and here we have to add not only the amount that we have sold, but also what did not have in terms of capital injection and all the risks that we'll no longer have and also the tax credit. When we left a given investment, for instance, like when we left Light, we not only sold that, but we no longer needed to have capital injection. That we would have to add BRL 1.5 billion to keep my share. We also recovered the tax credit, so I have the gain of tax credit. I also gained because I did not have the capital injection. Obviously we sold the stocks. Only that has represented a cash that we're bringing in to invest here in Minas Gerais. You will see how much investments here have increased.
We invested BRL 2.8 billion a year on average since 2000... In the last four years, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. That's seven times our historical average. We also lost half of our generation complex. I say BRL 1 billion, but actually when we consider the power plant losses, it's much more. We have invested seven times more than our historical average in Minas, obviously, because all this investment was outside Minas. Marney will be talking about that, but a very enlightening figure is the number of substations. From 2009 to 2018, we opened about five substations a year on average. Last year, we opened 45 substations.
That's a huge example of what that means to use cash not to invest in Rondônia or Pará. We're going to talk about our five-year investment plan. On average, that's five substations a year. In 2022, our market valuation was posted at 28.2. It's 2x the energy industry index and almost 6x the Ibovespa index. Clear value creation. That's what we want to do. We want to speed up that process. Speeding up that process means following the strategy. Prudent capital allocation, efficiency, which we're going to talk about in the next slide, and doing all that to generate value to shareholders and society. This is a value generation machine, and that's what we want to do. The second comparison. First, we have prudent capital allocation.
Whenever we invest and the return on investment is higher than the regulatory average, then you're generating value. We can do that better than the regulatory WACC. The other thing that generates value is when we're able to cost less than in regulatory terms. If you look at distribution, everyone knows you have a value for PMSO, operating expenses, and another one for losses. That is added to the tariff paid by consumers. You have the basic tariffs plus capital. The return on capital, then PMSO, and then we pay for losses. In the past, we were never able.
To keep to what was in the tariff. We were more expensive than the regulatory PMSO or regulatory expenses, and we had more losses than the loss that is included in the tariff. In 10 years' time, we've managed to consume BRL 7 billion out of the tariff. That was cash that was leaving the company because we were outside the regulatory limits and outside technical, regulatory, technical, and commercial losses. Now we are within those parameters. This is a huge adjustment. It's over BRL 700,000 a year, BRL 7 billion divided by 10. That's about 50% of our PMSO plus losses. We made an adjustment that was more than 15%. We had two buildings. We left one of them. That was the Aureliano Chaves building. That cost about BRL 40 million-BRL 50 million a year. We had two airplanes plus the hangar.
The hangar alone cost a few million BRL a year. That's not counting the actual aircraft. We also had post-retirement benefits, perpetual retirement payments, which is a right to inheritance after retirement, but life insurance added to that. We were also able to negotiate. That's no longer available. If you add those things up, it had a huge effect on bringing operating expenses plus losses to within regulatory parameters. That makes a huge difference to cash that stays in the company that used to go somewhere else, that cash is reinvested into those BRL 2.7 billion or in opening, as we did, 45 substations. That's what allowed us, and my hat goes off to Leo, from 5x net debt over EBITDA to less than 1x net debt over EBITDA.
That's five to six notches that we've gained, and our rating now is AA +. In four years' time, to get six notches given by rating agencies, that's quite a lot because it takes a long time. People reviewing ratings, it's not something easy to do. Obviously, right now it makes a huge difference having competitive cost of capital because of our rating. These are the key points for me: strategy, focusing on Minas and investing, winning capital allocation, but always prudent capital allocation within Minas and consistent efficiency to generate cash so that we can carry out our investment plan. That is what generates value. For the first time in history, we are within regulatory loss limits. These are the results. Our share price has gone up.
Total shareholder return was 235% from October 2018 to 2022. In terms of dividends paid out, we're talking about BRL 5 billion and market valuation, BRL 28 billion. Total shareholder return used to be -25% from 2015 to 2018, and October 2018 to 2022, it's 235% up. That's the kind of value creation we want to have and continue to have. Is this Gasmig? Right now, we are executing the company's largest investment plan in Minas, and we will show you that. Last year, we invested BRL 3.5 billion. In 2017, BRL 1 billion. In 2018, BRL 900 million. It's 3.3x more.
We'll be talking about the future in a minute, we want to increase that to BRL 2.9 billion in distribution, BRL 137 million in generation, BRL 340 million in transmission, plus CEMIG SIM, plus Gasmig. We will break these down in a minute, this is the overall message. We have broken the distribution record. We will capitalize on BRL 7 billion in this tariff review coming up in May. Concrete example being the 45 substations with an annual average of BRL 5 billion. In generation, Thadeu is here, our Chief Generation Officer. I love it. The best of Minas for you. That symbol, it was his idea, our communications department used that. He's not an expert, he has great communication idea. In generation, it had been a long time since we had invested in new plants. Sorry, what? This year, BRL 1 billion.
We are executing on Jusante, Boa Esperança. That's another, what? 180 MW. That's years later since we built any new plants. We also won a transmission auction. It had been years since we had won an auction. We won one last year, and we hope to win another one this year. Same thing. Where's Gilberto? He's here. We are investing heavily again, we're building a gas pipe. The building process has been successfully concluded for Divinópolis. It had been years since we had made considerable investments in gas pipelines. Distributed generation, we are market leaders. We're very proud to say that we are leaders. Actually, still on strategy, all of this is 100% CEMIG, no partnerships. That's another change in our strategy. We no longer have any new partnerships. We want to do this with the CEMIG know-how.
This plant is 100% CEMIG. Our model at CEMIG is also organic. If we're going to acquire anything, we want to buy 100% of the assets. This is a change to our previous model, which included lots of partnerships. The process is we're not going to grow, generate indirectly through Renova, Santo Antônio or Belo Monte. We're going to grow generation through CEMIG engineering, CEMIG teams, CEMIG, 100% CEMIG capital, even Cemig SIM, given the new reality, now that we can use the reservoirs doing floating solar power. Distributed generation with CEMIG know-how, CEMIG engineering, and CEMIG teams. This was our previous strategic plan, BRL 22.5 billion. We've contracted BRL 18 billion already. This is the new one. We announced this on Friday, was it Leo, or Saturday? Our strategic plan. Oh, the material fact was disclosed today.
Our strategic plan was BRL 22.5 billion, is now 2023-2027, adding up to BRL 42 billion. We want to speed up a strategy that is working, that we are familiar with. We will accelerate the transformation by investing in every single area: regulated market, BRL 18 billion in distribution, BRL 3.5 billion in transmission, BRL 2.3 billion in natural gas. In the free markets, this is probably the biggest change: BRL 13 billion in generation, BRL 1 billion in innovation and IT, plus another BRL 3 million in distributed generation. We're clearly betting on the trust we have in this country. We have the state support. The state is growing more than the average. That means we'll have a market for all this investment. Right now, a large part of this, especially in the regulated market, has been contracted.
We just need to execute on our investment plan, which is highly ambitious, but it fits with the rest. This will generate value, create value, and help transform CEMIG, and support the development of Minas State. That's what brings a twinkle to our eyes. We can generate value, create value, and to drive growth. Every time we can do this with a cost of capital that is below regulatory limits, I'm generating value because we're doing it by being efficient, keeping operating expenses and losses within parameters. If the cost of capital is below regulatory average, as a consequence, we are creating value to the company. At the same time, we're meeting market needs, keeping customers happy, creating employment, and helping to drive growth in the state of Minas.
Focusing on Minas, generation, distribution, transmission, excellent service with maximum efficiency, safety, focusing on results, and making the largest investment in the company's history. This is a snapshot of our divestment. Every time I say focus on Minas, that means moving away from focusing on other places. If you take a look, we used to have 191 companies when you add up all of our SPCs. We now have 55. Axxiom, Ativas, Renova, Santo Antônio, Light. This is what we saw previously, including all the cash resources, but also the cash injection that was avoided, as well as tax credits and a lot more. We used to have, for instance, I mean, this uses up huge management resources.
When I first arrived, you know, our board meetings, our executive board meetings were all about these shares, about these stakes. Thankfully, these assets are no longer part of our everyday life. There is some risk. Are no longer part of our everyday life that are worth a lot to the company. We have relieved PPA. We had to buy them because we buy power from these companies above market prices, because market prices have dropped. If we had any trouble with creditors, we had to renew the PPA based on those very high prices. We are free from that now. Reducing guarantees in the Renova case, we had the depersonalization risk. I'm sorry. He's the lawyer, he knows what I'm talking about. Disconsidering legal entities so that Renova could be 100% transferred to CEMIG and that's no longer the case.
All of this, obviously, we are free from all this risk. Not only do we not have to make investments in these projects and inject capital, but we're also free of the risk. Obviously we were only able to do that because we were bold in our management. Accepting that a company you have a stake in goes into judicial reorganization, you have to be brave to do that. You have to have good lawyers, and you have to have the courage to say, "We will face that risk in the name of the company, and we will create value." That's what we're doing. We're creating value because we left, we left Renova, we left Light, we left Santo Antônio and others that seem smaller like Ativas and Axxiom.
In these cases, our operation control system used to be through a company we had a stake in. How can you have the best system in the market like that? What if there are any delays? We weren't able to. Márcio mentioned IT. We are making huge IT changes. We're going to have a whole new ADMS because we were able to let go of risks associated to companies who had a stake in. When we talk about divestment, it's not just about the financial value that came in. It's also about being free from all this risk. Gasmig. I've already touched on this. What's great about this is that we are making considerable investment again in the state of Minas. The first point is we have renewed the concession for another 30 years. That's the key point.
Gasmig's concessions were maturing, We have been able to extend the concession for another 30 years, which ensures huge potential. This is one of our main value creation drivers. We have a concession for 30 years with the state of Minas Gerais, We have another 900 km of network, We have contracted a gas pipe to Divinópolis supporting the development of the state of Minas whilst creating value because the regulatory WACC is higher than our cost of capital, as I said previously. CEMIG SIM, again, same thing. Everybody knows that Minas leads distributed generation, especially remote distributed generation. Minas is always 10% of Brazil. Generally speaking, 9%-10% of Brazil. On any terms, the GDP, population, we always revolve around 9%-10% of Brazil.
In distributed generation, we account for 25% of Brazil's remote distributed generation. The state of Minas accounts for that. Obviously, that means a huge effort by the distribution company in terms of connection. We have to connect all of this, and it happens at huge speed, so it requires heavy investment. We are doing that. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity because there's a lot more investment going into remote generation, distributed generation here than in the rest of Brazil. Our target is BRL 3.2 billion. We have updated our strategy, which means these investments will be made in generation. They are 100% CEMIG. We'll be using our own engineering, and we have a huge potential for innovation, which is floating distributed generation.
Because of our reservoir. A large part of these 540 MW we have here will be in floating solar power plants in our reservoir. This is innovation and making the most of opportunity. We have all the connections. We won't need to invest in connections as much. The bottleneck was the connection to invest in the reservoir, and we will debottleneck that.
This here is the chart now. This is from the capital allocation perspective. Okay? Investing in distribution, generation, transmission, gas-
That was capital allocation, investing in distribution, generation, transmission, Distributed generation. This is that same chart I mentioned earlier to achieve operating efficiency. We were above the regulatory limits and now we're below. 318 to 900 to 199. That's 94.8%. Again, EBITDA -BRL 900 to +BRL 600. All you need is look at both ends. BRL 1 billion adjustment. We were more expensive than what was in the tariff, and now we are cheaper than what's in the tariff. We can't go back on this, right, Leo? Now that we have achieved this, we cannot go back on it. This has to be within technical and non-technical losses, as well as the regulatory PMSO. It's quite an achievement. We can never lose that.
It's almost like you can't put on another grain of fat. We have to preserve this efficiency. I've given you an overview. Which includes a clear strategy, prudent capital allocation, and operating efficiency. Those are the three key points. Our strategy is very clear now. We know when to say yes, we know when to say no. In fact, we have been saying a lot of nos because they don't fit with our strategy. Very prudent capital allocation. Substations still have a 50% load. One new substation that we opened has a load that is close to 50% of its capacity. What is the risk of that kind of investment? It's very low because we're starting off with 50% load. How can anyone say that's not prudent?
We have a study, the planning department has played a key role in our making prudent investments. When we invest in generation, we already have the PPA associated to that. In Jusante we're doing that, we have already signed a PPA. This is a free market. We are making an investment that is attached to a PPA that will ensure certain profits. Not only do we have a PPA, we also have a turnkey project in our CapEx. Just like financial investors do in generation business and in distributed generation, it's the same thing. It's a large market based on a discount applied to the main tariff, the distribution tariff. Again, efficient allocation and efficiency. As for ESG, the environment is key to us, obviously. I'll go back to this in a minute. I went back. Yeah, I'll go back in a minute.
I'll skip this one. We're starting with G rather than E. We'll talk about G. We'll talk about E and to everything Márcio has been saying. I'll start with this one. This is a major topic. We have to thank the board for the opportunity to renew our team. The board has approved up to 40% of CEMIG leaders, made up of professionals who don't have to sit an exam. Right now it's 14%. It's a mix of internal and external talents and professional management, and it will make all the difference. We need people to do everything I've just told you about. To implement that strategy, to have prudent capital allocation, to have more efficiency. To do all that, we require good people, and also to bring oxygen and to combine talent and to have more diversity at CEMIG.
That means not necessarily having people who sat a public examination. There has never been any political influence on what we do. We had no connection with the governor or any government representative. Our management is 100% professional, and all directors, all chief officers were hired by headhunters and internal.
Employees go through a formal assessment. It's a formal assessment conducted by an independent company or professionals hired by headhunters. I was hired by a headhunter. Thadeu was, Ozias was. No exceptions. Our own talent assessment. Goes through an assessment. Right now we're able to do that not only for directors, but for all leaders. 14% of our talent didn't sit public exams. That brings in new oxygen, more diversity, new ideas, which also create value for the company. We can see that in our climate survey. We went from 64% to 75%. Overall satisfaction, 86%. Diversity, 82%. Opportunity for growth, 64%. The way we think, what we want is to work so that we can have a client-centric culture.
Our family is Minas Gerais, because I have in mind a catering serving the Minas Gerais clients that are here. This is a gradual change. That's what we have been doing. We are leaving a procedure, a culture, and we are going to a culture where we have the customer at the core. We have to consider the clients at the end, but we have also to follow the procedures. The rationale is, first, I need to think about customer satisfaction. To reach customer satisfaction, I have to follow all the rules and procedures. When we think about the customer's pain, I have to go that extra mile, differently, when I just look at procedures. I have to work with both. People is a process, and I am going to repeat what Márcio said.
People is a permanent process. In a number of things we have grown, we have evolved. Here you see this new talent, and we have a lot to be done to evolve, and that has to do with creating a customer-centric culture. That's what's going to make all the difference when the market opens. If I'm thinking about the client, that's what's going to make all the difference. I don't know how much time I have, but I would like to congratulate the team from the commercializing company. Thank you very much, and congratulations to the trading team, Dimas and Marcio, that once again... I have to share a secret publicly, but it's not a secret, of course, because I'm saying it out loud here.
Wherever I go, I hear companies say, and they tell me, "Well, I have contracted your energy." Large companies contract our energy, and they say, "You play a hardball in negotiation, huh?" That's what we want to do. We want to play a hardball at negotiation, but we want them to close with us, to sign the deal with us, so we have the largest market share in energy trading in Brazil. We are leaders here in Minas Gerais, we are very strict because we also want to ensure profitability in this leadership. Really, I congratulate you because I was at an opening, Sigma's opening. It was Friday, if I'm not mistaken. This is a lithium company here at Jequitinhonha Valley. This is a huge transformation in Minas Gerais.
This is a company that now is worth $3 billion. They are producing green lithium in the Jequitinhonha Valley. Where did they buy their energy from? From us. They could buy from anyone, but they buy our from us, and that shows our capacity of delivering. Obviously, it shows the potential that the state has. The state is seeing in terms of growth opportunities and because new investments are coming into Minas Gerais. This is the culture that we have. This is the culture for the next moment when we have a market that is weird. This is what we already have been able to reach with our trading company. I already talked about this other slide here. We have some other important topics. I will talk about F.
We talked about governance, about the professional management, all the talent, the internal and external talent that come in via assessment or headhunters. That's a very professional management with no political interference. This is a culture that aims at clients and customers, especially at the core. Here in terms of other programs, considering our social responsibility, now we have 1.2 families benefited from our low-income tariff, and that's also thanks to simpler procedures. We were able to more than double the number of families enrolled in the low-income tariff program. We are thinking about the clients, the customers. Before we had so many procedures, they were not able to enroll. Now we simplified it, we doubled that number.
Here we were able to include more than the total population of Belo Horizonte in terms of number of families that now are under this low-income tariff program. That means that they were able to save around BRL 56 a month in their energy bills, and that, you know, that's money that they have to spend on food, for instance. That is just because we were able to change a special procedure and we were able to benefit that huge number of people by the means of this low-income tariff program. There is another program that is called Energia Legal. Here we have public lighting using LED in 100% of the municipalities. A huge program, 490 towns, over 120,000 public lighting fixtures.
Also, it was important for us because it decreased losses. Energia Legal is also important for us to decrease losses, we also are able to take electricity to all those people that have a hard time receiving it. This has a huge effect socially and also in terms of carbonization, because when we go into our zero target. That here, that's our ambition. Our ambition is to reach carbon neutral up to 2040. Up to 2030, we want to be 75%. That's right. Most of companies is 2050. We want to be carbon neutral in 2040. In 2030, we want to be 75% clean. Our challenge is the losses.
Whenever we are able to improve losses via Minas LED and also via program Energia Legal, we are also aiming to be neutral carbon, and this is what we are proud of. We are in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for over 20 years. We are the single company, electrical company that is in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last 20 years. We got here the Carbon Clean 200. This is the certification. We are ranking the 37th in the world, and in Brazil we are number one. Our objective, which is very clear, is to have a target zero for 2040. For 2030, we want to be at 75%. I already talked about our program, Energia Legal. I think that's it. I am finishing within my time here. I was able...
I still have eight minutes left for a wrap up. I would say that I need to say that I'm very happy to be participating in this journey. That makes a lot of difference for us. We have to keep that sparkle in our eyes. I do wake up every day with that sparkle in my eyes to continue carry on this transformation project. When we see the results, we only get even more encouraged. We would like to count on the support of all of you to move forward in this transformation project. I am sure that it's already generating value, and it will continue generating value.
At the same time, we will allow for a company's transformation, and this company will be the driver of Minas Gerais development, improving the quality of service providing, also, providing a better life for our consumers. That's why we are here, and we are always paying attention to that. We obviously have our own biases, and it's always important to hear from you, to hear your opinion, so that if there are any improvements to be made, we are willing to do so. All the executive board will be available by the end of the day here in our afternoon, so that we can have a Q&A session. We just want to be a machine to create value, to transform, to change, to generate value to shareholders, to drive Minas Gerais development, and to better serve the people from the state.
Thank you, Reynaldo, very much for the presentation of the new strategic planning phase. I would like to have you a few more minutes on the stage. We will have 10 minutes of a Q&A before turning to the results of the fourth quarter of 2022 with Leonardo Jorge. Now we'll go for a Q&A.
Should I tell a joke? We'll have a microphone here for questions.
Good morning. This is Victor from JP Morgan. Thank you and congratulations to the whole team. About expansion in generation, there are BRL 13 billion to be invested in the next years, and we have not seen good returns, especially in Greenfield. How do you intend to work with the capital cost? Also in GD, the BRL 2.5 billion are under the new rule or the old rule for the GD?
Let me start by the first question. The BRL 3.2 billion is the old rule. Of course, the number of incentives that we have in the old rule was much greater than in the new rule. We do have enough projects. The answer is that these BRL 3.2 billion, we already have assigned projects that will allow us to reach those BRL 3.2 billion of investment. The second question, I think, your comment is good. We know how low is the energy price right now. We do have a challenge to turn projects feasible. We can always have brownfields. If you don't have the greenfields, you can have brownfields.
We prefer to have the greenfields. My soccer team's color is green, so not many times in life will you be winning as much, and I had to make that joke. Obviously what we have done with Boa Esperança and Jusante is greenfield. In general, I would say that it doesn't make sense to have the largest trading company of the country and to buy outsourced energy if you also generate energy. We changed our strategy. We have the largest trading company in the country. We have a single understanding from our clients. We see the results of our trading company, and we were doing that buying energy from third parties.
We have a technical capacity to produce projects, to man-manage projects, and we have our trading company that has a single understanding of our clients, and we are going to put these two things together. If I can put these two things together with a greenfield better. If there is no feasibility for a greenfield, we do have M&A projects that are feasible. What is important is to have the discipline that we are going to look for these M&A projects within my strategy, that is in Minas Gerais. You know, very close to Minas Gerais eventually, but, you know, it has to be in Minas Gerais. I'm not going to go for an investment project outside of the state.
Good morning. Daniel Travitzky from Safra Bank. I have a question about the return rates.
A large part of your investment in the strategic plan goes towards distribution. You have a return rate of 11%-14%. I would like you to compare this return rates for the distributing company, how much you see that above the regulatory level, and if you can talk about how that compares, how the return rates compare. A second question, if you allow me. How do you see the risks involving the distribution contract extension, analyzing this amount of investments in this segment? Thank you.
I think you cannot compare invest BRL 18 billion and invest in distributed generation or invest in the regulated market in the competitive market. Obviously, the profitability in the distributing company is lower than the profitability in GD.
There is the capital, and the capital considers the existing risk. The distributed generation has a high potential of return, and the figures are very positive. We see that there is a rush also from Safra Bank to invest in distributed generation, a huge rush of investment in distributed generation that tends to turn to a more normal return. That will depend on the discount that you are going to give. Here we have an embedded risk. The risk is that, you know, the discount that you are going to have in the final tariff in the current situation does remains to be a profitable investment. That's why we have a fluctuating solar generation. It costs a little bit higher than the internal GD. Because the connection is easy for me.
I can be agile, I can be quick. That's what explains this investment in distributed generation. When we look at the distributing company, that's a whole set of things. It's not that I'm going to have A, B or C, a specific profitability by asset, but I will have that profitability according to a CapEx. For the situation number one is for a total CapEx that I have invested. We have two objectives. First, I would say that if I have BRL 10 billion of investment, I want to have zero disallowance, because if I have disallowance, that is going to affect less my base. The second, the capital cost is lower than the regulatory WACC. If I'm able to finance lower than the debt cost that is on the regulatory WACC.
I understand that it's lower than the regulatory WACC. I can generate value. We have to ensure a debt, obviously, that is attractive in terms of leverage, and I have to leverage lower than the debt cost that we have at ANEEL, the regulatory agency, and ensure that the disallowance is as minimal as possible. Let's hope so. I can't do it in the middle of the tariff review. In the last tariff review, it was 0 disallowance. Everything that we are doing requires a huge planning in order to ensure that this is a needed investment. Here, there's an advantage here because we didn't invest much. Now we need a lot of investment. I can do it.
Here, when we open a new substation, on average, we have 50-55%. That's a lot.
It's conscious, right? Also there is a qualitative consequence, right? With the line, we have a huge line for the connection request. If distribution is not prepared, this line won't move. We won't have the connection ability. You connect and you connected nothing, so it's also important to meet this growing demand.
André Sampaio from Santander. Márcio, I have a question for you. I would like to understand what is the difficulty, what are the challenges in dealing with a company that has a natural turnaround process, and you mentioned in the beginning of your speech and comparing that to the privatization process.
How do you bring together these two processes in a way that one does not get in the way of the other and to make sure that both of them can work hand in hand?
These are two simultaneous projects, as you said, but one is really moving forward. The turnaround projects and here are the results. We just work on them. We carry out, and we are able to achieve some objectives. The strategic plan, as Reynaldo said, is a limit to say no. The worst thing that we could have in a strategy is a good idea. When you have a plan that is defined, you say no to any other idea, you have a wholesome plan because you can carry forward this turnaround project.
You have a strategic plan that allows to say, to define what's in or out of the project, and you can say no to some good ideas, otherwise you are going to have a patchwork thing. On the other hand, the privatization plan nowadays, for CEMIG is more of a preparation. I mean, we have to be ready so that when we are ready to do it, we are really ready for the process with all the questions already addressed, with the most relevant issues taken care of, everything related to the corporate structure because that has to do with the state. This is more of a preparation, for when the general assembly approves some type of privatization. That could be a simple privatization, could be a corporation.
There are a number of options, but we do have a plan that is ongoing, that is bearing results. The other area is a preparatory area. I would say we will be ready to execute the other one, the other plan, when the time comes.
Another question about the transmission CapEx. How much of that transmission CapEx is regarding new lines or how much of that is just to reinforce existing projects in the original contract? Most of them are just to back up improvements by far. We will have a Q&A with all the other officers. Please, you can ask Márcio questions here. No problem, you can ask anything you want, but we will be here the whole afternoon, and there's going to be a Q&A by the end of the day.
My name is Lillyanna from HSBC . How much of your agenda today is focused in privatizing the company? That's my first question. How much the agenda of the board and the CEO is taken by the privatization possibility? Also on generation, out of these BRL 13.4 billion, do you have a target here? All of that is focused in Minas Gerais, and how much of that is from HPPM, how much is renewable?
About the agenda, we had an agenda consumer in the agenda that was huge, and that was Light and Renova. That really used up and consumed a lot of our agenda. It was really that would take up a lot of our time and hours, but also our intellectual agenda.
We cleaned up that agenda, and now our mindset is focused in Minas Gerais. Once we left the low profitability or negative profitability assets, and now we're focusing on the good ones. That allowed us to concentrate on privatization. Here we are, we are working on that. We are working closely with Minas Gerais administration, so that we can show Minas Gerais administration and tell them the, you know, the reason why this is a good option for them and to be able to approve it. In addition to that, we have a preparatory agenda. There's nothing much that we can execute, that we can actually do. How this is going to be on the day after. There's just a preparation. It's done. What are we going to do on the next day?
We had advisory that we are working with and internal actions that we're doing to be ready. There is something that is key. We need to have the government's approval. Now we have a favorable environment. We from management are favorable to that because of the objective reasons, because that's going to improve the value of the company and also for subjective reasons as well. This is the single non-privatized company in the country. We are the only ones. Is that right? I think it does make sense to take that into consideration. We always communicate with the government, and we always have meetings, so that's also very active.
First, I would like to tell you my personal opinion, just like Márcio's.
Also this is the opinion of the top management, I believe that as an officer, I believe that it's great for CEMIG to become corporation to go through this privatization process. This process of acceleration and value creation is going to be even more accelerated in the movement that we might have of turning into a corporation or have the privatization of the company. I'm thinking here as an executive. I think this is positive of the company. The company will no longer have some management ties, that will allow this amazing company that we have to generate even more results to the investors and to the society. Also we believe this is very positive for the company itself. The company will gain sustainability and long-term survival.
As far as our relationship with the state assembly and with our officers, we have something that we need to discuss, which were the concessions. Alexandre is here, and he can tell you more. By November of this year, we have to request the extension of our concessions, within those 49%. I don't know the number of the decree. It's Decree 9,271. Our concessions are due in 26, 27, but we have to send a letter saying that we are interested in the automatic extension, and this letter has to be sent by November of this year. We also need a report from the state assembly. By November of 2023, they have also to approve the extension of these concessions.
Here is more than 50% of our productive area. We have been discussing that with the executive power and the state assembly to avoid what happened in 2015 or 2017 when we lost some of the concessions. It was in 2015. About our CapEx, the BRL 13 billion, obviously, that is associated to a number of megawatts. How much is that, Thadeu and Márcio BRL 1.9 billion average. Obvious, it's 100% renewable, and that includes the renewal of the concession grant. Part of that is HPPD because it includes the renewal of the concession grant, but the investments will be in wind and the photovoltaic. I'm sorry, they are not using the microphone, so we can't hear what is being said. Yeah. Just so that you can understand. We have two options.
First, we can change, our head office, and that needs the state assembly, and that's the option Paraná's administration, chose. They will ensure 100% of the renewal of their concessions by changing the corporate structure of the holding company.
We have another option, which is to retain 49% of the SPE, the concession grant that is due. Then I have what another private entity will take over the 51. That's under regulation. For the second option, we need an opinion from the state assembly. The state assembly needs to approve this model, ensuring that we have the automatic approval of our 49%, and that has to come by November of 2023. I can also go for the auction. I think our time is up, but just one more question, please.
Well, this is João Pimentel from BPG. A lot has been said about privatization and the obstacles, but we do need the approval of the state assembly. Something very simple here, you said that you are not discussing with the state assembly yet.
When the government intends to discuss with the state assembly, what is the timing here involved? When do you think you will be able to start and follow the process of our privatization process? We know it's a long one. Next year we have municipal elections. We know that is a critical period of time, we don't know when that's going to happen. That's what we would like to understand. Are you going to submit this proposal to the state assembly right now? Is this a negotiation that takes time? Do you have a timeline involved here?
We want to do it right now. We don't want to waste any time. We've had meetings with the government where we emphasized the need for the government to mobilize right now with the assembly. That's what we want. We want to get the approval.
Obviously the government has its own interests. It's not just about CEMIG. There is a strategy to take those topics to the assembly to get approval. From our side, we believe in it. We've been working very hard on it. I believe that it will happen in this term. It didn't happen in the governor's previous term, but it takes time, as you said. We need to work hard. We need to bring in potential bills and try to get immediate approval. It's not just in our hands because shareholders own the capital, and they should decide. They have to. They have the power to vote at the assembly. We've been supporting that, providing information to get approval, but it's not in the hands of the company's management. We just operate.
The capital plan is done by the really wanted and we're working hard to get it. Thank you, Reynaldo, for your time. As we heard, we will have another Q&A session with the CEO of CEMIG. Now we'll hear Leonardo George about the last quarter and the year 2022 result.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us in person, and thank you for joining us online. We have our foreign investors who are listening to the simultaneous translators, and we also have our investors here, analysts, bank representatives who are here with us. Thank you so much for coming to the land of Cruzeiro Esporte Clube. I'm sorry. I apologize, but I do have the microphone, so I have the power of speech, and I'm gonna make use of it. I'd like to share results with you.
I wanted to talk about investments first. Reynaldo showed you the investments we'll be making in the regulated market, in competitive market. We do have the balance to invest BRL 42 billion. Our leverage will be kept at reasonable levels, low levels, so as not to affect our rating. In free markets, competitive markets, the future price of energy is one of the main variables for the company. Investing in the free market, those BRL 13 billion we saw for generation, for instance, will be made considering future energy prices in brownfield or greenfield projects. Márcio mentioned many times during his presentation that we need to have the right capital allocation. The right capital allocation plus financial discipline in allocating resources, that's part of our everyday life and an important part of decision-making.
Those investments, when we disclose them to the market, we are pretty sure that they will be adding value to our shareholders considering market variables.
With regards to-
principalmente o preço de energia futuro, que é uma variável muito importante. Ainda mais nesse momento.
raising funds and the future price of energy, which is a key variable, especially right now where, when energy prices are so low considering.
Hidrologia muito favorável, mas pra isso o Dimas, na parte da tarde, porque ele vai ter um trabalho bastante amplo também sobre esse assunto, a gente vai poder discutir um pouco mais sobre isso.
The last few years of favorable ideology. We'll have an afternoon presentation by Dimas about this topic.
Depois do almoço, a parte de geração, vai poder falar um pouco mais sobre essa geração, detalhar um pouco mais. O companheiro está à frente pra.
During Adel's presentation about generation, we'll also be hearing more details about how ready the company is...
O companheiro está se organizando pra poder tá aproveitando as oportunidades à medida que elas vão aparecer. Já iniciei a nossa apresentação. Não sei se ela já está-.
For this future, how the company is getting organized to make the most of market opportunities when they present themselves.
Tá. Eu vou ter que continuar falando do Cruzeiro aqui, né? É isso? Não me lembra de falar do Cruzeiro.
Oh, I'm gonna have to continue talking about my football team. No, maybe I shouldn't.
basicamente, eu acho que, como nós comentamos aqui, esses investimentos na companhia, eles vão tá respeitando essa disciplina na alocação dos nossos recursos pros próximos anos. A gente acha uma questão importante, a gente está comentando a respeito desse tema já faz alguns anos, né? A gente faz essa apresentação há alguns anos atrás, falando a respeito dos resultados ou sobre o foco da companhia nesse tema.
As I said, these investments will respect the discipline we'll have in allocating our funds over the next years.
A gente está comentando a respeito desse tema já faz alguns anos, né? A gente faz essa apresentação há alguns anos atrás, falando a respeito dos resultados ou sobre o foco da companhia nesse tema.
We've been doing presentations for a few years. When we did this presentation a few years ago about talking about the company's focus on planning, we were dealing with very difficult questions. Some investments that did work out, our debt profile wasn't great in the short term. There was a lot of pressure on our cash management. Our divestment program at the time, it had to do with how the company was dealing with cash pressure. Sometimes we had BRL 10 billion maturing in two years' time. It was a very tough time for the company. In the last two years, we have managed to change history. In the past, there were also discussions with the federal government about renewing concessions, losses that led to the loss of half of our generation complex. These were tough questions that led to a drop in our rating.
The cost of life of why we issued bonds at the end of 2017. No, not IPA, it was the dollar value plus 9.5. It isn't that scary right now, but at the time it was very high. Since then, over the last years, we have been able to reorganize. Our leverage ratio is very low. We have the balance we need to make the investment. Ronaldo showed us we have invested in operating efficiency, we are on a whole different level now. Our drivers now are our operation and our everyday life. We have an issue with our files, we're going to switch you to Marney, if you don't mind, Leo, then we'll come back with Bertels. Is that okay? Marney, would you be so kind?
Você tá pensando que eu sei de cor a minha apresentação, né?
You think I know my presentation by heart?
O Reinaldo nos falou aqui, né, indiretamente. O Márcio deixou um.
As Reinaldo said.
O Reinaldo deixou 8 e você deixou 29.
Marcio left one minute, Reynaldo left eight, and you left 29. There's no way I'm gonna beat that record.
Tá. Já pode pôr no primeiro slide.
First slide, please. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, analysts, investors. It's a huge pleasure to have you here with us.
Agradecer aqui o Doutor Reynaldo por acreditar e apoiar esses projetos maravilhosos nossos.
I also wanna thank Reynaldo for believing and supporting our wonderful project. Leo, all the directors, all the superintendents who are here today. I also want to thank everyone who's working here and our clients, the hotel. Am I changing my own slides? Okay.
Beleza. Agradecer também o hotel, né, que representa aí um dos nossos 9 million de clientes.
Great. I want to thank the hotel, one of our nine million clients. I want to say that we are going at 106 km/h, 106 an hour, I mean. Every hour we connect 106 new customers. Distribution. All those customers need investment in distribution. If we want to speed up our connections, we need to increase investments. If we do it well, like Sigma did, Leonardo, Valora, Crediagro, Fertilizantes, Morro do Ipê, those amazing customers we connected this year will need more investment. That will make it easier for them to join our trading company. It all starts with distribution. We need to meet the needs so that we can consolidate our relationship with our clients. As I said, our solution lies in expansion and focusing on our clients. This is a highlight.
We used to waste a lot of time Establishing relationships and all channels with our customers. We had a strategic partnership with IBM. We brought them on board with us to help me to digitize our customer care, which has made our life much easier. It has allowed us on growing and improving operations. You all know that. I think it's important to say, I always say this to my team, losses and default go hand in hand in distribution. The company has to be doing well, both in terms of losses and in terms of default, because if we stop paying clients, default will go up. Losses will happen anyway. So to be good in distribution, we have to have a consistent plan for losses and default. That's how we work, that's what I'd like to show you right now.
First, I'd like to highlight that our investment was record BRL 7.7 CapEx in 2020. 6 substations, as Reynaldo said, last year alone. As Reynaldo said, we have an aggressive number of substations, so that is what will allow us to connect our clients. These are heavy clients that use a lot of energy. 2.5 billion substations, 1,500 km of line. We have a program to remove wooden transmission lines because that leads to very high techs. We have a lot of burn downs. There's a lot of burn down that wooden transmission lines suffer a lot. We really have, right, much work to do. In addition to building, we're also replacing 2,500 km worth of transmission lines. We're also connecting our distribution clients. 118,000 works. Clients contact us and they complain.
We have to keep our deadlines. What about revenue? This is very important. We have 235 meters. They are smart meters. Total, 260,000 smart meters, close to nine million clients. It's quite a lot, 64% of our energy is protected in our billing. We monitor client consumption, our revenue is improved because we also monitor all of our consumption. 860,000 obsolete re-readers. Those are being replaced, more than one million last year alone. Considering a nine million customer base. More than one million meters replaced. These meters are obsolete. Ideas must have a complete sort of African state space. We want to replace all of the obsolete meters, and that will stop losses on our customer base. We will also not lose any energy.
That's the main thing, because when meters get old, everybody knows they favor customers. They increase. We're also focusing on the MSO that we're not. How do we reduce costs like this? We have 400,000 km in rural area, 300,000. We want 30,000 km of single phase. These reconnectors are completely automated. They are the best in the world. They reconnect automatically. They bring the numbers down to zero without even having to do anything. Up to two years ago, any temporary outage needed a team on site. We had to send people on site. You know what Minas Gerais is like. Distances are so. Wherever we've installed, we have reduced the interruption by 23%. That is PMSO, and it's system reliability.
Let's go to CapEx. 30,000 km of single phase will be converted to connect the teams. This will turn family agriculture into agribusiness owners. This is all about development, as Reynaldo said, and this is the contribution. We want to help rural farmers. We'll also be building 3,500 km of new line, and we will be slowly up to 250,000 km. We have the largest number of meters. BT Zero, part of the Energia Legal program. 240,000 companies have illegal connections. They're stealing electricity. That's because there are problems. Either they are in illegal area or it's not allowed to have power. They're working with the government so we can make these areas legal, we can provide services.
There's a neighborhood in Rio that has 6,000 families, 4,000 families have connections thanks to the flow of distribution. 135,000 customers. There's a lot of people with illegal connections, we can only deal with it if we work with other agencies to find a solution. Mais Energia, the More Power program, we will be building another 136 substations. That is a government program. We have new entities coming in. Hopefully, this number will only increase from now on. These are our substations. We have planned 37, now it's BRL 3 billion worth of investment. As Reynaldo said, our distributed generation ones come out with 100%. Yes, crazy, because when we put our energy availability max for the distribution generation, you know that there's a limit of up to 5 MW.
On average, 2.5 MW, 5 MW is only if it's exclusive for the substation. No, if we start building a substation now, we'll only open it two years from now. We have to deal with red tape, plan, buying equipment. When they do that, they place the order, then we just wait. Everything goes together. They want to connect closer to the substation. They buy the land, they get everything ready, and they just wait for the substations to be ready. The loads revolving around 55%-60%, depending on the region, because our substations are overloaded. At the new substations and put into more power, we have another 200 substations, 50% more, both in number and also in power. Amazing increase in energy availability. It's all about investing in maintenance. This is also interesting. I asked our engineering department to come up.
We talk a lot about pent-up load. Last year it was 3.5 MW, 4 MW. Seriously, you know, if it's not available, customers will go somewhere else. I want to talk about the loads that we are working on right now, that we connected over the next 24 months. 2.2 GW of loads that are required and are being met by the substations and the lines we're making available. This is a client who had these generators, and we thought, "I can't believe this is happening in the countryside of Minas." I don't know what it's like in the countryside in São Paulo, this has to be updated immediately to help them join the power world, because it would be much better for them, much better for us, much better for everyone. I'm not even talking about the climate and sustainability.
Look at these generators. Look at our [inaudible] substation. Huge pleasure. We're very proud to have this project at the company. These new substations and load have to do with people moving from city to countryside. It's the effect of the pandemic. Rural areas are growing considerably. There have been requests in urban areas and rural areas. The green bars are the rural areas. After the pandemic, as you can see, there was an increase. We also began to make more load available. That's 2.2. In addition to the organic growth, you know, the increase in the number of houses and flats, this goes to show that there's potential for even more. I mentioned 2.2, coincidentally, that's what we completed the year with 2.2 MW of distributed generation.
These are all the connections. We really have to make effort to offset this energy, which isn't bad for us because we are compensated according to TUSD. This is the captive market, which accounts for 13%. If you look at the total market, we're talking about 6% of the energy. System reliability needs substations. In addition to making load available, as Dr. Márcio said, we also need to improve energy supply quality and reliability. We're talking about 9.48 right now. The regulatory design point 0.98, so 99.9% availability of energy. Chat GPT. If you Google it, you see that this public service index is well above all other services, 99.9% reliability. That's a very high level of public service.
To consider all these investments, all the work that is being done, we had to change our strategy, engineering. This is our logistics operation. This is how we get our materials. We had to set up another two distribution centers. We have a third one being set up, and they've requested another one . We're talking about 1.4 million meters. I talked about 1.1 obsolete meters. We're also replacing meters as requested. 1.5 million meters that have to be... We have a regulatory deadline. The posts have to be ready when they are ready to support meters. We have our logistics updated. That's a role. There's a lot of work done. This is allowing us to improve our... We have also implemented our reverse logistics. I mean, images speak louder than words. We are reusing materials.
This is the kind that we might be losing. If we remove a material that hasn't been 100% used up, we have to make use of it. Otherwise, that's a loss. Our asset management focuses with logistics. Great. Not this last 6 months. All of these materials were being directly managed with the construction companies. We brought this to our distribution center so that we can have logistic gains, so that we can have more control over materials. Something else Reynaldo said, all of this was directly dispatched by them. When the customer called our call center and complained, it went straight to the construction company. The construction company would work directly with clients, but they only had their interests in mind, and that's not how things work. We need to do what the customer needs as quickly as possible.
The faster we can do that, the more indirect gains we get, such as customer satisfaction, faster energy availability. As for loss, we had high levels of losses. For two years and four months, I mean, we can't have any losses because one month worth of losses is difficult. We have been within the regulatory limit for losses. We did something really important.
We found losses and we wouldn't negotiate with clients. We can't do that. We have to go to court. We have to stop those losses. We've changed that. The other one was safeguarding the network, the BC Zero network. What does that mean? Zero voltage. There's no secondary way of getting the energy. Clients can't steal energy. BC Zero is precisely where most frauds can happen. Right now there is no frauds. That helps to reduce losses. Obviously, we have 400 technicians out in the field conducting inspections. That was one of our main gains. 40 an hour. Do you know what 40 an hour is? 40 frauds detected every hour. That's a lot. We have to do something.
We have to find the right innovation, the right technology, the best inspections possible to have the best systems so that losses can remain below regulatory limits. I was talking to my kids the other day. We went to see a Coldplay shows, there was a huge sign that I think most of you from São Paulo probably have seen it, return the bracelets because this is a sustainable show. Each band that comes in brings something new, they have the number of places, the countries that were returning the bracelets the most or the least. Guess who was the worst was Argentina with 80%. Then I thought, what is going to be what? How Brazil is going to rank?
My daughter said it's going to be 100%, but, you know, the results were out. We were 79%, even lower than Argentina. Yeah, even, you know, the leaflet from masses, people take it away. Can you imagine the energy, you know, power 24-hour available? This has to do with the inspection program, but we have a balance point here. What if I have an electrician in each home, we won't have fraud. Great, but we have losses coming down, delinquency coming down, and our PMSO also coming down. We can invest more in losses and bring this back to us. Well, I think we are fine here in terms of losses. I covered everything. The ARFA index, the receivables collection index, that is how much we were able...
Well, the billings that are due on the month over what we collect on that month. Here we have the accumulated from other periods, but that has to do with the efficiency we're looking for. Right now, we are at 99.68% of that. The amount of billing over the amount of collection over the amount of billing, so that our ARFA indicator, collection over billing. We also have the last 12 months results. In our delinquency, we are also with good results. Now talking about operating efficiency, we have another example here, which is collection. Collection is expensive, but here using digital channels, we are at 56.5%, a significant development.
We are bringing down the lottery houses that also collect money, that has a reason to be expensive because people don't have a bank account, they use the lottery places to pay the bills. Here we are looking at our average tariff for a collection at BRL 0.79 for a client billed. I have a number of examples here and Leo likes this one because it, you know, involves money, and whenever it involves money, he likes it. Here we have our default provision, our allowance for doubtful accounts. Obviously, here we have an improvement in the accounting rules, always aiming the best practices in the market, how other companies are doing it. There was a change here.
Here, what we really have to consider is the assertiveness of disconnections so that delinquency doesn't move up, and we are reaching 2.5 million of disconnections. That's why it's a cultural thing. That's why clients pay the energy bill. Otherwise, they know it's going to be disconnected. We cannot lose sight of that. Disconnections are crucial, but disconnections are expensive. What we have to do, we have to have other types of technology so that we can collect quicker or send WhatsApp's, send SMS, and also make our clients' life easier so that they can bill, pay the bill. Those that don't have a bank account only can pay with money. We can have another option for them closer to their home so that they can pay their bills.
That will improve us. Our results in our ADA. Here we have some other surprises still in this area. We have campaigns for Pix, that instant payment system. Also here we had two million temporary disconnections, we do have to be aggressive in that action in fighting delinquency. We have here 80,000 remote disconnections. It's important to say that our client A group, all of that is protected. Second category were the clients of average voltage, all of them protected. Indirect low voltage clients, the ones that consume the most, all of them protected, they will perform the 280,000 clients I mentioned. Now when we are at the low voltage, we are not going to add them to the ones that consume the most.
We are going to add that on the clients where we have delinquency problems, fraud problems, which is the BT Zero or low voltage zero network, and also safety because some of the neighborhoods you just cannot go in to make any disconnections, so it has to be a remote meter or smart meter. That shows that we are on the right track. This is also good because many times the clients are delinquent and not because they don't wanna pay, it's just because they can't. A lot of those tell us, "I'll get my payment tomorrow," or, "I'll be paid on Monday." We reconnect because we trust them, because, you know, it's easy to do it, and it's easy to disconnect again on Monday if they don't pay.
It's a good relationship that we have with our clients. For low income delinquency, for instance, why did we have a low delinquency in the pandemic period? Because disconnections were suspended for a long period of time. When disconnections is restarted again, we brought solutions, energy efficiency, and also installment payments. Just as we have done with the stores when they were closed for a long period in the pandemic, we created special conditions for merchants to pay. This is a very humanized relationship because a lot of clients are not in that situation because they are fraudsters, it's just because they are unemployed. We respect that a lot, and that has helped us to bring facilities to easy to offer easy solutions.
For instance, when we go for a disconnection, we bring in a credit card machine or allow them, you know, some time to pay using the PIX, the instant payment system. Also we have the regulation of the debt of public authority and hospitals. Because of our prior strategies, they removed the relationship with public authorities of the public power. We did not have direct service to city administrations. We created a project that's called Aproximação or Approximation, and our goal is zero problems with the city halls, with city administrations, and we have 774 of them, and we have been able to control delinquency. There is one of them that there is a problem, but everything else is solved.
Credit cards option I already mentioned, and we have that low income tariff that already was mentioned here when we increased the number of clients enrolled, and that really helped them. Thank you very much for your attention, and in the afternoon, I'll be here available to take your questions.
Thank you, Marney. We have time, Marney, for two questions, so if you can stay there, and we can take two questions now. Otherwise, we'll move on. No, we don't have questions. No, thank you very much, Marney, for your presentation. Leonardo, please, can you come back to the floor so that we can resume your presentation?
I think now it's gonna work, right? You saw Marney's presentation, and sometimes we see our collection index that better than before the pandemic, lower delinquency, the losses behind the regulatory.
Behind that, we have a number of actions that allowed us to reach those results. That is thanks to a lot of work from our distribution team, from our operations, so that we could reach those results today. Our collection, when compared to other distributing companies, we always compare ourselves to the best ones in the market. We do not consider the fact that we are a state-owned company, but we are always among the best ones in the quarter, and we say that our collection rates are among the best ones in the electric distribution sector. There are not many distributing companies that are meeting the regulatory indexes, and we are proud of that.
Teve atleticano que mandou mensagem que falou que eu falei do Cruzeiro, aí a apresentação.
Well, some Atletico, rooter sent me a message because I talked about Cruzeiro, and then the presentation didn't work. You know, rooters from a competitor jinxed me.
Oi? Pois é, Jinks, você é americano, né? Eu tô sofrendo bullying de torcedor do América Mineiro.
Well, yes, I'm being bullied by the competition here, by the competitors, the soccer team.
Acho que vai dar certo aqui.
I think it's gonna work now.
Bom.
Very well.
Essa apresentação de resultados, né, referentes ao quarto trimestre do ano de 2022.
This is our presentation about the fourth quarter of 2022. We published on Saturday that these results were filed on CVM, the Brazilian SEC. Now we turn in the slides. I don't think this is working. The clicker doesn't seem to be working.
A gente pode-
This is a quick disclaimer. I don't think I have control of it. With this clicker, this is not working.
Tá ótimo.
Okay, now it's working. These are the main factors and results. We always draw your attention to the transferring of our trading contracts from CEMIG GT to CEMIG Holding. This is something that we have been doing little by little, but that adds value to our shareholders. We were able to transfer 30% of contracts. When we talk about amounts, they are substantially higher. This is an interesting piece of data. Holding for CEMIG H totally transferred in terms of contracts and an EBITDA in 2022 of BRL 721 million.
Quase BRL 300 million, com acumulado de BRL 721 million.
Just in the fourth quarter, it was almost BRL 300 million with a total of 2022 is total in 2022 of BRL 721 million. Extraordinary results. We understand that in addition to the tax efficiency of transferring these contracts to the holding company, we can better visualize how much CEMIG commercial trading company adds to CEMIG. Sometimes the results are under CEMIG GT, and that is combined with the results of energy generation. We were not able to have that understanding of how this trading company really is special in the market, not only in size as the largest energy trading for final clients, but also how much value we are generating by this trading area. The figures are really amazing.
Eficiência operacional.
This is CEMIG D . Here we have operating efficiency and investments in 2022 are within the regulatory limits. We are one of the largest distributing companies in Brazil. We have nine million consumers. I believe we are the largest and with the quality indicators also in the regulatory limit that are established by ANEEL, our regulating agency. We are delivering sound financial results and distribution company meeting the regulatory indexes and also reaching the quality indicators. We believe that we are in the virtuous cycle of CEMIG D istribution and with investments that we have for next year. We are already doing that. We believe CEMIG Distribution will jump to another level. For Cemig GT, we have significant results, a very good result. Of course, CEMIG Generation and Transmission. Hydrology also helped here, and the results were very significant.
We'll see more of that in details. We reduced our FX exposure in around $244 million. That was done in 2022. We'll talk more about that. CEMIG GT had $1.5 billion of FX exposure in 2018. By the end of 2018, we published a plan to reduce this FX exposure. We are moving towards that strategy. I'll talk more about that in a minute. We have our consolidated results. We see that in a pure result, we had a reduction of 14% from BRL 8 billion in 2021 to BRL 6.9 billion in 2022.
When we adjust that by the non-recurring areas, in 2021, we had that huge agreement of GSF, and we had to post extra BRL 1 million in the results because of that agreement. In 2022, we had a huge provision related to what involved the tax credits on the CMS, the tax gain that we had. Because of an approval of a law in 2022, we had to make a provision for that. That has affected our results in BRL 1 billion. Even with this provision, we see the results were very robust. EBITDA closed BRL 7 billion, and when adjusted, it closed 7% higher vis-à-vis the prior year. Same thing for net profit. Adjusted, it was 30% higher than the prior year. We do believe this is an extraordinary result. It's very consistent for the company.
At every quarter, we can have a non-recurring effect, higher or lower. In general, our quarterly results in the past few years have been consistent. When we look at the fourth quarter alone, we also understand that these were very consistent results. Adjusted EBITDA grows to BRL 1.7 billion, and our profit 21% higher than what we had in 2021. Even if we do not consider inflation, the company is adding value to its shareholders with these special results. Talking now about PMSO, I think we should talk more about that. Our adjusted cost for the results of 2021, 2022, had an increase of 17% for PMSO cost. We should explain that if we look our personnel expenses and profit sharing, these were very controlled costs.
Post-retirement is something separate. We'll be able to discuss that in this event. We'll be able to talk more about post-retirement. This has to do with actuarial issues. The higher costs this year have to do with outsourced services, BRL 255 million versus in 2021. As I mentioned, we should break that down and explain that we have SG&A costs.
At every budget discussion, we want these costs to increase less than inflation. We want them to be very efficient. Not only with lower adjustments when compared to inflation, here in 2022, the company had some expenses that we understand that are more towards investments such as inspection targets that makes us lose loss to decrease losses or increase the disconnections that reduce delinquency because there is a huge relation between disconnection and delinquency. When we increase this, honestly, it might look like a loss of efficiency or higher expenses. If you look at that ratio of revenue increase and expenses increase because of the higher number of disconnections, for instance, you see that this effect at the end of the day is good for the company.
We do have those related to inspections and also related to disconnections and some costs related to maintenance of our electrical grid. CEMIG was spending a lot with corrective maintenance instead of spending with preventive maintenance that is much cheaper, of course. Now CEMIG is changing that. We are increasing our costs in preventive maintenance in a way that we reduce our corrective maintenance costs in the midterm. We still have those two types of expenses mixed here, the corrective and preventive maintenances. They are a little bit higher because of that combination. In a period of time, the corrective maintenance will be reduced. That is what explains the increase of these costs. We are also investing more in IT. That investment was approved in the strategic planning.
CEMIG did not invest in IT for a long time. Villani, our IT Officer, can talk more about that in the afternoon. IT is a cost that by nature in the past and an investment. We had storage, a large hardware investments. When you turn it to the cloud, you, it might think that you have more expenses with IT, but actually, it will move from CapEx to OpEx because of the tax innovations. Now you be paying more of a lease. Before we had large hardware structures where we were capitalizing all these costs. Basically, that is what explains most of these costs that we mention here, and that explain that increase above the inflation when compared to our prior year.
As Reynaldo mentioned, all the budget discussions of the company, you know, we will not maintain our costs above inflation. This is crucial for us. These costs will be always disciplined. As I mentioned, we have some costs that can be considered more of investment, and they will be only under the regulatory index. These will be covered by our tariffs. This is the cash generation of the company. Really amazing BRL 7 billion of cash generated in 2022. Part of these amount, and we are already returning the tax credits to consumers and the distribution company, BRL 1.5 million, that's relevant. That is to be reimbursed in 2023. We had amortization of loans. When we look at the net payment, we decreased our indebtedness level, and that helped our leverage.
We ended the year with a cash close to BRL 3 billion. We have a large investment for the next few years. This cash generation for CEMIG is very significant. Combined with funds from the market, I think this is part of a company, a utilities company with a significant investment plan. We think this is a sustainable combination. It will maintain our leverage at low levels, it's not going to affect our credit quality. Here we have our debt profile. You see that our debt in 2024, we have a larger amount due, basically the bonds, the BRL 4.5 billion. Most of that are the bonds. If we were to remove 600-700, which is the hedge or protection here, this is a debt that is under BRL 4 billion for 2024.
When you talk about our strategy here, in the CEMIG day of 2021, we told the market that we had a strategy to reduce our dollar-denominated debt, that we would do it in stages. We would be reducing that debt. In the second semester of 2021, we reduced $500 million of that $1.5 billion dollar-denominated debt. By the end of 2022, in December, we reduced $244 million more. That was the market's demand. Today, basically, open, we have $750 million that are part of this $4.5 billion here, and most of that come from the bonds. Of course, these bonds will not be due by the end of 2024 for a single payment.
We believe that we have to keep on reducing our dollar-denominated debt. We expect that if the market has more favorable conditions, that in the second half of 2023, we are able to do a new payment. In December of 2023, we can already buy the bonds in the market without any premium paid. We expect that by the end of 2023, we can Might back more dollars in order to reduce our exposure here and to have a more flat debt profile. Removing that pressure from 2024 compared to what we had in the prior years, which was $1.5 billion, it is already reduced and 50%. We have a much lower risk now. That has been reflected in our ratings. They have been up even more than five notches in the past few years.
That reflects the credit quality and everything that the company has been doing in the past few years. We see that in a scenario where the companies are going through downgrades, several companies are going through downgrades. This is public information available in the market, that is because of the risk perception in some of the sectors. We believe CEMIG is in the other way. We are already a AA, we are not happy about. We think we deserve to become AAA very soon because the company is keeping leverage at a low level. Our capital allocation discipline is we reduce financial guarantees in Santo Antônio. All of that has a positive impact in the credit quality of the company.
We believe that our credit quality of the company, our trend when we think about the current management, it is an upward trend in terms of credit quality here. Moving forward, here we have the debt cost. It has increased, but because of macroeconomic issues and that involve with interest rates and that's not something that the company has control of. Still, we have a low leverage, so we do not have any problems with the sustainability of our operations, neither the execution of our investment plan. Now moving forward, at CEMIG, it had an adjusted result of BRL 597 million, close to BRL 600 million, 12% lower than what it had last year. Here we have two issues affecting it.
As we already mentioned, one of them is related to the market, we will see more of it soon. This market was resilient in 2022, even increasing an increase of distributed generation. It grew a little bit. Because of that cost that I mentioned that were concentrated in the fourth quarter related to maintenance of installations, some IT costs, all of them happened in the fourth quarter, and they affected CEMIG's DE results. We did have some favorable non-recurring events that happened in the fourth quarter that also were good for the results. That was because of energy sold mechanism that CEMIG Distribution had a surplus contracted, and it was able to sell part of that energy and post a significant gain of BRL 200 million considering the rules of the regulation.
In the year, well, in the net profit, net profit of BRL 318 million, very close to the EBITDA variation because of the problems of the issues I already mentioned. This is CEMIG's D market in 2022 compared to 2021 compared to 2022. If we consider here transmission and build the market, we have a growth of 1.4%, where we can see here the classes in which we have higher consumptions. We had some reclassification here, rural one came down because of a favorable hydrology, less irrigation. Of course, the rural class would have a reduction in, at the volume of build market. Here, as Marney mentioned, the 6.4% that Marney mentioned, that's over total market of CEMIG. We had a tariff.
We will have a tariff review now in 2023, and the market will have an adjustment to this new reality of the company because of the distributed generation affecting our market. This is one of the main effects that we consider to be positive for the company. There's a tariff review of this market adjustment that we will have in 2023.
Um lucro líquido também que foi o dobro, né? O lucro líquido aqui, no quarto trimestre, ele foi praticamente, na verdade, ele foi mais do que o dobro, foi 107% acima, justamente mostrando a qualidade aqui da nossa, das nossas operações da Cemig Geração e Transmissão, combinado a um regime hidrológico muito favorável, né. A gente vai comentar mais na frente, mas eu acho que essa é uma das grandes fortalezas da CEMIG como empresa integrada, justamente em algum momento, quando você tem um, alguns segmentos com algum tipo de cenário menos favorável, você tem outros mercados que conseguem proteger a companhia e proteger o seu resultado consolidado.
O resultado da Gasmig, também uma empresa com resultados muito sólidos, né, o EBITDA de 2021 já tinha sido um EBITDA muito bom, de quase BRL 680 million, quase BRL 700 million, e esse ano 14% acima, né, quase BRL 800 million de EBITDA. É uma empresa que a gente entende que tem uma concessão muito valiosa, uma concessão renovada até 2053. Acabou de passar por um processo de revisão tarifária, todo o seu OpEx coberto pela tarifa e tem apresentado resultados que nós entendemos que são realmente impressionantes, né, um lucro líquido de quase meio bilhão de reais, né, no ano de 2022, e é uma empresa que agrega muito valor pro grupo CEMIG, né.
Na parte da tarde, nós temos aqui a presença do Gilberto, que é o Presidente da Gasmig, e vai tá junto com a gente aqui numa sessão de perguntas e respostas, a gente pode explorar um pouco mais as questões que envolvem a operação da Gasmig. O Reinaldo já comentou um pouco a respeito da expansão da Gasmig, mas é uma empresa que tem apresentado resultados relevantes pro grupo. Continuando, aqui é a parte dos dividendos. Mais um ano onde a CEMIG, a gente entende que tá distribuindo dividendos de forma bastante relevante.
O nosso yield aqui 12.2%, quando a gente considera todos os dividendos que a gente declarou no ano de 2022, né, todo JCP que nós declaramos, mais os dividendos que nós declaramos na assembleia do ano de 2022, um total de proventos de BRL 2.2 billion, próximo a BRL 1.00 por ação, o que faz com que se a gente fizer apenas a divisão desse dividendo pelo preço da nossa ação hoje, é um yield próximo a 9%, mais um ano onde a Cemig tá distribuindo um yield que a gente entende muito positivo. Entre os maiores do setor de energia elétrica, com certeza.
A gente vê que essa é outra questão que eu acho que é muito importante nas nossas conversas sempre com os investidores, como que a CEMIG ela é uma boa pagadora de dividendo, e mais do que ser uma política, isso tá no nosso estatuto, porque nós temos muitas empresas onde estabelecem uma política de dividendo, mas sempre condicionando o pagamento de dividendo futuro à alavancagem e outras variáveis. No nosso caso, o nosso estatuto já estabelece 50%. Isso dá uma estabilidade que nós entendemos no pagamento de dividendo aos nossos acionistas muito grande. Uma vantagem que nós entendemos praquele que quer investir na companhia é justamente essa previsibilidade nos resultados.
Uma empresa que tem uma alavancagem baixa, que tenha representado resultados de forma consistente, tem pagos bons dividendos, mantendo um yield que a gente acha bastante atrativo no mercado hoje, que tá estabelecido em estatuto. A gente acha que são questões importantes na análise da CEMIG. Hoje uma empresa que paga bons dividendos, que tem alavancagem baixa, que tem um programa de investimento robusto e uma disciplina na alocação de capital. A gente acha que essa é a nossa estratégia, uma estratégia sustentável da companhia e faz com que a gente ou seja otimista com relação ao nosso futuro. Basicamente, eram isso as informações que a gente queria trazer relacionadas ao quarto trimestre. Carol, a gente tá à disposição se tiver alguma questão específica.
Carol, that's it what I had. If they have any questions, we'll be available to take them.
Obrigada, Leonardo. Quem tiver uma pergunta, a gente tem.
Thank you very much, Leonardo. If you have any questions, you have a few minutes for Q&A regarding the results.
Tudo bem?
Hello, Leonardo.
Só perguntar de Gasmig.
Hello.
Teve uma queda muito grande.
A quick question about Gasmig. There was a significant drop in volume, at the same time the EBITDA had a significant growth year-over-year. Can you explain what happened at Gasmig, please?
Gasmig tá aqui. Gilberto, não sei se você tem alguma-
Our GASMIG CEO is here. Would you have any comments on that? This is for a question from João, from BTG Pactual. Last year was the other way around. We had an increase on distributed volume, but the thermal was down because of hydraulic favorable conditions for another type of energy, not the TDP dispatches. I think he's talking about the volume of the market where they have lower margins, right? We also had a tariff review last year that although it decreased our margin a little bit, it increased because of inflation. We went down 40% in effective margin, but because of inflation, we ended up increasing in 5%. There was a higher number, the collection was higher because of that. We had the TDP and we also sold more energy, more gas.
I don't know if I addressed your question. We will have a special session in the afternoon where we can go into the details, right? Can you go back to page 9, I think, on the cash flow?
Mm-hmm.
I just would like to check something there. Yeah, that page. What we can see here is that if you roll out the debt, you will be generating cash of BRL 3.5 billion, considering a CapEx of BRL 3.4 billion. The projection now is to have the BRL 40 billion of CapEx over the 5 years. It's more than double your CapEx here, right? I would like to understand how your leverage is going to behave in the process, and if that is interfering in the dividend payout. Also not only the capacity of getting loans, but also the operating capacity to execute this CapEx. First, for Cemig distribution, I'm starting by the end of your question, our ability to execute the program. We have investments close to BRL 1 billion.
To go from BRL 1 billion to BRL 3 billion-BRL 3.5 billion, which is new reality for CEMIG distribution, that's not simple. You will have to have a restructuring process in your operations. Our logistics today is totally different. We have centers all over the state. We have control in the process, in the investment process in our hand. That is in a more systematized way. We have already invested BRL 2 billion-BRL 3 billion. CEMIG organized itself to be at a higher sales level than what we had before. With no disallowance, we have an internal process to follow up these costs to see if they are meeting the regulatory compliance. We are very disciplined. This is multidisciplinary, and we are ready for these investments.
About the other investments, we see that investments in solar energy, you can do it quickly and you start generating EBITDA. In our results, when we consider our leverage in the long term, considering this program and the type of investment that we are doing, and of course here, there is a caveat. We will only be making non-regulated investments if they provide returns to shareholders. If we see that there are no opportunities in the market to invest, we will see that investments in the free market are not attractive to the company. We will have a discipline in capital allocation. We cannot lose that from our side.
Considering that we'll be able to make these investments, and we will have opportunities in greenfield or brownfield for those investments are leveraged, and we'll be following the 50% of dividends payment, and that's in our bylaws. It's in our strategic planning. Our leverage would not reach 2x our EBITDA. We know it could reach 2.5 at the most. Thinking about our results, how much CEMIG D on our next revision can generate in our operating efficiency in-house, we believe this is a sustainable program. We understand that the cash generation, in summary, cash generation and the new funding and other investments that we are making and maintaining that 50% policy leverage is lower than 2x our future cash generation.
I just want to make clear that this is part of our strategic plan. The sustainability of that investment plan is extremely important to us. As we said, this program is sustainable. We have the balance that we require to execute on it.
Question. About the same topic.
There's a wall in 2024 when you'll be paying for the bond. The credit market right now is quite tight. There are other instruments that are being used that are not so conventional. What is CEMIG's access to capital market considering that significant CapEx increase? Are there other options?
With our normal operations at CEMIG and our businesses at CEMIG GT, there is no cash pressure in 2023 or to pay for any debt. CEMIG distribution has a relevant program. We need to understand that there is a credit restriction in the market, and CEMIG D has great credit quality. In our industry, there's a predictability in terms of generating resources. It's one of the very few industries that are still attractive in terms of predictable results. It's very reliable for our investors.
During this fundraising period, the deadline will be shorter and the cost will be higher than it would be last year. Obviously, we understand that, but we don't see any problems in going to market to raise funds in these conditions to keep our distribution programs up and running. That wouldn't be a problem. Now, obviously, fundraisings had longer terms, but in the short to the midterm, things are a bit less favorable than they used to be a few months ago. That's not just CEMIG, it's everyone. We'll be able to deal with that. I mean, it's part of the game. Market conditions are not that favorable, but we have no problem to conduct a well-structured fundraising considering our investments and also our credit. For CEMIG GT, as I said, we're not gonna leave it to the end of 2024.
Maybe we'll raise funds in the shorter period so that we can amortize more than 50% of that bond, which will be close to $300 million. We can go to market and raise funds because CEMIG GT's leverage right now is practically the bond, so we'd raise funds just to improve our debt profile. CEMIG GT does have the credit it takes to go to market until the end of the year. We are monitoring the market, and there's a chance to divest as well. We're not counting on that, but if there are any divestments, we could use those funds. Even in this challenging scenario this year, it's not going to affect our investment plan for the year. There will be a partial amortization of bonds towards the end of the year.
I mean, conditions would be favorable to that, but as of December 2023, we can buy the bond. Could be December, January, February. We'll monitor the market and see when things are looking more favorable.
Gustavo from Bank of America. About results, costs were higher than inflation, especially in third-party materials at the distribution company. Does that have to do with your corrective rather than preventive measures? Might that decrease over the next few months? If you could talk about that, will there be a reduction in the next few months because of the preventive and predictive maintenance? Do you have any OPEX predictability for the rest of 2023, or have you done most of it last year?
Well, to give you some more color, we think that investing in innovation is extremely important. We spent a few years not making any investments. Investing in technology is very important to our business. In the short term, that means reducing costs. We will be making more investments in IT over the next few years. That's part of our strategic plan. We think that investing in IT is important to us, and it will help us have a more sustainable and efficient operation. We also talked about maintenance. We believe that cost increase, which we believe to be short term. You have corrective and preventive maintenance still at higher levels, but on the same level, we believe we should be investing more in preventive maintenance than corrective because it's cheaper. That's a short-term issue. It happened in 2022.
We believe that cost will be lower now. It will grow close to inflation rates, those are the rules of the game. Those costs should reduce looking forward. The message is, we have to reduce costs in other areas so that we can keep costs below the regulatory limits. We're not going to stray from that. We're not going to say, "Oh, this happened, that happened, therefore, our costs will be above regulatory limits." That's not going to happen. That's our strategy. We need to have expenses that make sense, that help to reduce costs in the mid to the long run. Even though those costs have to do partly with investments, they will not go over that which has been established for the tariffs.
I have a very quick question. You talked a lot about migrating some of GT contracts to the holding company, that about 30% of that spin-off has already taken place. How is that gonna progress over the rest of the year? How will you conclude the spin-off?
I have Our trading officer is here. I think he can probably help me with that answer. Do you want to answer that now, or will you be talking about that later?
Hi, good morning. Actually, good afternoon. Yes. Right now we're migrating those contracts because we have to agree on the prices for which we bought that energy. We believe that by the end of the year, we should have migrated all the energy that we purchased from third parties because we haven't traded CEMIG's we have traded CEMIG's energy plus third-party energy. By the end of the year, we believe we will have concluded our negotiations with the sellers.
By the end of the year, close to 100% of those contracts will have been transferred, and the holding trading company will be managing all the energy that we have purchased from third parties.
Good afternoon. Mayra from FSB. You just recognized the voluntary retirement program worth BRL 4 million. How much will you be saving on personnel because of that voluntary retirement program?
Well, that program is excellent for the company because we are bringing in new people, new talent, which is extremely important. These people have been in the company for a long time, you know. I was practically born in the company. We have 25,000 employees right now. It's not as much as it should be. When I joined the company, there were 18,000 company. Employees joining us are usually at the beginning of their career.
The company doesn't have benefits that it used to have, benefits that were usually seen in state-owned companies. We no longer have those. We're much closer to a private company policies. What we're saying is that new employees cost practically half of what employees who are retiring used to cost us, and it pays off in about eight months. That's important for the company, and it's important for our operating efficiency as well. It makes sense for us to continue to implement those programs in the future. Obviously, when that will happen depends on the company's strategy. When those programs have been implemented, they've had very positive effects on our operating efficiency. I think that's it, right, Carol?
Yes. Thank you, Leo. With that, we'll close the morning session.
You are all now invited for lunch, which will be served at the Belo Horizonte room to my left. Analysts, investors, and company officers will be to interact. We have reserved tables for you, and CEMIG team will also be available to answer your questions. Be back at 2:30 P.M. Thank you, and enjoy lunch.
Good afternoon a todos. Estamos de volta para dar continuidade à nossa agenda na parte da tarde. Antes de começar, reforço novamente, pedir pra todos coloquem o celular no silêncio. Agora convido ao palco o Diretor de Geração e Transmissão, Thadeu Carneiro da Silva, para falar sobre os investimentos em energia renovável e eficiência operacional da Cemig GT.
Boa tarde a todos. Good afternoon, everyone. Satisfação estarmos aqui. Eu acho que é mais difícil agora, né, porque depois do almoço, né? It's a pleasure to have you here. More difficult now, right? After lunch. Ter uma apresentação. Vou tentar ser bastante dinâmico, tentar prender a atenção de todos. Sou Thadeu da Silva, Diretor da Cemig Geração e Transmissão, representando um grande evento aqui na casa. Vim trazer um pouquinho desse caminho, o que tem se planejado pro futuro também, da área de geração e transmissão.
Então nessa agenda vou falar um pouco do nosso portfólio atual, quais são as perspectivas pro setor elétrico e as oportunidades e iniciativas que nós temos hoje na Cemig GT. Na geração nós temos hoje 3 pontos MW de operação, distribuídas em 53 hidrelétricas, 2 eólicas e 2 solares fotovoltaicas que estão dentro da Cemig GT. Na transmissão, nós temos 47 subestações de energia básica, mais de 5,000 quilômetros de linhas também de energia básica, tudo sob a gestão da Cemig GT aqui dentro. Essas são todas as nossas empresas que estão aqui, né, sob a gestão nossa, né? De uma forma bastante integrada. Essas empresas, elas não têm uma única como FPE, mas elas são totalmente hoje operadas como se fossem todas uma empresa única sob a gestão da Cemig GT. As perspectivas, né?
O nosso sistema elétrico, ele tá passando por uma transformação muito grande, aquela que nós chamamos de a transição energética, na revolução tecnológica, depois do medidor, ou seja, a própria geração, a autoprodução em casa, né, com os micro-inversores. Novos negócios e modelos de negócio, né? Estamos falando de autoprodução por arrendamento e uma série de outras formas de geração. A reinvenção das utilidades tradicionais, como a gente falou aqui, da abertura do mercado, que hoje provoca uma reinvenção nossa, onde a própria CEMIG se acompanha, colocando o cliente no centro de tudo. A evolução da regulação acompanha toda essa evolução tecnológica que a gente está tendo. O que que temos? O que que temos como consequências? Nós temos a necessidade de expandir a nossa matriz energética, baseada em eólica e solar, que são as fontes alternativas.
Nós temos que ter outras fontes para manter a confiabilidade técnica de geração. Baterias, os HBPs também são muito importantes pro nosso matrix. O storage, como eu disse, a HBP agora é uma enorme bateria, e isso tem que ser desenvolvido, especialmente aqui no Brasil. Digitalização, tudo aqui. Nós temos um importante progresso aqui. O Vilan vai falar um pouco da digitalização da CEMIG. Esse é um projeto que estamos trabalhando. Empoderar o cliente. O cliente, ele pode produzir sua própria energia e potencializar isso, o crescimento exponencial de GD solar. Isso é muito importante pra Cemig GT e também pra Cemig DG. Eletrificação, como um todo. A eletrificação de veículos, né, porque nós temos os veículos elétricos agora. A expansão do Power matrix.
We have 183 GW installed, and the trend to grow is to 252 GW. We see alternative sources such as wind and solar growing a lot, but also look at TPPs and gas also growing. We have GASMIG and the house, so some of these projects can be carried out jointly. For the next few years, we see an exponential growth. Here in the first years, we see that a lot of the projects were approved. Over 3,000 projects have been approved with benefit of 50% discount from the TUSD, so on the energy supply. Starting on 2027 and 2028, with the market growth, the opportunities will rise again. That's what we are considering to develop the projects here for CEMIG GT. What are the opportunities and initiatives here?
These are integrated energy solutions. This is a hybridization or association. What is that? The hybridization refers to the development of two sources of energy, of power generation, wind and solar, for instance. They are developed together. They connect on the same point, optimizing one another. That is, one completes the other. Generation by itself would be a disassociation. One is this source, we would install a second one in a complementary fashion. One example here of that are the fluctuating solar energy plant. We have ongoing projects in our two plants in Emborcação and Três Marias. We are also considering other projects to do that association of a solar power plant close to an HPP. The market is opening itself. We see an opportunity for the HPPs that already have room to implement other machines.
Três Marias is one example of that. We also have the possibility to install two additional machines, and we see that as a good development possibility for green hydrogen. We are working on it. We are learning more about it, and we understand this can be a new source for energy consumption. Brazil is a little bit behind when we compare to Europe, for instance. We understand that we need to foster the development of the internal consumption of green hydrogen for energy production, for ammonia production, for fertilizer production, so that we can have a ramp up of this new technology. The offshore wind plant follow the same line. As you all know, the offshore wind plants I am sorry, the sound got connected. We have onshore power plant equipment available.
We need to develop, and our shores are already organized, and CEMIG is aiming at future implementation on that line. Here, hybridization. At Três Marias, as I mentioned, we have already requested the access information because this type of association does not have an increase in the contract of the transmission system use. What does that mean? You just add to the existing source, and you maximize the transmission lines and the substation. We requested the access information for regulating agents of 260 MW, and we continue developing the project. At the same time, we are developing projects for clients of in Igarapé. What is the benefit of that type of plant? Since you do not have the increase in the system use contract, it is similar to the 50% discount from the TUSD.
In the model, even though this type of project has not been approved in February of last year, it has a similar benefit, similar competitiveness, to the ones that have the 50% TUSD contract. Here is the capacity market. It was created by the Law 14.120/2021. We did have a specific auction for that. Of course, this year's auction was canceled because of technology possibility and the repair rate. The idea is to go into this auction with two machines. We are developing this project in Três Marias, and we are using the existing infrastructure. What is most interesting is that the environmental impact of these additional machines installation is none. It's inexistent. We do have a reservoir that is red. The dam is red already.
Adding two machines would not change anything and would not add anything in terms of environmental losses that we had in the past. Green hydrogen, we have been working on that. We do have a memorandum of understanding signed with UNIFEI, just as the cornerstone we launched in Esma. This is considered to be the best city in Serropan. Actually, this is the third best town in Minas Gerais, and mine was the second one where I was born. The idea here is to use funds from R&D from ANEEL and to work on a better understanding of how the green hydrogen can better fit to the current matrix and how can it favor. In here we have some offshore wind projects. They are undergoing licensing. As I said, we do have a long-term approach here.
We are just making sure that we can develop the project in the future. This is something that still depends upon a regulatory development of the producing market, the manufacturing market. We do have great possibilities, but there is a lot to be developed in the onshore wind plant. That's where we have the largest capacity factors in the world. It's our average capacity of 60% factor. Capacity factors of 60% is similar to HPPs that we have here. These are the onshore, the internal one. They are very competitive. We have a large market to develop, but we cannot miss this opportunity, so we are here already sharing the possibility of investing in this source in the future. Here we have our current investment portfolio and investment in generation.
When I started here, they asked me, "What are you going to implement?" I told them that I was going to foster growth. At the time, we have very early projects being developed. We were the two solar projects that are being implemented now. We were able to accelerate those projects, today we have a very large portfolio, over 15 giga, and it's being considered. This portfolio is being distributed in wind farms, onshore, offshore, HPPs, floating solar HPPs, solar HPP, and thermal. We have a matrix and a portfolio that is very much diversified. It will be implemented if we have a return on investment over our capital cost. We have energy, we have thermal projects offshore being developed with GASMIG. These floating solar HPPs are two of those projects are already approved for implementation.
One of them, DG of Paziano, 39 MW peak, 89 in Pismadiesu, and 154 MW in Amborkasanu. These plants will be in operation in the beginning of next year, little by little, so that this power can be traded as HPP. These projects are very important because then we can have synergy in the plant. We will have a reduction in OpEx because I'm already using the team that I have in the plant to operate the DG that is very installed in the reservoir. We have 1 connection point in all of these plants. Our limiting factor to install all of these plants is really the 1 that connection point and availability of the lines. Also it's important, with the panels considering the panels are in the water, we do not have as much dirt.
We increase the generating possibility. Also we have water. That's important. Large solar plants depend on water to clean the panels. While we have the reservoirs, we use the water in the reservoirs with the minimum environmental impact. We're using 0.01 of the water and things like this. We have a huge reservoir there. This is zero environmental impact, very much in line with our ESG policy. Okay. Investment in transmission. This is our best business in transmission. It is only up to us. We already have BRL 2 billion, and we have studies already for these studies. The studies that are approved, projects approved, the projects contracted, projects in revision here are the projects that we have already requested.
That is the whole process that we have with the regulating agents to approve these investments. These investments have a sizable return for the company. At the same time, we focus in Minas Gerais to bring in new concessions. This year, we won lot one for an auction two of 22 to build 155 km of 138 KV transmission lines. We have an estimated capital of BRL 119 million. We are already working on this project. For the next auctions, we will continue considering lots in Minas Gerais that have synergy. Why? Because here we have great penetration both in generation, transmission, and distribution. We are able to bring in this benefit.
The project, and therefore we can be more competitive than the market, and we can deliver the return that shareholders expect for that kind of investment. We have the next lot here. We know that in the auction that we'll have in the middle of the year, we have some lots for Minas Gerais, and a lot of the investments and transmission will be made here in Minas Gerais, and we are already considering some lots for this auction. Obviously, always guaranteeing a return on investment, and we'll be very careful about that. Now, talking about the renewable projects, we are implementing the two solar plants in Boa Esperança and Jusante. Here we are working on a land that is from CEMIG. Two of them are being developed in our house, and we use land that we already had.
CEMIG has a big land here in Minas Gerais. We are able to combine a good location with other benefits. These projects are being done with creating area that were able to turn feasible the long-term PPAs. This is already something new for us, and we are able to work well. These ongoing projects advanced already, and they should become operational in September of this year. Here we have the photovoltaic projects. These are the largest ones of in Brazil . These projects are already approved for implementation. The first one is going to be here in Itajuru. Here we have a HPP of 9 MW. We are going to add another 39 MW there. The synergy is huge.
The added source is even greater than the existing source there, differently from the other plant here in Emborcação. It has an extra plant of 7 MW peak. In Jusante, we added another solar plant of 7-8 MW peak. We have another project of 6 MW that's also being developed. These are highlights. We are already working here with benchmarks for Brazil. Here we started with the first plant of 1 MW that came from an investment in Santa Marta. This was a laboratory for our engineering, both in terms of development and implementation. We can bring in the track records from other companies from out of Brazil for that type of money. The recovery of the wind farms in Brazil. We have two wind farms, Ceará and the Parque Eólico Volta do Rio .
Here we had as partners an investment fund from Caixa and the manufacturer and CEMIG. We developed a process here to separate the assets, and we remained with two wind farms. We had six of the 28 wind generators in operation. All of them are operating now. We have availability over 98%. We increased the revenue of these wind farms. We have the highest tariff of our plants, BRL 808 per MW. We add BRL 1.25 million at every MW here. We turned these wind farms around in the way we worked on the contracts, on the O&M contracts. We acquired the needed equipment for the work, and we started the remote operation of all prior generators in our operation centers here in Belo Horizonte. Very few companies do that in Brazil, and we do.
We recovered the transmission line that flows the energy from Jaguarão to Sobral. They were not good at all. We were able to increase the availability of these wind farms. This is a very special highlight that I brought here. Here, operating efficiency of all our assets. Our HPPs have been working at the state-of-the-art of engineering. We are at 96.08% availability. The benchmark in the sector is 78%. That reflects on our revenue, on the lower cost of energy purchasing, so that we can meet our contracts and the impact on the company's results. Same thing for the wind plants. We went from 50%. Now are at 89%. These are figures from last year. This year we are already at 98%.
Solar power plants also 94%, a significant increase compared to what we have in transmission lines and stations. We are here above the industry. We are at 92.02, and we are at 99.96, 99.97. That's a highlight for the availability of our lines that ensures the permitted revenue, therefore the return on investments for our shareholders. Other efficiency highlights the corporate structure optimization. We worked on the corporate structure of those companies in the portfolio that could not be maintained under presumed profit, and we integrated those companies into CEMIG. This allows us to optimize not only the expense, but also the daily actions. We avoid the extra governance of all these companies.
Also, we have for all our large substations, and they are 100% remotely managed. This means a reduction in OpEx. The last substation that will be in operation is Barreiro. four substations that we have in the metro region, we are able to bring in. Neves, Cardoso, Taquaril, Barreiro will come in the end of the year with improvements to allow the type of operation. I highlight our main plants, all the large ones are remotely operated. That means that today we only have people there in the working hours from Monday through Friday. CEMIG is at the vanguard of that type of operation and the factor. Tembo Casam, 192 MW installed, and we have created a contingency plan so that this can be done out of the working hours.
We did not have any negative consequence. Very much on the contrary, we are being considered the benchmark and the factor for other companies' implementation, and we are divesting in some SHPPs. These SHPPs are very small. They end up eating up value from our operations, and I have to spend and invest in my engineering and asset of less than 1 MW. While I could be using that time and money to develop larger projects, they end up eating up the value of some of our operations. We started a divesting process. We were going to divest from 15 assets. I think in August we will have the auction here in Belo Horizonte.
These are our drivers, continue to focus on project development and our own projects for global generation, especially in Minas Gerais, to continue studies for disruptive projects in line with the company's ESG policy. We want to be competitive in auction and efficient in the implementation of all the projects. We have created a project management office according to the PMI methodology. All our development engineers do have a PMP certification, and that ensures that all our projects follow the same implementation methodology. We started this methodology, and as it was started, the level was 40%, and now we are already over 90%. That's what we are delivering vis-a-vis what we had planned, and that is a lot for this industry. We are applying the best practices in terms of project management by using this methodology.
In the continuing the generation, next generation, we will try to maintain the high levels of availability like the ones we are talking about, with well-executed CapEx investments and also with our labor developing in training of this labor team, also we're focusing on operating efficiency, doing more with less. Since we started management, we decreased BRL 10 million a year of our IP for generation and transmission, that shows how efficient we are aiming to be with our assets here at CEMIG. That's what I had to bring you. I was able to finish for me.
Thank you very much, Thadeu, for your presentation. A few minutes. The last question for Thadeu about generation and transmission. Please raise your hand if you have a question for him.
You have a long pipeline of projects in different moments, each one of them. You have a cost structure that is different for a solar project or is it similar? If it is similar, what would it be?
Well, the difference is in the floating one. When we develop the modeling, there is a difference. Of the inverters of modules are the same, but the fluctuating one have a higher CapEx. On the other hand, our OpEx is lower because we have an optimization. We have a number of plants concentrated. We have less cost with water. We also can have an increase in efficiency because of the water there. The temperature is constant, so you increase the efficiency there.
We do have an increase in CapEx, but it's offset by the OpEx because of what I explained. We are able to maintain the real return on investment between 11% and 14%, just like the other plants, and that's why.
I have a few questions about these projects. Are they already contracted?
No, they are approved by the board. The business model has been approved, right now with the summer schedule, we are going to start the contracting stage.
Up to while we don't have that, we are developing the benchmarking, we're developing the best technology. We are going to bring in the best suppliers to Minas Gerais in order to bring down our costs. The main cost here is in the transportation of some of the machines, then, we end up spending a lot with the transportation. If we bring in the manufacturers to closer to where we are, we will be saving on the cost of the fluctuating here.
What is the CapEx for installed MW?
We have an idea, BRL 5,800.
About the auction for transmission. Two questions. First, are you interested in placing a bid in this position? If you are you going to have a partner? Do you see any bottleneck related to labor for these transmission auctions by the end of the year?
Yes, we are considering that. We are considering some of the lots here in Minas Gerais with the strategic planning, as Reynaldo and Márcio just said. Strategic planning is good because they stay focused in Minas. We are going to be focusing on Minas a lot. We are gonna go into them by ourselves, alone. We develop our projects ourselves. We do have a strong engineering team and a good team for the development and implementation of engineering projects. We already have that competitive advantage. About the bottleneck, we are following that up with the buyers. We will already start with pre-contracts so that we can be competitive and ensure that cost during the auction process.
If we are awarded the auction, we will just conclude the contract. To close, you know, to sign the contract, we will need to deliver a productive capacity and financial health, and we are taking all that into consideration. We do not what could be a bottleneck for this next auction, but that could happen in the future ones.
Do we have one more question?
Hi. About the generation CapEx you disclosed, what's the split between greenfield and brownfield, and have they been included in the previous figure?
Yes. That total amount considers a CapEx average per MW. We're trying to find synergy with the trading company. To keep market share, we're looking at the contracts that are being terminated over time so that we can have contracts directly with CEMIG. We want to make those greenfield and brownfield investment. There's no split, I can tell you right now. If we have good return on certain projects that are greenfield, we'll invest in those. If they're brownfield, we'll invest in those. We're looking at which projects are being approved, what are the implementation requirements. There will be new projects as the semester turns, but they will be coming in cheaply to the market. That's an opportunity. We're looking at acquisition of greenfield projects for our pipeline, something that we weren't doing a while back.
CEMIG would develop a project for subsidiary companies, we couldn't make the most of those opportunities. Now they're in our pipeline. Now we are ready to make investments and to guarantee the return on investment for our shareholder.
The financial return you've commented on, 11%-14%. Are you talking about what kind of implicit price when you sell energy?
Yeah. We're expecting an average discount on CEMIG distribution tariffs, considering the scenario is 16% average discount. We'll have to look at degradation, reinvestment CapEx, replacement, which are the variables we consider for major plants.
For your two projects for Esperança and Jusante, how much of them have been contracted? You talked about longer periods and self-production model. Could you give us an idea of price?
100% contracted right from the start. That is what made their development possible. Dimas is going to talk about the amounts during his presentation.
As of September, we will be adding energy to those consumers. We'll also have high production for lease at these plants.
You mentioned floating distributed generation at your plants. You'd need to extend the concession at some conferences. The generation CapEx you've disclosed, how much of that are you considering in your estimates? How far have you discussed it with the ministries in terms of extending the concession fee?
We hope it's very similar to what Copel has done. I took part in the process. Our assumption is very similar to that of Copel. I think those are the closest to reality at the moment. The extension of the concession fee will influence the associated plant. We'll need that concession extend.
The floating ones will be at 13.8 or 138 of the distribution company, we don't have a direct relationship with the concession. We have authorization to use the water reflection in the plants, it's not directly connected to the concession. Within that amount, I couldn't tell you what the exact figure will be for the concession fees, within that amount, there is the 49% renewal for the three plants that will mature soon. We sent the letter in February, as Reynaldo Passanezi Filho showed you, we are negotiating with the general meeting we can get the approval for the import letter in September and the Nova Ponte letter in November. We will mention our intention to renew by selling 51% of controlling shares of those plants.
Once again, thank you so much, Thadeu for your presentation.
Thank you. Thanks. Now we will hear from Dimas Costa, Chief Trading Officer, talk about one of the hottest topics at Brazilian and international countries, which is CEMIG's trading strategy, where it has been very successful.
Good afternoon. I don't have many slides. I shared this with you in our last meeting, I just wanted to give you an update. What is CEMIG's trading mission? Consolidation. We have roughly 15% of the market traded with end consumers. The second place has about 11%. We will be maintaining that leadership position with a 12% growth a year. We should have 4.4 GW by the end of 2033, according to our strategy. The free market is practically fully consolidated in the A1, A2, and A3 group, and practically all of A4.
The main issue is the retail market. We have competitive prices. I will be sharing CEMIG's strategy with you, which has been very successful. We were in a short position for the 3 years, 2023, 2024, and 2025, and we will continue with the same strategy. Of course, there are challenges ahead. Risk management. Everything we're doing follows a risk management policy. We also heard about digital channels. I will be saying in a minute that we are coming to a border, and it will depend on robust IT systems. I'll talk about some products and marketing. You can visit our website, and you will see that we have institute for marketing. Right now, with this new retail frontier, we need to have results-oriented marketing like any other retailer.
Before I go into my presentation, I just wanted to say, like Thadeu said, we want to get to 2028 Generation business is buying a pipeline. There are some brownfield opportunities, some pipeline opportunities. I'll talk about what will happen in the next five years. This is where we are right now. This black outline is our current load, and this is the surplus. This is made up of hydraulic wind and solar energy, thermal energy, and energy. Subcontracted energy, which is surplus energy. We also have some reserve energy, and this is a structural surplus. For the next five years, we're hearing about two-digit prices. Why? Because the hydrologic situation is extremely favorable. El Niño is supposed to hit us, you will know that there will be a lot of rainfall in the south and the southeast.
It practically doesn't rain in the Northeast, we have wind generation. Last year it rained so much in the Northeast that generation decreased. Now the trend is for generation to be much higher. Let me just have a drink of water. Sorry. This is an optimistic scenario because we haven't included something here, which is Eletrobras thermal power plants. That adds up another 8 GW with a 70% inflexibility. 5-6 GW that would be part of this. We don't believe these thermal power plants will come into it because there's some saturation already. It wouldn't make sense to have that available because it would be about BRL 40 per MW if these thermal power plants come into it. This is what we have included in our load projections. There are 6 GW that have not been included.
We believe that out of these 6 GW, which have not been included, if half of them come into it, that's another 3 GW coming in and will make the overcontracting even worse. Thadeu mentioned what will happen by 2028. We believe that by 2030 we won't need any energy in the free market or the regulated market, unless it's compulsory by Eletrobras. Another element that isn't here but will come into it as of next is that this distributed generation isn't here. We have 16 GW each. That's removing the load. We say that this load here doesn't consider distributed generation. This load here will drop. Not only is it not growing in the country, we also have distributed generation removing load. This overcontracting trend should last until 2030-2032.
It's a huge challenge for us to all generation companies, distribution companies, low price scenario ahead and a challenge for the investments that will need to be made to meet market demands. This is our successful strategy. Comparing our portfolio management plus the price. This is our balance from January 2022 until now, our energy balance positions. Those were the funds we had for 2023, 2024 and 2025. We had a lot of energy in a high price scenario. And we h eard from our fund manager for the whole CEMIG group, MVE, which was surplus energy itself, was sold for BRL 240 million. It gave us BRL 200 million worth of net income. It comes in as part of the tariff because that's consumer energy. We were able to sell it, and the whole market believed that.
The board of directors and the executive board does give us autonomy considering the risk scenario. We can run up to 15% risk in our portfolio. We lost a lot of energy during this time. By the time we got to May and June, we were in the red. We made the most of the high prices here. It became stable. Wait for rainfall. There was some consolidation. Our hydrology department is fantastic, and they have been supporting us in our decision-making process, there was a managed appetite for risk, we decided to sell energy here. Prices dropped, as you can see here. BRL 69, BRL 79 million spot price next year, 2024. Close to BRL 126 million.
In a short position right now, there's no energy, and now we are making up for those losses in our balance. Things are becoming more stable, we're buying little by little. We sold energy for BRL 220-250, and we're buying it for BRL 70-90. It was the right strategy and brought great results to our trading area. I mentioned our strategy, and this is our strategy. We're trying to reconcile prices whilst at the same time trying to increase our margins. These are the prices for the period. Both sale prices and purchase prices. This is just for third-party energy, not GT. We sell the generation energy, but it's for a transfer price. This is reflecting sale prices and purchase prices. This is a result of our strategy.
Obviously, it's not all a bed of roses. There's quite a challenge. We had huge gains until 2025, but this is where the challenge comes in. You're all familiar with this chart which shows our market. This is the current market with a 2% growth forecast, so 2.644% by 2032. This is conventional energy, incentive-based energy. Remember I said there was a surplus supply, and we're in a short position. We still have this up to 118% by 2025. This is energy we still have. We haven't sold it, and this is a challenge because the gray bar is in our portfolio. The PPAs have been signed. This is third-party energy because this is our own energy, so there is a reduction. We're not considering the full renewal of plants.
Well, there are two challenges: selling this energy at competitive prices in a low price scenario. To recover this, because in order to meet these market demands, look at my deficit as of 2026, 500, 600, 1,000, 2,000. Obviously, if we can recover this, and if we renew the plants, there is the price scenario that Joe has shared with us, right? It's making greenfield projects unfeasible because we're not going to invest in greenfield projects that don't pay for our sale price. Petrobras alone has 8 GW being concluded here. There's 2 GW coming in every year, and they haven't got a market for it. Eletrobras hasn't got a market. Not just Eletrobras, there are other generation companies in the same situation. We do have an opportunity to buy energy.
Obviously, the margin will be smaller because these aren't our projects, but we will have an opportunity to buy energy and to resell it. Those are our two challenges, being able to sell this energy at a higher prices than we bought it for and to make up our balance through brownfield projects, greenfield projects or by buying energy. We are market leaders right now, and we can't lose that position. If you lose a client, it's very hard to get them back, and this is our priority, to keep this market. I like to say that this is like a retail market. This is the new frontier. When you talk to trading companies, they say, "I'm going to the retail market." Prices are flat. When you have low prices or high prices for a long time, it's very hard, and that's what trading companies are seeing.
It's like a retail market, but the retail market isn't that large. This is Brazil, 153,000 clients. Consumption is only 3,750. This is the potential market, and our portfolio is 4,400. We have 4,200 right now. This is the frontier. It's the whole market. Look at the average consumption. These retailers, if there's an 80% migration, as the public sector, irrigation, many of these clients can't migrate. Let's say 8% migration. That will give us 3,000 MW on average across Brazil, and 23,000 consumer units. CEMIG, out of the incentive-based market, we serve more than 20%, and in the free market, 1%. We can serve 20% of the Brazilian market by December 2028, 600 MW on average, including 24,000 consumer units.
The challenge then... I'm going to tell you what we're preparing to do. We are going to be the largest retail trader in the country. We're getting ready for that. We have created a department that will be focusing on this very personalized negotiation. For the free market, we have a dedicated department. We need to adapt products to clients because they have zero take or pay. You have to give them discounts. After they've matured, maybe they will look at something else. Right now, they want discounts because that's how they can have some gains. Also, customer service is being digitized and automated. We have a robust platform that is being implemented. We have a new portal. It's a new trading portal, not a conventional portal. Clients can go straight into our portal. They can become part of a loyalty program.
They can score points. They can win prizes. This is what you need to sell to the retail market. When you see Telecom, Cielo, all those retail networks, that's what you see. This is impersonal. It's a contract that goes into an IT system. There are different options, guaranteed discounts. This is all key if we want to win in this scenario, and we're getting ready for that. In the second half of the year, we're going to go in to this market full steam ahead, even though it's only for 2024, but we're gonna start working hard this year so that we can win over a large share of this market. This is retail, but I say it's cash and carry because this is CEMIG getting ready for this low voltage client migration, which includes commercial and industrial clients, and then rural residential clients.
In Minas alone, you're talking about nine million consumers. You can imagine the size of this market, the scale of this market. This is peanuts next to what's coming. When we're ready for it, bring it on. It doesn't matter. Hundreds of thousands, one million, we will have the platform, we will have the expertise to deal with it, and it's unavoidable. I think that as of 2030, 2032, there will be no last resort. I mean, these will be clients who cannot migrate. Luisa, you mentioned, I gave you some wrong information. I said that by the end of the year, we'll be migrating all of our contracts to the holding company. By the end of the year, it should be 80%. 100% is only next year, okay? This is a major change.
This is the inflection point at CEMIG when it comes to customer relations. The world will be changing, and we need to change with it. It's a whole different approach. This is how everything I'm telling you happened. In 2005, at CEMIG GT. Those of you who are older will remember this. During Dilma's term as minister, CEMIG didn't have a vertical structure, so we couldn't operate in the free market. In 2005, a pool was created where all generation companies had to add some energy to that pool, and then they would buy from that pool for the distribution company. In an unprecedented initiative, we migrated all of our clients to the free market with a 2% discount. We observed each of their individual agreements. Prices were renewed, but it was like a blue ocean.
We had over 60% of the free market at that time. Naturally, all the other generation companies saw the advantage of operating in the free market. In 2010-
... I don't know how we're going to manage incentive-based energy for each client. We created a 60% take or pay, and it could go up to 130%. That allowed us to have 30% of the market. Now that's gone down to 20% of the incentive-based energy market across Brazil. Over 50% of our energy is traded outside Minas. In 2018, actually 2015, when we lost our plants, it was practically impossible to buy third-party energy. In an unprecedented initiative, we had some energy auctions. We offered that to our free market, and that was copied by other generation companies, but it had never been before, and we were able to add about 500 MW to our reserves. That was extremely positive. Now we already have a retailer.
You know, I like to joke, we have a retailer. We have 50 to 60 clients, that's nothing compared to what's coming. We do have products for some of our retail clients. The main thing is the reduction of the average ticket. In January 2010, average consumption per unit was roughly 11 MW. That dropped because CEMIG started losing its plants. It started losing competitive edge. Other major players started their own production. CEMIG decided. We went from 300 clients in 2010 to we have about 4,000 now. We have smaller clients, but the profits are higher. You can see how our average load dropped and the number of clients increased. We went from 200, 300 to 4,000-4,200 right now.
The load went from 10 MW to about 500 kW on average. That's a result of trying to find a solution that would add more value to the company and meeting the needs for speed in the market. When I say we're going to be leaders in the retail market, we will be leaders because we have the expertise, and we are getting ready with a digital platform, marketing strategies, new products. That's it from me. Thank you so much, and I'll be happy to take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dimas, for your presentation. Please, you can stay here on the stage. Let's see if we have any questions for you. Raise your hand if you have a question, please.
Good afternoon. This is Victor from JP Morgan again. We saw Thadeu's presentation. It is very interesting, now yours as well, about the growth of CEMIG HPP. It's actually a DG and a self-production. These are two growth drivers that we contribute to have a surplus. They have created a problem for you, right? You have to sell this energy from the HPP.
Well, Boa Esperança and Jusante, actually, these were a client that had their contract due. For Boa Esperança, it was a single client who... It's a large client. Their contract was due, and we renewed part of that, and we already have that next entry for next year. For Jusante, we have seven SPEs. We developed this leasing system, and we worked with clients that have their contracts due. What is the strategy that we see here? We have some pipelines and Thadeu's checking for other pipelines because some of them won't be able to make it run. What we want to see in this growth is self-production. As I said, we have a market. I have some contracts due. We are trying to work on a price reduction because even for self-production, that's difficult.
They go out in the market and they have an average price for 10 years of conventional energy of BRL 100, BRL 110 or BRL 20, and when they, at a cost of BRL 60 of charges, and when you sell the energy for BRL 180 of self-production, it's almost breaking even with the production. Our challenge is to have a self-production at something feasible, aiming for cost reduction, CapEx reduction, so that we can look for clients that have a low load factor that can benefit from ICMS. Our engineering here with Thadeu's area is really to identify those clients that have contracts close to renewal and third-party contracts to spot the energy deficit. That's what we are looking for now, this filling in these energy, that self-production.
If we improve market conditions, we might have a PPA for our generating company and now sell it in the market. Right now.
We want to have self-production with this market, we have a lot of clients. They are our clients because they trust us. They want to have self-production with CEMIG. We have around 1,000 MW of clients with self-production. Of course, that we will have to balance that out, right? Growth via self-production is going to create a problem for the rest of the sector. I understand that in self-production, you can have a greater return. That's a return that will pay off your investment. At the same time, if you grow your self-production and the known distribution, that will make your life more difficult if you have generated capacity. If you don't do self-production, someone will do it. If you don't have G, someone will do it. I understand that.
You know, at the being a sector, you create a problem to yourself and for everyone that is working on that. You still have to sell energy from Emborcação. You still have to sell, common, the conventional energy. Growth via self-production is going to meet your demand. That's a problem. That's a circular reference. That's a sector problem. Not necessarily. It can be brownfield and it's self-production. It's a self-production that is energy sale. If I have the client as a self-producer, I am selling them energy in a way that is satisfactory to them because of the charges and all the taxes that can be avoided, and I'm selling it to the client, adding, higher margin than if I were to sell in the market. That's why our target is self-production.
We have up to 2032, Eletrobras power will be welcome. It's going to be affordable, very much affordable. I would like to understand your opinion about the possibility of reviewing the ceiling of the spot price and how the trading company is affected by that. That's a good question. What is your name?
I am Daniel from Banco Safra.
Well, you know that there was a legal movement to request a spot price of BRL 15, what is being discussed now with APIMEC, is a spot price. You understand that you don't You know, not every type. We don't consider a type. The calculation would be between BRL 48-BRL 53. This is a discussion about the spot price.
Eletrobras is just trying to include that, the improvement, the difference of 41, 48, 53 considering or not the hydrological risk. If you add improvements, investment into spot price, you know, it doesn't make sense. Some people talk about the spot price at BRL 2030. If that happens, we will see the whole industry breaking. If you can imagine distributing companies that are over-contracted buying energy at BRL 240, and if they have to sell it at BRL 7, it's already bad. You can imagine if it's BRL 2030. Also generators are over... Have this over the supply. It... I don't think it's we're gonna be at the minimum spot price, the spot price is something that is going to really give some support to the generating companies.
If spot price goes down to BRL 20, we're going to have to go into an, you know, commercial agreement with everyone in the sector, you know, to work something out. This is being discussed, and it's between BRL 48-BRL 53. That's what I hear in terms of the discussions. When do you think this discussion will be concluded? Market really wants that answer from the regulating agencies by the end of this semester. Otherwise, we do not have any predictability for next year. ANEEL also is working hard to define it in this first semester. We are open. I have an open position of 84 tagging 24. I'm not buying because if this comes down to BRL 20-BRL 30, the price is going to come down to BRL 40 or BRL 50.
If I buy now at BRL 80, BRL 76, it doesn't make any sense. You see that the market is just at a halt, waiting for the definition. Do you think it's going to be defined this year? Yes. This semester.
I am André from Santander. I have a question on the spot price. There are some discussions around the model update, the inclusion of other projects that are still being developed. Also a change in the risk aversion. What do you know? What do you have about that? What do you have for next year? How can this affect the sector?
This is what I just said. This is inevitable, it will all depend on the adopted model. Eletrobras wants to include improvement. They want this value to be up to BRL 88. There are different models being discussed. Now it will depend. We don't know if it's going to be an average of the plan. Things have not been defined. The model has not been defined. The model will direct the price.
The model will actually guide the minimum of the spot price because the model is going to define the minimum amount, right? Yes, exactly. You're right.
This is Bruno. Quick question. This price scenario worries you about the possibility of having more clients in the free market and also signing new contracts for you, CEMIG, and also as a systemic effect, other trading companies with weaker contracts, you know, to have a larger number of contracts in delinquency. You're about the low price, how that's going to affect the market and trading companies and the generating companies.
Well, for CEMIG , can you go back to the slide? This is it. Look at that.
For CEMIG, I usually say that these companies that are over-contracted, I talked about the Eletrobras, this is a very complicated situation because when we see 8 GW, that's a lot. I have a challenge here, which is to sell this, that I purchased more... At a higher price than what I would be selling now. I have an opportunity here. The strategy here is that I'm not going... I'm going to buy energy here cheaper than what I can sell for. You will tell me I have profitability sometimes of, you know, 15%. I won't be able to get it. If I get 5%, it's very good. At this price, you know, we have here an adjustment of inflation and everything. I have this challenge, but the retailer will allow me to increase my gain.
In the beginning, I will sell with a discount, and the discount is a price that is totally detached from this. When the market becomes mature after one or two years, that's then it's price. This is the challenge for us. What if you have too much energy north? The trading company, you know, same thing. An additional comment here. In 2026, we're talking, you know, for Brazil, this is an eternity. There are a number of things that might affect this, like hydrological behavior that might be different. These past 2 years were very atypical compared to the last 10 years. Some areas can have more hydrological impact. You talked about retailer trading, and that because of asymmetry in new market, it will allow you to have greater margins in the beginning.
The generation market has to deal with the challenge. We have to see how all of these variables will behave so that we can find, we can see how we are going to deal with all these variables when they perform until 2026. Yes, that is the commercial strategy where I have a 5-year contract. I know I'm eating up my margin. Here, I'm selling it at a lower price than the price that what I bought. It's not a lot. In average, I am able to still at 2026, 2027 with a good margin because I accumulated, you know, some extra here, 15%-20% because of the price that we purchased and so on. That's inevitable. If I stop selling, you know, in the market, you never stop, right? 2026, 2027, that's same thing.
This horizon here, 2026, 2027, I have an extra to maintain a good margin here. Looking forward, just like Radeel mentioned, maybe 2028, the price could be improved. Considering that scenario, you know what I said with El Niño, with rain and a number of PG plants, if we remove loads from D, it's trying to have an over-contracting in this period. If it rains too much, we will have that challenge. Now when I turn to group B, that's something different because I have a greater profitability. The costs are higher. That's the second frontier. Here I still have the retailer. That's why I said I have 20%, and that's what I told the board. I said 20%.
I would like to be talking about 30%-40% of the market next year because we are going to come in hard next semester with a strong campaign for retailing. Yes, we always have one or another client that purchased in 2008, and now they realize that prices low, their competitors ended the contract before and they say, "Oh, I have a financial economic imbalance." Yes, that happens. That three or four clients asked about that. Then, you know, I tell them, "Well, no one can say that, you know, not even in the pandemic. Some of 10 clients acclaimed an imbalance, financial and economic imbalancing, but, you know, that's what happens.
Dimas, I have two questions. In line with Bruno's question, do you have flexible contracts today, where clients are already letting go of that flexibility? Second question, when you do your extra over-contracting accounts, what do you have for the contracts for 2005 and 2006? Because these contracts are now 25%, 26%. These are the two questions.
As biomass, the TPPs that are not contracting will be uncontracted later on, and then they will have to work it out in the contracting layer? Because we see a lot of oversupply of energy, but we don't see what's coming out here. We already see all of these thermal. They leave in 2024, 2025. It's just... I'm not saying that they are out of the grid here, of the...
No, these are large units that came in, but the expensive one will be leaving in 2024, 2025. They are not included here. What you see here and TPP growth here is a different one. This scenario here is a scenario that I have out for today. Here we did not consider DGE. Next year it will be considered, this load will come down this way because it is removing load from the distributing companies, it's going to come down. Eletrobras, it is just the 700 that have been auctioned that are included here, the ones in the north. The other ones, 7,300 are not here. This is for 2030. What is included here is the increase of loading from Paraguay included here.
Now we bring in the load from Paraguay, and now they have the right to 50%, and there is a huge migration there. This is already included. We are going to see a supply reduction from Paraguay. Here we are not considering the phantom 6 GW because we have some question grants. That's not signed yet. This tends to be a worse scenario. Maybe we reach 27 with 18%. Here, this is the backwards. You know, the last question was the first one. About CEMIG. CEMIG has three types of contract. One for large clients that, you know, with zero flexibility. It could then vary from 80 to 110, but we have to sign a contract at 100%.
We have for incentive-based energy, which is from 60 to 130. With the pandemic, consumption came down, a client went to 60. That's in the contract, we have to follow it. For others, we have 100% of take, like retailers, a 60 client. For them, we have a discount captive market, and they have the 2 consumers. We have these 3 types of contracts in terms of flexibility.
My question is about perspective for GSF in the next few years, considering that we are going to have this oversupply and a lot of energy from it and penetrating demand, especially with the increase of 2022, year that is hydrologic, strong hydrological years. I would like to understand what is your overview for the next few years.
Oh, GSF. Well, if the trend would be to be GSF 1. Up to six, seven years ago, no one talked about GSF. When it rains, we have GSF 1. One other month is going to be one. As the hydraulic re-availability decreases, things change. Why it goes below one? Some generation is displacing a hydraulic one, HPPs. When it's not a PVP, it's the wind power plant. The wind is generating, when you switch the load, the wind and solar displace a load from HPPs. GSF strand will be 0.9. Of course, the trend will be 1.1. The trend in average is around 0.9 of GSF. You see that we have inverted energy.
We added energy to the plant, and we could run it to turbine, but we can't because of regulatory issues. It ended up being discarded, but it could be turbinated. These are the details of the model.
Thank you, Dimas. Thank you all very much. Now continuing our event, we will start the Q&A session. I would like to bring to the floor our CEO, Reynaldo Passanezi Filho, to all the authors that made the presentation in the morning and the afternoon. Also our customers, the Regulation and Legal Officer, Mario Pinto, Gasmig CEO, Gilberto Moura Valle Filho, and CEMIG SIM CEO, Danilo Gusmão Araújo. Please come to the stage and take your seats for our Q&A session.
We will start with a few questions to warm it up, and then I'll open the floor to anyone else that wants to take this opportunity. I would like to start the question with Gilberto, GASMIG CEO. Gilberto, please share with us, what is your opinion about the tariff review that CEMIG went through in 2022?
For the tariff review, last year's tariff review actually was the second cycle of tariff review that GASMIG went through, and it followed the same methodology of the first tariff cycle. With that, we had some stability in the market. The uncertainties and the idea of distinct methodologies, that appeared. Not only that, it followed the methodology of most of our gas concession companies in Brazil and which are based in the best practices.
I think it was very good in terms of methodology, stability, and best practices. It was done in a very transparent fashion. We had two public tenders led by the regulating agency, the State Secretariat of the Economic Development. The first one to define a regulatory WACC, the second for the required revenue. It was also interesting because it allowed to tap into all the investments we had done. We also included in that our future investments so that we can have economic balance for the concession contract in the next five years. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Gilberto. Now, moving on, I have a question to Danilo Gusmão. Danilo, you talked a lot about growth in CG.
They'll talk about the floating projects, and I would like to hear from you, how CEMIG is prepared to take interest to absorb all these projects company and the other projects that are ongoing as well. Can you give us an update on the development of those? When do you expect it to conclude these projects? Thank you.
Yes, good afternoon, everyone. CEMIG SIM is going to complete four years now in the middle of the year. During this period, we developed a process to access clients digitally. Today we have a scalable platform in our CRM, also using the same tool that is being developed to the retail market. With that, we have been able to bring in these clients to CEMIG SIM database. What is interesting is that the distributed generating market is a very much retailing market.
We have short-term contract. We really need to have a good relationship, a unique relationship so that client can Come in to the business and work with us. These clients are also very price sensitive because this is a standardized product. We have been working with competitive prices, competitive discounts, and this has been done with available growth. We now have 88 MW that are allocated. We expect that and we have projects that will be coming in to this year, next year that will double our capacity. Our sales machine is well oiled for that.
We expect that in the next 2 years when we have the fixed DG process that are being developed at CEMIG with another area of the company, that we will be able to access a much larger area in the market in Minas Gerais.
Thank you. Now changing tack. Let's talk to Marco Soligo. We talked about capital allocation, reinvesting in Minas, and part of that strategy is divestment. 2022 had many successes, and Reinaldo touched on many of them. Marco Soligo, what are the next divestment steps in 2023? What can we expect until the end of the year? What have you been doing in order to be able to conclude the sale of the other assets?
Good afternoon, everyone. Talk about divestments. You should talk less and do more. That's what we're doing. If you look at the management message in the report, there's a paragraph that makes it very clear. CEMIG will be divesting in assets where it has a minority stake or where it's a co-controller. We're working toward that end. Now, Carolina, whether we're going to be able to do all of it, part of it, I couldn't really tell you. Whether it's going to be through in M&As, divestment, you have to be patient, persistent, calm. You have to put yourself in other people's shoes, and that's what we're trying to do. We believe that's how we managed to do it in 2022. That's it. Rest assured that every day we are working very hard with my team to do that.
Thank you, Carolina. Thank you, Marco. Since we have Henrique Motta next to you, one of the main aspects are the legal questions. Last year, there was a change in the fee and of the ICMS. I'd like to hear from you, what are the changes taking place in the legal department so that we can be successful in our litigation?
Thank you, Carol. Yes, the example you mentioned about Petrobras and Copel is a great example of what it's like to live in Brazil in 2022. A lot of legal uncertainty, and that is reflected in the company's issue. There's a great deal of volatility, a lot more than we lawyers would like to see. We work towards achieving as much predictability as possible. There's a time for maturation in the mid to long term, but we try to bring as much legal certainty to investment as possible. We're going through a very special time. We're going through a turnaround at the company, and it's above anything else, much more cultural. Legal is just supporting the governance change to provide more transparency and so that it can be done carefully, as we heard from our CEO this morning.
As the Chairman of the Board, Márcio, said this morning, we want to have more independence, and that's what CEMIG is doing to prepare for years to come. These will be competitive years, and we have had some concrete results of the work we've been doing. There's a great deal of uncertainty, a lot of doubt. We can't ignore that, but things are looking up for CEMIG. CEMIG will become a lot more competitive. That is the way forward for CEMIG, whether it's state-owned or privately held. There are different scenarios that don't depend on the company, but more of a controlling shareholder. We still have to be competitive, no matter what the scenario. We will be ready for that based on what has happened owing to the State-Owned Company Act from 2016.
It helped state-owned companies to be more competitive, there's some new government rules that are more favorable and also different contracting rules to those we saw between 2016 that came from the 8,666 that standardized public hiring. With the new act, state-owned companies can hire employees according to their own needs. Those needs vary among different state-owned companies. The realities are very different. As of 2016, we have been able to hire people more quickly to meet the company's needs. Ozias, our Hiring and Logistics Officer, has been emphasizing how important that is. It's a profound management process. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes years. We still have some remaining contracts from the 8.666 Act time. This is ongoing work, and it has already brought concrete results.
There are regulatory issues and legal issues that we have to deal with, but it's the way forward for the company to become more competitive, and that is what has been guiding us. Legal has always been providing support in any legal matters, litigation, legal issues that will arise from a transformation process. That's business as usual. It's our job to provide support to the different areas so that they can be managed.
Henrique, I have a question for you. We have all the directors and officers here on stage, but there are also other people working on continuous improvement at the company. One of the key points to deliver the investment plan, especially at the distribution company, is hiring suppliers. My question is to you, Ozias, how do you see that challenge as this?
What changes have been made to the company that a lot of the investments that are being made, I mean, contracts have been signed already, that Marney can deliver a robust investment plan?
Good afternoon. Thank you for the question, Carolina. Not just Marney, but also Thadeu and all the other officers. Otherwise, Thadeu will get jealous. I'm just joking. Thadeu contracted BRL 800 million for Esperança and Jusante, right? We did implement some changes with the team supported by management. We changed our supply chain. We have changed our hiring contracts, the main ones applied to every distribution and generation from alternative sources. In making those changes, I mean, they had to be made quickly. It's almost like changing a tire while the car is moving.
The investment plan was being implemented, BRL 14 billion in 2022 worth of contracts, whereas in 2019 we were talking about BRL 2.5 billion, BRL 3 billion, and now it's BRL 14 billion. It's been a revolution that had to take place while the investment plan was being implemented. We've had the support from the board represented by Márcio, the executive board represented by Reynaldo Passanezi Filho. Contracting was important, but logistics is even more important. Can you imagine distributing all that material, mobilizing the teams to provide that services at the distribution company, generation company, and transmission company?
Thank you. We have one more question to our HR director, Hudson. One of the main topics we discussed at these conferences are the next cost reduction. From there is post-retirement. We've already worked on life insurance, post-retirement life insurance, and then on the health care plan. Could you tell us how you see the challenge of post-retirement challenge? What else can we expect on the subject? Also, could you talk about the pension fund, post-retirement pension fund?
Thank you, Carolina. Post-retirement is one of our areas of turnaround at CEMIG. We're talking about BRL billions, it's material, it requires complex solutions. You cannot decide on things like that quickly. A lot of people are involved. There's a legal framework. Negotiations are required. You also need technical workarounds, good consultants to provide us with support. Many things need to be done. We have been working on it for a long time. We're working on three main fronts. First one was life insurance. We've concluded that we no longer have life insurance post-retirement for people who no longer work for the company. The healthcare plan, which is managed for us by CEMIG, with me. We've launched the new healthcare plan, which is paid for by the company for actively working employees.
When they retire, that cost is then transferred to employees and no longer paid for by the company. We had some people who have come on board voluntarily, and we have a number of other people who will be joining us soon. Also under the healthcare plan from the legal point of view and negotiations point of view, we are negotiating with unions, and we're also negotiating with retirees. The third front, our pension fund that's managed by Forluz, the main one that has most of the impact is Plan A. Most people have already retired. They're not actively working anymore. It's a defined benefits plan, and we're getting organized with Forluz. We have put proposal forward, which is being analyzed by Previc.
Before the end of the year, we will be offering retirees possibility to migrate with some benefits to migrate to a financially based plan. The more people migrate to that, the bigger our post-retirement reduction will be. As I said, they require complex solutions. It doesn't happen overnight, but we are on the right track.
Thank you, Hudson. Before we move on to the Q&A session, and we ask questions from the audience, one of the main points that had results in the fourth quarter was the pressure on costs because of preventive maintenance expenses and IT expenses. Since we have our IT director here with us, can you tell us about the benefits of these IT investments at CEMIG, please?
Good afternoon, everyone. We have been revising our strategic plan, as we heard throughout today.
Based on that, we are investing in digitizing the company on many fronts. I think the main one is a business opportunity to establish a 10-year partnership with IBM to digitize our customer relations. We are using AI in our communication channels. We have started many communication channels with our clients. We have different AIs being used on WhatsApp, on the telephone, apps such as WhatsApp. We also have an opportunity to start ahead because as we've heard in the retail market, if you have data consumption and intelligence, we can use that to provide offers that will more competitive edge through value-added products. We're also working on a platform. CEMIG has some in-house developed product. We're migrating to a market platform, and the main thing of this transformation is the fact that we are updating the systems that operate the distribution company electric network.
We heard this morning about ADMS. We can sum it up by saying by managing electrons. We have injection, we have the inversion of the power flow. To provide high quality service and to provide network reliability and more efficiency, which is tech reliability, which is a requirement by the regulatory agency. We're also preparing to deal with large data volumes. We talked about smart meters collecting new data much more quickly than conventional meters. That's a very rich source of information that will allow us to sell our services much better. We're migrating to a market platform, dealing with large data volumes, digitizing access to information by clients and by CEMIG, and making heavy investments in cybersecurity as well. I think in 2020, you almost saw that it was quite difficult for the power industry.
There were many attacks, there was a need to invest in protecting data owing to legal requirements, but also against cybersecurity's hacker attacks and so on. We are revisiting our systems architecture and taking everything to the cloud to have more resilience, lower operating costs. We know that architecture incurs in operating costs CapEx needs to be turned into OpEx, so we need to be able to use these resources more intelligently so that we can be within the regulatory OpEx limits forever. It's a strong investment cycle, in telecom also we are migrating to an automated network. Reconnectors, tele service and support generation and distribution services, and it should be as automated as possible. Heavy investment which help our ramp up in distribution, trading, and generation.
Now we're open for questions. João Pimentel from BTG, you've raised your hand. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My first question. I have two. The first one is to Marcio. Could you talk a bit more about Taesa's divestment? CEMIG has been talking about that divestment for a long time, but obviously CEMIG's situation has improved over time, especially considering leverage. What is the priority behind that divestment, considering the pool of potential divestment the company has looking forward? There will be tax on capital. Will it be fiscally advantageous to sell Taesa right now? Is this still on your plans or is it no longer a priority?
What's your name again? João, i f you look at note 16 in our report, you will see the booked value, and you can infer that there will be capital gains from selling that asset. That divestment is as relevant as any other in our portfolio. That's all I can say.
We're trying to divest of that one like we are all others. That's all I can say. You work for a bank, so you know what it's like. About the tax credit. In the event of selling this asset, there are also tax credits coming from the sale of Light. If you consider the tax rule, a third of those tax credits can come from the sale of Taesa, and then there's another two-thirds. According to tax rules, when you sell Taesa, it's as if those Light tax credits could be used to offset gains at CEMIG Holding. Since our holding company is currently generating earnings, we could use those credits down the line to offset the Light tax credits we have.
What I mean is, if Taesa is sold, they would allow us to offset a third of Light credits. At the same time, those two-thirds of Light credits that cannot be offset right now because they are related to the sale of assets. We can change the status of that. We can offset that through two properties. What I'm trying to say is that Taesa's sale is very positive in terms of offsetting credit, tax credits. We can't do it right now. It will allow us to offset other tax credits that are on our balance sheet continuous to come. It would help us in terms of tax efficiency and operating efficiency.
I have one more question to Danilo, please. About DG. You talked about DG returns, not in terms of traditional DG. We were talking about that at lunchtime. How do you see the DG return for DGs that fit within the new rule?
It's close to 12%, 14% right now, deleverage from what we're seeing.
Who would fit in the new rule to capture TUSD over time? How do you see the price assumptions, and what kind of returns do you see on these new projects?
We're getting closer to the industry's profitability. DG's profitability in the power industry outlier. We're talking about 14% on average. For these projects, after this new act that was passed on January 7th, we've gone back to one digit and a low digit. We have quite a large portfolio with our project in GT with the previous act, we're exploring that pipeline right now. We couldn't run an actual simulation because we haven't issued any expert reports after the act was passed.
We believe returns will revolve around one digit low or medium low digit. Current stock levels of that DG plus the discount through to 45, not the new ones. I think that that inventory, when the market is deregulated in 2026, for industrial and commercial client in Group B, that will be extinct, the DG. The other one you asked about isn't competitive enough with retailers. The stock will be finished, and I think retailers will start in 28 because that DG will be unbeatable in 26 if current captive market prices are kept. DG will completely take the Brazilian market, but then that would be over. The other one isn't competitive. The other one is the rooftop. To sell to third parties. The portfolio we showed you with the 540 challenge has been included in the previous also.
In our strategic plan, we have ensured profitability for the projects before that act.
Do we have any further questions?
Still on DG. Rooftop is what has grown the most in Brazil. It's a question mark in the industry. What's that gonna be like moving forward after the transition? I know that this has started not too long ago. In January and February, there's still some effect in terms of new connections. How do you see that?
You mean in terms of requests? Requests for new connections. New rooftop connections within the rule. Well, thankfully, there's still some effects. Long may they last, because until January sixth, there was a ramp-up, and there were many requests, actually an overload of requests. Of course, many of them didn't happen because of high costs, but the request after January sixth dropped by 80%.
We're only getting 20% coming from rooftop. I don't think rooftop will continue. Well, I think rooftop will continue because there is an advantage. Also, we have the seller shares, right? There's an example of that right here. Rooftop, it's highest probably, which is local self-consumption. Local self-consumption, if sized properly, won't be affected by the new rule because it won't be exporting surplus energy at the distribution company, so it's not subject to the foolish rule. The high local self-consumption, the best scenario is low load, and then you will be exempt from the regulation. You got me. 2022 was a very different year because in the last 40 days, there was a ramp-up, as I mentioned. We couldn't consider that as the average. Until January 6th, things were one way, then they changed.
As I said, we only have 20% of the requests we had in the previous period without a ramp-up effect. Rooftop? You can't hear the question because it's not being asked in the microphone. Yes. Rooftop will resume because it does have its advantages. There's no point in hiding that. We changed our strategy, so we can keep up with that. Remote isn't as advantageous as it used to be. Just double-checking. That auto single digit. The return you mentioned, that's for non-local. That's for remote, right? How much for local? What kind of level are we talking about? We don't operate local. We operate a mini DG up to 5 MW remote. That's what we call subscription energy. That's our business. We don't fund local self-consumption. Would it make sense to imagine it's a positive return because you think it's going to continue? Yes.
It's more exempt from the new rules when compared to remote, especially if there's no surplus energy to go through the distribution network.
To generate future credits. That's not our core business.
Any other questions? No questions? I would like to thank you very much for asking your questions and making your comments. We are now towards the end of our meeting, but I would like to invite our CFO and IR Officer, Leonardo George de Magalhães, for the final remarks.
Thank you, Carol. Well, just a quick summary, like 30 seconds. I'm thinking about all of us here gathered. Ronaldo started as CEO in January of 2020. After two months, the pandemic started, and our discussions with the market that year were very much focused on how the company would deal with the pandemic and its operations. We were concerned about collection, our daily cash follow-up. In the initial days, our collection dropped because the lottery places were closed. We didn't know how we were going to tackle the latency. A different reality from what we had gone through. After 2020, the company was able to go over that most difficult moment in the pandemic. In 2021, we talked about our strategic planning, and we published it.
We talked about our vision for the future of the company in the long term. We were able to bring to you a bold investment plan, bolder than what we had in the prior periods. In the financial area, how we are going to tackle bonds, the leverage divestment. After the 2 years in our event of 2022, we were going to hold the CEMIG Day, by the end of 2022. We postponed it up to now 2023 after the review of our strategic planning. This strategy execution that we had since 2021, the company was able to deliver several of its proposals, several of its promises and objectives that were in the strategic planning that we designed in 2021.
We were able to divest in most of the assets that we understood that were no longer core in the company. We increased significantly investments in Minas Gerais, especially in distribution. For instance, we invested almost BRL 3 billion by the end of 2022 in investments compared to investments close to BRL 1 billion in prior years. We are very much motivated for the future. As Márcio mentioned when he was considered for the chairman of CEMIG, he said that being a chairman of a state-owned company, that is not something that really would motivate him. You see that now he is really thinking about the good things that we can do for the company in the next few years. He's very much excited about it.
Reynaldo showed everything, you know, how the company changed, how the company was before, and how the company is now in all aspects in terms of level of investment, financial health, customer service, the quality of the company, all the rating agencies, classifications, everything that shows what we have been doing and all the positive results across all these postings in the past few years. All of that added to the other presentations from our officers. You can see that all of them were very much and are very much motivated about our actions and their actions in the company. We thank you all the opportunity for being here with us. This accountability, an obligation that we have with the market. Our IR area is available to you at any time.
We can take any questions that you might have about our strategies or any other questions that we might not have been able to answer. Finally, we would like to thank Carol and the IR team for organizing this event. It's very nice to have this, these in-person events once again, right?
I was gonna say that the IR team is available 24/7, that's not very nice, right? Well, I was talking to Andrea at 6:30 A.M. this morning. Yes, it is literally 24/7. Thank you very much. It was very nice to have you in person. I hope that at our next CEMIG Day, we can talk with you again and to bring to you new deliveries of the company. This is from now on, and we'll be considering our strategic planning, and we will always be considering what we can add value for our shareholders. Thank you very much. I would like to thank you all for being here with us. I would like to thank my team. This event wouldn't be successful if I didn't have the help of one of our team members.
We are going to end with a typical, coffee break outside. Typical from Minas Gerais. Thank you all very much, and we hope to see you again in a new investors meeting. I hope you all have a nice afternoon. For those of you that will go back to your accounts, have a nice trip back. Thank you.