Good morning to everyone. Welcome to the presentation of the results of the Q1 of CPFL Energy. My name is Carlos Lin. I'm the Director of Investor Relations of the group. And today, I'm going to conduct all the dynamics of our event.
Today, we have Gustavo Schiele, President of CPFL Energia Mr. Pan, Director, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations and the other executives of the company. I reinforce that due to the pandemic, everyone is still connected from their homes. Therefore, we apologize if there's any failure of connection, and we reinforce that we will be working hard to reestablish communication as soon as possible. All the presentations will be done in Portuguese with simultaneous translation to English.
All you have to do click on the button, Interpretation, which is on the bottom part of the screen. If you wish to see the presentation in English, this presentation is on the website, our eye of CPFL. I'd like to mention that after presentation of results, we will start our session of questions and answers. All of the questions will be done live. And to ask this, all you have to do is click on the button, raise hand.
And this is also on the bottom part of the platform. I remind you that this event is being recorded. I'm now going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella to start the presentation of results of the Q1. Good morning to everyone. Thank you very much for the participation in our call of results in the Q1 of 2021.
I'm going to move directly to the Slide 4, where we have some highlights. The first one is the growth in load in our concession. We can see this in more detail. I think we have some very positive signs here of recovery in our concessionaire. We have closed and a profit of EUR 961,000,000 and a growth of 6.3%.
And we have a net debt of EUR 15,100,000,000 and a leverage of EUR 2.03x the net debt EBITDA. We have investments. I think this is important to highlight. We have an ambitious plan of investments for the company for 2021. Our expectation is BRL 3,400,000,000 of investment for 2021, expressive growth, which was already record in investment last year.
So we have EUR 695,000,000, a growth of 36.3 percent in relation to 2020. We also had the tariff adjustment for CPFL Paulista of 8.95%, a very similar process to what took place with CPFL Santa Cruz in March. We had here some deferment for the reduction of the impact of tariffs. So we had the postponement of a parcel. This deferment does not mean any loss for the company, and this is just for the cash flow.
Another important data is the sustainability as our practices in our business and also the evolution of our commitments, our public commitments in this area. Another important event that we've had is the Alesda operation, which is our fintech. And we've been preparing the entry of this Alesta. We've had these operations of the Central Bank, and we started the operations in the pilot model with CPFL Piratinga with the expectation a high expectation in relation to potential business for our fintechs during the next few years, another important number. We reached 10,000,000 clients, and we've noticed that the market continues its organic growth.
So we've reached 10,000,000 clients in the month of March 2021. Well, let's move on to the next slide. Here, we have the composition of tariffs for CPFL Paulista along negotiation with the agency, not only CPFL, but all the distributors that have had a tariff adjustment. They've been going through the same discussion. We put a benefit here of all the agents of the sector, from clients, the regulators and also the companies themselves.
I think when we think of alternatives to avoid a very high adjustment now during the pandemic, a time where we have pressure of default clients. So I think we've had a lot of success in this negotiation. What we can see here is that the largest parcel of this tariff deferment comes from effective reductions of costs, so with no impact in the cash flow of the company. So these readjustments of the transmitters, we anticipated this and the reactive energy already contracted for the next this is just anticipating what was going to take place with Alice in 2023, the reversal of the credits, a Taipu credits here also with no economical or financial impact. And we are able to reduce the expenses.
So no impact on the cash flow and the deferment of Parcel B, which will be corrected in 2022. So we have this potential adjustment of 1658 percent, and we go to the final effect to the consumer of 8.95 slide. Well, going here to energy sales, growth of 2.6%. In sales, 2.5%. If we look at the right side of the screen, we see this growth per class.
And a highlight here in the industrial area, where we have an expressive growth of 7.7%, followed by residential with 4.6%, percent also doing very well and the commercial class here still suffering the effects of the pandemic. And with some recovery. We see that this negative percentage is less than the previous quarters. I'd also like to highlight the case of the industry. You can see here on the pizza chart on the left slide below, we see here that, in general, we have a positive performance in all the main segments of business of our industrial class.
So we can see here a general recovery of all business segments. This is very positive. It's an outlier of a specific area, but the industry in general. And I believe this is very important. When we separate here the impacts in the residential class, we see that the effect temperature, calendar, the distributed energy, we see that the recovery, in fact, of residences is even higher.
And due to macroeconomy and revenue, etcetera, we have a recovery of 7.8%. So I think these are good messages, good news in relation to the growth of the consumption of energy, very positive. And this is aligned with what we had in the Q4. And of course, it's still a year of a lot of uncertainty, and we hope that we will overcome this pandemic period, and we will have a recovery of the market. So with no doubt, it is a very positive beginning of the year.
Let's move to the next slide. Now let's talk about delinquency. I think this is another focus and attention for the company ever since the beginning. Here we have good results of delinquency, 0.67, 0.1 better than the Q1 of 2020 and a bit lower than our historic average. I think, again, the market is reacting well, and we're able to deliver good delinquency, a lot of concern for the months here in the Q2 of 2021.
We have felt pressure, and we have prepared the company with different actions, billing, etcetera, but we see that there is a trend of an increase of the delinquents, especially the residential clients, which is pressuring this delinquency. As I said, it's a year of a lot of uncertainty, a lot of volatility. So we have always to pay attention at such types of movements. And in April, we noticed that there's a trend of increasing the delinquency. So our main tool, we have high levels of here over 200,000 cuts per month.
And the expectation is that we will increase these power cuts so that we can control the spend of the increase of delinquency short term. In terms of losses, these are stable energy losses. These are we've had some challenges to control these losses. I think the good news is that it's not increasing. We've had some difficulty in bringing these losses to a stable level.
So all the instruments that we have, especially a growth of 6% in terms of compared to 2020, we also had a positive effect of here with 19%. But this is also this is the recovered energy, but this is something that concerns and is an object of a lot of tension in the company. About generation, I think here we can see a drop of the PLD in the Q1 of 2020. For sure, the trend is different, especially for the end of the second quarter. And the Q2 of 2020, we've gone through unfavorable times from January to April.
It's the 4th worst period in hydrology in the last 91 years. So this starts to pressure the PLD. So we have a perspective of high PLD for the next month. The GSF, more or less, going in the same direction with this expectation of a drier period. And the expectation is that this GSF has a trend to increase in the next month.
We have different scenarios about the flow. Basically, it talks with the main regime. We've come from a negative number in 2020, a bit better in the south of the country, different to the PCHs, which are basically in the southeast of the country where we have worse hydrology. Well, what about wind? This is one of the highlights of it's a growth of 68.4 percent in the wind generation.
And here, we have 2 large impacts. The first one of them comes from the availability with a growth of 0.9, and we've had a trend of increasing the availability ever since last year, especially in our wind farms, and this has brought better performance in generation. We also have a very positive performance in wind. Last year was bad, was a low performance of winds, and we've had an expressive growth. Last year was 58%, and now we have already reached 92%.
So this has been the trend beyond the Q1. This number is very close to P50, and it brings a positive perspective for wind generation, not only for the Q1 but also in general. Let's move to the next slide. Well, now I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Pan for him to comment the results.
Thank you, Gustavo. Good morning to everyone. This slide, the EBITDA in this quarter has been almost 2,000,000,000, an increase of 15.9%. The distribution segment has now had a good result, again, with an increase of 11%. The largest variation was the Finance Act assets of the concession, which had an increase of BRL 130,000,000 due to the high IPCA.
In the Q1 last year, the IPCA was 1.62 percent and this year was 2.48%. Another important effect was the higher market game and the tariff, 2,000,000, mainly due to the increase of tariffs that we've had in the readjustments in 2020. We also had a gain of EUR 7,000,000 euros referring to the BRR of CPFL Santa Cruz. In CPFL Santa Cruz, we decided to revert the gain relation to the peace confings over the ICAMS tax. This reversion was carried out due to the positioning of the technical area of Enel on the theme of public hearing, which is ongoing, about the credits, which should be total.
But it's important to highlight that the agency director is still going to decide about this topic, and the company is still continuing with the understanding that the reimbursement to the consumers is limited to a time frame of 10 years. In the pension plan, we've had an increase of EUR 11,000,000. The PMSO and other effects on the EBITDA all totaled €12,000,000 In generation, EBITDA was of €650 million, an increase of 21.4%. The main effect was a higher energy generation in our wind farms with which Gustavo has just mentioned with EUR 117 1,000,000. Another positive effect was the update of the contract prices to EUR 62,000,000.
On the other hand, we had some negative impacts in the period. The seasonality of the PCH contracts, negative EUR 34,000,000 due to a lower allocation of energy. This should be compensated in the next quarters. A high of UBP due to a higher IGP €10,000,000 GSF, €7,000,000 depreciation tax change in EPASA assets to adequate to the end of the contract, EUR 6,000,000 among other effects. The segment of trading service and others had an increase of 41,000,000.
Trading improved its results in 17,000,000 due to higher prices in the service segment, more than 17,000,000 CPFL Services and CPL Efficiency once more are highlights. Now the next slide, we show the performance of the net profit, which was BRL 961,000,000 during the period, an increase of BRL 6.3 in relation to the last year. In the financial results, we had a decrease of 242,000,000 due to the gain of MTM, which we had in the Q1 of last year. On the other hand, we had a gain of EUR 40,000,000 with increases in fines due to payment delays of energy bills due to the higher IGPM. And the expenses with the net debt had a reduction of EUR 15,000,000, which are explained by the decrease of the Seliki and by the cost reduction of the average cost reduction of the debt.
The depreciation varied in EUR 30 3,000,000 and the taxes had a positive impact of 26,000,000. Let's move to the next slide. Now we're on Slide 11, where we have the debts of the company. The first chart, the net debt is a total of EUR 15,100,000,000 EBITDA, EUR 7,400,000,000 and the leverage measured by the net debt over EBITDA was of 2.03 times. On the debt profile, on the chart beside, we have the cost of the debt, real and nominal.
An increase in the first quarter is due mainly to the IPCA variation leak in its historical minimum and by inflation, which is over 4%. In the composition of the gross debt, we see that a higher exposure is indexed to the CDI with 75%. The cash at the end of the first quarter was close to 4,600,000,000 with a coverage rate of 0.76 times the short term amortizations. The average period of amortization is 2.44 years. Now let's move on to the Slide number 12.
Here, we have the CapEx. During this period, we carried out an investment of BRL 695,000,000. Gustavo has already mentioned this amount, an increase of 36 0.3% in relation to the same period last year. In division per segment, we had: in distribution, a total invested of EUR 597,000,000 destined to modernization and maintenance for generation and transmission. We've had EUR 44,000,000 to continue the Gameleira and Cherubim projects and EUR 38,000,000 for the Marakanau, Su-1 and Su-two projects of transmission projects.
And for the Trading and Services segment, we destined EUR 16,000,000. So that's what I had to say. Thank you very much. And now I give back the floor to Mr. Gustavo Israel.
Thank you, Mr. Pan. Well, to I want to go a little bit more into detail about the sustainability and what we've been doing. So I think the first initiative that we have here is that we're increasing the renovated number of units. This is totally linked to ESG.
This is part of our 4th commitment for the sustainability plan, almost 10,000 units. Only in just in the Q1, this activity has brought large relevance for our business of distribution, renovating our transformers, about the reverse chain, which is part of our sustainability, is that we started this in the South. We had already this activity in the state of Sao Paulo. So the idea is to expand these activities, And we now began with huge expectations. We have all over 6 tons being recycled and in a reverse chain.
And the idea is to do the same thing. And for all the benefits of our environment, we also have generation of new jobs in the company with these activities. So once more, there are 15 commitments. What we have here are very clear plans for each one of the terms that are linked to our business. These are some examples of the 5th and the 6th 4th and 5th commitment of the sustainability plan with these refurbishments, reverse chain.
And this is part of our core business here in CPFL. So I believe that these were the main information. And now we are open for questions and answers. Thank you, Gustavo. Thank you, Pan, for your presentation.
So we'll now open the questions and answers, and the questions will come in, in their order. Reinforcing that these questions will be made live. All you have to do is click on the button, raise your hand. It's a button that is below on the platform. So we're going to follow the order here.
Well, we have here some questions. The first question is from Rafael Nagorno from Credit Suisse. Good morning, Rafael. Thank you for your participation. You can ask your question.
Thank you, Carlos. Thank you for the presentation. I would like to know about capital allocation and the leveraging of the company. I'd like to see how are you looking at the return comparison as these transmission projects and which one of them are more competitive right now? And besides transmission, other activities of the group, what are the expectations?
And what would be the steps for this negotiation to have results? Thank you for your question. Well, allocation of capital, what we've seen here, what we've seen is a series of opportunities in transmission. And as you said, we have the perspective we had with it tenders, and I think these expectations are lower than last year, but some assets will be on the market. So that's what we've been seeing.
And I think in both cases, what we observe is high competition, a lot of people, a lot of competition, a lot of players wanting to invest in transmission, whether it be through bidding processes, but this is being pressuring. We're living through an interest rate scenario with low interest rates. And in general, we have this perspective of low interest rates, which will probably last for another year or 2. And this ends up by reflecting in investments. It's important to remember that we're talking about assets with maturation of long term concessions of 20, 30 years and the scenario that we expect of real interest rates in Brazil can only can has to look at this perspective at an even longer term than this.
So this has brought us a challenge of growth with this perspective of low interest rates and also the market low market return for this type of asset, we continue. Of course, the environment short term also affects our perspective of return, but it is important to keep up the methodology that long term investments should be evaluated long term. So that's what we've been doing. And we have we see a lot of competition in this modality of investment. Now we don't have any signaling or any news from what we've been saying to the market.
I think these are decisions of the shareholders. And what we always say is that if we have any movement, any new movement, all the procedures and practices will be according to the norms and the regulations of CVM of the market and the respect that CPFL has had for the market, this respect will be maintained. So this is a process that has been happening in the same basis. So a follow on, we also had this. So we're going to follow all the government's rules, transparency, fairness with the market so that we can have this operation.
It will not be different. But once more, I don't have any signaling that this operation will be happening at all. If we have any news, we will communicate. Now let's move to the second, Marcelo Sa from Itau. Thank you for your participation.
You can ask your question. Thank you. I have two questions. I think the first one would be for you to comment about the implications of the SCF decision, the high court decisions of the exclusion of the calculus base of the PISCONFINS, from what we've understood in the case of distributors in general that we follow, everyone went to court way back. So if you went to court before 2017, you'd have access to this credit.
And the credit that you've recognized or that you're going to recognize, it will be guaranteed with this decision of the high courts. And another point, which I think was important in this decision, is how to quantify this credit. I think this is a discussion about the value effectively paid and what was determined, which is over the status. So in this magnitude, I think that you I would like you to compare the numbers that you've put in the gains. Is paid based on the value effectively paid?
Or just for us to have an idea of the dimension of what could change with this High Court decision? Thank you. Good morning. Well, this decision, I think, is aligned with our expectation. It's basically what we imagine.
So as you said, the most important aspect is the definition of how to calculate the process that still haven't been decided and how to calculate the ICMS credit. So this is the value that is on the invoices and not effectively paid. So it's important to take into consideration some process already have crystallized decision in these different processes. So it won't change. But this will guide the next processes, and they will quickly converge to a final decision.
So the way that we calculated is this was calculated exactly as we imagined. And the next ones is you will be converging towards the decision of the high courts where you have these values. So in these processes that you've already that have already been calculated, this credit has was calculated based on the value effectively paid. You wouldn't have additional recognition of credit. It would be the value that was already determined, and nothing would change.
What's being discussed is what was not yet judged, and this then will be done based on the value of the invoice and not on the value effectively paid. Yes. They so there wouldn't be any change, but this process has changed. So it has to be calculated according to what they've what and the next ones will be done according to this criteria. So my question is that some people say that this total value would be EUR 250,000,000,000.
And in this study, the value effectively paid and not the value determined on the invoice. But if it's not going to change, perhaps the increase on the fiscal side ends up by being lower than what people think because of what is going to happen in the future. Yes, you can't change what has already been ended and been crystallized. You're talking about the whole country. But in any case, what was this is what was decided yesterday by the Supreme Court.
Do you have any estimate of how much this could impact the actions ongoing actions that you have that haven't been concluded? Is this increased 10%, twenty percent? Is there any estimate made by the company? No. We don't have a clear vision.
It will be calculated according. Now we have a more precise understanding coming from the high courts, but it would be a higher value depending on this. So it would be higher than the value effectively paid, then the value would be a bit lower. Okay. That makes it clear.
Thank you. Israel, I think my last question is about the privatization process of Eletrobras. So this was published. And after there was a report that was circulated and in this report, it mentions the possibility of ANEEL. When you have a large market share of the free market, it could be obliged to participate in a regular bidding process.
I don't know how you see this. Is this something that concerns the sector? If you think this is something that will be modified? How is the sector articulating itself to avoid this becomes a large regulatory risk in the future. I'm Ricardo Motoye.
Thank you for your question. We have followed the issue of the privatization of Eletrobras. We believe it makes sense for the country, and we have been looking at the concentration of generation in the hands of 1 only player, one sole player. They have a large parcel of the country's generation. So this is something that we've been looking at with care to see what the impact of this concentration is for sure in relation to the topic that you're talking about.
We have to look at this very carefully. So this is not a regulatory risk, as you mentioned, but it is a point that we've been following very carefully a long time. Thank you. Thank you very much, folks. That's it.
Thank you, Marcelo for the question. We're now going to move on to the next question we have from William from Santander Bank. Good morning, William. Thank you for your participation. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, Cedino. It's Andre. Sorry, I came I'm on Zoom with another name. I'm going to ask 2 questions, which are very much connected with the topics of Saab. These are 2 questions I have.
The first question is, it would be in relation to the Peace Confins taxes. I'd like to know what is your expectation and how the process can evolve, the legal process, due to this law that they're working on to revert this 100% to consumers. This has already advanced in the government. And the second question I have is about the privatization of Eletrobras. There's another interesting point, which is the ProINFA renovation contract.
We'd like to hear if you have any vision about this possibility, how you see this? Would this be compulsory? And how much we could be talking about in relation to potential? Basically, that's my question. Good morning.
About the PIS Confins, the we understand that the values over 10 years will not be given back to the consumers. So SEPEPE ELLI has would have the right to this amount. And now it's not a law. It's an interpretation that all this amount would be transferred to the tariffs. It seems to me, as from a public hearing, the decision taken by Anel, the natural consequence is that there will be a dispute about this, and it could even go to court.
So basically, we will we could differ from this idea and there would be some legal actions. So we think that these amounts obviously should be for the distributors. That's how we understand it. If there's any dispute, this is obviously something that can happen. I hope I answered your question.
Gustavo, I'd like to follow-up here in relation to this question. My question is, if the Congress approves a law that says the consumer can the company continue disputing this fact or not? Well, a law that says that you're going to transfer this to the consumer, this would be from now on, not a retractive law. So if there's an NEL decision, then this legal dispute will be different. It doesn't seem reasonable that a law goes back to a right, a legal right that already exists in the past.
So it's already an old rule. So the reason that we understand that we have the right to this is prior to this. So to make a new law to transfer this and remove the right that we have, I think this would be something questionable. So if it's this way, for sure, the I think we could question even a law because it's a right that already exists. Thank you, Gustavo.
Thank you for your answer. Andreas Gomes from Regulatory, just adding to Gustavo Gascinero. I think he's also talking about the Senate Law, which is establishing a social reduction, utilizing this Peace Confluence decision, perhaps he's referring to this, would it be this? There's a law that it's a recent law that passed in the Congress. I can't remember.
Yes, it's still ongoing, but I can't remember the number of the law. Well, it ends up by referring to the ANEL discussion, and it establishes return in 5 years. So there would be this return of this PISCONFINS tax in 5 years. And in the article, it establishes that the executive power will determine the value associated to the resources that this law project, which is 10,848. So I think it still has to be evaluated.
It will still go to the chamber, but I think that these values would be regulated by the executive power. So I think there is still a discussion about what the executive power is going to define. So I think it's still ANEL's responsibility to discuss if it's 100% or not. I think there will still be a discussion on this. I also believe that we still have to evaluate.
Things are moving fast, but it goes back to the ANEEL issues and resources and readjustments when you analyze the reasons of the project goals. So we have to look at this carefully, but we will have to evaluate and check. Thank you, Andre. Hello. Good morning, Andrea.
Thank you for your question. About the ProInfo that you mentioned, there is this point in the preliminary report that was published this morning about the privatization of Eletrobras. It is a point that for sure we're going to study. It's not a simple topic. We have to remember that INFA has different types of sources, PCH, wind and extensive contract, the performance of this type of project.
So we're paying attention to this, but it will be a discussion that will be carried out with technical aspects taken into consideration. I think that's what I had to say about it. Thank you, Rodolfo. Perfect. Thank you, Andre, for the question.
Well, we don't have any more questions. So we're going to end this question and answer session. If there's any other question, the Investor Relations group is available to clarify this later. I'm going to give the floor back to Gustavo Estrella for his final considerations. Thank you, Sidino.
Well, thank you very much for your participation. I believe that we end the first quarter in a very positive way with expectation and hope of a recovery of our economy, of the market and that we are able to overcome this pandemic so that everything can go back to normal. I think it's a positive beginning of the year, which shows the market and the industry ready to produce again. And there's this involvement of stock composition, and we see this in a very positive light. So there's a perspective of recovery.
I think it's still early to celebrate. It's a challenging year, The same as 2020, we've been trying to preserve the maximum we can. Our operations were the focus, always concerned with the health and the safety of our collaborators and our business. I think the indicators of the investment gives us the directions of the perspective and the way that we're handling our business goes long term. It's a crisis that has to be dealt with, but looking to the future and looking long term.
So I believe that we've started well, but we have to be very attentive to any movements in the sector to the economy during the next month. So once more, I thank you all for your participation, and I wish you a wonderful day.