[Foreign language]
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to one more presentation of the group CPFL Energia. We're going to talk about the fourth quarter of 2023. I'm Carlos Cyrino, Director of Investor Relations of CPFL Energia, and today I will be the master of ceremonies of our event. We have today Gustavo Estrella, our CEO, Mr. Pan, our CFO, and other executives of the company. The whole presentation will be carried out in Portuguese with interpretation to English. All you have to do is click on the interpretation button on the lower part of the screen. If you want to see the presentation in English, it is in the site of our IR of CPFL Energia.
I would like to inform you that at the end of our presentation we will start the questions and answers, remembering that all the questions will be live, and to request all you have to do is click on the button Raise Hands, which 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 for us to start the presentation of results.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Cyrino. Good morning to everyone. Here we have our call of results of the fourth quarter of 2023. I'm going to already tell you our highlights. I think one of the interesting highlights, we're going to go more into detail, but an expressive moment is a growth of 5.9%, which very much is consecrated on the low-tension market, especially residential and commercial, due to the high temperatures. In 2023, the load went up 1.3%. EBITDA with non-recurring effects. We had a negative variation of 18% and basically two non-recurring effects. The first one still is the consolidation of the Campos Novos plant. We had the acquisition of the control last year, and this brought some changes in the consolidation process of the IFRS.
When we analyze these effects of Campos Novos and also the legal action which took place in 2022, we go from a drop of 18% to a positive variation of 27.7% in recurring bases. This reflects much better what our companies have done in this quarter. The same thing in the net income. We have here a net income with a negative variation of 3.5%. Considering these non-recurring effects, or not considering them, we go to a positive variation of profit of 16.7%. Our net debt, BRL 24.2 billion, with a leverage of 1.87x the criteria of our finances, remembering that our covenant is 3.75. Dividends. We have a proposal of dividend payment of BRL 3,173 million, BRL 2.75 per share, and the implicit yield with a market price of 8%.
We also publicized our CapEx plan 2024-2028 with the expectation of maintaining the high levels of investment of our group, as has already happened in the previous years, and so in the next five years we will have investments of BRL 28.4 billion. A large part of this investment comes from the distribution of BRL 23.4 million. In the transmission segment, the highlight is the commercial startup of Cachoeirinha 3, a project with a RAP of BRL 11.5 million in 2023 and 2024. Let's move on to the next slide. This is a slide from our ESG plan, also with some movements, important advances in 2023.
We did, in the beginning of 2024, an update of our plan, revisiting all our 23 public commitments with an important highlight for the team of diversity and the expectation that we reach 2030 with 40% of the leadership of the company, with the sub-represented groups: Black people, women, and others, diversity, and also with a reduction which was 38% of the emission to 56% and carbon neutral up to 2030 . There are important advances in our plan, which is being updated in a recurrent fashion as a target and a goal, long term. The CDP, we also had an important classification, a score A for the first time. We are part of a special group of companies in the whole world, not only in Brazil, that has this A score, which reflects the commitment that we have with the topic ESG.
Now let's talk about the Index of Sustainability, B3, in the ISE and the ICO2, important indicators for Brazilian companies. And we also received the Top Employer Award for the fifth consecutive year. This is the recognition of the market, of the indicators, of all the effort and dedication that the company has made in the ESG company. Sorry, ESG topic. Let's move to the next slide. Energy sales, in the fourth quarter of 2023, as I said, we have a growth of the load in the concession area of 5.9%. When we look at the sales, a growth of 5.4%, and a big highlight in the residential and commercial areas with an expressive growth of 12.2% and 12.9%, respectively.
We noticed that even though there is an important impact of distributed energy of 3.9% in the residential and 5.1% in the commercial part, even so we are able to have a very positive performance in these two markets with expressive growth. What we notice clearly is the consumption in the residential and commercial areas, but even so the perception is that there's a change of consumption habit, an increase of consumption per capita of the clients in the concession areas, and this makes this growth tend to be recurrent, independent of the temperature. In the industrial side, we see a stable growth of 0.1%. We still feel resilience in the increase of production and the increase of consumption of industry in the industry, so stable growth in relation to the last quarter. We also see some classes with a more positive performance.
It's important the food sector with a growth of 4%, but we see the heavy industry, metallurgy, equipment, machines with decreases of consumption. So the industrial class has a stable number in relation to 2022. Now let's move on to the next slide. 2023, we have 1% in load and sales. We see that the movement is very similar, so the residential and commercial continues with a positive performance, not only for the quarter but in the year in general, and the industrial class with a drop of 1.2% reflects in the challenge of the industry of taking up production again. Now let's go to another slide. This is about delinquency.
Here we can see that in spite of having a drop of delinquency, annual delinquency compared 2023 to 2022, we see that there's a trend of increasing this in the fourth quarter, and this trend has confirmed itself in the beginning of 2024, so we can see larger pressure of delinquency. Some of the reasons, the first one that we can see here in the lower part of the page, the volume of cuts that we carried out in the fourth quarter was less than the average of the previous quarters, very much impacted by rains and storms that we had in our concession area, and this made our teams have to go to emergency situations and reduce the cut numbers.
This gave us an increase of delinquency, and also with the increase of consumption, the bills are more expensive, so when you have a more expensive bill, the risk of delinquency, of course, increases a lot. So these are two effects. I would say that the first one is only when there are storms. The expectation is this will start to decrease in the next few months, and we go back to the level of power cuts higher, about 210,000 per month, but the pressure for a higher energy bill will continue, so we'll have delinquency pressure which will follow in 2024 as well. Now let's continue in the energy losses. We have a small increase of the fourth with two impacts. The first one is the post-process of tariff revision of our companies in 2023.
We had a revision down to the regulatory losses and the real loss, given that the market growth took place in the classes of low voltage where the losses are higher, so we can see the percentage of an increase of losses due to this market movement. I believe that here we also have to give special attention in 2024, as we are going to have a series of new actions to control delinquency and losses as well, but these are the two main reasons for this variation of our losses. Now let's go to generation. Here we can see PLD, the average in the fourth quarter of 2023 reaches BRL 78, a little bit above the baseline.
You can see this compared to the baseline the whole year, and we can see the increase of demand, and this made in some moments of the day we had a variation of price to higher levels. We also have, from the beginning of the year 2024, unfavorable hydrology, especially the month of January, with the formation of reservoirs, which this makes us have pressure, not of supply but price, during 2024, so the expectation is that we have a concentrated elevation of price in the second quarter of 2024 due to this unfavorable hydrology, but also expectation of load increase and demand increase. We can already see this due to the temperature. Wind farms, we can see here a variation between the negative variation of 1.34%. We put a reference here without the restriction of the grid we would have an increase of wind production of 7.1% in our group.
The GSF closed the fourth quarter with 86% in the year, an average of 90%. Availability of wind, this is the fourth quarter, 96.3%. Now let's move to the next slide, and now I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Pan for him to continue telling us results.
Thank you, Gustavo. Good morning, everyone. Well, we reached an EBITDA of BRL 3.1 billion, a drop of 18.2%, especially due to extraordinary effects this year and in 2022. Let us talk a bit about each segment. Once more, the distribution segment had a good performance with an EBITDA of BRL 2.1 billion, a hike of 14%. The largest gain came from the market and tariff. At the end of 2022, we had the extraordinary effect related to the fiscal agreement and the pension plan of CPFL Paulista, which generated an expense of BRL 275 million.
For the pension fund, we have another extraordinary effect in 2022. On some collaborators, they opted for the conversion of the model of their plans, generating an expense of BRL 125 million, which did not repeat itself this year. Now, the update of the finance asset of the concession had an increase of BRL 43 million due to the larger asset base and the higher IPCA when compared to the same period of 2022. Talking about extraordinary effects, again, we also had the impact of the reports of the base of assets of CPFL Paulista, RGE, and CPFL Piratininga. It was a total of BRL 631 million PMSO with an increase of BRL 108 million PDD, BRL 28 million, as Gustavo has already explained. The other items went up BRL 10 million.
In generation, the EBITDA reached BRL 761 million, a reduction of 56% explained by extraordinary effects in Enercan, in the case of Enercan, totaling a variation of BRL 1 billion. The increase of wind generation was compensated by ONS restrictions, both in the value of BRL 34 million. Other effects had an increase of BRL 30 million. The trading service and others had an EBITDA of BRL 59 million, an improvement of BRL 51 million, especially due to the recovery of the margin of CPFL Brasil with a gain of BRL 28 million. The service segment had an increase of BRL 24 million in the period, especially in CPFL Serviços and Alesta. Other effects added to a loss of BRL 1 million. Let's move on to the next slide.
In the EBITDA results, IFRS of the transmission segment, we had a reduction of BRL 18 million and an increase of PMSO of BRL 50 million, basically effects of the IFRS partially compensated by a margin increase of BRL 32 million. In relation to the regulatory EBITDA, which I believe is what is of interest to you, we had an increase of BRL 101 million with a net income going up BRL 42 million due to the contract readjustment and the PMSO dropping BRL 42 million. Besides this, there were new projects coming into operation, and they had a revenue of BRL 16 million. In the next slide, we show the performance of the net income, which was BRL 1.3 billion, a reduction of 3.5% in relation to the fourth quarter of 2022.
In the financial results, we had an improvement of BRL 714 million due to the negotiation of the fiscal process of the pension plan of CPFL Paulista at the end of 2022. This value, net with monetary update of what was due to be paid, resulted in a variation of BRL 881 million. This effect was compensated by larger expenses with a net debt, BRL 92 million, explained by the larger IPCA and balance. Lower regulatory asset, BRL 35 million due to the lower balance. Other items, BRL 40 million. Depreciation increased, BRL 27 million, and taxes, BRL 41 million. Now the next slide, we're going to show the accumulated performance in the year. We reached an EBITDA of BRL 12.8 billion, an increase of 4.6%. All the segments had positive results with the exception of generation, which was impacted by extraordinary effects, not cash, already explained.
The distribution with an increase of 12.9% was favored especially by Parcel B. The transmission segment presented an increase of 1.9% due to the expense reduction with personnel and the greenfield project operations that started. In the chart below, you can see the performance of the net income, which was BRL 5.50 billion on the period, an increase of 6.1% in relation to 2022. The financial result was better in 2023 because it was not impacted by extraordinary effects that affected the previous year. The depreciation increased, BRL 218 million, and the taxes, BRL 385 million. In the next slide, we have the net debt. The covenant criteria, which reached BRL 24.2 billion, the EBITDA of the last 12 months was of BRL 12.9 billion. Therefore, we end the year with a leverage measured by the net debt over EBITDA of 1.87 x.
Our proposal is a dividend payment of BRL 3.2 billion, equivalent to BRL 2.75 per share, which will be submitted to the approval of the AGO on the next 26th of April. In the next slide, we show the final position of the cash in 2023, which was BRL 5.5 billion with more than sufficient coverage for the short-term amortizations. The average is 3.4 years. Below, we have the debt cost, which is 11.9%, and then at the end on the right side, we have the gross debt with a larger exposure in CDI with 70% followed by 29% in IPCA and 1% of TJLP. I also highlight the recent issuing of debentures that add up BRL 2.5 billion with an average time frame of 3.3 years and the average cost of CDI of 0.6%.
Once more, we benefit from a favorable movement to be able to get funds with attractive costs and to finance the investments that we have planned for the next years. When we talk about CapEx, we've had a reduction of 5.2% in relation to the same period of 2022 with an investment of BRL 1.6 billion. But we must remember that in 2022, we made a huge effort for the RAB composition and tariff revision. The accumulated of 2023, BRL 5.1 billion were invested, 97.3% in relation of the CapEx plan that was published. In distribution, we had a total of BRL 3.8 billion invested, generation, BRL 446 million, transmission segment, BRL 735 million, and finally, the investments of other segments added to a total of BRL 99 million.
Now, it is very important to comment about the new CapEx plan, cycle 2024/2028, which was approved at the end of 2023, adding a total of BRL 28.4 billion, a highlight to the segments of distribution and transmission with investments respectively of BRL 23.4 billion and BRL 3.5 billion. Thank you very much, everyone, and now I'm going to give the floor back to Gustavo Estrella. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Pan. Well, I think in the last slide, just talking about safety and our challenge here during the year of 2023, a series of extreme climate events that affected our concession areas, whether it be in São Paulo or Rio Grande do Sul, and the expectation that we have this type of event. I think our challenge is that we prepare ourselves more and more for winds, this type of winds, and also the frequency that they are happening.
For us, one of the biggest problems in a day like this are the trees that fall. So we've started a project ever since 2016, which we call Safer Trees, and we've been able to substitute over 12,000 trees in eight years. Given the new reality that we have today in our operation, the expectation is that we substitute 15,000 trees. It's a huge challenge. It's a challenge of execution partnership with the public power, but we believe that it's very important for us to be able to preserve the quality of our distribution service. It's very important for us to identify and substitute the trees that are a risk for the network and for the population. This is a huge challenge that we have.
We've started the year with this huge challenge of substituting the trees, and this is to preserve the quality in the distribution, removing these trees that bring a risk to our network. Now, let's go to the questions and answers.
We are going to follow the order in which the questions come. These questions will be live, so. [Foreign language] . André, please feel free to ask your question.
Okay, I have a quick question here. It's about the renewal of the concessions. If we have had any advance, we have heard a correlation with the offshore source. It's a bit of this risk of this contaminating and hindering the distribution process. Thank you. [Foreign language]
Thank you for the question.
Well, as I said, I think today we have a huge operational challenge, not only CPFL but all the companies of distribution which have been affected by these extreme climate events. I believe that with the process of the discussion of the renewal of this brings us to this discussion beyond the ministry. So today we have a huge participation coming from Congress. It might be a demand for us to give quality also in these critical days, and this is what the chamber wants: renewal process and demands of quality of operation of the distributions and also perhaps a precondition for the renewal process. So we have a different reality that we had when we signed our concession contracts currently. So I think it's natural that we have this discussion in order to advance and also more adequate to a reality that we have today.
I think this is the desire of the ministry as well, and these conversations are taking place for us to be able to advance in a sector that demands. We've already talked about the perspective and a long-term vision. I've mentioned our CapEx estimated for the—this is not only CPFL, I think it's the whole sector. After a few changes, it's all companies. The distribution sector invests more than BRL 30 million a year, and this only happens, obviously, if we have a long-term perspective of concession. So this is the size of the importance and our expectation. We're already late in this process to be able to advance and bring this long-term perspective back so that we really have conditions to operate the sector as it should.
I would like to make a follow-up here. We've heard a lot of noise about these quality issues in São Paulo, about Enel.
We would like to hear from you. Do you believe that there's any possibility of the government removing their concession? Would this be an opportunity for you to invest? It would be cool for you to comment on this issue.
We have a regulation today, and I don't think there's any technical base for any player to lose the concession. I think Enel as well, regulatory-wise, this is very negative for the sector. I hope this does not happen. We can discuss what would be the new rules, what are the new demands that can be brought on us, but then we play a new game. But the game, as it is today, there's no reason for any player to lose a concession. So we defend the stability, the regulatory stability, the compliance of rules.
So we hope our regulation has proved to be a robust regulation, a mature regulation that brings the stability and consequence, this volume of investment in the electrical sector, not only distribution but transmission. So it is a sector that attracts investments today given the regulation maturity and the stability. So I do hope that this continues. I think this is good for everyone, for the government, for the companies. It's good for our clients. So I hope that it continues. And once more, if there's any adjustment that brings any type of additional demand, that there be a new regulation which is valid from now on. So I don't believe there's any reason for anyone to lose the concession now.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your answer.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Thank you for the opportunity. [Foreign language] . I would like to talk about leverage versus CapEx and payout. We've seen here in this quarter a reduction of payout in relation to last year. And when we look at the CapEx plan, it's a robust plan. So I would just like to ask for your help for us to understand how you see this trajectory of leverage versus payout given this voluminous CapEx for the next years. I'd like to understand better.
[Foreign language]. Daniel, thank you for your question. [Foreign language] . This is our expectation. I would say for the next five years, there's an expectation of maintaining this higher level of investments. And today we still have a comfortable perspective.
But when we look in perspective, we clearly see higher pressure from the distributors due to this high CapEx. So the decision that we took is to reduce our payout so that we are able to have an increase of leverage. But this should happen in a suave and stable way. So this is our perspective, and we can revise the optimum level of payout versus leverage and cash generation. So I think as a concept, the idea is not to do brusque movements but maintain stability and slower leveraging in the next years. So the idea is to not jump up or down for us to preserve a capacity of investment and also that we can continue looking at the market, some asset that shows up that's an opportunity of investment.
So this suave curve allows me to look at some asset that's not on the radar but that can come in short or medium term.
Thank you. Just to thinking in the transmission auction that we're going to have next year, how is everything for this?
We've identified some lots that we should participate in. We are here in the last final phase of internal approval and analysis. It's always a challenge to map what the degree of competition is going to be in these auctions. The fact is that we continue with our strategy, which is unaltered as we did in the last auctions. So we have an expectation of a return which is not altered. So we continue with our strategy, and we hope to have an opportunity of investment. And to have a return.
I think it's a more positive expectation, but it's very difficult to read beforehand the level of competition in these future auctions. Thank you, Estrella.
Thank you, Daniel. Now, the next question is from Vitor Cunha, from Itaú BBA. Vitor, thank you very much. Go ahead with your question.
Good morning for the call. Thank you for the call. It's a quick question. So what is the price view for the second quarter, and how has the company looked at the dynamic versus the energy distribution, if I understood his question?
Hi, Vitor. Thank you. Thank you for the question. We've seen the level of prices in the second semester negotiated at about BRL 140/MWh. This has been very frustrating. Between 2023 and 2024, we have the expectation of the second worst period in history, which ends up in higher prices.
What we also see, and this is fundamental, is which of these—this is part of the continuation of the rains. So we see lower prices, but not as being as negotiable in the market. Now, if this situation continues, we have up to January, February, we see levels closer to 150, 160 megawatts-per-hour. Vitor, depois se você puder só repetir a segunda parte da sua pergunta. Vitor, could you please repeat the second part of your question because we did not hear it?
Thank you for the response. I asked if you could—how have you observed the load dynamic in the areas of concession of CPFL vis-à-vis the distributed generation effect? Vitor, tudo bem?
[Foreign language]
Vitor, I'm Ricardo. About the dynamic vis-à-vis load, what we've seen is 94% due to the microgeneration, which is solar roofs.
We see an increment of the number of requests of new generation units. This is due to the low market prices. So it's a maintenance with a change of the law where we don't have the compensation of the part B of the tariff. So we see this continuous insertion due to the low prices today in terms of captive load that we have installed in the group. This represents more or less 12% of our captive consumption, and this is referred to the microdistributed generation of solar roofs. So to summarize, the trend of growth continues even with the new law. Okay?
Perfect. Thank you for the reply.
Thank you, Vitor. Well, now let's move on to the next question, and it's the last one that has a hand raised. Vitor from JP Morgan, good morning. Thank you for your participation. Go ahead.
Thank you, and congratulations for the result. I have actually two questions about the operation. The first one is the possibility of reimbursement, if there is any relevant compensation in the quarter. And the second one is, how do you see liquidity in the longer cases? What about the demand for these longer contracts at this price? [Foreign language]
Hello, this is Karin. Well, in relation to the reimbursement of the generation cuts, which impacted at the end of last year, especially after August, we have an initial discussion of the rule of the reimbursement of the power cuts, and we had an administrative conversation in relation to recognizing this Proinfa reimbursement. This is still going to be regulated by ANEEL.
We hope that ANEEL will regulate this, as we understand is correct, which is the price of the Proinfa in the contracts, which is done with the RAP, the same thing. So this is our expectation. And in relation to the past, there is a legal discussion, and I think the process continues moving in the legal area. So we hope that this will be done in the most correct regulatory way and that we don't have to continue with legal procedures. This continues happening, but much slower recently. But I believe that this is something that we can live with today in the composition of how the operator operates the system. So what we need is that the regulation address all this, and this is why we are working directly with ANEEL for all of this.
Thank you, Vitor. Well, folks.
Sorry, there's still a part of the question that was not replied. Well, you talked about the energy liquidity medium and long term. We've seen a lot of liquidity in the shorter term, so 2025, 2026, 2027, when we look at longer, then it reduces but very equivalent as the curve. So we've seen this with much less liquidity up to 2032, 2033, some cases up to 2034, but nothing in a relevant volume during this period.
Thank you. Obrigado, Vitor.
Thank you, Vitor. Well, we now will end our Q&A once more. Thank you very much for your participation. If there's any question, contact us, the investor relations teams. We're always available to be able to clarify anything that has not been clear. I'm now going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for his final considerations.
Thank you very much.
Well, once more, I'd like to thank you for the participation of each one of you. I think the results are positive. It shows the solidity of our operation even in a challenging year with the climate events and with RGE. We had the best 8.7, the best year even with all the challenges. We've been able to improve the quality with this investment program. As I said, it's not only one year but a few years, and we can see that the robustness has helped in the maintenance and improvement of the quality for our clients. And this continues based on our plan and our challenges moving forward. We have a high CapEx this year of BRL 5.9 billion. Just in distribution, it's BRL 0.7 billion in transmission.
So we continue with this strategy with a long-term vision, given that the CapEx that we make today will bring us the improvement of quality for the next years. We're still also focused on hydrology and the variation on the short-term price variation. As Ricardo said, we have still extra offering in the, but it can affect prices depending. So this brings a bit of volatility. We have to pay a lot of attention to this movement that affects short term. Of course, the topic of concession renewal is something that continues on the table, continues being discussed. It is a fundamental topic, extremely relevant, and our expectation is that we advance and that this topic be defined the quickest possible. And lastly, with all this context and with the results that we've been having, we continue looking at the opportunities of M&A, the auction transmission next week.
We look at it positively but also keeping our essence of financial discipline so that we really move to generate value to our shareholders. We thank you all for your participation of the call, and we wish you a very good day. Thank you very much.