Morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dexco's Conference Call, where we will discuss our earnings for the Q4 of 2022. This conference call is being recorded, you can watch a replay of it at our company's investor relations website. This presentation is also available for download. This conference call will also be translated into English. If you'd like to listen to the translation, click on the globe icon on the lower dashboard on your screen and select English. You can also mute original audio for your convenience. We'd like to inform you that all participants will be in listen-only mode during the company's presentation. We will begin the questions and answer session when further instructions will be given.
Before we continue, we'd like to state that any perspective of statements during this presentation are based on the company's beliefs and assumptions. They involve risks and uncertainties since they refer to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not come to pass. Investors, analysts, and journalists should take into account that events related to the industry, to macroeconomic factor, and others may lead these results to defer materially from what is described. In this conference, we have Dexco's executive team and its investor relations team. We'll now pass it over to Mr. Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira, who will begin the presentation. Go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you here for our earnings call.
Before I begin, I'd like to refer to the recent changes to the company's organizational structure, which have been communicated to the market, but I'd just like to underscore that we have a new executive committee in the company. There have been some changes in attributions, and you can basically see that, there have been important changes here. We invited Henrique Haddad, our CFO, and someone who is frequently in touch with you, to leave financial aspects aside to handle our wood division. We also invited Raul Guaragna, who was the vice president of the wood division, to migrate to Deca and Tiles. Raul did some excellent work in the wood division, so we have some new challenges ahead of us. We have many good ideas that we can use for Deca and Tiles, and we're very excited.
Raul has been in this position for about six weeks. In the future, you'll also be able to hear from him. I'd also like to formally introduce Francisco Semeraro, who's our Director of Administration, Finance, and Investor Relations. He's been in the company for a number of years. He has a lot of experience. He's young, so he is starting this position with us. He was already in this role before. We have Natasha and the investor relations team here with us, and he's going to run the presentation today. I'd also like to highlight that the IT Director now has a new scope: IT and Growth.
This is all under Daniel Franco, who is focusing on all of the initiatives and projects that we have involving e-commerce, retail, and our investments with such as ABC da Construção and several other projects that we're running in this area. Daniel is building up a team. He was responsible for the company's digital agenda, and now he is reinforcing it with these new attributions. Glizia remains our Director of People and ESG. The last change was having Marina with us. She's worked for the company for about 2 years, and she is now unifying this concept of marketing and design. It's a very important area that handles our brands, that cares for marketing and design projects. Therefore, these projects in Deca, Wood, and Tiles is now unified in this executive committee.
Marina is going to work, connected to Henrique Haddad and Raul Guaragna, who will still continue handling the P&Ls for each business unit. With this new structure, we hope to have a very efficient process. We hope to have a lot of work done to our productivity. We hope to advance with the five-year strategical plan that we have ahead of us. I'll now pass it over to Francisco, who will begin talking to you with our earnings. Thank you.
Thank you for that introduction, Antonio. Hi, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for being here for our quarterly earnings call. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Slide four gets us started on our presentation. Here we have the highlights of this quarter and this year.
I'd like to remind you that 2022 started as a strong year for Dexco, which gave us the second best year of results in the company. However, at the end of the year, the market contracted significantly, which led to a drop in volume across all divisions. Even despite that drop, we were able to keep price levels and improve our sales mix, especially for the wood division, which has increased its product sales as a result of the investments we made in the last few months. One of the highlights was the first operational quarter for the new dissolving pulp unit, which has its EBITDA proportional added to Dexco's for your analysis. This quarter, that new division had BRL 307 million in EBITDA, with an EBITDA margin of 56%.
With that, we wrapped up the Q4 with an adjusted and recurring pro forma EBITDA of BRL 517 million. If we only look at Dexco results without dissolving pulp, our EBITDA was BRL 366 million. Our adjusted and recurring pro forma EBITDA for the year was BRL 1.9 billion, considering BRL 194 million from LD. Disconsidering that result, our EBITDA was BRL 1.7 billion, the second-best result in our history. Moving on to the next slide. We concluded the year readapting the cash cycle after COVID and we had a higher expense in rebuilding our forestry assets, representing an expense of BRL 430 million a year. Ladies and gentlemen, please hold while we reconnect. Okay.
Referring back to slide five, I'll go over it again. We finished this year readapting our cash cycle after COVID, and we had a higher expense in rebuilding our forestry assets, an expense of BRL 430 million a year. With that, our sustaining cash flow was slightly negative at BRL 36.6 million. This added to investments in strategical projects led to a consumption of BRL 859.3 million in our total cash flow. The company concluded a cash conversion cycle in 47 days. We continued adapting our expenses to new projects coming into operations.
The year concluded with investments of BRL 823 million, of which BRL 400 million were directed for projects below what was previously scheduled, and about BRL 300 million were used for LD and about BRL 100 million for purchasing Castelatto. Continuing with slide 6. The higher cash consumption from these investments led to a leverage of 2.3 times, still comfortable. Regarding our debt, we have to highlight the effort we made in liability management, which allowed us to extend our average term by 1.1 years. Our debt is now 84% long-term. High interest rates have generated a negative impact, and currently our cost is 107.2% of the CDI. We continue with slide 8 on our divisions.
According to ABIPA data, the wood panel market finished the last quarter with a reduction of 19% in volume sold versus the Q4 of 2021, which was a reduction of 18% for the entire year versus 2021. Exports, although lower in the Q4, were 10% higher than in 2021. In Brazil, we continue to operate in above historical levels, which is a good indication. Slide 9 continues. Our wood division was a positive highlight as its results were very resilient. Even with strong pressure from inflation and with a lower demand, the division still gained market share. We kept the price levels which allowed us to finish the year with revenue above 2021, our historical record.
For the Q4, another highlight was contracting costs for the division, which allowed our adjusted and recurring EBITDA to go up by 5.4% versus the Q3 of 2022. We had a significant mix improvement, which allowed us to increase product sales by 14% versus the Q4 of 2021. On the next slide, we'll talk about dissolving pulp. The Q1 at operational stage sold 91,000 tons at an average price of $1,130 per ton. Even with costs and expenses associated to the ramp-up process, our adjusted and recurring EBITDA was BRL 308 million at a margin of 57%. For this new division, our margin was 45%.
Dexco has a 49% stake in this business, so if we were to consolidate it into our numbers, this would add to the company's EBITDA BRL 151 million this quarter and BRL 194 million for the year. We're very happy about its performance and excited for the future. We continue with slide 12. The construction materials industry had a contraction of 6% in gross revenue in the Q4 and 7% in comparison to the same time last year, according to ABRAMAT. Despite this reduction, ABRAMAT continues to have a positive outlook for 2023 and it's expected to go up by 1%-3%. Looking at metals and sanitary ware on slide 13, it was a challenging year.
After a first record half of the year, the division finished the Q4, taking the blunt from a worse market, a reduction of 29% in volume versus the Q4 of 2021, a total drop of 21% for the year. On the other hand, the company increased its prices by 20% versus 2021. It finished the year with the second highest historical net revenue. Even with good revenue, cost pressure and lower sales led to an EBITDA of BRL 52 million for the Q4 or BRL 311 million for the entire year. We continue on slide 14. The ceramic tiles market had a contraction of 29% in sales volumes, while for the quarter, while it was 18% for the year.
We continue with Dexco's tiles division on slide 15. We advanced all of our stoppages, and that had an impact on our costs, which led to an adjusted and recurring EBITDA of BRL 22.7 million this quarter or BRL 234 million for the year. We advanced these stops for the market and our competitors are now performing those during the Q1. Although we had worse results than 2021 in 2022, we were able to implement better prices to offset pressures from the inflation. Our results for the year were the second highest ever presented. We now continue with ESG initiatives on slide 17.
Concerning ESG, 2022 strengthened our commitments to ESG through a new round of Dexco's corporate culture program, our way of being and doing, training leaders and sharing it with every level of the hierarchy. Approving the company's social responsibility charter, revisiting the company's material themes with more than 700 stakeholders involved and signed off by Comex, and progressing the sustainability strategy targets and commitments for 2025, including 30% of women in leadership roles and over 2.5 million BRL in projects. The last slide wraps up this population with some expectations for the year. I'd like to re-inform that even though the market has changed, especially in the last quarter of 2022, we were able to confirm a new level of results for Dexco, concluding this year with an EBITDA of 1.7 billion BRL without LD Celulose.
This was the second-best result for the company, it's above the average we presented during 2015 to 2018, and it's still above the results we got in 2019 and 2020. This shows us that the transformational movements that we had in the last few years were successful and changed the company's position. However, we understand that 2023 will be a challenging year, especially due to the uncertainties in the macroeconomic scenario, which impact confidence and demand. The start of this year is even tougher than the end of 2022, we expect it only to be better in the second half of the year as new constructions conclude.
On the other hand, high wood prices would be kept that way and that will favor Dexco and logistics costs are going down, which will favor our exports, especially panels and tiles, where we have which we have in our strategy to diversify channels. We understand that our priority will be to control costs, expenses, and investments, specifically, productivity and efficiency. We're constantly reanalyzing our investment projects. We've communicated a reduction to BRL 2.1 billion in our strategic investments, and this is constantly being analyzed.
We believe that our current projects still make sense considering their medium and long-term returns. We continue to strengthen our brands in the market, specifically on gaining market share, which will involve our commercial operation, excuse me, commercial execution and operations. We're very excited about the first full year of our dissolving pulp operation and its potential results. We'll now open up for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the questions and answer session for investors and analysts. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by clicking on the raise hand button again. Please hold. Our first question comes from Marcio Farid from Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. I'm not sure who can take it, the first one is about Deca and Tiles. We see that the restructuring cost has been relatively high versus your reported EBITDA in the last few years. I'd just like to understand how long these costs are going to be in your balance, and we haven't seen any gains related to these expenses in the division either. I'd just like to understand where these benefits in operational improvements are coming from, where they would come from, and if the Deca and Tile business will improve before the market improves.
Is there a lot we can do inside the company? I noticed that there has been a significant reduction in volume in the Q4. You mentioned that during the Q1, your competition is facing similar issues, how did your market share change, and what are you thinking for 2023? I'm sorry to ask so many questions, I'd just like to hear a little bit more about Deca and the Tile division. How should we consider your CapEx? For the projects that you announced in the recent past, will this CapEx be executed? Are you going to focus on productivity? Just considering the next quarters and years. I apologize for the long-winded question.
Hi, Marcio, this is Antonio Joaquim. Thank you. I think your question makes sense. Since it's a long question, I'll give you a long answer, but I'm sure it will answer many questions that we might receive. You made a good observation, and I'll start on Deca and Ceramics. The first thing I'd like to say is we are still focused, and we still believe in the adjustments that we've been promoting over time after the acquisition in 2019 of the ceramic tiles units.
First of all, in my opinion, I think, there's a biased perspective on that. We had some integration issues, but none of them were relevant enough to change the dial. I'd like to refer back to this. What did we believe when we put this all in the same division, Deca and ceramic tiles? We have essentially the same clients, the same timing from the moment in which these products were placed, and especially, we had the same opportunity to do business. I'll give you an example. In the construction industry, you can offer a full solution in a single deal or in a single business. How are we doing it today? How are we structured below Raul Guaragna? What's our structure for that? We have an industrial operation that is separate.
There are no synergies between the ceramic tiles division and also sanitary ware and metals. There are some synergies in engineering, processes, maybe quality, but there are no significant synergies in inputs or anything else. We knew this from the beginning. We integrated our commercial operations, so we have a director's office for the industry based on Ceusa and Cecrisa, which handles the ceramic tiles operation completely. They're experienced people under Menegon, who is heading this operation. We have a director handling Deca, an operational director. You saw that we changed this part of the business. Raul is adjusting some things to this operation.
We also have an integrated commercial director, which is basically we separate exports currently, and I can tell you a bit about that, but we have a director that is dedicated to doing this because we have the same clients, the same purchasing schedule. In some regions, we have some operations in specialized stores, but our main clients are serviced by the same managers. We strongly believe in the synergies that we've already obtained from the commercial area. All the synergies that we planned in this area for costs are there, and unfortunately, they have been eclipsed by this poor moment in the market. We have been obtaining synergies. What we have been doing is this. As you noticed, there were restructuring cuts, so we will probably not see this in the future, any additional restructuring costs.
We had intensive work to do for prioritizing. We had too many sales professionals, we optimized that. That led to some expenses. We also had to restructure our back office, Deca. This was an entire process that required investments, this process has been concluded. From now on, whenever you see any significant changes, for example, training, labor, and so on, it will be recurring, it will be within normal levels. We don't expect any relevant things to change. This is always going to be implemented, there are always going to be things to be implemented, it won't be a recurrent thing. To answer the second question, we have a lot of work to do and a lot of opportunities in the company.
Leaving the market aside for a little bit, we have many ideas to implement. A lot of the structural changes we see are directed towards having productivity projects. We have some market deals that we want to transform and adjust. We're in contact with our clients. Raul has been here for one month and a half leading this operation. He's met many relevant clients, and we have many ideas to implement. We hope that this effort will contribute to going back to the normal results we expect. We also had to adapt our CapEx. Remember when we announced that BRL 2.5 CapEx, it was readapted to closer to BRL 2 million. Basically, we have to understand a few things which are very important in managing this. We're an industrial company.
We have to decide projects and buy plants and execute it, but it always takes two years or a bit longer. Many people say, "Well, the market is now weaker, so it would make sense to have a plant like Botucatu?" It's not a matter of that. This was something that we bought a year and a half ago, and it's being assembled, built. We're just managing timing very carefully, but it is on time, on budget, and we're investing in ceramic tiles in productivity, cost, and technologies. Automatically, when you look at our scale of capacity, we're increasing our capacity in Botucatu. It doesn't mean that we need to activate it. We have six lines in Santa Catarina, which are smaller individually, and they can be operated.
When Botucatu comes in, it will have new technologies with lower costs closer to the consumer market. We really believe in what we're doing here. If the market is doing well, we can operate everything. If the market does not recover, we can operate Botucatu and other areas of Santa Catarina, and we can stop older lines because we don't have any relevant fixed costs in stopping them. Most of the old lines have been depreciated, we have some flexibility in our operations. What I'd like to tell you about CapEx is this, though: We canceled all of our expansions that we had foreseen two years ago into sanitary ware. We maintained our investments in automating this sanitary ware division, which is very important to gain a better margin.
We've invested heavily in this process. A part of our investments into metalware has been maintained, especially in new technologies, new finishings. We didn't see any increase in capacities for metals. Our investment into our forestry is still maintained in the Northeast. It's a very good project that we kept. What I mean to say is this, we adjusted what we needed to adjust. We're now executing. Below this BRL 2 billion in CapEx, is there a lot that we can do? No, we have. This is all things that have already started. There's nothing that we can stop. I'm sorry for the long answer, but I think it's important to clarify this process. During the Q4, we had a situation that wasn't in our plans. We saw the market changing significantly.
Since we perceived that we would have poor results in some divisions, we stopped in December. We adapted it, we gave them collective leave. This affected Deca significantly, especially because we had a lot of inventory in the chain with our clients. It was a challenging market for this, the Q1, and we're still in the first few months, but it has been a more difficult market. I'd just like to underscore something here. All of the drivers that we have, all of our operations drivers. We can operate ceramic tiles in a long-term view. We have some turbulence right now, but we continue to operate this division and at profitability levels of about 25% EBITDA margins. That's what we have always planned for. I really believe in it. I think we have the right processes.
When the market is tougher, it may be lower, but the long-term processes are driving us to that. These investments will help us with that. I apologize again for the long-winded answer, but I'm sure there would be many questions about it and we can carry on. Thank you, Marcio.
Thank you, Antonio. Let me just ask you a follow-up question. I know it's hard to say when you'll reach this 25% target, but can you tell? Can we think that, are we close to it or should we see it happening throughout 2023?
Marcio, we imagine that from now on we're going to improve our profitability continuously. We hope that market conditions improve and that we can recover. If you're asking, you know, the beginning of the year is a challenging moment, especially the Q1 tends to be weaker.
This year we have some macroeconomic situations that really compromised our results. You saw what happened in January. Some operations had to stop. Many of our clients were worried about what would happen to the country with this new government administration. The next week we're going to have the Revestir trade show. It's the biggest in the industry. Clients are very excited about recovery. I believe that right now we're experiencing probably the worst results that we could expect. I truly hope that we can do better. I wouldn't say long-term responses, but I think we can recover over the year. We have budget plans and commitments for it. How long does it take to recover that 25%? Because we operated above that for a long time.
It's hard to say exactly when, but we really believe in this recovery, not only at these levels, but also Deca. We're taking some initiatives for it. I mean, it may be a bit more difficult during the beginning of this year, but we hope to recover this year.
Thank you, Antonio.
The next question will be asked by Caio Greiner from BTG Pactual. Go ahead, sir.
Hello, good morning, everyone. My main question was very similar to the previous one, but I would like to understand the commercial side of it as well. When we look at your performance, especially volumes, focusing on Deca. We seem to be below the market levels, Dexco versus the industry. If you could tell us a bit more about that I know you addressed it, Antonio, what I'd like to ask is this: the company made a big bet in its strategic, excuse me, its commercial strategy.
When we see an expressive reduction in volume and revenue here, it draws our attention. I'd just like to hear from you if you have faced any hardships, any challenges that you can tell us about in the company that may have influenced this. Do you consider the company to have done well, and was it only, you know, receiving headwinds from the market? I remember that in the past, you've mentioned something about challenges capturing commercial synergies between this merge between the two units, Deca and Tiles.
I'd just like to hear a little bit more about volumes and what the company can do to reverse this short-term negative moment, or if it's just, you know, having to wait for the market to see if your capacity utilization will go back up. That's my question. I also have a question about dissolving pulp. I think we had very surprising results here. Very good prices, great volumes, above 90,000 tons. What are your expectations for this market for the next year? Looking at the dissolving pulp market, what are you expecting in prices for this year? What's the supply and demand for the market? If you could tell us a bit about how the unit is ramping up. It would be great to hear. Thank you.
Caio, thank you for referring to a strategical, excuse me, a commercial strategy. Of course, most of what explains our results and most of what impacted us is really due to this weaker market in the Q4. I'd like to remind you that usually this is the best quarter of each year. It was absolutely atypical. There are two things that affected it. Turbulent elections. We also had interest rates at very high levels, and that really hinders our operation. I think you're right. We don't have any dogmas. We're not shy in saying that we do understand that some points in our commercial strategy might need to be reviewed. Okay? That's what we're doing. Raul is working with our commercial director at Deca and RC. We're interacting with clients, trying to find out what happened.
When the market has such a drop in demand, there are two effects that are possible, and they're both bad, but one affects us more. For example, if there's a reduction in volume, our traditional clients work with higher inventories, so they held back, and I think I would do the same thing if I were in their place. You know, keeping your inventories low while there are uncertainties in the market. You know, with sell-in was not only the only thing that dropped. Sell-out also dropped during this time. The first effect is volume, and the next effect is the mix. You might have an important mix effect. If, you know, it's, the bills are more expensive. Construction material prices went up significantly during COVID. Since it's more expensive, you have to pay attention to anything that can drive your mix down.
You know, selecting cheaper faucets or ceramic tiles. This obviously is not good for business. We're doing a major deep dive with our clients and our commercial strategy. We're investing in improving logistics. We're putting on the table everything that we saw and we learned. What seems most obvious is not necessarily true. We didn't have any relevant problems in selling ceramic tiles and Deca together. For example, a policy that works very well, that has worked very well on this high demand period might not be the most appropriate when the demand is changing. Raul is here, we're working on it. We've taken several measures in the first month. We're starting to see results. We're interacting with clients. It's an extremely important market for Deca. Specialized stores, for example.
We're trying to bring stronger people to this area. We may have lost some market share in the Q4. We're paying attention to that. Right now, if you look at it, we see that our competition is facing big challenges. About a month ago, we had the amount of capacity that was stopped was about 50%. There was a crisis in the market. We're well-positioned with products. We're reviewing our pricing policy. We're investing a lot, and I'd like you to just from next week onwards, but we don't have any dogmas, you know. If we see anything that wasn't working, and we did see some things that weren't working internally, we're adjusting that. If anyone would like to add to that's great.
Now about dissolving pulp. I'm visiting this operation. I think we're very happy. With dissolving pulp, we've reached our monthly volume level. For example, we have a scheduled budget for 2023, which is full operation. You have, of course, to consider downtimes, but it's at around 480,000 tons for the year. This is full operations, full capacity. The first thing, you know, after we reach that good production level is that we got great operational quality. When you're producing dissolving pulp, you have a certain percentage of A type and B type, and we're basically at 100% A type. We had a ramp up. This is a more complex plant than a common dissolving pulp plant. It has different features, different loaded technologies.
We went through a learning curve, and now I think we'll be at a regular level. In terms of volume, as I explained, the most important thing that affected dissolving pulp are prices and continue to affect us, but the cost of inputs, you saw in the conversations that we had with on that pulp went up significantly. Some things now will need to adjust in the market, logistics, and so on. We have some long-term contracts, but there are many inputs that had much higher prices. They're starting to go down now, which is good. Prices are at good levels. They're above our business case. We operated about at $1,000 a ton, and now we're above $900, which are good price levels.
We believe that this division will meet your expectations to what, you know, with what we expect. We're at good foreign exchange levels as well. We have to fine-tune, but we're at a very good level. If you're analyzing it at the market, I do think that you should see how dissolving pulp will add value to Dexco. We're still presenting it pro forma, of course, but it does have the likelihood of generating value for our shareholders.
Thank you, Antonio.
The next question will be asked by Raphael Barcelos from Santander Bank. Go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you. Can you hear me? Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is for Antonio. It's about your long-term strategy. In the last few years, the company has been very vocal in defending its ceramic division. What we've seen is that the wood division has performed better. At the same time, there have been some challenges in Decaceramics and this has all been raised. My question is just to understand what the company's focus is in allocating capital. Especially now that we have a new executive committee, what do you believe will be the best way of improving your performance in ceramic tiles? The second question is about wood. How do you see this demand changing in this year? Thank you.
Thank you, Raphael. That was a great question. I love when we get questions about long-term strategy because we are a company which, you know, has shareholders, even those with a minor stake that have a long-term outlook. We really believe in our strategy. If you look at the slide that [uncertain] over. Started this process and dated now. Do we see on the invest- Well, the predominant view for 2023, 2024, and early 2025 is that we don't have plans for new expansions, but the ones that are already ongoing. We want to consolidate investments, we want to pay our bills, and we're going to reduce our CapEx significantly. Especially for new projects for the next years.
At the end of this project, we'll be prepared for ceramic investments with new investments, technology, tech metals, and we're going to have a more automated sanitary ware operation. We're also investing, which will take our forestry operation in the northeast to a new level. This is extremely profitable. We have mature forests, selling wood at great prices, which justify the investments. It's a long-term project and it's comparatively low CapEx. We're not buying land, we're at a competitive level, and we're at a good location. Do you think we're going to expand our wood area on the short term? No, we don't have that vision. We believe that the market will balance itself out in the next years.
We don't see any specific projects from our competitors, and we're going to have to develop the market. If at some point we have the opportunity to grow, we're going to have a great forestry base. It's a long-term strategy for both things. As you said, wood has been very resilient. The wood market is doing very well. We have to be careful when we compare to 2021. 2021 was an outlier year for all businesses, but for wood, it was very close to our budget from 2022. In 2023, we were also aligned to our budget. We have a great strategy and wood, contrary to what we saw and heard, will have good perspectives for the Q1. The Q1 is also weaker, everyone knows.
As our clients are excited since volumes have been contracted and so on, we see that wood will be very resilient. Haddad had many visits in his onboarding. He visited the south of Brazil with some of our clients. We see a lot of excitement. The industry is doing well. The retail industry, of course, has some competition, but this is very concentrated. I'd just like to reinforce something that I've mentioned for a couple of years that you're starting to see in the spreadsheets of our competitors and our colleagues in pulp, which is the effect of cost and unavailability of wood in the market. Dexco can do very well since we control 100% of our operations. For example, if you reduce 5% to the market at excellent levels and it generates great results.
We have a great situation. We don't need to buy wood, contrary to all of our competitors, with basically no exceptions. They're facing tough issues with wood prices. You can see our biological assets in our balance sheets, and the company is having great effects from that. I think we're very well prepared when it comes to wood and even for wood, we don't see, besides the investments we're making, anything relevant right now. We'll probably see some time in which we're going to have to work more to improve our EBITDA, to improve costs and productivity, and to have better results. We're not focusing on investing in it, especially when, you know, we still are in an uncertain time. We'll have to see how our country does.
Great. Thank you.
Next question will be asked by, Isabella Vasconcelos from Bradesco.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I have a couple of questions here from my side, still about the wood division. We saw that your mix improved significantly in the Q4. I know this is a part of your strategy. I'd just like to confirm if anything happened in the Q4 or if you expect any seasonal variations or anything to change in your mix in 2023. My second question is also about wood panels, specifically, exporting. I think you mentioned improvements in exports in 2023. I'd just like to hear a bit more about that. What's your expected share for 2023? Also, to conclude, you mentioned that you are exporting more ceramic tiles. If you can tell us a little bit more about that. Thank you.
I'll let Haddad answer your questions about wood and all of it, then we'll conclude exports.
Hi, Isabella. Thank you for your question. To your point, what has happened in the Q4 is a consolidation of our long-term strategy. As a reminder, our mix is complex. Besides our product mix, we've been driving ceramic tiles up, and that's been having a good result. We also have a mix of distribution channels, retail and industry. We don't see anything outside the curve. This is a trend. We're betting on it. Of course, we're going to see some changes from quarter to quarter. This is just the result of this consistency that we've been having. We have a major goal and in order to characterize it, well, Antonio mentioned Revestir.
If you can go to the trade show, it will be great because we're going to show another important chapter in the evolution of materials, finishing solutions, which I believe represent the future, or rather, it's the present in our portfolio. We're not saying that we don't have challenges with the market, as we mentioned before, clearly in the world of wood, they're more recent if we compare to what happened in the last years. What we're seeing now is, you know, the results of what we did in the wood structure. Nothing here is happening by chance. It just took some time because we have to take several steps here. Haddad can talk about this, we're looking at exports with a close eye, we're betting on it for 2023.
In 2021, wood reached important exportation levels. We're seeing it recover. There are 2 factors that contribute here. Reduction in international costs. Of course, it hasn't reached the level we want, but we're moving forward. We see compatible shipping prices. For January and February, we are seeing them come to a stronger level, more than double what we saw in the last few months. We really expect it to have a good portfolio, maybe five, excuse me, 50,000 square meters. We believe that we can do it, which basically is an entire production line. We have good perspectives. We've always had a demand for exports to other markets. You know, of course, with the war, this changed, but we did have some challenges in logistical costs.
Raul is working on this area. He's been making an effort to restructure our exports area. For wood, we have a new executive working with Adad. Raul is also bringing in new people. This area is being managed directly by Gilmar Menegon, and maybe Raul can tell us a little bit about that. We expect to strengthen this area that has many opportunities. Like Antonio mentioned for wood, we believe that there's some potential for ceramics in some categories in Latin America for exports. We see that there is a potential demand in ceramics. We see that it's growing by about 30%. As Antonio said, shipping is a significant price, but it's been going down slowly. It's now at a level that allows us to have profitability.
Besides that, as Antonio said. We have many small furnaces and many refillers. Just like wood with ceramic tiles, we're having great occupation, and we really believe in these tools. They'll help us to dilute fixed costs and generate profitability. There's more that's going to happen on this front. That's interesting. Just a follow-up, considering exports mixes. I remember last year you mentioned that you had managed to export premium products. Just like to hear if that continues, and also considering ceramic tiles, if you can export them easily in other formats. I know that logistics are not helpful in this area. Well, we can occupy containers relatively well with different formats as well, for small and big formats. Yes, we do have to work on exporting to markets that value quality. You can't go into a price war.
We're moving towards this direction. We're trying to sell more premium products. It's the same as we do with wood. Here we start to see Latin American countries more present in this area. That's basically it. We're going to work strongly for that to improve the export mix for premium price products. Isabela, I'd just like to highlight that we can't look at what is in fashion or what is the current model that are doing well here and extrapolate it for the foreign market. For example, the American market is very strong, and it requires different kinds of parts. They usually like smaller tiles than bigger, for example. What we saw is that we are competitive in certain lines, in certain shapes, and we're exceptional. That can be a benchmark.
We're developing the e-exports market where we have more competitiveness, even if we're not the biggest. The American market likes more traditional, smaller shapes. What companies do is also close to that. Of course, there are opportunities. Wood laminate flooring, for example, is an interesting opportunity. We see some interesting opportunities to recover in the American market, for example. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. This now concludes our questions and answer session. We'll now pass it over to Mr. Antonio for his closing remarks. Go ahead, sir.
Well, I'd just like to thank everyone for participating. I'd like to thank my new team here with me. We're making a new effort. We're restructuring the company internally. We had to be very brave in doing this continuous improvement process at the company.
We made a strong effort to restructure the company to connect to retail. We're learning a lot, we're learning a lot about e-commerce, and it's a strong effort that we're continuing this year with marketing. We mentioned this significantly, that we were going to have a flagship store, that we were going to have things appearing over time, Marina has been leading it. Thank you. Of course, these tougher moments are always a boost so that we can continue having a long-term perspective. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day. Natasha and our entire team will be available for any additional questions you may have.
Thank you. This concludes Dexco's conference call. Thank you for listening, have a great day.