Dexco S.A. (BVMF:DXCO3)
Brazil flag Brazil · Delayed Price · Currency is BRL
5.11
-0.14 (-2.67%)
Apr 29, 2026, 4:25 PM GMT-3
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q1 2023

May 4, 2023

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Dexco's conference call to discuss its Q1 2023 earnings. This conference call is being recorded. This recording can be obtained on our website, ri.dex.co. This presentation is also available for download. This conference call is also available in English. You can press the globe icon on the bottom right bar on Zoom and then go to the English room. There you may choose to mute the original audio. All participants will be in listen-in mode only during the presentation. We will start a Q&A session and further instructions will be provided. Before proceeding, it should be pointed out that any statements, forward-looking statements, are based on Dexco's administration assumptions and currently available information for the company.

These statements might involve risk and uncertainty because they refer to future events that depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors, market analysts, and journalists should take into account that macroeconomic events, also the sector that this company does business, these might lead to result that are different materially from those that are expressed in these forward-looking statements. Today, we have Dexco's executive board members and also their investors relations team. Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira will give this presentation. You may proceed, sir.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

I'm the company's CFO, Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira. Thank you very much for participating, attending another earnings release call. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. On slide three, that's the beginning of our presentation. Here we show the highlights of the first quarter, 2023.

This year started with poor conditions in the markets where Dexco does business, especially in January and February, that led to decreased sales volumes in all divisions, especially in Deca and RC. With lower sales activity, we finished this quarter 20% down in total net revenue. This result with less dilution of our fixed costs led to our adjusted and recurring EBITDA to be at BRL 351 million at the end of the quarter. If you take away, of course, LD Celulose results. This operation finished its first maintenance shutdown at the beginning of the year and now is at full capacity. This quarter, LD contributed BRL 133 million to EBITDA. That led to Dexco's earnings to BRL 484 million. Cash generation, slide 4.

We finished the quarter with a negative sustaining cash flow at BRL 117.1 million. Of course, with the effort to expand our forestry with more investment in OpEx than historically. Another relevant factor was greater expenses in financial expenses as a result of our gross debt linked to CDI. For our working capital, there was slight increase in our inventory levels, and that, of course, led to our greater working capital net revenue ratio at 18%. With the project we keep focusing on a new cycle of investment, and we spent BRL 141 million, and we had a negative free cash flow of BRL 258 million. The impact of this result on our debt on slide 5.

With greater cash consumption as a result of the investment that was made, our leverage at the end of the quarter was 2.0x. That was adequate considering our amortization schedule. Our strong cash position to date. This quarter, the company raised BRL 5 million from Santander, the average cost of funding was at 110.2% at CDI, the average maturity term was 3.9 years. Our divisions on slide 7. IBGE published data show that our sales contracted 9.7% year-over-year in this sector. The domestic market dropped 2.8%, the foreign market, under even more pressure, dropped 41.1% this period. The highlight in the market, local market, was a 7% increase in MDP sales. On slide 8, Dexco's wood division exceeded our expectations.

This shows we are resilient when we face instability in the market. Even though the MDP sales increased, which led to a worse product mix, we were flexible and adapted to the demand scenario, and we chose to set factory operation levels to optimal asset utilization. As a result, we had surplus wood production and increased profitability with greater sales of standing timber. Even if our results were 8% down year-over-year, there was a 14% increase when compared to Q4 2022, and this led to a significantly higher margin of 29%. We took advantage of market conditions and high wood prices, and we are now keeping our position in wood panels. On slide 9, dissolving wood pulp.

In quarter one, even though we had this maintenance shutdown, we sold 92,000 tons at an average price of $950 per ton. The relative cost of this shutdown let our adjusted and recurring EBITDA to BRL 272 million down from quarter four 2022, a margin of 42%. If we added these earnings, because Dexco owns 49% of this company, this would add BRL 133 million to our company's revenue. We are happy with our results, and we really want to decrease our production costs. On slide 11, finishings for construction. Building material sector contracted 7% on average in terms of deflated gross sales in quarter one 2023, with better performance in basic products, according to ABRAMAT data. On slide 12, metal and sanitary ware.

We were impacted by an adverse event. This division was greatly affected. We had a strategic increase in basic products because we have more favorable conditions on the market as compared to Q1 2022. This also led to it have an impact on revenue levels and dilution of fixed costs and worse adjusted and recurring EBITDA for the division. The division ended this quarter at BRL 22 million. On slide 13, ceramic tiles. The ceramic tiles market dropped as a result of pressure on demand levels as a result. According to Anfacer data, sales and ceramics contracted 18.4%. The wet line sales were 22% down year-over-year. There was also a suspension of factory production of major producers. That led to a installed capacity for the sector at 61%.

On slide 14, our tiles division and the entire sector chose to keep temporary suspension of production levels. The idea was to reduce inventory levels. Sales volumes was 34.8% down year-over-year. This was higher than the sector's figures due to the high inventory levels in the supply chain, especially in the premium sector, and also, choice of having this profitability level. We chose to have these price levels, and our unit net revenue was 2.6% up year-over-year. This strategy, however, was not enough to offset decreased sales and lower dilution of fixed costs. We had a negative adjusted and recurring EBITDA at BRL 2.4 million. Although there was significant decrease in sales, we see improved market conditions both in Deca and Tiles.

This, of course, as a result of our restructuring process in the last few years. We are confident that we will have better earnings of Deca and Tiles in the next quarter. Final remarks, slide sixteen. I'd like to finish this presentation with a discussion on our expectations for the year. First, although we have a more challenging scenario than expected, our expectations have been gradually fulfilled, both on a macro level and also for Dexco's operations. This scenario of wood is still challenging, but a pressure on cost that leads to good conditions in forestry in both foreign and domestic levels. We understand the difficulty we have. Our priorities are still to control costs, expenses, and also to optimize costs, work on our product mix, and also work on the return on investment and timeline of our investment project.

This is all compliant with our strategic initiatives. Medium and long run, we also follow our brand strengthening strategy on the market. This involves both execution and operations, and this has already yielded results, good results. This quarter, we're also focused on achieving new, winning new markets with wood panels and also ceramic tiles that will diversify risk in Brazil and leave our factory utilization levels if we have economic slowdown. We're very happy with our first year and the potential results for Dexco. Before we move on to our Q&A session, I'd like to stress the announcement we made yesterday. We canceled 57.6% of our treasury shares, which is, of course, that we trust our long-term strategy in Dexco. We're now open, opening our Q&A session. Thank you very much for your attention.

We will now start the Q&A session for investors and market analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please press the reaction button and click on Raise Hand. After your question has been answered, you can leave the queue. First, Caio Greiner, BTG Pactual. You can ask your question, sir.

Caio Greiner
Analyst, BTG Pactual

Hello. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. One, about the selling timber sales you made. I need more details about this strategy, especially in two aspects. Can you quantify the price of these sales in Q1? Do you have any idea of the margins, how much this accounted for your earnings this quarter? Can you maybe give us some clarification on this? Number 2, what was the limit? Sales seem to have offset the drop in wood panels.

This is important because we see some civilization in wood panels, but if you have more stable or wood panels on the same levels as we have today, can you offset that with selling timber, and again, doing this sustainably? Because this has made your results even more resilient. Do you believe this will continue sustainably from now on? The other question, this is about Deca and tiles performance levels. How have these two first months after your turnaround movement, what has been your focus in the short run? I believe Raul mentioned this in some event that you had some price adjustment initiative. You were thinking about offering your market share in the use of your portfolio and what your portfolio does, industrially speaking. What has been your answer in terms of improving all this?

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Thank you. Thank you very much. This is Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira. Thank you everyone for attending our conference call. We have two questions, Caio. First, this is something I've been stressing for a long time. The wood panel market. In answer to your first questions about our revenue on forestry business. The wood market is really favorable for Dexco. We are almost the only one wood panel company in the sector that has full supply from our own forestry. What we've been doing, these are operations. We're not disclosing all the operational details. Of course, it involves tactical information that are as important on our day-to-day. What I can tell you, though, is that what we've been doing is that we're working on... It's not about a forestry inventory. It's not something that we cannot achieve.

What we've been doing is that since we saw at the end of last year, the last quarter, what we have been seeing, taking place is slightly lower demand in the wood panel market. What we have in terms of prices and sales is really reasonable. It's like when you're at the end of the month, what you do is you set your industrial operations to work at 85% or 90% capacity, and this is good operations level in terms of ancillary and fixed costs. Operation at 100%, which could be done but is not convenient now because we don't have such heated demand on the marketplace. I just take the wood that I would use in this 100% capacity level, and I sell it.

Caio Greiner
Analyst, BTG Pactual

If I had three, four times more wood, I'd still sell that wood at very good prices because we know we have a wood supply crisis on the market today. Is this sustainable?

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Yes, it's more than sustainable. We've been doing this for a long time, and now we're doing this with a, of course, good standing timber scenario. It doesn't seem to change in the next seven or eight years. There's not enough forestry to meet this demand. These prices will keep on the same level. There's demand for wood, there's no supply, so wood prices are high in Brazil, everywhere in the northeast. Every place sells wood. Prices are very high because there's high demand for wood. As we are selling wood, we can take advantage of this situation, and we believe this will remain thus for many years.

As you said, we have good wood resilience. Of course, it would be great to produce wood panels, but selling standing timber from our surplus production operating at 85% or 90% industrially is also a very good strategy. We have our capacity share. We want to ensure that this operation will keep adjusted to our market share, in line with our capacity share. When you have some demand decrease, there's always some pressure on the side of prices. We have been trying to keep our market share. Again, when you consider the cost, the pressure on our cost, especially wood prices, our major competitors are suffering the effect of having to buy wood to be on the other side. In other words, buying wood at very high prices. Our wood division earnings, they're fully sustainable on these levels.

We are living two moments. One of cost reduction of the commodities used in the wood market. These have been growing less than expected. I believe this is positive for our business. We're doing relatively well with good productivity levels. Our products are being widely accepted. We have this measure. I'm not taking a forest that I would use down the road and selling it now. None of that. It just means that if I can maybe sell 100,000 meters of wood because I didn't make wood panels, I sell this surplus wood to the spot market. I think this is fully sustainable. Yes, indeed. We've always looked at Dexco's wood business as a whole. In other words, one offsets the other in a very interesting way. We will keep this strategy on.

Another point you mentioned was on how we, how we had been investing. You followed up our change, the change that we made in January, we are still having the consequences of this crisis. I'm really happy with the first results we've been having, especially at Deca and RC. Everyone is happy with the results. We had our board meeting, and the board is really happy too. They have very positive expectations. I cannot give you all the details, of course, what's being done in Deca and ceramic tiles, the investment we've been making there, but there's very many actions being taken and executed, and we are readjusting prices in some products that were a little too high. This was adjusted.

The market in January and February, market conditions were really difficult, especially for ceramic tiles, but we are now recovering. What we're expecting is that ceramic tiles resume their previous good performance until they reach the levels that we had before, our previous productivity, profitability levels in our market share too. In March and April, we are increasing our market share. The launches we had in tiles were really well received. We have products that have been selling much more than expected. We're working on all these fronts, logistics, and also all the industrial changes that are needed. We're also studying new processes and new industrial routines. Raul is really working hard. Both, Deca and Tiles, they're really recovering.

I'm really confident that it's not just about structural change, but also the projects that are being conducted, automation product projects. That's why our CapEx is remaining almost the same, because these factors lead to better productivity levels.

Caio Greiner
Analyst, BTG Pactual

Okay. Thank you, Antonio.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question, Leonardo Correa, Bank of America. Please, sir, your microphone can be turned on.

Leonardo Correa
Analyst, BofA

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. I have two questions. One, can I have a follow-up on this discussion of wood levels that Caio mentioned? Can you give us a little bit of color on this? Maybe, what is the effect if this would sales on your consolidated margins. Number two, this quarter we saw stable volumes in the CPV or unit increase a lot quarter-over-quarter because of maybe maintenance effects.

How far is this effect related to maintenance and volume and costs and what we can expect in terms of what we can expect from now on after you have this maintenance.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Ri ght, Leonardo? As I mentioned before, this is our strategy, and we cannot give you all the details. This is part of our strategy, so part of our forestry operations. What I can tell you about this is we're not saying that forestry represents our earnings overall. No, not at all. This is just complementary. Our greatest earnings come from wood panels, and forestry sales are just complementary additional to this. Today, not selling or selling a bit less of wood panels and selling forestry, this is helpful, of course, extremely helpful, but this is not our strategy. Our strategy is to sell wood panels.

We've been doing this because we're taking advantage of this opportunity because it's highly profitable to sell standing timber at the moment when you consider the prices of standing timber today. When you compare this to others, we see that this is highly profitable. This is just a supporting operation to wood panel sales. It makes no sense to store wood. If I produce a little bit less, we can take advantage of these opportunities, which are circumstantial. We can never do like 100%. There's always some surplus wood or sometimes you don't have enough wood. We have surplus wood when we decrease our monthly operations level. This is complementary sales. It's not our strategy to sell fewer wood panels. We're taking advantage of this situation as our operation is running smoothly and rather sustainable.

This can be our competitive edge to sell a standing timber, to sell forestry. Would anyone like to say anything, Francisco? No, you're right. This is part of our routine. That's not an extraordinary case. This is no news, right, Antonio? We're having significant increased forestry prices, and we are really higher than last year. This is one thing. Another thing we've already mentioned with you is that it might have taken a while for us to realize that we have this higher wood price levels on the market. This meant that. Well, this is our market conditions, and we're not considering, you know, a change in our price, market prices on the horizon. Yes, Leonardo. We also need to consider how. This whole issue.

I mean, what might happen to wood is that the price scenario that we see today when you see biologic assets and the variation are even in our balance sheets. We were conservative first, prices are rising. They keep rising. In our price scenario for a couple of years still, it will highly likely to be on the same high levels or even more. We have many great projects going on, the forestry that is available today are not enough. Planning new forests seem to be still far fetched. We'll get follow up what Eva has been saying. This is something that in a way came to stay. These conditions came to stay. At least in the short run, there's no structural conditions for this situation to be changed.

It's not just about the wood panel. If the wood panel market drops, then we will have surplus in wood, and the pulp market has much more demand than supply. In other words, this issue will be there. You will see it. If you look at things at this issue carefully, you see this wood shortage is a world problem. It's global, not only in Brazil. I'd just like to add one thing to your answer. What we have been doing historically, we had margins close to 20%. More recently, from 2021 onwards, we're talking about 30%. No, now we're talking about 29%, which was the division earnings this quarter. Not considering going back to levels under more pressure. The effect is significant, of course. You see what was shared, but again, this is higher than our historical data.

We have a very good prospect. I have a question or a favor to ask Leonardo. I know your second question was about pulp. Can you maybe resume your questions, just repeat it?

Leonardo Correa
Analyst, BofA

This was about volumes and CPV and how much the maintenance shut down impacted on it and what would be a normalized level.

On this discussion on wood, we also set some LD with a revenue in forestry levels that we calculated about BRL 200 million. Can we think about a similar wood strategy in terms of forestry sales, both for MDP? Was just from something that happened in the first quarter for LD? Thank you.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

With quarter one, we had the annual maintenance shut down. Whenever you have this shut down, you have more costs, of course. This is already expected.

What we see from now on is that, of course, the factory is operating fully after the shutdown. We see always look at the core of an operation such as this, where we have the entire production already sold out. We're looking at industrial production and also the use of wood and the quality of the product is outstanding. It's higher than expected. The factory has been operating really well, and it is producing on the levels, around 100%. I think it will continue like this to the end of the year, fully operational. Everything that people had questions about with dissolving pulp or eucalyptus, well, these things have been resolved, really with very positive expectations. Wood pulp levels, of course, dropped slightly, but again, on really good levels.

I believe that we can expect that LD will be aligned with our expectations in terms of production. What can help LD the next few months is that, like with what we had with wood panels, some of the inputs are, input prices are now adjusted with better levels and the cost at risk. I believe we can expect greater stability in LD's operations, and as a result, in its earnings. Of course, we may have events down the road, including fluctuations in wood pulp prices, but our expectation is that LD doesn't have the same forestry situation as Dexco. LD is fully operational, and the forests are planned for that full operation. Everything is tightly adjusted there. At some point during the quarter or, they might have some forestry operation, but we're not expecting sales operations.

It might buy a little less. We still buy a little wood for LD. Its supply is under control, but we're not planning to sell forestry or wood from forests because the operation is totally, fully adjusted.

Leonardo Correa
Analyst, BofA

Thank you.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Thank you.

Operator

You should remember that in order to ask questions, please click on Raise Your Hand at the bottom of your screen. If you want to write your question, you can use the Q&A tool again on the bottom bar. Our next question, Isabella Vasconcelos, Bradesco BBI. Miss Vasconcelos, you can speak now.

Isabella Vasconcelos
Analyst, Bredesco BBI

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The firstAgain, wood sales and your strategy. Let's think about quarter two and three in a short run.

As far as I understand, the profitability of wood sales seems to be really attractive, but you also wanna keep your market share and supplying, for the wood panel market. Now, my question is also about exports. And also wood sales in this market. Do you want to keep selling standing timber and exporting more wood panels? I just need to understand how you are considering this year in the next few quarters. The second question is about demand evolution, both for wood and also ceramic tiles and Deca on the margin. You said March had been much better than January and February, which had been really poor. How about April and how about May? I just need to know what's going on, with your margins in your different market sectors and the inventory in your supply chain.

I believe that your inventory levels are better now, more in control now. I'd like to know your view on this. Thank you.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Okay. I'll ask Haddad to answer this part in wood. We have that which I've already confirmed. Our wood sales strategy is complementary to our core business. Haddad can maybe or Raul as well, you might add to this discussion on market and investment in tiles.

Speaker 7

Hello, Isabella. Yes, you're right. Antonio has already said it all, but I'll just stress this. We really want to be relevant in wood panels. We need to strike a balance when we sell standing timber. This is just a tool that helps us in cash generation and profitability, but that's not our core business. Exports, yes. This is one extremely important channel for us, sales channel for us.

Exports are still on the radar for us. We've been working hard again to restructure our business. That started with Raul. We want to reinforce or strengthen our presence, our footprint on the markets we are already doing business in. A year ago, we had improved costs and also better shipping costs, process costs, that is really led to a good, positive level of activity for us. We have also built a relationship with our customer base, this needs consolidation. We are being increasingly more meticulous in search for sustainable opportunities in the markets we work in and others. This, of course, has brought, you know, we can strike a good balance. Our operations needs to be scaled up of course. It would be pointless to imagine that we have wood panel operations.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

If we don't sell enough, we will have a lot of entropy in terms of fixed costs. That's another, that's very important to scale up. Raul.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Isabella, and thank you everyone for all the other questions. What do we see in the market today? What we see is that we are considering costs that started in March. The market is getting better. In April, it was better than March. When you look at sales per business day, it's slightly better in March, both in metals and ceramic tiles. In May, after the holiday, right, we're in the beginning of May, but we have a good activity. Now, inventory.

This will take a little longer for us to adjust, but we're much closer to a good level with a very important effect in inventory in the first three, four months. This will continue in May. A lot has been taking place with our major clients. It's a great opportunity. Antonio mentioned this. We have a very competitive environment. When you go back to the right occupation level, we can expect a good recovery in the second half of the year.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Thank you so much. Haddad, maybe you can comment on your wood panel on wood panel demand for April and May. The beginning of the year was a little. There was some turmoil considering our inventory level at the end of the previous year. What we see in retail and the trend for carpentry, for instance, carpentry sales.

The trend or pattern is closer to a balance or equilibrium. In terms of planned furniture, we hadn't reached an inventory peak level, so we have rather balanced demand. We are concerned about the final demand for furniture, of course, when you consider credit availability and high interest rates. We don't see any imbalance in these points in the supply chain. Of course, on a monthly basis, we are working and we are below last year, of course, but our volume is reasonably positive. As a result, we're excited about the prospects of the year. Without wanting to anticipate things, we go step by step, and we think we are a bit more stable than before.

Isabella Vasconcelos
Analyst, Bredesco BBI

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Marcio Farid of Goldman Sachs.

You can proceed, sir. Your microphone is on.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hello, everyone. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two points maybe. The first is like, I'm almost provoking you, Antonio. In the last two years, we had a good market moment, good market conditions, and strong balance sheet. People ask questions about your capital allocation strategy in M&A or anything else. You mentioned that it almost makes sense that everything is too expensive. Everyone is making money. This might not be the right moment. Now, we are at the other end. Market conditions have changed, not only for you, for everyone, of course. Balance sheets are not as it were two years ago, but from a valuation perspective, you might have more of an opportunity than in your recent past.

The point is, what will the balance sheet be like? I mean always in this game, you know, always saying it's hard to balance things out. What is on your mind about these opportunities under these new market conditions? That's one question only, and that's what I'm really trying to understand what is on your minds about this.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Right, Marcio. I might give you an obvious answer. Always paying attention. Okay. Again, the moment now is not one of. We have no relevant operation on the negotiation table, no M&A being considered at the moment. Not at all. As you mentioned, we've been generating less EBITDA, of course, in investment. Our basic plan, if you will, is to finish our CapEx projects that are ongoing.

That's the Botucatu factory in particular. Also investment that we are making in industrial automation, in sanitary ware. That is very important. We're making adjustment to our industrial processes, which was announced before we canceled our investment in sanitary ware. We can gain in productivity when we can better explore our current assets. Right now for this year. Probably next year too, we're not expecting any movements, including market M&As. Then you see that Dexco has been reaching levels that are rather basic. You see many people, many companies losing value that are undervalued, underappreciated right now. First, we don't have much that is really appealing on the marketplace, nothing that attracts us. I think the best thing we can do is to keep doing our work.

Trying to achieve increasingly better results. If we can pay the bill of the investment that we've been making, we prefer to be a bit more cautious right now. If things change, we're going to deleverage now. If we see this, then we might consider the M&As later, but not now. I don't see anything that's really significant. Maybe some complementary business, like with Castelatto, but nothing that will alter things significantly right now. I hope we can really pay all the dividends and with increasingly better results, but we're not considering expansion, neither in wood panels or others, other divisions. We are working in many area, on many fronts. Really happy, there's nothing really significant in terms of different capital allocation strategies.

We're really focused on taking care of our debt, and we're having very high return rates, and this might lead to greater contributions and greater return on investment expectations. This will be our focus now.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. Let me just ask you one more question. Well, how have been these two, first couple of months, what has been the pressure like? What are your expectations for Deca and tiles changes? Before you get better, you get worse, is that it? What are the toughest decisions you need to do in-house? Can you tell us a bit about this experience and how your work in the first few months has been?

Speaker 7

Well, this is my 100th day. 100th day. I'm really excited.

As I said, in these 45, 60 days, I visited all the units, we have great foundations, team and production foundations. We have good competitive, really competitive. Our products have very good positions, maybe with minor portfolio adjustment. Some lines might need to be changed, we have good capacity to do this. Analytics and digital action have given us great insights to manage market, our market situation, that's not just a feeling, right? The carryover in the last quarter did take place in the first quarter. In March, the demand level was more constructive. You just live one month after the other. You see the market going on. As Antonio mentioned, you cannot list the number of initiatives that are taking place.

This is a very complex business with many different facets, many sides, a lot of isolated adjustment initiatives and many fronts at the same time. Our commercial sales team is well aligned and working hard. We see good synergy in France sales, good sales results. I'm really positive. I'm really happy about the next few quarters.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Speaker 7

We're also excited to see your numbers.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Haddad, maybe you could mention about dissolving wood pulp. You had, of course, your maintenance shutdown and that had an impact on cost, right? Your dissolving wood pulp cost on our calculation was BRL 490 and BRL 790 now, right? EBITDA, right? This difference, BRL 490-BRL 790, was this the post-maintenance pattern? Can you confirm this?

Speaker 7

Well, Marcio, the first quarter is not a good reference because of the maintenance shutdown.

We're not going into detail. Going back to normal is what we are expecting. We will not consider the first quarter as a reference, as a benchmark. I think we can go back to that level you've mentioned. That would be reasonable for modeling purposes. I'd like to stress that now our operation has changed from the project to the operations mood, if you will. In October, you might remember we finished the project. As you start operating more intensely, it's only natural that you seek new opportunities, like with Dexco. Again, I stress our work we've been doing together with Lenzing to work hard and exchange experiences. Also buying in packages to reduce costs for that operation. This is the time to operate. We have a very positive history in this respect.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Marcio Farid
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Good luck and, well, good job. Thank you.

Operator

Our Q&A session is now closed. We'd now like to give the floor to Mr. Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira for his final remarks.

Antonio Joaquim de Oliveira
President and CFO, Dexco

Thank you again, everyone, for attending. I'd like to stress that many questions were asked, and I'm really excited about our new team and the entire company performance levels. Everyone is really focused on results. That's our major driver. We are working together in our projects, on our culture. We have many initiatives underway in this respect, and I'm really excited to see that what we can get from the company, these internal initiatives with a lot of dedication from everyone.

I don't even consider that that's already 100 days, like Haddad and Francisco. Time flew, I see that we will operate our company the way we expect. I'm really happy with our achieved achievements. We're really open again to any discussions. We remain at your disposal for any discussions, any questions. Okay. Thank you very much for participating, for attending.

Operator

The Dexco's conference call is now closed. Thank you everyone for attending. Have a great day.

Powered by