Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our conference call of the earnings release of the fourth quarter of 2019 of Energisa. The audio for this conference is being broadcast and simultaneously through the internet on the website ir.energisa.com.br, where you can also find the presentation available for download. We would like to inform that during the company's presentation, all participants will be only at listen mode. We are going to start the Q&A session, and further instructions will be then given. In case you're needing assistance during the conference, please request your operator's help by pressing star zero. We'd also like to inform that the conference call will be held in Portuguese with the company's management, and so the English conference will be simultaneously translated.
We'd also like to clarify that forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the company, Energisa, is under no obligation to update them in light of new information or future developments, and this should be always taken into consideration. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors may impact the future results of the company, leading to results that materially differ from those expressed in forward-looking statements. I will now turn the conference to Maurício Botelho, who will start the presentation. Mr. Botelho, you are now on.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much. I would like to start by thanking your participation in our teleconference of the fourth quarter in 2019.
We have here Ricardo Botelho, President of Grupo Energisa, Gioreli de Sousa, VP of Distribution, Alexandre Ferreira , VP of Regulation, Finance Corporation, and finally, our Investor Relations team. I'm going to share with you some slides, and then we are going to open for questions and answers. Let me remind you that similarly to previous quarters, we are going to present the results of ERO and EAC considering 2018. The financial part, where we have pro forma balance, we are not going to consider the acquisition of this company presenting our results. We only acquired the distributors that had already been part of the legacy.
Slide three, let me remind you of the positive non-cash effect that happened in fourth quarter 2018 of BRL 1.2 billion, referring to the results that had been accounted for in the combination of businesses related to acquisition of Energisa Rondônia, Energisa Acre, which ends up distorting some of the comparisons. Adjusted EBITDA totaled BRL 1.056 million in the quarter and BRL 3.840 million in 2019, showing a decrease of 44% in the quarter and 6% in the year according to accounting methods. If we don't consider the recently acquired company, adjusted EBITDA has reached BRL 1.078 million in the quarter and BRL 3.968 million in the year to date 2019, which means 58% increase in the quarter and 38% increase in the year.
Profit reached BRL 466 million in the fourth quarter 2019 and BRL 1.177 million in 2019, with increase of 639% and 107% respectively. I'd also like to emphasize some important events after the closure of the quarter. First of all, the presentation of dividends, 0.32 units, which means BRL 116.1 million, which are going to be paid as of April 3rd. Finally, in mid-February, we presented our CapEx projections and forecasts that we are going to share with you later. Slide four now. We can see the distributors market sales increased 4% in the quarter or 1.7 percentage point above national consumption level. In 2019, the growth was 4.2% against 1.4% of growth in retail.
Since 2009, consumption progression in the concession areas has been at about 2.2 percentage points above the national average. The growth of the fourth quarter 2019 is primarily due to the performance at household customers, which increased 6.7% in the quarter, and commercial applications, which were 4.2%, both influenced by high temperature levels and also calendar effects. Would also like to highlight Energisa Mato Grosso do Sul, which had growth of 8.4% in the quarter, and household customers grew 11.9% or 58 GWh. Another important highlight was Energisa Sul-Sudeste, reaching the second-best performance in the group, 6.9% increase, also influenced primarily by the household segment. We can look to slide five. Here we can see once again our efforts to deal with low-income population.
Between 2018 and 2019, there was increase of 170,000 new customers registered as low-income customers, primarily for Energisa Rondônia, Energisa Acre, amounting to 27% of this growth. Slide six. We can see on the left our total electrical losses. There was a decrease in total loss, reaching 13.48% of injected energy, 0.12 percentage point below September 2019, and 0.09 percentage point below December 2018. This equation shows our consistency in our activities against fraud and theft of energy. If we exclude Energisa Rondônia and Energisa Acre, total electrical losses represent 11.52% of our amount of energy or 0.27 percentage point below the regulatory average. Energisa Mato Grosso maintained its improvement journey, presenting a reduction of 0.06 percentage point over September 2019 and 0.50 percentage point compared to December 2018. Once again, closing the year within the regulation or the regulatory limit.
There are still a number of challenges to be dealt with. We are going to keep on working to maintain this indicator below the regulatory goal. Another highlight was Energisa Tocantins with a reduction of 0.45 and 0.64 percentage point over September 2019 and December 2018 respectively, or 1.37 percentage points below the regulatory limit. Energisa Paraíba, which is currently above the regulatory goal. This is due to the increase in some clandestine connections and theft of energy. We've applied a number of actions to fight against that in 2019, which meant an increase of 37% over what we had in 2018. Regardless, it was not enough to compensate what had been lost throughout the years. In 2020, we are going to reinforce our actions to really correct this deviation. Slide seven, we are going to talk about quality. Highlighting here Energisa Rondônia.
Except for Energisa Rondônia, all distributors were below the quality regulatory limits. In relation to FEC or SAIDI, Energisa Minas Gerais and Tocantins and Sul-Sudeste reached better historical levels. Excluding the recently acquired distributors, Energisa Tocantins presented the second-best evolution in the group in FEC, SAIDI, with a reduction of 1.64 hours compared over December 2018, reaching 21.65 hours. Another highlight for Energisa Sergipe, with the second-best performance in SAIDI, FEC, with a reduction of 1.52x . For Acre, Rondônia, the year of 2019, we've been training our own teams and third-party teams focusing on quality, and we've made major investments in these two concessions, and this is going to help us recover quality in provision of energy and services. Let's move on to slide nine, eight better say. Here we're going to go into financial highlights.
The informations of distributors here are excluding the results of Energisa Rondônia and Energisa Acre. In PMSO pro forma, we had an increase of 6.8% in the quarter. In the year, the total amount was 12.1% above 2018 or half of inflation rate in the period. Part of the increase in the quarter may be explained under the line others as a result of costs provided by Alsol, which is a turnkey project for customers. It amounted to BRL 48.3 million. In 2018, in the fourth quarter, there was no correspondence to these services. There is a counterpart in revenue with a positive effect over EBITDA. If we didn't consider this effect, PMSO in the quarter would be aligned with the fourth quarter 2018 and also the year 2019. Slide nine. Now we can see a brief analysis of the PMSO of Rondônia and Acre in the quarter and in the year.
We can see some non-recurring effects. These exclusions have really made the whole performance be more aligned with the activity of the companies adopting very important actions that are going to be repeated during 2020. For these companies, these non-recurring events refer to disconnections and also termination of some employments. For example, some retirement plans, some voluntary recessions, and we had to pay some labor costs as well, especially with headcount. There were also some additional services, consulting services, and some related to extraordinary tax and legal consulting. Based on the charts, we can see relevant impact of these events, BRL 136 million spent in non-recurring events in the year, whereas for Acre it was BRL 33 million. Now we can see slide 10 on the left. We can see the whole progression of pro forma consolidated EBITDA of the fourth quarter. On the right, we have accounting consolidated EBITDA.
The adjusted EBITDA, if we exclude Energisa Rondônia and Energisa Acre, was BRL 1.1 billion in the fourth quarter 2019, and about BRL 4 billion over 2019, amounting to 58% in the quarter, 38% increase over the year. I also highlight non-recurring effects. If properly excluded, the EBITDA of the quarter would have increased by 20% as a result of the increase of BRL 148 million in Parcel B of distributors. In 2019, the improvement would have been 22%, with an increase of Parcel B of BRL 759 million. If I may ask you to hold, please. We seem to have a technical issue here. If you can please hold, I would appreciate that. Thank you. We still have a problem here in our webcast audio. Please hold. Well, it seems that we are back. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope nobody has lost anything important from slide 10.
Should you need any additional clarification, we can go over that during the Q&A session. Slide 11. On the left, we can see significant progression of pro forma consolidated net profit with an increase of 639%. With the non-recurring effects in this quarter, and we mentioned that in the annex of the presentation, there was a bonus of subscription related with the seventh emission of debentures in Energisa amounting to BRL 144 million without cash effect, as opposed to BRL 165 million the fourth quarter 2018. Pro forma net profit amounted to BRL 385 million or 73% over the fourth quarter 2018. If we exclude this effect of the market and the amount of the subscription bonus, we're going to total BRL 1.2 billion or 95% over what had been observed in 2018, amounting to BRL 1.4 billion. Now we have slide 12 to cover, where we talk about indebtedness.
Total consolidated amounted to BRL 13.7 billion, including BRL 1.1 billion referring to the issue of debentures and the debt associated with the tax bonus amounting to BRL 628 million. Once executed the bonus, we are going to have the effect of a reduction of approximately BRL 1.7 billion in net debt, amounting to 0.5x the net debt indicated by EBITDA. The covenant indicator reached 3.6x in the end of the year. It's also affected by the combination of the businesses from 2018, which would amount to BRL 1.3 billion. We are operating within the limits and all the factors that have been negotiated, and it ranges between 4.5x and 5x times during 2019. Let's talk about investments in slide 13.
It grows to BRL 3.2 billion at the end of the year, or a 60% increase over 2018, and BRL 2.7 billion related to the segment of distribution, meaning an increase of 52% period-over-period. In the area of transmission, we invested approximately BRL 366 million in 2019. The most advanced projects were Pará I and II and Goiás I, in which we invested BRL 350 million in 2019 and BRL 172 million in 2018. Slide 14. We can see investments planned for 2020 as we presented in February in our reference call. The estimates of investments amount to BRL 3 billion, 85% of which will be concentrated in our group distributors, 10% for energy transmission, and 4% at Alsol. Rondônia and Acre will together receive BRL 832 million during the year, and Rondônia will be the distributor that will receive most of the investment considering all the categories we presented.
In terms of electric assets, we are going to still make relevant investments, just second to Mato Grosso. Slide 15, we are going to talk about transmission. The projects that were purchased during the auction in April 2017, Energisa Goiás I, Energisa Pará I, were started in September and October 2018 respectively. They have advanced. Goiás would reach at 99% and Pará I 83%. Based on these figures, we can anticipate that it will be higher than initially expected. Energisa Goiás is coming close to its commissioning phase, and soon we're going to have operations to start the commercial operation of the facility. We have been negotiating with many landowners whose lands have been impacted. We are coming to the end of it. Concession of Block 4 in Tocantins, whose contract is being signed by 2024.
Energisa Pará II, which was a lot obtained in June 2018 through an auction. The construction operation started in June 2019, and we've already covered 30% of this lot. Energisa Tocantins, which was obtained in December 2018. We had a basic project confirmed in July 2019, and part of the initial designs for requesting a previous permit have also been provided to the environmental agency in July 2019. In this project, we've already started negotiation with landowners that are impacted by the operation. Bringing together these four projects, it means an RAP of approximately BRL 192 million and a CapEx of BRL 1.5 billion. It closes my presentation. Now we would like to open for our questions. Once again, I apologize for having lost part of the audio conference for a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are now going to start our Q&A session.
Should there be a question, please press star one. If your question is answered, you can always remove it from the queue by pressing star two. Questions will be received and answered. We would like to ask you to remove the headset from the phone when asking the question so that we can obtain better sound quality. Please hold while we collect the questions. First question comes from Carolina Carneiro from Credit Suisse. Please proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for this call. I have two questions. The first one concerns regulatory issues. Some time ago, ANEEL provided a final opinion by the authorities checking some questions from ANEEL's own area and one specific area.
It seems it changed the initial interpretation where there would be no possibility of having a decision in 2019. Later, ANEEL had a different kind of interpretation, and the companies are trying to change and revert the decision. I would like to hear your take on the specific document and what kind of implications it may have over your extraordinary pre-consideration request that you've made, and also the retrospective analysis that it would have. In the quarter, once again, Alsol showed a growth within its segment, gaining relevance. We know it's a small business concerning your group portfolio. What can we expect for 2020 in this segment? Do you really believe that the increasing trend, quite relevant in 2019, will remain so? The first question I'm going to ask Alexandre to have it answered. Then Ricardo is going to answer the second one. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone. Concerning what ANEEL presented in its position, we are in contact with them. A number of reporters of the committee presented that when reviewing the taxes, they have analyzed some of the arguments that we presented in our appeal. An opinion of the legal public authorities is non-binding. Therefore, we believe that the whole process of analysis of the appeal is ongoing, including all the specific considerations that should be made. Let me now turn it to Ricardo to make his comments.
Good afternoon, Carolina. Concerning Alsol and our activity in the business, in our Alsol business throughout 2019, it was based on increase of revenue from turnkey projects. These are projects that are sold as a full planned operation. This is a model that we discontinued last year because it was just one single revenue.
You build it, and then you get paid over the construction by third parties, and you end up having just a small amount of OEM revenue for the future, which is not very relevant. We changed the business model for 2020, and we changed it last year, to run a model in which you explore shared generation and remote consumption, high remote consumption. In this new model, you generate revenue from sales of projects to a number of consumers. That is a model that has gained more momentum. We've managed to have three projects in full operation, selling them to customers, to clients, and it has a recurring revenue flow. What we are going to do from now on is to invest further in this model of distributed, remote, shared, distributed generation, adding additional services such as battery, energy efficiency, and some added value services.
Our perspective is still quite good, even though there has been a difference in regulatory affairs. Because of the potential of technology that our company has in its portfolio of clients, it's still quite capable of experiencing significant growth in the future.
Thank you very much for your answers. They were very clear.
Our next question comes from Marcelo Sá from Banco Itaú. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for this call. I would like to hear about some strategic points of the company, because you were more focused on buying distribution assets, but now the assets available, maybe they have a different nature, and it wouldn't be that the company wouldn't be as competitive as other players. Thinking about the scenario today, would it make sense to go stronger into generation? We've recently seen a movement of combining assets with ETT and diversifying portfolios.
Would it make sense in your company to acquire a company and go somewhat stronger in that segment? Thank you.
In the short term, we don't see that movement into generation, except for GD, which we've been working with also. We do have some projects in our pipeline. A project in Bahia, from São Paulo in Paraíba as well. The prices in auctions are not very attractive. Probably we'll have to bring together free market and auction, and the free market still has very short reference terms, very short deadlines, so we have to have a mismatch of projects and contracts, which ends up being a problem. We don't think we are not that away from the competition in distribution, really.
If I can ask a second question concerning the discussion of fiscal fees and tax rates, can you please update the discussions that you've been having with ANEEL, the regulatory agency? Do you think you're going to come to any conclusion soon?
This is Alexandre speaking. Good afternoon, Marcelo. This is something that has brought to the attention of the regulatory agency. We've been monitoring it closely and we believe that the regulatory agency will have a reasonable position. This is something we've been monitoring very closely. There is no update yet.
Good. Thank you.
The next question comes from [guess] Paulo Camacho with Canvas. Please proceed.
Hi. Good afternoon. Great presentation. Thank you. I'm going to ask about financial leverage because your net debt and EBITDA and their relation have been increased over the years. Do you really feel comfortable with that figure?
How far would it go, and do you have any plan to reduce that debt in relation to your EBITDA?
With the decrease of the interest rate in Brazil, energy distribution companies and companies in general have been operating at higher covenant levels. We've reviewed the covenants of all covenants to 4.5x , and then it went down to 4.25x, and then 4x . I think we can operate close to 4 at lower levels. Should there be any change in the scenario in the industry, in interest rates, we would have to adjust that. There is another important point here, as I pointed out in my presentation, which is the potential conversion of the shares of BNDES. It's by August 22 that we have a deadline of the bonus, and that would mean 0.5 in leverage.
If we are close to 3.6 on December 31st, we have to deduct 0.5.
Great. Thank you.
Let me remind you that to ask a question, please press star one. If there are no further questions, I would like now to turn it over to Ricardo Botelho for his closing remarks. Please proceed, sir.
Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to have you here in our earnings conference call for 2019, where we presented important achievements as a group. I would like to share with you how glad we are to have celebrated 115 years anniversary in February this year, of 115th anniversary.
For all the time, we've had a team of excellence to help in our journey of growth, not only in the business of distribution, but also as a broader business of electrical energy services, also working towards sustainable sources of energy and managing all our companies. Our main focus will always be in presenting the best services to our clients. In 2019, we amounted to 7.8 million consumers, they are a source of inspiration to our company for continuously developing our work in 11 Brazilian states. We are very proud to share with our market our achievements in 2019. We've presented a significant growth in our market in volume of distributed energy, as Maurício pointed out. We also had increasing profitability in our company, always working within an ethical, social, and environmental perspective in our role in the productive chain.
We've renewed the concession of Energisa Tocantins, being absolutely sure that we could provide services of excellence to our customers. For the past three years, this company has gained a specific highlight in the region and the company of Midwest and North of Brazil. We strongly invested in our concessions. We've added BRL 11 billion in investment in modernizing our electrical infrastructure for the past five years, always focusing on innovative solutions centered in our customers in all regions where we work. On top of that, we've been working very hard throughout 2019 in restructuring and integrating distributors Rondônia and Acre, acquired in the end of 2018. Investments in the first two years of the creation of Energisa includes two companies will be higher than anything that has been invested in six years of state-owned control.
We've used an optimal capital allocation methodology, and we've been directing investments to improve the quality of the provided services, which will bring benefits for the economy of the state and for consumers. I'd like to conclude our meeting this afternoon by telling you a little bit about our moment of really concern in global economy because of the dissemination of COVID-19. We are paying close attention to its dissemination, and we have a work group to preserve, as much as possible, the quality of health of our staff and maintaining the quality of operation within the quality standards, continuation of the operations. We've maintained, now we have new hygiene routines for our service providers and team. We also have a protocol for quarantine if required, and we've canceled national and international trips, except in situations that are going to be analyzed individually.
We've also decided to postpone larger meetings and events and conferences that require traveling. We are going to rely on the technology that we currently have in-house using video conference meetings whenever possible. We are also extending that kind of guidance to our clients, encouraging them to prioritize new digital channels to interact so that we have fewer people coming to our branches. We've also been paying close attention to the virus and market because of the expectations of decrease in global economy and the unpredictability of the impact it will have on people's lives. Despite this very uncertain outlook, our activities as a company have not been impaired, and we haven't identified, as we've seen in our earnings release from 2019, any significant impact that would modify our business forecasts and assumptions and measurements of assets and liabilities.
We are really confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to prevent the expansion of the virus all over the world. We are here willing also to fight against the dissemination of the disease. We are going to carry on with our projects in 2020 with investment amount into BRL 3 billion as provided before. We have over 15,000 direct employees to help us execute this project focused on sustainable growth and generation of value to all our stakeholders. Thank you once again for being here with us this afternoon, and we wish you a great afternoon. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The conference call is now concluded. Please disconnect now.