Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Itaúsa's conference call to discuss 2019 results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. Should you require assistance during the call, please press the star followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. The file will be available at the company's website at www.itausa.com.br/en at the investor relation section. This conference call and the slide presentation are being transmitted via internet as well. You can access their webcast by logging on to the company's website at www.itausa.com.br/en. Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the Safe Harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Actual performance could differ materially from that anticipated in any forward-looking comments as a result of macroeconomic conditions, market risks and other factors. I inform that during the presentation, the questions can be sent by webcast, and it will be answered at the section of question and answers. With us today, we have Mr. Alfredo Egydio Setubal, CEO and Investor Relations Officer at Itaúsa, Mr. Henri Penchas, Chairman of the Board of Director at Itaúsa, Mrs. Priscila Grecco Toledo, CFO at Itaúsa, Mr. Bruno Salem Brasil, Investor Relations Manager at Itaúsa, Mr. Geraldo Soares, Head of Investor Relations at Itaú Unibanco, Mr. Guilherme Setubal Souza e Silva, Investor Relations and New Business Manager at Duratex, Mr. Carlos Biel, Investor Relations Manager at Alpargatas. It is my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Alfredo. Sir, you may now begin.
Thank you. Thank you for those who are participating in our annual results conference. First of all, I'd like to mention that we changed some of our financial statements. We think it's more modern, more transparent, with more relevant information for the shareholders. For those who want to look at that and also give some suggestions for that improvement that we made in our financial statements, we will be glad to receive and improve even better for the coming quarters. Starting our teleconference on page four, the business environment that we see, we put here what we saw in 2019, one year ago exactly. Most of that was confirmed by the scenario. What we expected for 2020. We expect interest rates to keep it and inflation low. Interest rate can even reduce a little bit more.
Let's see how all this coronavirus and inflation in Brazil goes on, but there is some room in our view to a little bit more reduction. Not in the short term, but for the medium term. We think consumption, job, and income levels will continue to grow because we expect the economy to grow around 2% for this year. It's still low compared to the Brazilian potential, but it's better than in the last two or three years that the growth was around 1%. We expect lower global growth because of the reduction in the growth of China especially. Now we have to see what will happen also with this coronavirus in China, how this will affect the China production and so on. Probably the global economy will suffer some reduction in terms of growth for this year.
We continue to expect the capital allocation from local investors to the stock market, into real estate market and to some more hedge funds. This movement we expect to continue, what will of course affect the capital markets. We expect the federal and state governments to go on the privatization and concessions projects for this year. This will give some opportunities for investments. What do you see under this 2020 environment? What do you see for our companies that we have investments? In the case of the bank, we see the lower portfolio growth. We continue to expect the growth of the portfolio, especially in individuals and middle markets. Big companies will continue in our view to use the capital markets locally and internationally. We see the mutual funds industry equity and hedge funds growing.
We see the companies using more the capital markets for issuing debt and equity. The investment banking will continue to grow in terms of revenues. We think for the wholesale products for the bank, we will get the benefit because we are very well-positioned in terms of asset management, investment banking, and private banking also. In the case of consumer goods, we continue to expect growth because we see the total income growing because of reduction in employment. This probably will benefit the local markets for Havaianas here in Brazil. We see civil construction, especially residential and commercial buildings going on, not only in the São Paulo state, but going on to other states also in Brazil. We are already seeing that happening in the case of Deca products, in the case of Duratex.
We expect the new gas legislation that can offer some new opportunities to NTS, that is the company that we have a participation of distribution of natural gas. Going on page five, we see the results of the allocation of capital that we did in the last two and a half years. NTS, that we made equity investments of BRL 926 million. We make the calculation for these financial statements of the fourth quarter, and the fair value of the equity is BRL 1.2 billion, so we have a gain in that investment. We received, in this period, almost BRL 600 million in earnings, in dividends, and the interest over capital. These investments have been very good and very accretive for Itaúsa. In the case of Alpargatas, we bought that by the end of last quarter of 2017.
Using the metric of the share value in the stock market, the Alpargatas shares almost double the total return of the Ibovespa index. Also a very good investment for Itaúsa . By the end of the year, we announced a new investment, an investment in Copagaz. Copagaz is one of the players of GLP distribution here in Brazil. Our consortium, Copagaz, Itaúsa, and Nacional Gás, were the winners of the privatization of this company from Petrobras in the November of last year. We are now waiting for the antitrust authorities that are already analyzing this deal. Itaúsa will invest BRL 1.4 billion in the capital of Copagaz that we'll use that money to pay Petrobras for the stake that Copagaz will remain in Liquigás. Also, Itaúsa will increase the corporate governance of Copagaz. That is a family-owned company.
We have to improve a lot to put in the better standards of all the companies that Itaúsa has in their investments. Going to page eight, some highlights of the companies that compound our portfolio. First one is the bank. We saw the loan portfolio growing 10.8% with a very good performance, especially in middle markets, where our portfolio grew by 25%, and also in the segment of individuals, where we grew 13%. Commissions from investment banking and fees in general, insurance operations were up 7%. Investment bank, the wholesale bank in general, it was the main sector that this growth appeared, especially related to asset management, private banking, and investment banking fees for debt and equity issues. We improved our efficiency ratio by 2.5 points.
We achieved by the end of the year 45.5%. We will continue to improve this efficiency ratio in the coming years. That is very important to face the new competition, the new environment of competition here in Brazil. We continue to invest a lot in the digital transformation of the company, with high investments in products and systems and apps and so on. Also, the evolution of the customer experience, and we improved our NPS by 900 basis points in the last 16 months, showing that the customers are reacting to our new position in terms of products and experience provided to them. With all that, the net income increased 5% last year. The ROE of recurrent ROE almost 21%. Going to page nine, talking a little bit about Alpargatas.
I think Alpargatas grew almost 10% in revenues, mainly driven by the volume of Havaianas in Brazil and also internationally. We continue to move the company on. We changed the management last year. Roberto Funari was elected the new CEO and started the 1st January of 2019, and is doing a quite good job improving the company and changing the management, the strategy, the people, culture, and we are getting the benefit from that. We are also doing a lot of investments in the digital. Alpargatas is very behind in our view in terms of e-commerce, and user experience. We are investing a lot since last year and the coming years to really reduce the gap that we have here, especially in e-commerce, not only in Brazil but also internationally, in the markets that we want to be, like China, Indonesia, India.
We think the e-commerce will be the main channel to improve sales in these countries. We continue to keep our eyes in the capital management. We sold all the textile operation of Alpargatas in Argentina, and also sold all the assets related to the Topper, that is shoes, sportive shoes in Argentina also. We are going on in the strategy that focus the company, especially in Havaianas brand, not only in flip-flops, but also in accessories and clothes and things like that. With all that, the net income increased almost 30% last year. ROE, recurring ROE 30.5. The EBITDA also increased by 18%, reaching BRL 620 million. The company is showing a good trend in terms of results and cash generation. On page 10, we have the highlights for Duratex. Duratex EBITDA went up 7%. We saw a very good improvement in terms of efficiency operations.
The acquisition of Cecrisa and the Deca division outperformance, especially in the last quarter of 2019. We expect Deca also to have a good year in 2020. We reduce a lot our financial leverage because of the strong cash generation recurrence and through the sales of farms and forests that we did last year. We acquired Cecrisa, that is the Portinari brand. With that and Ceusa, we are very well-positioned in the high-end ceramic tiles markets. That is where we want to be. We don't want to go down in the channel to lower value products. With these two acquisitions in the last two years, we think we are very well-positioned. We finished the investment in the second line of Ceusa, and we use this second line as the most digital line of ceramics in Brazil to also produce Portinari products.
This line will be probably full in this year, next year, in terms of capacity for the high-income products that we want to sell. We finished the total approval of the new JV with Lenzing related to the cellulose, to the pulp investments that we are making. The total investments projected is BRL 5.2 billion, and we already started the construction of this factory in the state of Minas Gerais. Also we continue to rationalize our investments in terms of farms and forests. We sold the excess that we have in the state of São Paulo because we are not planning any panel investments in the future. We decided to sell and use this money to generate cash for acquisition of Cecrisa, pay dividends, and rationalize our assets. Duratex increased, still with low results. We expect every coming years to improve more.
We still have our recurrent ROE much lower than we expected, but we are very confident with all these measures that we are taking in new business. This ROE will increase in the coming years. We finished with 5.8% last year. The recurrent EBITDA increased by 7%, achieving BRL 900 million. On page 11, NTS, the gas distribution, revenues increased 9%. Company continues to overperform the projections that we did when we made these investments. Revenues increased by almost 15% last year, and we received BRL 211 million in terms of dividends and interest on capital, an increase of 9% over 2018. Going to page 13, we see some numbers that we released. A net income increase by 9.3%, achieving BRL 10.3 billion. Recurrent net income BRL 9.7 billion, with an increase of 3.6%, ROE of 19.4%. Total assets, BRL 58 billion on the holding.
Stockholders' equity, BRL 55 billion in a market value of BRL 118 billion. The payout for this year, the dividend yield was 8.5%. On page 14, we can see all the dividends interest on capital that we paid. We continue distributing all the dividends that we received from the bank and use the non-financial sector dividends interest on capital to pay the accounts that we have as a holding company, especially taxes. You know that we have not the best structure in terms of fiscal. As a holding, we pay more taxes on interest on capital. We use the dividends from Duratex, NTS, and Alpargatas to serve the expenses that we have at the holding level. That is around BRL 400 million per year. The last two years, we are able to do that.
We expect this year also to pay all the expenses and taxes using the non-financial sector dividends. Probably this year we are going to continue to distribute the whole dividends that we receive from the bank. We don't see any necessity for capital increase for this year of 2020 because we have a cash position of more than BRL 1 billion. On page 15, we see the market value of Itaúsa portfolio, that the total is BRL 145.7 billion, and the market value of Itaúsa, BRL 118 billion. That means that the holding has a discount in the market of almost 19% by the end of the year. Our daily traded volume in the Bovespa and B3 is increased 24% and achieved BRL 282 million per day. That is a good liquidity for the share.
We end 2019 with 364 individuals are in the base of shareholders of the company. The last slide on page 16 is the return of the company in the last 10 years, five years, and 12 months compared to the interbank, to the Bovespa index in U.S. dollars. In long term, we have been showing a good performance for the shareholders. That is our presentation, and now we are open for questions that you probably have for the management and for all the people that are here at this conference today.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press the star key followed by one on your touch tone phone now. If at any time you would like to remove yourself from the questioning queue, press star two. Please restrict your questions to two at a time. Our first question comes from Adriana de Lozada , Scotiabank.
Hi, everybody, and congratulations on your results. I would like to ask you if you can give us an update on your M&A outlook. I know you've said in a previous call that you have several NDA signed and a big pipeline of offers. If you can give us some details about the industries that you're looking into, that'd be great. A second question would be on your outlook of dividend payout. If you can give us a range and what you see there as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Adriana. The M&A outlook, we've just announced this investment on Copagaz. We are expecting the antitrust authorities during this first semester to approve that investment. We will start to work with Copagaz in this new investment, and we are very confident that you will be very accretive also like NTS and Alpargatas that we did in the other years. In terms of new investments, we continue to analyze what are being offered to us by the investment banks, private equity companies, and so on. We have many NDAs signed, but at this moment, we don't have anything really advanced in terms of studies and for new investments. We want to see the changes in the natural gas law in the regulation. The regulation of the I don't remember the wording. Gas. No. Sanitation. Sanitation and sewers. Market laws that will change.
We want to follow the concessions and privatizations. We are very cautious because we have limited capital to use in these investments in the coming years. We have to analyze very well and deeply, the opportunities that we have, to see if it makes sense or not to make new investments. For the moment, we have nothing real concrete in the pipeline for the coming quarters. In terms of payout, the payout of this year reduced because the bank reduced the payouts in the bank because the bank will need more capital this year, according to our guidance, in terms of credit growth. The bank distributed less than last year in terms of payout, and by consequence, Itaúsa also distributed less than the previous year. It is difficult to say how much capital the bank will generate and need for this year and need for 2021.
Anyway, we will continue to the practice of distributing the whole dividends and interest on capital that we receive from the bank to the shareholders. Today is very difficult to say what will be the payout of the bank, because it will depend a lot on the needs for growth of the bank in the coming year, especially in the next year.
Got it. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's question and answer session. Mr. Alfredo, at this time, you may proceed with your closing statements.
Thank you for those who participated with us. I think we released a good result for the year. All the companies we think are performing very well. The bank, of course, had their challenges, but I think we are facing them and improving efficiency and improving digital products, competing with the feedbacks and so on. Duratex, Alpargatas also improving results, improving revenues. We think the results are very good, and all the investments that we made have been very accretive. Accretive. As I said, we expected Copagaz also to be very accretive for our shareholders. Thank you for your time, and we will be back in the middle of the year with the results of the second quarter. Thank you.
That does conclude our Itaúsa's 2019 results conference call for today. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.