Good afternoon and welcome to Jalles Conference Call to discuss the results of the third quarter of crop year 2023-2024, 3Q 2024. This conference is being recorded and has simultaneous translation into English. The replay will be available in both languages at the company's website at ri.jalles.com. All participants will be in a listen-only mode during the presentation. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A session when further instructions will be provided. As we have limited time in this conference, any questions that are not addressed during the call will be answered later by the company's investor relations team. The earnings release and the presentation on the third quarter of crop year 2023-2024 can also be accessed on the company's investor relations website and also at the CVM's website.
Before proceeding, I would like to mention that any statements that may be made during the conference related to the company's business prospects, forecasts, operating and financial targets related to its growth potential are based on the company's management's expectations about Jalles. Such expectations are subject to change due to macroeconomic conditions, market risks, and other factors. Today with us are Mr. Rodrigo Penna, CFO and IRO. And I would like to turn it over to you now, Mr. Penna. You may proceed, sir.
Thank you very much, Doris. Good afternoon, everybody. Once again, I would like to thank you very much for attending this conference call, monitoring our results. Thank you very much for your confidence in our company. And thank you all for being with us.
Well, to start this presentation, I would like to tell you that we changed the model, the earnings result model, based on a survey with our investors. So we will try to be brief in our presentation. We are going to focus on the main items about this crop year until this point in the first nine months of 2023-2024 crop year and to leave more room for Q&A at the end. All right. These are the main highlights for this quarter. We reached 7.4 million tons, 8.4% higher year-on-year, and record-breaking sugar production with a lower mix than we are going to be in the future very soon. We also had a record-breaking production of ethanol in the company and in the unit, the Santa Vitória unit. We had never processed 1.1 million tons before at the Santa Vitória unit.
We had a net revenue of BRL 495.9 million, 2.6% lower year-on-year. Now we would like to give you a brief overview of all the things that happened this quarter. The climate and the weather conditions in the Center-South Region were very good. We went from a yield of 74-93 on average in São Paulo by December 2023. Of course, March can still affect these numbers, but they have been very good so far. In the state of Goiás, we went from 77%-84% with a 9% improvement. And Minas Gerais, there was also an increase going from 79%-90% with a 13.9% improvement. So the quarter was great in terms of weather conditions. And as we said in previous quarters, in the Goiás unit, we had an okay weather condition.
It was normal, but it was better than the previous year, which had been a little bit more adverse, but it was not exceptional. It was ordinary. In the Santa Vitória unit, the weather conditions were better than expected, better than normal. Now we would like to show you what we are doing right now and how we are going right now. In São Paulo, the weather condition has been challenging in the past months, and the consulting firms changed their forecasts for the production in Brazil for this year. So now we would like to show you the results in each unit so far: Otávio Lage, Santa Vitória, and Jalles Machado. This is what the rainfall looks like so far. Here you can see the numbers from September to August.
In August, we had unexpected rainfall, 35, and we started the year with a higher rainfall than we expected in September. In October, the current year is light green. That is 2024. And 2022-2023 is dark green. And the gray line is the average, the historical average. So you can see rainfall has been higher than our track record in September, October. Not so much in November. December exceeded our track record, January too. But February so far, or until last week, since February has not ended yet, you can see that we had 45 millimeters in rainfall. So rainfall in Jalles Machado unit and Otávio Lage is according and fully in line with our track record. Only February is still below our historical average, but we still have some weeks to go.
Now we have to wait for March and April to define what the crop year is going to look like. In Santa Vitória, since Minas Gerais is not doing so poorly as São Paulo in terms of weather conditions, the numbers are good. In August, we had very good rainfall above the average. Then in September, also, the numbers exceeded our historical data. October was in line with our track record, November too, and much better than last year. December was below our track record and worse than last year. The same goes for January. In January, the rainfall was well distributed, unlike December, which was below our history, and it was not well distributed. December was a bad month for Santa Vitória. In January, we were still below our historical average, but with a good distribution.
In February, for the first weeks of February, you can see that rainfall has been low. What we wanted to show you with this is that for the construction of the next crop years, the units in Goiás have better weather conditions than last year, at least so far. In the Santa Vitória unit, the weather conditions are worse than last year. This is the overview pertaining to weather conditions so far. We still have March and April when rainfall stops in the state of Goiás. That is very important for us to map out our crop year. But the numbers have been better than last year. Now I would like to address the market vision for the sugar sector. In the bar chart, you can see the global sugar balance, production minus consumption, year after year, and the source is Datagro as of February 2024.
In the light green squares, you can see the ratio between inventory and consumption of sugar throughout the year. So now in 2023-2024, in the current crop year, when we talk about worldwide sugar crop year, it will only finish in September 2024. So it goes from October to September 2024, which is the current crop year. Our inventory was low, 41.9%. And now we are going to have a deficit of 1.5 million tons in the current season. And that is going to decrease our inventory consumption ratio to 40.6%. And for the next crop year, we know it's far, but still, according to Datagro projections, we are going to be at 40.5% with a surplus of 0.4 million tons. That increase will not be sufficient to offset for the decrease in the current season. So the scenario is good.
First, because of the fact that despite Brazil has been producing more sugar than expected, Thailand is having a very low production with 7.5 million tons in the crop year that is ended there. And India, I believe that you know a lot about what's going on in India. So the market looks very good in terms of prices if we look at 2023, 2024, and 2025 seasons. Now let's take a look at the ethanol market. It was one of the greatest offenders in the 2023-2024 crop season. It drove prices down. So I would like to give you more details about our projections for next year. Looking at Datagro's projections in terms of crushing as of February 2024, we're still lacking March 2024. Some mills will resume production in March 2024. So we don't have that volume to account for here.
So we are projecting 656.4, and the mix will be at 48.8% for sugar. For next crop year, according to Datagro, considering the adverse climate conditions in São Paulo and Minas Gerais, we are going to see a decrease of 10% in comparison with the previous year. In the last crop year, the average productivity in the center-south region was 88.26. I think that was a record-breaking number. And now it is estimated that we are going to go back to a yield of 79, which is better than the past five years. Even with that decrease, the numbers would be better than the average of the past five years. Now, what happens with the total sugar that is going to become ethanol in the market? We're talking about sugarcane ethanol.
We are going to go from 46.7 million tons to 38.8 million tons, a 17% decrease in the supply of ethanol for the next crop year. Those are the figures based on Datagro's projections. What happens because of that is that our hydrous ethanol supply will go from 19.5 million liters to 16.2. When it comes to corn, the volume would increase by 400 million liters. That is going to be the increase for next year, but the rest will become anhydrous ethanol. Considering all of that, we are going to have a supply of hydrous ethanol in the market amounting to 12.7% lower, according to Datagro's projections. That is going to leave us with a lower ethanol supply in the 2024-25 crop year. That is going to consequently lead to a better average parity ratio, a better ethanol-to-gasoline parity price.
Now, on the next slide, I would like to show you some more details about price parity. This chart shows actual results and estimated results. The source for this slide is SCA. SCA monitors the ethanol market continuously, and it sells the ethanol produced by several mills in Brazil. What we want to show you with this chart is that for last year, we had a very low consumption of ethanol early in the crop year. The parity price, the price parity rather, was 72.5%, then 73%. The numbers were very high. The price parity was high in the beginning of the crop year. That happened because the PIS and COFINS taxes started to be charged by the government again at that point. That caused the market to increase the levels of the price parity. After that, the price parity went down.
Consumers took a while to start consuming ethanol again because they knew that early in the season, the price parity was high. It took consumers some time to get back to consuming ethanol. They stopped consuming ethanol for a while, and it took some time for them to resume that consumption. Because of that, the market increased the volumes very slowly. At the same time, the productivity in Center-South increased gradually. In November and December, the rainfall was very low in São Paulo, which is the main producing state. We were able to crush more than we expected. The volume of ethanol to be consumed increased.
So SCA designed this curve, this chart, showing what is going to happen, what is likely going to happen when we have a normalized price parity and a crop year that is more in line with our historical data. And it also shows what the ethanol consumption will be considering these price parity levels. We are also assuming here that oil will be about $75. And gasoline will be sold at prices that are $0.10 lower than we have before. And the weighted average price would be BRL 3.09 compared with the weighted average price for 2023-2024, which was BRL 2.64. There is another important factor that we should consider here. These numbers consider a higher crushing of ethanol. And in the projections by Datagro, considering crushing, we wouldn't need such high ethanol consumption as we have in the chart.
This is all to show you that if we have a better supply of TRS for ethanol in the crop year and a lower supply of hydrous ethanol to be consumed in the market, according to SCA projections, we should have a better average price for ethanol. Now I'd like to show you the operating highlights of the past crop season. There was an increase in the yields in the Santa Vitória unit by 16%, and that is related to a more favorable weather condition. We also changed part of our agricultural management practices. We have not been able to implement 100% of our practices, but we had some improvements. We also had a record-breaking crop year in line with our guidance, the guidance that we published in June with 7.4 million tons.
There was a higher share of sugar in accordance with our guidance, although Santa Vitória produced 100% ethanol this year. Another point that I would like to highlight this year is the harvested area, considering the three units in comparison with last year. There was a 0.9% decrease. That happened because we accelerated the renewal in Santa Vitória, especially. We had a higher percentage of renewed areas. We still have to plant in some areas in February, March. But by December, we had 4,000 hectares renewed, almost 100% of those in the Santa Vitória unit with 58.3% increase. So we have a recurring CapEx that is a little bit higher here because of that. Our productivity, our units, Jalles Machado and Otávio Lage, were at 90. Santa Vitória was a little bit lower at 69.8.
We still have a lot to work on to increase yields there. Our production mix was 62% ethanol and 37% sugar. We were able to increase the production of sugar by 22.5%. The investments that we are making to improve our capacity so that we can increase the share of sugar in our mix, and that is going to bring our capacity to above 600,000 tons. That is all capacity. We're going to give you more details about the investments later. Here we have some other highlights focusing on prices and volume. I'm going to give you the numbers for the first nine months of the year. Since our business is so seasonal, I think it makes more sense for us to give you the numbers for the entire period, the entire nine-month period than just the past quarter.
You can see that the average price for all types of sugar increased by 5.3%. When it comes to ethanol, there was a 20% decrease in price going from BRL 3.3-BRL 2.7. In terms of volume, we sold less. In December, we had a higher inventory to be sold. In the past crop year, the opposite happened. We had very little inventory to sell in the last quarter. For Q23, it was a quarter that brought us little, a bit little income in comparison with previous quarters where we had higher inventory to be sold. Here on this chart on the right, you can see the comparison between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. Here we have a summary of everything that we talked about. Considering the total recoverable sugar that we produced, we only sold 64.9%.
By December 2023, we had already sold 88% of the last crop year's volume. So our total volume sold was 22% lower year-on-year considering the first nine months of the year. And that's why we had carryover inventory of ethanol to sell late in the crop year with 181 million liters in comparison with 58. And in sugar, we have 23% more sugar to sell. Our inventory is 23% higher. And that is the amount that we have to sell in the last quarter of the crop year. I would also like to highlight some more elements here on this chart. Our EBIT margin was 13.9% in comparison with 20% last year. And that happened mostly because of a lower ethanol price. And in the pro forma numbers, we went from 33%-19% in EBIT margin for the first nine months of the year.
It shows how resilient the company is. Although we had higher costs in the last crop year to build and structure our sugarcane fields, and although we had bad ethanol prices, we were still able to reach 19% EBIT margin. Our EBITDA margin was 67.1% in 3Q24, and in the first nine months, it was 64.7% in comparison with 77%. This is our indebtedness. Our net debt over EBITDA is 1.4. The last quarter of the last crop year, we sold less, and therefore our EBITDA was lower. In the next quarter, we are going to see the results of the last quarter. You're going to see a better EBITDA. Still, our leverage ratio is very comfortable. Our debt is 7% in the short term and the rest in the long term. Our average tenure is 5.2 years.
So this is a very comfortable leverage level. Despite this was a very heavy investment cycle for the expansions and also the construction of the sugar mill that was added this quarter, we had almost BRL 50 million invested in the Santa Vitória unit. Now, when it comes to our hedge policy, we have already hedged 100% of the available volume for the 2024-2025 season, which is a little below our capacity. We consider our conventional sugar capacity because organic is a different price model, and we don't hedge that volume of sugar. Now, considering the conventional sugar capacity, we have already hedged 100% of that volume. And that does not include the volume that we are going to use to pay for sugarcane partnerships and also a coefficient to cover crop failures. And for the 2025-2026 season, 75% is hedged. And the 73, rather, 73% is already hedged.
The average price, as you can see on the chart, is 24.1% higher than the current crop year. You can see that we are building a better capacity for producing sugar. We're going to have much more sugar because it is more advantageous than ethanol. You can see that that is equivalent to 4.1 in ethanol and for 2025-2026, 3.9. Now, let's talk about some of the sugar mix construction works. With the construction of the sugar mill in Santa Vitória, plus the investments that we are making to increase the sugar, the share of sugar in our mix, we are going to reach 60%. That is going to take the entire company share of sugar in our mix to 55%. We are increasing considerably the share of sugar in our mix because it has better prices right now.
So the company was able to pivot very quickly to adjust the company to the new reality of prices. Prices were not so favorable this year because we were heavily concentrated on ethanol. With that, I would like to thank you very much for your attention. And before we move on to the Q&A session, I would just like to summarize the situation. The market is much more constructive for ethanol than the last crop year and for sugar too, especially for us, since we're going to have an increase in prices and a large portion of our sugar production is hedged. The weather condition is a little bit better in the Goiás units and a little worse in the Santa Vitória unit.
Before we move on to the Q&A session, I would like to ask you to answer a survey about our earnings call because we want to make it better and better. We want to communicate better with all of you. Lucas, over to you to explain the survey.
Hello, good afternoon, everybody. We created this survey with the goal of improving our press releases and our earnings calls. We also want to know from you what you would like to see in the next earnings call. You just have to scan the QR code on the screen. You just have to answer five questions. Four of them are about giving a score, and the fifth one is an open-ended question. Please take some time to answer the survey because it is going to be very helpful to us.
Now, I would like to turn it over to our assistants to start the Q&A session. And once again, thank you very much for your attention.
Okay, to ask a question, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. If you wish to open your microphone to ask your question, please let us know in the Q&A field, and your microphone will be activated when your name is called. You can also submit questions in writing by typing your question in the Q&A field. If you're using a dial-in connection, you can also ask a question. In that case, please press star nine on your phone. After your name is called, you will hear instructions to press star 6 to activate your microphone. Please press star six only once. The next question, the first question, actually comes from Pedro Fonseca with XP.
Hello, Rodrigo. Good afternoon. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes, we can hear you.
I apologize. I'm having some technical difficulties here on my side, but thank you very much for taking my questions. The first question is about your unit cash cost. I don't know if you included a new type of disclosure in your press release. I think so, and it's very good. And you are delivering mid-singles level in terms of unit cash cost. So I would like to know what we should expect for the next crop year and how that relates to something that Rodrigo said in terms of having better weather conditions in Goiás, but more challenging conditions in Santa Vitória. I know it's too early to talk about your expectations for 2024-2025, but if you could give us more color about a potential to decrease costs in the next crop year, that would be interesting.
The second question is about a ramp-up in the use in Santa Vitória. If you could give us more color and an update on your expectations, that would be helpful. Are we going to maintain the curve of 78 tons per hectare? And if you could give us more information about your expectations for that ramp-up in Santa Vitória, that would be great.
Thank you very much, Pedro. Well, about the cash costs for the next crop year. So far, the inputs, including fertilizers and crop protection, the prices have been low. There hasn't been an increase in inputs prices yet. So we have indications that that is going to continue. If we consider the line items that weigh heavier on our production cost, labor is a very important one. And that should increase according to the inflation rate. That's what happens usually when it comes to labor.
The other inputs, as I said, will behave well in terms of prices. Also, we always calculate CapEx for agricultural machines. We believe that those prices have decreased too. The outsourced workforce will also increase, but a little below inflation. We believe that this scenario will be stable in terms of costs. We believe that if there's any increase, it will be in line with inflation or a little bit lower than that. That's what we can say about the prices behaviors, at least for the line items that compose the price of ethanol. Now, when it comes to weather conditions, they have been better in Goiás and a little bit worse in Minas Gerais. Santa Vitória accounts for 25%-30% of the crushed volume in the group.
And so far, of course, we still have the second half of February and March and the first half of April to finish the crop year. But Goiás accounts for over 70% of our total crushing. And you asked about the ramp-up in the yields in Santa Vitória. The curve remains the same that we published in our guidance. By 2026, our target is to reach 80. We are going to go from 60. That's what we had when we bought that unit in the first crop year. And by 2026, we are going to reach 80 tons. That's what we published in our guidance in June. So it remains the same. And we should remember all of the other points that we mentioned in previous calls. We are going to improve irrigation. We are going to improve the varietals that we use.
We are going to plant more productive varietals. We are going to implement agricultural management practices in line with what we already did in other units. We are going to renew the sugarcane fields too. This year in Santa Vitória, in total, from February to November, which is the planting period, it includes a little bit of the previous crop year and part of the current crop year. So it went from February to October or November. So if we consider all that, all of that period, we planted over 21,000 hectares. It was a lot. That happened in the entire group. In Santa Vitória alone, it was 7,000-7,500 hectares. We're going to have new varietals. So all of that is going to make up for the not-so-good weather conditions that we've had so far.
As a follow-up question, Rodrigo, if you allow me, you said that you had third-party sugarcane in Santa Vitória. Can you share with us what that volume was? And I would like to know if that effect is going to repeat in 2024-2025.
I think we included that information in the release. We bought 76,000 tons in third-party sugarcane. And there is a possibility that we are going to have third-party sugarcane from neighboring mills. We have not defined anything yet. We have not bought anything from anyone yet, but it might happen.
Okay, thank you very much, Rodrigo.
The second question comes from Gabriel Barra with Citi.
Hello, good afternoon, Rodrigo. Thank you for taking my question. I would like to know more about the inventory. We saw a higher inventory last year, and you talked a great deal about the company's strategy. But if you could give us more color about your expectations for the fourth quarter, we know that you have a very high volume to be sold. So if you could talk a little bit more about the challenges for selling ethanol and to whom you're going to sell ethanol and organic sugar?
Again, we saw a higher inventory of organic sugar. We were expecting the organic sugar to sell faster. So again, if you could talk a little bit more about the challenges in terms of logistics, for example, in terms of containers. And a third question would be, you talked a little bit about the investment in increasing the share of sugar in your product mix, which is very important. And it seems to me that you have already taken advantage of that higher share of sugar. Are you going to keep that high level of the share of sugar in the beginning of the 2024-25 season?
Thank you very much, Gabriel, for your questions. Addressing the first one about ethanol. Well, ethanol, we have a very significant volume of ethanol to sell in the last quarter of the crop year. In the first half of January, we had the most challenging period in terms of prices. Prices went down even further before it started to recover again. The prices in the market are about BRL 2.60. You probably saw the consumption for the entire month of January. It was 1.77 billion liters sold. It was actually different from the projections made by SCA. SCA estimated the volume to be lower. But considering the parity level, we had a better consumption of ethanol in January.
Just so you have an idea, in São Paulo, the main producing state with the current prices of gasoline at the pump and considering the average margin of distributors and gas stations at BRL 2.80 reais, we would have a price parity of 63% at the gas station. So the gross price would be BRL 2.80. And the price parity at the gas station at the pump would be 63%. That is a very competitive parity for ethanol. So we are going to start the next crop year with a high production. And prices will be pressured until we sell the inventory, the production of ethanol that was higher than we expected because the harvest was very good in the state of São Paulo and in the state of Minas Gerais in November and December because rainfall was lower than our track record. We started January with BRL 2.20 in prices.
Then the prices went up to BRL 2.60-BRL 2.70, and it stabilized at that level. The expectation of consultants is for the prices to be at BRL 2.70 or a little bit more than that until the end of the crop year. Now, organic sugar, year-to-date, the volume was in line year-on-year. In the last quarter, we are going to have more shipments. We have more shipments scheduled. I think that we are going to make up for the volumes that we did not sell. As we said in other earnings calls, organic sugar is selling well in the United States. The market has been growing there. In Europe, with the recession, the crisis, all of that affected the volumes that we had since the pandemic. Europe is not the biggest market for organic sugar. It is the United States.
It already was the United States. But in Europe, things are going slower in terms of consumption. And they also produce beet sugar, which is also organic. Now, addressing your last question about the mix, the product mix, and the increasing share of sugar in our mix. The biggest construction work is in Santa Vitória, as you know. And we are expected to start operations there in late April. The crop year will start in April. Rainfall is higher. Crushing is lower. So we are probably going to miss a few days early in the season, but that has been accounted for in our plan since the beginning. And if everything goes according to our plans, we are going to use that new mill in almost 100% of the next crop year. In Otávio Lage, you should remember that we are expanding.
We are going to have 1 million tons in capacity in the units. We are increasing the share of sugar in our mix and also expanding. Everything is going according to our schedule so that we can start the Crop Year in the scheduled date, which is early April. We have a question submitted in writing from Cedric Mello, an individual investor. He says, "Good afternoon and congratulations on the results. Can you please comment more about how much of the construction of the sugar mill at Santa Vitória has been completed, and when do you expect to finish the construction works there?" Well, I think that we addressed part of that question in the previous question. As we said, we expect to have it finished by the end of April. About 70% of the construction has been finished. We started the construction in July.
In less than a year, we're going to finish the entire construction. It was challenging, but it's not any different from what we did in the Otávio Lage unit in 2015 and 2016. We've been through this. When we did that in Otávio Lage, we actually started one month later. It is a very tight schedule, but everything is moving according to plan. Now, moving on to the next question.
We have a question from Thiago from BTG. Hello.
Good afternoon, Rodrigo and Lucas. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. If you could give us more information about some aspects related to this point, but I would like to know more about the availability of sugarcane for the next crop year. You said that the weather conditions were better in Goiás and not so much in Minas Gerais.
You also emphasized that you were going to renew a very large area in Santa Vitória. I imagine that you were going to renew a higher percentage of your areas there. We believe that you are going to be able to expand the amount of sugarcane available to crush in the next crop year. If you could give us your perception about all of those vectors so that we can confirm our thesis, that would be great. The second question is also about Santa Vitória. I know this is a very difficult exercise. But we saw a significant progress in yields in the first year of Santa Vitória. We saw that across the board in the Center-South region, as you showed in your presentation. You showed the productivity in São Paulo and Minas Gerais. This was a very favorable year in terms of weather.
But we cannot extrapolate that to other crop years, excluding the weather factors. It is very difficult for us to figure out how much of that improvement is related to better management practices and so on and so forth. So for the next crop years, considering the Datagro projections, the entire Center-South Region should see a decrease in yields. And Santa Vitória is included in that, but not so much your units in Goiás. So considering all of that, if you could share your opinions about that, it would be very helpful. If you could tell us what the evolution in Santa Vitória is going to look like, excluding the weather factors, that would be great.
Thank you very much, Thiago, for your participation. Thank you for your question. Okay, so let me give you some information about what we have been doing.
As we mentioned, we have been accelerating the renewals in Santa Vitória, but we are also expanding organically, as you said. So if we put that together, if we put the expansion in Santa Vitória and Otávio Lage together, we expanded almost 5,000 hectares. And that is going to have an impact on the next crop year. Although last year we increased our area, we also decreased the area to be renewed in Santa Vitória. So for this year, we are going to increase our total expansion. I said 5,000, but it's actually almost 6,000 hectares. That's what we are going to have in addition to what we already have. And that is in our guidance, if I'm not mistaken. So Duarte, since we have not actually, we have not released any guidance about this.
So what I can tell you is that we increased our area, and the renewal has been more accelerated. So the average age of our field is lower. So if we consider all of those factors and the weather conditions in São Paulo, and we know that in Minas Gerais, the weather conditions were not so good as in São Paulo, but it's not so bad either. So in Minas Gerais, we are right in the middle between the conditions in Goiás and in São Paulo. So if you consider the 6,000 hectares, about 3,000 hectares are there. So if you consider the lower age of the field and all of the factors that I mentioned, we expect the productivity to increase, and it is going to continue to increase. And we are going to increase gradually until we reach 80 in Santa Vitória by 2026, according to our guidance.
So considering the information that we can give you, I think that's what I can tell you so that you can bring more information to your calculations and your thesis. If we consider a 75% capacity in the mills, that is going to allow us to increase productivity. Also another very important point that should be mentioned is El Niño. We are moving towards a lower intensity El Niño, and we are going to move to La Niña, the La Niña effect, which is positive for the region of Goiás. In our region in Goiás, La Niña brings early rainfall, and that is going to cause an effect on the 2025/26 crop year in September and October. We're going to have rainfall earlier. So usually, the La Niña phenomenon is positive for us.
Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you, Rodrigo.
We have another question coming from Everton Rodrigues, an individual investor.
He says, "Good afternoon. I would like to know your perspective about paying dividends, the payment of dividends by the company."
Everton, thank you very much for your participation, for submitting questions. We distribute dividends once a year, and that is defined in our shareholders' meeting, which takes place in July. I think we have already a schedule for that. That's when we define what the dividend payment is going to be. In our dividend policy, when we have a leverage level that is below 2x our EBIT, we commit to distributing 40% of the dividend. That is not the case because we are in a process of investing. In the past two years, we were actually below that level, but we were in an investment cycle.
That's why we distributed the minimum amount, which is 25% our income. We only distribute 40% if our leverage level is very low. And if we don't have any projects to invest in, if our leverage level is low without any major projects, we distribute 40% of the dividend. And we usually pay dividends after the shareholders' meeting, 30-60 days after the meeting. So after the meeting in July, we're going to pay dividends probably in August or September.
As we don't have any time left, we would like to close the Q&A session. If we still have questions, please send them to the investor relations department. I would like to turn it over back to Rodrigo for his closing remarks.
Thank you very much, all of you, for taking the time to participate in our earnings call. Thank you for your interest in our company.
We had a record-breaking crop year in line with our guidance so that we can reach the 9 million tons. As we said, the year was challenging with ethanol, but the company knew exactly how to pivot and adapt and address the low share of sugar that we had this year and fix the situation for the next crop year. We are very confident that we are going to have great results in the last quarter of this crop year and the next crop years. I would like to thank our entire team, Lucas, Louise, the financial, the IR teams. Thank you very much for helping us put together the materials for this earnings call. We tried to focus more on the main points related to the market to bring something new to all of you after your feedback in our survey. Thank you very much.
Enjoy the rest of the week. We had a carnival, a holiday here in Brazil. So enjoy and see you in our next call. That finishes 3Q24 earnings call of Jalles Machado. See you next time.