Good morning, welcome to Jalles conference call to discuss the results of the third quarter of crop year 2022/2023. 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 have a Q&A session when further instructions will be given so that you can ask your questions. The earnings release and the presentation on the third quarter of crop year 2022/2023 can be accessed on the company's investor relations 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 the future of Jalles. Such expectations are highly dependent on domestic and foreign market conditions and national and international economic scenarios, therefore are subject to change. Today with us is Mr. Rodrigo Penna, CFO and IRO. I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Penna. You may proceed.
Thank you very much, Doris. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for attending our conference call today. I would also like to take this chance to thank our investor relations team for conducting a change in the presentation layout.
Lucas and the entire team, thank you very much for your support and also the accounting team, thank you very much for your support. We made this change so that we could provide you with more information in a more user-friendly way. We started the integration and the consolidation of our business with Santa Vitória, this is the first earnings release containing consolidated results with Santa Vitória, which is a significant change, especially when it comes to the numbers that we are presenting. That takes me to my initial remarks before we dive deeper into the third quarter's results. We would like to look at the entire crop year as a whole. In our sector, we produce for eight months, we sell our production in 12 months, we have many commercial strategies as the year progresses.
It is important for us to look at the whole picture. Of course, there are different events that need to be analyzed in each quarter, but I would like to highlight the fact that it is very important for us to look at the entire picture, the whole crop year. In this quarter, we consolidated our results with Santa Vitória, as I said, and the production was finishing in October in renovated areas, in areas that should have been renovated in the previous year. We had only 100,000 tons. I would also like to stress the fact that the yield in that area was very small, and that affected the entire quarter for Santa Vitória.
We don't usually like to use pro forma figures. In order for you to have a better understanding of Santa Vitória's results, including the results since April, and those results are part of our business, are part of the transaction. All of the results from April belong to us, although the closing date was October. We are going to use April as the date for our results in our statement since we had already incorporated Santa Vitória's results into Jalles. That's why we are using pro forma numbers, just so you can see the whole picture. I just wanted to make that clear in the beginning. Now I would like to comment briefly on the results so that we have more time for questions.
First of all, I'm going to mention the highlights of the quarter and then operating highlights, commercial highlights, and also financial results, consolidated and pro forma, as I said. In thir d quarter of 2023, we crushed 526,000 tons of sugar cane. This crop year was a little bit shorter because of the crop failure that we had at Jalles and Otávio Lage of around 80%, which was offset by our TRS. Considering Santa Vitória, our failure was 9.5%, but we have already incorporated Santa Vitória's numbers in the quarter. Our TRS was very high because we finished the crop year earlier. We didn't have that intense decrease in TRS when rainfall starts. Our adjusted EBIT was BRL 104 million, 48.7% down, quarter-on-quarter, with a margin of 20.6%.
Without Santa Vitória, it would have been 25% according to our release that we sent to you. Our adjusted EBITDA was BRL 313 million, 7.5% up year-over-year, with a margin of 61.6%. The net income was BRL 450 million, 166% higher year-over-year. There's a one-off situation, which is the bargain purchase, which created a gain of BRL 428 million. I'm going to go over the operating results very briefly. We had a 5% decrease year-over-year considering the 112,000 tons that we had in the third quarter in Santa Vitória. That's why you see that gap.
In the pro forma numbers, you can see that we were at 6,700 tons considering Santa Vitória from April onwards. Our yield was at 84.5, considering three months of Santa Vitória yield and 78 in the pro forma of vision. We should remember that Santa Vitória has a lower yield than the rest of the company, and it is one of our goals to make progress and increase Santa Vitória's yield. The production mix. If we were to look at the three months of Santa Vitória, we would be at 44% with sugar and 56% with ethanol. In the pro forma numbers, you can see the split is 33% and 67%.
We didn't have more sugar in our mix because we started the crop year in April and May, and in the beginning of June, our production mix leaned more towards ethanol because ethanol was north of BRL 4, BRL 4.6. At that point, it was more advantageous for us to produce more ethanol than sugar. We started the crop year leaning more towards ethanol, and then we started to produce the maximum capacity of sugar and the maximum capacity of ethanol in Santa Vitória since we don't produce sugar there.
For the next crop year, we are going to work with a sugar production capacity of 37%-38%. That is the maximum capacity that we can produce of sugar in our plants. Let's talk about the commercial highlights. I'm going to focus on the nine months, the first nine months of the crop year.
I think that's the most interesting comparison for you. We had a higher production of sugar than last year, considering all types of sugar, conventional, organic, and VHP, with 2,695,000 tons. For ethanol, we had a major variation from 4.2 to 2.96 quarter-on-quarter. Considering the entire crop year, we were at 3.74 in 2022, and we were at 3.56 in 2023. We were able to offset the lower prices because of the tax credits that we received according to the laws that regulate biofuels. Since ethanol is more competitive than gas, we were able to enjoy tax credits from the states, and we received those credits in five installments.
You can see four installments for Jalles Machado, you are going to see the fifth installment in January. For Santa Vitória, in the consolidated numbers, you can see only three installments. For the sold TRS, if you look at the consolidated numbers, we were at 96%. We sold 96% of our production, there's a distortion here because of Santa Vitória. Santa Vitória produced very little in the quarter, the first quarter that was consolidated into Jalles. It had inventories that had been produced in October and that had not been sold yet, it is not included here as production. When we make that adjustment, when it comes to TRS sold, we were at 86%. If you consider only Jalles and Otávio Lage, it's 96%. CBIOs, the average price was 94 BRL in the quarter.
Our numbers for the first nine months of 2023, we had BRL 132. Now I'm moving on to slide number, let me check. Which number is it? 10. Number 10 with the financial highlights. Our revenue amounted to BRL 1.6 million. In the first nine months of the crop year, it was BRL 2 billion. I would like to spend more time with adjusted EBIT. We had 56% of EBIT margins in 3Q22. At that time, we should remember that the ethanol prices were very strong. It was about BRL 4.10, much higher than the historical average. This year, the margin was 21% considering Santa Vitória. Excluding Santa Vitória, it is a little bit higher than 25% if we consider only Jalles and Otávio Lage.
We should also remember that we took advantage of the first half of the year to sell as much as ethanol as possible in April, May, and June, because we wanted to take advantage of the good prices. If we look at the first nine months of the crop year, you can see that our EBIT margin is 35% and the pro forma margin is 34%. If we consider only Jalles and Otávio Lage, the margin is almost 40% considering the first 9 months of the crop year. If you consider only Jalles and Otávio Lage, excluding Santa Vitória, the margin is not 35%, it is 39%. In the quarter, instead of 20%, if we exclude Santa Vitória, our margin stood at 28.5% considering only Jalles and Otávio Lage.
It is 28.5% again, if we consider only Jalles and Otávio Lage. The ethanol prices are very different now from what they were in 3Q22. Let's take a look at adjusted EBITDA. If we look at the first nine months of 2023, our adjusted EBITDA stood at BRL 996 million, and the pro forma number is BRL 1.3 billion. Let's talk about the net income. We already mentioned a bargain purchase that we made. In the first nine months, our net income stood at BRL 748 million. In the pro forma figures, we are including Santa Vitória and excluding the bargain purchase, which leads us to BRL 409 million, with a net margin of 23% against 25% in comparison with the first nine months of 2022.
Even if we have lower prices now, you can see that we were able to improve our net income significantly from one year to the next. Now let's talk about the cash income. We had BRL 305 million last year, and we stood at BRL 389 million this year in the first nine months of the crop year. We are excluding all non-cash effects from our financial statements, including non-cash effects, variations, non-cash tax, and also the impact of the advantageous purchase. You can see that there has been a significant progress in terms of cash earnings, considering that the last quarter of the first nine months were not so good in terms of cash results.
When it comes to our adjusted EBIT, we are adding BRL 115 million in EBIT when we consider Santa Vitória in the consolidated results since April 2022. Let's talk about the production costs. We have COGS, production COGS. We have the entire production cost, and part of that is inventory and a ctually, I'm sorry, this is not COGS. This is production cost, which is in part inventory and in part COGS. Considering the impacts of higher costs related to the prices of input and fuel and also maintenance of machinery and parts and also the price of diesel, we suffered a significant impact this year, and our costs increased by 20% in BRL and 25% in USD. That was our production cost in the first nine months of the crop year.
Out of the cost, we should remember that 75% of the cost is related to agricultural costs and also agricultural partnerships, and 25% of the costs are related to industrial activity. 75% of the production cost at the company comes from the agricultural side of our business. Let's talk about CapEx. We are including the three months of Santa Vitória results in the consolidated numbers. We stood at BRL 421 million in comparison with BRL 310 million. In the first nine months of 2022. BRL 29 million of this CapEx amount comes from Santa Vitória, especially when it comes to planting, renovation, and expansion. We issued a material fact yesterday, actually, to update our guidance. You can see in the material fact that there was a reduction in the investments to be made to expand to 1 million tons.
We invested BRL 97 million in expansion and planting, that number should be BRL 130 million. BRL 120 million-130 million. That's in our guidance now. Why did we do that? We did that because we analyzed things, and we identified some investments that don't need to be made until the end of this crop year and during the off-season. Since we are not going to achieve the 6.3 million tons this year in 2023, we are going to achieve it in 2024. That's when we are going to achieve our guidance of 6.3 million tons. That's why we decided to delay the investments, which is not going to come in the way of delivering our crushing goals this year.
Since we now have higher Selic interest rates, that is a good opportunity for us to make this investment later on. This, again, does not affect our growth plan whatsoever. Things are going according to plan. Things are according to our budget. We don't have any deviation from our budget, which is very important as there was a major fluctuation in the cost of equipment, machinery, and pieces. That increase had already happened when we disclosed these numbers to the market last year. I think that I have already mentioned expansion CapEx. Now I'm going to talk about recurring CapEx. That one has a major impact on renovation planting. It went up by 59% year-on-year as a result of the impact of diesel prices.
We can already see a major reduction in the prices of fertilizers and crop protection products which reached very high prices. Just so you have an idea, we used to pay $1,100-$1,200 in crop protection products and fertilizers. Now the prices are back to $500. When it comes to off-season maintenance, we started our efforts earlier this year. In any way, we have higher costs in off-season maintenance. This number, the 74%, is related to the things that we did until the end of the crop year and the things that we did earlier because we finished the crop year earlier. Our CapEx in the first nine months of the crop year stood at BRL 421 million in comparison with BRL 310 million year-on-year.
I would just like to briefly mention some details about crop management. You can see here the impact of price increases. We have a larger area to manage this year, the biggest impact came from the price increases. As I said earlier, we were able to absorb some of those costs and offset them, the prices of inputs and the prices of diesel had a major impact on this number. Let's talk about our cash and cash equivalents. We finished the year at BRL 1 billion with a net debt of BRL 893 million. Considering the acquisition of Santa Vitória, it's interesting to highlight here the fact that the company was able to issue bonds last year, we had a disbursement of BRL 450 million in January and another one in October.
We were able to do that in better conditions than the current conditions of the market right now. We were able to compose the necessary cash even though we had a major acquisition. I believe that we were very fortunate to take advantage of that opportunity, and we have a very good debt cost for the coming years after the issuance of those bonds. We also had a loan approved by the BNDES of BRL 320 million for the brownfield investments at Jalles and Otávio Lage with a term of up to 16 years and a cost that, if you do the math, considering swap, would be the CDI rate plus 1.6. We have a very good funding position for the coming years.
Considering our debt, we have 89% of our debts denominated in BRL and 11% in dollars. We went from a debt of BRL 147 in March 2022, and you can see the progress of our debts over the year. The main point here is the acquisition of Santa Vitória, of course, with a disbursement and of BRL 531 million, considering the acquisition of Santa Vitória. We also paid BRL 189 in late March. From March until the closing, we had a net debt variation of BRL 35 million. You can see that this is the main effect in our net debt. You can also see the expansion efforts from the IPO. We can also see some expansion and improvement actions during the off-season, including operating improvements. You can see that our debt profile is very good.
We have plenty of time to settle our debts. One of the items that we use in our minimum cash policy is that our debts to be repaid two years after the end of the crop year include BRL 211 in 2023 and 2024 and BRL 139 in 2024 and 2025. We also use the four months of the earnings of the previous crop year as a reference for our net debt. Here we are using that criterion, the four months of our earnings in the previous crop year. That is the minimum cash that we use. Let's talk about our hedge position. We finished the crop year of 2022, 2023 with an average price of sugar that was way below the market price.
In the past, when the pandemic started, the company decided to hedge a major part of its production because we were not sure about what was going to happen in the pandemic, but the prices actually increased after the pandemic. We had already hedged a major portion of our crop year. You can see that we have a very small quantity of sugar hedged for the end of this crop year. You can see the average price for the crop year 2023, 2024, and also the average price for 2024, 2025 with BRL 2,364. You can also see the prices for ethanol. We don't have too much exposure to foreign currencies, and you can see that at the end of the term that we are showing here, we are not going to have any dollar exposure.
I would like to talk a little bit more about the integration of Santa Vitória. Things are going very well. We had positive surprises when it comes to the team and the entire transition period. We are forging a very important partnership with the Geribá guys, they are making every effort to make this integration as smooth as possible. ERB, as we used to call it, used an independent system, its back office used the same system as ERB. It was very important for us to integrate Santa Vitória into that same system. In the last three months of 2022, we integrated the SAP systems across all of those companies. Santa Vitória and Jalles Bioenergia are using the same system, SAP as ERP and GAtec as the operating software. For three months now, we have been running on the same systems.
When it comes to communication, we focused on people. We wanted to explain to our people how we were going to proceed after the acquisition. We showed everyone what the organizational chart looks like, it was very positive. We held an event, an onboarding event at Santa Vitória on the day after the closing actually. There are many integration actions that we are conducting right now. I'm not going to comment on every one of them, I'm just going to go over the main ones briefly. For example, the agricultural good practices. We have already implemented many management changes together with the Santa Vitória teams in terms of the use of fertilizers, irrigation, the use of organic matter. We have already standardized many processes using Jalles' indicators.
We are making headway on all of those fronts so that we ensure a smooth integration across all units. We are already procuring all inputs as one single company. After we signed the acquisition contract, we started procuring inputs as one single company, standardizing the processes and inventories. We have already started mapping all processes so that we can later down the road, integrate all corporate systems used by the entire company. Well, I tried to be as brief as possible to leave more time for our Q&A. We are here to take any questions you might have. Once again, thank you very much for participating in our conference. We are here to take any questions you might have. Thank you. Now we are going to start the Q&A session.
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. To do so, please type your question in the Q&A field. If you're using a dial-in connection, please press star nine on your phone to ask questions. After your name is called, you will hear instructions to press star six to activate your microphone. Please be sure to press star six only once. Gabriel Barra will ask the next question with Citi.
Hello, Rodrigo. Good morning. Hello, good morning, Gabriel. I would like to talk about Santa Vitória, and I would like to delve deeper into some questions.
When it comes to yield, as we have been discussing since the acquisition process, Santa Vitória has lower yield than the rest of the company. Towards the end of your presentation, you talked about the points for improvement and things that can be done. When you look at the sugarcane field age, what can be done to bring Santa Vitória to the same level of Jalles Machado? What can be done to level the playing field between Santa Vitória and Jalles? Where can we get in Santa Vitória in terms of yield? About Santa Vitória, as you said, Santa Vitória focuses more on hydrous ethanol, and in the earnings release, you mentioned a possibility to migrate to anhydrous ethanol. Would it be possible to produce sugar at Santa Vitória too? What do you think about that?
If you could give us more color on those two points, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Gabriel. Thank you very much for participating. Let's talk about the age, the average age of the sugarcane fields. At Santa Vitória, the average age is a little bit north of three years, which is very similar to Jaú's average age. The management practices differ greatly when it comes to planting and also when it comes to crop management and irrigation. When it comes to the varietals of sugarcane that are used in each unit. The management practices are very different. That's why our operating officer, Joel, since the approval of the acquisition by the antitrust authority, we started working together with the Santa Vitória team to make some changes as soon as possible because the sugarcane cycle is very long.
As you said, we renew the sugarcane field, of course, that takes almost six years, you know, to renovate the entire field. On the other hand, management practices can be changed overnight, basically. All of those points are being worked on by the agricultural team. When Geribá took over management, Geribá made some immediate changes to improve planting practices when they took over. Some things had already been made when it comes to planting, there are many things that can be done still. There's a lot of potential to be seized, some work had already been done last year in the planting practices. You are correct. When it comes to the average age, it is a low age. However, the sugarcane fields were not managed appropriately.
The fields suffered over the past year because there was a major drought in the region, in the center south region. That region struggled a lot, and it also struggled with a very uncommon event that happened in 2021. There was a significant frost in 2021 that affected part of the sugarcane field there. You asked about the potential, right? I'm moving to your second question now. The potential at Santa Vitória works like this: The production environment there is actually better than Otávio Lage and Jalles on average. The production environment there is actually better. The expansion areas are also very good. We are making progress in areas that have a better soil condition. We are actually very excited about the potentials that we can take advantage of on the agricultural side. Of course, that is going to happen gradually.
Every year, we are going to improve. Our goal is to reach more than 80 tons per hectare. As we said in our previous call, in 2026, we should be working at our full capacity. You also asked about hydrous ethanol and anhydrous ethanol. The investments to produce anhydrous ethanol are feasible. We conducted a study to analyze the feasibility of the production of anhydrous ethanol in the state of Minas Gerais. Actually, the premium this year was above the historical average. Even if we consider that historical average, the investments are very feasible, and we are looking into that possibility. The management will probably decide over the course of this crop year to make that investment. It would take about 40 million BRL to start producing anhydrous ethanol there. It is feasible.
The return rates would be very interesting. Now, you also asked about sugar. We analyzed those possibilities as well. In order for us to put together a sugar plant at Santa Vitória, even if we consider that our average premium would be 15% over the coming years in comparison with ethanol, and then that premium would go back to the historical levels. We should remember that we have idle capacity at Santa Vitória to reach 2,700. Just to change the mix and increase the flexibility, the investment that would be necessary wouldn't be feasible considering our current CapEx. For the time being, we are not considering the possibility of producing sugar there. We want rather to maximize the production of sugar at Jalles and Otávio Lage.
Thank you very much, Rodrigo.
When do you think you are going to reach the maximum yield at Santa Vitória? When do you think that's going to happen?
Well, we are going to improve continuously. Obviously, we are going to pursue that number continuously, of course. I think that in order for us to reach 80, for example, we believe that we are going to be able to reach that number in 2026 or close to that level. If we compare Santa Vitória against the other units, even considering its current yield, we should remember that Santa Vitória made fewer investments in management practices. The cost of ethanol produced in the entire crop year was a little bit above Jalles and Otávio Lage.
It was not so different from the benchmark companies in the same region. We were a little bit below the benchmark, but there is a lot of room, of course, for us to improve in Santa Vitória on that front. We, as I said, are making efforts on many fronts. For example, fertilizers, irrigation, varietals, and all other management practices. The agricultural teams are working together to pursue better results.
Thank you very much, Rodrigo.
Pedro Fonseca with XP is asking the next question. Please go ahead, Pedro.
Good morning, Rodrigo and Lucas, and the entire Jalles team. I would like to ask about organic sugar. Could you give us an update about your expectations for organic sugar? Do you think you will have the chance to adjust prices since there was a recent decrease in freight prices? Also, what do you think about hedge strategies since the commodities curve is stable? What do you expect to see in terms of hedge practices for the coming cr op year?
Thank you very much, Pedro, for asking that question. I'm actually going to take advantage of your question to talk about some SG&A elements. We had some increases in commercial practices because of organic sugar and because of the increase in freight prices. It is also related to the fact that we sold organic sugar to other markets because of the shortage of containers.
Of course, that came in addition to the price increases. I just wanted to give you more color about the impact that you mentioned and that you noticed. To answer your question about organic sugar, there was a significant decrease in freight prices. We said in some conference calls that the freight prices to our main destination for organic sugar, which is the United States, reached over $10,000 per container. In the past weeks, that number was back to $3,500. Of course, that is important. Of course, our customers did not pay that price on average, but we had to deal with prices of $8,000-$9,000 for a long time. We had to pass that co-cost over to our consumers, of course. We see better scenarios coming. We don't think the prices for organic sugar have changed.
For now, we are seeing stable prices, flat prices. Of course, all of those changes open room for us to be more competitive across the entire chain, and that may lead to different prices or price adjustments later on. We cannot make any statement about that right now. We cannot say that things are 100% back to normal. Things are going back to normal right now as of recently, but the three past quarters were very challenging in terms of shipping organic sugar. Things are going back to normal levels, I guess. We are shipping about 6,000 tons per month. Pedro, I think that you asked a second question. I can't recall. Can you repeat it?
I wanted to know more about your hedge strategy.
We can see commodities curves sustained and flat. I would like to know how that relates to your hedge policy and your margins.
That's a very good question. This crop year, we have already hedged our production in BRL 1,950, a little bit below the current market. For 2024, 2025, our price is BRL 2,400. As we said in previous calls, our hedge policy includes the provision of only hedging two crop years ahead of us. We only start hedging the coming crop years when the projected cost for the coming quarters, considering 200% of the implicit inflation rate and the implicit inflation rate, we multiply it by two, and we only start producing conventional sugar when our EBIT margin is 20%. We try to be as conservative as possible.
We try to push the costs to the third crop year with twice as much as the inflation rate provided by the Focus Report. That is a very conservative strategy. If the IBAT margin is projected considering the inflation rate of 200%, if that margin is 30%, we can hedge 50% of the first crop year or the third crop year. What I can tell is that there is now more room to make progress and to hedge more of our production in the future. We are always paying attention to those opportunities, Pedro. We are always trying to find the good opportunities to hedge our production at good prices.
Thank you very much, Rodrigo.
Christian Audi with Santander is asking the next question. Please go ahead, Christian.
Hello. Good morning, Rodrigo. Good morning.
Good morning, Christian.
Well, thank you very much for taking my question. I have three questions. First of all, can you give us more color about your expectations about costs? I know you've already given some details about it. I would like to know your expectations about freight costs and other significant costs at Jalles. Thank you.
Thank you, Christian. That's a very good question. I believe that the costs have already peaked. I believe that there are some other costs, for example, workforce and other related costs. I believe that we are still going to see some increases, but on the other hand, other costs have dropped. For example, diesel accounts for 10% of our agricultural costs, and the price of diesel is now at a much better level than it was last year. Diesel is used between April and November when we harvest, when we have irrigation.
During that period, precisely, the diesel prices peaked last year. After the end of the crop year, the prices of diesel went down a little bit. There are some costs, for example, diesel and fertilizers. Those costs have already gone back to normal, or they have decreased significantly. What we are envisioning for the coming crop years is that some costs will become stable or flat, but we are going to increase our efficiency and productivity. We don't think that the total cost, the overall cost will decrease, but we are going to see some gains due to better productivity. At least costs are not going up anymore, as they did last year. Of course, costs are right now very volatile. We had to learn to cope with volatile prices for inputs because of everything that happened around the world.
Just so you have an idea, we started discussing our budget in October. Now in January, we saw some significant changes from October to January in the price of some inputs. Things are changing very fast.
Okay. Thank you. Well, the second question, Rodrigo, is about capital allocation. We are reaching the end of the crop year, I would like to know more about your expectations for dividends, for leverage, and CapEx. Thank you.
Well, Christian, as I said, when it comes to CapEx, we are going to delay part of the investments that have been planned for this crop year. We are going to delay it to the next crop year, especially because, especially industrial investments can be delayed to the next crop year without any impact in our goals.
That's why we reviewed our guidance and when it comes to our goal of reaching 1,000 tons in the two units. Our leverage is 0.6x and the consolidated is 0.7x. We always like to look at the debt level considering our EBIT. The company defined that if the leverage level is below 2x and if there is no significant investment happening, we can distribute dividends. Since we are going to finish this crop year below that number, but we are still investing in organic growth and at Santa Vitória, we are going to invest in the sugarcane field. As we said, we are going to expand our field and also we are going to invest in agricultural equipment, and that is going to happen in the course of the coming three years.
This year, we are going to be at 25% of minimum mandatory dividends. We should remember that the bargain purchase gains, we are not going to pay dividends on that. That is just an economic gain that did not add cash to the company. When it comes to capital allocation from now on, we want to reach the 9 million tons of capacity in the three units, considering the investments that we are making at Jalles. We finished this crop year with 6.8 million tons, considering Santa Vitória, and we are going to go from 6.8 million tons- 9 million tons as soon as possible. Of course, that is going to give us a major return because the industrial capacity will be already installed, and we just need to feed it with sugarcane.
As soon as we do it, the sooner we do it, the best, the better. When it comes to investments, we want to start producing anhydrous ethanol at Santa Vitória. We are assessing that possibility right now, but we have not made any decision yet.
Still about dividends, even after you adjusted the CapEx, what is your expectation in terms of cash generation? Do you think you are going to keep dividend distribution at the level of 25% instead of 40%?
Yes, 25% because we reduced CapEx for this year, but we are just pushing it forward to the next crop year. Yes, it should be 25%.
My last question is about sugar and ethanol prices for the next crop year. What is your expectation for those prices?
The ethanol prices really depend on what's going to happen after March.
We believe that the PIS and COFINS tax will resume after March. If that happens, the gross price in São Paulo to keep the 70% parity with gasoline today would be about BRL 3.30. That's the gross price, including the PIS and COFINS tax. The net price would be BRL 2.95-BRL 2.98. That would be the scenario if COFINS and PIS taxes come back. Now for sugar, the market is very strange right now because there has been a problem in India. The DATAGRO projections indicate that we should have a surplus of 3 million, which is a small surplus. Since we have inventory of 43%, considering the annual consumption, considering all of those scenarios, I believe that the prices for sugar should be flat. They should be stable. India was a major effect.
I believe that the impact was 34 million tons. That was the impact from India. We believe that for sugar, the prices will be flat. For ethanol, if the PIS, COFINS taxes come back, we are going to see some impact, but we need to wait and see. Wait and see what's going to happen after March. We believe that those taxes will come back.
The next question comes from Mr. Brustolin with BTG Pactual.
Good morning, Rodrigo.
I have two questions. The first one is about production costs. I would like to know your expectations for the increase of yield in the 2023-2024 crop year at Jalles and Santa Vitória. Specifically about Santa Vitória, how much are you going to increase your yield, and how much are you going to increase the area? Because I know that those two factors are important for your ramp up in 2023, 2024.
About Santa Vitória, looking at the first nine months of the crop year, I believe that the company benefited from the strong ethanol prices in the beginning of the crop year, but there was a significant impact on the production side, on the production costs. Looking at 2023 and 2024, and considering the resumption of the PIS and COFINS taxes, what are your expectations for the margins considering your production costs? Do you think you can increase Santa Vitória margins in 2023, 2024?
Thank you very much for your question. That's actually a very good question about Santa Vitória's margin. Well, let me answer your first question about the yield. The rainy period is very good. It has been very good since December through January. February and March will bring us good rainfall, and April should be at the average level. That is very good. That is very good considering everything that happened so far. Last year, we had a crop failure. At Jalles and Santa Vitória, we believe that the yields will be better. We have not disclosed any guidance yet, and it is very early to do that because we still have to wait and see what's going to happen in February, March, and April.
We believe that the yields are going to improve. Considering Santa Vitória and the yield in Santa Vitória next year, considering the harvested areas, and you asked if we are going to expand the harvested area and the productivity. What happened in Santa Vitória, and we actually read your report today, the 37 tons in Santa Vitória really caught our attention, but that was related to some sugarcane leftovers from October and November. If that sugarcane volume had been included in our figures, we would have renovated those areas last year. I don't think that we are going to expand the area in Santa Vitória because we are going to renovate a major part of our lands there. We are going to renovate over 4,500 hectares there.
Since we are going to set aside a part of that area for renovation, we are also going to exclude the areas that gave us lower yields. I cannot give you numbers. We are not disclosing any guidance, but we are going to have a better yield in a similar harvested area. If we consider costs, what happened is that the inventory for ethanol at Santa Vitória was not so high. In October, our crushing was low, and since it was an active crop year month, we had a production that was below one-third of the average level. That led us to lower yield and higher costs. That increased the average price of our inventory. That was a very interesting event actually.
When you look at the consolidated numbers, you can see only three months of Santa Vitória with almost zero production and high October costs. Those numbers were distorted, and that's why we always like to look at the overall picture, so that we can see the whole company and consider the margins for the whole company. When you look at costs and yield, for example, those are two indicators that should be looked as a whole. You should look at the big picture always when you consider those indicators. We actually thought that those types of questions might arise.
The next question comes from Guilherme Palhares.
Good morning, Rodrigo. Well, you talked about the Santa Vitória debt amounting to BRL 190 million.
When we look at the company's gross debt quarter-on-quarter, a significant part comes from the BNDES debt and other debts. The cost of those debts increased, I believe. I would like to know your expectations about the management of debts and if there is any opportunity to reduce the cost of debt at the company.
Thank you very much, Guilherme, for your participation. The debts that we assumed for, from Santa Vitória, and actually it's not from Santa Vitória, it's from ERB, the thermal power plant. That debt was composed of two parts. The first one is a BNDES debt. If you were to convert that debt to the CDI rate, it would be very close to the CDI rate. The second part was CDI plus four. That was the cost of that debt.
Soon after we bought ERB, we settled that debt one year late or one week later, and now we are left with BRL 90 million, which is the BNDES debt with a rate that is very close to the CDI rate. We only have the BRL 90 million because we have already repaid the part of the debt that had higher interest rates.
I just wanted to know what you did in terms of reducing the cost of debt since Jalles is significantly larger than the acquired company. I just wanted to know what could be done in terms of reducing the cost of debt?
Guilherme, in a nutshell, Santa Vitória has 0 debt. Jalles Bioenergia has a little bit less than BRL 90 million, and that is the only debt that we have there.
We wanted to keep it because the average cost of the debt was interesting. That's why we kept it. The rest is all Jalles Machado.
I have a second question, if you allow me. I just wanted to follow up on Christian's question. When we look at fertilizers, for example, can you give us more color about crop year 2023 and 2024, considering the necessary inputs. Have you already purchased all necessary inputs? I just wanted to know that because I'm thinking about possibilities of capturing better input prices. Thank you.
When we look at last year, in the beginning of the crop year, we had some contracts with prices that were not at the peak of the prices that we saw. We started the crop year with good inputs and fertilizer prices. We had inputs with fixed prices that would last until May or June.
Starting in June, we started to buy products with higher prices. We always buy inputs that will be used until the end of the crop year. For the next year, we have already bought in early January, and we are going to start planting in February. We have already started at Santa Vitória, and we're going to start at Jalles this week. We bought those inputs at better prices, lower prices than those that we saw in January. We are going to enjoy those prices until June or July. When it comes to fertilizers, we purchased those inputs that will be used until June, and the prices were very similar to the current prices.
Thank you very much for your questions. Unfortunately, we don't have any more time left in our conference call.
The questions that have been submitted and not answered in the conference call will be answered by the investor relations team over the phone or via email. I would like to turn it over to Rodrigo for his closing remarks.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much once again for your participation. Unfortunately, we have not been able to answer all the questions that you sent, but our team will collect them, and we are going to contact you to answer those questions later. I would like to thank the entire global team, our accounting and investor relations team. I just wanted to highlight a very important point. It is important to look at the entire picture, the entire crop year. If you look at the quarter only, you are going to see some distortions which we covered in our presentation and the Q&A session.
Once again, we are going to have a record-breaking crop year in terms of pro forma EBIT, for example. Of course, there are many challenges ahead of us, but the returns will be as great as our challenges. I believe that the biggest concern that we had, which was the PIS and COFINS taxes levied upon fuels, we believe that they are going to come back in March. I believe that we are going to be able to have clearer projections. In order for us to keep the 70% parity against gasoline, the gross price for ethanol in São Paulo would be BRL 3.30 per liter of ethanol. Thank you very much and see you in our next conference call. Have a great day.
This concludes Jalles' 3Q 2023 conference call for today. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a great day.