Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to MAHLE Metal Leve's video conference to discuss the results for the first quarter of 2026. This video conference is being recorded and the replay can be accessed on the company's website at the Investors Relations section. The presentation is also available for download. Please be advised that all participants will be only watching the video conference during the presentation, and then we will begin the question- and- answer session when further instructions will be provided. Before proceeding, I take this opportunity to reinforce that the forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the management of MAHLE Metal Leve and the current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties given that they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors, analysts and the public in general must take into account that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the segment and other factors may cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Present in this video conference are Mr. Claudio Braga, CFO, Mr. Daniel Brasil Alves, Marketing and Corporate Communications Director. Today, we'll also be joined by Sergio Pancini de Sá, Chairman of MAHLE Metal Leve's board, and Eduardo Luiz Spilla, CEO of the company. I would like to hand over to Claudio Braga, who will begin his presentation. You may proceed, Mr. Braga.
Thank you, Samantha, and good morning. I would like to greet all participants. It is great to once again have all of you here. Let me briefly go over this agenda.
We are going to go over to the highlights and then I'll turn over to Sergio Sá and Eduardo Spilla. Daniel Brasil will talk about some market overview and also revenue. We are going to talk about sales performance, financial management, and finally, we'll open for question and answers. As Samantha mentioned in the beginning, today we'll have myself, Daniel, Sergio Sá, and Eduardo Spilla. I will turn over to Sergio Sá, Chairman of the Board, for his comments.
Thank you, Claudio. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. After over nine years, I'm no longer a CEO, but the Chairman of the Board. I am here to tell you about the transition process and that I'm going through and consequently Eduardo Spilla who's taken over as a CEO. We planned this process. You saw that in some communications to the market.
The succession process started about five years ago. Back then we realized that Eduardo was a good fit. He has a lot of experience in this market. Until then, this was more related to his experience in OEM. He worked in operations and different aspects of the business. As part of our succession plan, Eduardo Luiz Spilla was also engaged with the aftermarket section of this company. I'm very pleased with the succession process. Once again, the company shows the market how it operates. We are a company that is constantly focused on a good structure and anticipating ourselves to future moves. Over this year, this was in a publicly communicated process, but lately that has ultimately led to my replacement and Eduardo taking over.
I would like to thank the MAHLE Group for nominating me to the Board and then as the Chairman of the Board. I will keep working for the company doing my best. My focus now will be less operational and more strategic on the directions that the company might take together with Claudio and with Eduardo. That's what I had to share with you. I will turn over to Eduardo.
Thank you, Sergio. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. Let me tell you a little bit about my background. Sergio introduced me, but very briefly, I would like to give you more info about my background. I graduated in mechanical engineering and specialized in finance, and I've been working in the automotive market for over 20 years.
Started in sales, then moved to operations. I joined the MAHLE Group in 2017. My first position in the company was the leader as a restructuring process. After four years, I might not know that I was expected to succeed him in five years time. After four years, I was transferred to the aftermarket unit where I worked for about three years. I was invited to move to the U.S. to be the leader in the aftermarket business in North America. I was also part of this restructuring process that lasted until 2025. I returned to Brazil. I started this transition process with Sergio, finally leading to the taking over the position. My goal for the future is to give continuity to the legacy developed by Sergio in the past years.
Strengthening governance, sustainability and following the discipline in executing processes to ensure the resilience of results. I would like to turn over to Claudio, who is going to talk about market highlights.
Thank you, Sergio. Thank you, Eduardo. I wish you success as the chairman of the board. This is crucial for us to give continuity to the strategy that we have developed in the past years. Eduardo, you should count on us whenever you need. This is going to be a difficult year. As you can see on the screen here, you have some headlines, some are positive, some not so much. They show the unpredictability, the lack of predictability. We do not know what we'll have in the future.
I'm not going to cover all the headlines that you see on the screen, but we see a movement of the acceleration reduction of the Selic rate and the focus report of Brazilian Central Bank. There is a projection of a potential drop to 13% at the end of the year and an escalation in inflation. Today, inflation is at 4.14%, but the Central Bank expects it to reach 4.9% until the end of the year. During my presentation, you'll also see several highlights and either provided by myself or by Daniel, with some exchange rate variations. This a positive result for us despite the negative results we've seen so far. The debt that we had for follow-on and also to pay dividends in 2023 connected to exports contract.
The exchange rate variation we've seen has an accounting effect. It doesn't have to do with the cash operation, which is normal in any operation in any company. As we mentioned in the last call, this accounts for 50% of the funding, so we expect payments to be pushed forward during this year. When this debt is settled and when we receive payments from exports, this exchange rate variation might be positive and also the interest rate is going to be very low. Overall, the dollar exchange rate is at BRL 4.93, euro at BRL 5.79, below what we had expected. Everything is uncertain because this is an election year, so we cannot state that these figures will remain or that this reverse trend will be maintained in terms of exchange rate escalation. This is an overview.
We usually show a map of South America with our facilities. Most of our production plants and the technology service and service center, that is the shared technology and service center is located in São Paulo. Except for the plant that we have in the south of the Minas Gerais state, we also have one aftermarket site and a production site in Argentina with a sales office in Panama. Differently from previous quarters, I'd just like to say we are close to the main highways of the São Paulo state. As for revenue, we've already seen that we had a total sales of BRL 1.3 billion, this is a significant evolution overall in my opinion.
Of course, there are positive and negative aspects that will be described by Daniel, but in a quarter of variation from comparing 25 to the first quarter of 26 of 0.8%. Our gross margin was interesting at 27%. Some of you may have seen in the analysis that has been previously communicated that there is a small retraction. Part of this retraction, maybe most of it actually, does not come necessarily from a deterioration of costs. This is basically an impact of the exchange rate variation that would explain a drop in the gross margin. As you observed, as you can see in the bottom line of the report, we have a positive exchange rate variation of the financial operations, which not just offsets but doubles positive impact at the end.
I would like to start, then I will turn over to Daniel if he needs to complement anything. We want to share with you the main highlights. Not necessarily reflected today in profit and loss, these are important movements of continuity, expansion, or maybe moving towards new lines. We will talk about launches that were made at MAHLE Metal Leve in the first quarter of this year. As communicated in the press, in our investor relations site and on LinkedIn, we have the MAHLE chargeBIG launch. This is a charging solution installed in Europe. There are over 3,000 charging points in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and other countries.
It was launched in the city of Jaguariúna in the end of March, and that reinforces our strategic positioning by introducing an innovative charging solution of electric batteries in Brazil that aligns us to global trends of electrification and sustainable mobility. This initiative also strengthened the reliability of our company and consolidates our position beyond the combustion market, and we are now taking a leading position in solutions for electro-mobility. We also inaugurated a global competence centers for air conditioning compressors in the city of Jundiaí. 20 benches were part of this launch, and this is very interesting. We are taking a movement a little bit contrary to other industries in our segment, multinational companies in that case. MAHLE Metal Leve is expanding and not reducing its research capacity. We had two technology transfers. One of them we already communicated in another earnings call.
One of them is the competence center filter tests from the U.S. to the U.S. We sold that to North America. That competence center also help us developing products locally to potentially serve our customers in the region. Now this year, we opened the global competence center for air conditioner compressors. MAHLE is the only producer of variable compressors in Brazil. This inauguration positions us as a world reference in development of compressors, and it makes our positioning as a technology leader in this segment even more important. Also, we had the Prêmio Everest, and MAHLE received a award as a reference in the aftermarket sector. That was award given by us by the Via de Auto Partes and from an old lucky group. Daniel Brasil Alves, would you like to say something?
Thank you, Claudio.
Good morning, thank you for attending MAHLE Metal Leve's earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. If you have more questions about those three highlights, about the MAHLE chargeBIG or Global Competence Center or the Everest Award, of course, we can tell you more details about that during the Q&A section. Claudio talked about the importance of electro-mobility. MAHLE is using its global portfolio. We have access to these technologies, and this is why we introduced this solution to Brazil. It is quite an innovative solution with 6 charging points for vehicles and 1 hub. This is an innovative solution to charge electrical and hybrid plug-in vehicles. As to the Global Competence Center, America's filters have already been transferred to our tech center in Jundiaí.
We are consolidating our abilities using the global tech center of MAHLE, which is also a hub with the global center of e-mobility. This is important not just for our region, but also globally. As for the Prêmio Everest for aftermarket, with that, shows the leadership of the company in such an important segment for our company. Next slide, please. Here we see an overall details of production and sales of vehicles. Comparing the first quarter of 2026 with the first quarter of 2025. In light vehicles, we had a 15.5% increase in sales in Brazil, which accounts for more value vis-à-vis 2015. It was a very positive quarter. April was not included here, but also was a very good month of sales because of promotion. Car makers are making promotions, also using lower interest rates.
Also, new launches have leveraged the market. Tax reduction. Now we have lower tax rates for sustainable cars, so that segment also accounted for a significant growth. The overall perspective of Anfavea for 2026 is a 2.8% growth in sales. We believe that our figures are going to be even higher than that, given the very positive beginning of the year. At MAHLE, we expect to have a 5% increase in light vehicles in Brazil. In Argentina, the situation is different. There was a 12.2% drop in sales because it's a more challenging environment with a structural challenge. The sales of light vehicles in Argentina last year was very positive. The comparison basis is higher, but also the purchasing power of Argentinians has been reduced.
We expect to have a 10% drop until the end of the year. Brazil is kind of making up for the losses in Argentina. The combination of Brazil and Argentina, combine with a 10% increase in sales, and we expect to have a 2.23% growth in light vehicle sales until the end of the year. A significant growth. Talking about production of light vehicles in Brazil, there was a 7.4% increase in production. Anfavea projects 3.8% until the end of the year, and we are aligned with this perspective by Anfavea. We expect to have a 4% increase in light vehicles production in Brazil. There is a lower number in production than in sales. We have more imported vehicles.
Chinese brands are importing a lot of their vehicles, so this is why we see this difference between sales and production. We also have a full return of taxes. In January 2027, we'll have 35% of import taxes, which is lower. Taxes have been reduced to bring new technology to the country. We also have a schedule for return. We expect that to be 35% as of January 2027. In Argentina, there was a 19% drop in production. Again, very challenging, and we expect production levels to be reduced by 5%-10% until the end of the year. Combined, Brazil and Argentina have had a 2.9% growth in the quarter, also because of the Chinese brands. The Chinese companies plan to produce their cars in Brazil.
Several of these car makers have already announced opening production sites in Brazil. Some of them already have their sites in Brazil, while others have just smaller plans. Of course, this movement will depend on the local production of Chinese cars in Brazil, because in the meantime, they're just bringing imported cars. For the quarter, we had a 2.9% increase, and we expect that by the end of the year, we will have a 2%-3% increase in production. Positive results for the light vehicles market. As for heavy vehicles, trucks and buses, we had a drop of 20.8% in sales. The MOVER program in Brazil had subsidized interest rates for the acquisition of trucks. That is not reflected in the numbers. BRL 10 billion were made available for subsidies.
It was fully utilized until the end of the dates for that. It was a program that would be open until May, but it has already been finished. Now the government has announced MOVER Brazil 2, a continuation of the MOVER project. With BRL 21 million, BRL 14 billion from the treasury, BRL 6.7 billion from BNDES to buses and BRL 2 million to autonomous drivers. They have up to 12 months to start paying this fund, this loan, and also for autonomous drivers, a lower interest rate. Those interest rates range from 14.2%-14.9%. For autonomous drivers, interest rates will range from 11.3%-12.4%. Selic rate is much higher than that. It has been reduced, but still higher than that.
We expect more positive results for the second half of the year once these incentives reach the market and the fleet is renewed. We expect a drop of about 5%, and Anfavea expects a drop of 0.5%. We might be positively surprised with improvements in these figures with this new program. We might have similar results as we had in 2025. We need to keep following that to see if this, the government incentive, will help leverage the market. In Argentina, there was a growth of 3.7% in sales of buses in the quarter, and the combination of Brazil and Argentina has led to a drop of 17.4%. As production, we had a 14.3% drop in Brazil.
We expect to close the year at -5%, while Anfavea expects this market to grow by 1.4%. As I mentioned, that might be different and better depending on the results in the second half of the year. In Argentina, the growth totals 30.2%. We expect to close the year at 20% growth, and a combination between Argentina and Brazil, a drop in 12%, and we expect to have this drop of 4%-5% until the end of the year. Next slide, please. I would just like to mention that there is the MOVI agricultural program. At Ribeirão Preto, there was a Agrishow, one of the largest exhibits related to agribusiness in Brazil or in Latin America. This agricultural MOVI program was just announced by the Brazilian government, BRL 10 billion with very attractive rate, interest rates.
There was a drop in intention of new businesses, 20% compared to last year in the Agrishow fair. That reflects the retraction in the market. Not just the retraction in the trust market, but also in agricultural equipment. MAHLE was present at Agrishow fair. We had a booth there. We had not been present since 2019, we had a full portfolio in powertrain, filtration, thermal management. That makes our strategic presence stronger in this off-road segment. This is a movement that the company is making to diversify its business. We have new segments to make up for, to offset the problems we're having in light vehicles, especially because of the Chinese brands. We need to still understand whether Chinese brands are going to localize their production in Brazil.
We are working closely with the Chinese carmakers, sending, they ask for some quotation. The off-road segment in heavy vehicles is a segment we are interested in. We want to increase our share in this segment to increase the company's resilience. Let us talk about the North American Europe market. This is where our company products are exported to. In light vehicles for the quarter, we had a drop of 1.8% in our production for North America. Our comparison basis is higher because last year, you might remember that there was an increase in the rates imposed by the American government. That has led to a race for acquisition of cars. This is why they're having negative results in this quarter.
We expect that by the end of the year, we will have a -2% result in production for North America. In Europe, we have had a 2.8% drop in the production of light vehicles. We are also impacted by the increase in imported cars in European market. Again, Chinese vehicles being taken to Europe. We had a 4% increase in sales of vehicles in Europe. In terms of production, we had a negative impact with a 2.8% drop. We expect to close the year with a 2% drop. If we combine Europe and North America, we had a 2.2% drop in the quarter, and we expect a 2% drop until the end of the year.
For heavy vehicles in North America, we have a 3.1% increase, and we expect to have a 13% growth in the year. In the previous quarter, this expectation was 7%, so we have more positive expectations now. In Europe, currently, there was a 3% drop in the quarter, and we expect to close the year at 5%. Combination of Europe and North America, 0.1% of growth, and we expect to close the year at 9%. Last year, we had a significant drop in the heavy vehicle segment, both in Europe and in North America. The company had a significant share of this market in the heavy vehicles. This recovery of that market can help us in our sales too. Now let me tell you about the evolution of the net sales revenue.
In the first quarter of 2026, we had BRL 1.2 billion, a slight drop of 0.8% in our net sales. We had a negative exchange rate impact of 3.7%. If we take that separately in volume and price, our growth was 2.9%. It is 0.8%, but it is impacted by the exchange effect. For OEM, the total sales was BRL 796 million, a 0.3% growth. There was growth despite a drop in production of heavy vehicles. There was a significant share of this revenue from trucks and buses. Despite a significant drop in the quarter, the company still achieved 0.3% growth with market share gains, and also in the mix of light vehicles. For exports, there was a 1.4% drop.
Here, there was a negative exchange rate effect of 4% because the price volume would have been 2.7% growth in OEM. That shows again the resilience of the company and the presence in our light, heavy vehicle, both domestically and for export. After marketing total sales of BRL 460 million, 2.8% drop because of a negative exchange rate effect of 7.6%, and the price volume growth was 4.8%. In the domestic market, it was a 2.7% drop, not just because of the exchange rate variation, but also because of the Argentinian market with its reduced purchasing power. There was also a drop in the sales of new vehicles there. Also, there are more importers and new competitors in the market. The market was open in Argentina.
In the past, there was a restriction to that, and there was also some adjustments in inventory in the supply chain. That effect contributed to this reduction in addition to the exchange rate variation. We've been working a lot on that in Argentina to increase our sales and increase our market share to reverse the scenario. In exports, we had a 3.4% drop, most of it in U.S. dollars because those are exports. A negative exchange rate effect of 15%. If you deduct the exchange rate variation, it would have been a growth. I'll turn over to Claudio, and then I'll come back for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Daniel. Based on the explanations given by Daniel, you see that the net operational rate was BRL 1.2 billion. There was an increase, there was an exchange rate variation.
It's not like we are trying to give some illusion and try to offset this exchange rate variation in our explanation, but this is out of our control. If for just for comparison effect of COGS or of gross profit, if I give back the BRL 47 million in the sales line, then we'll have a gross profit of 29% versus 28% in first quarter. There are negative effects, of course, in COGS, but the positive and negative effects kind of offset. SG&A, research and development and other operational revenues account for BRL 147 million because we didn't need to spend so much with special freight in this period.
If you had the opportunity to go into the details of our financial statement, you probably saw that the percentage of our sales in the express and administration lines are flat and lower for the first quarter than the first quarter of 2025. The EBIT was at 17.3% higher than in the first quarter of 2025. Most of it, although we give some highlight to the exchange rate variation, there were also some positive effects that were operational effects, whether in the administrative area or in operational areas. We had a positive exchange rate variation as an offset here. Most of our operations account for financial operations, not necessarily operational activities.
The exchange rate variation was about BRL 76 million positive in the exchange rate valuation and versus the financial results of BRL 47 that had a negative impact on our sales. Net income totaled BRL 214 million in the first quarter, much higher than in the first quarter of last year. Here we can see the evolution in our debt and leverage. Let us go back one slide, please. While we get the slide ready for you, we want to show you the evolution in indebtedness and also leverage in the company in the past four or five quarters. We're having some technical difficulties here. We're back. I think it's slide 13. The first quarter of 2026 had a leverage ratio of 0.9x for MAHLE Metal Leve standards. We're having problems with that slide, I guess.
Well, let me verbally tell you what I wanted to show you on that slide. You can also open the presentation you received. We had a 0.9x leverage. If you look at the background of MAHLE Metal Leve, you see that this is slightly higher than what we historically had. You can compare that with peers in our market. Most companies have ups and downs, but they usually oscillate from 1.4-4x EBITDA. In our case, we ended the quarter with 0.93x, with a net debt of BRL 964 million, and debt net was BRL 1.4 billion. You can see a reduction in the net debt of the last quarter.
This reduction is due to what I had previously explained, the beginning of payment of the debts established in 2023, and also positive cash of BRL 530. We also had interesting loans from Brasil Soberano program this year. Also, in April, we had a new tranche from FINAME. For those who follow up BNDES operations, there is an intention or at least a possibility of a new funding line called Brasil Soberano to be launched again. That'll be very interesting for us because interest rates would range from 4- 5 percentage points a year, with very long maturity periods up to 2030 or in some cases, even up to 2041. Here you see the evolution or some of the movements that affected our cash flow.
In the evolution in the closing of December 2025 and how we ended the first quarter of 2026. Just to clarify what you see on the screen, we also show, for comparison purposes, the first quarter of last year. The closing of December 2024 versus March, and in the last line, the whole year, comparing December 2024 with December 2025. We wanted to put this table at the bottom of the page to show you this historical trend. Because if you look at the first quarter isolatedly, those numbers seem low. When we compare those figures from the upper table with the ones in the lower table, you see that this is a trend we observed in the first half of every year.
With the first funds from Brasil Soberano, BRL 49 million, we amortize the principal payment in the first quarter, about BRL 74 million and an interest rate of BRL 32 million, with a positive cash generation of BRL 52 million. Comparing that with the lower table, with the first half of last year, we had BRL 62 million along the year, BRL 968 million in cash generation last year. MAHLE Metal Leve historically is a very positive cash generation for those who have been following us for quite some time. In terms of financial interest, you see that it is at BRL 3 million. Payment of taxes align with our historical data, a disbursement of BRL 59 million. Investment, you will see a number that will be slightly low.
You've probably read the decision of our shareholders in the last meeting and also in the last board meeting to make a new reserve. This new reserve, this is kind of a second part of a reserve because the reserve had already been made at the end of 2024, and another one for dividends at the end of 2025. This is part of our strategy of maintaining a lower financial cost. These reserves are a temporary retention of payment of dividends to shareholders. In the medium to long terms, of course, those dividends will be paid, as happened in 2023. I hope not at that level, but in a more gradual way. In 2023, we had some factors that changed a lot the direction of our business, such as COVID in 2020.
That was also the reason for the reserve in 2023. In the board of directors and then in the shareholders assembly, we approved the creation of a reserve. First part of it was withheld from dividends in 2024, then in 2025. The reserves we've retained this year totaled BRL 190 million. You might see more details in the financial statement. Here we see in the disbursement of investments of about BRL 30 million. Historically, in the first half of the year, this figure is much smaller. Disbursements for CapEx are usually more intense in the second or third or even fourth quarter of every year. We've also had other movements, but relatively low, and we closed cash in a very positive way, as you can see in the last column.
Just to recap the movements that happened in 2025 and in the beginning of this year, we had significant disbursements for the acquisition of compressors. That relates to the Athena Project in the end of 2024. As communicated previously, we agreed with the sales, with the seller to pay in three installments. This operation was communicated, but it wasn't settled as it was initially expected in the project. This is a public document. The controller abstained from his vote, and the decision was made by 99% of the shareholders and approved those accounts. I'm bringing your attention to this fact because every purchase of compressors totaling BRL 750 million-BRL 800 million, and for the aftermarket division, was mainly paid with our own resources. Resources generated by the business itself.
The acquisition of those compressors kind of helped pay in itself. It's not fully settled, but there was some impact in the increase of investments. Again, this was also explained in the last earnings calls. Talking about the financial results. We can see in-depth levels at about BRL 1.5 million. Please notice the interest rates on the financial results we paid. All these debts and average costs, as I mentioned at the beginning, most of them had to do with exports and strong currencies. The average cost of these debts totals about 6 percentage points in the first quarter, whereas Selic created 14%-15%. That means a very positive effect for all of us. To save time, I think we can move to the next slide.
That ends our presentation, and I will now turn over to Samantha so that we can open the Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please press the Raise Your Hand button. If your question is answered, you may exit the queue by clicking the Lower Your Hand button. First question from Kiefer Kennedy from Citi. Please proceed, sir. Kiefer Kennedy, please proceed. You can open your microphone. Since there are no further questions, I would like to say that if you want to ask a question, please click on Raise Your Hand button. If your question is answered, you can click on Lower Your Hand button. Please wait while we collect more questions.
Samantha, in the meantime, in the chat, there is a question from Kleber Caetano.
He says, "First, I'd like to congratulate MAHLE for the results. As to the payout of the company for 2026, what are your perspectives, especially after a loan of BRL 49.3 million from the Brasil Soberano program?" Kleber, our dividend payout policy does not change. You're talking about public information from 2024 and 2025, where we had reserves made for dividend retention. In the middle of the year, we do not have any information to be communicated. There are no changes to that. We're just creating reserves as we did for the past two years. I don't know if I answered your question. If you feel I didn't, please send another question, leave it in the chat. There's another question, if you allow me answering that question by Angelo Cardoso.
His question is: How does the company see the free trade agreement that was recently signed with the European Union? Well, we've been discussing that for the past 20 years, with some ups and downs. Finally, it has moved forward with a positive result. Personally, I believe that free trade agreements are very interesting to Brazil because that expands our frontiers, our borders. This is a very positive movement, in my opinion. Right now, we see symbolic impact at MAHLE Metal Leve. The free trade agreement between South America and the EU has some ups and downs of them. Some segments, it will be positive. For some segments, maybe not that positive. In our particular case, we see positive aspects, but also negative aspects. None of them still in force. We have a gradual reduction on imports rates to Brazil.
1.5 percentage points a year. To reach zero will take eight to 10 years. That will be applicable to our products and of course, that depends on the tax classification of different products. As for exports, we have a subsidiary company in Austria through which we sell our products, and also to North America or to Europe. Immediately there is a reduction in the rates for that subsidiary. At first, this sounds as a positive result. This can leverage our exports. A reduction in the imports rate might also be positive. The problem about all of that, I think it's a little bit premature to say because there is the risk of new members in the market, of new new players in the market. In the short term, we might have some positive results, but small positive results.
In the medium and long term, we need to assess whether these results will be higher. Thank you. Thank you, Werner. Werner has a question, and he says congratulations on the results. What is the penetration of the electrified vehicles in terms of revenue and what are the perspectives related to Chinese makers in Brazil and MAHLE Metal Leve as a supplier to those car makers? As for electrification, we are following up these new technologies and its growth in the market. Over 15% of cars in Brazil are already electrified. We need to explain what electrification means. Electrified vehicles include electric vehicles, so 100% battery base. The category also includes hybrid cars, such as the plug-in hybrid car. We have it where we have a combustion engine, but also an electric engine.
We also have the full hybrid vehicles such as Corolla cars. They also have a combustion engine. Light hybridization, that has increased. It's kind of a transition towards a full hybrid mode or even a plug-in mode. MAHLE is part of this electrification movement and supplies to this segment, both full hybrid and plug-in electrification as light electrification. We are still discussing about where these electric vehicles are being produced. If they are locally produced, then it's different. There are some announcements of Chinese car makers and Brazilian car makers announcing the production of those electric cars in Brazil. MAHLE has products to supply to those companies to be part of these electric cars. Hybrid cars, full hybrid, light electrification cars, we already supply to traditional car makers. Your question asks about location, right?
There was an increase in the import rates. Chinese car makers will probably localize the production of electric cars, maybe at a lower rate that we're having in sales. Increase in local production by Chinese car makers in Brazil will take longer, but eventually it will happen. These production will account for about 15% in the medium to long term. 15% of cars produced in Brazil. We expect 15% of the cars to be produced in Brazil by Chinese car makers in Brazil. Some of them are already MAHLE clients in China. We already have this relationship with them abroad. In Brazil, they are working on localizing some of their products. MAHLE is participating in these quotes to supply to them.
Of course, we want to be competitive to be able to supply to car makers, not just Chinese car makers, but traditional ones as well. Higher competition will require the whole market to be more competitive. I hope I answered your question.
Thank you, Daniel. Samantha, any other questions that will require opening the microphone?
Our next question is from Marcelo Motta from JPMorgan. You may proceed, Marcelo.
Good morning. I'd like to thank you for taking my question. First, congratulations to Sergio and Eduardo for their new positions. Since Eduardo is here, I would like to hear from him what he expects from this new position. What would he like to be remembered by in five years time, based on what he did in MAHLE Metal Leve.
My next question is to understand the trends on gross margin, because you talked about impacts of exchange rate variation, raw materials, personnel. If you think about the whole year of 2026, how do you expect the gross margins to behave vis-a-vis 2025?
I will start and then I will turn over to Claudio. I guess I briefly touched on that. Metal Leve did a wonderful job in the past nine years to strengthen governance. Did a good job in working on sustainability and be very resilient in its results. This is my role. I joined the company six months after Sergio, so I participated in this transformation process. My role is to give continuity to that, to see a major transformation in the market.
I have some experience with the previous restructuring, as I mentioned. How can we turn this organization working with people, inspiring them to do more and better at what they do? This is my role. This is the legacy I wanna leave after some time. I think this is the path that I want to take. Strengthening everything that I've built and also giving continuity and using people to inspire people to keep innovating and to keep strong results that Metal Leve usually brings to the market through that transformation. Now I'd like to turn over to Claudio, because there is a second part of that question. I'll let him answer that.
Thank you, Eduardo. Thank you, Marcelo, for your question.
From my perspective, and I believe this is kind of common sense with comparable companies and even unlisted companies. The level of results MAHLE has presented in the past years has been quite high. The bar is really high. Marcelo, it's quite hard to say. We had the first slide with the highlights from news from the world. There are so many negative things going on in this year, so it's difficult to promise anything. I can try to say that rest assured that we have one of the best teams in all departments. We have very skilled professionals who will do our best to keep the very high levels that we usually provide. That's not an empty promise. This is really a commitment that we have with the market. Thank you.
Thank you, Claudio. Our next question is from Gabriel Rezende, from Itaú BBA. Please proceed, sir.
Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to ask this question. First, I'd like to congratulate Sergio for his trajectory over the past years, and I wish him good luck in this next stage. Also good luck to Eduardo in this new challenge. We're very excited to follow in-depth MAHLE Metal Leve in the next year. I would like to ask a question going back to the discussion about the market that you raised. Could you talk more about the short term of the MOVER project? How do you expect to see any acceleration in the production of car makers in the short term, in April or May, because of the MOVER program? Do you see any of the effects the government expected from this program to accelerate the production of heavy vehicles?
Thank you, Gabriel. Thank you for your question.
We see very good results from the MOVER program. The first stage of the resources opened, were quickly used. There was a delay between the use of these funds and when the vehicles are licensed. You need to order the truck, and then it takes some time for it to be produced and then licensed and everything. We didn't see the results of that in March yet. In April, the numbers of sales in trucks and buses still do not reflect a strong recovery. We believe that this trend will improve because the comparison base is also very high. The first half of 2025 had high sales results, and the numbers dropped in the second half of 2025. We believe that we'll see the results of this program in the second half of the year.
These additional BRL 20 billion obviously are positive. This is something Anfavea was expecting to see, and we know how important it is to renew our fleet. In 2025, we had a drop in the sales of heavy vehicles, so it is the second consecutive years with a drop. There's also a pent-up demand in this segment. This is also an election year, which kind of gets in the way of investment decisions. Trying to objectively answer your question, we believe that there will be improvements in this market. At least the drop has stopped now with this additional BRL 20 billion in resources that was made available and also special conditions for autonomous drivers and adding buses to the program also will indeed be beneficial to the market.
We had a projection of a drop in 5% in growth in that segment, we expect that to be better, maybe a similar figure as we had in 2025, even growth. I don't know if I answered your question.
You did. Thank you.
Samantha, if you allow me, we are a little bit above the time expected, we have one question from Eduardo Menezes in the chat. If they're taking loans, using the results of BNDES funding usually means a payout limit of 25%. Usually MAHLE has a sustainable and conservative payout policy. Any company that distributes 100% of its results usually gets into a complicated situation, especially with investment levels at BRL 150 million, BRL 200 million in CapEx every year. BNDES program does not establish the payout limit of 25%.
It suggests that, but it doesn't establish that. As Eduardo mentioned in the beginning, the company does not change its dividend payout policy. Samantha, I believe that we can wrap up. I would like to thank everyone for your participation. You have our contact information. You can send us an email, we at the investor relations area are open to clarify any questions you may have. Thank you very much, I wish you a very good day. Thank you.
Thank you, Samantha.
The question and answer session is closed. MAHLE video conference is now concluded. We thank you all for your participation and wish you a good day.