Good afternoon, and welcome to Light's second quarter 2022 webcast. My name is Rodrigo Vilela. I am responsible for investor relations, and I will host this event. This event is being held in Portuguese and simultaneously translated into English. If you'd like to listen to the English version, you can click on interpretation on the bottom of your screen. This presentation and comments on the results will be made by Investor Relations and Financial Director Gisomar Marinho. We also have our interim CEO, Wilson Poit, and the elected CEO, Octávio Lopes, who will take his position on Monday the 15th and will make some remarks. Our presentation is available on our Investor Relations website, but you can also watch it on Zoom. I'd like to remind you that right now all participants are connected in listen-only mode.
At the end of the presentations, during the Q&A session, we will give instructions to those who wish to ask questions. This webinar is being recorded, and its audio will be available in our Investor Relations website. As per usual, this is our disclaimer. We'd like to clarify that any statements made during the company's presentation about business perspectives, projections, operational and financial goals are simply beliefs and assumptions based on the information that is currently available for the company. Remarks about the future are not a guarantee of performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. They refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that economic conditions, industry conditions and other operational factors may affect the future results for the company and may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in these statements.
Well, with all the disclaimers being made, I'd like to give the floor to Wilson Poit. Poit, over to you.
Good afternoon, everyone. We've reached or actually passed the midpoint of the year with relevant advances, and we continue to improve Light's operations. As you know, since the end of June, I became the interim CEO in the company while we expect our new CEO to join us, Octavio Pereira Lopes. Although I'm still a member of the board, I have left its presidency, and it's now being carried out temporarily by board member Ana Toni, and I'll return to that position on Monday. Octavio has a consolidated and successful trajectory in turnaround processes in several companies, including in the electrical industry. His goal is to accelerate our operational improvement plans to generate better results.
As of next Monday, the 15th, he will be the new CEO for Light, and we're very optimistic and confident about his arrival to continue restructuring the company. The results reported during the second quarter will be— We'll receive more details later on from Gisomar. I would like to highlight that we have made positive achievements in the financial point of view with an EBITDA expansion and a reinforced cash position with over BRL 400 billion in the operational side. We advanced the main initiatives in our loss combat plan, and for the fifth quarter in a row, we have reduced loss indexes. The generation company continues to post strong results, and the distribution company is among the top in Brazil in FEC, which measures frequency of interruptions. It's the third best in Brazil in DEC, which measures how long interruptions last.
Achievements like this are being made as we implement a management model that, where all the decisions for the company are based in concrete facts and data to ensure the generation of results and so that we can correct course when necessary. We adopted a winning habit of only having opinions in projects based on fact and data that is sourced and double-checked. In our company, we no longer want to use guesswork and old methods for our initiatives. We want sources, we want to check risks, and we want our sources to be reliable. We're sure that this is the only way in which we can make good decisions.
I have to say that during this quarter, we continue to understand how important it is to recognize the credits from the exclusion of the ICMS tax from the calculation basis for PIS/COFINS, despite a law being passed foreseeing returns for these credits. We do not agree with the law, and we've made all legal measures that we can right now. I have to highlight that Light has a strong tradition in Brazilian law. Throughout its centenary history, it has always contributed to strengthening institutions in Brazil. The company has even spoken in the past with the legal system and had major victories in our Supreme Federal Court in several occasions, benefiting consumers from the entire country. Finally, I'd like to say that we firmly believe in the viability of recovering the society in Rio de Janeiro and especially in our concession area.
There are many opportunities, and we have to be protagonists in this story. Light maintains its co-commitment to our entire population. Our administrators and our employees are committed to generating results. We are all working hard, and we have the pleasure of receiving now our new CEO, Octávio Pereira Lopes. With that, I'd like to share with you a message from Octávio. We'll speak soon.
Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, I'd like to thank Poit, the interim CEO, for inviting me to say my first words as the future CEO of the company, a position I'm going to take on Monday. This challenge of leading Light in its turnaround process is seen with a lot of enthusiasm by me. I've been a part of the company when I was a member of the board between 2018 and 2020.
I have experience in turnaround processes in several companies, including in the electric industry. I know about Light's peculiarities, its concession areas, and the challenges the company needs to face to reduce energy theft and service its entire client portfolio with excellence. I'm confident that these objectives don't come into conflict with creating value for our shareholders. Light has been investing with that focus, but we have a long road ahead of us. We're going to continue that change process started two years ago, but we need to accelerate the speed of that change. In the next months, we're going to modernize the company, make our processes leaner and faster, and trail our own path in this industry that requires new solutions.
We're going to focus on combating losses, accelerating processes, increasing collections is also one of our goals, and these resources will allow us to have a healthier future with more possibilities for investments in our core business. I understand there's a challenging scenario ahead, but we can advance and make Light into a sustainable company that is closely aligned to the best practices required by the market. We're going to accelerate this movement to write the company's next chapters. We're based on the following processes, optimizing processes, updating our technology, loss combat, improving collection, and financial discipline focusing on manageable expenses. I know that we have a regulatory agenda that is very intensive for the next years, and we're going to seek solutions that will provide services to our clients appropriately, including the specificities in our concession area, combining the necessary returns with our future investments.
Thank you. Now I will continue as a listener, passing on the floor to my colleagues, Wilson Poit, Gisomar Marinho, and Rodrigo Vilela, who will run this call. Thank you.
Thank you, Otavio, Poit . Good afternoon, everyone listening to this conference call. Continuing with slide four, which is shown on your screen, we're talking about Light's billed market in the second quarter of this year. We can see that there was an increase of 2.9% versus the second quarter of 2021. The total billed market was 6,342 GWh, up 177 GWh versus the same quarter last year.
This variation was the result of a reduction of 2.3% of captive clients and an increase of 11.5% of clients classified as network use, represented by free clients, and distributed generation and utilities. By breaking down the different consumption classes, as we can see on the right-hand side of the screen, we had a reduction in the residential market, 1.9% down due to lower temperatures around the second half of May and the end of June. Although on average, the temperature during this quarter was slightly higher than in the second quarter of 2021. In the commercial segment, we had an increase of 3.8%. In our concession area, the effects of the pandemic and the economic situation of the state of Rio de Janeiro led to a longer recovery in the commercial market.
However, we started seeing increased consumption from the first quarter of 2022 that was maintained during the second quarter. The industrial segment had a slight increase of 0.5%, especially because of metallurgy and steelworks. The utility segment had been seeing a reduction in the comparative periods, and it posted a 28% growth. This is especially due to reestablishing Light's flow to a neighboring utility. A part of the load from Light's to this concession was reduced as thermoelectric plants started in the neighboring areas. When they were shut off at the end of the second quarter of 2022, this flow was reestablished, benefiting Light again. Grid load went up 2% to 8,144 GWh. Continuing with the next slide five, we can see that the market expansion overcame our load expansion, so the total loss was reduced.
We finished total losses this quarter at 8,998 GWh, and the total loss ex REN was 9,219 GWh. This demonstrates our continuous strategy to minimize billing for non-accounted energy or recovered energy, REN, from consumers who are being regularized. Looking at the right-hand graph, we can see the total loss over grid load indicator, which concluded at 26.41%, down 0.18 percentage points, a reduction for the fifth quarter in a row. It was around 4.9 percentage points above the regulatory threshold defined during our periodic tariff revision process concluded on March 15 through 2022. Continuing with slide six. It reinforces the dynamics in our loss reduction program. We continue in the strategy where we increased investment in infrastructure to reduce vulnerability to our grid w ithout leaving aside a management model, made up of the levers in the process that will provide good results in our loss reduction program.
This slide shows some of the main levers in our process. The first point is loss proofing, where we regularized 21,000 installations during the second quarter of 2022, a growth of 61% versus the first quarter of 2022. This year, we've had 34,000 installations loss proofed. This process seems very resilient and in some areas where losses were around 53% have stabilized at around 14%. With inspections, we have continued to make strides. We have made 76,000 normalizations throughout the second quarter of 2022, reaching a total of 163,000 normalizations this year.
In the meter replacement lever, considering that meters are essential to ensure that we bill our clients correctly and reduce legal demands for any misreading. During the second quarter, we replaced 38,000 meters. This quarter, we have replaced over 95,000 meters in our concession area. In low-income communities, we had another great stride. We normalized 9,000 clients in the second quarter, doubling the number we posted in the first quarter, where we had made 5,000 normalizations. We have therefore reached 14,000 clients normalized in low-income communities. Continuing with slide seven, and continuing that follow-up that we had mentioned during the last quarter. This is an example of a location that was one of the pioneers in our current loss proofing pattern.
Through this standard, we review the entire energy supply system in that location, removing the low voltage network, installing meters, and installing ballistics and loss-proofed boxes, normalizing 100% of the clients connected to them. The Dom Bosco community in Duque de Caxias, near Reduc in Petrobras, shows that loss-proofing has provided important results and has proven resilient over time. At Dom Bosco, we had losses of around 60%. We managed to reduce losses in that location through the current standard of loss-proofing, which was implemented in September last year and reduced to under 10%. It's a great example showing that our strategy has been very successful to loss-proof our grid. Continuing with slide eight, we'll be talking about our collections and our ADA. In collections, we have had good indicators.
On the left-hand side, we see a reduction in total collection versus the first quarter of the year, from 97.5% down to 96.8%. This reduction is due to a lower collection in the retail segment due to an increase in the low-income client base during the time. The company now has 633,000 clients who are low-income. In comparison to March 2022, it represents an increase of 30,000 low-income clients and 127,000 low-income clients versus one year ago. On the other hand, the company now has a gain passing this subvention on, where a billing is offset through a CDE sum.
Now on the right-hand graph, you can see our ADA over gross revenue indicator, which has been improving in the last months, concluding at 2.6% at the end of June. ADA in the second quarter finished at BRL 67.3 million, and this was due to a reversal of a non-recurring ADA in the third quarter of 2021 due to a judicial reorganization from one of our clients, which was just reversed now in the second quarter. Excluding that effect, our ADA would have been BRL 107.8 million, 11.6% below what was posted in the second quarter of 2021, which was BRL 121.9 million. Continuing with slide nine.
Before we talk about our EBITDA, I'd like to talk about our PIS/COFINS tax credits, as Poit mentioned in the beginning of the presentation. Based on our legal and technical assistance, we've understood this quarter that we should maintain the accounting made in the third quarter of 2019 on these tax credits. We consider that the law passed is unconstitutional. The additional liabilities to reimburse our consumers should be classified as a contingent liability. According to IAS 37 or CPC 25, we did not foresee any resources being disbursed from our cash. That's why no provision was made. Since it was considered even by our legal assistance as a lost contingent liability, we understand that ANEEL will identify the affected consumers who require these credits according to the law.
Continuing with our EBITDA for the second quarter of 2022, we see a significant growth. EBITDA on a recurring basis was approximately BRL 608 million. This increase is due especially to an increased EBITDA at the distribution company, which came to a total of BRL 432.4 million, driven especially by the new tariffs applied as of March after our tariff revision that I mentioned in the beginning of my speech. We also had a reduction in manageable costs for the distribution company of around BRL 10.6 million due to better management and cost control in the distribution company. Considering non-recurring effects, ADA was launched as we mentioned, BRL 40.5 million above the line in court-ordered reorganization.
In provisions, there was a release of 35.7 million negative related to a legal procedure. The net effect of these two non-recurring events was about BRL 5 million this quarter. EBITDA for the generation company came to a total of BRL 150 million, driven by readjusted long-term contracts in the free market, despite seeing a reduction of energy revenues in the spot market due to a lower PLD at an average price of BRL 56 , although there was a lower volume. Now in the trader, the quarter finished at BRL 31.6 million in EBITDA, a reduction of BRL 8.5 million versus the same period last year. This was due to a lower volume sold and a reduction in PLD, which was partially offset by lower energy purchase prices.
Slide 10 shows the company's net results, which came to a loss of BRL 77 million. We had a significant improvement in our operational results, a growth of about BRL 223 million, and we saw financial results pressuring our bottom line significantly. We had a reduction of BRL 314 million in our financial results, especially due to higher CDI and IPCA at the time. Since we have a higher gross debt of about BRL 12.5 billion. Of the BRL -315 million, we have the impact of BRL 152 million due to our swapped debts in foreign currency, but it does not affect the company's cash. Continuing with slide eleven. Here we see some indicators related to our debt.
The upper left-hand side graph shows an improvement in our consolidated net debt, which is the company's leverage index, which finished the quarter at 3.23x , especially with advanced operational results, as I said, and lower limits. That is below the most restrictive limits in our debt contract, which is 3.5x . The graph below shows the debt cost. We see that nominally it went up to 13.5%, and the real cost went up to 1.4%. On the right-hand side, you see our amortizations for our loans and our consolidated cash position. This quarter, it was BRL 4 billion approximately, which is more than enough to honor our commitments for the next years. The average term of our debt was 3.2 years.
As a reminder, in 2023, we can once again access the infrastructure deb enture markets, due to a recomposition of its basis for a future emission. Our debt is currently made up of 65% CDI- indexed debt and 35% IPCA- indexed debt. We'd like to highlight that all of our foreign currency debt is hedged to the CDI index. The last slide of our presentation shows some of the highlights that we have had in our ESG agenda. On the left, you see a reduction of 39.2% in our injury frequency rate due to having more safety inspections along with new awareness programs and prevention activities.
The second bullet shows that we reduce our internal or in-house consumption of energy by 33.6% with better energy use in the company's sites, which contributes towards an important indicator for climate change. The third bullet shows an increase of 70.2% in R&D investment and a significant increase in investing in low income communities about 237%, with new projects of loss combat and programs to create awareness on responsible use of energy. On the other half of our slide, we see some of the main ESG ratings according to the MSCI analytics, which increased Light's score from 6.1 to 6.8 points, maintaining our A rate and placing us closer to double A.
To conclude, we'd like to invite everyone listening to read our yearly integrated sustainability report available on our Investor Relations website. Now, we'll pass it back on to Rodrigo Vilela, who will organize our Q&A.
Thank you, Gisomar. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. If you'd like to ask the question, you can use that Raise Hand button on the bottom of your screen. That will allow your microphone to be turned on. You can also send questions in writing using the Q&A button at the lower part of the screen. Your questions will be answered live. Andre Sampaio, an analyst from Santander Bank, will ask the first question. Go ahead, Andre.
Good afternoon, everyone. I have a question here about the PIS/COFINS tax credit. I'd just like to understand what are your next steps. From our understanding, you did not reverse the gains with a temporary measure. What are the next steps there? Do you believe there will be more expectation on timing? Any potential merit to that discussion? If I can ask about a second subject. Now, with the changes in CEO, do you expect the company to change its strategy or will it be maintained? Thank you.
Hi, Andre. Good afternoon. Thank you for your question. To answer your question on tax credits, this is legal strategy, so it's a bit more confidential. We did not want to say what it is during this call, but we do have a strategy created by our legal assistants who have a step-by-step. Even if at a certain moment we're not successful at that step, we can continue with the next steps to reverse this entire situation and so on. As you know, unfortunately in Brazil, we can't give you a deadline to resolve these issues that will be taken to court, because we might even have to make appeals and go to the Supreme Court. It's very difficult to give you a timeframe for it. I'll pass it on to Poit, who's going to mention that, who's going to answer your question.
Well, we're very excited about Otávio joining us. He is a great professional. He's well-known, well-regarded in the market. He has experience in turnaround, and he has a very successful story in the electrical industry. He knows our industry very well. He knows Light. He's worked here at our board, and he's made some strong positions. He is aligned with us. We've talked a lot even before he came in. He knows what is happening. As he said, he aims to accelerate improvement plans to generate results and to quickly turn the company around. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
We've received a question in the chat. Good afternoon. What is this company's senior management perspective on renewing the concession area?
I can answer this one. I think it's important to keep our understanding in line. A concession cannot be simply returned at the press of a button. The concession area here in Rio will only conclude in 2026. According to the legislation and the current understanding, the concession area cannot be returned after an ordinary process.
To give you an idea, there is a legal prediction and a contract to renew the distributor for 30 additional years, according to the terms and conditions that will be defined by the government. What I can say is that it is only from mid-2023 that we will begin looking at the regulatory arm to renew the distribution company's concession. Once the process has begun, and I have to say this is a non-binding process, the government will provide us with the terms and conditions for renewal. To make any decisions to renew or to not renew, we have to understand the terms and conditions, and we have enough time ahead of us for that. We will continue to restructure our turnaround for Light.
I'll now pass it on to Marcelo Sa, an analyst from Itaú BBA. Marcelo Sá lowered his hand. I'll pass it on to Matheus Amorim from Navi.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. The first is about the investments that you have made. The company, since last year, has increased its investments in distribution. We can see that this year they have also gone up in comparison to the historical average. I'd just like to understand the logic behind that, because usually there is less interest in investments that take four or five years to be recognized in the base. I'd just like to understand if we will continue to see investments in CapEx going up above the historical figures. The company has been seeing an increase in its net debt. It's gone up significantly in the last 18 months.
I'd like to understand how your funding strategy works, considering there's a current contract coming to term in 2026, and as a distribution company also has one. Does that prevent you from getting more interesting rates with the National Development Bank and so on. Because to be honest, I don't really understand how it works. Thank you.
Okay, Matheus, thank you for those questions, and I'll start with the second one on funding. First, for this year, we no longer have any needs for additional funding, not even to honor our debt amortization commitments this year, and not to pay for the investments that we have programmed for the rest of the year. Considering funding, we understand that we have an open market.
In fact, we were able to include our debenture in April, and it wasn't even incentivized, BRL 1.3 billion to the market. That was a reasonable price despite interest rates going up. In fact, as you mentioned, we made a change to our strategy. In the last years, we had a debt extension strategy to reduce cost. Since this year, we had a turbulent scenario due to many issues, not only due to exogenous issues from the international market, like the war and higher interest rates in the U.S. and Europe. It all led to a higher pressure of our interest rates at home. As a part of our strategy, we have reduced the terms to capture that.
As I mentioned, we're opening up again to the debenture markets, which often have a longer term above the average of five and seven years of a normal debenture. Based on that, next year we will definitely analyze the market and see what alternatives there are to capture the debt and roll it out. We also have a strategy that for the future, and I can't really tell you exactly when, but based on the investments made, and this connects to your first question about why we increased our average investments and the company's cycles, which are normally five-year investments. This year, we have accelerated investments and loss prevention to try to capture over next year some results from these investments. Due to seasonality, we have advanced some investments in expanding our grid.
Why am I saying that? That is related to rain. In the second quarter and the third quarter, we have made investments that were foreseen for the fourth quarter to escape from the rainy season, which makes this kind of complex construction more difficult. That's why you're seeing our investments above average during this period. Rodrigo, I'll let you answer the rest of that question too.
Great. Thanks, Gisomar . Matheus, another point to analyze is that last year, the distribution company made an investment of BRL 1.2 billion, of which BRL 1 billion was in electrical assets. The engineering part of that had a higher participation from the total value. This year, according to the company's strategy, we will have investments in electrical assets, and they will be about BRL [1] billion.
In electrical assets it's BRL 150 million. 600 million for commercial initiatives. Collection and loss combat. When we look at electrical assets, it's a total of around BRL 950 million. Considering the company's current QRR, it's around 10%-12% investments above our QRR. We believe that this is appropriate right now according to the challenges that the company has.
Great. Thank you.
To continue, I'll pass it over to Marcelo Sa from Itaú BBA.
Hi. Thank you. First, my question is about cash generation. We see that net debt has gone up this quarter. EBITDA went up, but net debt also grew. I'd just like to hear a bit more about how this has been doing, and also about the PIS/COFINS tax credits. It surprises me that companies are taking different measures in recognizing this in their balance sheet, because it's something that needs to be uniform among auditors. That's just like what I like to understand. But if you had to set a provision for it, I'd just like to understand what your covenants are, if that would be something that would be in your covenant calculation or wouldn't it, if you had to set a provision for it later on. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions, Marcelo. Good afternoon. I'll start with your second point, which is about provisions, if that they would have an impact to debt covenants.
No, they would not have any impact to any of the company's debt covenant since our debt covenant is our adjusted EBITDA, so it excludes any non-recurring events as they would be in this provision if it had to be made. To answer your question on your previous question on PIS/COFINS, saying that you'd like to understand why we were different from the other distribution companies, that's a legal issue. This process is legal. Although accounting follows accounting rules, it's a legal issue. They were backed by robust reports saying that this is a possible contingent liability. Therefore, there's no need for any kind of provision. Continuing with your first question about cash pressure and so on. First of all, we have the pressure you see now because of the acceleration of investments, as I answered to Matheus in the previous question.
That generates some pressure on cash. We had made an estimation of BRL 870 million cash investments, and we also have BRL 370 million available in paying interest rates. With that being said, we understand that even with all the pressure and interest rates, we're not just Light, we're not just a company. And since we have significant debt, we do face some pressure. All companies in Brazil are feeling it. All companies that have debt, right? Because they're either indexed by the CDI or IPCA, which went up significantly when you look at the interest rate flows this year versus what happened last year. Okay, Marcelo?
Great. Thank you. Do you have any estimates that you can share with us on what quarter you imagine that net debt would be stable and stop going up? When would you see that turning point? Because now you started seeing the effects of tariff reviews that increase the company's cash generation, and on the other hand, you have higher financial losses, which will definitely continue throughout the rest of the year and maybe even down to 2023. Do you think that before interest rates are cut, that can be reversed? Do you think your net debt can start going down, or will you have a growing net debt scenario considering the pressures we mentioned, higher financial expenses and so on?
Marcelo, our perspective would be for next year. Considering we have great investments to make this year, we don't have any expectations of any reversal for the reduction in interest rates or inflation. Because even if it drops, it won't go back to last year's levels. We understand that we will start seeing a reversal of those flows. As we start capturing revenue gains from tariff reviews and also the results we expect to capture with our loss combat program, that will require more investment. For next year, we should have more gains being captured. Throughout next year, probably around the second or third quarter, we'll see a reversal in net debt.
Thank you.
A question we just got in our chat. Although there was a reduction in total loss on the grid load by 18 basis points, the non-technical losses went up by 15 basis points. Why was there a difference?
Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Basically, our loss prevention strategy is based on investments. We aim to reduce losses in a structural way. We've invested 90% of our resources in conventional areas with high reoccurrence. We have around 10% in low-income communities, but our focus is basically protecting the grid and loss-proofing the grid. This was the fifth quarter in a row where we had reductions on the grid load. That's an important reduction. We also need to look at the ex-REN version, because REN is an administrative process. Since I said our process is infrastructural, increasing our billing. When we look at that, the percentage of the total loss over grid load also shows a consistent reduction, and we need to look at the volume of energy.
Where total losses went from 10.5 TWh to 8.9 ex-REN. It shows that the structural effort has had an effect. When we look at the reference market, it also happens in a percentage of total losses, ex-REN, that goes from 58.52% in June, in the last 12 months, to 57.59%. If we include REN, it's from 54.17% to 54.63%. It might seem like a small increase, but basically there's an influence from the lower volume in the last quarter, where we redirected activities through structural levers, and there were some one-off cancellations. Even then, we can see that our strategy has been consistent. When you look at the non-technical loss volume, in June 2021, we went from 7 TWh to 6.6 TWh, without considering REN.
When we consider REN, the volume of losses, even including the previous quarter, is at the same level. So there was a one-off variation here because of the inspection teams being redirected, but the main highlight is a consistent reduction in the volume of energy lost. Which is a part of our strategy, investing in infrastructure so that we can increase our billing basis and combat losses in a structured way.
Well, we've reached the end of our call. Now I'd like to thank everyone for participating, and I'd like to reinforce that our Investor Relations team is always available to answer any questions you may have. Have a great afternoon, and we'll speak during our next call. Thank you.