I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter of results for 2025. I will give the floor to a person that will give the main highlight for the first quarter of 2025. Then I will talk about the numbers of the company in this first quarter. Good morning. The floor is yours.
Thank you for the introduction. My name is Kleber. It's a pleasure for me to be here once again explaining a little bit regarding the last months on Ourofino, regarding animal health. We had a very positive moment. The last year, we had very good launchings, and we had a good recovery. We started the year in a very positive way. We know that our business is seasonal, so we always need to think about the first quarter, that it's a little bit low at the beginning.
Later, we have better results that are way stronger. We have explanations due to the climate change and also rains. Also regarding the businesses that we have. The third quarter, we have a fair that is very important for us. We have the state fair that is very important. By the way, we have the production and other things. The numbers get better soon. Regarding the first quarter, we had a quarter that grew a lot, highlighting that when we talk about production, we need to discuss what happened the last year and what we have now. Lots of units of products are growing, and this is very good for us. By the other side, we have a market that is growing, and it's not an easy market.
As you know, you need to be very competitive and very strong as us. It's a year that we are fighting for to have a year, once again, with a better growth compared to 2024. We have the margin that is better in this quarter. In this year, we had the gross margin growth. This year, we hope to increase our investments. Also, this is highlighted by the launches in 2025. We have the animals of production. I would like to highlight the main ones from 2025. We have some launchings worldwide. We launched it on February, LeanVac, the best option for the freedom of choice. This is for [inaudible] , and this was made by our team. This is part of our lots of clients, and we have lots of other clients that are already buying this product.
I'm quite sure that this product has a huge potential to be global. We will expand that in the future because we are focused on establishing this operation in a more focused way. Sometimes we have this service of applying the vaccine, and that's why we will work with that. We have excellent results. We have lots of hope with the growth of this vaccine for the next years. As you know, we had a great work to bring this product for us because this product is in Brazil for decades. We had a negotiation with the Korean market, a company that work with electronic products with LG . They have their division of chemicals, and they produce this Boostin. This was produced by another competitor here in Brazil.
Now this product is in our hands, is with us, and this will help us in our growth. Besides that, this is a product that brings an increase on the milk production, and this is very important. We are talking about health, well-being, and we are talking about healthcare. Besides that, we also have our presence on the milk production and our milk portfolio is very good. With all these tools, we have a great work, and the Boostin started to be sold in April, and we have great expectations. We have another launching that is being organized for June. I will talk about this product on the second quarter. As I commented, we had good growth. I would like to comment regarding the structure of the company. We have a very good structure. You have been doing very good work.
Everything is very good in all senses. Marcelo will talk about it later, but the introduction regarding the capital is very good. We have BRL 120 million during the quarter, and we had another significant amount in April. A new investment from FINEP regarding our dividends, and we generated a cash flow, and we improved everything. We have a very good perspective on the financing level. We have an excellent financing perspective, and we have the expectations to be very strong this year and in the future. Thank you so much. I give the floor to Marcelo to talk about the numbers. I am at your disposal at the end of the presentation if you have any doubts. Marcelo, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Kleber. Continuing with the presentation of the financial results of the company. We had a growth of 6.3% in the first quarter, and we had the gross margin increase in 48.5% in the period. We had the highest numbers since 2021, and we have to show it with details, because this shows the increase of the participation of the pet unit and also the international transactions that were included to a better performance of the company.
We had a growth on pet and international hirings. This brings a lot of money to the company. Following to the second unit, just a moment. To the cattle sector. We had production animals regarding cattle. This is important to be said, because we had a revenue that grew, and we had a 6.2% of growth. We had, regarding the foot-and-mouth disease, a net revenue growth of 6.2%, and we also had a growth on pork.
Also, we mentioned it that the first quarter revealed the total increase of the unit, as you can see. Everything is captured here. We have some launchings that were done on the second and the third quarter, and fairs, and a lot of parts. The tendency is to have a decrease of the sales for the next quarter, bringing a lot of gross margin for the production. We have to mention that the pigs line is a line that is growing, because we did investments regarding the launching of products and investment on structure of sales to support the increase in the next years. Following for the pets. We had the growth of 7.9% and the net revenue of BRL 36.6 million.
It's a business that is growing in the last years and all the quarters, it's something that was growing and it's bringing money to the company in all senses. We've been working on the management of demand and everything, and we've been working with the profitability of the company. We had the growth of 7.9%, considering all the data, as you can see. The international unit's operation had a growth of 45.1% compared to the first quarter 2024. This growth reflect the high sales volume in the period, mainly in Mexico and Colombia. Mexico and Colombia export in more than 14 countries in Latin America, and these countries represented a very representative growth. We had a unit that was very expressive, and we had better numbers, and we had the gross profit that is 64.2% of the margin, representing the growth of 11.3%.
Regarding the SG&A We have the first quarter of 2025, compared to 2024, we had a growth. This represents the investments on commercial and marketing and the business. This was an investment that was needed to support the business growth in this year and in the next year. We hope we have results regarding these investments, for the revenue of the company. We have the investments and research and development. We had reached the 9.9% of net revenue in the first quarter, and we had BRL 18.7 million of investments. The increase of the amount of expenses on investments may oppress the margin of the results of the company. Because, if you remember, we can see that the investments on research should not be considered as expenses, but future expenses.
This might oppress a little bit of results, and we might have a little bit more of expenses because this was part of the expenses, and we had also expenses with the commercial. This brings us a little bit of pressure on the first quarter of 2025 and the next quarters. We have the plans to deliver better numbers, that this is what happened in 2024, too. Regarding cash flow, bringing a little bit more of information, we finished the cash availability of BRL 148.5 million of cash availability, considering the structures and our capital structure and the capacity of the company to keep with this agenda after this operation, we had the approval of the assembly of BRL 57.7 million in the first quarter. We have a very robust cash flow that is embedded by the results of the company.
This only happens due to the results of the first quarter of 2025. We closed the last year with a leverage of 0.9x leverage EBITDA. The company always had the management that is non-conservative, but what was adequate was customized regarding the Brazilian market, but was very low in 2024. Although we need the operation on the generation of capital, we closed the trimester or the quarter with 0.9x leverage. We do not have in our economical policies the leverage for the company in the next years to have conditions to finance our growing with our own cash flow.
We need to keep the agenda of the most relevant investments, focusing on investments and innovation. EBITDA closes and, with these numbers, as you can see, to keep the agenda of growing. Besides that, we have a structure of the capital. We have the long-term debt that we have, and we have the aging of the bank debt. Looking forward, regarding the 85%, most of them will expire in more than five years, this gives us a little bit of comfort in this sense. Regarding our investments, we have general comfortable results. This is the end of my presentation. I come back to Kleber. I give the floor to Kleber if you have any questions. At your disposal.
Marcelo, I'm here. Marcelo, thank you so much. Since I'm seeing here the chat, we do not have any questions so far. Thank you everyone for your participation, and we are very confident to have an amazing year next year, with launches. Since we did some, we will do others, and I hope we have a year of very good profitability. We are there to finish our second quarter in the future. Huge hug to everyone.