Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the webinar of Ourofino S.A., where we are going to bring you the results of the fourth quarter of the year 2024. My name is Kleber Gomes, and we are here with Marcelo Silva.
To begin with our webinar, I would like to invite Mr. Kleber Gomes to give you an overview of our business.
Good morning, Marcelo. We are in different places today. I'm talking from a network room. I hope we don't have any problems due to this. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with you and deliver the results that we had in 2024, a year full of challenges, but as Marcelo already mentioned, a year that was very positive. I've been in the presidency for five years. In the first year, we had years that were impacted by the market, but the company reacted.
We did our homework, I'm very happy to be here delivering the results that we promised for you. We've resumed our historical margin. We have improved our profitability. We grew in relation to last year. In 2024, with the exclusion of the foot-and-mouth disease, we had a growth of 14% during the year. The quarter was spectacular. We grew 26% in the quarter, we've worked a lot during that year. We are happy because all business units met the results. Production animals had a very good growth. Pet also, strong growth. International actions, it grew a little bit less, even so, we had a positive result. We did some restructures at the beginning of the year that really delivered the expected results. We worked on our expenses; the result now is that the year was really positive for our cash generation.
Marcelo is going to give you details later. We had an assembly, we did a capital reduction, we delivered a significant amount to our shareholders without compromising our investments in research and in everything that is needed by the company. We also launched seven products during the year. Very good launchings in Chapecó in the south of Brazil. We launched this SafeSui Glasser One vaccine, unique in the country. We've launched FerAppease. We are exclusive supplier for some countries. It's a product that diminishes the sensation of stress in the animals, swine and cattle. Stress reduces productivity, you can really minimize the impact of the stress in the animals. We've launched FosBion B12, our organic phosphorus, with B12 vitamin that helps a lot with productivity. We've launched our vaccine, CDV Feedlot Plus as a partnership with Biogénesis Bagó for cattle reproduction.
For pets, we've launched Banni, our injectable solution for dogs. We've launched before the Banni 3 for cats. That is performing very well. We've launched EnziClim. It's a product to reduce odors and stains due to urine of animals.
This year was really good. Kleber, we hear you.
Just a moment. My image is not on the screen now. Just a minute, please. You hear me, don't you? I'll continue. I don't see the screen; I know that you hear me. We have a sequence of positive news. On the 19th of January, we did a very big event to launch the LeanVac vaccine. We brought all the most important growers of swine in Brazil. They met us, they visited our plants. This is the second product of this category in the world.
There was another company that launched also something like this, but it was not available in most of the places here in Brazil. Now Ourofino is bringing this to the producers. LeanVac , I'm sure that this is going to have great results. Next week we launch another very important product for dairy cattle. It's Boostin. It's a product that is already on the market. It was distributed by another company. It's a product that increases the productivity of milk, and Ourofino, with its positioning in the market, is now able to bring this product that is produced by a giant company from South Korea. We are bringing it to Brazil now. We have two products in this category, and we are really now going strongly with it in the market and reinforcing our portfolio. It's a very positive movement.
We expect to have other positive surprises during the year; we are going to continue working hard during this year. I would like to highlight the BU of poultry and swine. You know that last year we've segregated poultry and swine, and it had the greatest growth in the history of Ourofino. More than 30% last year. We are really obtaining good results. We are happy for these deliveries. We are aware of the difficulties. The market is very competitive, we know. We are really relying on what we have planted. Marcelo is going to explain the financial results now, and I'll be back with you in the Q&A session. Marcelo, the floor is yours.
Thank you, K leber. Now I'm going to continue talking about the financial highlights of the company.
Kleber has already mentioned the growth of the company in 2024 compared to 2023. It's very relevant. If we don't take into consideration the foot-and-mouth disease, we have consolidated 14% of growth, BRL 1 billion of net revenue. We obtained again more market share. This growth happens in all the BUs, even in those who were challenged by the macro scenario. Also, we need to mention the commitment that we had to deliver in 2024 more profit than revenue with the reduction of costs. We wanted to grow EBITDA more than gross profit. We began with some actions of cost reduction still in 2023, the impact didn't come in 2023. It really came in 2024. We grew EBITDA more than the gross profit. Our expenses were really below inflation, and it was really very good. Also, the net profit was very good.
We closed the year with this very good tax management of the company. We had a reduction in the leverage combined with this structure of investment that is aimed at innovation. Now I'm going to talk about the BUs. This graphic brings us the numbers. We grew the revenue, the gross margin consolidated, with exception of foot-and-mouth disease. We had a very good growth, relevant, bigger than the historical margin. The gross margin is now 51.4% in the year, this was really relevant. Production animals, it's the biggest BU, and we have here beef cattle, dairy cattle. We had this relevant growth in swine and poultry. Poultry that is now headed by Marcelo Faria, we are now focusing on the market. We have launching of products. This line really grew compared to 2023; it helped with the consolidated growth of the company.
The unit grew 8.6%, if you look at the compared base, we have BRL 43 million of foot-and-mouth disease that we didn't have this year. The growth is really big and expressive and strong with this line of swine that contributed even more than the good periods that we have in the previous years. The gross margin ex foot-and-mouth disease is 46.6%, even bigger than the gross margin of 2022 and 2021. This is the result of the cost reduction, the right position, and the fair positioning of our pricing in the market. In Companion Animals, this is the segment that grows more. We have very good results. If we look since 2021, this unit grew 29%. It's very important growth, and the gross margin is bigger than production animals, it really contributes for gross margin of the company as a whole.
We have a 67.6% in 2024. This is the result of the good job done by Brandao and everybody of the team. We are really close to the veterinarians, to our partners, and this is making the difference in the market. International operations also, we have here comparison with 2023, where we had the impact of the foot-and-mouth disease. We have an interesting performance in the countries of distribution. We have a challenge for the growth of the unit caused by Mexico because Mexico is undergoing difficult situations, the plans are to resume the growth in Mexico as well in 2025, a very important market in Latin America. We had growth in Colombia, in other countries. Dollar exchange rate favored us with an important positive impact with a margin that reached 62%. Now talking about the structure of the expenses of the company.
You can observe that we had a dilution of the expenses compared with previous years. The expenses were 28.7%, and the nominal growth is nice. This shows a dilution of expenses over revenues. We had this inflation that was high in 2024, and even with that, even growing 14% and accommodating an inflation that pressured the company, we were able to keep the SG&A of the company below the inflation of the year. The efforts that we did in 2023 and 2024 contributed to keep profitability. I'm going to show you. Now it happened without compromising our investments that totalize BRL 75.8 million. We didn't have contingencies. The variation of total expenses is conditioned to the execution and the staging of the project's chronogram.
We had seven launchings in 2024, and sometimes we need to overcome all the challenges regarding to the regulatory institutions in Brazil, we've searched for new partners, and everything went okay. The adjusted EBITDA, we had a margin at 21.6% against a margin of 14.2% in 2019 compared to 2023 and 2022. That were the best profitability that we've had so far. You can see that we controlled the expenses, and we were able to expand this margin with this growth of 65%, and it's a very good growth. The company has still capacity of growing even more Creating cash because we don't impact the leverage of terms. We have a good management from our point of view of the capital. You can observe that we had situations with the stock, with the inventory of the company, this is part of our strategy.
The sale of those stocks are going to be done now in 2025, but everything was planned so that we can increase our relevance in the market. We have still this pressure in the stock, but we have a very good cash generation that is very relevant of BRL 73.9 million. This is a very good cash flow. We can pay two years ahead. Another important point is that we've finished the capital reduction. We paid in the 31st of January. We respected all the terms and deadlines. If we get our debt on the 31st of January and we do the math of everything, our leverage is 1.1 times against the ratio of 1.6. If you look at the last 10 years, you will see that we are really aligned with what we've done in the last 10 years.
This is going to really allow us to continue with our investment's agenda from now on. The combination of growth, cash generation, the management contributed for the reduction of leverage, from 0.9 to 0.6 of the EBITDA. We closed the year with BRL 7.9 of debt, and we have plans for investments in research, innovation, increasing of productivity capacity. It's very adequate in our point of view. We have a very good structure in terms of cost composition and also of allocation of debt. We have 17.3% of the debt in the short term and 83.7% in the long term, and 40% of it is due to be paid in five years. This gives us some comfort. Well, I finish now my presentation regarding the figures and numbers of the company. I'll be back for the Q&A session.
Again, I give the floor to Mr. Kleber Gomes.
Thank you, Marcelo, for your presentation about our numbers. We have a question here from André Prates . Three questions. I'm going to read them and I will answer. He is congratulating us for the results and he has three questions. First, can we go deeper into the potential of the launches in the internal and external markets? Well, I cannot tell you about potential of growth of products because we don't give guidance, but I can tell you that the products were launched at the end of the year, the main ones, and they are important ones for our future, especially for our biological line on which I see the potential for internationalization.
The Glasser vaccine and the immunocastration vaccine, the second in the world, I do believe that they have potential for going abroad and we are going to work on this in the next years. This is not a short-term thing. It involves registration in other countries. It takes time, but I believe that these products have a big potential. Second, can we comment about the synergies in the Asian market with Mitsui? Well, yes. As you know, Mitsui is a giant in the Chinese conglomerate. It's very strong in terms of investment in other companies. I don't know the accurate numbers because they change daily, but they have more than $110 billion invested in the world, more than 500 companies in which they've invested and years and years of experience. It's a very strong company that opened doors to us and helps us with these synergies.
The synergies that are more obvious are with the local ones, but we search for strategic ones. Strategic synergies aiming to bring new technologies that are sometimes created from in Japan and come to Brazil. I commented about the distribution of the boost product, and we had the help of Mitsui that have this relationship with LG Chem that is the producer. This is already fruit of this partnership. You know that we have visited Asia with Mitsui. We've visited Korea, China, Japan, and we are not going to stop. I see a very good partnership with a very good potential and long-lasting. I would like to thank all the shareholders from Mitsui, the Corporate Planning Director with the advisors from Mitsui that are supporting us, Kakio-sa n and Sugimoto-sa n.
The third question, is it possible to comment about the closure of capital that was spread out in the media? Well, we don't have any decision made in regard to the closure of capital. I don't know where this news came from. The company has no decision regarding capital closure in this moment. These were the questions from André. I don't see any other questions on the chat, so I give the floor back to Marcelo so that he can make his final comments.
I would like to thank all the Ourofino team that has worked so hard to deliver such good results. We had a lot of barriers that were overcame, and I would like to thank also Mr. Jardel, Mr. Norival, our founders, our advisors, our management boards, all the committees.
I would like to thank also our financial agencies, especially FINEP, our body that incentivizes innovation, BNDES, and other partners from the banking segment. To thank everybody and especially to our clients and customers that believe in our daily work, that walk together with us, and they are the reason why we exist. Thank you so much. Marcelo, the floor is yours.
Kleber, thank you. I would like to thank also everybody, thank the international relations team, all the stakeholders, and I would like then to finish this call reaffirming our commitment of continue working to create this relevant agenda, to create value to all the stakeholders, all the important people that Kleber mentioned. Have a nice weekend and see you in our next webinar. If you still have questions, you can send them. We are at your disposition. Thank you so much.
Have a nice weekend. Thank you.