Morning, everyone. Welcome to this quarter of results and the consolidation of the year for Ourof ino. I'm Mariana Anselmo, I'm part of the communication team, and it's a pleasure to be here. We are recording this, and it will be available on our website as well as on youtube.com/saudeanimal, Ourof ino Saúde Animal.
After the presentation, we will have our Q&A session. In case you want to participate, you can click on it and there is a very nice disclaimer, which is that this presentation will bring statements about future events that are submitted to risks and uncertainties. Some statements has as beliefs and assumptions of our administration and information that the company could have access statements about future events. The exceptions related to statements and information about the future also include information about the operational results as statements that are followed or in which the words such as believe, can, will be, will continue, wait, predict, intend, plan, can have some similar expressions.
The statements information about the future are not a guarantee of performance, and they involve risks, uncertainties, and the future results and the creation of value for the stakeholders can differ in a significant way. The things that are expressed or suggested. Some of those factors will determine these results and values that go beyond our control and prediction. After the disclaimer, I will invite our CEO, Kleber Gomes, as well Marcelo Silva, the Chief Financial Officer and Relations with Investors . To start our round here, I will invite Kleber to give his remarks. Welcome.
Good morning. Can you hear me well? Because I'm not in the office. Good morning, everyone. As I've said, I'm out. I just hope that there is no technical issue. Marcelo will lead the Q&A session with the team, okay? With the people who are in the office. We have been explaining everything that has been happened. We know that last year wasn't a good year. We had several challenges. Basically, we had no vaccination for six months.
We had the suspension of exportation of some kinds of meat. We had some issues in the end of the year. The price of the meat was lower. Several states had the same issue because of foot-and-mouth disease. As well as the application of products and everything brought some impacts on reproduction. The prices lowered a lot. There was a postponement of the negotiations. We also had the drop of some pesticides. We also had other situations. We know that the market had a deceleration, it's not our goal here to explain every time the situation where we are in. We needed to explain how we needed to adjust. As we see the seriousness of it, we know that it would be a hard year, it was much harder than we thought. We've been taking collective actions.
We had an action of constraint of the expenses. It worked well. We had a positive impact on the cost reductions, not enough to compensate the fall of our performance, the reduction of it. We worked a lot in the second half of the year with our board. Looking ahead, we did everything we could to give the best results, that's not the result that we wanted. We really worked hard on 2024 to have a good year as we did in 2020, 2021, 2022. It's obvious that Ourof ino has had other important years, we have to remember that from 2022- 2023, we doubled the size of the company, so we gained market share. Now we have to look ahead and now we have some actions. I will mention some of them. A very important one was to segmentate our former BU.
Now we have two. We had the ruminants and the other one that is specific for swine. We had some movements in the board, now we have a Director that I will introduce to you. He's very skilled, that has come to lead this new BU. That's what we have. For the swine, as we have the need in this business to be more diversified and to have a better growth in this sector, we have brought Marcelo Faria, a very skilled person that has been in several important companies and will help us a lot. We guarantee the focus on what we need. One, we will strongly work on the cattle area, and Marcelo on the other one. In ruminants, for example, we had three executive managers, now we have different models.
Now there will be only one National and International Manager, one for marketing, that has come to reinforce this team. We also have changed the swine and bird segment. We have a large project to expand this line, all those changes have been made internally. We had a change in the board, now we're seeing this fourth quarter, the result of this change. We had a growth. Last week, we had a distributor convention with several processes, we are reinforcing some of our teams. We have worked a lot on the distributor's mindset to be more aggressive. In the company, we are looking at the results of the areas to be more agile, efficient, we were able to build a budget for this year that will bring the profitability that we expected for us, for the investors, and for the stakeholders.
We did what we thought was important. I'm very confident. We had two good months, like January and February, we also have a good view for the launch of products, a good perspective. I would like to highlight my commitment as a CEO to change this scenario, as well as the approach that we've had with the board. We are demanding this change. I'm very confident in the new board that we have, all the leadership that we have for Ourofi no, I'm totally sure that we will have a great year in 2024. I really thank you. Marcelo will lead at the end of it. I'll try to stay to the end, Marcelo will lead this Q&A session.
Thank you. Thank you, Kleber. To reinforce the invitation, I really would like you to participate in this Q&A session. Just write your question here in this part. Now I will invite our Director, Marcelo Silva. Please, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Mari. Good morning. I will continue here with the call of your results, bringing some more information related to it. Kleber has brought a very good view of the market and where we tried to come back again, to have this resumption and the result of better efficiency, and also the capital was better for the cash. We doubled the generation of the cash in the company.
This combination of the reduction of costs and the increase of the generation of the cash enabled the company to close the year with very good levels for the leverage, as well as the financial cost, which enables us to have this strong agenda for the launch of new products and to have this recovery of growth for 2024. As Kleber said, the fourth quarter of 2023 was in a very complex scenario, especially for some kind of animals. We had the reduction of the volume of sales for the animal reproduction, which is for the insemination protocol. Because of the price, which was lowered from BRL 3,000- BRL 1,000 last year. There was a fall in this protocol. Besides the volume, we had the impact of price, which was very strong.
Basically, all the companies that work in this segment Not to have the significant losses in their inventory, they changed their prices, and with that, we had the impact on it. We had the frustration because of the vaccines and because of the foot-and-mouth disease, and there were some spare vaccines in this campaign, which also changed the price of it. We are actually seven states that didn't vaccinate their animals. As now it's not mandatory to have the vaccination of foot-and-mouth disease brings an impact on us, especially on the center north of our country. The campaigns of it were followed by the application of other medicines, of other drugs, which brings the change of this new dynamic. Looking at the segment for those animals, the wholesale is still different, but the retail is still good.
Now the launch of new products in the company was also something good and gave us a growth of 10%. Comparing to this year, we had also a reduction. In the fourth quarter of 2023, we had spot sales to Indonesia with higher prices, which give us this comparison base related to the third quarter of 2022. This 13% of reduction that we show here in the fourth quarter compared to 2022, reflects this combination of factors as well as the drop of the growth margin is the result of the lower volume, which brings lower fixed costs. We had to have a forecast for the inventory for the foot-and-mouth disease and for the reproduction line, because what we predicted, we couldn't carry out because of the demand that was lower. For the accumulation of the year, the gross margin is 49%.
The result of the year reflects on the conditions. We had the biggest impact in the last quarter, especially for the inventory, for the foot-and-mouth disease and the repositioning of some products. In the previous slide, I gave an overview of the market about our product lines. The one that had the largest impact was for the foot-and-mouth disease. We had this impact on the gross margin because of the lower volume of sales as well as the reproduction line. Because of everything that I have already mentioned. The company animals, we grew 10.7% in this fourth quarter. This growth is because of the launch of new products and the other parts is because of the sell-out of the distributors. We close the year with a good balance between sell-in and sell-out.
As Kleber said, we had the convention. We start this year with a good volume in the inventory. It gives us the idea that we will continue growing well. The gross margin, it doesn't close well. Actually, it didn't close well last year because of some products. International operations, the drop of 10.9% in the fourth quarter, it's the comparison that we had, where we had a strong sale of more than BRL 90 million of revenue to Indonesia, and it's 13.6%. We finished the year with a growth in international operations. When we compare the gross margin in this area, it goes to 52%. There isn't any inversion or any change in the price. We still have the effect of the prediction of the loss of the investments that we had in the company because of the foot-and-mouth disease.
As some companies don't do it, some countries we have this issue and other countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, have the same issue and that's why we had to stop the operation to other countries. That's what affects the gross margin. We had this reflex here, as Kleber said, the shares They were not focusing on the core of the company. There was no restriction for investment, but we didn't have anything for the Research and Development. The investment was focused only internally on the departments, and we had a reduction of 13%. This reduction of 13% doesn't capture the total of the adjustments that we made. It brings other costs, such as the terminations, among others. In 2024, now has a lighter structure due to the reduction costs that we had last year, more strongly in the fourth quarter.
We kept the same level in R&D. We didn't have a reduction for the investments. The projects were kept within the deadline that we had. The reduction of EBITDA, which is a combination of because of the sales that were lower and also the reduction of G&A, this is not enough to compensate this gross margin. I think it's important to highlight that the cash generation is a reflex of the reduction of the financial cycle because of the reduction of the inventory. We shortened the deadlines that we had with some distributors. We also reduced the credits of some taxes. There it was BRL 190 million only for cash. We closed the year with BRL 304 million in cash. The robust cash generation, which leverage the capital structure. We have always worked with a proper capital structure because we invest in research, development.
We always have a good technology. Our capital is suitable to the investment that we have in the areas as a pharmaceutical segment. We had a project of BRL 225 million, and we had a very good condition in this process with the cost of TR plus 2.8%. The funding that we had lowered our cost, which was a very positive cost, and we closed December with this number of BRL 80.3. We started the year with this number of BRL 80.3, lower than 2023. We have the profile of debt, 77% for long-term. We are more than 41% above this number. We can take a breath here, and we will be able to generate our cash in this year. I wrap up here, actually agreeing on what Kleber said. Last year wasn't so positive. We had to take several actions to recover.
For the production line, we weren't able to recover as much as we wished, but we tried to keep the health of the company with the capital costs lower, and the leverage was very healthy, and the commitment to continue 2024 with a better agenda with our growth. I thank you, and I give the word back to Mariana.
Thank you, Marcelo. I invite everyone to participate in this Q&A session, feel free to write whatever you wish. I thank you again for your attendance. I have already a question here. Marcelo, let's go back with you. Just to participate, ask your question here, put your name and the institution that you represent.
The first question is from Caio Barros, he says, What is the impact of the change according to the vaccination obligation for the foot-and-mouth disease, how does it impact the company? Yes, it brought a relevant impact, especially in the last quarter, we can have this variation if you compare the gross margin of 2022- 2023. The difference is significant because of this foot-and-mouth disease. There is something else, which is the change of the dynamic of the market, especially in the center north of the country. Because in the past, it was mandatory as other vaccines, now it's not mandatory anymore. It can change all the handling that we have, because the campaigns were held in some months, now maybe because as there are no campaigns, the sales will be lower. I believe that the market will still grow because the animals need the vaccines regardless this issue.
As we have no more questions, our Q&A session will finish, I will call Kleber Gomes again to carry out the final remarks of this transmission. Kleber, can you hear me well?
As we said, I think the main message here is that we will recover what we had with strategic actions, we are very confident that this year will be better, especially with the results that we had for these two last months. It was a very, very hard year. I think it was the hardest one in my whole history, my whole journey. I'm sure that we will be stronger and we will be much more efficient because we learn.
We will work hard to bring better great results regardless this scenario that we had. I'm sure that [inaudible] will give the answers that we need. Thank you and we are always available here through our IR area in case you have questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mari. Thank you, Kleber.
I thank you, Marcelo, and I thank you all of you for being here with us. As Kleber said, I will remind you that this will be available on our website and on our YouTube channel.