Good morning, everyone, welcome to the results presentation for Ourof ino. I am Mariana Anselmo. It's a pleasure to be with you today. This broadcast is being recorded, and it will be available on our website at ri.ourofino.com and on our YouTube channel. At the end of the presentations, we are going to have our Q&A session. If you want to be part of this session, just use the Q&A box. To start, we have a disclaimer that I'm going to read for you. This presentation brings declarations about future events subject to risks and uncertainty. These declarations are based on beliefs and suggestions of our administration and pieces information that the company has access today. Declarations about future events include information about our intentions, our beliefs, our current expectations, and also the ones that belong to the members of the board.
About relationships and declarations about the future also include information about operational results and declarations that are preceded, followed, or that include the words believe, shall, will, continues, hopes, foresees, intends, plans, estimates, or similar expressions. Declarations for the future are not a guarantee of performance. They involve risks because they are related to future events that depend on circumstances that might or might not happen. The future results and the creation of value for the shareholders may differ from the ones that are expressed by these declarations. Many of the factors that will determine the results are beyond our capacity of control or forecast. For the presentations, we have our CEO, Kleber Gomes, and our Financial Director, Marcelo Silva. We're going to start our presentation, then I'll give the floor to Kleber Gomes. Good morning.
Good morning, Mari. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you again to talk about the results of our third quarter. Well, just like you know, I always like to highlight, we participate in markets that are strong drivers of growth. All of you are aware that when we talk about humanization, when we talk about animals for production, we're talking about the food of the world through protein that comes from animal origin. We have no doubt about that. We are in this market, and the management of the company always has a really interesting highlight with regards to growth, stability, and the previous years were excellent.
We had third place in the top. We know that 2023 is not a typical year. We have been mentioning that with you. We had many things that impacted the demand of our products, also the products of the whole market right. I'm not going to mention all of them again, but we know we had more exportation, we had the suspension of exportation, we had vaccines that were stopped, we had a high cost of capital. Many factors that we have mentioned before.
In the third quarter, besides, we've been seeing some progress. It's similar to the rest of the year. We're working. We had many actions to mitigate the impact of this year that is more heated. We had a very well-succeeded program. We are going to see when Marcelo talks that our income is in a very controlled stage. At the same time, we invest in everything that we have in the future. We have strategic planning for our company. We were supposed to be more aggressive in our market share. All the players are looking for the resuming of their sales, right?
We need to defend our market share. This is very important, our leadership position. Right now, this has impacted our income and our profit. Taking a look a little ahead, we understand that 2024 is going to be a better year when things are going to be normal. We also have many actions that are being conducted to make it the best way possible. We have been using this moment. We always do that, but it's always a moment to look inwards once the market is not a market that we can control, right? We have many actions that are directed to the next year, 2024, so that we can have an aligned year. I can highlight some of these actions. Some of them you already know we've been mentioning. We've been talking about the internationalization plan. It's really strong.
After our new shareholder, we're studying Asia as a new market. Maybe in the future, we are going to direct More this internationalization. We also have in our pipeline of products, important products for poultry and pork, especially in terms of vaccination. Some have been released, but some we have the expectation to be launched in 2024, of course, depending on regulatory issues. We're going to bring important products for the market, and that's going to make us able to deepen more and more in this sector. We have a very strong relationship for cow meat, and we're going to also do that for poultry and pork. In 2024, we expect to see all those results. I'd like to highlight that in spite of this typical moment, the company is very healthy in a financial point of view. The generation of cash is very excellent.
We have low leverage reduction. Marcelo is also going to detail that, but today is 0.5x EBITDA. We were 0.2x. Our average cost is below the market. Marcelo is also going to detail more about that in a minute. We have a new composition and structure. That composition and structure is going to be really interesting for the company, reinforcing our credibility related to innovation projects. I understand that we are right now seeing that the company has proven to be resilient and totally able to generate superior results. The company is super healthy, the moment is to work more, to look more for 2024 projects, then we'll go ahead. Thank you for being here. Marcelo is going to explain the numbers in details, then I will resume in the, I'll come back in the Q&A session.
Thank you, Kleber. So j ust like Kleber mentioned, we're going to have our Q&A sessions, okay? Just use the Q&A box. Now, for the next presentation, we're going to have Marcelo Silva. The floor is yours. Good morning, Marcelo.
Good morning, Mariana. Good morning, Kleber. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our result presentation. Just like Kleber mentioned, we started this year with several hard challenges in the production and international operations, we had more difficulties on this third quarter. It's important to highlight the important growth that we have. We have a cumulative of 30%, this is relevant when you take a look at the average growth. In 2023, in the nine months, we are decreasing 7.7% in the net revenue. Pretty much we have an impact in the sales of aftosa vaccine. We're no longer going to have that. There is no obligation.
Several states are still on that. It has been communicated. We have been seeing the retraction of segments when we have relevant participation, the biggest segments of the market, just like reproduction. They are not incentivized to invest in reproduction considering the scenario of prices of meat and the prices. It has a retraction in the reproduction market. It affects us because we're relevant in that segment. Also talking about that, the reduction of the importance of the aftosa campaign brought a change of important lines. It's one of the main things of the company, we have been receiving pressure in our sale. On the other hand, the company is intent and very busy to have campaigns and actions to defend our market share.
We believe that this moment, it's our defense, our base of customers, because just like Kleber mentioned, the market has solid drivers and good growing drivers. This resuming, we have been seeing an improving of the marketing, it's important for the company to preserve, to have more value in the market participation. For animals of company, it's a market that is growing in inferior levels. We have been working strongly to have more presence in this sector of production animals. We have a very relevant program of visiting our doctors, our vets. It's important for the decision of purchase. It's a market with more relevant margins. It's above 67%, 68%. We foresee that we can have more participation and greater growth when we launch new products. We're doing that. We've launched new products of supplementation at the beginning of the year.
We've been working to launch other products related to dermatological problems, we have been successful in the launch of these products, we want to gain the market and grow, even in this diverse scenario we see. We might close the results behind the expectations of the company. We have an evolution of 8%. We're trying to have our distribution and keeping a health stock in our chain. We're resuming the base to grow more in 2024. About international operations. It's the segment that the company grew the most in the last years. It's a great route of growth. We have a strong agenda of investments. We have been having investments in Mexico, in Colombia. We are taking the work that is done in Brazil.
In 2023, we had some products that were impacted of the non-sale of vaccine in some countries, because we sold last year, probably we're not going to have the vaccines on the next year. We're working to have more products registered in several countries so that we can increase our market share this semester. We opened new markets in Latin America, this is going to bring more revenue, we're going to see the results of that throughout 2024. This is a good market. It's above 54%. When we have more international operations, we have more profit for the future. About SG&A of the company. We're looking for the highest efficiency in all areas of the company. We're taking a look at our value very carefully and preserving our future that are the investment in research, new products.
We had a reduction of SG&A compared to last year, and it's reflected partially the administration actions to look for this level of efficiency. We are still behind our forecast because of the reduction of sales, but we present an SG&A reduction compared to last year. Well, if you take a look at other net expenses, we have a more relevant, that is the biotechnology platform that we had. We reviewed our expectations for sales of this platform. Even though they had a relevant growth in the last two years, they are behind the expectations of the company. We had to adjust some prices. This technology, that is Regenera, is still in our portfolio, but due to the revision of our expectations, we had to adjust the value of the acquisition on this quarter. We kept our investment in research and innovation, 7.5% of the net revenue.
We had from BRL 57 million- BRL 49.7 million. We are still having investments. It's just a temporary allocation of the projects. We sometimes are in a phase where the projects are in a pilot phase. Sometimes we have temporal allocations, but it's no contingency for the projects. Just like Kleber said, we're making progress in our line of R&D with people, with processes to bring good news in 2024 about the launching of new products. The EBITDA is 20% below last year. It reflects off the margins and the sales that were not compensated because of the reduction of expenses. Our cash flow is really robust. This year, we generated BRL 202 million net. This result is the combination of some things.
Our dedication, the efficient management of the cash flow of the company, especially in the process of mitigating or reducing the investment in extra stocks that we had during the pandemics. We're working to go back to the normal levels of coverage. Of course, being careful to have a rupture in our supply chain. We had no problem related to that. We were successful. We've been working to be more aggressive and defend our position in the market with a lot of responsibility. The financials of the company is health, and we've been controlling expenses. We have this reflection of BRL 22 million, almost four times more than we had last year. This is the biggest generation, operation cash flow, cash generation. Even with the lower number, it shows that we had a reduction of the net debt, is BRL 86 million.
Yesterday we had over BRL 200 million, we had an expressive reduction of the debt of the company, and we are in a more adverse scenario for revenue. We're trying to reduce the cost of the company, and we've been increasing the participation of some lines of credits that is very suitable for our profile of investments. We are investing in research and development. That's why we have this line of credits to keep this agenda intense and relevant. The quality of our debt, it's not because of the costs. It has over 70% of the debt is on the long term, and that's going to be even longer in the end of the fourth quarter, once we're working to hire a new financial program for the next two years that will guarantee in a strategic cash flow for research of the company during this period.
Thank you very much for your attention. I am finished reinforcing about our financial capacity to grow in a healthy way once the market is coming back to the levels of growth that are more normal. We see that 2023 is a year of adjustment, right, because of many factors, just like Kleber mentioned, but we're working to grow in a strong way. We are financially structured and prepared for that. Mariana. I'm also available for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Marcelo, for your information. Now I'm going to invite you, if you want to be part of our Q&A session, just use the box. Write the name of your institution and your name, and you may ask your question. Okay?
I also would like to reinforce that this broadcast is being recorded, and it will be available in our website, ri.ourofino.com, and it will also be available in our YouTube channel. Right now we have no questions. I would like to finalize this transmission reminding all of you that our team of relationship with investors is always available to talk to you. Should you need more information, please contact us through the website, ri.ourofino.com or our channels. Have an excellent day. See you next time.