Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Portobello Group's conference call to announce the results of quarter four, 2022. This conference call is being recorded and the replay will be available on the company's website. The slide presentation will also be available for download. To hear the audio in English, please click on Interpretation and select English. You can also mute the original audio for a better experience. We would like to inform that all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company's remarks, after which we will open the floor for questions. Further instructions will be given. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements made during this conference call are based on the company's beliefs and assumptions, also information currently available to the company.
These forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties since they refer to future events that may or may not occur. Investors, analysts, and journalists should understand that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the industry, and other factors may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Before starting the company's remarks, we will present a video about the quarter's results. Today we have here with us Mr. Mauro do Valle, CEO, Mr. John Suzuki, VP for Finance and Investor Relations, and Mr.André Lopes, Senior IR Manager. I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mauro do Valle to start his presentation. Mr. Duvale, you may proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here. I speak on behalf of my colleagues, John, Andrés, and the entire Portobello team. We're very happy to have you here to talk about the company's results for last year and our prospects for 2023. Our strategic planning. Today, unfortunately, I am not present physically with my colleagues in Santa Catarina in our headquarters in Florianópolis.I am in our U.S. Unit in the United States.I have been monitoring the last few weeks before we start production here in the U.S.I insisted on being here today to talk to you about the company's perfomance.So we will basically go over the whole year 2022.We will show data about our operational perfomance.We'll also give you an update about the company's strategic view,strategic projects.We will talk about the prospects for 2023.
It's important to start by saying a few words about the market. During 2022, we had some important variations in our market. This is not news to any of us. The Brazilian economy and how it affected the construction materials industry, mid to long-term investment... it's very much linked with the changes were more expressive in quarter four. The accumulated drop was nearly 18%. It had been an excellent year compared with the previous year, with a lot of growth. The same thing happened with other companies, other competitors that sell construction materials in Brazil. Some of the largest companies in Brazil also had a decrease in their performance, not as marked, but also significant drop. They also saw a drop in their performance in 2022.
This had also been happening before that for ceramic tiles, but we saw the stabilization of the numbers in quarter three and quarter four in 2022. Now looking at Brazilian retail, we see a very similar behavior. There was also a drop. It was not as significant of a drop. Here we are speaking in nominal terms, so we had a price correction that ended up minimizing the nominal decrease here. It was also a year with a stricter scenario, particularly in quarter three and quarter four . We also have here some information about the U.S. market, a market where we are now also operating. Similarly to what happened in Brazil and in most of the countries, in the U.S. market, there was also an expressive drop that occurred particularly in quarter four. It lasted until January, February this year.
We will talk about the prospects for 2023 later. You can see the orange line here showing domestic production in the U.S., and this also shows the sensitivity and how this difficulty in the U.S. market can be overcome and seen as an opportunity by local manufacturers, among which Portobello is now and will start operating in the coming weeks. You see that the domestic, the share of domestic consumption gained relevance during last quarter last year, and this was due to the local industry, either due to its competitiveness, the level of service, and adaptability to local consumption requirements. This is one of the cards that Portobello has for this year, which is starting now and also for the next few years.
We will talk more about this expectation for 2023, and how we had this slowdown of the Brazilian economy and international economy during 2022. Still, Portobello was able to show significant growth rates, but it also suffered for the first time after 11 consecutive years of growth. The last quarter last year was the first in a very long time where there was a slowdown in the company's growth. In addition to macroeconomic factors, we also had other factors that have a seasonal effect. In quarter four, for example, if quarter four is always a more restrictive quarter for the sales of construction materials and the types of materials that we produce, compared, for example, with quarter four, 2021, which was a very strong quarter, it was a peak in the sales of ceramic tile in the Brazilian market.
The comparison basis here is really hard. It was a year, and I'm going to talk more about this later, a year that we closed with difficulties, and we also started 2023 with a few difficulties. We also saw a can see a clear expectation in terms of resumption, in terms of recovery of the Brazilian market. We are also going to talk about the Brazilian and the international market during the presentation. Now I turn the conference over to my colleague John, who is in Florianópolis, and he will give you more details about our operational performance, and I will be back in the end of our call to answer your questions. John?
Thank you, Mauro. The fact that we are together today shows that how we have been growing.
Mauro is in our office in the U.S., we are here in our headquarters in Florianópolis, Brazil. I think it's worth noting that we will also share with you the indicators of the U.S. market today so that we can provide you with more information about a new market where we already have a presence and where we plan to grow our presence in the future. Now let's go over our figures. These numbers are a reflection of what Mauro said, both from the standpoint of our strategy and also from the market.
We are advancing in our strategy, and both in terms of the strategy that we had already been using structurally to increase our competitiveness in the market, and also those that we are still maturing, which are strategies that allowed us to maintain our growth rates, as you heard from Mauro, even during 2022, which was a year that we knew that there was a slowdown in the market since the beginning of the year. Until quarter three, we were showing a lot of resilience and resisting these effects from the market. Quarter four, there was a stronger decrease in the market, a stronger slowdown in the market, and although we had a very good strategy for the first three quarters, that's when we suffered our first setback in the period.
Nevertheless, we were able to close the year with a 15% growth rate, which is very expressive. When we look at the numbers specifically for quarter four, we had a drop of 5% in our sales. I'm going to show you more about this dynamics in each of our business units. In terms of our gross profit, the market has been showing some effects on our margin. Of course, this impacts our pricing, our mix, not just our product mix, but also our business mix and our channel mix. We were still able to maintain a good level of gross profit that we had been achieving the past few years. A gross margin of 43% for the year, but we already see that decrease of 45%-40%.
In quarter four, I think it's worth mentioning that we already started to feel the effects on our results of some one-off shutdowns that we did in our plants in Marechal Deodoro, in Alagoas. This was an adjustment that we had been doing to balance demand and supply, and we are going to hear more about this, that our stocks are growing nevertheless. If we exclude this effect, our margins would have been higher in quarter four. These shutdowns are one-off, and what we have been seeing in the market, we have been seeing that the rest of the market, they are performing much longer shutdowns. Based on the information that we have from the market in the months of December and January, these stops are much longer.
They account for about 50% of the capacity of the ceramic tile industry in Brazil. Our shutdowns were significantly shorter than those 50%. Next slide. Now let's look at our numbers by unit. We have been talking frequently about our strategy for internationalization led by the Portobello America business. In these two businesses, we closed the year with significant growth. In Portobello Shop, which is more consolidated, we had an increase of 32.8%, reaching a net revenue of BRL 814. In Portobello America, this part of the business is still gaining maturity now with the entry of our U.S. plant, which will go into operation in the next few weeks. We grew nearly 33% in Portobello America year-over-year.
In Portobello is our unit that suffers more directly the impact of Portobello Shop due to its more premium positioning and because it is targeted at classes A and B, which is a more resilient segment of the market with fewer oscillations, also less sensitive to the interest rate. It is a segment that is not suffering so much. Portobello, with its multi-channel strategy, both for exports and also reselling, it is managing its strategy, the multi-channel strategy, and it's suffering a little more in resale, but with important growth in engineering and exports. That's why we closed the year 2022 with a 13% increase. Pointer, differently from Portobello, Pointer is not so strong in its multi-channel strategy.
This is one of the purposes that we have for 2023, to advance the engineering and the multi-channel strategy in Pointer. It is a business that is more focused on multi-brand resale. It is very much based on the northeast region more than other regions in the country, it had a drop of 16% in 2022. On the right, we show the evolution and the breakdown of our sales between the internal and external market. In the internal market, we had an 11% increase, accounting for 77% of our revenue. The external market, with our internationalization strategy, it grew 28% in 2023 and already accounts for 23% of our sales. As for our gross margin, here we have the numbers for quarter four.
In 2022, we were able to maintain the level of 43% for our gross margin in our consolidated results. Portobello has a gross margin that is close to these 43% with a small drop that was concentrated on quarter four, the second half of the year, quarter four. As we can see, with the decrease in margins of the Portobello business. Pointer also suffered some effects due to its concentration on the Northeast. It closed quarter four at 27%, so it was a business that suffered the effects for its revenues and also margins. In Portobello America, I think there's an important comment to be made here, particularly about 2023. Portobello America still has the characteristics of a distribution business, so it's mostly distribution in the United States.
Now with the opening of our plant, there will be a change, a drastic change in Portobello America, because we will have a much more competitive cost of production with our local plant in the U.S., which will allow these levels of gross margin of 23% already considering the comparison with 2022, the comparison with 2021 and also quarter four 2022. Portobello Shop.
John, let me just add to what you're saying. This is just an informal comment, but the point that you raised about our operational margin for Portobello America, this is very expressive. It's not just the revenue growth, but also we are expecting to double the gross profitability of Portobello America. The contribution of Portobello America will be very significant in the next months when we start local production.
We will continue to work with the imports, the imported products, but we will grow significantly our margin, not just the volume, but also revenue. Well said, John. Yes, just to stress once again, it's been one week. We are about to start production, and there's this initial period of stock formation. In the first few months after we start production, we will start to see a significant increase in sales in the United States of our local production. About Portobello Shop, Portobello Shop is one of the leading business units for the brand within the group.
It closed the year with a margin of 46.3%, a margin that showed good evolution year-over-year, but it also suffered the effects of the market on quarter four, with a margin that is slightly lower year-over-year or compared with the rest of the year 2022, or compared with quarter four 2021. It's also important to talk about our expenses, because with this advancement that we're seeing in the company's strategy, a significant portion of our expenses still have the characteristics of investments. A significant part of what we are investing on the company's structure or on the structure of our business units, this is part of the strategies that we highlighted to you today. Our focus is not so much the left part of this chart, but the right part of the chart.
Here we show an evolution of BRL 117 million in our expenses going from BRL 534 million- BRL 651 million. However, 92% of this increment was targeted at business units with the strategic prioritization within our business, both in Portobello America, and there the strategy is very structural to implement the systems, to structure processes, and to the startup of the plant. There are different aspects here that ended up increasing expenses, and we will start to see the returns after we inaugurate and launch the new plant and as we carry out the projects planned for this new plant. Also Portobello Shop, both due to the expenses that resulted from the acquisition of our own stores, we made some important acquisitions in 2022, and also due to the evolution of the digital strategy.
The digital transformation and the digitization of the retail culture, which is something we have been promoting in Portobello Shop. This also brings expenses, additional expenses. That's why we had this addition to our expenses in 2022. This consistency in the evolution of our expenses, I thought it was important to show to you, Mauro.
Yes, I have a comment here, John, because we talked a lot about this, but I think this is one of the most important slides so that we can understand the current performance of the company and the projection for Portobello. This may seem like a problem, the growth of our expenses, a higher growth than the growth of our revenues, nearly two points as we can see in the left side chart, but this also brings good news.
Today, we are controlling very well our operational expenses, our sales expenses of our core business, of our current core business. The cash cow of the company, all the main activities that are at cruise speed currently in Portobello. This increment, which is basically composed of new businesses, it will be compensated by the revenues that will start to come in 2023. Portobello Shop will have the maturation of our investments in store, then in Portobello America due to the industrial operation itself. This is really like a pre-operational expenses, it's not. From the managerial standpoint, this shows the potential that we have to inverse this curve over time, of the curve that shows the participation of our expenses in the company's revenue. This is a very important slide, in my opinion.
Thank you, Mauro.
I think that still talking about our expenses, we can also say that we are enforcing a lot of discipline with our expenses, working capital, and investments. Of course, the current market is really challenging with these reversions that we saw during 2022. We have been able to maintain our discipline. The leadership of the company is working with a lot of discipline. We are not negotiating our strategy. Our strategic pillars continue to stand, but we have to maintain our level of expenses when we look at our core business. Finally, as for our EBITDA, our EBITDA during 2022 still shows a good performance.
We went from 19% in 2021. We closed 2022 at 17% due to the factors that we already mentioned today, either related to our margin or our expense level. We go from an EBITDA of BRL 366 million. It increased 6% to BRL 386 million. As we said, the quarter four was challenging. We went from quarter four in 2021 with BRL 96 million, with a 37% decrease, reaching BRL 60 million in quarter four 2022. However, we must remember that we have this special characteristic to our expenses. We also had our stops during quarter four. If we were to normalize this margin, the EBITDA wouldn't be 12%, but it would be higher. Finally, our net income.
We also had effects on our net income, and we suffered just like the rest of our competition. We suffered with the higher basic interest rates. Our expenses grow with increase in interest rates, so this ends up harming our profitability. In quarter four, we reached BRL 4.9 million recurring net income. It's important to stress that this is for recurring net income, but including non-recurring effects. Here we closed the year at a level of BRL 137 million and a net margin of 6.6%. As I already mentioned, this change in the market expectations brings a certain onus, particularly to our working capital. We are reducing our customer payment terms and prolonging our supplier payment terms with incentives, trying to compensate for our the evolution in our stock levels.
Stocks went from a level of 88 days to 129 days, so an extra 41 days. Despite all the compensations, we closed the year 2022 with 25 days more compared with 2021. Like we said, for the other effects, this is not just due to excess stocks. We do have higher stocks in Portobello America, but this is due to the nature of our business in the U.S. The U.S. business demands higher levels of stock. In all our business units, we are increasing our stock levels to be able to appropriately meet the demands of our customers, so we are improving our service level. A significant part of these 25 extra days is due to the structural evolution of our stock.
When we look at our cash conversion cycle, we go from BRL 270 million- BRL 318 million in 2022. Investments. Our investments truly reflect what we talked about, our strategy. It is in our strategic plan to invest. We closed the year 2022 with BRL 401 million in investments. Here we give highlight to our U.S. project, and particularly our new plant. Here we have a picture of the new plant on the right. It is one of the most modern plants in the world and in the U.S. with state-of-the-art technology, and it is about to be inaugurated. We also had relevant investments in our retail strategy, our integrated strategy, particularly through the acquisition of own stores in 2022.
We bought the store in Gabriel Monteiro da Silva in São Paulo, the Pacaembu Avenue in São Paulo, and here in Santa Catarina, we bought a store in Balneário Camboriú, Tijucas, and São José. These were very important acquisitions so that we can advance in our strategy to expand in integrated retail. Even after these investments and after everything we invested in 2022, we were able to maintain our debt, net debt level. Also our net debt over EBITDA ratio. We closed at 1.6x , and our net debt reached BRL 630 million with a very good profile, with long maturation times.
In our total debt, when we look at our cash, we also close the year with a cash level that makes us comfortable to maintain our strategy, BRL 256 million. On the right, we see that the long-term portion is more than 80% as of the end of last year. We are now starting to open for more raisings in dollars as we advance with our project in the U.S., which allows us to create the cash flow that we need in foreign currency. Here, just to recap some of our deliveries for 2022, considering the expectations that we had shared with you in beginning of last year. We had already anticipated that this growth rate would be a little smaller in quarter four.
We had a small drop in quarter four, but we were still able to close the year at a good level of 15% compared with 2021. We also expected to maintain our gross margin, which indeed occurred. We had a gross margin of 43% with a slight drop in our EBITDA margin from 19%- 17%. The CapEx was very much in line with what we had planned, both in terms of CapEx levels and also the focus of our investments, the strategic projects that I just mentioned. Also in terms of our cash flow, I think the main highlight here is our leverage.
We are maintaining our leverage under 2.5x, and we were able to close the year at 1.6x , despite our higher investments and despite all the pressure that we suffered from our stock level. This is just to illustrate, we didn't really have any major changes here, but our shareholder structure, we have 60% of our controllers, and 39% is our free float. Most of our share base at 51% is formed of individual investors, 27% by corporate investors, and 22% from foreign investors. On the right, we have the performance of our shares. We closed the year at BRL 8.23 share price, with a market cap of BRL 1.1 million.
We have approved in our management board, and we are now submitting to approval by our assembly, the maintenance of our dividend. We would have a complemental dividend of BRL 29 million in the form of interest on net equity. Now we would like to give you some updates about our strategic projects. I'd like to hand the conference back to Mauro to talk about this part.
Very briefly, we always report on our projects every quarter. The first one is our U.S. operation. These are internal sources showing that our plant is ready, so now we're making the final adjustments before we start producing in the next few weeks. As an additional fact about this ramp-up, here we mentioned phase II.
Starting in the middle of the year, we will have some special products, some special parts, and the core and smaller parts, which will also be important to consolidate the product mix that Portobello America will offer in the U.S. market. We are maintaining all the alignment and the expectations and the schedules that we had planned for the U.S. project. Another important point is in retail. The growth in retail. We already saw our numbers in the previous slides. We showed clearly that Portobello in integrated retail and in store operations, either franchise or own stores, is growing at a higher rate than the average of the company and gaining market share in the Brazilian market.
This is due to the product profile and the type of services that we offer, and also the value added to our operations and the natural expansion or the natural growth of our stores, both franchise stores and own stores. This next chart shows the performance of our own stores, where we already talked about our new acquisitions, but it's important to show we had 32% increase in our same-store sales. This is very significant, and it shows the gain in market share and also the larger internal share. Today, our own stores already account for 41% of our total sales at retail. This means that there's no way back. Does this mean that there's no way back? No. Does this mean that we are gaining muscle in two different market segments?
We continue to invest and believe in the franchise model because it is the model that has brought us so far, and it will certainly continue to be our partners. Our franchises will continue to be our partners in the coming years. With a few operations, larger cities, and with the need for turnaround in some cities, this requires Portobello to have a second strategy. This second strategy is strategic and profitable, the participation of our own stores. Our vision is to maintain this hybrid model. We will have part of our operations or our major operations in our own stores and also the Brazilian distribution and even some franchisees that we have in larger cities, if they have good performance, our commitment is with the profitability and providing good services to our customer.
We're very happy with our retail operations, and this will continue to gain market share in 2023. Next. Sustainability, ESG, more than just talk, it is our internal purpose. We had some important changes. We had an evolution of our energy matrix, as you can see here, with a greater participation of Portobello in this segment of renewable energies. With a self-production, which is very relevant also in terms of investment. What's worth noting here is the expansion of this internal culture, the corporate culture, at all functional levels to raise awareness about governance, people and environment.
This has been a very relevant point, and it is part of our strategic planning and the KPIs for each of our business units, as we have been promising since item number one or the leader, the top leadership, and also lower levels of employees. This is something that has been consolidating over time in Portobello. Another important advancement is something that we already communicated to the market, but this evolution, this maturity that Portobello has been reaching in its organizational structure, I've been CEO for three and a half years now, and I've been in this industry for many years, but this maturity and the strategic vision of our management board, led by Cesar Gomes Junior, the group's Chairman, allowed us to design and build over the years this update in the profile of the executives that lead the company's operations.
We have John, who's our partner, our friend, and with whom we have been sharing responsibilities, concerns, and projects in the past few years. He will take over the presidency of the company in May, and I will continue in the management board, and I will continue to work in some strategic projects such as this one in the U.S., and we will keep working to maintain the company's DNA in design and product quality. The most importantly about my role and John's role is to show to the market the soundness and solidity of the company's structural organizational structure, the company's maturity, and the natural evolution of its executives, the profile of its executives with good adaptability to the new times to come in the future.
Now I'd like to ask John to talk about our new colleagues who will take on their roles in the company's management.
Yes, we are seeing this evolution in our profile of executives, and here we have two important profiles being incorporated in our structure. We're changing the statutory management of the company. For my position as CFO, we will have Rosângela Sutil. Rosângela Sutil has vast experience as CFO in different companies, either national and international companies in different industries. She's worked in the energy sector, technology, consumption, consumer products. She also worked for FDT in the telecom industry, and she's had great results in all her missions, in all her roles. Either in missions relative to M&A, also the capital market, preparation of companies for IPOs, and also missions related with ESG, diversity and inclusion.
Also in a fundraising, operations structuration. She is certainly a great addition to our team, to our leadership team of the company. Another strategic change that we're making, a very clear change with strategic purposes, we will continue to have as our CLO Dr. Edson Svigari. He's been with us for a long time. He was focused on institutional, legal, governance, compliance. These topics continue to be important, but we are now raising them to the C-level with a CTO. We will have a CTO, someone more focused on the digital transformation of the group. This is something that we have been advancing greatly, particularly in Portobello Shop, but we want to see this evolution in all our business fronts.
We're bringing Luciano Abranches, a career technology executive with a lot of experience in digital transformation, with highlight to his work in Natura, in the Natura business here in Brazil. Actually, he was a leader for Latin America in technology for Natura. John, I think we can continue with our prospects for the year, and then we can open for questions. Great, Mauro. Some prospects for 2023. During our presentation, we shared our vision for 2023, reinforcing our strategy, our strategic pillars, which will be maintained particularly in the U.S. to continue with our developments in the United States with the entry into operation of our plant and also phase II , which will start more strongly in 2024.
In terms of the market, we are going through harsher times in the market, particularly in our industry, but our expectations are positive, especially when we consider the level where we're at today, we have higher and greater expectations. As for our expectations in terms of the base interest rates in Brazil, which is a relevant factor for our industry. A very small part of the consumption in our specific segment is dependent on the interest rates. This is something that we feel in the market and we are expecting to see a lot of recovery during the year, particularly in some segments where we have already seen better resiliency and a faster recovery, which is the premium segment where Portobello Shop is positioned. The engineering market with the developers and construction companies.
Although launches are slowed down, we still see a good pipeline of deliveries in 2022 and 2023, which benefits us and also the international market. We talked about the U.S. market, we also see the same prospects of recovery in the U.S. market, we must give even greater highlight. You heard from Mauro. Mauro shared with you the data from the U.S. market, the most important part is the competitiveness that we gain now with local production. We will be much less susceptible to these oscillations in the real estate market in the U.S. As for our sales, when we look at our consolidated results, our expectation is to grow above the growth rate presented in 2022. We believe in a growth rate over 15% in 2023.
In quarter one, we were still going through this de-oscillations of the market. Differently from last year when we saw the market slow down after quarter, I think during 2023, we will see the market improving or speeding up quarter after quarter. Particularly in our case, it's worth noting that we have the U.S. unit now inaugurating a new plant. In the case of Portobello Shop, we will also see the maturation of our new acquisitions that we made last year. As for our gross margin, our expectation is to maintain this level of 43%, even in this more adverse scenario, we continue to work with a lot of discipline in managing our costs and expenses. We are expecting an EBITDA margin in the same levels of 2022 for 2023.
For our CapEx, we are estimating about BRL 380 million in investments with the same characteristics that we saw in 2022, very much focused on strategic projects, particularly Portobello America, but also with some important investments in Portobello Shop. To complement these investments that we will make in Portobello and Pointer, we will maintain our policy of maintaining our net debt over EBITDA ratio under 2.5x , and to continue to preserve liquidity. We will work in 2023 with higher cash levels than those we had in the past few years. We were running close to our minimum cash levels. Our minimum cash was about BRL 100 million. Today, we have a minimum cash level of BRL 125 million, but we should operate in 2023 with a higher level of cash.
In terms of financial discipline, we are also committed to maintaining a very rigorous management of our cash conversion cycle and our working capital. We started with a high level of stocks, and this is a challenge that we have for 2023 to reduce the levels of stocks. We will still have some pressure from the market or from the strategic evolution coming particularly from the U.S., as I said previously. With the stock levels in the U.S. during 2023, the stock levels will be higher due to the ramp up because stocks come first and then come sales, right? This is the picture for 2023. This should serve as an overall guidance for all of you. Some data that we can share with you today about what we expect for Portobello in 2023.
Now we will open for questions.
We will now open the floor for questions. We will take questions from investors and analysts. To ask your question, please press raise hand. If at any time your question is answered, you can click on the same button to lower your hand. To send your questions in writing, please use the Q&A button. Please wait while we poll for your questions. Our first question is from Carlos Herrera, Condor Insider.
Good morning. Based on your press release, you will still need BRL 170 million in CapEx for the U.S. plant in 2023. Do you have any projection for the CapEx in the U.S. starting in 2024? What about your general CapEx starting 2024? Thank you.
We cannot give you long-term CapEx guidance.
Of the BRL 380 million, 45% will be destined to Portobello America. We do have continuity planned, both due to the characteristics of the CapEx that we invested in the United States. In civil construction, for example, we work in the build-to- suit model, so this is done through a financial partner. We are responsible for the lead, so this is not included in our CapEx. The greatest part of the investments that we're making is in equipment. All these investments that we're making, in their great majority, if not all of it, was funded by the equipment suppliers themselves, equipment vendors. The payment terms go up to five years with our suppliers.
This is valid both for the first phase, for the special pieces that will start in the second half of the year with a less relevant capacity, but we also have the second wave in 2024. These two parts will use this funding model.
Two more questions from Carlos Herrera, so I will read them individually. Could you please tell us what this ramp up will be like in the U.S. this year? How many square meters will be produced there per year? In the breakdown of the U.S. production, how do you see the prospects for increasing your sales in the U.S. in 2023?
John, I think I can help because I am here right in the middle of this project. We don't give guidance for the future, but we can give you a macro idea.
The phase I will be implemented in 2023. There will be a ramp-up in the end of the first half, but we will have At least half of the capacity that we installed, we will see the production of that in the second half of the year. The second line will double our capacity, and it should be started up in quarter one 2024. In quarter two 2024, we should be already operating at full capacity in terms of investments and sales. We are not concerned with the volume. We are concerned with the mix that we will able to sell in the U.S. market.
When we talk about the ramp up, more than the industrial challenge that of course we have because it's a new technology and a very modern plant, there will be a need for operational adjustments in the first 60 days of operation, in quarter two 2023. It is also a ramp up of our positioning, our product mix, and the level of innovation, distribution channels. This is the greatest challenge in terms of ramp up, and this is what will measure the contribution margin that the company will see from this project in the coming months. It is a process, of course. Of course, right now the cost is still a little higher. The first months the mix will not be the ideal.
Just to give you an idea, Carlos, in 18 days, on April 17, we have a launch in Orlando, the main trade fair in this industry in North America, of this new Portobello America branding with local USA production. After this event, we will be able to measure better this positive evolution that we expect. We are sure that we can achieve and contribute to an even greater growth guidance than what we had this year for Portobello Group. We have a very positive outlook.
I would just like to add, Mauro. I think it's worth mentioning that Portobello America will not be restricted to selling its own production.
It will continue to complement its sales portfolio with products exported from Brazil, either from the Pointer plant or Portobello plant, and also outsourcing from both U.S. partners and also partners from other parts of the world. It's a broader view. This reinforces what Mauro said. We are not concerned with the volume. What we want is to have a good sales mix, a good product mix to increase our profitability to provide us with revenues at the levels that Mauro already talked about, and we want to double our margins of our U.S. business. Carlos, next question. With quarter one coming to an end, can you compare the trends seen compared with quarter four last year? Was there any improvement? What about the competitive environment in Brazil? Is it possible to grow your volumes, improve your mix or pass on prices?
Let me start by saying, Carlos, that we already gave some guidance, and we can't really anticipate the results of 2023. Qualitatively speaking, I don't know, Mauro, if you would like to share your prospects for the market and how we're seeing the first quarter. Yes. This is a more like a movie, not a snapshot. There was a slowdown in quarter four, as we already mentioned. In January, we saw the same level of difficulty. In February, starting in the second half of February, and I can be more precise about the days because we have our own operations, and we also have the monitoring of our franchise, the sell-out in multi-brand and retail. We're already seeing improvements in the market starting in the second half of the month of February.
In March, there's also a recovery of the construction companies. It is a scenario of gradual recovery, as we said in the beginning of this presentation. Particularly in our priority markets, the export markets and the retail markets, Portobello Shop, we see more resilience. We believe we will continue to grow, and today we have a positive outlook, but it's very difficult to define, to give you more precise expectations for Brazil in the coming months. In our specific industry, and also based on the data of the industry, a reduction in the idle capacity of the industry and the resumption of some investments in civil construction allows me to believe that we will have an improvement, a gradual and careful improvement pointing up.
Thank you, Carlos. The next question is from André Duarte, Hedgefy Investments.
Portobello acquired owning shares, Class B shares of Enel Green Power, what was the objective with this acquisition, thank you.
I think that when Mauro talked about sustainability, we signed a contract with Enel. It was a contract for high production. We entered with some participation in terms of share. It was a larger project. We're involving different companies, which allows us to come up with a high production design, both in terms of clean energy supply with the benefits of self-production. Not high production, self-production. This is something that depends on the participation of Enel and also a small participation from our side. What's the most important is that we invest on sustainability.
We have an energy matrix that is cleaner and cleaner over time. This investment was made in a wind farm, a wind farm located in the state of Bahia, which will supply 50% of our energy needs for the Tijucas plant and the Marechal Deodoro plant. It's not just about competitiveness. Of course, we will gain competitiveness, but we will mostly advance in terms of sustainability.
The next question is from Tito Avila.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Congratulations on the great results. Can you talk about your prospects in terms of the price of natural gas and how this can help you recover your gross margin in 2023?
I will start, and then maybe John can add.
We could have talked about this in our previous question when we were talking about passing on the prices, the trend is towards deflation of some costs this year, and this is an important positive point for the industry. Different from 2022, when we had a very significant inflationary pressure, starting with natural gas. We already saw a decrease in this pressure in the end of last year. In February, there was a second decrease for our Maceió operation, and we are working with an expected reduction in the middle of the year due to the contracts that we have and the international prices per se, the oil prices and also the foreign exchange.
These are variables that we don't have full control over, but the projection is that this should drop during the year, and we are considering this decrease so that we can have better competitiveness in the market, including the international market.
Another follow-on question from Tito Avila, Liz Capital. Can you please talk about the quality of your stocks and if you are able to equalize the stocks, particularly for Pointer? Also, what are the main levers to improve your cash conversion cycle? Thank you.
John, I think you are in a better position to answer this question.
Let me just tell Tito that we are not very concerned with the quality of the stocks, leftovers, and non-healthy products and how to characterize them. This is not a difficulty that we have today in our operation.
We have high stocks for some products with good turns, regular products or normal products. This is what we're working on. The stops in our capacity last year and the stops in production last year during December and also in January, the purpose was to regulate the excess stocks, but this is a positive point. We don't have, historically speaking, and this moment is not different, we don't have a high leftover level for low profitability products. Although from the accounting perspective, we are also looking at the turns and the provisions required, but this is not a concern right now, as I said. Let me let John talk about the cycles. Talking about the cycles, I think it's worth stressing some of the points in our presentation. The main one is about the stock levels.
If we can balance supply and demand, I think this will be a challenge, particularly due to the levels with which we started 2023. There's another point, which is the start of operation in the United States. With the entry to operation in the United States, we will have stock formation at levels that will still be high, particularly due to the level of sales that we will have when the plant is inaugurated. We already talked about the level of confidence that we have in our sales volume, but still we will have a relevant formation of stock in the beginning, early on. Also there are some characteristics of the U.S. market. The U.S. market has a higher level of demand and requirements, and then in terms of level of service, particularly for stock availability.
This will also require from us an even higher level of stock than what we're used to seeing in Brazil, and also in the customer and supplier payment terms. Far, we are seeing longer terms for customers and shorter terms for suppliers compared with what we practice here in Brazil. We need to evolve in this sense when this is what we plan to do in 2023, and the evolution of the plant itself. We talked about the product mix or the sales mix. The sales mix in terms of channels and also clients will also help us in this average customer payment term. Customers. The least profitable customers are also those that require a longer payment term. The customer mix will also help us, but this is a challenge that we will face in a business that is still gaining maturity.
The next question is from Mr. Mohamed Hisyam, S&P Global. Mr. Mohammed, you may proceed. Your microphone is. You can open your microphone now. Mr. Mohammed, please open your microphone. Click on the button to open your microphone, and you can proceed with your question. Once again, Mr. Mohammed, you can open your microphone now. Please click on the microphone to open. Can you please disconnect and connect again? The next question is from Alexander Silva, Tesouro Investimentos.
Good afternoon. The U.S. plant will account for which percentage of the total company sales? When will we reach the maximum potential? What will be the learning curve, and how long will it take before you reach maximum margins? What is the prospect in terms of operational cash generation compared with 2022?
These are many questions.
We don't have enough clarity for all of them because of the long-term guidance. What we can say in general terms is that maturity will be reached in two years. This is what we are expecting. This is the strategic vision that we have, not for volumes, as I said. For volumes, as I said, it's just in the short term. For industrial maturity, product mix, channel mix, the level of innovation, things that you implement gradually in a company, we expect two years. It is a positive growing curve. At full speed in the phase II of the project, as I said before, this will start in the second quarter 2024. John, anything else?
I will continue to. I will say again that we don't give long-term guidance.
It is difficult to share with you because we have an intra-business unit dynamic. We don't have just the growth of Portobello America, but we also have the growth of the other business unit. Clearly, it will gain relevant share, relevant participation in our revenue, and this reinforces another point that I already mentioned. This is particularly for profitability. The contribution of Portobello America for our EBITDA. The contribution of Portobello America, I think we can say that we are investing more in Portobello America than the contribution of the business unit. It will start to have a very relevant contribution, both in terms of the EBITDA, but also in terms of the cash flow.
We still have our cash flow from the CapEx, which will be relevant in 2023, 2024, and in the next three or four years. Regarding our operational cash flow, we will start to see an important contribution already in 2023.
To ask your question, you can click on the button Raise Hand on the bottom bar or send your questions in writing using the Q&A button. The next question is from Mr. Alexander Silva. Are you expecting any follow-on to adjust your capital structure, or are you considering your current structure appropriate?
Alexander, I don't think that saying it is appropriate would be the best answer because we can always be better, right? There's still room to improve, particularly in terms of the liquidity of our shares. The follow...
No follow-on in our radar, particularly in this capital market scenario that we are seeing right now. It is a capital market that continues to be very close, and when it opens, it will open with more room for follow-ons than IPOs. It's not in our radar, at least not in 2023. In terms of funding needs, we are also not depending on this. We are actually counting on our. The structure that we already have is sufficient to cover all our needs for 2023. This is what we expect regarding the capital market for 2023.
The next question is from Guilherme Cambraia, Lumi.
Which strategy and e-expectation in terms of recovering Pointer's margin? Is there any strategy to be implemented in that regard?
It's a great question.
Pointer, as you heard from John, the Northeast market suffered more. Of course that we expect some improvement from the macro perspective, but we understand that our planning was carried out thinking of a market which is still restricted for the Northeast, and the improvement will come from internal actions. I give highlight to the investment that we made in 2022. We modernized our plant, and we completed this modernization project in February this year, and we will visit the plant in late April to visit our current facility, which is already operating. This new facility is an improvement of our current capacity. It's not an expansion of our capacity, but we are improving our capacity. We are producing better products, larger formats, and better products in a greater scale, which will add value and add margin.
Of course, this will allow us to enter other market niches and improve significantly our results. The strategy is focused on industrial improvement, innovation capacity, and competitiveness gains. This was even tested two weeks ago when we launched this new collection in the Brazilian fair in São Paulo, the Expo Revestir. This helped us grow our numbers and the prospects for Pointer in the international market. Not that significant, but it already showed a clear response of the market with new orders. As I said, it's a careful project for the Northeast, not in terms of market evolution, but more focused on capacity and results generation based on the current capacity that we have today.
The next question is also from Guilherme Cambraia, Lumi. How do you compare the cost of energy production of Portobello America with the Tijucas plant?
Is the competitiveness level similar? Thank you.
That's a great question. Historically speaking, Brazil has always been very competitive, and all the studies that we carried out until, well, the implementation of our plant, it was not the U.S. competitiveness that the size effector for investing here Brazil as an export platform continued to be interesting. Today, what we see with the evolution of the U.S. industry and with the improvement of local productivity and the cost of energy in the U.S., which today is very competitive, we can say, Guilherme, that there is a certain balance between producing locally or importing. The differentiator that speaks in favor of local production in the U.S. is the level of service. It's the adaptability of the product mix and the product profile, the product design. This is very relevant.
It is a product that does not have good operational commercial performance in other markets, Brazil, South America, Europe. This ends up leading to leftovers. Products that have the volume, the profile of the American market, it's much better to produce there than in Brazil. Does this mean that we will stop working as an export platform? No. John even talked about this. No, because some add-on products, some complementary products that will not be produced there, and here we're talking about our. For example, in our unit in Santa Catarina, we have 17 ovens, and they have a different mix of products. This complementarity will continue to exist. When you compare apples to apples, when you compare the same products today, the U.S. is as competitive as the best markets in the world. I hope to have answered your question.
Yes, and I think it's worth adding, Mauro, that it's like a movie, as you said, and not just a snapshot. In this movie, there's an important factor, which is the difference. The market has been more competitive in the United States, and local production gained competitiveness as the U.S. gained energy competitiveness, particularly with shale gas. Today, the competitiveness of the U.S. market, considering the cost of gas, brought the local producer back into the game with local production and local productivity. This is an important aspect that Mauro mentioned for the vision that we have for the business. It's not by hazard that the American market has 70% of its consumption met by imports. This balance is changing over time.
The next question is from André Duarte, Hedgefy Investments. Good afternoon.
Will we have any share buyback program this year?
It's not in our plans. We have had very robust share buyback programs in the past. We have been focusing our energy and our efforts and resources on strategic projects. It's not in our plans for 2023. This question and answer session is now closed. I would like to turn the conference back to Mr. Mauro do Valle for his final remarks. Mr. do Valle, you may proceed. Thank you all for attending our call. Thank you for the great discussion, for the great questions. Thanks to our team in Brazil. We will keep in touch. John will be now leading with his team and Andrés also in investors relations. We will be focusing more on the company's board to work on strategic projects. It's always a pleasure to keep in touch.
Thank you very much. I say this on behalf of John and the rest of the team. Good afternoon.
Mauro, if you allow me, before we close this call, I would like to convey to all of you, our partners, investors, on behalf of the company's board, and particularly our Chairman, Cesar Gomes Jr., I would like to express our gratitude and recognition to Mauro. Mauro has 45 years in the company, so he's seen the evolution and the progress of everything that you heard today and what's to come in the future. The company's existence is intertangled with Mauro's life, and not just has he contributed greatly to the company, but he was also here for the three best years in the company's history, as you are seeing with the results that we are delivering.
I wanted to share this with you because unfortunately, this is our last call with Mauro as our CEO. He will continue to work with us in our board and some strategic projects, as he already said, so he will continue to have a strategic role. Cesar and I, we couldn't finish this call without recognizing Mauro's work and thanking him for his dedication. Thank you all for attending. We will see each other again next quarter. Bye. Thank you.
Portobello Group's conference call is now closed. Thank you for participating. Have a great rest of your day.