We're about to begin one more KAWSAN Day, 10th edition of our special event. When I watched the video we've just played to you, I was thinking about what I could say at the start of our 10th event. And what came to my mind was a race. When we run together and we pass the baton and you only win the race if you run well together.
And we've announced some important business in our management. We planned and we programmed our changes. We have picked specific talent. Our athletes, some of them will be rotating places here today and following the same concept of passing the baton in a race. I was waiting to come up onto the stage and I remembered when I used to swim and we'd have individual contests.
And at the end of the day, we would pass the baton, and we would all do better. There's somebody who sets the pace, somebody who continues with the pace and somebody who's responsible for the final sprint. And it's always a team victory. It's about overcoming challenges. And that's what we come here to talk about every year, about our achievements, about our marathon, the work we do that we take very seriously, which is very consistent.
And above anything else, it's teamwork at KOSAN. 2020 has started. We're more optimistic. We were all surprised by a major issue, coronavirus. We have implemented some measures, precautionary measures.
Of course, the market is important, but people's lives are above all that. So we have disinfectants all over the place. We have some safety tips. And we need to avoid very common habits in our culture. And it's important for everyone to do their part.
Still on safety. We don't have any training sessions scheduled for today. If the alarm does go, we have emergency exits. You go out to the foyer upstairs and our meeting point will be on the ground floor next to the security booth in the car park. Our agenda is a little bit different today.
We'll start with move, Raizen, then we'll have a Q and A session, then Rumo, then another Q and A session and then Compass Comgas and then our holding presentation followed by another Q and A session and then lunch as usual. So that's what I wanted to say to you to start with. Marcus, let's open our session officially. Good morning, everyone. First of all, Paola was telling me off because last year, I didn't say welcome to the 10th event.
We skipped a year. As Paola has said, we had to cancel the event in New York because of the coronavirus issue. So we are broadcasting live with simultaneous translation. And we will also be broadcasting via videos. It won't be the same, but at least we'll be able to convey what's happening at the company.
And we'll have presentations about the capital market with the whole team. So economic exposure to coronavirus was smaller when these presentations were put together. So some aspects will sort of fall outside the current situation like oil, for instance. But we're always going for it as you know. So we will be going for it again this year.
We will be delivering on our guidance and we will be making things happen again just like we have every year. We're very optimistic, and we really trust that we'll have positive results. Today, I personally think we have a lot of interesting things to share with you. No spoilers. We will be talking about some very relevant initiatives.
I think they are transformative to KOSAN. And I do hope you enjoy what we have to share with you and that you also enjoy our interaction afternoon sessions. I won't take up too much of your time. I only have 1 or 2 minutes to say good morning to you. So good morning.
Welcome to our 10th KOSAN Day. It is an honor for us to be here with you. We're very grateful to your support during harder times, not such hard times, some looking out, some looking in. But at the end of the day, market funding has always been key to the development of this company. And we see you as key participants in our journey.
So Felipe Alfonso Ferreira is the VP for lubricants, and he will start the day by talking about Move. Felipe? Hello. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here today to talk a little bit about how Move has been progressing.
As you all know, our businesses are connected to the fact that we want to become the global benchmark in the lubricants market. We are guided by our priorities. Year on year, we put together high performing teams. We focus on creating a culture of efficiency so that we can capture value by expanding our businesses. Given this very ambitious vision, the clicker is not working, We have made a few strategic choices.
Apologies. We've made a few strategic choices with a great deal of focus. So within the lubricant chain, we have decided where we want to be and that is where we are able to create more value. And within the globe, which are the regions where we want to be present? In 2019, We were already present in the markets that have defined our strategy.
These are major markets, huge volumes with excellent growth potential and platform. And this year, we have been working on integrating these businesses that have come from investments that we have made. We concluded the year by being a multinational headquartered in Brazil. And taking that into consideration, we have worked really hard to unify our culture. And now we can safely say that our culture is based on the best people have to offer and top performances.
We have established a streamlined and efficient organizational design that allows for global governance, allows us to have local execution. At the same time, we have established processes, systems, tools to support our different businesses and all of that in light of the reality and different maturity level of each business. We have been able to create an environment of trust, of collaboration that allows us to channel the collective intelligence of each business towards the business as a whole. The culture of efficiency has become more pervasive within our organization. We have progressed a lot in our lean program and our S and OP and that has given us a great deal of traction.
We have reduced volume bottlenecks, increased productivity. Our philosophy is one of value creation, asking questions, adding value, problem solution methodology, which becomes a growing part of our culture. We love eliminating waste. Waste is something we do not like. We don't want to be doing anything automatically in our business.
And given these higher volumes, higher productivity, more sophisticated processes, In order to protect our personnel, we have been investing in awareness, safety, skills, competencies in the last year to keep our number of incidents as low as possible. Move behavior goes beyond physical safety to get to financial security and emotional safety as well, always safe. Our revenue has been consistently going up and that is based on the fact that our sales organization is constantly evolving. We focus on different channels and we are constantly on the lookout for any changes in these channels. We also invest in the skills and competencies of our sales force so that we can keep high levels of service.
That is our biggest asset. So we are constantly paying attention to our customer pain points and needs. As for the results, we have been executing on our strategies and creating a culture that is people based, people focused. And we also focus on continuous improvement, which has been ensuring that we deliver consistent results, stable results, sustainable results. And at the end of 2019, our results were 2.5 times higher than 2016.
We're very proud to announce that. In conclusion, actually, in 2019, we invested in our financial management. We have strengthened our cash management, and we concluded the year with our own capital structure. We have delivered on our EBITDA, cash conversion and we have investment on CVC and we have concluded the year stronger so that we can continue to grow. We started 2020 with robust governance in a multinational environment.
We will continue to invest in our main assets, which are our people, our management systems, which can ensure that we deliver exponential results based on business growth. Luis, thank you. Good morning. Huge pleasure to be here with you today to talk a little bit about Raizen. And I'd just like to remind you where we concluded the year last year at our last close and day when we talked about the company's strategy.
So today, I'm just here to recap our 2019 results until the end of the season by the end of March, and then Musa will talk about what happened after that. Musa will be able to share our vision on continuity with you where this company is going based on our current platform, future opportunities. So I'll start by talking about safety. We continue to reduce our TRCF and LTIF levels. That is a constant concern focusing on people, processes, and we will never become complacent when it comes to safety.
We made a decision that came from our decision to expand the business of reporting on our combined businesses, including the Argentinian geography, Brazilian geography and trading. It's an integrated platform. As of April, it would be fully integrated with Argentina's SAP and huge back office operations. So all of this is combined. Now looking at the market this year, we had a volume retraction despite market difficulties in Argentina because of the political crisis and the recession.
The fuel market did grow in Argentina as well as Brazil despite the GDP having disappointed in both countries. New entrants, new competition, I know that is one of your concerns, but it's good news to the market in our opinion. This market will continue to consolidate, but it will now be bottom up rather than top down. And these new entrants will become stronger. They will be acquiring retail networks, B2B and distributors.
So they will be playing our game. This is a game we're very familiar with. What we have been fighting for is the regulatory environment. So you will be hearing a lot about power and gas. We have had major regulatory changes, divestment.
Petrobras divestment will be changing the configuration of the market. Have already started to change since price configuration has changed, especially considering the international market. But we will focus on what we know what to do, segmenting customers, being closer to our dealers and also integrated logistics, supply, reducing cost, increasing efficiency. That is the game we know how to play and that's what we have been doing in all of our geographies: Latin America, some other regional markets still through trading, but there's still a great deal of opportunities. As for consumption, I've already talked about that.
There has been an increase in ethanol and diesel. We believe that was going to continue, but we need to see what was going to happen based on the issues we've had the last couple of days the last few days. Infrastructure, we have always focused on that. The blue dots, especially in the north excuse me, the gray dots in the north and the northeast where we've had new projects approved, They are always more exposed to imports, so we would like to have a solid infrastructure to make sure that we can continue to grow and have insured supply. As soon as we bought the refinery in Argentina, we also purchased a warehouse next to it to improve the infrastructure going up to Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and other attractive regional markets as well as our trading capacity in Argentina.
So we will continue to focus on that. We have money to expand the infrastructure over the next few years. Major operations have been implemented. We will continue to fine tune that over the next few years. So the message is we are extremely well positioned as you can see in terms of infrastructure needs in Brazil and Latin America.
Now moving on to the implementation of the network, same again. Network is still growing. We have gone over 7,200 points of sale, over 1300 convenience stores, solid points, solid dealers in the best corners and the best operation, a great deal of segmentation, B2B customers and aviation. These are 2 businesses that we have also integrated regionally, and we will continue to have the best throughput in the business in the sector, selecting the best points of sale, best operations and the best logistics. So our EBITDA has been continuously growing and cash generation as well.
We continue to focus on the same elements in the last 10 years increasing our base, which is crucial in terms of scale, operation, which will allow us to develop better personnel to have better partners. Musa will be talking about proximity, digital transformation and so on and so forth. In terms of power, prices have improved. We've had some good sugar prices, ethanol prices, driven by the auto cycle. So we've had some good ethanol prices in the market.
It's been a global thing. It's no different in Brazil. The rest of the world has been asking for sustainable goals, positive agenda for ethanol Renova Bio coming into Brazil this year, not only here, but there are countless countries around the world increasing the level of ethanol in the mix, India, Pakistan and so on. So we are extremely well positioned as an industry. All things being equal, the renewables platform should grow in the next few years.
And last but not least, power and fuel markets in Brazil increasing the captive market, integrating to the gas and power markets. That will lead to opportunities and we are making sure we're in the right position for that. We have been focusing on recovering productivity. That is our biggest gap. We've been working on that.
Francis has been working hard on that with his team. So we need to improve productivity. We are outsourcing some farms, partners who are better than us in terms of productivity. And you will be seeing more details about investments in profitable renewable energy projects and important transformations that are happening in bio gas pellets and so on. So improving on what we do today, focusing on productivity and making the most of the investments we've made in the last few years in technology that we already have.
Most players don't have them in the market. As I said, a deficit sugar market this year. We'll still have some deficit next year. Prices have recovered, and we hope that will continue looking forward. So we'll see what happens in terms of oil.
It's very hard to predict that. So in terms of acreage, it has been increasing above average to recover productivity of our sugarcane plantation. So based on our cost to have a better denominator and to ramp up, which has been flat in EUR0.11 and we want to reduce that even more. That is the main focus of our operation, improving productivity. Financial highlights.
This year will be concluded at better levels of EBITDA than last year and making sure that we can guarantee productivity. So in total, this season will be 8.7 percent adjusted EBITDA considering BRL 1,000,000,000 of the transaction in terms of convenience and above the last few periods. So in summary, consistent top quality teams. We are developing new talents in our team, preparing for future changes, regulatory changes, new opportunities we see in the market based on that and our guidance for next year. This was put together by myself, Musa, our leaders Leo, Theo, Paola, Fabio and so on, so that we can again guarantee consistent performances next year.
So I'd like to invite Musa to come up to the stage. He will be replacing me as of April so that he can talk about our journey, which is now 10 years to a new level. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Luis. Now I'd like to talk about Raizen's journey.
Journey will be the most frequent word in my presentation. We're not planning on any radical changes, quite the opposite. We will be continuing what Vasco started and Luiz continued, and I hope to continue as well. Let's look at Raizen's history. Excellence in execution, we have tripled the size of the company.
The results in the last 9, close to 10 years, 2 fuel businesses, sugar, ethanol, bioenergy. We have changed the number of stations from 4,200 fuel stations to 7,200, almost doubled it, very consistent market share. So we have been growing the company's volume year on year. We have been increasing market share. We have doubled the convenience store business.
We entered the Argentinian market and proved to Shell that we could replicate that business model in Brazil in another Latin American market. Trading, we have almost traveled our ethanol, renewable oil, other byproducts in the same period, huge reduction in the headcount with automation. So our cost reduction has been excellent. We have the lowest cost if you compare to India, Thailand, Australia. Raizen has a lower operating cost, production cost than all of those.
So it makes our business very resilient. And that's what our journey is all about. That's what Luisa said. We have reduced our results more than 10 times in terms of safety. So that's what we've done so far.
What's happening looking forward? What are the megatrends? You're all familiar with this Over the last few months, clean energy has become a buzz term. We are on the right side of the coin digital revolution. This is no news to anyone.
We're talking about new consumption behavior as well-being closer to consumers and we are tackling that through OXXO low emission cars, not only electric cars, but hybrid cars as well, changing electric or power consumption and distributed energy generation. I'm going to touch on that, but this is definitely a trend. These are market trends, and we'll see how Raizen is getting ready for them. First thing is consistence. Let's talk about fuels.
This chart shows how Raizen's market share has been increasing year on year, increasing volumes based on business consistence. LEO is the leader in this strategy. It's all very consistent. We have excellent resale, our B2B portfolio. If you look at the relevance of this business, it's much bigger than it used to be 9 years ago.
We have a unique infrastructure that came from Shell's and ESO's portfolio. The investments that have been made in the last 6 months on infrastructure have meant that we are very well positioned over 9 ports, over 72 terminals, 67 airports. We are really well positioned in Brazil with unique efficiency. So when you look at the average distance between our terminals and our fuel stations where our terminals are located mean we have huge advantage, and it makes us very efficient. So that's what I mentioned before.
So we have a win win relationship with dealers. There has never been a conflict. We want our dealers to be strong and we will continue to do the same thing. Nothing will be changing. I get asked a lot if OSO has will be changing and we want to keep that as a strength.
We're talking about Shell Box. And in Argentina, we've been working on our integrated margin, because when you have refineries and you have a vertical business, that means you can work on trading because of that integration. So that is one of our strengths and we have been exploring that. And the last thing on this slide is our power potential that we have been capturing on with Argentina. We have a single byproduct import desk.
In 2019, we had BRL 150,000,000 synergy and the potential is to achieve BRL 350,000,000 by operating these two countries together. This is already true and will continue to be so. Shell Box. Over the years, Raizen has been selecting a digital customer relations platform and a platform to relate to our end user. And we think we got it right.
This business has been growing exponentially. This is not a loyalty program. This is a tool that will bring us closer to our clients. When they come to our petrol stations, they get points and they can use those points in the Shell network. So they won't be use those points to buy plane tickets or anything like that.
It's a relationship program. So they can use our platform to come to our stations to win points and it's an open market. One of the main points here is the partnerships. We have an open platform. So we have Peily.
We have a relationship with Ponde Acucar, the supermarket chain, so that they can use their points in the entire network. It's been great. We are betting on this platform. And 2 points I'd like to draw your attention to is the high frequency of use and the V Power conversion is twice as the average. So again, this platform is here to stay.
It is growing very quickly. Over the past 3 years, we've been investing a large part of our time in turning this into a solid platform so that it can help the business to grow. You will be hearing more and more about Shell Box, not only at our petrol stations, but also convenience stores, the convenience store network outside the petrol stations, and it will become increasingly more relevant. We're ready. We think we got the platform right, and all we have to do now is grow.
As for convenience, the highlight here is our joint venture with OXXO. I talk a lot about FEMSA, about OXXO. It's a huge company. They are leaders in the Mexican market, over 20,000 stores. And the idea was to bring in this expertise, which we didn't have in retail.
My relationship with the OXXO Mexican team showed me how much they focus on the operating side. So we want to have that in supply chain. We will be investing in storage distribution. We'll have 2 models. 1 of them will be our select stores in the petrol stations, and we will also have stores close by through the OXXO brand.
We think we have the right partner. And now all we have to do is roll it out. We started operations in December. We have a new team, a new CEO, just as it needs to be with huge responsibility. The OXXO team and the FEMSA team are already here in Brazil.
We'll have a pilot project, which will be announced soon and they'll start with the new model in the Q1 of the new season. So again, focus on growth. This is a growth business. I don't have a timeline here, but this 5 times expansion should be taking place very, very quickly. Again, let's talk about sugar and ethanol.
This is a mea culpa. I think we did excellent work on cost reduction. And this slide shows that if we can take our sugarcane per hectare potential when I say about when I talk about potential, I'm talking about our suppliers. So if we can take the business to the same level of our suppliers, we're talking about 800,000,000 additional reais a year just by taking our productivity up to normal levels. This is in our control.
It's in our hands. If we look at how much we've planted in the last few years to recover, we really believe this. We think we can bridge that gap in the next 2 years. The first metrics in January February are pointing to excellent figures. So it's within our reach.
Again, if we think about biomass optimization, I'm going to talk to you about what we've been doing in terms of biomass utilization and cogeneration. We're talking about energy efficiency. We've been reducing steam consumption. There's more biomass left over that we can use in cogeneration and other things, advancing in the sugar chain. If you think of Raizen today, ethanol gets produced and sold to end users.
We cannot hand it over to traders. We do the logistics and we hand it over to the end user. 100% of Raizen's sugar used to be sold to trading companies, to traders. We've invested in storage. We've invested in logistics.
And now we are delivering sugar straight to the end user. Over 200,000 tons to customers in Africa, U. S, Canada, we'll more than double that figure now and the sugar chain will be progressing. So Raizen has changed the way it treats ethanol and we are now catching up with sugar. Renova Bio is a new program.
We are an integrated business. We have trading capacity. So we believe we will be leading the Renovo Bio program, especially when it comes to C Bio trading, which is coming. Now let's talk a little bit about global decarbonization. We forget about talking about 2 gs ethanol, but Brazilian ethanol, when you look at the full carbon cycle, the well to will, the full ethanol cycle, Brazilian ethanol is the most efficient even when compared to electric vehicles.
Very few people look at this. We already have the product. Ethanol is a reality. The infrastructure is set up. Vehicles have been tested, have been approved.
I don't think we explore the potential of ethanol enough. This new wave of sustainability is making us look again and try to expand this market. As Louis said, India and Thailand are markets we need to help develop so that ethanol can become more widely accepted. This is a clear example of things that are in our favor and will help Raizen to grow. Let's talk about a few new things.
I need to spend a little longer on this slide, renewables. At the top of this slide, we see our competitive advantages. Let me give you some examples. Sugarcane is an excellent energy conversion plant in terms of biomass. Everyone knows that.
And I don't think we are using a large part of this biomass. We only use 30,000,000 out of the 60,000,000 tons of biomass, and it comes from the bagasse. So we're not making the most of that. Raizen's main advantage is biomass availability. We have excellent results in converting biomass into energy.
And then E2 gs, we have been investing in the last 7 years a great deal in technology, and this is our own technology so that we can make better use of biomass. We have biogas. We have pellets. And trading, We know how to work with these products. We know how to trade.
We have a desk, E2G, pellets, biogas, our trading desks know how to work with those products, and we have to make the most of it. And last but not least, customer access. We have our sales force. We have access to the end user, and this market is changing through distributed generation and free market. And we are already part of that.
We have got an energy distributor, solar energy and our strength is customer access.
I will talk about 3 biomass projects, which you can see here, which E2G biogas. This is the one that has the best potential. We've come to a point where technology has been proven. We have very competitive costs in our plant and now has come the time to accelerate. Our numbers still do not present the expansion of the 2 gs in a way.
If you look at our guidance for the next 5 years, it's not included in this number, the expansion of E2 gs. Well, there is an advantage because we're the owners of the technology. So I can explore it here, not only in Brazil, but if I'm able to convince the Indian government to give us support, I could even license the technology in those countries. So this is a project where the proprietary technology is ready to be rolled out. Now when we talk about pellets, the technology in pellets is well known.
We have the only plant in Brazil. But the most important thing that we did this year last year that is was to test this technology and this product in Germany. We carried out a very successful plan and test and it has been approved. So now we're trying to get the commercial contract so that we can expand. So this is an expansion of our own mills.
We are not going to give licenses to our technology, but a better use of our biomass for energy production. Now biogas. Biogas also there's a our the ethanol market is 30,000,000 liters. We produce VINAS only more than the whole market of biogas. We have 30,000,000,000 liters of enath.
So we have to spend money to put this in our farms. So I here, I have a byproduct that has no value, a very well known technology, which is for a reactor for the production of biogas. And we're now going to inaugurate the biggest plant for biogas. It is in Bonfim. So this is a project for me that is a well known technology.
The market to market is well known. There is no difficulty in selling biogas or power. We have an amount of raw material, which is enormous to be explored. So you're going to see an acceleration when we talk about biomass. So these three projects have been we have been studying and working on this in the last 3 years.
So now you're going to see in our business plan more and more this is going to take strong colors and very related to renewables. And in closing here, I would just like to make a summary of what is priority here in the company. I didn't want to go into too much details, but we have the fuels, we have the proximity convenience and also our business of ethanol, sugar and bioenergy. So these are the 3 areas, the 3 industries that we're going to expand in. And we're talking a lot about continuity.
And I said consistency and strategy, especially for fuels, focus on efficiency when we talk about power, power, our partnership with OXXO for expansion and the new renewable projects, okay? Well, thank you very much. We're going to go to a Q and A now. And I will invite Luis and Filipe to come up to the stage. Hello, everyone.
As you know, we're going to have a Q and A. We have microphones spread out in this hall. And please speak into the microphone for questions and for simultaneous translation. Well, good morning. Luis Musa, where are you?
Oh, I thought you would be first. Well, question. Luiz Farna, I'm from the UBS Bank. If I could take this opportunity, Luiz, you said in your presentation about a consolidation from the base, a better competitive environment. But when we talk about the main players that are participating in this process of consolidation like Encore Vitol and others, they don't share the same vision.
They believe that this is a movement with these acquisitions that are happening. Those were already players that participated in the market in a very, let's say, healthy between quotations way. It's not an acquisition of players that were not playing the rules of the game. So I would like to understand what are the arguments or what can you say to talk about this competitive environment because now we have players that are far more prepared. BR, for example, was going through a difficult moment and now they're much better prepared.
So if you could share a little bit your opinion about this? And secondly, if I could approach the issue of refineries. You did mention some synergies that you were able to capture, and you gave us a very high estimate in terms of trading going forward. Now I would like to understand what have you learned? What has been the lesson learned with the acquisition in Argentina?
And how does this purchase impact the decision taking not in Raizen, but more with the process of Petrobras selling their refineries? How do you see what is your opinion about this? Thank you. Well, I will say the first one and Musa will speak about the effect because he has been the leader of this in house. Well, Luis, I don't believe I don't agree that players such as Bleco, Vitol and others have joined the market just to have these very small companies that they have purchased.
It doesn't make sense. So it's a very simple hypothesis. There's nothing more complicated. It depends. The way to grow this market is how we benefited ourselves.
We had to choose good positions, good business and going after them. So this takes us to an increase in efficiency of other players as well because they're going to be able to press as well, exert pressure on those that are irregular. So it's sort of good against evil if you have more people on the good side with different sizes, different sites, different specializations, expertise, but we have the power of pushing of pressure. And the exogenous FX that we don't want to talk about now, But we're if we have a tax reform in this country, we will see we have a great improvement. We have seen some states already here in Brazil have more electronic participation.
This is a very simple hypothesis. People with resources, quality of understanding this market, they have joined the market and not going to remain with a market with 0.1 or 0.2 or even 3. And we have seen this. We have seen some things happening. Of course, everything is very small for the moment because we have to wait for all this to consolidate and take us to another level.
So this is what I can say. Of course, they're not going to be saying publicly what is the intention of each one because no one's going to say this, but we've seen things working in practice. Well, Louise, talking about the refineries, if you have a refinery, you understand the mindset of optimization. So far level of knowledge of how Petrobras operates has increased enormously. We're also we're even participating in the recent activities at Petrobras and to understand how they work and how their mentality works to take a decision for each refinery was very important for the strategy of imports of byproducts, Raizen.
We are the leaders in this process. We're very active with very much success in spite of all the volatility and also the learning process in Argentina. So how the refinery happens, how the refining happens, my trading team is only 1. And here in Brazil, we know how the refinery works and we start understanding why things go to one side or the other, they're going to open more in Parana gua, they're going to open less in the city of Santos. So if you look at the arbitrage this year, it was much more closed than in the past years.
And we did much better this year than last year. So we have improved in our reading. I would just like to say that I'm talking about total synergies, not only trading, but also back office. This is why we now have SAP and a series of other ones and some deficiencies that are being solved in Argentina, integrating with the businesses here in Brazil with the best opportunities. Next question?
Thank you. My name is Andre. I am from Itau BBA. I have two questions. One is you were talking about the tax reform.
Could you say a few words? Tax evasion is a big issue for the industry. So how do you see the tax reform? How do you think that the structure the tax structure could improve in Brazil to avoid this enormous tax evasion? And so all this going forward.
Now about CAD, CAD and the refinery level. Now Petrobras, they have one only price for everyone, but doesn't make sense if you talk about scales, the size and scale. So do you believe there are going to be advantages how the bushel is measured? Or do you think the situation is going to be maintained? And the third part of my question is regarding move.
Move has become very strong in the past years. What is the trend? Are you going to stabilize? Or do you think that the growth in the past 3 or 4 years is going to continue? Or do you think that it will slow down going forward?
Well, thank you for your question. The last 3 years, as you said, our performance has evolved a lot, the deliveries. What I can say to you is that our business today has more muscles than any other moment. We have a team which is focused. We have a team which is interested in growing.
They like to grow. It's part of our culture. We like to expand. We like to evolve. We like to improve.
So I would not set constraints to our capacity of future execution. Quite to the contrary, I think there's room for growing in the same speed from now onwards. So I think that we have just joined the markets where we want to be defined by strategy. So now we have a big space in the U. S.
We have the 1st year consolidating in Europe. And at the same time, we have our procedures have become more sophisticated and our initiatives and the construction of teams here in Brazil. So we have an organizational chart design, which permits us to focus on different markets at the same time. We have a global governance. We have passed from that phase and saying, well, now that I'm multinational, what do I do about my management?
No, we're very comfortable in what we're doing. So I would say that from the point of view of our in house and structure and headcount, we are very strong and we will continue to grow in this rhythm. Now there's something here about the tax reform, but tax reform is something that we could spend a whole day talking about this. But what can I say is we have a lot of control and we need one only point? We cannot have different Brazilian taxes like ICMS.
So it's like 1L, it has to be RAD REM to eliminate volatility. This is a discussion that we hear here. And of course, we need monitoring. If you have a tax reform and there's no control, not only in our industry, but all the others with default and tax evasion. So this is already at Congress and the bill is still being discussed.
It's these four points. And there's no doubt they want this. All these Brazilian states want this and they want more tax collection in all states. We believe that this is possible, a possibility. Now regarding the refinery, I think there's an enormous change.
People have not noticed that Petrobras was designed to work in a unique way. When you take out a refinery and bring it to the private sector, how they're going to run the refinery is going to be totally different. So the first thing is the system is going to change radically. The output will also be different. Logistics will be different.
Everything will be reconfigured in the Brazilian industry. This is how difficult it is. People don't really know what is going to happen after this. And scale makes a difference because with a private owner, he's going to maximize the return of that refinery. So there is going to be an offtake guy.
There's going to be more. It'll be bigger. And regarding the CAD, who decided that Petrobras would have to go into this direction is because card is working and they will not prevent regionally any kind of difference among the states and among the different interested people. So you cannot make differences in price. The difference can be in logistics.
The most difficult thing is how these refineries are going to operate. This is a substantial change. I think this is going to be very beneficial for Raizen. I think this will be integrated by our logistics. I see this in a very positive way whether we participate or not in the refining.
I think this is a beneficial change in our favor for us and says the other speaker for the country. Duarte from BTG Pactual Bank. I have two questions, one about energy, power and fuel. What I would say is that it's almost an oxymoron when you were saying about the strategic position of a sugarcane plantation, because you said you have suppliers that have levels of productivities that are much higher that you can achieve in your own sugarcane plantation. So I would like to it doesn't make sense because I always understood that in this period of crisis that the industry has been suffering, Part of the problem, I thought, was because of the small sugarcane producer to have very small productivity.
So I'd like to hear your opinion. Regarding the refinery, my question is going back a little bit. Under the Raizen point of view, to buy a refinery, why does it make sense? Because you believe that you can run the refinery in a better? I mean, you only touched on this, it's going to have a different output.
Or do you think that it makes sense in the integration with your business with trading, distribution, the origination of the product to take it to the petrol station? Is it because the managed will be better or because the integrated business will make more sense for Raizen? I think I would like to hear your opinion. Right. Now says CDP, what we see here in some regions, some have scale.
In some regions, they have a different system of logic because they are owners of the land and they have better productivity. So our strategy is where it's going to make sense outsource, we will outsource, yes. Well, our in house discussion is what is the minimum and optimum size that we should have at our disposal or of the control of the agricultural industry in our hands. So you can't just sort of look at it from outside. If you go to the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which is a south one, there's a lot of people there, but less.
But if you go like to Piracicaba, it's in the state of Sao Paulo, there's a lot of people working there with very good productivity. They have very good people prepared people. Each mill has a different profile with different qualities and we are outsourcing, yes, what we're putting in the hands of one supplier that can give him scale and that he can operate better, we will do so. So we have a complete review of our portfolio. Sometimes we're increasing our agricultural part, others we're reducing.
It's something strategic. It's not only one direction of 50%. No, we don't have a magic number. It depends the moment that, that mill is experiencing. And this is being done by Francois, and he has been doing excellent work.
Well, I think it's important to say, says another speaker, everything is based on segmentation. We don't believe in unique, only one solution for our problems. So we have a portfolio of B2B customers, which are different from the rest of the industries. We have a portfolio of dealers that is different than the rest. The capacity and the quality of the team in each one of the businesses is important.
This is why we have 4 regional managers for retail because the North of Brazil and the South is so very different. So it's the same thing. We are segmenting our businesses more and more to understand the drivers, people, headcount so that we can optimize and be more efficient than the competition. And the answer to, says Felipe, in my personal opinion is the refining is is not changing the way Petrobras works with their pricing system. I think they do a good job.
They have good people there. I think the value is in integration. Now how can we participate in this process or not, let's say, with but have more integration? Well, let me repeat this. I think that whoever is going to have the refinery, if there's going to be things are going to change in terms of fuel because what we're looking at the refining is the trading, then the biofuel, they're going to be beneficiaries anyway because we're going to have a private use of the refinery.
There's not much difference at the moment to Petrobras, to a big player like us. Whoever is going to have the refinery do the refining, they're going to have a different outlook. For me, the benefit is how can you use a different machine to be able to import more or to be able to change the diet of the refinery sort of between quotations? I don't think this is an operational gain. You're going to reduce operational costs.
And it's going to be a mix as to how you operate the mill. The important thing is how to operate and work different. I don't think the upside is in cost reduction. This is my opinion. Another question in the back, Isabella from the Bank of America.
I think both my questions are long term. I think we're seeing 2 very important changes in the world. First of all, India thinking of an important blend of ethanol in their gasoline. And the second one here in Brazil, using corn ethanol, I think we see that there is an expansion in this industry and it's very relevant. I would like to hear your opinion on these 2 using corn ethanol.
What is your intention? Do you want to participate as producers? Or how is this going to affect the price dynamics in the future? Now regarding India, what is the true possibility of this business? And how is this going to change the sugar price going forward?
Well, let me talk about India because he has just come back. Well, I went for carnival holidays to India to talk about ethanol. Private joke, he says. Well, the current government has an enormous advantage in terms of ideology to understand that the external agenda, the foreign agenda is very important for this country, especially a commodity producer such as us. Markets and agreements are so important.
And Brazil started off very well with India because we did 2 things. We put right at the outset in the World Trade Organization, the subsidies. This put on strong lights went off saying we are not joking. We want to give you support to have the success that we have, because they have a problem. This is more important than anything else, which is the pollution in the big cities in India.
They have to do something, Sao Paulo, now. I think it's about 18 particulates. And it was 188 in New Delhi. Can you imagine with respiratory issues every year, they have problems, lung problems, breathing problems. So pollution is public health.
They have now understood they have to do something about it. And they have to see what they're going to do with the sugar surplus. They're going to produce more. I think India is going to oscillate between 26, 30, then 26. So they have to give a news to this ATR.
And they also they don't have they don't produce any oil, but they have 3 mega government owned companies. So everything is set up to happen. They have a lot of bureaucracy. It's a complex country. But India is certainly the government woke up to this pollution issue.
We talked a lot about this and I think they understood. If you're a sugar producer anywhere in the world, we have an enormous share in the food chain. Sugar is highly competitive with a high market share in terms of market, very low production in terms of fuel. They are giant in the world with a lot of pressure to reduce emissions, to improve the air condition in the big cities in India and zero share in terms of chemicals. So this all this is going to happen in India.
So this is a market share. It's the expansion of the market base more accessible for the green carbon molecules, which are those that produce sugarcane in Brazil, India or Pakistan? I went to Pakistan and Thailand and they all understood that it is a solution for this to increase radically the supply of ethanol in this market. It's going to take some time, but it will happen. So my vision is very positive regarding this.
Well, about the corn ethanol, we did a very detailed study to see how we can fit in this chain. We think that corn ethanol is here to stay. One thing that I don't like about it is the mismatching of the price of the corn with the commodity price. If you take the sugarcane commodity, when we buy sugarcane from the leasing of the land, everything is tied to the price of ethanol. Now in corn, there's a mismatching.
So the price of corn is 40 BRLs in Mato Grosso, for example. We have defined that decided that in Ryzen, we're going to be involved in logistics. So we're going to be the biggest off taker in Mato Grosso for corn. We are based on a very efficient logistics to pick up the product there and to use the use of diesel. So yes, we're going to participate in this market in the sale but not in production.
When I went to the state of Mato Grosso, I would say that I saw that the investment in this, if you want to mill in this region, you can have a better margin. But there's no entry barriers. If I want to set up a new mill, a new plant, start working with corn, ethanol, well, you just have to have a new company set up. It's not like sugarcane. So I did not see a big advantage for Raizen to verticalize corn ethanol.
But yes, we're going to participate in the logistics in trading, yes. Well, I think we've run out of time for our Q and A. Thank you very much, all of you. And we're now going to continue with the 2nd panel. And now we're going to have the room of presentation.
We are Brazil in Motion, the largest railway operator in the country. We operate around 14,000 kilometers of railroads from the Central West, South, Southwest and North regions. We connect Brazil by railroads and operate in ports and terminals. Over the past few years, we've invested in innovation, technology and safety. We have increased our operational capacity by building new yards, improving tracks, terminal, port and rolling stock.
Always seeking maximum energy efficiency and sustainability. Our results are strong. 24% reduction in our CO2 emissions over the last 3 years. We transported RKK 60,100,000,000. Our EBITDA reached RKK3.8 billion.
Our cash flow generation was RKK688 1,000,000. And by the end of 2019, our net profit reached BRL 907,000,000, 3 times the number of 2018. These accomplishments are the result of investments as well as the work of a qualified and determined team. Over the next few years, Brazilian industrial and agricultural production will continue to grow. The investments in Jumu's pipeline will allow rail transportation to increase its share in the national transportation matrix, thus adding competitiveness to Brazilian economy.
Jumu, we are Brazil in motion.
And now we're going to talk about RUMO. My introduction is just to say we're going to split this presentation into: 1st, we will be recamping our investment assumptions, what sustains our long term view, what sustains our investments. And then we'll talk about the how, our strategic leverages, our priorities in order to deliver on our plan and to achieve our long term vision. So let me revisit what I have called our investment thesis. At times of turbulence, such as what we've seen at the beginning of the year with lots of volatility, we know that when we look to the long term, we see that the world will continue to consume products grown in Brazil.
The Brazilian agribusiness chain will continue to increase its share in the global demand, which is also growing. And I like this piece of data. If we go back a few years to 2017, this world demanded 300,000,000 tons, and Brazil only contributed with 97,000,000 tons. So
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the global trade, it's only 34%. We concluded 2019 with 37 percent global market share. And I've already put down 40% because this will happen in the very short term. Now I have no doubt that Brazil will be responsible for half of the global trading because this demand continues to increase. And that's the beauty of this business.
In a country Brazilian growers are highly capitalized, which is extremely important. Brazilian farmers have never been as able to invest and to continue to have productivity gains. Growers' money is their fertilizer in order to continue to invest, to continue to grow. And we need to have fully reliable logistics in order to support this growth. I love the corn story.
I don't know if you know, but let's go back 10 years, 2009. Brazil exported 4,000,000 tons of corn. Last year 2019, we exported 40,000,000 tons. It's a tenfold growth in 10 years. That is the magnitude of the Agribusiness potential.
Now what is Ruma's potential within this scenario? This volume that is being exported, let's look at grains. We are responsible for 26% of everything that leaves Brazil. This is our current network. We either take part or will take part in 6 of the largest producing states in Brazil when we talk about agricultural exports: Mato Grosso, Parana, Rio Grande do Sul and we will be entering Goyas and Mato Grosso do Sul and Sao Paulo.
These 6 states are account account for 80% of the agricultural exports from Brazil. So we have everything it takes to increase our share in exports in a business that will continue to grow globally. So that's our assumption. That is our thesis. I won't put a time on it, but we want to have more than onethree of Brazil's exports, everything growing through our railroads, railways and assets.
I'm revisiting data you're already familiar with just to recap our long term vision thesis. And in order to get there, we have priorities. I'm going to talk about our strategic leverages. I'm going to talk about growth efficiency.
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lot has been done, but this journey has no end. I'm going to talk about customers and people. Let's talk about growth first. The first chapter is our operation in the north. When we look at this operation, it is full.
It is complete. This is the Rondonopolis expansion, which is taking place right now. We started last year. 70% of the works have been concluded. This is a short term investment that will allow us to increase capacity at this terminal, which is already the biggest in Latin America by 50%.
So we have tactics. We'll have more lines. We'll have everything it takes to absorb the growth that is taking place there. And we also have an expansion plan for the north of Mato Grosso. This was the Sorizo project.
We've only changed the name. It is now called Lucas de Rio Verde project. And this is NPV. We'll be able to reduce investments with no impact on the volume. Our project now has a stop in Avamutons and then it goes to Lucas de Rio Verde.
So what are we working on while the regulatory framework evolves? We've bought the land, 7.50 hectares. This is 29 kilometers from Nova Motung to make investments to build our terminal. All environmental licenses have been requested. It takes 18 months between requesting them and concluding the process.
So we started in August last year. And engineering and regulatory affairs have been moving forward. So we're concluding the Sao Paulo network renewal, and then we will be fully focused on the regulatory affairs and the expansion of our operation in the north. Now our operation in the south, I don't know if you noticed that at the end of last year, we signed an agreement with the state government of Parana. So we will stop having mutual transportation because we weren't able to go with our railcars in those 250 kilometers from Guarapuava to Cascabel.
We had to use their local operation, which wasn't efficient. So now we signed a new agreement that will allow us to reduce cycle time because now it takes 8x to cover that area to get to Parana Agua, and we will reduce that time by 50%, 4 days. So that will allow us to increase capacity, and we'll be more able to access the market in the west of Parana. Now Rocky, the VP for the area, is here. He did record results last year.
It was a BRL 600,000,000 operation worth of EBITDA. And in this region, which is a huge production pocket, we only have 10% market share. It's very far, so railroad should be more competitive there, but we are unable to have the right market share because of efficiency issues. So this market has 8,000,000 tons and right now we're transporting 500,000 tons. So huge potential, new geography and huge market share gain potentials in this region.
Now our central operation, new geography, Goya's top producing states, 13,000,000 tons for the next 10 years. This is a very conservative scenario, but it's equivalent to other regions. It can double in size once again. We have 0 share here, and works are ongoing, full steam ahead. We are on track.
We'll have close to 2,000 people working there. And in March, we'll start working on the land leveling at the terminal. This will be the Rio Verde terminal, which will be Goyazes Rondonopolis. So we have the land, the project is ready. We're beginning to move earth and we have everything it takes to start operations on track.
Obviously, it will be burning cash, CapEx, but by 2021, we will be up and running in this region with huge potential. What's interesting as well in the central operation, just like we have in the north and in the south, we'll have operations and sales here. Huge synergy like in the rest of the company because the back office, the infrastructure, HR, legal, shared services, everything will be ready and will help dilute costs in the operation of this business. Now still on growth. We love this container operation, which has been growing at high rates 20% to 25% and will continue to grow at the same pace and showing profits based on scale, 85,000 containers transported last year, over 100,000 this year.
This is our double stack railcar, which increases our scale by more than 40% and increases efficiency as well, transporting much larger volumes on the same trains. And as we can see, profits are reacting and huge potential for the mid to the long term, huge opportunities to continue to grow in an area with massive cargo diversification. And the local market is interesting here as well. We've made progress not only in exports, but also holdbacks. If you look at Sumare, Rondonopolis return cargoes account for over 50% backhauls.
And when you look at the our central operation, again, double stack full double stack operation, It's practically like a new business in terms of potential in the same region. You can practically double the size of your business in the region. Still on growth, it's not just about new geographies. It's not just about larger market shares. We also have huge opportunities here in cargo diversification.
Pulp should double production in the next 5 years with the pipeline projects and our share is still quite small. So in the next 3 to 4 years, we'll have about 16000000, 17000000 tons worth of business where we operate. We are only transporting 3 500,000 tons. Fertilizers, pulp, next year, we'll have a new square here, cotton. So many different products with huge opportunities to increase our market share so that we can continue to increase volume, increase share in grains, in geography and also different types of cargoes with bigger market shares.
This shows our growth initiatives. There is another key element here which drives our competitiveness, efficiency gains, which turns into more oxygen, a second win so that we can gain access to more markets. Cost, over the last few years, we've practically operated with the same fixed costs. Giulio Fontana is here. He knows.
He's done some amazing work in terms of efficiency increase, cost reduction, energy efficiency gains, 18% less fuel consumption in the last 3 years. Last year, again, 6% reduction. And this is not the end. We still have a long way to go. 2020, we'll see the intense implementation of our trip optimizer, semiautonomous train.
We'll still have an operator just in case making sure that there aren't any problems. But this is an algorithm that learns and reduces cost. So we'll be reducing another 5% because of this technology, which has already been installed in 120 locomotives and we'll be rolling that out to our entire fleet over the next 2 years. Double stack railcars. This year will probably have a 53 feet container on the 2nd floor instead of 40, so even more efficiency gains.
And 2021, 120 railcar trains. So not only cost gains, energy efficiency and also capacity increases. You'll be replacing 3 80 railcars by 220 railcars, so more volume without having to invest. So this efficiency journey covers 20 21 and what happens in 2022. This is a project with huge potential, AI, using AI within our processes.
Trip Optimizer is only the first stage, artificial intelligence helping to drive the train. But then we're going to use AI in our yards. We have over 50 yards. So you can imagine with all the crossovers, 10 trains coming up from the south, another 10 trains going down. If you multiply that by the number of yards, the algorithms, the intelligence needed to make sure machines can do that instead of us, This is crucial and it will bring even more gains.
Network optimization, yard optimization and locomotive driving optimization. When you add those three things, you have huge potential for gains. So as time goes by, we will clearly have machines taking over those decisions and people working as a backup. So these are ongoing projects and huge potentials for longer downtime, 50% of our operations with downtime due to the crossovers and all the issues we have on the lines. Growing our geographies, increasing the number of customers, increasing market share, diversifying cargoes.
Our relationship with our customers is changing. It will have to become even more sophisticated. We have new kinds of cargo. We're going into new geographies. Our investment partnerships are becoming increasingly more present and being discussed.
We have business with trading companies, co ops, the industry itself. Growers, farmers are increasing scale. They also want to do business directly with us. So very broad perspectives that forces us to have a more in-depth understanding of the value chain of each of the products we work with. So it is key that we continue to invest in understanding these customers, getting to know them better, getting to know markets better, having more data, mining that data so that we can have more intelligence, having a more sophisticated pricing policy.
This relationship and value creation in the process of growth together with customers is a need. It's here. It's now. And it's very clearly needed if we want to grow with our customers. And a growing company is a company that will need new competencies, new skills.
This company has a fantastic project. It's very appealing, very attractive to talent. So we are also focusing on people. We're talking about growing, about a need for new skills, different skills and increasing visibility for this new project. We have the opportunity to take part in a transformational project in logistics in Brazil, and that is also transformational for talents who want to develop their skills, another important opportunity for us.
Our ESG agenda is a natural part of our project. We take part in different methodologies. We are CDP participants. We are audited based on our annual metrics. We reduced our emissions by 7% last year.
We're still working hard on that. It's very natural for us. And there is another chapter that makes us very proud, which is safety. Rumo had 0.3 LTIF rates in 2019, and that is the benchmark in the industry. It's also a worldwide benchmark for any industry, for any company.
We heard in the previous presentations about fuel distribution, oil and gas. Rumors, safety figures are a definite benchmark for any industry. And it's interesting to see that companies can only deliver on safety at these levels with a great deal of discipline when executing on their projects and operations. So this figure goes to show how the company has progressed in terms of operating efficiency. This is our guidance.
Three main elements here. 1st, the guidance hasn't changed when compared to last year, same figures. The only difference is that we're starting from 2019 figures. Our CapEx is absorbing investments, heavy pre operation investments in our central network, about BRL 1,000,000,000 that are being absorbed within our guidance, and we haven't added the benefits that will come from our central network to the EBITDA. We will be making more investments.
And when operations are up and running, we shall measure it and then get actual results. So that's our guidance for 2023. In conclusion, once again, safety is our license to operate. It is one of our values. It's part of our everyday life.
We are committed to that cause, and it's an opportunity to change logistics in Brazil. We want to build value in a growing company, a company that grows with its customers, High operating efficiency is what drives our growth because lower costs make us competitive and helps us to grow. And we have an ambitious investment plan and the discipline to invest that capital so that we can provide high return to our shareholders with capital discipline. Thank you. Hi, any questions?
Good morning. Felipe from Credit Suisse. I have a question about sales. If we look 5 years ago, you had to gain market share on trucks going up to Santos going down to Parana gua. You have delivered on that.
Now looking forward, perhaps your new challenge will be bigger than what you had in the last 5 years. And since last year, we've been hearing a lot about commercial differentiation in the different regions of Mato Grosso as a strategy, a pricing strategy, so more price where you're stronger, less where you're not as strong. So what's been happening? What happened last year, for instance? Is that a reality?
Are there any implementation challenges? And how do you see this looking forward? And the BR 163 has no tolls yet, So that has brought some competitiveness to your competitors in the north, perhaps a challenge in the short term, more stability in the long term. So what are your challenges in that sense? And how is the company positioned to change that dynamics?
Because you didn't have any commercial complaints or you weren't focusing on the commercial aspect of things in past 5 years. So now you're going to have to change that. And I have a second question. I'll wait for your answer. Well, you have 3 questions in your first question.
So there has been no change in our sales strategy, in our commercial strategy. It's very clear. I'm talking about the 163,000,000,000. But generally speaking, what we're saying is that in a dynamic market, it is key to have access to more information. So what we're working on is having more market intelligence so that we can have access to more data, so that we can make more informed decisions in terms of politics, policies and regions.
You mentioned Mato Grosso. We had been working on Mato Grosso before, and we have continued to work on that. And over time, we should have access to more information so that we can make better decisions, better informed decisions. No changes there. And as for 163, once it's been paved, it will bring in more competitiveness to the region in the short term.
To me, the 163,000,000 in the short term means having an area that will allow truck drivers to cover 8 trips rather than 4 in the same period, so more competitiveness. In the midterm, we mustn't forget that there were 34,000,000 tons in the north last year. Total capacity is for 40,000,000. So in the short to the midterm, capacity levels are coming very close to their limit. And Mato Grosso is growing.
We know that it will continue to grow. As you've said, there is a concession. There will be new tolls, weighing of trucks and cargo. That is part of the natural concession process on that motorway. And when freight costs go down,
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mean, it goes up or it goes down going up and goes down coming down. We do have a significant fleet. Perhaps it has gone down more going up rather than coming down for the time being. But I have been going to Mato Grosso frequently. Let me share my view for the long term.
Brazil needs both solutions. We have BR 163. We have Arco Norte. And growers, producers, farmers are highly capitalized. They can see both solutions.
Ours still has a lot of room for growth going south. We have 40,000,000 at the moment. There's 100 and €60,000,000 in terms of total capacity. So we'll get our 2nd wind and we want a virtuous circle. Producers will continue to grow.
They will continue to invest. There will be cargo for everyone. I don't see any major changes in our commercial strategy. And
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will drive our efficiency gains, competitiveness gains and market share increases. If you look at our figures for February, you'll see that we've grown more than the market average. That's the data speaking. I have a simpler question about operations. Felipe, at the Port of Santos, do you see any bottlenecks in terms of capacity in the long term?
Not in the short term. You have more capacity in Roan Donapolis. You have the 120 railcar train. You have transshipment. You have other solutions, you'll be more efficient.
But the port of centers, especially on the right margin, how will you be unloading 120 railcar train? And up to how much cargo can the port of Santos take, not only considering the north, the north, south and the Goya's networks where you'll be growing? The port of Santos is crucial, and it's a maximum priority in all of our analysis, all of our assessments and projects. There are many options that we're looking into. Obviously, we're doing all of that internally.
We have plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D, short term investments that are being made on roads, level crossings, so that we have better conditions both on both margins at the Port of Santos. But when we look at the whole growing process, we're looking at investments. We're investing in the Rondonopolis terminal, the north south terminals. We know that those figures will go down in the Sao Paulo network. We'll also start investing investments that have been mapped for the renewal and the port of Santos.
We're looking into tens of projects. We have partners for some of these projects. Anyway, we're looking into all of those options internally. As for bottlenecks, we have 2 to 3 years to increase capacity. So we have room for maneuver.
We have time enough to operate efficiently. And these projects, which are up and running now and some are for the long term, will be going into operation in the mid- to the long term.
Good morning, Bertil. My name is Lucas from the BTG Pactual Bank. I have two questions here. First, you just mentioned that it's Lucas de Rio Verde project. Can you anticipate and tell us what is going to be the structure of this new project?
There is also the Sao Paulo network that has to be concluded. Is this a new bid? Or are you going to fit this in like an authorization that this new law is being discussed at Congress? What would be this new model so that we could you shed some light? The second question, I think, would be interesting to hear from you, Berto.
There's a lot of rumors about coronavirus and how this is going to impact demand. This has been the subject people talk about all the time. So what have you seen changes in demand for soya shipments? Do you think there's going to be a gap in exports? Have you already noticed, for example, that there has been a delay of ships in Santo?
I think I'd like to hear your opinion. Well, says the speaker for Mr. Abreu, well, you mentioned we're going to close the Paulista process. We have a preference for the contract. Now we're going to change the batteries to go into this process of expansion.
I cannot go into details right now, but the alternatives are the ones that you mentioned. Now regarding coronavirus or COVID-nineteen, well, to tell you truthfully, we haven't felt any impact in the soya shipment. If you see the lineup at the Santos port, the lineup at the port is quite robust. We have an enormous amount of soya to be shipped. What we're doing is we are monitoring the crushing of soy in China.
This is we can see what the market is like in China. We have an expectation that China will import 19,000,000 tonnes of the 150,000,000 that the whole world imports. Brazil will participate in 73, 74, very similar to our numbers last year. So in February, when they extended the holidays, you saw crushing go down to 0 and a delay in shipments of the containers in the from the Chinese ports. Well, another way that we could analyze this issue is once more.
Until now, we have not seen any important impact regarding this subject. This is what I can say. The lineup is okay. Soya crushing after the Chinese holidays went back to the original levels. And what the other way of seeing is that there's going to be a drop in GDP when you start putting 1% in the drop of GDP, the impact of this in the consumption of protein.
And the soya, it's like 350,000,000 tonnes, but it's not really relevant this number, is it? So meanwhile, we're keeping an eye. We're controlling, keeping an eye, but we have not felt an impact yet. Another question. My name is Dalmo.
I am from the BNDES Development Bank of Brazil. You talked about the investments of EUR 3 1,000,000,000 a year. So could you give us some detail because one part is recurrent investment and the part of expansion, which should be BRL 2,000,000,000 a year. So could you detail what is the north network, South, East and West? And also what percentage is rolling material, trains?
Well, first of all, I'm going to talk about what is recurrent. We work with BRL 1.1 1,000,000,000 of recurrent CapEx. So when you take the investment until 2023, this is the amount of investment, BRL 1,100,000,000. I can tell you that what is included in the central network is about BRL 700 million that we cost up call operational CapEx, which is to support the structure, to put it on its feet. Now the north of Brazil's network is 90% of expansion CapEx.
So we are still working on 1 terminal with the 120 train that demands important investments in yards. Most of the expansion CapEx is concentrated on this operation. So these are the main numbers. And let us say that the coming 2, 3 years, we can add BRL1 1,000,000,000 in trains. So it follows our guidance more or less.
Right. Well, let us end logistics, and let's go to the 3rd panel. The 3rd panel will talk about natural gas, and we will close with a holding presentation. Thank you very much for your presentation. Good morning, everyone.
It's a pleasure to be here with you to speak about natural gas. My presentation here is going to be a little bit longer than normally because we're going to approach 3 topics, which are on your screen. Each one, I will dedicate 10 minutes. Comgas, our results until here, we're going to talk about the regulatory plan, which has been approved going forward. So I'll speak about the future.
And I would also like to talk about all this transformation that is happening in the gas and power market and what are the opportunities that we can see coming from this movement? And finally, let us, in the 3rd block, talk about our strategy regarding all these opportunities. So let us begin with Comgas company and say what is really important. What is important? I would talk about safety first.
Well, 2019 is a year where once more we had excellent safety results. We have been acknowledged in the last 11 years and last year was not different by ADA, the American Gas Association. We are the global benchmark in safety for the Americas. And once more, in 2019, we hit this number, which called the attention of AGA. So 11 years, we have been receiving this award.
What has been the Kongas journey since Kozan acquires Kongas in 2012? Well, we went through some relevant years. We had important activities. For example, in 2014, we had the delay in our tariff review cycle and this generated a lot of discussion in our meetings. In 2016, this was the year in which we decided to change our strategic repositioning of going to the client.
We repositioned the way of dealing with the client, dealing with the network saturation much more than the construction of a new network. And now we focus a lot more on the customer. We want to focus on the customer that has more volume and more gives us more profitability. And this did give us results, which I will show you in the coming results. 2017 was when KOSAN acquires Shell stake.
This was almost 17%. And 2018 was a year marked by a lot of progress in the elimination of all our legal disputes with Petrobras. And due to this and with this, we were able to renew all our gas supply agreements for another 10 years. 2019 was also a very intense year. We concluded our tariff revision review.
We approved a capital reduction in the amount of BRL 1,500,000,000 BRL 1,500,000,000 and then we did the 2 OPAs for ON and PN. So the tender offer in the end, we ended with Kozan's ownership attaining 99%. During this journey, we distributed BRL 6.3 1,000,000,000 in dividends paid since the acquisition, reducing the BRL 5,000,000,000 in capital reduction. Now speaking more about results. While speaking about results, you see that CapEx last year is also it mirrors the approval of our tariff review.
So as you can see, you will see in the coming in the following slides, our regulatory plan foresee this level of CapEx investments. So in the coming years, we will keep the same level of BRL900,000,000. Like the previous years, we have connected to the customers. In 2019, we connected more with the customers, achieving 17,000 kilometers in our network. The volume we've been recovering from the crisis, the total volume has been growing modestly.
But this part on the graph on the left side that you see that is on your left, which is residential volume, this has been growing consistently and this is the result of repositioning that I just mentioned that we had in 2016. The result of this is that our margin, you can see, if you look at the first slide where there's a white the white part, the margin for residential use has increased. So the last 5 years, we practically doubled our gross level in residential and commercial. Now the middle chart is a growing and a normalized EBITDA always growing going to BRL 2,200,000. Now the leverage is always around onefold EBITDA with a peak last year of 1.4 times, much due to the payment of dividends and capital reduction.
The last chart on the right hand side, we see the net income and dividends payment and this mirrors the reserves in profit of the previous year's 2019. Last year, we paid BRL 2,000,000,000 dividends to the shareholder. Now going forward, what do we have? This is exactly what was approved by the regulatory agency in our regulatory plan for 2024. So what do we have in terms of CapEx?
In the last cycle, investment was almost BRL 2,000,000,000 and next cycle BRL 4,400,000,000. We must remember that due to the delay in the review, the first cycle, the cycle that was previous to 2014 to 2018 was a 4 year cycle. The next one was 6 year cycle. So even so, I think it's a substantial increase of CapEx investments in the next cycles. So if we look at the end of 2024, we imagine that 2,700 customers, 22,000,000 kilometers in network and 5,000,000,000 metric cubic meters in gas in our network.
So this is the regulatory plan that we find approved by the regulatory agency and by the state of Sao Paulo. Now a summary of Comgas. Well, it's a value creation since the acquisition in the late the past 6, 7 years, distributing and paid dividends almost BRL 8,000,000,000 for the shareholders, a consistent growth because we have foreseen or rather that concludes the cycle with more than 2 1,000,000 customers in our base and 70,000 kilometers of network. Proven strategic positioning that has worked and has resulted in operational and financial results that are very consistent and finally, the conclusion of the tariff review cycles, which opens a new road for growth for this concession. Well, so here we close the first block.
Now we're going to talk about opportunities. Let us talk about the transformation of natural gas and power is undergoing, not at the moment, but mainly in the whole world, but mainly here in Brazil. The first graph table on the left, you see the share of gas in the matrix in Energy and Electricity, which is the 2nd line with white and yellow bars. So you can see that around the world, this gas share has increased enormously. And Brazil in Brazil, it has not been different, but we still see that we have a lot of room for growth.
Now what must happen for us to grow? Well, what was the main drive of this transformation in other markets? Well, that's the middle table. In the horizontal axle, we see the gas share in the matrix in each one of those countries represented with little circles with the flags and then the cost of gas in dollars by 1,000,000 of BTU. So European countries, for example, Portugal, Spain, Germany that have a level of competitiveness and the price of natural gas, which is dollars €10 for 1 BTU.
So the share in the energy matrix of these countries is around 20%, 25%. Then there's some extremes where the molecule price $13 per 1,000,000 BTUs with a share of 10, 11, 12 depending on the source of gas participating in the energy matrix. And the other extreme is the U. S. A.
They're far more competitive. And the gas in the energy matrix has been gaining share. It has been expanding year after year. Now what about LNG? Well, the demand has increased and also the cost of LNG, the mobility of LNG is also more and more competitive.
The result of this is that we see a convergence of GNL of LNG in the rest of the world with the most competitive price, which is in the U. S. Today. All these transformations we see happening. What about Brazil?
What do we see happening here? Well, first of all, the net offer of natural gas should also grow. Everything happens in this direction with small variations. What I show you is the net supply. So this is all the net production of natural gas.
So what we see is that all this comes in a growing curve with a perspective of growth mainly focused on the past years beginning in 2026. And with the new gas reserves in the pre salt. This is something that will happen. There's another component in this transformation. We have only one supplier of natural gas, although several produce.
But Petrobras is still the one that purchases all the gas at the well and resells this to the market. So the trend that we're going to see in the coming slides is that this is going to change going forward and that we're going to have multiple and independent suppliers from here onwards. Now only production is not sufficient. We need more infrastructure to make all this production arrive to the continent. So on your left, what do I show you?
I show you the pre salt next production. It is not for the country as in the previous slide. This is the pre salt net production from 2024 to 2,030. The yellow line straight line in the middle is the capacity of the existing capacities, routes 12 and we've added the 3rd route, which will start operating next year. So what do we see?
We see that around 2027, we are going to need another outflow route. So 'twenty seven is going to be the year a little bit before or a little bit later, but forecast show that this will be 2027. On the right hand side of this slide, what do we have? In yellow are the transportation and distribution gas pipelines. It has not grown, but there is an idle capacity.
In gray, we see the growth of the distribution networks. What we see in dark gray is the whole market market without comgas and in pale gray what comgas has grown in the past years. So you've seen that comgas has grown much more than the market, excluding talking about other concession areas excluding Congas and half of the existing network in the country is here in Congas. So what do we see? On the left side of the slide, we see that there is the investment necessity until 20 27.
On the right hand side, an opportunity, in investment opportunity in the coming years. Now it's not only infrastructure that we need. We also need to change our regulation. This is happening. It is happening in the right direction in the energy and the gas industry.
Now why did we show both of them here? Because there's more and more integration between gas and electric energy. So what we are going to see happen in the natural gas is a proxy of what happened 15 years ago in the electric market. So what is happening, for example, in terms of updating in electric power. First of all, the reduction of access to the free market, the person to be totally free market would need a very, very high volume and this is being brought down.
Improvement of the energy auctions, improved bidding process and what we do not have in Brazil is the development of financial products of power and the power market. What do we see? If the 66 giga that was consumed in the 2019, 20 giga went were in the free market. So what do we imagine? If this grows with the growth of the country in the coming 10 years, we might attain 84 giga of consumption.
Now with the reduction, if we add with to the growth according to the GDP, we imagine that the stream market will can be double of 42 giga in average. So there is we will have a free market 10 years from now between 30% that we have now if nothing changes or until 50%. So there is a possibility of growth in the free market. Now what about the new gas market? Well, it's more radical because gas is like 15 years delayed as compared to electric power.
So now we have access to infrastructure. This is just something that is in the beginning. So through a resolution, government resolution, now they are promoting the discussion of access to infrastructure to have a promotion of competitiveness in free market, improved regulation, especially federal regulation with ANP regarding transport pipelines, units of out floor pipelines and also the resolution foresees the integration of power natural gas sectors. So what do we see in terms of volume? Currently, if we look at the gas market consumption in the distributors in 2019, it's 40,000,000 cubic meters a day.
If we use the same accounting system for the GDP, we will come to 43 53. So in 10 years, the gas will evolve as the electric power market. We will have 30% of the market of natural gas 10 years from now and also in the free market. So that's 16,000,000 of cubic meters a day, which is like 1.5 times comgas in the free market. Now the orange circles are the regulations of government regulations.
So this is also going in the right direction, which is the cease and desist agreement. And so and the ANP is the government agency. So what is the picture we have for 2019 or for 20 excuse me, says the speaker, 2029 in terms of potential offer? Well, we have the net pre salt, which is EUR 180,000,000 national net production, which is according to the first graph that I showed you, the first table, the import capacity from Bolivia is 30,000,000,000 cubic meters a day and an existing of the regas thermal capacity of LNG, which we know that for 2019, our demand was between the distributor, another 78 of cubic meters, we have a growth potential of twofold for the coming 10 years. And the natural gas the higher gas price competitiveness, it might sort of open to new investments of all sorts.
First of all, we might have more investment in thermal investment. It will recover the industrial growth. Other energy sources like automotive, natural gas for engines of high performance engines. Attraction of gas incentives is industries such as petrochemicals and chemicals and fertilizers. So yes, there is a potential of a demand creation and a value creation behind all this.
So in summary, what we have seen here is that this gas supply is growing, will continue to be growing. And this incentives is an incentive to competitiveness and also liquidity, market liquidity. Secondly, access guarantee to new investments. This is fundamental. If we did not have active guarantee and if we did not have new investments in infrastructure, there's no way we can connect supply and demand.
Regulatory changes, they are in the right direction and they promote free market and the integration of natural gas and electric power. And finally, the development and the integration between gas and energy stimulates investments and generates competitiveness and this becomes a virtuous cycle. Well, so far, what have we seen? We saw what was Congas and what were the main transformations of this gas and energy. As of now, we're going to look to our strategy.
How are we going to look at all these opportunities? And in an isolated way, I don't not bringing you anything really new, but perhaps the way of saying things is that I think you know that we are looking for an LNG terminal in the city of Santos. We're also making an effort to build another outflow route that will connect this will be the route for. Kozan also bought a seller of electricity of electric power. And there was a recent important factor that was the Comgas.
Cosan contributed to with Comgas to a new company. So we put together all these assets around natural gas and we put all these assets and we contributed all these assets for to make only one company, which is going to call Compass Gas and Energy. This company will be the vehicle of KOSAN to invest in different business opportunities. What are these opportunities? And we're going to look at each one of these opportunities because I think that with this important audience, as important to say what we're going to do and what we're going after, it's important to tell you what we are not going to do, what we're not going to go after.
So it will be very clear our strategy behind all these new businesses. So I would like to go 1 by 1 into these opportunities. So infrastructure. Infrastructure currently, there are 3 routes for outflow. I already said it's Route 1, 2 and 3.
And Route 3 next year will go into operation, 15 natural gas processing plants with route 3 next year and 3 Regas terminals and the capacity of 47 millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters
millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters
millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters millimeters Centimeters and what has already been approved for the coming years according to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which are 3 additional routes, 4, 5 and 6 and 4 Regas terminals, some announced where ours is one of these. What is the characteristic? It is in the Santos area. It has a capacity nominal capacity that was licensed in 14,000,000 cubic meters a day in a value of about BRL 500,000,000. We have also been working on this for some time.
We have forecasting this and analyzing this possibility since 2015. During different phases we had to go through it last year, we had sort of the first license prior to the final concession. We can negotiate contracts for supply for this terminal, this re gasification and also for the terminal. If we're going to be successful by the end of next year, we will begin the construction and begin the year more 2 years in this terminal and it will go into operation.
The second initiative in infrastructure you're aware of is Route 4 with the offshore pipeline connecting presold platforms in the Santos Basin to the continent. This is a licensed capacity for 21,000,000 cubic meters a day with an extension of close to 300 kilometers and an estimated cost of about BRL 8,000,000,000. What we're trying to do here with this so much so that the LNG and the route for terminal investments, the idea is for the to get the gas to the continent. So we won't have to invest 100%. Perhaps our share will be 10%, 5%, 20%.
We're not quite sure yet, but that will definitely be built with our partners. Now distribution. This is a snapshot of distribution in Brazil at the moment, 40,000,000 cubic meters a day, twothree of that in the Southeast, 1 third of the total is Comgas. So we still have a lot of room for growth when it comes to distribution. And when we look at the country as a whole, we see 27 distribution companies like Congas, 36,000 kilometers of distribution network, close to half of that is Comgas and about 4,000,000 customers in the whole country, 2,500,000 of whom are Comgas.
So what is our objective?
In the distribution business at COMPASS, what we will be doing is guaranteeing that COMGas regulatory plan is implemented and it will selectively add a few privatization opportunities that will certainly begin to appear soon in Brazil. Generation. We want to take part in the short opportunities through power auctions and through partners. We don't want to have 100% control of that offering. That will be done through partners as well.
And in terms of opportunities, according to the Mining and Power Ministry, there is a growth in the installed capacity and as a consequence in the consumption of electric power in Brazil over the next 2 years. And in the red chart in the middle, we can see that gas field thermal plants should triple their volume. So what we've been doing is we've been looking into this since 2017. And right now, we're ready to start talking to partners so that from now on, we can start taking part in auctions and testing our competitiveness and our business model. Trading.
On the left hand side is what's been happening in trading. As I told you, in the free market last year, 20 gigs were consumed. Now even if 20 gigs are consumed, 4 times that were traded. So that's 4 0.6. So to consume 20 gigs, that means 89 gigs were traded.
These were bilateral agreements cleared by CCE of 4.6 times more in terms of turnover. So for 2029, we expect to more than double that because the free market will grow and because the needed volumes will be decreased. And looking at other markets, we believe that turnover might go up to 8x. In terms of natural gas, we currently don't have a free market for natural gas. And given all the effort, all the work that's been implemented by the government, by private agents, we imagine that we'll reach 16 cubic meters a day in 2019.
So what is our strategy to tackle that opportunity? Compaq's Comercelizaso that was acquired by KOSAN at the end of last year with a few characteristics. It is the 7th independent trader in the country with close to 900 megs traded in 2019, €1,600,000,000 in gross revenues, number 1 in profits according to Valero Mill this year. And what else does Compas add to us? Experience, they were pioneers in opening the electric power market in Brazil.
Compas was established when the electric power market began to have its first free customers. So it brings in intelligence to help us follow the same path in trading the 1st cubic meter of gas in the free market in Brazil. Compas is already authorized to transport and trade natural gas. That permit is in place, and we're ready to start as soon as regulations and access and pipelines and infrastructure is ready for that to happen. Compas also brings us options, flexibility between gas and power and more importantly, intelligence through integration of gas and electric power customers.
In summary, Compass has an infrastructure model with fixed assets with compensation fees, which gives us access to a competitive molecule. What about our plan for growth? It will be focused on an LNG terminal in Santos and building a 4th outflow route together with partners also getting to the continent incentives. In terms of distribution, our business model is based on regulated assets with network expansion. The biggest investment opportunity is in network expansion.
And the value that generates this integrated power company is an increase in short. We have considerable supply. So If you have a longer short, you'll be better positioned. And the growth will come from Congas' plans implementation as well as other distribution companies. In power generation, we will have power auctions through PPAs in the long term.
Again, in terms of value, an increase in short as well as optionality. As you know, thermal power plants are contracted with 50% of their capacity. So the flexibility is embedded, and it accounts for more than 50%. And the plan for growth will happen through strategic partnerships so that we can take part in this new business. Lastly, the business model in training comes from customer relationship, client relationship and risk management when buying and selling power and natural gas.
The value that comes from that is market intelligence and the integration of gas and power, clients and the diversification of products, both in the electric free market with the potential growth as well as the natural gas market. Just to clarify the corporate restructuring of the company so that there are no doubts, as I told you at the start of my presentation, KOSAN's assets that have anything to do with gas and power have all been contributed to this new company, Compas Gas and Power. So Compas Gas and Power currently controls the Sao Paulo LNG terminal. We have the Route 4 project. We have Comgas.
We have power generation projects and Compas Comerciales Assam. So recapping everything I've said in the past 30 minutes, Comgas has robust and consistent results, and regulatory stability will pave the way for growth and new investments. Gas and power markets are undergoing a transition. Higher supply will bring more competitiveness and liquidity, and all regulatory improvements put forth by the government are on track and in the right direction. KOSAN has a track record.
We have been consistent on results delivery and business transformation. Encompass Gas and Power is a unique combination of assets and talent, with solid cash generation coming from Comgas, high leverage capacity and high growth potential and value creation. That's all from me. And now we have time for questions. Thank you.
Good morning. As usual, I'm here to share the group's financial results with you. I will try to be as brief as possible so that we can finish on time. This has been a record year for us yet again, and that has been our track record over the last few years. Those of you who have been with us for the past 10 years or even longer know that we have consistently sought to improve our results without compromising our other performance metrics.
Year on year, our priority is to continue to deliver better results. And just like in the past 10 years, we have yet another EBITDA record. Let me just point out that this EBITDA includes 1 off impacts as is the case every year. But at the end of the day, our company has one offs consistently. Those of you who have been with us for a while know that one offs are a recurring thing with us.
And our EBITDA in December 2019 was BRL 14,000,000,000, which is a record figure for this group. That does not consider 100% of Raizen's fiscal year because it doesn't end until March, but Raizen's figures should be higher than the figure you see here. The fact is that we've had an exceptional year. The past 10 years have been based on our main objective to build a robust portfolio. We have always focused on diversifying, reducing risk and allocating capital efficiently.
And I think we have been able to achieve our objective in the last few years. And I think this is particularly important right now when we are transitioning from Marcos Luz's leadership at KOSAN. Marcos will be talking about that in more detail. But if we look back, we see that during that time, we've had the biggest number of M and As in the history of this company and that is what allowed us to diversify as much as we did. That is reflected on delivering on our EBITDA consistently based on our guidance, and this year is no exception.
We have our guidance for next year, as you know, both for power and logistics. And it's quite a challenge considering everything that's been happening in the 1st months of the year. And today especially with the impact it's had on the market. So there is some degree of uncertainty, perhaps a high degree of uncertainty, but the the fact that we have been able to put together a portfolio that has been delivering good results in times of volatility and little growth to our shareholders and we are very optimistic. We believe that despite the uncertainty and volatility we've seen so far this year, we have been able to deliver results.
In terms of capital structure, you know that we are a capital allocator. We are constantly trying to allocate capital as best as possible. And to that end, it's important to balance leveraging and the company's equity structure. Over time, we've been able to deleverage the company recurrently and to increase our cash generation. 2019 was a cash generation record.
Our net cash position at all group companies has been a record, which not only reveals substantial delivery of robust results, but also a great position to tackle volatility. The refinancing element for all companies of the group has been substantially solved for 2020. A few specific cases will have to be refunded, but we are feeling very secure in terms of cash and the refinancing for companies this year, which will allow us to continue with our strategy to buy back shares as soon as we have the opportunity to. Return on invested capital because that's the value we'd like to measure in terms of value generation, value creation for our companies. It's been a good year with a degree of growth.
Raizen in 2019 included the operation in Argentina. As you know, the return on investment capital invested capital in Argentina is lower than that in Brazil, but the ROIC is still substantial considering the situation in Brazil right now, not only Brazil, but worldwide. Now if we exclude Argentina, the return on investment capital for Brazil alone would have been higher than it was last year. But it doesn't matter because from now on, we will have a consolidated view of Raizen's results. So Brazil will be completely integrated with Argentina because Argentina is now a full time part of our portfolio.
Now looking at our business lines, Cosan S. A. Has increased its portfolio, reflecting the previous chart from 11% to 12%. Logistics, again reflecting Rumos increased to 9%. And as a consequence, KOSAN Limited return on invested capital has also increased.
This was the biggest buyback year for the company. That's an important objective for us. So we're buying stock to create value. During the different presentations, you will have noticed that we have been focusing on growth and pursuing opportunities to create value within our business. Over the past 10 years, KOSAN had to put together a robust portfolio.
That's why we needed to diversify. Now our focus is no longer as urgently on diversification, which doesn't mean KOSAN won't be making other acquisitions, but it undoubtedly means that our focus in order to grow and build value looking forward will be on our businesses. You heard Nelson's presentation, the last one, showing huge opportunities for integration based on an asset that wasn't even considered to be strategic up until 2012. So as soon as we joined the gas and gas distribution business, we realized that the more value we can build by integrating these assets, the more we will focus on that. So BRL 7,500,000,000 in terms of stock buy, If we compare that to 2016, when we had rumors first follow on, that was BRL 7,000,000,000 invested in the group's stock in the past 3 years.
So there is no doubt that, that is the best possible investment we could have made. We're very happy with our decision to create value to our shareholders, and that continues to be the case for 2020. This is a summary of our stock performance end of February in light of what's been happening over the past few days. And today, that performance will obviously change. I don't know how much it will change relatively because Bovespa has also been affected, but that goes to show how our stock has been performing, especially in the past year.
Well, that was basically it for me. And I will turn it over to Markus Lutz.
Thank you.
Marcelo and Paola asked me to start by giving you an overview and my view of the past 10 years. It's been a fantastic journey. We created a lot of value, and it really came from the inside to the outside. We've created a fantastic company. We've made huge investments and divestments.
We built a portfolio based on a great sugar and ethanol company, logistics, power businesses under a leadership that hasn't changed. Rubens, chairing the Board, which made everything much easier, allowed major decisions, risky decisions to be made during that period. And that culture of always going beyond, always questioning, looking for more And this new project we're launching here today, Compass, Comgas was a great company. It started off well, but everyone started asking questions, huge cash generation, paying out dividends, BRL 3,500,000,000. It would be very natural to just sit on it and let it turn into a cash cow, but that's not our culture.
Our culture is to ask what else can we do? How can we do better? And that culture is what led to the construction of this portfolio, which was built step by step. And when somebody looks in from the outside, it's very hard to see how the culture was built over the years and how people's mindset changed, added knowledge over the years, allowed us to climb one more step within the production chains we were already operating in. So we started in the sugar and ethanol business, but we built around the sugar and ethanol business.
We expanded, and that's how we built our current portfolio. And I think it culminated in this company's climax, which is the ability to be extremely appealing to new talents. The number of CVs and top level professionals that come to us Whenever we launch a new project, whenever we start something new, it's a whole new world. The RUBO project, for instance, is symbolic because we had to set up a team with 80 people, top management people from former LLL, and we kept looking for people. It was very rare when we had to bring somebody in from the outside, and they said no.
The company was going through a tough time, but we had a fantastic project, and we were able to attract all the talents we wanted. We were able to build a team that I think is the best railway team in the world in a few months. People from Canadian Pacific, England Pacific, Kansas City, South everyone is impressed with our team, their energy, how young they are, how professional they are. So we have really been able to build a talent powerhouse, both to attract and retain talent in this company. And I think that is COSAN's main asset because, yes, we do have excellent operating performance, excellent assets, but what keeps the wheels turning and gives us huge power for growth is our human capital, the people we have and our ability to attract new people.
And again, during that time, we never stopped investing. We never stopped believing in Brazil. We have always looked at our investment, considering new opportunities. So at the end of the day, from 2010 to 2019, there were times when we did invest less, but it had to do much more with investment discipline, capital allocation discipline rather than slowing down and thinking that we didn't need new projects or they wouldn't bring us the return we wanted. This is the first time we have all these businesses consolidated.
And our operating excellence based on talent, based on culture, And I always relate these things. Beto did that, and I love the way he put it. Lost time injury frequency is the number of incidents where people miss at least one day's work divided by 1,000,000 of hours worked. So when we say 0 at Rumo, I think 2 at Comgas. Comgas, we're talking about somebody who sprained his ankle on the pavement and couldn't get to work one day.
That is an LTIF, one of the 2. So at the end of the day, we're talking about a huge ability to keep processes going because we can avoid this. We and by doing that, we can avoid time waste, raw material waste and waste in general. And the return to shareholders is a consequence of all that. High quality investments, efficient investments and operational excellence under any circumstances, in any scenario, with all the idiosyncrasies in the company, we still had positive financial results.
This is the same chart as Marcelo showed you, but not broken down by company. And the red line represents the GDP showing they haven't been exactly the best 10 years in Brazil. But even so, we were able to have great results.
Well, now I would like to say a few more words about this portfolio because this is a game. Everything is prepared for a marathon and not for a 50 yard race. All these results have a long term logic. We think a lot about being a valid company to society, a company that adds value. We have an admirable profit, but I think we merit this because we create something that adds value.
And I take a little bit of this value to for my compensation and the rest for my partner, my customer for him to build his own business. So all our businesses have a logic that in the long term, they will have a lot of value as well. So there's nothing here. I mean, we are sort of squeezing out the last drop of the fruit before you discard it because all that's left is the bagasse. Everything is built and done with a lot of value.
Some
things, the value will come more at a longer term. However, everything here has a concept that I consider the main concept for sustainability, which is the current question. Well, can I do the same thing 10 years from now or 20 years from now? Is there something that's going to change dramatically and that will not allow because all my this result because all my customers will go broke or I will not be considered the best partner. But I'm not going to go to the line to line, but this is going to remain online for you, if you're interested.
But everything here creates a lot of added value to all the industries, and this is very important for you. Now this is the graph that I always say, what word defines the strategy of each company and these are the same words as last year. It's just exactly raising energy, although there's so many new things, although there are so many growth dimensions. Musa told you about all the biomass being used, all this trading coming to a final point. But the main buzzword for the rise in power is efficiency.
Efficiency, Francis is here looking at me, but it was what we were after, we sort of tripped on a couple of things, but not in processes, but in sort of how to do things. But we paid a lot of attention to this and the efficiency is coming. It is consistent. And sometimes we make mistakes, but we learn a lot from our mistakes. Now if we talk about calls and fuels, it's very consistent.
If you speak to our partners or our dealers or our peers, we do things the same way with efficiency improving every single way. So this is what brought us to where we are now. This is how we obtained our market share without any hiccups on the way. And this is how we intend to continue and this is how we're going to continue working on the OXXO partnership, which is going to become a very relevant business as well. Now Comgas keeps its strategy as a cash generator, but Comgas in itself appears less in this form and we'll see more and more COMPASS.
COMPASS has COMGas, but it has a more encompassing view than in this segment. Move in its geographical expansion begins more consistent in the countries that we entered less than 1.5 years ago. Sorry, I wasn't supposed to change slides. Here we go. And rumour, rumour is this growth machine.
It's an engine of growth. And from this year onwards, it's going to have the dimension commercial dimension, which is very important for its expansion. But there's a whole world of growth because the market for rumour keeps growing even with the coronavirus crisis. People are investing so that Brazil will be more competitive in agricultural. So there is this dimension and the market share itself that we have to grow, which is very, very relevant.
So speaking of growth, so we have this platform. This platform has important dimensions. Now I will say a little bit of words some words about my transition because I think Luis Enrique is going to have a very relevant footprint in all this. Now Raizen, this green integrated energy company, begins to have a moment, which is totally favorable because the world is rediscussing a series of issues and new routes that were chosen in the past and fuels are different. And this integrated company has the muscles it needs that it didn't have in the past and is going to be very, very important, a big player in this industry.
Now Compass already mentioned here, we are talking here about an enormous minister of our finance minister has mentioned this very frequently, but it's something that we experience in our day to day. We see a change in regulation. We see pre salt beginning to happen and expand. This is going to happen. And there is no midstream.
And this gas will have to be placed in the Brazilian market, but it might be a whole new cosan under Compas, which anchored on the talent and the short term of Congas has an enormous opportunity. Now move, there's a consolidated geographical expansion and we want to have high performance and also keep growing in our performance. And Rumu, well, the whole of Brazil, has to have logistic improvement. And the size that of the market is it brings to the real economy, not only for the big load transporters, but the railway model will be integrated in the sub Brazilian society as a whole. Now this is a process that I would like to highlight because I think I only have 2 more slides.
I would like to say that in these 10 years, my role and Portela that has been Mr. Portela that is also leaving next month and Marcelo, who has been with us, we were far more operational. And the company started creating independence. 3 years or 4 years ago, people started talking here, saying here when we have these meetings, annual ones, that we are sort of portfolio allocation. And it's important as a portfolio manager to say what is KOSAN's view regarding the performance of this portfolio.
So it's not a performance of the shares of KOSAN, but the portfolio that is managed under these companies, 5 companies. So in practice, we did 7.5x the evovespa, which as I say is the reflex of this project. And I always repeat and I continue to repeat this because it's all based on strategic decisions of M and A. But the main merit was to have a talented group, which is, I mean, the winner. And my last slide, I'm going to invite Luis Enrici.
I would like to talk about the headcount and the human capital, and I would like to say something about myself. People say to me, Marcus, why are you leaving the company? Well, in fact, I'm not leaving the company. I'm going to the Board. I will be the Vice President of the Boards of the group.
So I will be close. I will be in the company's day to day. In fact, every single day in the company, because every day I wasn't already present. And in this procedure, well, I would say that this would be sort of the crowning of the project of leaving the operation and let each business become independent with the freedom to find their own routes, their own way and KOSAN be just the controller. But looking closely at the financial models and has its CFOs and the organization, which is the model that was used adopted by Raizen.
And so now I think that Louise will join this and very mature without any solution of continuity, Continue the company as the Chairman, which Rubens continues to be here, and everything will be preserved. So in practice, this group of people will continue being here. And I, well, 10 years, I wouldn't say. But I would say that the past 6 years, I have motivated changes in all these companies. So you've seen of Musa talking about Rod, move.
He's not here because he was with the Vice President of LNG. And you heard Luisenhiki speaking of Congas and he was speaking about Move, Beto that was in Raisin and now he's in Rumo. And now Junior, I mean, it was sort of I did all this. I mean, I could never thinking of coherency. I couldn't say I am I'm not included in all this.
No, this is a natural process. And internally, it comes naturally that this that my chair will be replaced by somebody else and I don't have to go anywhere. It's sort of like musical chairs. I go to the Board and I will be just as close to the company And obviously, we'll see what's going to happen. But this group of executives, which is one of the main assets, top assets of our company, there will be a refreshment, sort of a refreshing ideas with new experiences and new information and more knowledge to become more and more robust.
Now Louise, I would like to call you to say a few words and then we will go to the Q and A. Well, thank you very much everyone. My first achievement was not to shake hands already. And Marco only gave his foot contact, not handshakes anymore. So Marcos really gave a good idea and covered everything about this fantastic portfolio that we have of people, customer and partners.
I think that this is the main slogan and the main drive of this company, and it's a challenge to follow Marco's footsteps. I think he was right in saying that this company only increases because we are all working together. So in the past years, nobody in top management ever left the company. We just added new talents with companies that went through an M and A and or partners. We like people.
We like working with people. We have no difficulty in having partnerships. Look at our portfolio. We have no issue with new cultures, with people that do things better or going to other countries. It's what Philip is creating to attract people in other countries and make this part of our culture and not to be ashamed of doing things that other people do.
And we're not the company that says it's either our way or no way. That is not what we think. We think the opposite. We have to include the talents that we were able to bring to our group and this is a challenge. I will continue working with Marcelo, Rita that is replacing Portela as of next month.
Continue with the team that is always growing with independence in each company because with a portfolio this size can only be managed by people that know how to operate the business. We have excellent examples. Look at Theo from Argentina. He was at Raizen and he worked at Shell and now he's working at Raizen Argentina. And the whole Argentina portfolio, he is integrating with Brazil.
So this is what we have been doing and will continue. So just a couple of things here that I think is important. Well, it's funny to talk about macro environment, but we believe where we are we are in favor of low interest rates, an increase in GDP and also we have experienced other crises. So this is not going to cause any it's not going to shake us And the leadership of our President of our Chairman of the Board is going to help us in our continued growth in the coming months years. Marco said, but I think we have to repeat this 10 times.
We are on the good side of all the changes that are happening here in Brazil, the disinvestment of Petrobras, radical change of Petrobras in the whole energy and power because they were the only player in Brazil. And so they we built thermal electric power plants. We developed the plants and the mills necessary and in electric power and natural gas. So all these movements and no longer having the monopoly of Petrobras having a free market with distribution increasing, renewable platforms, which is fantastic. New bio this year, nobody believed that a country like ours would ever be that we would be also included in the pricing of carbon ahead of other economies.
So the energy transformation is enormous and new managers and other managers as well that are positioned with regarding sustainability, the future of the planet and the capacity of being responsible reducing our emissions. Dozens of companies having public commitments regarding carbon footprint. The majority, they don't even know how they're going to get there, but they have to reduce their carbon. They have to have a carbon footprint and they will see like companies like ours because we're going in this direction with more efficiency. We lubricate better, we transport better, we reduce the footprint of emissions and we have ethanol.
So we are on the right side of the change and with a platform that is already ready. So the turnaround challenge has gone by and now we can concentrate on the new opportunities that are coming up and position ourselves. Others are still waiting to do their housekeeping and their turnaround. We are the have the right assets in an industry that is changing, transforming and coming into our direction. So using the same graph that Marcos showed you, this is a footprint of continuity.
I'm not going say anything that is going to change the portfolio or the direction. No, we're just a guarantee that we're going to deliver growth like all the CEOs of each company said in their own businesses. The portfolio is positioned for a growth, and we are going to give an important leap in growth. And we're going to focus on headcount, on people, in culture. Of course, we have evolved a lot, but we still have important opportunities.
We are still not a diverse company on the top. We have to increase diversity in the top of the company. We have been growing in the base, the trainees. Just to give you an example regarding gender, we now have many areas with more than 50% of women, including trainees. And so these people have a capacity of a career growth in coming here to present the KOSAN day with new businesses.
This is a challenge. So we have a continuous culture agenda and of people and we are going to dedicate a lot of energy and time on this. And so all the issues that have to do with the ST are fundamental. You saw that Beto talked about this and Marcos as well and Paola will talk about this. We're going to be drilling down and the chain is a market truth and it's what you investors want.
We always focus on you as well. The logo of the Khozan culture is an e. You want efficiency, profitability and responsibility and accountability, and we are prepared to this. Everything we do has this footprint. And I will just use this to give you some examples.
I think you've already seen this graph a couple of times, but we're going to continue talking about this because this is our mantra. Safety is our mantra, and we can only get this through discipline, leadership and courage. And once more, all the business have a result that we have to be very proud of this and the challenges to continue like this. When we look at the different businesses individually, Raizen, they contribute relevantly in Brazil when we talk about the emissions footprint, particularly especially in cities like Sao Paulo, Belo, Horizonte and Curitiba, where you can see the blue skies. And as an industry, we are launching a campaign, bring back my blue skies, because the biggest metropolis, the biggest cities around the world don't have blue skies anymore.
Go to Shanghai, Manila, Delhi and Bangkok, it's never a clear blue day. So we have a great opportunity and Raizen is coming to show you that it is possible to reduce the carbon footprint and 1st generation ethanol and with the entry of biogas that can replace biodiesel and also the sugarcane ethanol. We're going to be more competitive and more competitive with gasoline and corn ethanol. We already have more efficient cars. Rumo, well, the company, Rumo, with it takes 100 of trucks from the roads and lorries from the roads, we're going to increase efficiency and going into general low transport, which is containers, which is a much bigger market and with enormous benefits regarding urban mobility and in fact, emission reduction.
So we have eliminated so many lorries and trucks from the roads and this will continue. Now let's look at Move. Move has removed a lot of plastic in the world and the plastic challenge is total in all businesses, not only the ones that we participate here, but the society as a whole. But besides this move, we'll improve energy efficiency, productivity of all equipments and we'll also bring the reduction of the carbon footprint. In COMGas, the replacement of LNG and others like for burning and also reduced transport.
Transport is something that we have to take out cars from the streets and roll and we're talking about the biggest city and the biggest urban concentration of our country. Every network expansion of Comgas and a new industrial customer is also a reduction in the footprint. So if you look at our portfolio as a whole, we are positioned in everything that generates efficiency, the carbon footprint and everything that will make our country, our society because of move and raising a better world. And adding who do we have in the leadership in the board, I'm not going to go into each line, but you can see that there are so many people or that depend on the company with a lot of experience in the different areas so that we can have profound discussions and opinions, valid opinions to help us take the best decisions. Marcelo is our guardian controlling our risk.
And it's important with a different point of view, we take better decisions. If we all think the same way, we run enormous risks of doing things wrong. Now we have on our in the board of all the companies and the holding, they have different opinions, act different, but everybody respects each other and they know how to work together and listen to the other. It seems that some people don't listen and they do what they want. Now in this case, we have a series of board members, executives and members of the boards who have different backgrounds and perspectives.
Some people have different nationalities. So this permits them to have a vision of the world and the country always using risk management and the best capital allocation possible. And in wrapping up is consistency. We're going to continue with consistency. I will give continuity to everything that has been done in the past years.
Of course, each person has a different style and we each want a better evolution. We want a better company. So we cannot just be criticizing what was not done like you wanted, but to go forward and to go to a higher level of more efficiency, better risk management and a better discipline and allocated capital and making this machine of people and talents to continue growing to attract good talents because we have a strong culture that will generate results, but we will learn with the evolution of the business and the country.
Okay. Somebody's got a question already. Andre Rasi from Itau BBA. My question has to do with capital allocation. You've done a great job in the last decade.
Now looking forward, there are many new projects, natural gas, the new routes, the thermal power stations, Raizen, you have the refineries. How are you thinking about funding for that capital allocation? What are your priorities in terms of projects? And considering the next 2 years, how do you see the origination of more funds to do all of that? I'll start.
Marcelo can finish. We've been saying for a while that our businesses have their own capital models. So, KOSAN won't be allocating capital. There's no need for KOSAN to allocate capital to any of these projects. The project Nelson presented, He said a few times, there are partners in most of those projects.
Route 4, you add up everything they produce, and our share is 200%, 300%. So there will be outside capital coming in as equity into those projects into most of those projects. In the refinery project, Luis can answer your question. But in practice, it will be funded by Raizen Within the assumptions that we shareholders have for leveraging and not going over it, Raizen has to find a format that will allow it to make those investments without going over those criteria. Over the last few years, the priority has been the group's capital structure to have as much room as possible for companies to fund themselves to fund their growth projects.
That is the priority. Companies should be able to fund their own growth projects. What we have been doing at KOSEN is to deleverage the company over time. We have an excellent cash position. Our net debt is much lower than it has been historically.
So we are accumulating cash, paying out dividends at a level that has never been done before. So companies will be funding their own growth. They will continue to make investments, whether it be in the refinery operation or compass integration, they will be looking after it themselves. Then funds will go up in the form of dividends. KOSAN will serve its debt.
It probably won't need that cash anymore and it will continue to pay out dividends. If KOSAN has to make any investments, it will use its own funds. Now you'll remember that in 2007, when CCC went public, the 10:one structure was used so that we could deal with the growth in the group's diversification, which happened but was much bigger than we thought. And we didn't have to issue a single CZZ share. So we have always prioritized the debt so that we can improve our balance sheet.
And if there is no alternative, as was the case in ruble, we raised funds, and that will continue to be our priority. You can also take that from assets. You won't have a majority shareholding, so you can raise funds from the assets just based on their characteristics. That's not a problem. Luis has a question.
Luis Carvalho from UBS. I don't know if my question is to Luiz or to Luiz, but over the last few years, we've been seeing the acquisitions you've mentioned. And the company's capital structure wasn't seen as ideal by the market because of the discount of 40%, 50% between Cizan 3 and CCC. So that discount is no longer there recently. And in the last 3 or 4 kozan days, we discussed what the next capital structure step would be and how to simplify that structure.
You've been talking about listing the assets. But with the last buyback you did at CCC, please correct me if I'm wrong, but Cezanne III and CCC have a consolidated share. So you're comfortable enough to take the next step, I think. Could you share a little bit more with us about what the next steps would be in that sense? And a second quick question.
How do you what do you think about being the controller shareholder or not of certain assets? Is there a standard? You might be a minority shareholder of a refinery question, Luis. But again, nothing has changed. Our buyback strategy is a way to create value at very low risks, and it naturally simplifies the capital structure, the ownership structure.
Now the question is timing. When might that happen? And the answer I can give you to that question is, I can't give you an answer because in practice, you know what the regulation is, I can't. That will only happen when we can make a formal announcement. So that's the strategy.
The end strategy of the ownership structure is to have a single holding, still the same strategy you've heard in the last 5 years. We are definitely much closer to that now than we were 5 years ago. It's much easier to do that now. The time is coming. It will come soon, but it's a journey, and we haven't got there yet.
As for your second question, perhaps Luis can answer it. I'll just comment on it briefly. We need to have enough of a share to make sure that the quality of culture, assets, decision making is compatible with our initial guidance. Control can be majority control can be the guarantee, but sometimes it's not like in the case of OXXO. That's somebody who knows a lot about what we're doing.
So they have half of it. They are cocontrollers with Raizen. And that's more than enough for us given the trust that we've got from our interactions with him. My name is Gabrielle Francisco from XP Investments, right at the back here. My question is to Nelson, and I have a follow-up on Luisa's comment.
So about gas, you've created the structure between Cezanne III and Comgas. What can we expect in terms of capital structure? Will Comgas future dividends be used to fund those four initiatives? Or if not, what part would be going to the holding to season 3 or CZZ?
And
what will you be focusing on first at Compas given that opportunities will be taking place at different times? So we have a thermal power plant that was more quickly because that's the most severe structurally short in Brazil. But you have to have a firm supply of gas. So what would be your strategy if that precedes PGM or route? And in terms of corporate structure, Luis and Marcos, often we've heard about this simplification.
But today, you've been focusing on complementing it, which is the value of Kozan 3. One thing offsets the other. So how do you see this complementarity? Do you think it has more value than the restructuring? Okay.
I'll start. In terms of Compas's capital structure, obviously, Comgas, below Compas, even having paid out all dividends, the dividends we've been paying out, will continue to generate cash and therefore generate dividends. And Comgas dividends will be paid out now to Compass and not to Kosen. We haven't issued a dividends policy yet. So a part of that can be reinvested in other businesses of the new company, which is a vehicle for gas and power investments called Compas.
Now there are other funding sources. We could leverage it. Compas's leveraging is very, very low, suboptimal, I'd say. So my direct answer to your question is we don't have a dividends policy, and we can use part of those dividends paid out by Compas to Comgas to Comgas to reinvest. As for our priorities, well, that will depend on what happens in the market.
When we talk about routes, route 4 is a project that we started a few years ago. And we still need 2 to 3 licensing years plus 2 to 3 construction years before it can be up and running. As we said before, there is no direct capital allocation, not substantial anyway, from Compaq. It's a minority share, as we've said before. There will be other opportunities, thermal power stations, auctions.
We're ready to take part in those and to understand how the thermal power station auctions work. That doesn't mean we'll be going to that auction or other auctions with a huge appetite to leave as winners of the PPA. But there will be a learning curve so that over the next few years, we can be positioned with partners that are familiar with that segment and then come out as the winners. That will depend on the types of opportunities that will appear in the market first. We do not believe that Compass's growth project will compromise our ability to pay out dividends.
All the studies we've conducted show that market sources will provide the resources needed for compacts to grow without having to pay out less dividends to KOSAN. That needs to be made clear. We will continue to receive dividends from Compass. It's about and simplification and complementarity, both things. Hi, Isabela Cimonato, Bank of America.
I
have a couple of questions. First, about Compas and maybe it involves Raizen. Many of your expansion projects have had regulatory tailwinds, not only at the state level, but also at the federal level. So how would you address the risk of a change in the administration 2 years from now? How might that hinder your mid- to long term agendas if there's an unfavorable regulatory change?
And the second question, especially to Marcelo, is looking at CCC's debt after all the buybacks, especially after Cezanne III's last buyback? Is it the same level of debt we used to see as Cezanne 3 used to have? Because that will bring some inefficiencies. And other than dividends at Khozan 3, is there anything else to address that CZG balance? Isabela, actually, CTC's debt was required because it was the only way to fund the buyback process.
You remember why the only reason that dividend exists is because we bought stock. It's not enough obviously. But we will solve that in time. So KOSAN has been deleveraging. We leveraged Comgas last year, this year and we will not stop the process.
We will keep the debt in the operationals. But when you change the ownership structure, you will improve the efficiency the inefficiency you see at CCC. Last question. As to the regulation, Isabela, you saw in my presentation, we started these projects during the previous administration. And so when we look at the investment plan, we have to consider the long run and past experiences, future plan.
Regulation is a technical thing. And often, it doesn't depend on administrations. Now speaking specifically about the power and the gas industries, often there are differences in speeches during interviews, but we tend to look at the technical side of publications. The new gas market, the TCC, the cease and desist agreement between Petrobras and KADE. So we look at things technically, and regulations are progressing.
They're going where they should be going. So it has been evolving despite the administration that is in power. My name is Soraya. I'm from Rodia. Now the industry needs competitiveness.
So when we see a slide like you showed where gas is more expensive in Brazil than in Europe where lots of companies have plants. We're very happy to see that you're building a portfolio with different initiatives so that we can have access to a cheaper gas, whether it be via Comgas in the captive How long it will take for that to happen? Because even though regulatory issues are moving forward, access to infrastructure is still a complex issue. So how do you see the time it will take to have access to that infrastructure so all of that can happen before we have a new gas market. The entire regulatory framework that has been built for those changes we've shared with you today, a large part of that came from the federal government through the cease and desist agreement that was signed between Kari and Petrobras.
So access to infrastructure right now, outflow pipelines, gas treatment, gas transportation, access to that infrastructure has been set forth in the TCC agreement. If you look at the TCC, the cease and desist agreement, the timing set forth that is before the end of 2021. So we hope that along the next few months or over the next couple of years, that will come to pass. Obviously, we've been working on trying to bring that forward. So from our part, we want things to happen before then.
Now whether we'll be able to exert any kind of influence to make sure it happens earlier, we'll see over the next few months. But what the cease and desist TCC agreement says is by the end of 2021. So unfortunately, we only have time for one more question, and then we'll have to go. We've heard a few questions about that, but it's important because of the official appearance of Compas. All other business units have a pro growth agenda, more growth over the next few years when compared to what we've seen happen in the last few years.
So the best way to understand the dividend flow, whether we'll have more debt increased capital. Do you reiterate that 1.5 to 2 net debt to EBITDA at Suzanne 3? No, 2 to 2.5 Tiago, 2 to 2.5 Tiago. Okay, that changes things a bit. Yes, that's our target, 2 to 2.5 We are already on target and the trend is for more deleveraging.
If we look at our forecast in our last strategic plan, we will be deleveraging. And that's the challenge companies need to continue to generate enough projects because we don't want to have inefficient capital structure. That's not desirable because that hasn't had an impact on our ability to pay out dividends, to recapitalize. They will generate opportunities, so we have the best opportunities to get to close to 3%. You just heard during that presentation that even if we can have a lower return on invested capital, it is still substantially better in terms of value creation when compared to a higher interest rate scenario.
So looking 2 years down the line to create growth opportunities at company so that it doesn't compromise our ability to pay out dividends and so that we can continue to grow. Otherwise, we won't be doing our job. Yes, just a slight correction. Our target has always been 2 times, never 1.5 to 2. We always said when it gets to 1.5, it's too low.
When we get to 2.5, it's too high. So the target has always been 2. And it's a paradigm because now with the 12 to 13 CDI, you want to be closer to 1.5. But with current low interest rates, as low as they are, the economic advantage and the value creation for shareholders by leveraging a bit more is much higher, especially when you're based on stable businesses to generate cash. So no risk to have liquidity problems.
So but again, target is 2x.
All
right. Great chat. But unfortunately, we have to come to an end because we've gone over our time. Thanks, everyone. Thanks to the teams for working so hard and putting these presentations and this event together.
And I'll see you at the 11th event.