I think we can already begin. Now we're gonna have our presentation of the earnings in the first quarter. In paper and packaging. We will start off with the results. The public earnings call is in a webinar format, where participants have their mics and videos off. The questions can be submitted by Q&A on the chat platform, or we can also open up your mic to submit a question if requested. This meeting is also going to have simultaneous translation into English. You can select the option and transition through sign language. The webinar is gonna be recorded and provided on both on the website. Thank you all for your presence. We're gonna start off concentrating on our performance for the first quarter.
Our first quarter was characterized by some events that impacted our results. First, our scheduled shutdown for machine five. We have an investment which is XI. We had the shutdown of this machine to be able to deploy all of the new equipment and refurbishing in the machine. This is the end of first quarter, this was complete. It was an absolute success, the machine is already operational ever since the beginning of March. There's been a curve on the ramp-up that is above what we planned. We have this one-off event where there was an impact by BRL 20.7 million on the EBITDA. We also had the annual inspection of the boiler.
That's also where we had a shutdown on machine 1 for a certain period. We had the impact of machine 1 and 12,600 tons. This considered this event of BRL 20.7 million. We also had a technical issue in the transformer, our turbo generator 4, that impacted our own energy. With this we had to buy more energy in the market, and that impacted the EBITDA negatively by BRL 6.1 million. That wasn't expected. It wasn't in our plan. It was a technical issue. We've already handled this, and it was a critical situation that went on. It's already been addressed, and the expectation is that this transfer will get back to operating in May. Now, next month.
We'll also have the effect of this technical issue in the second quarter. Here you have a QR code if you wanna have more information on machine five. There's a video where our team talks about everything that was done, and it actually shows the paper machine. Having said that, we closed the first quarter with a net revenue of BRL 409 million and an adjusted EBITDA of BRL 113.57 million. A free cash flow in the last 12 months of 19.8%. Here, of course, considering the ongoing and discontinued operations, because in the first quarter we still had the Rausen operation that was discontinued and that includes this for the second quarter of last year.
With this you complete the 12 months to calculate this indicator. If you look at the comparisons of the net revenue here on the left side, we have the ongoing and discontinued operations. Over here you can see the best comparison because it's clean from the operation we had in the second quarter of last year. When it comes to official comparisons quarter-over-quarter in the ongoing operation and discontinued operation, that dropped 1.5%. The factors that were impacting this are especially the shutdown of the machine five. If you only look at the ongoing operations, then you have this issue of the 1Q last year with the Rausen operation.
We had a drop of 3.1% in the net revenue, and then we entered the fourth quarter with 1.5%. When you look at the EBITDA, our adjusted EBITDA had a drop of 17.1% in the ongoing and discontinued operations compared to the first quarter, 25% and 16.7% in the ongoing operation. As I mentioned, that allows for better comparison. In regards to the fourth quarter, the EBITDA dropped 11.3%. In the ongoing operation it dropped 12%. The EBITDA margin, even with the shutdown and these events we had in the first quarter, the EBITDA margin was at 27.7% of the net revenue. Very healthy margin. We had the bridge.
If we did not have the impact of the first quarter, our EBITDA would have been BRL 140.2 million, which would add to 2.4% in regards to the first quarter. That, that takes you to the BRL 20.6 million. We've been performing slightly above what we had in the first quarter last year. Analyzing the net income we have ongoing and discontinued operations and, In the continued operations, the net income we're at a drop of 66.9% in the first quarter of 2026, and compared to the first quarter of 2025. It's important to mention that we had some events. These events, we had some bigger impacts than what we had in the first quarter of 2026.
We had, even the first quarter of 26, this dropped a bit. Let's say you have the variation in the fair value of the biological assets. When you compare this to the fourth quarter, it's pretty stable. Now if you look at it without the biological assets, then we've had a drop due to the shutdown on the machines, considering these events in the first quarter, and due to the comparison with the fourth quarter of 25. In the ongoing operation, the explanation is the numbers change a bit because you had the results of the Rausen operation in the first quarter of 25 that we don't have. This is, actually, disconsidered. With this, you have the profit that dropped 68.1%.
The recurring net income, which is without the biological assets, dropped 62.5% due to this shutdown, as already mentioned. Now looking at the segment of packages for paper. Paper which gathers the statistical data in the sector discloses, in the first quarter 2026, there was a total issuance of 2.5% higher than the first quarter of 2025 and 3.5% below the fourth quarter of 2025. In sq m, the numbers are very similar, 2.3%, compared to last quarter of last year. Here I wanna call your attention, because our number was lower, as you'll see in the next slide. We've dropped actually 3.8% in regards to the first quarter of 2025.
Our performance was worse than in the market. When you compare this to the fourth quarter, it's stable. You can see this dropped 3.5, and we kept this volume stable. This represented a reduction in our comparison, demonstrating that in the first quarter of 2026 we've been keeping up a pace that's better. We're going to talk about this up ahead because this has been a strategy actually to consider to value profitability above volume, but there's also a limit. We start looking at volumes more, and that's where we already start seeing this in the first quarter in the comparison with the fourth quarter, with numbers that are better than the rest of the market.
Although the first quarter of last year had been behind a bit. In the comparison per square meter, 2.2% below. Also for the same reasons, considering this because that measures the width, so we lose less in square meters. When you compare with the fourth quarter, we actually gained volume, considering that our width was smaller than the rest of the average in the market. The average prices here, we can see in regards to the first quarter last year, the average price of packaging actually grew 5.5%.
It was pretty stable, so we had stability in this number of price where the market, well, we don't have price data in the market because it's not disclosed, but the market had a drop actually in the volumes in regards to the fourth quarter, and we had stability. These are all positive signs that we are already facing a volume pace that is better than the market. In square meters our price grew 3.9 and dropped 1% in the comparison with the fourth quarter. Moving on, moving on to the paper for packaging sector. We transferred most of this to our paper for our packaging plants and part of this result to the market. The total sale dropped 10.8%, 29,000 tons against 32,000.
In the comparison with the fourth quarter, it dropped 3.7. Here you also have an effect of the shutdown in the machine of the Gaia XI, which is why you have this main impact. When it comes to prices, we had a drop of 1.5. 1.7 in the comparison with the fourth quarter. Basically, this drop here is related to lower dollar as we export part of this and that pushed the average price downwards. There was no modification when it comes to price in BRL for our sales.
For the rigid packaging, which is basically the sale of the smaller part here of the pulp of the paper, that's where we had stability in regards to the first quarter last year, and it dropped 3.6 in regards to the fourth quarter. Here, this is really influenced by the price of the scraps. On the scraps, the market data where you can see the statistics for the segment. The price dropped, and it dropped 5.2 in regards to the fourth quarter. We have a pretty good supply in the market where we've seen this drop in the prices and now we already have stability.
We have multiple events going on, we don't notice a pressure for an increase, and we also haven't noticed space for drops, additional relevant drops. Our understanding at this moment is stability for these scraps from now on. Our price has been following the market data 10.9 and 5.1 in this quarter and the fourth quarter. Now moving on to the financial front, our leverage is at 2.11x .
It went up a little bit in regards to the fourth quarter of 2025 due to the increase of the net debt that we've had through the CapEx that we performed, and also due to the drop in the EBITDA in the last 12 months, because the EBITDA in the first quarter this year was actually smaller than the first quarter last year. We had a higher drop and, since this is circumstantial, the leverage will tend to be at a downward trend from now on. We closed the quarter with BRL 760 million in cash, BRL 1.61 billion. All of our debt is in local currency, only 1% in foreign currency, 20% in the short term, 80% in the long term.
The average cost of our debt is at 13.9. It's below CDI in the mix. We can have some lines that are cheaper. The average cost of the debt. There's a favorable carryover cost, right? The moment in Brazil is quite delicate and because of the interest rates we've been experiencing. The balance sheet of the companies are also impacted. We're kind of experiencing a stress test for our financial management policy as you all know. We have a leverage target of up to 2.5x . There's a reason for this. Due to calculations and studies we had, we're above 2.5x.
We get close to 3, we already get into a situation where when the interest cycle is high, you'll have a situation where cash generation is the same as the cash consumption. We were to look at the free cash flow, that's why we control the leverage to keep it low, so we can go through periods with high interest cycles that we're experiencing. What we see here is our financial management policy working. We have liquidity, we have controlled leverage, and we've been performing operationally well. We have a capital structure that can really handle the situation we're going through in Brazil. Interest dropped yesterday, 0.35. It went to 14.5. It's still extremely high, and it's been high for way too long. I think this is a caution point.
This is under control for us. When we look at the market as a whole, it's very critical because high interest rates are already very complex and bad. Imagine if this keeps up for longer, right? I think that brings in an additional impact of complexity that we must consider. For us, everything's kind of under order, but it's also for the economy as a whole. It kind of depends on the economy. We have a ROIC of 12.3%. In the first quarter, it's 13.1% spread. This is not a WACC. It's data that allows everyone to calculate the WACC. Using their own capital. An investor can use their own capital.
Our target is always to consider the ROIC above the WACC. There's the standard levels here of WACC that we can use. As each investor has their own, we disclose it like this. Some important data would be that even in the cycle of high interest, if we calculate the WACC here, you're going to see that our ROIC has been above the WACC. When we look at this, we can still navigate above this. Even in a high interest scenario, the company's still been able to deliver return on capital that's quite adequate. On dividends, in the first quarter, we paid BRL 9,583,000 in dividends, 0.04.
In the last 12 months, we had BRL 169 million for dividends, and dividends yield of 8.1%. We also have a policy for distribution of dividends, where we distribute 25% minimum. Then at the end of the year, leverage is about below 2.5, we distribute more, 35%. That represents a payout of over 50% profit. That allows us to return capital to investors and still retain the other 50% of the profit to reinvest. For this exercise of 25, we released this in our General Shareholders Meeting, and we released the distribution of BRL 0.25 per share, and that's a lot. That represents 25% of the profit of 2025, and that's closing the year below 0.5% leverage.
For the first quarter of 2025, as policy, that's also gonna be considered with the distribution of the minimum dividend, which is equivalent to BRL 0.02 per share. When it comes to investments, yeah, the complete investments. Then you have Gaia IV. Then you have the restart of the São Luiz. It's already under operation. The new Santa Catarina printer is also. Here this is actually inverted, 90% here, and 73 is machine five, and that's already 90% complete. Our machine five is at 73%. These are the amounts that we invested initially. That's one of the reasons why the net debt went up.
Just recording this in the first quarter, we kept our A rating in a survey with the stakeholders. This is a survey we perform to understand the perception of the communities and the stakeholders over the company. We're really happy because we're the only publicly held company in the industrial segment that was able to get all the certifications granted by the institution. We care for stakeholders, we care for cost. All four of these categories we were able to achieve. We're the only industrial company that where we see this recognition coming through this research. Besides this, we had two awards, one on the sustainability and the other one is on the decarbonization strategy, certified by the Ministry of Environment.
We also integrated the index, that is the industrial companies in the capital markets. We'll have on the M ay 28th, we'll have our Irani Day. We're gonna talk about our history. We're gonna talk about everything we've been doing and about our future, our plans and how we plan to execute our strategy from now on. This is gonna be a really interesting event. If you can keep up, you'll have a live transmission through YouTube. On this day, we're gonna be celebrating 85 years. We hope to count on your presence. Our, our IR team everyone already knows. To understand this, we wanna make each investor understand the business model and really see how we can work on this.
What's the view of the market and help us make decisions. Everyone can also decide on if they're gonna invest in the company or not and feel comfortable in this way. The market has dynamics. We wanna be very transparent with this, everyone's more comfortable as they decide to invest in Irani. I think that's it. Now we can move on to Q&A. I'll pass this on to André.
Great. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you. I'm gonna conduct the questions here, following the order that the questions were sent on chat, starting off by Eduardo Menezes.
A question on the technical occurrence on the transformer of the TG4, which led to the acquisition of energy blocks in the free market. There is a contingency plan to guarantee the operation of the assets, power assets, considering that it represents a high cost per minute. If there is a lack of availability, the cost of a transformation tends to be residual considering the impact caused by a technical problem. Is it part of the company's plan to increase reliability of the electric infrastructure in the plants? Thank you. Henrique, can you answer this one?
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for this question. I knew it would come.
First, just to clarify, on our side, all of our electrical parts in the plant are completely automated and modern, so you can feel comfortable in regards to this. When we talk about a transformer, this transformer has a useful life cycle of 30 years. This specific transformer that caused the problem, for 2.5 years it's been functioning with us and we bought this with SEG. All of our transformers have always been coming from big manufacturers. The chances of a transformer like this having some problem is less than 1%. It's kinda like if you were to win the lottery, right? Very rarely do companies apply these kind of reserve transformers, right? Because they normally last 30 years.
When you think about extra spare parts in the factory as a whole, we have a criteria, we have a formula for this. I'm not gonna get into details. We do have a lot of spare parts for the factory to operate as a whole. For transformers in this case, that's not a traditional spare part, right? Because it's very difficult for us to have this and that problems with it. Unfortunately, we were caused, we were impacted negatively by this, right? It happened. It's very rare, but it happened with us. Soon it'll be back to operation. Well, great. I think very low chances of happening what happened. Although there is an impact of relevance, you'll have the energy to fire up, right?
You have a financial cost of that, of course. The fact is the chances of something happening like this are very low. You wouldn't justify having a reserve in a situation like this where there's such a low risk probability.
Now moving on to the next question. I think that non-recurring events are part of any company. The question left is, the perspectives you had for the year 2026, have they been adjusted after the results in the first quarter? If so, what are the new interpretations that you could disclose to the market?
Yeah. I'm gonna say that we don't disclose the guidance. That's the first point. That's really important.
I wanna reinforce that the understanding of how what was non-recurring was the technical failure in the transformer of the generator tube. The impact in the EBITDA in this quarter, though very significant, was the shutdown of the machine, right? This was planned and prepared. It's already part of the planning for the year. Since we've been working with productivities higher than before, there is this planning. You can see that this is compensated when it comes to expectations in the next quarters. In regards to the technical failures, there's no way out. There's an impact and that's it. Life goes on. Yeah, but it doesn't. The impact is very little.
We have over BRL 500 million in EBITDA, and the impact in the first quarter was BRL 6 million, a bit more than the second quarter. It's not even a methodological issue.
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And so-
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I'm gonna see if I can go over the main questions here of the people that have their hands raised. Then we'll pass the word on to them. Then after I'll continue to keep reading this.
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Guilherme Nippes from XP.
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Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?
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Thanks for the opportunity, Odivan and André. I have two questions here. The first one is going to follow the price of paper. In the last quarter, you saw a pretty positive trajectory and we've seen a drop in the price of rigid paper and flexible paper. Normally you always pass along the inflation, right? My question is more like a one-off. If you could maybe think about what has gone on in the market and especially with the rigid paper here, if maybe this could pressure packaging. I wanted to understand this, confirm this understanding, right? My second question is in line with that graph that you mentioned in regards to the shutdowns and the cost of the transformer. My question here is looking ahead.
When you think about the second quarter, can we think of the shutdown impact as reduced or zero? In regards to TG4, I understood that the impact was in March, and that would be solved till May. If there's any other negative impact in regards to the second quarter and there would be a second semester in a normalized scenario. I wanted to make sure this understanding is correct. Thank you.
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Just the first quarter, the shutdowns are on the first quarter. The second quarter will be clean from this impact, and there's gonna be the residual of TG4 that it's gonna impact a bit. I think that's pretty much it. The second semester as well is normally a bit stronger. Yes, after we can talk about this a little bit more, with the inflation compensation measures, and we've been working on some campaigns in the market to increase prices to be able to recover the inflation losses that we've been suffering with the diesel prices and other factors, right? Everyone's been watching this closely, and we've been, you know, looking into what we can do.
On paper, if you could just talk about the prices, et cetera.
Well, I'll just add on what appears in the price of the flexible packaging, especially with the dollar issue, we haven't reduced the price. Adding on to Odivan's point here. In some paper lines, we've already been transferring the price from the May 1, that's already underway to recover all of the inflation that took place in that period. The same is valid for rigid paper. We don't export almost anything, the effect of this could just to keep up with the market. Once again, considering the inflationary impact, we've also seen an impact in paper prices for packaging for paper, right, to recover the inflation of what's going on now in this year. Any other points?
No, that's exactly it. Thank you. Very clear.
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Very good. Now moving on, we have our next hands raised. We have Marcelo. Good morning.
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Hey, guys.
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And, uh-
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We had two points that are a little bit different than what we had in our models, and we would like to get some more color from you guys on these. First, the costs. We saw costs were a little higher than our estimates. I wanted to understand if this can be 100% connected to the shutdown factor and the problem with the transformer or if there's any other factor that could be impacting this inflation that Odivan mentioned. The second point, we saw a CapEx that was reasonably high. If you normalize and annualize this number, it'll also be above what we had as an estimate for the year. How should we consider this CapEx curve up ahead? Should this be smoothed out? It's a quarter with a bigger payment.
If you'd allow me one last point here, which is more geared to Ochu Farms. Our stocks have been suffering a bit in the last few days. What you've seen. Also if could maybe impact the company from accelerating the share buyback program. I'm gonna start off, then you can contribute on the cost. We still haven't seen structured changes in this cost. The first quarter is covered by the shutdown. We have no other events impacting this as much that would justify a modification in the cost level. Even the inflation you mentioned happens, but not to the point of having, like, a structural change, right? Scraps are really well behaved, so we have no other event that would justify, like, a structural modification in cost from now on.
In regards to this, it's pretty much all related to the shutdown. The same answer is applicable to CapEx. The CapEx had this shutdown, and that was because of the execution investments and having to pay multiple suppliers in this period that we had. It's also not a number that can be perennial for the rest of the year. Consider that as a basis for the rest of the year, right? Because it's an isolated impact from the first quarter. Our CapEx has a level that we have seen for the maintenance that is not going to have any modifications in regards to 2026. It will be kept at the same level. Nothing different on this end.
Then about the price of our shares, what we've been seeing is in the last few weeks, we had a lot of the foreign investors selling, and now they started selling. They had bought a bunch, and now they've started selling. We see the numbers, and we estimate that almost half of the negotiations and the tradings in the last weeks were from foreign investors. It's a movement we've seen in the market as a whole, and if you look at the numbers, we've also seen that foreign investors that came in this period strongly left recently. We're exposed to the same situation that's been impacting the price of our stock. On the buyback program, that's something we always analyze because I think the moment now is a moment of caution.
If this drops and it makes sense for shareholders, we're going to balance with this, right? We also look at the levels of interest, our leverage, and it's pretty much controlled, but we don't wanna pressure our leverage because of this. There are many other factors you have to consider. If the price actually justifies it, and that this generates value for shareholders, we're gonna buy back, right? With this critical view, trying to optimize returns, right? The variation of the stock up or down is for the business itself, right? It's natural in periods where it peaks or drops, and we're not gonna move because of this.
What makes us move is when we see big opportunities that really make sense for our shareholders. I hope that's clear, Marcelo.
Very clear. Thank you, guys, so much. Thank you, Odivan, and all of the team.
All right. Now moving on. Our next question is from Edgar Souza. Edgar, please, you may. Edgar from Itaú.
Good morning, André, Odivan, and everyone. How's it going? We have two points here that we wanted to understand. First, a little more of an understanding, and I'm sorry to insist on this, but I wanted to look at cost. If we deduct this impact from the shutdown that's already expected and maybe a non-expected event that's more of a surprise, let's say, how would you view this dynamic of input cost pressure, right?
Maybe for scraps, you're kind of on a dropping trend. Is there anything else in a dropping trend to pass on to the result for still? Is there any effect of higher fuel costs that should be considered or any other inflationary pressure of chemicals or any other elements we can foresee? That's a point we wanted to understand. The second point, Odivan, you've been really very vocal in regards to this more challenging scenario than what the market had been seeing when it comes to the interest rates in Brazil. I think this is not news to anyone. We still have this war in between that maybe led to a reduction in interest rates of maybe a little slower than what was expected by the team.
What's the impact of this in your growth plan? We saw that Gaia is practically complete with all of its projects. We have a few things missing only. There's a big plan for growth as well, which is the Plano Maca. That should probably be phased out. I wanted to hear from you guys how this growth situation is and maybe a Maca phasing, if there's any kind of market or specific project in Maca that you see in a more positive manner that could maybe come before. If you could talk about this a little bit, I think it would be really interesting.
Great. Thank you, Edgar. This helps you and me in keeping the mark. I think for scrap, things are pretty stable. We have no room for dropping.
I think, We've reached stability now maybe in the second quarter, there's carryover cost if you consider the entire quarter. It's also not that significant, though. Yes, there's always a cost pressure. We've had freight, as you can see, an increase in prices, international freight as well, that we've seen as well as pressure and also in the fuel line that, of course, impacts other inputs. When you have an increase in freight and diesel, you impact everything. Nothing is absurdly relevant here. But there's this inflationary environment, inflation has already been headed upwards. But we had one view, one trend, all of a sudden things changed, right? We had a little more pressure, right?
Is there any other points, Henrique and Lindomar, that you felt besides what I just mentioned?
No, that's exactly it. Odivan, if I can, on this point, just a follow-up point here. Henrique mentioned that, what are the conversations for prices, in cardboard papers, right? We know that these are normally in the second semester, but is there already some kind of impact, for the team that we can observe in the second quarter? Can I help you here? Well, I think there's two positive factors. Besides the positive expectations we've had in regards to volumes, Odivan mentioned that there was a drop in the first quarter, but we're optimistic with the recovery in the volumes in the next months. Of course, without destroying value, and that's an important point we wanna highlight.
We're on this campaign for readjustments and due to the inflationary environment, besides the issues you've been mentioning when it comes to freight increases, right? That's already happening now in the fuel business from the month of May and June. This should be happening, right? Great. Is that clear?
Yes, very clear. Thank you, Lindomar.
Now, on the other point, on the level of interest and our decisions, this is gonna be the topic for the investor day, Edgar. We're gonna approach this in our next cycle of investments in the company. I can't talk about anything here because first of all, this information is not public yet. It's also a topic that in less than a month will be in this event, right?
I think that we should see each other there, and we'll talk about this a lot.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks, guys. We'll see each other there.
Thank you, Edgar. Great, guys. Now I'm gonna pass the phone to Pedro Melo from Citibank. Good morning, Pedro.
Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay. How's it going? Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is about the normalization in volumes in Q2. The strategy of value over volume. We wanna understand that if you compare with last year, this should be maybe at a level that is similar to the recovery strategy in each of the segments. The second question is still about costs.
I wanted to follow up on the question as to understand the margin guidance for Q2, sorry, considering possible effects of the war and the conflict in Iran. If this impact should be half of what this is, and also the recovery in volumes and price adjustments in part of the portfolio that you guys mentioned, to be able to compensate the costs. To summarize, normalization of volumes and this issue with the margin guidance here.
All right. Do you want to answer that one, Lindomar? We had talked about packaging specifically.
Yeah. When it comes to volume, we've already been talking about this repositioning to fill in our capacities, which are relatively small. We don't have that much idle capacity.
The small idle capacity we have in both plants, we should already be filling out in the next months. Volumes are pretty much equated, as I mentioned. With this, it's just about this movement right now, from the month of May onwards.
Actually, we've always been very careful with this issue of the value over volume. You've probably seen this. We have a very strong approach of return on invested capital. Maybe we're the companies that are most concerned about this in this sector. This generates some challenges. One of the challenges is to profitabilize the assets we have. This, that is, we're very skillful in the sales, R&D, innovation, relationship with customers, so that we can have margins that are adequate for the product and the service that we sell.
Now, we always prioritize the margins and price, and we actually lost a bit of this volume. We've been performing a little less in the market, and that demonstrates that the strategy also has limits, right? As Lindomar mentioned, we also need to look at volumes, right? We're always gonna look at. We lost very little volume, but it wasn't that relevant. We've been working on this strategy to search for these volumes, right? With the adequate margins, right? The correct customers and the correct products that can, through innovation and R&D, we can really redesign the project and bring in adequate margins for our business that compensate our assets and our invested capital. Our strategy is to always have close attention when it comes to pricing margin.
Volume is an important component, and we must watch and ensure that we don't lose this to the point where we perform this analysis, right? Of the percentage of volume that we can lose to not lose margins and so on, right? This trade-off is done daily, and it's always very favorable considering the value, right? The margins, et cetera. That's what we've been doing. Now, I think that's it. Any other points, Pedro, that you mentioned? Well, I think the margins of the first quarter are not a parameter, but we've been navigating with margins about 30%. We haven't seen any reason for this to change from now on.
We also don't see any relevant impacts from the wars or political environment, et cetera, external events in this margin and this earning level, right? I think, our business is historically very resilient, and this is always really focused on the food sector. The only barometer that we have that varies a little bit is so scraps, and we have land, we have the forest, we have our own energy, and so it's practically self-sustainable. Our productive integrated chain provides a lot of stability, right? We don't see these kind of, we don't have exposure to currency, and so it's always gonna be very stable. In the top line, it's also stable considering this in most of our packaging, and that gives us a lot of resilience.
What impacts the results are these events, right? Like a shutdown and for maintenance. Or even when you have another case of like what happened in TG4. I hope that sounds good.
Thank you, Odivan.
Great. Now getting back to the questions that came in in writing. Bruno Almeida asks about buying back stock, I think that was already answered in Guilherme Nippes' question. Another question is about Mathias Wagner. "Hi, Odivan team. Thanks for this space. Could you talk about if you feel there's a slowdown in the demand due to interest, even operating in sectors that are typically resilient, and if this has been impacting the pace of expansion in the company.
Do you see this fragile competition and space maybe for recovering market share? Do you wanna talk about that, Lindomar, then I can add on?
The issue with the corrugated cardboard business, not only because of the interest, also due to the war. Our main leads have been directing to other markets, so we haven't seen any impact in this sense. We also haven't seen fragility to intervene more in the market share when it comes to this. I don't know if, Henrique, you could add on to this maybe.
Well, in regards to our stock, the demand is pretty stable. I haven't seen any loss of volume in the near horizon. The market has stability. There's actually perspectives of maybe in the second half heating up a bit, as we've seen in the last few years. Actually, the PO sector has been demonstrating some important growth, growing 2.5%. Yeah. The demand's really healthy, I'd say. The interest issue, when you look at the top line, we don't notice it as much, right? It's food. If you bought to eat, they maybe switch a more expensive product for a cheaper one, they still have to eat, right? For the interest, that's important, right? How are the companies doing, right, when it comes to capital structure?
Yes, there are companies that have higher debts. We haven't seen any, like, big disruptions. Maybe smaller companies that are maybe not on our radar that could have some kind of an issue, so we take advantage of this space to capture some shares. I think the sector is really well-organized and maybe even healthier than what it was like. Companies are better, actually. The sector is pretty healthy from a demand perspective, and we don't see, like, any companies where interest could be getting in the way that could motivate some more drastic strategic movement in this sense.
Okay, we can move on, André.
Great. Well, Enzo Rodriguez asked about the status of the Gaia platform.
As I mentioned, we're gonna talk about this on the Investor Day. If you could keep up there, Enzo. We're going to present our plans in regards to Maca and the future. I think it's going to be the right moment to give you guys updates on that. We can't mention any of this because there's nothing public besides what was already disclosed. We're going to have this event on the 28th, and then we're going to be able to approach this topic. Everyone is invited to keep up with this.
Perfect. Now Pedro Melo, we've already opened up his mic, so we'll move on to the next question. Then we have Eduardo Menezes. He had two questions here, actually. The first one is if there's any responsibility from a contractor perspective from the manufacturer with the supplier of TG4? Henrique?
Well, no, there isn't. No one does this in Brazil from the equipment we buy. There's no way to charge the period where we lost profits.
The next question, the constant share sales on behalf of the controller, wouldn't that maybe represent some pessimism in the horizon for who should be believing in it?
Actually, the controller continues to keep almost 60% of the company. Possible sales, I haven't even kept up with this recently. They're related to the financial organization of the group as a whole, right? You have financial commitments in the group that must be considered and also the performing one-off sales, or maybe when the group has like you buy 1 company and sell another. That's normal.
The controller has a very relevant stake, and he believes in the company more than anyone else, right? He's been around for over 3 decades, and he will remain in the company and continue to care for the company with his belief in the business and his love for the business.
All right. Finally, any other participants that maybe asked if we could share this percentage of the prices at the beginning of May, and I'm going to say no. We can't share this. We can't talk about future results and give numbers of future results. That's not allowed. I think we answered all of the questions. No other questions? Okay. We can end this, and I want to invite you all to the Irani Day.
We're gonna have the live transmission, and we're gonna be talking about the future as well a lot. We wanna wait for all of you guys there. Thank you, guys, and have a great day. Bye. Thank you.