Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for waiting. Welcome to São Martinho S.A. conference call to discuss the results of the 3rd quarter of the 2022/2023 harvest. Today with us, we have Mr. Felipe Vicchiato, CFO and Investor Relations Officer, and Alessandro Soares, New Businesses and Investor Relations Manager. The audio and the slides of this call are being broadcast simultaneously on the Internet at saomartinho.com.br/ir. We would like to inform you that participants will be in listen-only mode during the company presentation. Afterwards, we will start a Q&A session for investors and analysts only when further instructions will be given. Should you need assistance during the conference, please press star zero to reach the operator. We would like to inform that some information contained in this conference may be projections or forward-looking statements.
As such, they are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may lead these expectations not to materialize or be substantially different from what was expected. Now, we would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Felipe Vicchiato, who will start the presentation. Thank you. Mr. Felipe.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for participating in this call about the third quarter of 2022/2023 crop year. Let's go straight to page number 4 for the highlights of the quarter. Stable net revenue quarter-on-quarter, BRL 1.5 billion, resulting from a combination of a higher price of sugar and lower price of ethanol. Mainly because of the tax situation of ethanol that favored local market prices. Our EBITDA, you can see third quarter, BRL 774 million, a drop of 13% because of the production cost increases and COGS.
Basically, it has to do with diesel and labor. Adjusted EBIT, 35.8% drop. Mainly because of the depreciation of investments made last year that had a major impact on the results of this year. The company net cash income dropping 33%, going to BRL 505 million. Also due to increase in financial expenses, I will be getting into details about that and the MTM, mark-to-market derivatives were the main items, and the position is CDI, such as in the last quarter. We have another part of receivables of Copersucar being posted to our results. It was close to BRL 100 million from the viewpoint of volume. The TR equivalent, we are talking about a growth of 5%.
On the lower part of the slide, on the left, we have the net recommended cash income of the company, a normalized one. We go from BRL 430 million. There was a negative impact of IFRS 16 of BRL 59 million. Basically, this is the different from what you take from the COGS in order to round it when you put the financial expenses of leasing. Besides BRL 44 million, the mark-to-market of biological assets because of the drop in prices of ethanol with the cost of the formation of the sugarcane field. In this quarter, we had BRL 44 million a negative difference, BRL 127 million negative when we talk about income tax to our result and the judicial deposit because of the IAA.
The MTM of these derivatives, as I said before, with the financial result of the company, BRL 233 million, with an impact on the net income. A BRL 103 million were due to derivatives that are acknowledged or 10, 15-year derivatives that have to be MTM. As it's opened quite a lot in the semester, there was a negative impact. The debt of the company is mainly in CDIs, but we do have the situation that I have already referred to. We are talking about a net income in the quarter of BRL 519 million. With the effect of the precatório or the court-ordered debt security.
This is very healthy for a quarter, in spite of all the impact that we had about the lower prices of ethanol in the domestic market, such as was the case in the last quarter. We were able to increase our exports of ethanol. 79,000 cubic meters of ethanol exported, and this helped us minimize the issue of the average price of ethanol in the local market, in the domestic market. If you have any questions about that, I can answer during the Q&A. We have the cash costs here. The cash costs for the company includes the whole maintenance CapEx that is acknowledged via depreciation afterwards, and our cash cost for the nine months of the year-to-date for sugar, it was BRL 1,732, a 22% increase.
For ethanol, BRL 2,570 per cubic meter with an increase of 21%. If we compare to the last quarter, the cash cost was more or less in line with what we reported last quarter. For the end of the year-to-date, we are talking about cash cost of BRL 1,800 for the full year and a cash cost of ethanol around BRL 2,600, 1% higher than the year-to-date 9 months. We have a weighted average here. In the allocation of the 4th quarter, we had a higher CapEx than the average of the 3 previous quarters. The main drivers of the cash cost for this year, diesel going up 51%.
It has never been posted with the PIS/COFINS, which means that the effect, practical effect on the cost year-on-year is higher than when we think about the diesel at the pump. Fertilizers, 42%. Industrial inputs, 16%. These are the major offenders, so to say, that drove our cash cost about 20%. I would like to remind you that the cash cost is a unit cash cost. There is a lower dilution of fixed cost because if you produce 3%, 4% less than last year, per unit, you have this impact. As of the next harvest, when we go back to a higher position because of a higher yield, then we will have the opposite effect of the operating leverage, which is the reduction of the unit cost of ethanol and sugar.
On the next slide, we talk about the company indebtedness. We closed December 2022 with a net debt of BRL 3.9 billion, of which we have here this DVI, an indicator of 1.24, very comfortable. On the lower left, you have the major figures that led this net debt to go up. We are talking basically about the working capital, BRL 1.8 billion. We have to separate into two parts of working capital, BRL 300 million related to the corn harvest. The working capital of the corn itself, which is in the warehouses, I have already started to crush part of the corn at Boa Vista, I will be using this over time.
The remainder is basically because the cost of inputs went up very cheaply, and I still have a lack of sugar, so to say, this working capital goes up, and it will decrease over time. Because of the PIS/COFINS exemption for ethanol, we accumulated the receivables and part of the ICMS. With the return of the taxes, we will be decreasing this in the next few quarters. The company had BRL 2.7 billion at the close, a short-term debt of BRL 1.2 billion, a very comfortable situation, and the average term of the debt, 5.4 years. On the next slide, we have our hedge position. Open for the 2022, 2023 and 2023, 2024. For 2022, we hedged something close to 349 million tons of sugar at an average price of 2,500 per ton.
For the next harvest, the average price will be BRL 2,300 per ton. This amount is equivalent to 50%, 60% our own sugarcane, but it will depend on the mix of the next harvest. The more I do, the lower it gets, closer to 50%. Conditioning the current conditions of prices for sugar and ethanol, we expect to have a more sugar harvest for next year, and it will be more close to 50%. There is an important point here that what posted to the result of this quarter, the volume of sugar that we posted this quarter, had an average price of sugar which was much lower than the volume that we will have with the next quarter.
Regarding the commercial strategy of carrying over more sugar for the March screens, the average price of our own sugar was quite low comparatively. We did the math here. We had, for the year, about BRL 1,900 per ton, and sugar for the next quarter, BRL 2,500. During the next quarter, we expect to have the margin of sugar at a much better level than the year-to-date 9 months.
I would like to remind you that this price so far is a result of the hedge that we did over time, and this is the reason why we've sold our sugar at a lower price than the one that I used to do regarding Consecana, given the price of sugar as it continues, continued to go up gradually in the last 18 months for the reason that are very well known to all of you. These are my initial remarks, thank you very much.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. We will start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. To ask a question, please press star one. Our first question comes from Matthew Bechtel, UBS.
Good afternoon. Felipe, thank you for the presentation. I would like to know your expectation about the next harvest. Will it be in line with the estimates of the market, 8% to 10% of total product and the TRS cost? We expect a drop around 10%, 15% or 20% with the higher dilution that we saw at the beginning of 2023. I have another question. I would like to know about ethanol prices, and you have been positioning this differently to focus on your side. What about your talks between the industry and the government regarding the PIS/COFINS taxes and the impact on future prices? The export premiums, what can we expect? They were quite high in 2022, but we start to see a drop in these premiums. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. We have quite a lot of questions, so if I forget to answer one of them, let me know. Regarding the company expectation, yield... We will have a higher degree of certainty about the quarter. What I can tell you so far is that up to now, the rainfall was quite good and higher than the historical average. January was very good as well, as well as this number, and our sugarcane fields are going very well because of the variations that we have and the technology that we apply. Our estimate, I don't know what will be the average for the Center-South. I cannot tell you that, but we expect to have a high yield, higher than the Center-South. We have made many investments in our fields. Eight to 10% for the Center-South sounds very aggressive to me.
One thing is if you talk about 8% to 10% of the harvested area, but for the total area, I think it's a little bit too much, because maybe you will harvest less, maybe you will plant more, maybe the yield of the harvest will be higher, so you have to check the math. If it were 8% to 10% Center-South, we would imagine that the sugar market would have a surplus much higher than it has today. Around 3 million tons. It would be more than that. The rain is okay. The fields are okay, very good. February, we still have rain. For March seems to have a very good estimate for rainfall and also for planting.
Our planting is lagging behind a little bit, and we might still have this in April, and we will start the harvest in the 2nd or 3rd week of April because of that. There is a slight delay. Apparently we will have a much better year regarding yield. Having a better yield, and it is only natural for us to have a decrease in our fixed costs in the same proportion. Our thinking is that we will have a nominal cost when you talk about the diesel, labor, fertilizers, everything included, nominal in Villa equal to this year, given the fact that this year we had a very high cost. Nominally, it would be at the same magnitude of this year. If I am able to improve my yield 15%, my unit cost will be dropping 5, and so on and so forth.
Two years ago, or three years ago, we were saying that this would be the year when we would reach 24 million. We made all efforts to get there, and with the best possible variety of sugarcane to be harvested. Let's see this. Let's wait and see, and we're doing 20. To reach 24, it could take a few years still, but we will expect a very good response. The export premium. Let me check the data here. Far, for the nine months year-to-date, 243,000 cubic meters in exports at an average price, export price of BRL 3,841 per cubic meter, already net of all the costs.
This price was in the order of magnitude of 15% to 20% higher than the domestic market, looking at the average for the nine months. In the last quarter, I will still have about 60,000 to 80,000 for exports cubic meters. Anhydrous. At a slightly lower price, BRL 3.5, BRL 3.3, already net of taxes. I have a very small exposure of ethanol to the domestic market. We didn't suffer because of the drop in prices. For the next year, I cannot really tell you yet what the premium will be vis-à-vis the domestic market, but I believe that it will be smaller because we believe that PIS and COFINS will come back at the beginning of March.
As the government has already indicated in late December, early January, postponing for a couple of months for the PIS and COFINS for gasoline and ethanol. We expect this to come back, and this would mean a lower premium in exports or maybe non-premium for exports. The ethanol would be basically all channeled to the domestic market. We did a great job this year, and we are talking about something close to 300,000 cubic meters. We have conquered a very important market in Europe. We have big clients there, and if there is a premium, of course, we will continue to cater to this market two years. Decreasing our exposure to the domestic market. It's very difficult to talk about the level of premiums and. They will probably be concentrated between May and June. Thank you very much.
Guilherme Palhares, Bank of America.
The nominal flat cost year-on-year, you talked about that, but maybe you could talk about the cost for April. Which are the major offenders or the vectors of a lower cost for next year? We believe the fertilizers will have a lower price, and there is a trend of using less of this product per hectare. How do you see this? The second question, in relation to the remaining CapEx of the plant, how much do you still have to invest?
If you look at the costs, you will see that the highest cost is sugarcane with 38%. The cost of the sugarcane is outside this number of stability. It could go up or down depending on the Consecana. When I say that nominally the cost will be similar, I'm talking about the cost on which we have a higher control because sugarcane, it will depend on Consecana. Labor represents around 20%. SG&A follows inflation. Maybe slightly higher than inflation are freight expenses, and they play a major part because we have a relevant harvest of grains, for instance, and this could have an impact. Fertilizers and pesticides, 15%, and these are dropping 20% to 25%. The industrial inputs are dropping as well. Okay.
I look at the total plus the gain of efficiency that I have of consuming less diesel per machine and using less fertilizers and having a more precision agriculture, so to say, the lower consumption of fertilizers and the higher technology and efficiency gains, together with the drop in pesticides and industrial inputs and fertilizers, all that together will bring the costs down. Labor and freight might offset this trend. If I am able to get a higher yield, this will lead to a lower unit cost per hectare or per cubic meter or whatever indicator. The corn CapEx. Let me check here. The most recent information that I have here we published. The estimate is that in this harvest, I will be spending about BRL 300 million, BRL 320 million, and so far I have spent BRL 270 million.
I still have BRL 50 million to spend in corn, and this should drop in the second quarter, and in cogeneration, about BRL 80 million remaining. This is the bulk of our CapEx. The mill is ready, the plant is ready, and UTE will be ready in August and will be started up in August. The contract itself, well, the sale will happen in 2025, according to our contract. This year we have 4 or 5 months of harvest, and the next year we will be selling spot, unfortunately, because the spot price is very low. As of 2025, this is when I have my full contract in operation for corn.
Would it be fair to say that São Martinho will be applying less fertilizers in the next harvest? Not necessarily.
Not necessarily. It will depend on the sugarcane. If the rainfall is okay, I need less of these products. The issue of fertilizers depends on the yield and the level of the precision agriculture in the area that I'm harvesting. Not necessarily. The decision about fertilizers is not based on prices, it is based on the response of the sugarcane. In each area, if I place more tons of fertilizers, if the response will make sense, okay, I will do it. Otherwise, I will not do it. The point is, when I say nominal total costs will stay stable, it's not because the amount will be low. It will be a combination of lower prices.
Gabriel Barra, Citi.
Can you hear me? I have two questions, Felipe. The first one has to do with hedge. If you take the hedged volume for the net crop 2023, 2024, about 45%-50%, depending on the mix and the production. Given the moment that we are in and given the prices, could we expect a higher level than this one? How do you see the company strategy for sugar hedge? Also regarding the price for the 2023, 2024 harvest, maybe you are holding back your hedge because of sugar prices. Could you get into details about that, please? The second point has to do with Boa Vista and corn ethanol. You recently started to operate. In the last calls and talks, you talked about 16% to 20% IRR.
Do you think this level of return is still possible with the price situation that you see now and the situation of ethanol in Brazil? The third question about capital allocation. What about your pipeline besides corn ethanol? With higher interest rates and the price policy in Brazil, what are your next projects? Where you see you're sitting outside, and maybe you will return this capital to shareholders instead of applying or investing in new projects.
Thank you very much. I will start with sugar. Well, sugar has been going up consistently and surprisingly so. This-- what helped the market was the Indian harvest, with a drop in production beside the situation in India as well. Regarding the mix, which is more towards ethanol because of the adoption of the flex cars in the Indian fleet. These 2 factors are helping sugar here to $0.215, and we didn't think it would be possible for the March screen. We have been hedging for discipline reasons and also for risk control reasons.
With the corn ethanol plant for sugar next year, I'm saying that we will still have 60% ethanol and 40% sugar for next year because I have a mill in Goiás, I have a plant in Goiás that crushes 7.5 million tons of sugarcane. If I do the maximum of sugar here, I will be doing 40% sugar. It's important to hedge so that I have a good material that's hedged at a comfortable level. Trying to be more assertive in answering your question, we have not accelerated our hedge. The level of December continues at the same level. January and February, we didn't do because of what happened in India and also for logistics reasons in Brazil. In mid-June, July, we expect to have at least 70% already done at a reasonable price.
Your second question has to do with Boa Vista. UBV Boa Vista, we have not started production, full production of corn. We still don't have the authorization of ANP to do that. They visited our plant last week, and they are evaluating to give us the authorization. We are on a test phase. In test, we are operating quite well, but we are still testing, and we are waiting for the authorization of ANP in order to do that, in order to have full production. They went there on February 8 or 9, and we have to wait for their final report and their final authorization. As I'm talking about harvest, the April-March harvest will be operated full. We have not started this yet because we have to wait for the final authorization of ANP.
As far as returns are concerned, Gabriel, well, the level is more or less the same, and it will depend on the dynamics, price dynamics regarding gasoline. If PIS and COFINS come back, and this is what we believe will happen, the return, the IRR will be going back to the same level that we had before. If we have a return of the PIS/COFINS and the PGT, we will be talking about 20%-25%. If it does not stay forever, this will be close to the cost of capital. Regarding the allocation for projects for the next few years, concluding UTE and the corn ethanol plant, we do not have anything very important in our pipeline. We only have marginal projects that are still being studied, but they are small projects.
With probably the return that we have will be remunerating our shareholders. There is a project for biomethane that I have already talked about, and we are getting close to the technical evaluation to be submitted to the board between March and April. This is just a BRL 200 million project, so it's not very relevant, such as was the case of or an ethanol plant. Let's say the situation regarding interest rates change and the PIS and COFINS situation, of course, we will continue to evaluate. For instance, the corn plant can double in size very quickly at UTE using the cogeneration of the plant itself. We will be evaluating this, but it will depend.
As the CapEx in the second phase is much higher than the first phase, as you know that the co- capital today is very different from the first phase. We had inflation plus 3, and now it is inflation plus 7 or 8. Recently, we made the bank's inflation plus 7. Comparing to the first phase, well, it is inflation plus 3 vis-à-vis inflation plus 7. To increase your CapEx and have a higher cost of capital, of course, you cannot have the minimum internal rate of return. The company cash will be going to our shareholders in terms of remuneration. Thank you.
Thiago Duarte, BTG Pactual.
Good afternoon, everybody. I would like to touch on three points. Going back to the better prices of ethanol for export. Could you please help us do the math? The highest price so far in this harvest was very clear. Of course it helps your growth margins, your contribution margins, but it also increases your selling expenses. Could you break down this increase in selling expenses, how much has to do with your ethanol going to exports?
What I would like to know is the unit margin of the export ethanol considering the higher selling expenses. The second question, you talked about that very quickly. You talked about the approval by ANP. But the base case is that you will be able to crush 500,000 tons in 2023/2024. Or do you have a ramp up horizon that we should consider given that we are already in February and for the next harvest, the impact would be felt in full. Lastly, regarding the internal rate of return for the corn ethanol plant.
Considering the corn price that you have already paid and that is already in your inventory, we have the impression that the margin of the corn ethanol would be higher than the one that you have been achieving in sugar ethanol considering the maintenance CapEx. Is this correct? The corn ethanol unit margin, is it higher than the sugarcane ethanol?
Thiago, thank you very much for the question. My freight cost for ethanol for export so far, we are on 9 months 2023, we are talking about BRL 50 million more. I would say BRL 10 per cubic meter approximately. The price that I referred to about the export ethanol for the 9-month year-to-date was BRL 3,841 per cubic meter. The price is already net of selling expenses, export expenses. Okay?
It is posted to my gross revenue. It is already net of selling expenses. I can give you the quarter-on-quarter figures, BRL 3,800 in imports. The average between those was BRL 3.4. BRL 3,400, 2/3 domestic market, 1/3 export for the year to date, 9 months. Regarding the corn mill, the base case is that for the full harvest, we do 500,000 tons. If we had talked at the beginning of January, I might have given you a little bit more. As we had a slight delay, the base case is 500,000. The EBITDA margin came vis-a-vis corn. It will really depend on the efficiency of my sugarcane fields in the next year. What I can tell you today is that the price of corn up today, BRL 60, for instance, approximately.
To be honest, I can sell 1,500 per ton. My unit cost per cubic meter of corn is about BRL 1,900 per cubic meter. I'm placing this as a reduction factor. I'm talking about the DDGS. 2,600. When you look at all the mills, all the plants, and you look at the sugar mills as well, you can see that corn is much cheaper in this case. Thank you very much.
Lucas Ferreira, J.P. Morgan.
Felipe, good afternoon. I have a more qualitative question. When you talk about price policy, we have already seen this in the past up to 2017. What about your strategic planning? How do you deal with the possibility of having the prices of gasoline going up and then drop very steeply?
What do you have on the table to do differently from the options you had in the past? You have already talked about exports. Do you believe you will be able to have a bigger portfolio of clients abroad and other certifications? Do you see other players doing the same, or do you believe that this could be tougher? Many people are producing more sugar because of India. When you talk, what do you discuss? A follow-up about the corn ethanol plant.
I think I have addressed this. A major part of the profitability has to do with the DDGS. Sometimes the client asks for product to test and to try. Are you priced at a suboptimal price? What can you tell us about the first year of operation in a nutshell? I will start by the last one. You're talking about suboptimal prices.
If the product has already proven that it has the amount of protein and the quality, you can sell the first lot at a lower price, the volume is very negligible. The next ones you will go to the market price. Of course, we cannot keep a much lower price. We have the DDGS that is much better for the animals. We believe, the commercial air believe that we will be able to place the product with no problem whatsoever. You can see that soybeans are going very well, and it is a similar situation. Regarding the pricing policy, we understand that the Petrobras prices, whether they are going up or down, it doesn't have anything to do exactly with the administration. The government reduced PS.
For England, it had a negative impact on the whole industry. Let's talk clearly about the measures taken by the Bolsonaro administration. It was much worse than others. A lot is said about price control, but so far we have not seen a lot in this regard. Quite the opposite. The prices of gasoline went up. It went up 7.5% in January. I agree in part with you. If the prices go down very steeply, and it goes up very slowly, as you described yourself, going up a ladder and dropping at an elevated speed. The price cannot be very different from the international prices. The situation is not possible. Internally, we have manners of dealing with this problem. The first one is to access the export market.
As you saw, we will be have a record export this year, 300,000 cubic meters of ethanol. The domestic market having a lower price with the drop of PIS and COFINS, we are able to go to foreign markets that have a premium, and it has the seal of being a renewable source. Another path that we see with positive eyes is the. For instance, in the United States, if somebody has this kind of plant, it may be more advantageous to buy this ethanol. Because the CI of the American market, they use gas for the boiler. The carbon density is lower in Brazil than in the United States, so that would be something very good. We can evaluate also the integration of one of our plants in this regard to do this and export.
We didn't have the possibility before. Until some years ago, we didn't have this market. You could go to the export market because the molecule is sustainable. Now the staff will be in obligation, and companies will have to adapt. If we do an integrated plan because of CapEx and to decrease the cost of capital, in the United States, the cost of capital is lower and our carbon is lower, then you can access the export market, this additional export market. There are many, many ways in the remote possibility of having a co-co over prices here in the domestic market. We do have ways to circumvent that. There is a lot of noise about that. The economy has to run, the economy has to work.
Ethanol has been increasing a lot in the United States, the Lula administration has been a major ambassador of ethanol, so it would be nonsense to do anything against ethanol. I believe that we will have the opposite situation, which would be incentives. For instance, CBio, we. The last government wanted to change the CBio and the price that was BRL 300 went down to BRL 80. We might go back to CBios. If you look at the result, you will think that the combination of CBios plus ethanol sold in the first half, which didn't have the impact of the PIS and COFINS. It was very good in terms of remuneration. Now, if PIS and COFINS come back, then we will have this change in situation going back to normal. Thank you.
Rogers, Carlos do Credit Suisse.
Felipe, thank you very much. I would like to go back to the working capital. You said at the beginning that you take the credit of the PIS and COFINS, this is slightly different from what I thought. There is an implication about accumulating these credits. The improvement set also the level of taxes on the product. I don't know if on the side of the core ethanol plant with the by-product, there is some implication in this regard. Then the ICMS as well, because there has been a change in the tax rates, and I don't know whether this generated any impact. This is a more general question, but could you go a little bit more in depth into the taxes, federal and state taxes, please?
The total working capital for the year to date, we are talking about BRL 1.3 billion, of which BRL 330 million have to do with the corn. The remainder, BRL 970 million or something like that, is working capital. Of these BRL 970 million of working capital. The Corn inventory does not return. It's like a CapEx. Every year, we will have to maintain this because we need to have this inventory of corn that was bought in the second production, the second harvest that has a better price. It has to do with the project. It was already when we evaluated the project for the corn ethanol, we already had the CapEx plus 250,000 tons of corn as working capital in order to run the project.
When we go to these. We have to separate this into two, BRL 630 million, basically with clients and suppliers to these terms when I sell my product. The remainder, BRL 280 or BRL 300, are taxes recoverable. Most of these are federal because the ICMS is very small. What happened with the ICMS was that we had a tax rate in São Paulo, 12, and it went down to 9. The product that I continue to buy, diesel and fertilizers. I take the credit if the ICMS is on the invoice. As I exported a lot of ethanol, 300,000, and exports don't have these taxes, I accumulated these credits this year because of that, because of the exports.
For the ICMS specifically, this would be 20% of the volume, and the remainder, 80%, is PIS and COFINS, and they are the most relevant because we pay on ethanol BRL 130 per cubic meter of PIS and COFINS. This was generated because of the change in the drop of the tax rate in the Bolsonaro administration. These BRL 120, we believe that we can return this in about 18 months to zero, this working capital. When you talk about the federal tax, PIS and COFINS, I can deduct this from the IR to be paid as the company is a profitable company. When we accumulate PIS and COFINS, it helped us, but because it can be deducted from the income tax to payable.
In corn, I almost have no input with this credit than as we have 80% of the cost. When I buy corn, I don't have ICMS or PIS and COFINS. When I transform corn into ethanol, I have PIS and COFINS. There is no ICMS because I'm included in a system in which I don't pay this ICMS, but we do have PIS and COFINS, and it will help us to... When it starts more quickly. Richard, thank you.
Another question, please. In the broader agenda of the industry, if the change in the administration, what changes are desirable? More specifically regarding the PIS and COFINS, but maybe... Would that be an admin tax for ethanol and also CBio? Do you have the same targets consistently or do you change every year? The CBio should be the distribution companies liable to pay these. What would be constructive changes for this sector?
Well, predictability is very important for the sector as a whole. Make investments in a sugarcane, in ethanol plant, you start to operate at a certain scale after 3 years. You have to plant, you have to stabilize the fields at least 3 years from the moment you make the decision to the moment when you have some profitability. Predictability is very important. For a long time, we have not seen investments in ethanol by means of sugarcane. CBio is fundamental, and maintaining CBio the way it was before, and with all the targets and going back to the previous situation and not having to change every single year.
Keeping the plan of decarbonization of the energy matrix of the country. This is fundamental because then you can foresee in the cash flow what will the price of CBio be. If every year you have to postpone the target, they have no predictability. It is fundamental to have a framework of CBios without changing the target. The monophase or monophase question is not really the case for the sector. This is not a problem. If you place this monophase in the sector. The sector is not homogeneous. You have company from A to Z, so we do not agree with that. The ideal situation is to leave the situation as it is because it is working properly. Lastly, and I think this will happen, and with any government, it will be the same dynamic.
Any CEO of Petrobras who sits there will have a pricing policy, be it cost as premium or whatever. This is very important for us so that we may model this, and we have to work with what we have. Apparently, it will be something close to the international situation, we need clear rules so that we may make the accurate investment decisions. Thank you.
Daniel.
Good afternoon, everybody. You talked about the logistic challenge that the country is facing and will be even worse because of the very good harvest of rains. Do you believe there will be any different solution for you for this year? Is there a concern in terms of contract, or do you see any opportunities to improve logistics? You also talked about the offenders in your cost structure. How do you see competitiveness of São Martinho with the other players in the market?
The cost breakeven of São Martinho vis-a-vis the other players' breakeven. A major part of the incentive that you talked about are valid for all players, but maybe you see a possibility of gaining share over other players that have less financial capacity to cope with lower prices of ethanol for a longer time. Daniel. Logistics are more related to sugar in general, and not because of São Martinho specifically. All our sugar today is via railway. Distributing sugar shouldn't be a problem at the end of the harvest. Maybe the cost will go up because the price that we pay for railway usage might go up if the freight goes up. We do not foresee any problems regarding distributing our sugar in relation to cost.
There are two factors for the company that are foreseeable for the two years ahead of us. The first one has to do with yield. It affected the whole sector, but for us, the impact was bigger because I have 70% of our own sugarcane and companies that are more integrated, and they have a deleverage, operational deleverage, and the total unit cost goes up. The other day, we were doing the math here. Let me check here. In two years, my unit cost for TRS went up about 50%, 50%. Overall, almost half of that was the operational deleveraging.
When I return with the production of TRS equivalent at a better level, I had 70 ton per hectare, and if I return to 80, 85, which is what I usually had in the past, this will reduce my cost of operation and the second factor accounting for 70% of the cost decrease. We understand it is a structural issue regarding fertilizer and diesel and crop protection products and labor going up 22%. It is here to stay. Just to give an idea, if you take the 2021 harvest, we had TRS production of 3,300. This year, we are talking about 2,800 for this year. A very significant drop. The cost going up to BRL 1,600 per TRS, 60% in two years. 60% in two years.
Most of that is explained by the drop in the TRS produced. The good news is that we should be going back to higher yields. I'm not going to go back to the maximum, such as we had in 2021, most of that will come back for the next year should rainfall continue and yields responding. This will help us in regard of costs. Structurally speaking, we have a lower cost on average. It would-- I would say it's about 1% lower if you put all the players on the same base. The fact is that it is very difficult to get a neighboring area to plant more cane and your neighboring areas, they want to protect themselves, and they need that additional income. This will always happen.
What happened is that we have been seeing that the volume produced in the Center-South is at a stable level, and it has remained at this level for many years because the sector is growing the Center-West by means of corn or brownfield that grow modularly. The volume crushed is dropping when you look at a longer window, 8 to 10 years. The reason for that is that some are facing problems and it isn't feasible for a mill to continue producing when it is more expensive to harvest the cane than the price that they will be getting when they sell the sugar. You have to harvest, you have the rural traffic and the planting. If you don't do the first two, you have to do the third, which is the harvest.
If yield is very low, they just stop harvesting. This is when another player may take advantage of that. This does happen sometimes, but it is very difficult to tell you how much we would be able to gain in share. Thank you.
Christiane de Santander.
Two quick questions. When you talked about the options, depending on the ethanol prices, as you talked about that to see the ethanol market. How fast can you do that? If you have a window opening in this regard, in Europe, for instance, can you sign a contract immediately and be very quick? Or do you have companies or plants interested in your product already in the United States?
Anhydrous ethanol is the one that is exported or the H2 in that group. If the window opens both in the United States for their own consumption, or carburant or in Europe, we can quickly sign the contract. This is a fast process. That is already different because first you have to have the technology in place. You have to have somebody investing in the technology there. It has to prove it is feasible. Looking at 18 months or 24 months, we already see many players moving in this direction in order to place the product, and Summa too included for the next harvest from April to in March, April. We have to look at the effort market for fuel, for carburant. In the long run, we can look at another market which is more profitable to start.
Update regarding gasoline that could impact the state ICMS, or is it still being discussed with no decision?
Continues to be discussed and no decision. You were talking about the possibility of gasoline not staying within, not being considered as a staple, an essential good. We would have the difference of 17% in ICMS. So far, no news in this regard.
I would like to remind you that in order to ask a question you should press star one. In order to remove your question from the queue, please press star two. Please stand by while we wait for questions. There are no more questions, I would like to give the floor back to Mr. Felipe Vicchiato for his closing remarks.
Thank you very much for participating in our call. We will all be available to you should you need any further clarification. If we do have news or material facts, we will inform you. São Martinho conference call has come to an end. Thank you very much for participating, and we wish you a very good afternoon. Thank you.