Ultrapar Participações S.A. (BVMF:UGPA3)
29.94
+0.82 (2.82%)
Apr 30, 2026, 5:07 PM GMT-3
← View all transcripts
Ultra Day 2021
May 18, 2021
Good afternoon, you all. I'd like to give you a warm welcome in our Ultra Day. It's a pleasure to be with you in this virtual format. We have a chat line in which you can send your questions and make your comments. We'll do everything we can within the frame of time live that which is not possible.
We commit ourselves to answer. Our RI team will answer. I will start with this presentation. And given a sequence to that, a little retrospect, a brief one as for the year 2020 was a difficult year for everyone, but a year in which we had a crisis management that I would say that was close to excellence. We were able to keep all of our operations uninterruptedly.
We had no replenishing problems with our consumers or clients in general society. We were able to keep our people safe, supporting the weaker areas of our value chain. And you're going to see at the end of my presentation the social actions that we carried out. We also had these great results in 2020, but the resilience of our companies, we had a year that was very great in terms of results. 3 companies, Ultra Gas, Ultra Cargo and Oxiteno, with record results in their histories.
Ipiranga Cayima with a very good cash generation. It was a difficult year for every all sectors. Pharma had the best results since its acquisition in 2014. And all this, post investment, we had EUR 2,100,000,000 operational cash, a very strong result, which shows the resilience of our portfolio, a number that came to EUR 1,000,000,000. And we advanced a lot in the whole issue of our portfolio.
So it was a year that ended up being very good despite all the challenges. Now all of this is inserted in the strategical agenda that we developed and defined it and started to implement there in 2018, Such agenda that has 2 great focus, 1 in a more in a short and medium run, which is the operational results of the company, the implementation of key processes, the review of our business model or management process, the review of our organization, a renewal process of our senior leadership and also the whole issue of reducing of our level of indebtedness and leverage, all this in this front of results in medium and short run. And in parallel to this, in a more medium and long run, is the review of the allocation of our capital, a process that we started reevaluating and assessing our portfolio of companies. I'll be talking ahead about this. Our agenda ESG and in a more long term process that ensures us some bigger dynamic in capital allocation, always ABN seeing a generation of a value generation.
This is all related to the energy transition. About 2021, I'm not going to come into many details because the CEOs of these companies, we will do shortly, but this is also strengthening business continuously. In Ipiranga, we saw series of actions that have been carried out by Barcelo showing its results. Now we expect to see a gradual recovery of market share at Image related to the organizational structure, especially in the commercial area, strategic area, regionalization, competence in trading and the IPM itself and the ultra gas and ultra cargo infrastructure issues, continued renovation, digital channels, improvements in profitability and a very rich agenda that each of the CEOs will be sharing about. Oxiteno, the focus that we use to play about it and choke, we have 3 focus, execution, execution and execution.
And Parolin has done a brilliant work. The results are there. United States has improved a lot and it continues to focus in the innovation in new products. The same thing for ExtraFarms. There is a digital area that is very strong and relevant growth.
A, Binancing, a more omnichannel area and our start up here that starts with 30,000,000 users who are members of our Advantage Club and loyalty. And we have more than 2,000 digital accounts, and it can be a great leverage of value in the future. So these are our efforts of strengthening business for 2021. I would like to share with you our portfolio review that we have done since 2019, 2 phases in this process of portfolio management, 2 stages, 1 in the more shorter over short run, which is a review moving towards focus in a strategic synergies, having more relevance, which is the supporting ourselves in this virtuous triangle, Ipiranga, Nutrogas and Nutra Cargo, taking advantage of the opportunities of revitalization and the actions of Petrobras in this channel. And soon after this, natural gas cutting forward.
And so this is the phase that I would say in the short run, 'nineteen until 'twenty two, reviewing those issues. And then from now on, we'll have a long run and an evolution coming, a more continuous evolution of our portfolio and the allocation of the capital, which will be alongside the transition of the energy process. The great advantage is that we have a very energetic and a generation of cash that will enable the Ultra Group over the next 10, 20 years to follow-up and to become a protagonist, which is our desire in this energy transition process. I couldn't forget the ESG agenda, which is a parallel agenda. It's not anything else, but a very intrinsic part in which shows that our work in ESG is intrinsically connected to our strategic plan.
We had as a reference we have used it as a reference, the SVGs. And we came to a matter of metrics that is already being reviewed. And all of this is going to lead us to targets and action plans for 2,030, very intermediate targets, nothing that could be called aspirations. It's a business target. And some of them, we intend to take over the commitment until the end of the year on restructuring Ultrapar, an area of sustainability.
I have brought a market specialist well experienced to help us in this. Companies have their initiatives, but we need to insert this in a very coordinated way for 2,000, 30. And last, I'd just like to comment and say that we are a portfolio of companies. Each company has its own organizational culture, which is very healthy. However, we have a connection there, a common denominator, which are the business principles.
These are negotiable, and they are followed by all the companies even if they are acting in different sectors and are in different organizational cultures. These principles are safety in the first place, integrity and transparency in management, discipline in establishing the financial areas, which is the base of success, the valuing of people, the growth of people and the innovation in operations. So these principles sustain and maintains our purpose. The purpose of Ultra Paws is to create value for society. How?
Investing in sustainable companies and essential for people's lives. These dynamics in business happens in 3 fronts, which is the strengthening of the business, a continued process, a continued improvement, never ending improvement, management process, which is agile, flexible of capital allocation, the Ruishu portfolio and our agenda ESG, permeating all of that. This is all sustainable and sustained by these principles. I would like to close my presentation here. I would like to show a short video to you about the summary of 2020 that we carried out and some social actions that have been carried out because of the pandemic.
And I will come towards the end with Rodrigo for the question and answer session. Thank you very much. Please Brad, it's always nice to speak to you analysts and ambassadors and other stakeholders. I'd like to start talking about Ultragaz. I'll start by strengthening the importance of the GLP market in Brazil.
It's an energy that is accessible and present in the lives of Brazilians, an energy with environment advantages for various alternatives. I start highlighting Ultragaz in this market. Ultragaz is a very relevant player recognized by its great relationship with customers and innovation culture that presents an infrastructure in plants which are very strong enabling a very good logistic coverage in its operations, a market which is quite dynamic and mature and that Ultragaz has a very relevant presence. For our conversation this afternoon, the ongoing implementation of our strategic plan, we have the 3 basic initiatives that we have developed last year. We made the review of our purpose using our energy to change people's lives.
And we've chosen these 3 main pillars, focusing in the relationship with the customer, in the operational excellence and the innovation supported by the culture of people's training, quite robust and differentiated. And to give more details in the advancement that we've had and that we have presented in this implementation of this strategy, I'd like to start of the relationship with the customers saying that we are advancing very strongly in our natural of our resellers, a great presence in the relevant municipalities, direct conversation with our customers. We have been in a great proximity in the households and also with the segment, the corporate segments focused upon the clients of small and bigger, potentialized by the moments of new users. So these have been quite relevant for our strategy, and we're coming closer to 58 1,000 customers despite the pandemic issues of this year. Advancing here for the operational excellence, we would like to highlight the evolution, an important one that we have presented in our safety culture here reflected through a very positive shown in our indicators of safety, but there are a whole lot behind, a very robust as far as reviewing our processes and various initiatives that have transformed our culture, our safety culture, and that has been so important for us to meet our targets.
Continuing here, I'd like to see here with you the delivery of we have made in our infrastructure and the investments made in North and Northeast is 2021. We have 2 bases under implementation. The first one that is most relevant in Miramar with its construction ongoing with the 4C delivery at the end of this year, with us we're going to have a very good relevant segment for our logistic area in the region to be able to meet customers and potentially expanding our with this implementation associated to Miramar. We're advancing and growing our shipping base and storage in Pizjara that will be ready at the end of this year that will unblock our logistic capacity for this region and enable in our various attacks to various markets in that region, which are very important in the area of GEOPG. In safety, operational safety, the highlights that we would like to meet would be the constant contribution to the results and the productivity that we've been able to take from our operations.
We count with more than 76% of our volumes in automated basis that added with other efforts and process reviews and transactions of activities. We have been able to obtain import deliveries in terms of profitability, added to the delivery and the expansion of our base expansion of our base of the authorization of gases here in Sao Paulo At the beginning of this year, the space is completely operative and that really launched our capacity to meet the market with the relevant differentiation in products and the reduction of cost is for Ultragaz. So the chapter of operational excellence has been quite relevant for the positive evolution of our results. I would like to advance you to the 3rd strategy innovation focus in the segment, the corporate segment. This innovation developing new solutions for the segment has been extremely relevant, adding a lot of value to these operations.
Today, we represent 30% of the acquisition of new customers. They come looking for solutions developed in this area, adding a lot of value to these clients in terms of energy efficiency that we present and the capture of value for Ultragaz when we compare to the traditional market solutions. These solutions are always drawn there, focusing each one of them in the actions of the customers. And I would like to bring a highlight in the segment of agribusiness, which is very strong here in Brazil with a lot of space for the penetration of LPG. We have various solutions launched recently for this segment that has delivered a great energy efficiency for our customers.
And we see a potential there ahead with the end of the use restrictions. And basically, when we talk about motors and thinking about agribusiness like irrigation, pumps and various equipments that can bring a great benefit to customers, they use LPG. We are tempted to disenfolding procedures that will come along the way. As mentioned in innovation, we recently placed our focus in the innovation of this segment, domestic segment. We started the journey with very interesting deliveries here.
We have the 1st light gas bottle with a reductionist weight compared to the model that besides the obvious economic benefit for the employee and the client, it has a reduction in the cost of manufacturing distribution of the product also with the reduction of emissions. We have an ongoing project with solutions of sensing for the gas bottle that allows different ways of emergency for this segment. And last, I would like to highlight here the ultra Drive for automatic sales, very much available for clients that likes to pick up their products. So we have implemented now in the market and now being fully developed. Advancing now and talking about our digital journey with our customers, I'd like to highlight to our important investment with the relationship with our domestic customer.
We launched it recently our tool for a relationship with this customer and the FPD of our business. Starting recently, we have 1,000,000 customers. They are very powerful tool that connects customers online, and we follow-up the whole process of sales until delivery. And it can operate with operating with WhatsApp and various other solutions. They're expanding the capacity of interaction with the customer with us.
We also had the fans from the digital area with reseller. We have the whole journey happening in our partner, APP, all the interactions that the salesperson has got to have with the company and administrative transactions and market journeys and training personnel that can happen inside of this FPP. And most recently, we are advancing with the relationship with the transportation of the retailer closing this whole journey from the order request until the experience of the client receiving the product. We also advanced the corporate area with a new relationship, auto amplifying and enlarging these channels with contact of the customer with us. All of these relationships happen or can happen with the support of our new digital assistant, Yulei, that was recently launched.
And this entire advancement that we have presented here in these strategic areas, it has allowed a consistent growth in our profitability and also in our EBITDA and potentialized by the pace of the pandemic, but that will somehow continue its trajectory throughout the next 2 years, bringing our guidance of results for 2021. When we talk about the opportunities for the future, our vision for the future, we'll believe a lot in this focus of potentializing our purpose, using our energy to change people's lives, believing firmly in the opportunities of innovation of the LPG market, bringing offers of new products, new opportunities and operational efficiency that can potentialize our results with new projects that we are developing. And we have added here new avenues for continued growth. 1st month, the transformation that we made in the LPG segment in Brazil with Petrobras assuming a new hole drifting away from the hole of a supplier, new players coming, creating new dynamics, new opportunities, including any structural importation process that can be very relevant for the configuration of this sector. We also gain space in the energy administration with the delivery of new solutions for our client portfolio for those markets we act upon that can be potentialized down the line.
And recognition of these and the opportunities for the company and the future and the success of this implementation and the strategy that we are developing encouraged us to make a review of our brand and launch our new brand that kept everything we have discussed and potentialize the deliveries down the line What would you take our purpose from the paper and make it in a more practical way? For this, I would like to invite you to watch a video that exemplifies this entire journey and bring this new proposition proposal that we have for the market. This is it. I hope you have enjoyed our new brand and the position of Ultragaz. Thank you very much for your time and your presence.
I would like to invite Lesio Amaral, the CEO of Ultragaz.
Thank you, Tabachara. Hello, everyone. Ultragaz is a very important event for us here at Ultragaz, and it means so much when we are able to bring good news. And in terms of Ultra Cargo, this means potential for expansion and productivity gains to drive our results. 2020 was a very challenging year for all of us, especially because we were an essential activity.
We were we didn't interrupt our activities, but with risks and strict safety protocols for our collaborators and our employees and clients. We were very pleased with the results because we were able to advance important projects, expand our capacity and improve our productivity, which resulted in EBITDA and profitability records. Today, we operate 6 ports and our 7th terminal is still under construction, and it should be operational in the Q1 of next year. And so those that were with us last year will have noticed an expressive increase in the railway operations and as well as road operations from 142,000 to 161,000 operations. These are results of our increase in our productivity throughout the year.
On the next slide, we declared our ambition, which is to extend the leadership in port operations of liquid bulks with increased profitability. And for that, we have several strategic initiatives that we divided in 5 main topics. Starting with the first topic, it's unacceptable that we consider any new projects not taking environmental issues into consideration. Our view is entirely possible to generate values to the shareholders as well as society. Our second group is people and high performance culture because after all, it's the people that make the difference and it's up to us leaders to ensure an inclusive diverse environment where everyone wants to do their best and make a difference.
The group of initiatives is our Productivity and Technology group, which is a clean and digital production. This is the essential foundation for an excellence in any process for any business. Another group of and Atop is a top choice of customers where we wouldn't exist without customers and we need to be able to create value to each of our customers and new growth opportunities and geographic relevance is take advantage of the opportunities that we have in our sector due to the entire transformation that the oil and gas chain is undergoing and diversifying our customers and businesses as well. In the next few slides, I'm going to highlight some of the initiatives that we did throughout 2021 for these topics that I just mentioned, starting with the subject of ESG, which was an unusual year. So we went through several years donating inputs to hospitals and basic goods to the surrounding areas.
We maintained our partnership with Childhood Brazil to combat child and adolescent sexual exploitation on highways. We began a program to train residents of Barcarena with our commitments to always foster the training of the local workforce wherever we operate. But to have a more structuring participation, we started diagnosing the main needs of communities where we operate, which will in turn help us to define our strategy on how to act throughout the next few years. Another subject that's very dear to us is health and safety. We invested last year approximately BRL45 million in the integrity investment and our assets and safety barriers, also training our employees.
Now thinking a little bit about natural resources and being eco efficient operations, we migrated to 3 energy markets and we concentrated so 100% of our operations. And all our new plants are built with rainwater collection to reuse the rainwater. Now into productivity and technology, we began last year 2 new programs, Sol, which is Ultracargo Operational System or our Konnecta program. Sol has, as an objective, to establish a new operational management model. It's based on the lean production, so new process automation and improving assets and improving productivity.
And Connect is the beginning of our digital transformation journey. We're taking advantage of improving our automation process from the management level all the way to control of the business as a whole. And if we took a look in Santos, which was the terminal where we started the sole project in February, it's already shown significant gains in 2020. So if we look at the average truck loading and unloading time, we had a reduction in 37% and which immediately translated into 25% increase of trucks loaded and unloaded without any additional investments. So more important than this is the improvement in services that is what is noticed and valued by our customers.
At the end of the year, we started this project in Itau. We already see expressive improvement possibilities. And throughout 20 21, all terminals are we're rolling this project out on all terminals. And it's important to note that these projects have strong financial results comparing 2019 to 2020. There's an increase of cubic meters sold with an increase of 16% in tons handled.
But when we look at our costs, we see cost expense and ex depreciation, we see a decrease of 9% and the cost, which was the cost of cubic meters sold, this is the cost of this is productivity, do more with less. This is our challenge and this is our continued search for improvements. When we talk about being the top choice of our customers in addition to the improvement in services with the projects that I just mentioned, we've been looking into expanding our installed capacity. So from 2017 to 2021, we've had a 20% increase of our installed capacity and arriving at the end of 2020 within 838,000 cubic meters of installed capacity. And when we compare ourselves to our competitors, we can tell that we're not only the leaders in installed capacity, but also in geographic coverage by a long margin.
And our geographic coverage brings several advantages. First, naturally, there's a lower volatility in market share. When we have a competition between ports, which is very common and due to the fact that we're present in so many terminals, we have less oscillation of competition and volatility. And this also helps us to offer better value to our customers who are able to be more flexible in transferring cargo or even higher capacity between ports and a larger scale for it to reduce its fixed costs. And if we noticed on the next slide, it's very helpful.
So we have a diverse high portfolio of customers with a large portion of our contracts on the medium and long term. And that's very important in order to ensure investments and expansion for the company that we're going through. So changing focus a little bit and talking about new growth opportunities through the future, I think we have a huge opportunity for expansion. It's very leveraged by the growth in the movement of light fuels and ethanol. And I think everybody knows that production deficit of byproducts in Brazil, especially in the North and Northeast, where we've been focusing most of our investments in the last few years.
In addition to that, our own movement for privatization of the refineries will bring a revision of the logistical flow and an expansion of Cabotage with BR Dumar program, which should be approved sometime this year. This we believe that this new dynamic will make new suppliers and even refineries to have more storage tanks in order to have their products in other areas or even if it's a distributor maybe. So to not to allow for a price arbitrage to have a more flexible negotiation of prices. And taking into consideration this entire dynamic, we see that there's a need to increase installed capacity by 55%, and we are very well positioned in order to take advantage of most of this opportunity, specifically because of our presence in all of these terminals that we will see this increased need for storage. In our first steps with this strategy in capturing these benefits, we have a few ongoing expansions, starting with the Port of Itau, which is very important to or imported fuel, either because of its wide draft or proximity with the Gulf of Mexico or for its connection with railways, which allows for this port to ever expand its influence.
We're expanding there with our current installed capacity and should achieve 175,000 cubic meters at the end of the year. We actually won a bid in auction at auction this year to expand our area and our production our installed capacity of 79,000 cubic meters. And in the last few years, we've always had also had Vila DuPont, a new terminal, which should be operational during the Q1 of next year. And as we also mentioned, efficiency and productivity implementing new projects. Fila DuPont is very interesting because we're implementing the project 1 year ahead of schedule, not because we started building it 1 year ahead of schedule, but because we were able to execute it 1 year ahead of schedule with efficiency gains, simplifying the project and training the existing staff with 30% lower CapEx, total CapEx.
So there was an increase in productivity, not in just our services, but our new projects as well. The sooner the better, the sooner we get results and revenue. But the opportunities for expansion don't end there. In our current areas, we still have expansion for our brownfield expansions without and by 30%, 32% that is. And the government will make it's always making areas available and putting them up for auction, and we're evaluating whether it's worth participating in them or not.
And moving towards the end of my presentation, if we analyze the evolution of EBITDA margin of the company in the last few years, we're going to see a significant increase in the last 2 years. This consolidates the expansion of capacity and productivity means, but we broke a record of 55% in the of last year. I like to use another indicator last year for these productivity gains, all of these productivity gains, which is EBITDA for installed capacity per cubic meter and how much value we add to each tank that we implement. And this indicator closes the end of 2020, 26% above 2019. And this combines all effects, cost reductions, productivity, assets, prices gains.
And this shows a new level of operational sense that the company is at. With this, when I talk about specifically about 2021, even though it's going to be yet another difficult year, the pandemic was is a little worse than we expected it to be, but we still believe in superior results from 2020 at a level of anywhere between 4% 13%. But to make it very clear that the results shouldn't in there, expansions shouldn't end there. We see that our competitors have EBITDA levels that are above ours. But we're further leaders in operations and capacity.
We have an obligation to be leaders in every indicator. And so this is a movement that's already in place, that's already ongoing. This is what I will try to show you during our presentation. So this is what I had for you today to talk about Copesan Cargo. I imagine that you're curious to know about our next company.
So I'd like to give the floor over to Jean Parolin at Oxiteno. Parolin, it's up to you.
Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for your presentation. Let's get started by talking about Oxiteno and just share with you what happened especially in 2020. And in the first slide, we start with the value chain. As you know, we have a focus in markets with high potential for growth in which the Americas have comparative advantages as for instance the agribusiness in which Brazil, Argentina and United States are powers in agribusiness, gas and oil and consumables in general, our focus are in these markets, significant growth in their potential.
And in this slide, we have our value chain and the raw materials. We have more than 20% of these raw materials as natural derivates and the rest of it like basic petrochemicals. And in the family of products from right to left or from left to right, we have the glycos or the most commodity products and the solvents, the chemical oils and our specialty is surfactants, which is the growth of the company. In the next slide, I'm going to share our position and leadership in the Americans. This position is built up, 1st of all, with the capability of productivity.
We have more than 20% of the production capacity of oxalated surfactants, more than 600 tons a year, and we are leaders in the production of surfactants and specialties in Latin America. This is build up in technological base, which is very solid. We have a very broad knowledge of the applications and the production technology. And with this, we have been able to launch new products in 2020. We had approximately 15 of the margin of the company coming from products which were developed over the last 5 years.
Our business model proposes flexibility and agility for responsiveness to our customers. We do a lot of co creation and create solutions, not only for products, but also for services, customized ones. And we have very safe plans with a high operational capacity. So these are basic elements of our business model, which is based on agility, flexibility and innovation capacity. Over the next slide, we will have our proposed, which is to contribute to the well-being of people through chemistry.
And this purpose is met with these 5 strategic pillars that I have mentioned in our presentation: talent people, innovation, actions to improve competitiveness, Occidental USA. So I would like to start with the first one, which is talent management and successors. We have really worked to create an innovation culture, learning and inclusion. We have also had the retention of talent, which has been quite high as much as of our trainees and our leaders and an active management of our organizational culture in which we were able in 2020, 88% of favorability in our climate survey. We have a permanent work for the improvement of our management, of our culture management, trying to look for our strengths, our traces and mitigating behaviors which are not productive.
Last year, I would like to highlight, we carried out an engaging campaign called the chemistry of well paying, trying to create a link with our purposes and the products that we produce, where we work, where we act and showing how the company can improve through chemistry, the quality of life of people. We also included the diversity program and inclusion and other programs that have been already mentioned in this slide. The second pillar I'd like to talk about is sustainability, ability that it's well structured in 8 verticals in topics that have been aligned with the sustainable issues of the United Nations. And I have brought here the supply chain. We've formed an EcoVadis partnership to assess our suppliers.
And Oxiteno itself had a recognition, Diplatinus recognition in 2020, which is a differentiated recognition. Only 1% of companies is within this category. And we had a significant reduction of the greenhouse effect, gas reduction emissions as compared to 2019, and this emission per tons. And we started a mapping process of our portfolio in terms of sustainability. So products and its applications being applied under the standpoint of sustainability.
The next pillar I'd like to share about innovation. You gentlemen have this, our margin of contribution of new products. Last year, we had about $48,000,000 of margin on new products, new products that have been launched over the last 5 years. And we have a pipeline of projects which are quite robust and that can enable $250,000,000 additional for new products throughout the next years. Considering that over the last 5 years, we launched more than 130 products.
And we have taken advantage of a lot of programs of the government and entities to improve our funding in the area of innovation and also establishing partnerships. So we have a partnership in a very strong area in the area of innovation. The next pillar I'd like to share about is competitiveness. Last year, we launched our transformation and digital lab, and we started to work towards improving our productivity using digital technology. And we already have a series of results in the internal process and the use of artificial intelligence and automatic control in the plants, internal process like the anticipation of receivables.
We had lots of gains in cost reduction and time reduction of the execution of these processes with the intensive use of digital technology and we're implementing data like industrial data like for the improvement of our processes with the use of analytics. Still in this area of competitiveness, we have had some actions in the reduction of variable costs with a gain of BRL20 1,000,000 with the optimization to win a geometric income and remember, an improvement of the technical index of production we had launched in 2019, metrics that enable the use of about BRL 54,000,000 of our SG and A costs and the optimization of our working capital, we had a reduction of 15% on the days of the working capital in 2020, improving the return of the capital that was used in the company. Our work in the United States, the next speaker I'll be talking about we advanced as much as in the operational area and commercial area as well. We have more than the 130 SKUs implemented, more than 100 active clients, and we had a significant improvement in the results in 2020. Our plan started at the end of 2018.
And as you can see in the slides, the evolution of the volumes that were effectively produced in this plant over the next 3 years. For 2021, we expect a new volume growth around 35% to 35% as compared to 2020 and an expectation that we may come to breakeven over some month at the second semester of 20 21 from this operation in the United States. The combination of all these strategic issues, it results in the evolution of our results over the next 3 years. As you can see, this traffic started in 2018 with BRL439,000,000 with an EBITDA recurring EBITDA of about $120,000,000 This year, we have a very good perspective of delivering this guidance that we have launched within between BRL 800,000,000 and BRL 1,100,000,000, which is around $150,000,000 Very significant growth of EBITDA. We had a 2019 year that was very not common.
If you've seen my presentation last year, I mentioned that this year would be very much out of the normal. And we have returned to our reports in 2020. So therefore, our strategic agenda for 2021, it is based upon these strategic pillars with people management, the evolution of our culture project, sustainability actions. We have a road map that we're going to fulfill in 2020 21. Innovation, we have the challenge to come to 16% of the contribution margin for new products that have been launched over the last 5 years.
In the area of competitiveness, we're going to speed up our transformation digital processes. And in the United States, an increase in volume and penetration in this market that may lead us to reach breakeven somewhere in the 2nd semester of 2021. Well, this is what I had to share for today. And I would like to invite Marcelo Raucho, who is going to share with you how we are doing in Ipiranga. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Parolin. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. It's always a pleasure. One more ultra day.
Today is an ultra virtual day. But taking advantage of that we're here virtually, I'd like to remind you that there is a channel for asking questions and making comments to participate, and we're going to try to answer all of them by the end of the presentations. So let's talk a little bit about Ipiranga. I wanted to remind you that our strategy is still going strong, but how we're going to deliver our purpose in spite of all the turbulence and the volatility brought on by the pandemic, we didn't stop, we adapted, but we moved forward. And I wanted to remind you of this because we have 4 strategic avenues and we remain focused to them.
The core of Piraeus business is fuel and the core of the fuel business is the Piraeus network. So strengthening the competitiveness of our network is our first goal. In order to bring this competitiveness throughout the country, we need competitive costs, and that's where we need a new infrastructure and discipline when we allocate capital. With now with the strength in competitiveness and network, then we can start hoping to recover our market share that we lost the last few years consistently and gradually. And that's our strategy for recovery of market share.
And then after that, we would be ready to prepare for the company for the future, how the company is going to be positioned in the market for the next 5, 10 years. So I'd like to go through all these pillars, these avenues and tell you a little bit about what we've already done and what we're doing right now and for the near future, next year, 2 years from now. But before going to these forefront, these four avenues, the next slide, it's important to highlight and show where we are right now, what moved forward in spite of the challenges of last year. A lot of it has been done. We started transforming our relationship model with resellers.
It was one of our greatest challenges recovering this relationship with our resellers. It was a little bit strained during periods of crisis that we had, cost and expense reduction. We had advances in customer experience and pricing intelligence. So we're going to talk a little bit about but we focused on costs for short term reserves. But we didn't stop investing in infrastructure for new investments and improving competitiveness.
We'll see a little bit about that later. But we also have we took important steps for a vigorous convenience experience here in Brazil. We are mid journey with the cultural and digital transformation in our company. We know that there was a huge shift in management here, but we've also done tried to attract and train new talents, which is very important to our future. And it's important for us to build a more agile culture, lighter with more autonomous, which is what we hope for Ipiranga's future.
Last but not least, we also started improving our data science pricing and nothing stopped in 2020. We really did continue moving forward with our transformation just as we expected in our from our 2019 plan. But now delving a little deeper into the forefront of our strategy, I wanted to talk our first avenue is strengthening competitiveness of our network. And to begin, it's with our value proposal. So we're strengthening every all of our actions, all our dimensions, which was our what we have best to offer, which is the service stations always more complete and more digital.
It is definitely the best product for supplying fuel in Brazil because we have high performance products at competitive prices. We're always leading Inconvenience brand and network with our AMPM brand. We are leaders in automotive services. We have a leading lubricant company in Brazil. We have the largest loyalty and payment program and discount apps.
We have leading top of mind brand, most innovative and our service stations, which are seen as excellence in image and services by consumers. All of this only exists at Ipianna stations. So that's where our challenge starts to deliver this value proposal. The first challenge and probably one of the most important is to recover, to mend our and the health of our network and our relationship with the resellers. And I believe that we're on the right track.
We're getting closer to them. We're listening and learning from them. The reseller journey was a program that we brought 35 handpicked resellers from different profiles from the market so that we could reconnect with our network, but also to focus in effective actions to support the network. We can't just come up with a lot of initiatives and these initiatives aren't the initiatives that meet the needs of our resellers. We started investing again heavily in supporting our services and our employees.
We started revitalizing the image of our stations. And if one of the actions there's an important measure of this advancement, the health of our stations, of them being more competitive is being more competitive is a reduction 28% of 2020, even with a reduction of 28% of defaults and that shows the financial health of our resellers, it shows the closeness and the support that we're giving and being more competitive in the market. So we're revitalizing our marketing program, which was all built in collaboration with our resellers and now it's curtailed to each need and we're creating the 1st integrated project for franchisees and resellers. We used to have the largest loyalty program, but we didn't have a program, an instrument for resellers and franchisees. And that's where Ipiranga Top came to be, which was launched during our convention in 2021 in February.
So we have a lot of good things in the pipeline with automation platforms, data science analysis, improvements in our management methods and training methods, financial management, personnel management, and that's how we expect to move on and keep strengthening our network. Also very important is strengthening our brand because it synthesizes a strength of our ecosystem. It's important to remember that in Ipiranga's the brand Ipiranga is not Ipiranga's, it's everybody's who's part of the network, the resellers, the franchisees, the brand is not the property of Ipiranga. It's in fact an asset for the entire ecosystem at Ipiranga, which includes franchisees and resellers. And so this brand is unbeatable, but we can't lose sight of this because we since 2016, we're one of the most top 15 most valuable brands in Brazil, and we've won every award, every relevant award in 2020 for services and convenience like Volvo and Rio, Sadel, Folia and Sao Paulo and other price vehicles.
So when customers were asked and they recognized and they realized the value of the brand and this entire ecosystem at Ipiranga. So this pillar is very strong, but we look into the future and we know that there's room for improvement. And with Aber Miranda as our new marketing and new development for Up to Business Director, we began a deep project of revitalizing our marketing architecture, the names of our products, the name of our stores, how they're presented visually as a whole, and also updating our visual layout of our products. So the brand is very important to the entire ecosystem. It's important to their franchisees and resellers, but it's also very important to the user experience, their user consumer journey.
And that's where our main instrument for relationship with the customers, which is our loyalty programs that which in 2019 were the 1st business unit that we focused on and it became a reality. The emancipation, so to speak, if we could call it that, of these 2 products into a new company of the Osler Group managed to accelerate the digital transformation with digital accounts, which we've reached over 3,000,000 digital accounts, which surpassed any expectation that we have. We're actually a reasonably sized digital bank, which you have actual accounts, you can put money and take money out, not just receive the cash backs from your transactions at the gas stations. But you can also operate as an account with digital payments. But widening the participations and collaborations that have provided and allowed us to offer financial products for these 3,000,000 accounts already in 2021.
So we're going to start offering financial products for them. But they're going to transform our loyalty programs and payment programs and make them even more relevant to customers, to resellers and to Pidang as a whole, which increases revisits to our business. So if a customer already visited, they were already a driver of our relationship with the customer, how much more relevant they become to daily journeys, even people outside of convenience or the gas station filling up with gas, the better it's going to be. That's why the focus now is to continue to widen this scope and create a digital relationship with all the drivers. That's why our destination network will be able to benefit increasingly with this potential, which hasn't been achieved by the competition, sorry, and we keep moving forward and striving to stay ahead of the competition.
So the customer journey within our strategy is key. So, service stations and lubricants are also important to us. It's not just liquid fuel. So cars also need lubricants. That's why I wanted to talk about Iconic.
I think it's a company that we don't talk a lot about, but it's important because the joint venture, Ipiranga and Chevron, closed its integration cycle brilliantly. It surpassed all expectations of our shareholders in every way possible, market leadership, financial data, EBITDA generated, cash flow generated. ICONIC is already a leading the lubricant leader of the market and it's at the very top for even car manufacturers with over 50% of market share. So this shows the quality of the and the reliability of the products and as a supplier and the quality of the product for such a demanding customer, which are the car manufacturers. For the future, we're imagining new avenues of sales and more integration of ICONIC with the Piederonga network and with JetOil.
JetOil should offer products, TEXPO products to our network as of 2021. And the success of this initiative was still big that we borrowed Leonardo Linden, who was the CEO of the since the inception of this joint venture. So he's joining us at Ipiranga and is taking over the Vice President and CEO of the Commercial Department, which is a huge asset, new asset to our team to strengthen our strategy for new marketing and strengthening our strategy to become closer and help and develop a network and our business in the business environment. So Chapter 2 now Chapter 1 was strengthening the network. So Chapter 2 is how to help the network be more competitive in terms of costs.
So the search for competitiveness, it's a long journey. We've been searching it acceleratedly in forefronts that I wanted to share. 1st is the fiscal structure, the integrated regional strategy. I'll talk a little bit about that trading and of course cost, cost and cost. We're in a business high volume and low margins, so costs are key.
It's in our day to day vocabulary and it's always on our minds. But these four fronts, I'm going to talk a little bit about. Let's talk about the physical structure, which is this slide that you see here. We're expanding constantly, consciously our storage and logistics efficiency. And we've been very diligent about this with allocation of capital to be sure that we're doing it correctly and efficiently.
So all the extensions that we've done have already presented investment returns between 12% 22%, which are very good results for our type of business. And we have a very robust pipelines for expansion of basis for the next few years like you can see on the map on the right hand side of the slide. So for fiscal infrastructure, but in of itself doesn't really solve the problem. It needs to be used efficiently. And in fact, with a little delay because 2020, we were forced to postpone a few initiatives.
But as of September of last year, we started what was already in our strategic planning, what we call what we're calling our largest transformation in decades of our business model, which we want to which aims to put us ahead in the future, specifically speaking, and infrastructure as well. So it's a regional integrated strategy, which wants to infer our go to marketing from pull to push. I'm going to try to explain what that means. In the context of the market that existed for many years, it's a stable market with the domination of Petrobras with the supply of byproducts, it was very close market for the import of fuels. So now we have new ports and new businesses here and there.
But as a whole, of course, we looked at regions that were growing that had showed a little more potential. But Where we would develop our businesses, I would open the market and then I would bring the infrastructure trying to supply the demand. So now the market would pull the infrastructure with it. Now we're trying to invert this logic or at least balance it somewhat, which is more the characteristic of the big business commodities worldwide or how many large business oil and gas and distribution companies throughout the world where there's this duality or plurality of supply of products with different logistical challenges. So this new methodology, we invert the process and so where our infrastructure and our trading is able to bring our product in a more competitive manner and that's where we are going to focus our commercial efforts, whether it be the market or business environment.
Why is that the push? Because the competitive product pushes the strategic models and force and bring where the infrastructure already exists. So this integrated strategy with strategic with specific strategies for each of the 12 avenues that we mapped throughout Brazil aim to maximize profitability with our logistical and commercial footprint. So we have an existing infrastructure, which is already competitive. So it's easier and cheaper and more profitable and more competitive in the surrounding area of that infrastructure and throughout our logistical infrastructure.
And this will also help us prioritize investments and allocate capital more efficiently. So this is the role of this new regional integrated strategy, which already began at Ipiranga. This is what's going to set the tone for our growth planning for the next few years. And to complete the investments in with original integration and infrastructure, we also need to improve our supplies. We can't just buy the products we need to supply.
And at the end of 2020, one of the largest projects that we began in this company in the last few years, we designed, approved and began the implementation of our trading structure as the future profit center for the company. So the next 3 years that we started already in 2021, which already is already bringing positive results in the Q1, we implemented in 4 stages this ambitious program. We have until we have a full fledged trading platform and that it becomes the new leader of the market of derivatives and fuels that will emerge in Brazil. Brazil is the 4th largest fuel market in the world and we still don't have from the dynamics of the supply model with the monopoly of Petrobras for refinement and logistics. We don't have a fuel liquid fuel market here in Brazil.
But we have indications that this market is going to evolve quickly and we're prepared for this, Running in parallel to the structure that we already have trained professionals to work with this, we're also developing a group of risk management and value management to sustain the robustness of this new activity because the trading activity works taking advantage of the volatility of different components of byproducts and products that we sell. So it's very important that we develop intelligence for this, but also risk assessment and develop methods to monitor this continuously in all the operations. So by the end of the year, we should have all these systems implemented. They're already being implemented with the support of large companies with international experience in the sector. And the 4th pillar of competitiveness that I mentioned, maybe I should have started with this slide actually because this is where we started in 2019 when we started the program to reduce costs and expenses that we called Ivoluir.
You might remember this program. It's already at the end of the program. It's a 2.5 year program. We started mid 2019 to finish the end of this year. We're on budget and on track.
We were able to identify and and release 200,000,000 in expenses. 85% has already been captured. And by the end of the end of this year, we're we should be able to capture and implement everything that we had hoped and capture the remaining 15%, which is already added to our budget of 2021. And so now we entered this new phase of cost management because now we're seeking or we're hoping not to give in to the temptation of going back to the old ways, but also develop gains competitive productivity gains of 2% to 3% a year. We expect to do this with automation processes and took a lot of simplification of our processes too.
So because if a company is hoping to be lighter and more agile, it needs to improve its automation and simplification of processes. So with these forefront infrastructure, our regional integrated strategy trading and cost is where we are strengthening the competitiveness of Ipiranga. And that's what gives us new energy for new flights. So now we can move on to our 3rd strategy, which is the recovery of our gradual recovery of our market share. You might remember that we've been pointing out from the beginning of this management cycle that started in 2019 that our first focus would be to recover our market share of our service stations.
So if the core is fuel and the fuel core is the are the stations and this is what keeps us stale and gives us awareness of the brand, I couldn't just grow in the market in other fronts, in other businesses and other segments while I'm losing my gas stations. So the focus was to recover and grow, go return to growth our market share for our own stations. We were doing very well in the Q4 of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. We had the largest participation of gas stations in the last 4 years, as you can see in the graph on the left hand side. But then unfortunately, in part because of defending our profitability with the volatility that started because of the pandemic in March and the true impact of the mobility restrictions in large urban centers where we are very strong, but we had a huge market share decrease in the beginning of 2020 for what we call the flag stations, which are the ones that are keeping the gas stations.
We already started our recovery process, but we need to keep moving forward, and it has to be a focus. We need to recover what we lost. And for that, it's important that we've been able to keep our network active and we need to move forward with successive increase in productivity at the new stations that we've added to our network, which is the graph on the right hand side shows. It shows clearly that we're focusing on large stations. The productivity of these new businesses that we've added is a longer than our average productivity.
And in time, it should help us increase our average productivity of the network, but it should also. And we are going to keep weeding out and exchanging less competitive stations that have a harder time delivering our products to customers to complete stations ever more digital and so that they can deliver more quality to increase our market share. With the scale that the network gives us and the gains in productivity that we're achieving, we have more emphasis in 2021 to the more sensitive price sensitive markets like other portions of the consumer market. So with the focus on this productivity and the growth of the network and the returns the gradual return to the spot markets, is that where we can grow our market share with poly, of course, delivering poly. We don't want to grow at any cost.
We need to grow consistently, and that's our main objective. With this, we conclude the 3rd pillar, and we can start talking about our 4th pillar, which is repairing the company for the future. And then the largest or maybe the most important value creation avenue for the future is to where we've been investing in parallel over the last couple of years. We put a staff that's very experienced in retail, fully dedicated and focused on developing the new AMPM as a sustainable and self sustaining business. We know that convenience stores helps fuel sales.
Do we think could convenience stores be actually profitable to be Perionga as their resellers to a point that they generate resources for their own sustainability instead of needing subsidies from fuel sales. That's the question we've been asking ourselves. The new AMPM has shown that it is possible. The new layout concept, the new value engineering that reduces costs to implement the stores and the operational costs as well, a new mix of categories with a more focus on food service. The new AMPM is showing that this is possible.
We already have 3 formats that are already validated. It provide a different experience and it's been tested in over 200 stores. So it's measurable results. And these stores have showed a significant increase in profitability between 5% 10% in EBITDA for these stores compared to the comparable scores in the old format. So it does bring an additional, not just with the layout, but with a new management model that helps operators and our franchisees to operate more efficiently their stores, which is more complex than managing the gas station.
So it's important one thing that was very important was the learning experience that we had with our own operated stores. We have 80 stores and on average they have reached breakeven point in less than 6 months even during the pandemic. So our 1800 stores, almost 1500 have some type of restriction, whether it be time or they can sell alcohol or you can't eat within the stores. There's some type of restriction. And even still, our own owned stores that we own have reached a breakeven point and surpassed our expectations.
So From an example to Abas Castaicin, which we accelerated in 2019, and we made this possible and we bet on a new we have no doubt that this year will be the year to accelerate AMPM. It's already top of mind in the category. And with the new tested models, we're ready to begin the launch of this as a business, as a sustainable business. And that's why we expect for 2021 already to have 175 new stores and add approximately 100 company operated stores. So we would have 188 total company operated stores.
But it's important to understand that we're also going to weed out the weaker stores and the weaker stations, but because we want the AMPM brand to be in stores that can actually potentially generate value for us and for the franchisees. And so they need to deliver unique products to the customer because if they're poorly operated, it's no there's no point in having the AMPM brand because it will frustrate consumers that more and more will enter AMPM with expectations for a more standardized and more efficient experience. So still within the Q1 of this year, just so you get an idea of how fast we're moving along, for the during the Q2 of 2021, AMPM stores throughout the country will be 100% integrated with Abastase. So you'll be able to pay your purchases in AMPM with your gas card, which you only used to be able to do is pay for gas. So it's going to start becoming our main payment and relationship platform, fully integrated with pumps and station as a whole.
And we're going to keep moving forward and developing this. We already have a pilot test pilot of new stores and of stores on highways and cities and we're making adjustments where necessary, but we might be able to accelerate the growth our growth and the growth of AMPM. So several stores are already testing also our new experience digital platform for customer experience, which is always more evermore complete with drive through. So you can start and scan a QR code by the pumps or on your cell phone and you can order inside the store and you can receive in the car, you can pay right there or you can even have a delivery at home or at your office from a nearby gas station, e commerce. So we're digitizing completely our customer experience in our AMPM network.
And to the future, we're going to bring this entire experience and platform to Jet Oil. So that's how we're preparing the company for the future. We started with loyalty program and the Vantage program, now AAM and Jet Oil and through other growth avenues as well. But we can't just talk about the future without talking about sustainability. I wanted to take a short break and share with you, I think most of you already know, but it's always good to mention that we're constantly focused and we look at it very seriously with the sustainability of our operations.
Our Carbon 0 program is already 10 years old with so it's almost fully consolidated. We need to start looking beyond it. We've been working actively with several organizations like Cedebs, the UN's Global Compact. We have goals and for materiality and sustainability of our operations. We have a background of development the UN's development goals, sustainable development goals.
And everything will be we'll reconceive our project, looking at it with new eyes and new technology and looking into renewable sources of energy, like we started our first plants for solar plants for Ipiranga and then we have more coming in the near future. That's why we have the intention of continuing to be the leaders. Today, we're the largest electric recharging stations in Brazil, And we expect to expand our partnerships with BMW and GE in Portugal and we have more partnerships. So sustainability is an item ever more present on our agenda. So we're hoping to recover our transformation journey and recover moving forward in the market.
And like I showed you, we have several important initiatives and we're starting to reap the benefits and consistent initiatives that we've implemented. And we have a very positive outlook for the sector, which events in restructuring downstream with the divestments from Petrobras and new customers that will bring new opportunities that I tried to explain with a more complete and digital gas station to capture these opportunities. We're looking into finally we're seeing that is an important environment for regulation advances with more freedom between agents and more dynamic market with all its multiplicity of investments and new contract models that are showing up and hopefully even tax reforms that will simplify and make it more transparent and reduce the distortions that we have in the fuel market that you're well aware of. And with this, after the Q1 and moving into the Q2, I think we're very comfortable into keeping our EBITDA evolution for 2021, just like the numbers we released earlier. This means an increase of 20%, 25% of EBITDA compared to 2020, already putting us at 2019 levels, so ready to moving forward and growing from here on out and the recovery of our economy and our business and that we hope should start from this as of the semester of this year.
So what I hoped to bring to you and show to you is how we're imagining that Ipiranga is going to continue to grow and generate value leveraged by its 4 pillars of our strategy, which is strengthening the network competitiveness, recovery of our market share and the initiatives for preparations to the future. This is a summary of our strategy of where we are, what we're doing right now so that you can understand a little bit better of the choices that we made and how we're moving forward in implementing these initiatives. And I wanted to share a short video just to finalize our presentation, which a few that we've shared with customers and our partners, which is shows a little bit of the energy and the environment that we've been having here at Ipiranga. So I hope you enjoy the video. I hope you enjoyed the video and that you that my presentation helped you to understand a little bit better the moment at Ipiranga and our expectations for the future and why we are still optimistic about the future.
Because from our point of view, everything really is only exists there at post Ipiranga. And once again, thank you very much for your time. I'd like to give the floor over to a guy who's also called Marcelo, who is going to give the presentation to Esther from Azale. The floor is yours.
Good afternoon, you all. Congratulations, Marcelo, for the results obtained and for the presentation as well. Thank you so much for sharing these results from Ultra Farm. It's a pleasure to be here for the year 2021. I'd like to strengthen our purpose here, which is to give access to beauty, health and a well-being lifestyle.
Throughout this presentation, I'm going to focus more on the maturation of our the models of our stores and the evolution of our channels, especially digital channels and all the data that permits and the personalized coupons and all tracked and focused on people and need a new culture of extra fun. As far as our net store network, we finished the Q1 with 402 stores. We are present in 80 municipalities. We inaugurated ours, DCE Montreal that will enable us a return, a very important return in terms of profitability. And we have a great focus on the selective expansion of our format and in the protection, especially NAT, which is quite focused and being present in North and Northeast in 4 sites, we have a strategy to be shielded the digital as the main growth driver, making the conversion in between stores and the site and maintaining our low tolerance strategy for low performance.
The retail market in the area pharma grows consistently in 2 double folds. In reality, it became €240,000,000,000 having a precise approach in 2021 with €153,000,000, dollars very robust and consistent growth, a segment that was not penalized by COVID-nineteen. Our focus in North and Northeast shows through our data that they show a bigger growth, which allows us in many areas and a retailer that really speed up as far as the trends of the consumers for a more digital life. With this, I'd like to strengthen the conscious and consumption to the new dynamics categories that permeates the pharma segment with categories that are beginning to be born like vaccines, tests, a segment that it's opening its scopes not only for pharma sales, but also bringing new services to the area. I would like to focus the digital channel.
Our segment practically started strongly in May 2020 and has been showing consistent growth increasingly in the area of delivery, rather through WhatsApp, rather through Westmile or through our own e commerce. You can see that our growth and penetration closed the Q1 of 2021 with 2.2, but we came to March with 2.6, which is quite strong, represented by the graphic below, which shows that our penetration was 5.3 folds, which was bigger than it was in Aber Farmer, which we are part of it. And the evolution of the journey of the digital transformation, which is an analyst journey, And we've seen recently in channels, the maturation of these channels, the expansion of new channels like marketplace in and out, our web, FPP, that by the end of May is might be upgrading. And the company also developed strategic partnerships for this leverage, this consistent leverage of this segment. As far as productivity gains are concerned, so important to our business, we have a great focus on the analysis, store after store, all of the KPIs, which are so important for the retail market.
I'd like to highlight a few. Our inauguration of the CD that will enable a great gain in the region of Maranhao state, Spending towards our private brand, we're going to double the number of SKUs. We have a revenue of 2.2% when we look at the categories in which these private brand items go, we can see from 20% to 60% penetration. It's a well structured work, and I'd like to strengthen the extra club area that after this, we have the profile of our consumers, which is something very important for our lawyer relationship. Our personalized coupon that for the time being is already with 35 percent of the base, very important data in the retail area.
The optimization of the number of our stores in the area of the administration, but always preserving the level of service to our customers, a very strong focus in rupture and breakage, indicators which are very relevant for our customers. The expenses management, I'm really strengthening the area of leasings. We are obtaining very good negotiations closer to EPCA, not EGPM, which is very important to our SG and A, which collaborates with consistent results and the monthly payments, which is important that creates a utility to our customer in the sales point. We try to decrease the friction of our customers in the sales points that he may find the products, that he may pay very quickly and that he has a very good experience. Very important focus for us, that's why we have the environment of these teams and that's why I make sure that we should value and that we should thank our 6,000 employees.
So in a short run, increasingly improve the whole of the drug stores and the sales point, new service, new categories. The digital was a very important tool and fundamental one in this new journey that only became strong after COVID, the consistent growth of our results via the control of SG and A, a selective expansion, as I said, shielding, protecting the markets in which we have strong EBITDA, showing the consistency of our results, we closed 2020. In our guidance, we are in between €100,000,000,000 and €140,000,000, showing a consistent result of our company. And for the next year, it's continuing focusing on the selective expansion on the changes for this year. We understand that expansion and remodelization brings a better return to the shareholder and the expansion in itself in some cases.
Our consolidation in the state in which we are present, especially in the state in which our PCs are operating, a bigger consistency and a convergence of the digital is an important meaning to improve our revenues store after store, improve our productivity whenever we can and with focus in the whole issue of cash of the company and with the consistent result of the EBITDA so that we can perpetuate our company. Thank you very much. We'll have a question and answer session. Now I would like to invite Rodrigo, our CFO.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you once again to talk about the results at Ultrapar. I'm going to give my presentations of the consolidated results of the group as a whole. And without further ado, starting with our first slide, talking about the consolidated results. As you can see in the first chart here, year of 2021, despite of the more volatile environment, is already 15% above the results of 2020 and far surpasses the results of the last few years, which shows the resilience of the portfolio of the Ultra Group.
Also reminding you that we had record results at Ultragas and Oxiteno and Ultracargo. And even within the turbulent scenario that we've undergone in the last few years, the company has been shown it has maintained its profitability and recovery of profitability from other countries. And 20 in March, we paid in BRL 480 1,000,000 in dividends from 2020. And when we talk about the growth of profitability for 2021 and strengthening some of the points that my colleagues mentioned and starting with Ipiranga. Ipiranga has been had a year of recovery of results with initiatives to increase competitiveness like Marcelo just presented.
Oxiteno, Ultracargo and Astra Pharma, if you considered their minimum guidance point for 2021 already shows of records for the 3 companies. And even though Ultragas had smaller volume within tanks and propane tanks and bottles, they've had consistent results and consistent sales results, which shows profitability and strengthened and disciplined with cost discipline that we've had throughout the company. Moving on to the next slide. These results with greater selectivity in capital allocation, we've prioritized projects with better returns have allowed us with the optimization of working capital increased cash flow over the last few years. 2020 was a record year for generation of capital flow.
And we announced for 2021 an investment project with expansions for 2021. It's BRL1.8 billion compared to BRL1.5 billion expansion program from last year and growing potential for opportunities, whether it be for the recovery of economic growth, the ongoing privatization and privatizations to come, opening of the natural gas market and opportunities with the energy transition that Fred mentioned during his presentation. On the next slide, I'd like to point out our financial position. Looking at the bottom chart, where we closed the Q1 of this year with cash position and cash equivalents of BRL8.5 billion, which is a comfortable position, not just for the investment plan that I mentioned, but profiles of debt maturity that you can see at the chart here, you can see that 50% of our debt is longer than 5 years. The debt maturity is longer than 5 years.
Our rating is 2 levels above the Sovereign Credit rating, and we have access to several sources at low costs like infrastructure, the mentors and bonds from the foreign market. Our debt decoration is average is 4.6 years, but we have no operations attached to this. In the last year, we were able to maintain leverage level, very stable leverage level. And when we look ahead, it's guidance of EBITDA for 2021 for gradual cash generation for an expected cash generation, you can see a gradual leverage reduction. It's also important to remember that the ongoing portfolio revision may provide additional liquidity to enter the refining segment, which is under negotiation.
So in short, our knowledge of the oil and gas chain combined with the portfolio business portfolio that we have and the soundness and the management of Ultra are levers that benefit us and place us in a good position to capture an expansion opportunities to and to grow within the oil and gas sector. On the next slide, I'm going to talk a little bit more about ESG. And like Fred mentioned in his presentation, ESG is an intrinsic part of our strategy, where today we are a company with the best rating in the sector. From the MSTI rating, we have an AA score, which is a sector leader in the sec and we're among the top 15% of the 41 companies of the sector in the world. And we are in the oil and gas refining, marketing, transportation and storage segments.
A fact which is very characteristic of Ultra in corporate governance and where we're recognized in ISS for for the ISS's quality score rating. And we have a score of 1 between 12, and 1 is the best score that you can get. So within CDP, which is the carbon carbon disposal project we had, we have a B grade, and it's a grade that you can see that it's above the South America global average and oil and gas averages as well. And just to conclude my presentation with this slide, my presentation is coming to a close and it's the last presentation of Ultra Day. As you can see, it's the more macroeconomic view of our strategy and our business.
And I think to delve deeper into the discussion, but that's why we have Ultra series and with the leadership for our programs where we can discuss in more detail the outlook and the projects that we're implementing. And it's a forum where the executives can come closer to investors and analysts. So we've had in March an Ultra Cargo event where DASCO was able to explain the expansion and productivity gains and projects that they are implementing. We're planning for July an event with AMPM, which will allow us to present in more detail our new business model for the stores and the growth perspectives and profitability for our convenience stores. And we have a few events to be defined throughout the next few months.
So we can present our past EISG, our deep dive on Ipiranga and Ultragaz and also increase our interaction with foreign investors. And with these events, we hope to give a more complete view based on the potentials of value generation for the Ultra Group and a better understanding of the company. And with that, I close my presentation. I would like to thank you for your attention and your time. And I'd like to invite Fred to participate with me with the Q and A.
Thank you for your time. Let's start this session. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, you all. Fred, Andre and the other executives in the group, Ultrapar.
Hello? We can we can we are listening. We just need your image. Now, yes. Well, first of all, thank you very much.
Good afternoon, Yuval. Congratulations for the event, Rodrigo and all other executives of Ultraparks, our analyst partners, congratulations for the event and for sharing your strategies with us. It's very worth. And thank you for the opportunity to make a few questions. So we're going to have other sessions.
We're going to have this from the other companies later. I'd like to start, Fred, bringing 2 questions to you as far as capital. If we look in the sundry a long ways, we had 2 factors that were very important in the high cooperative governance and a track record, which was very positive as far as capital allocation. And in this recent period, we noticed that the allocations of the capitals and that they did not produce the fruits that they were expected rather from the shareholders than what they expected. But so, Fred, you have adjusted with this speech that the company has shown itself to be more open to eventually see the assets with more attention, not only the position, but the assets that you have today, but the opportunities that are being created rather in the refinery or so the two basic questions are first, if you could give a little bit more of color in the sense of this allocation of capital and a horizon of 3 years, say, if we look 3 years ahead and if we look behind what you as a company would like to meet and hit in this whole process of reformulation or changing the portfolio of assets of this company, if you could just highlight a point in the timeline?
2nd question is, it is as far as natural gas. We have noticed various companies obviously showing a great interest in this area of natural gas. Obviously, with all the opportunities that are being created, the whole area of infrastructure or a more diversified supply. And I would like to understand how Ultrapar places itself in this chain. Are you guys going to be positioned in a natural gas distribution or in the part of term mix or the commercialization of energy projects?
In what parts of this chain do you see Ultrapar having the biggest opportunities? Thank you, Luis. I'm going to answer here. Please compliment or just correct me. Well, let me say this.
You're right. We've had in some moments very good moments last year. It was great. We had a sequence there. And we had some issues there, as everyone knows.
What we are trying to see, Luis, very well is we're in a transition period of governance from years until now, the innovation. And these decisions of portfolio, which are superior governance, it comes from the counseling of Ultrapar or even that moves to an assembly. So these are points. And our vision is that we should have a structure process. If it's a hold of investments, it only makes sense if we exist, if we add value.
The work has to be valid more than the sum of the parts so that we can go back to these conditions. But we are moving towards that direction. So in this order, it's important to have focus, if we look at 3 years or even something more structured, not only opportunities. So this opportunity appeared here and then, but it's a planning process of managing this capital, the social governance. All of these things are being done over the last years and we are marching.
Of course, here and then, our anxiety for sure is it's ours. We cannot control, for instance, the market forces. The pandemic disturbed a lot. Some ideas and some possible work fronts that we had and that generated some insecurity throughout the way. But in these 3 years, if I could say in a qualitative way, 3 years from now, I hope to be and to have a more symmetric portfolio than we have now, always reminding ourselves that 3 pot that we have with regards to the other cargo, they're fortress.
And so when we add a refinery to this, that strengths even more. And so I believe that we will have a more synergy portfolio. And in the last moment, we will see the growth of all the capital employed. So it's a value generation. Our business continues to be a value generation.
And we should always look at our companies, our assets through these three perspectives, the value proposition and my capacity as a shareholder to add value. Am I the best shareholder to this business? So these two questions are quite important when we think of this portfolio. In this context, the natural gas fits very well in this. The chain is very long.
Let me say that we're not going to come to the exploration or things roads or mainstream, so bringing Brazil some place, extracting. We're going to see more of the downstream. But we're in this moment, this moment that I mentioned over this last 12 months, so we're working deep like all these zeroes in the chains. You mentioned the potential that we saw participation in the PGN, which would be for sure as a buyer. Ultragaz is it is a relevant player in this area, not to mention natural gas.
And if it's an important, it would be making sense to invest or not. This is something that we need to see. The distribution of GNL, very similar model to Ultragaz, similar. It's not the same, but we can add value or capillarity. Ultragaz has about 60,000 customers.
We can increase this. We can expand that. So, for instance, a client that is using this or he may look for another field. And last, the distribution of gas itself it's not a secret. Most of distributors are state companies, and there should be privatization there.
And so we have to pull that conversation from Maslow. Whenever we think of regions, we have strong presences. For example, think of the ultra cargo structure, Ipiranga, and think on the refinery that we've been purchasing and buying, you start to see a logic of the integration, and that could even be distributed in which we have a position that would make a lot of sense. Honestly, we are not in this stage yet. For 1 year working on this, we are coming closer.
And we need by somewhere next year, we need to have this contract signed and with Petrobras. And so it's a demand that we have from the entire team, and we start to focus on new things with a lot more of energy as from the 2nd semester on. But in 'twenty one, I think that we're going to see this Pointer moving in terms of portfolio. The entry is the position of Ultra will be more symmetric and with a return over capital and in places which are better than we are now. This itself differs.
Thank you very much. Congratulations for the gathering and for the event. Thank you for the questions. And our next guest is Thiago Duarte from BTG. Thiago, our welcome to you.
Let's go to your questions. I would like to thank you, Rodrigo. Thank you, Fred, for the opportunity. Congratulations on the event. First of all, obviously, whenever we talk about this, all these companies, and it's impossible to escape from this topic, like the allocation of capital, I'm going to try to bring in a different way, which I think it's important, but also trying to see the film of Ultraparks more in the long run and over the last few years.
When we look at the growth organic curve, it accommodates and falls when we think about CapEx over the last 3 years. You had a vestige of in Oxiteno with the expansion the only expansion that we see, there is Ultra Carve over the last year. The other ones had an accommodation or a settlement that was important. My first question and just trying to make sure that I leave the refinery there aside, which would be an inorganic investment. My first question would be outside of Chicago, I think that this is very clear.
Where do you guys see from the standpoint of organic growth a bigger potential? Or in other words, where should we see an acceleration of CapEx? And then I just move on to a second question. The company operates business, which are mature business industries, which are matured in different stages, but most of them mature, others in rapid and transition processes in terms of energy. Would it make sense if we thought similar to the graphic that you have shown, Rodrigo, in your presentation, would it make sense to think of UltraPark as the player that would be very much a value dividend oriented than organic growth the next year or so or not.
If you could choose, how would that have permeated your discussions along with the Board and in the shareholders groups, which would be important? Thank you, Thiago. A very good question. I see a combination in reality of organic growth. Ultracargo, for example, Ipiranga, our investment for 2020 to 2021, it's above 2020.
Our budget for 2020 was already a growth that could not be rejected. But with the inclusion of the pandemic, we had to hold things because we didn't know what would happen. And so we end up finishing ending the year and not having any loss for the future. But in terms of investments, we had we're seeing that. This year, we have $1,900,000,000 of investments organics.
And so this expansion is beyond this number, refinery beyond this number. So I believe the awareness of Ultrapar can mainly domain or it is the capital allocation governance is very intrinsic to our condition as an open capital company. So this awareness is very clear and it should be a combination of the two things. If you don't go with these efforts of improving the average margin, often that when we talk about quality, having net that sells more fields and this has come through investments. Without a shadow of a doubt, all due to us over this last year had significant bigger investment.
In other words, we have 2 bases there that are being developed. Ultragaz, it's a mature, stable market. And so it's a growth that it's going to have more market share. And so, I would say that it would be good to hear and listen to Rodrigo. We didn't talk about this answer, but I wouldn't just stamp on anything and say, we're going to try to search value on the long run with the combination of these things.
And here, just complementing Fred's thoughts, if you go a bit behind, we had, in a period of 10 years, a consecutive growth in EBITDA. And so that was a combination of acquisitions and organic investments. And an acquisition normally opens space for new value generation ways. And that's where the beauty came from that generation of Capra with that period. As Fred has presented at the beginning of the event and even as a part of that, part of the review of this portfolio, it is an action to go back to these ways.
And these ways have the combination of the new and the acquisitions that generate value and open new ways of value generation for the synergy and for the complexity. And also for the organic investments in 2021, we had 1 B900. So even in this market, we do not want to invest before the need. So you follow-up in Ipiranga, the volume growth for the opening of wells. So it's a negotiation there.
So there is a way for Ipiranga and the IPM of the acceleration for the growth of the NAT and including their own private stores, the Ultra Car. The Oxiteno, I remember it's an investment that brings long cycles of investment. It just end up vanishing, concluding a relevant cycle and it's in another. As Aurelien said, this is just a mode of the execution, execution, execution. It is capturing the benefits of these.
And part of this are seen in the new results, we were able to meet. There's a strong demand in Brazil because all the investment is taking capacity. So part of this growth that we have had in the Oxiteno and even the investment in the United States and the acquisitions that open new ways. So these combinations that we are searching towards building, part of that comes from this review of portfolio that Fred has mentioned. Very clear.
Thank you for your answers. Thank you, Thiago. Let's invite Andre and Hossain, our last guest, for the live questions, and then we'll move forward with the questions that we will read. Fred and Rodrigo, thank you for the invitation. It's good to be here.
Two questions from my side I'd like to explore. Fred, it's going to be 4 years of you in Ochre. And I imagine that inside of your mandate, the first conversations we had the first years, you said that part of your mandate was to make a re innovation of all the teams in Ultra Park. So it was a work that was well done. Everything was renewed over the last years.
I'd like to ask you maybe something more how have you seen this mandate evolving? If you're walking, this is my first question. The second question is still in the allocation of capital, we have seen the other companies adding more stability and in a different way. For example, natural gas is the main scope. Other players talking about ethanol as being the main fuel.
And so how do you see Ultra Park inserted? In which way the refinery would be fit inside of this from the investors' perspective? Let me start with the first question. This renovation process of the leadership and this process, just to give you a dimension, we're talking about of the first two levels of the organization, the directorship of the company and in this core, this strategic core of the direction leadership of the business. So our renewal is around 70% in reality 3 years in October, it will be 4 years in October, 3 years and a half.
So there's still space to reach the 4 years. So we have the 3rd 3 more quarters to reach. But this was done very in a very tranquil way. People that left the organization, high quality people, It was a process that has been very nice, very soft without any discontinuation. And so I would say that any organization of excellence, it's a process to say it is not dependent upon the council or composition.
It is my obligation, any one of us, myself or Trigal, if we sit on our chair the 1st day, we start thinking about succession. So it's a bit of work. We lost some people. We started to lose people to the market, which is very bad, but it's a positive sign that say, well, we are forming great leaders. And so this house had a lot of quality in this regard.
And so that's how I see this vision is quite present in the administrative board. We have a committee which is dedicated to the conversation and succession. And so the topics that are there, and so as far as sustainability is concerned, I don't think we have. We are not ashamed of what we do. We are essential to society.
We have to do it. And what we have to do is to do increasingly better what do we do. You see Piranjo mentioning, they're talking about their emissions and we're studying this, simulating the refinery market in terms of footprint. Today, it's oxygentle, but in the future, there will be a refinery in which will be added in an adulterous case. What does that mean?
What are the things that we can take over? Do things well, what we do. It is incredible. We have to do. And we're going to cut some edges throughout the way so that we can analyze and make it visible to society.
We have a strength in sectors such as energy, infrastructure. How is this going to evolve? We're talking about 10, 15 years in the future. How is this going to evolve? It's difficult.
Biofuels Brazil has a long way of growth. It's going to delay the electrification process of Brazil. We have a very big infrastructure challenge. We have Ultracargo with great challenges there. We can think about this.
Dastu is, in reality, working to improve profitability. And he's also thinking in terms of what he can do differently to take advantage of this strength he has as the more we have as a synergy portfolio, the more chances we will have. Rodrigo even mentioned this of organic growth. So I see as this do very well what we do, concentrate ourselves, say I'm sorry, throughout time, 15 years down the line, I can see that by our portfolio, we see a gradual move there. It's not going to be anything radical.
We're going to have at least 20, 25 years of a very strong cash generation in these activities. But gradually, we will identify opportunities and try to gravitate towards our and surrounding our efficiency. I would just add a short comment RPM that already replenishes. It would we are trying to see how we can take over territory, say, the automobile. But the ecosystem around this car, it could be an electric car, Our gas stations of Ipiranga, they're potential points for electrifying these cars.
So in 5 years or 10 years or 2025, it can even be the majority. It depends on the speed, but I would say that they are side businesses that end up complementing this hardcore of downstream. So this is the way I see and we should be proud of what we do. And we should be daring to show our faces and say we can do better with even less environmental impact. And so we're going to go up until the end of this program to put more numbers and colors towards this direction.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Andrea. Have a good afternoon. Thank you for your participation. And we're very much running short on time.
Let's pick up some questions here as they arrive. And Fred, there is a question to you and that involves the others that already came. This question came from Gabriel of other states. Congratulations, Fred, for your presentation. My first question is as far as the strategy in the long run, in the process of allocation of capital in Ultra Park, where you see the biggest opportunities for the groups considering the changes that you see downstream with the sales of Refinery, new market of natural gas?
Could you give an idea on that? This is the first part that you have just asked. And the second, could you just give an idea on the timeline of these changes? Well, I use a slide back there in a short run, maybe 22 next year, this reveal. And that would be like fixing and organizing our portfolio and making it more consistent, which is the phase.
And from next year on, we would have 2 things. For example, processes stabilized, processes established, being starting from a more comfortable position, but also unleveraging something in terms of our debts, our flexibility to invest. That will come in the next few years. Of course, that we're going to have a spike with the acquisition of the refinery, but it brings a very relevant cash flow. You do the pro form, do you have that EBIT that was back there quickly?
We have capabilities to absorb this investment without really touching our capital structure. What would we do had it would be quite dissipating over this moment, but we know how to do a few things and we have to add things to what these two questions see, these assets and Petrobras as excellent assets as it opens for these participations privately that will be new opportunities, gas natural gas and refinery, for instance, well known. We will be well positioned knowing the sector very well, having more financial capacity because of the reduction of the indebtedness. And so feel is very close to us. We have an infrastructure company, which is called Chicago.
And so we have a big activity there, which would be to fix our portfolio, bring our indebtedness low or that's low, having some results, but we still need to come to the point where we would like to be. Fred, I'm just going to have one more question. It's a compliment that we can gather a lot of this. It came from Bruno Montanaro. Fred, congratulations on the event.
Thank you for the questions and the answers. The group has do some organization of the sales of some utilities and the potentials. But however, there's been a bit delayed compared to what the market expect. 2021, it would be like oxygenating this quarter. What are you looking for better opportunities?
I think that 'twenty one, our expectations, Bruno, thank you for the question. 21, as I mentioned before, pandemic really disturbed really and of course that we have a transition moment. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to repeat as from 'twenty one on, we have a target up until July. And with Petrobras of signing a contract, it's a public action. And so this by itself can be a super development of our portfolio, but other movements that we are analyzing and that may happen up until the end of the year.
Therefore, we will end 2021 possibly having a different image of what we had. And if we could complement these transactions, there's something very relevant, which is the time for these transactions. Part of the potentials are potentials of privatization sales that have their own timing and that we try to follow-up, but that we do not dictate this rhythm. And the other potential investment is also the timing to have the adequate perception of the value of that company. So that also influenced the timing of doing these transactions.
And as Fred mentioned, it's not the year for some of them to materialize. We have gone over time in 4 minutes. Let's close this question and answer session. Unfortunately, we won't be able to answer all of these questions. The RI people will have all these questions, and they will look for the answers