Hello, good morning. Welcome to Ultra Day 2024. It's a pleasure to be here with you. It's my 1st Ultra Day. Before we start, I have some safety remarks to make. There is no planned fire drill today, therefore, if there is an emergency, our fire brigade team of the hotel will come and support us. The emergency exits are on the end of the room, to the left. Our exit route is just following straight in the corridor, the hallway, and the meeting point is just outside the hotel lobby. Our morning has been organized as follows: We are going to have an introduction of all our businesses, followed by an introduction of Ultrapar, and then we are going to close with the Q&A with all our executives.
For those who are with us online, you can submit comments and questions as we go, and during the Q&A session, we'll try to answer as many questions as possible. To start, I would like to invite Tabajara Bertelli, CEO of Ultragaz, to start his talk.
Good morning, those that I haven't greeted personally. Thank you very much for being here. It is a pleasure to be here and to spend the next minutes with you, telling you about Ultragaz, the founding business of Ultra. For some of you, we've been discussing our strategic plan for a while. What I've summed up to present to you today are the key highlights of our plan, what we have achieved so far, and our forecast for the upcoming months. For those who have been with us for the past three years, we've implemented most of what we planned.
Let me start by telling you about the foundation of everything that I'm going to elaborate on. Our mission is very specific to the company, because Ultragaz has its own specific attributes, a result of its own history. It was the introductory company of LPG and gas bottles in the Brazilian market, and we've captured lots of interesting things that can be used for the development of our business. Let me highlight a few points. Of course, there will be more, but this is a well-known brand, known throughout the society, so the brand power can do much more than what we've done so far. It's a company with great capillarity because of its own structure, and there are some important indicators that you can see on the screen.
We are represented in most of the cities with our reseller operations, and therefore, we have a very good capillarity of operation. The company has developed a model of relationship. Ultragaz is a machine of relationship with its business partners, resellers, and consumers. Everything which was developed for LPG, but what we have observed in recent years has also proven that we have potential to go ahead with all the choices that we've made to Ultragaz. There are some challenges, of course, and we've created some unique solutions to them, but this is very encouraging. This is where we take as first step to our strategy. Before emphasizing the main avenues of growth, let's talk about the Brazilian LPG market. It is known quite well, but those abroad might not be familiarized with that.
LPG market, as a reference worldwide, it is among the ten largest markets in terms of volume. But the way we operate, we don't have LPG for cars, we don't have heating, applications because of the tropical nature of our country. So our market is the most developed market with a very sophisticated model in the world because we serve households. It has very high logistic complexity. We cover the whole country, a combined model of home deliveries, very quick, and this is not replicated anywhere else in the world. Our delivery expectations are quite high, and this is supported by the capillarity that we have. We can meet the expectations. The area has developed a lot, and Ultragaz has played a key role in the development of our industry at large. Another relevant point, important to us and to other countries, LPG is a clean energy solution.
In Africa, for example, 80%-85% of the population has no access to clean energy, and LPG is a solution, and we are a reference to that. There is still room for expansion in Brazil. There are still people who do not have access to LPG because of limited income, and we have a number of actions towards that. Finally, I would like to talk about market regulation. It has obtained the best of two worlds. On the one side, it developed a market focused on end consumer, who are free to choose, protecting customers and encouraging competition. On the other hand, it's a market that is very well organized and safe, safety of supplies and products. Regulatory agencies, especially the Brazilian Agency of Oil and Gas, has evolved significantly and has brought us to our current status.
The whole LPG market can see the importance of regulation and how much it has led to our current successful nature. As Polaris has said, let's start from the key pillar for all companies in our holding: safety journey. Our product is somewhat more complex in terms of operation, and we are extra careful with our model of operation. We've been evolving in projects and implementations. I think we've already made all the hardcore investments in our installations. Now we are working on the behavioral journey of people. This is the main topic that we've been emphasizing on, and indicators indicate we are on the right path. In Ultragaz alone, we sell 10 million bottles per month. It goes in and out of resellers. A lot of handling throughout the year, so a huge safety challenge.
But we've been doing our work ahead of the future, and now we are expanding our work, bringing most of the logistics to the safe journey and bringing other elements of the supply chain. We are going to keep on focusing on that. We believe that this is a very good test behavior. Now, speaking of our strategic model, I am going to emphasize what we are going to do. Our vision of development is to maximize investments with high generation of value. These are some details. The main purpose is to strengthen our reseller network that has this kind of retail profile, delivering specific services which are better, higher, thinking about recurrence as well. This is one of our recent progression of our company, and it has really transformed our results. In the corporate market, we are still focusing on dissemination.
The corporate corporate customers have put us in the leading position. We are also focusing on digital channels to interact with customers, partners, to improve operations, which is essential for our design. We've also made robust investments towards operational excellence. This is a model where we have more complexity of relationships, and we have to maintain that at levels of efficiency and quality to be perceived as a partner of value. So we need a platform over which we can provide a broader range of products beyond LPG, as I'm going to tell you later. Let me shed some more light on each of these elements. So let's start with the residential segment.
70% of our volume comes from it, 100% through our reseller network, and we want to be close to the end consumers, increase of value perception with partners that understand this importance and like this model. There is still a market to expand. Some geographical regions, still, there is room for improvement, and we've been expanding our infrastructure to maximize growth into some of these markets. Proximity through digital channels is very important. Over 12% of our negotiated volume is through digital models. This is real-time operation. We have to capture orders through different channels, be in contact with resellers, observe delivery, level of excellence, and this is why we have a number of qualification and development programs for our resellers, which are ultimately perceived as Ultragaz at the end consumer.
We really believe in this growth, and I believe customers are going to adopt different channels. Channels are going to remain in the market, and probably we'll have to have different profile of clients all at the same time. Here we have consistent evolution of number of resellers. It's a mature market, as you know, but what matters is the process has already been started with expanded volumes, but we prefer resellers focused on retail, and we have fewer resellers, which are more wholesaler operators, more based on the transaction. This is a great lever of profitability and perception of value and brand by customers. The other relevant segment is for the corporate segment, for bulk operation. It's our own operation directly with end consumers. We have 60,000 customers, corporate customers. It is a process that we've been doing for a long time.
We try to expand our portfolio, expansion with profitability, of course, just, focusing on our current markets, expanding our footprint, always offering additional value and capturing value based on what we've developed. Our main indicator is the time of relationship with our customers. They all have a contract base, but it's great to see the satisfaction level going up and renewing the contract and the businesses with us, which is something really important. The plan of expansion is combined with expansion of our infrastructure. We want to have our operations closer to our customers. It's our own operation, so we have long-term operations. We know exactly what are the areas we're going to focus on, and with that, as I've said before, we can offer a portfolio of energy solutions, different solutions for different industries that have different needs, not only one single LPG solution.
To show you our further progression, we can talk about our journey in those two segments, closer to customers, more customers, complex operation. Therefore, we need operational excellence in execution. Execution of this plan is not obvious. We've been working hard to deliver the best. These are the indicators of this operation, just for you to have an idea. We've been added technology and automation in our productive processes. We've also seen the capture of benefits in logistics. Our model is much better developed now. We also have a number of opportunities in supply chain, which were used, and we've also started the implementation of so-called operational consortium, sharing some bases for storage and manufacturing, and I'm going to give you some more details.
So here at the front, talking about operational aspects, we have one, the second phase, which was the most complex, and it's fully implemented. We are still missing a third and last phase that depends on some additional investments that we have already agreed on, and this is going to happen early next year. But we were successful in implementations, and we can see a higher service level with our customers. We're closer to customers. We're much more competitive in some regions, and this agrees with our expectation of attraction in terms of benefits. Financial benefits will be fully perceived next year, 2025, and part of it has been captured and will be captured over the next few months.
So we are closing a package of improvement of operational excellence that we were very optimistic about, but there was a risk that we promptly overcame according to plan. Now, moving on, and we talked about the evolution of our core businesses and the two segments, operational excellence. And as we have been saying to everybody, we have a proposal of continue with the offers to the same market, same customers, expanding the solutions that we offer. These are some of the movements that we have already done. So here you can see the operation of compressed natural gas with biomethane, and we have also started our energy operations with two acquisitions.
One has been just finalized, and with the first operation with what we call, bio LPG, but this is a fully renewable product with very, very high acceptance in the market, and we are expecting to continue this development with a product that has good prospects in the future. Now, talking a little bit about the set of evolution and everything, I'll talk about our vision for energy, and as you remember, two years ago, we started in distributed generation market, acquiring a very small company, Stella, and developing. And especially last year, we had a long journey of learning to understand what the journey would be like for our customers, and this is a focus on low-voltage market. This is very interesting actions. Targeting this market, we have just finalized the 2nd transaction with the acquisition.
... a recent acquisition that just earlier this month, and now we are focusing on high voltage segment with a business profile that is very similar to Ultragaz, which is marketing in a retail market. So, and we have operations that, in a very simplistic way, we look at the low voltage model, working with small customers, and the retail, much closer to business and stores, bars, restaurants, hotels, and so on. And so this combination we can already see that it is very successful in distributed generation, and it's at full steam for the integration of the second vertical, and we are going to complement our package for the our existing customers with LPG, and we are offering now new products. Now, an update about the progress on biomethane.
With CNG, we are continuing with compressed natural gas, as we did in the acquisition from Trice. This year, operations that we didn't have for biomethane, but they were very difficult. Production was very small of biomethane, and there were very few biomethane customers. Today, as we have assured supply, so a significant volume of supply that we have assured, some of it in operation, and another part is going to start operations over the next two years, and many contracts with customers already finalized. These are true pictures of the real-life operations with customers, and we are going to sign more contracts before the end of the year, and possibly this is going to provide a significant contribution to our business.
So we have designed this operational model, focusing very much on our core business, that is our main focus. Closer to customers, in having pulverized relationship with customers, capturing the opportunities, we are seeing a very good and positive evolution of what the company has been doing so far, and also having a wider array, of solutions offered to our customers. So this is all I had to say to you, and in closing, I would like to show you an internal video that we use to help us, to disseminate our strategy and summarizes everything that I have said today.
[Foreign language]
Thank you so much. And now continuing, I would like to give the floor to Décio Amaral from Ultracargo.
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you here today. Thank you so much for being here. It's very nice to tell you what has changed and the progress after our last meeting, almost one year ago. I would like to say that we haven't changed. Well, something that we haven't changed is the way we grow, the way we deliver our strategy, the way we create value. And how can we do that? First, with a great focus on safety, social, environmental responsibility, looking after our people in an inclusive and diverse environment, but something that tries and bring innovation, with the challenge of always doing the best. We have, we're always and always on the pursuit of finding excellent and adding value.
We want to improve more and more our value proposition for customers, so that they may see Ultracargo as a preferred company, a company that they want to work with, and we are very attentive to new growth opportunities and geographic relevance, and this is what hasn't changed. First, the most important thing for us is safety. Numbers speak for themselves, something that has evolved is this in the company. How can we do that? I'm going to repeat what I said last year. We do this working concomitantly on three elements: mindware, that we call our culture. A culture very people-centered, safety-centered, and also centered on risk management. We work on hardware. Assets need to have maintenance, need to be thought and planned right from the design to permit safe operation.
I need to maintain protection systems, control systems, valve calibration. Our safety level is so no matter how good is the control, it is going to degrade over time. There's software which is the management system, the monitoring of performance indicator, proactive and reactive indicators to be attentive to changes in the scenario. Whenever there is a new product in operation, this is a new risk analysis. We need to have these three aspects combined all the time, but how can you keep this alive? With lots of commitment from leadership, so this year we have introduced the Safety Day. It's kind of common for you to stop the company to have some downtime when an accident happens, but we don't need an accident, so we have a downtime.
For one hour, all operation, Ultracargo, all our employees and contracted staff, more than 1,300, almost 1,400, people with a senior leader talking about safety, and it is the role model of leaders that assures that this really happens. Something that hasn't changed either, and I hope it won't change for a long time. Ultracargo is a leader in its industry, both in terms of geographic footprint and as well as in static capacity. What has started to change, we are creating another element of diversification, as compared to the competition, by going in the interior, and I'm going to talk more about this. But it has also changed that we grew from 7-8 million tons handled and from 14-17 million cubic meters sold.
Already with the benefit of our acquisitions of Opla and Rondonópolis and another small acquisition last year, and I hope that this changes a lot in the future. In terms of social and environmental responsibility, this is important, and there are a few things that I would like to highlight. We have seen a strong increase in the number of women working in our operations. By next year, we want to have 30% women operating our terminals. For many of them, this is their first job. I go to terminals, and I talk to them. These women are so proud to have the first job opportunity at Ultracargo. This is very valuable because income in the hands of women gets better to families. Behind of this, there are women that are entering the labor market and also with social consequences.
So we want to have our operations more friendly to the environment. We have renewable sources of energy, very strong waste management, water, CO₂ emissions, and then you can monitor our indicators in our annual report. But we can only do this with people, so we need to have good climate. We work strongly on an inclusive, provocative environment combined to our purpose, and we were very happy to win the GPTW seal this year, Great Places to Work, demonstrating that it is possible, we can do that. And the last example that I would like to share with you, it's a new way of interactions between public and private sectors. We needed to buy an area in Santos for the connection with the terminal. So traditional, you sign the check, and that's it. And then, well, it's a Pix.
You enter, and then you make the bank transfer. This was easy, but what about the legacy? What is the best way to do this with a city hall? They needed a school, a hospital in a poor area of the city of Santos, and then thought, "Let's do it differently." So Ultracargo is going to build with some partners, the school and the hospital, and we're going to swap with the city, so that we have the land. So this means leaving a legacy. This is the execution of what we call social responsibility. So this is a legacy in a practical way and maybe other companies and other public agencies will have the same vision, and we can work in this way. Now, a little bit about our customers. We have a diversified customer portfolio with good clients.
Most of our contracted capacity in the mid and long term makes us confident that we can continue with this robust investment plan that you have been seeing us doing over the last few years. Our exposure to derivatives is 61%, but better saying, our exposure to byproducts is 61%. It accounts for a significant share of our revenues, and then we have corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol. 82% of our revenue comes from outside our group, demonstrating that we are independent service providers, that we are open to the market, and this is likely to grow even further, this external exposure as a result of our investments. Now, a little bit about productivity and technology in a very wide-ranging way.
If you take a look at the chart on the right-hand side, so our cost and expenses have been flat per cubic meter of capacity, accumulated inflation over the period. This is productivity. We have been able to gain productivity every year above the level of inflation. How can we do that? This is our Ultracargo operational system, based on lean Kaizen methods, so we seek technology efficiency at very low cost, very efficient operations. This is the first element to assure a good value proposition for our customers. If you look, so we had 827 people, this year, 836 , with three new geographies, and these people operated 83 2,000 , today to 1.67 million . This is productivity.
It's important when you take a look at the chart on the left-hand side, it talks about our investments. So of the 832 to 1,067, the utilization level is very, very high. We could invest at the right timing, right geography, adding more value per cubic meter that we sell, as we have been placing in the market. So productivity and accurate allocation of investments, this is very powerful, and you can see the effect in the final results of the company, and you're going to see it further ahead. Now, transitioning into the future, I would like to talk about the basis of the foundations for our strategy. These are two maps.
On the left, we have the surplus and deficit of oil byproducts per state, the vision for 2030 , and the main ports for the entry of products where Ultracargo operates. So it can be Cabotage, Vila do Conde, Itaqui, and Santos. So you can see the center west of the country growing with agro. So what changes for 2030 , in thinking of the growth of the ports, is that Santos will be the structural importer of byproducts. So when we say, "Well, this is an opportunity, the main ports, they're going to grow, we need to invest in this area." When you combine this with a chart on the right-hand side, you can see corn ethanol, our vision for 2030 , with a huge increase in production in the center west, and consumption spread throughout Brazil.
And if we were to talk about reverse logistics, complementarity, so let's work on corridors, so we offer services. This is a little bit of our strategy. First of all, I'm going to share with you a video for you to understand a little bit better, and then I'll come back.
[Foreign language]
Lots of constructions, really ongoing construction sites, large country. We are challenged, but delivering results. Now, speaking of the first logistic corridor, the chart shows the increase of corn ethanol and our forecast up to 2026, and the share of Mato Grosso in the growth. This is what's going to happen. We've seen yesterday, General Motors investing in flex fuel cars in Brazil. Flex cars run by ethanol, and we have to improve the logistics so that it gets as a competitive product. Corn ethanol is very competitive, and if we improve logistics, it can take over even a better part of the cycle, auto cycle. In all our terminals, we have that product stored, but with inefficient logistic. Imagine if we had efficient logistics.
Concerning our oil derivatives in São Paulo, as of next year, we are going to have really structuring investments. Rondonópolis, Palmeirante, Paulínia and Opla receives that product connected through pipelines, so 1 million cubic million per year. With our investments in Rondonópolis and Opla, the corridor will go to 3.5 million capacity per year. We are going to have it completed by the first quarter next year. Expansion in Santos Terminal to capture more volume, and there is going to be a connection as well. Santos, Rondonópolis, connected by railways, being able to deal with complementary reverse flows. As it expands, Ultracargo then has more opportunities to offer efficient services to our customers. Now, speaking of the second corridor, in Itaqui, there's been a huge growth.
This is going to be maintained, but to increase the efficiency of the four terminals, we need to have efficiency of exiting the port. There is a lot being transloaded with trucks, but we need trains. Palmeirante is a new terminal connected with railway systems that's going to increase the turnover of Itaqui Terminal, thanks to the Palmeirante unit that's going to be opened in the first half next year. Very relevant corridor to us and to Brazil. We are also going to capture truck-borne ethanol being transported by trucks, and that can also be then shipped through the terminal. How do we expect to be in our next meeting? Expansions in Santos, Palmeirante, and Rondonópolis, fully completed. Itaqui at the last step of the production, that's going to be 15% increase in installed capacity.
Itaqui and Palmeirante will be in full operation, and probably we can have some more information about the strategy to expand inland in Brazil. As of Vila do Conde, similarly to other corridors, but in a river solution with more efficient flows, we are going to get ethanol coming up to the north by trucks to be transferred to Vila do Conde. We want to offer to our clients, "Do you want to get to the center west region of Brazil? Well, I have two or three options to offer." We want to offer to our clients options, multiple options that they can decide to go on, depending on the moment. To conclude my presentation, we've produced robust growth, because to do it, we need money, we have to make money. Margins matter. Last year, we had significant growth.
Most of the growth has come from acquisitions, but not much. We've improved our asset bases, efficiency is part of that. In the first half, we closed above last year's number. Terminals are being used, high occupancy rate, and this is why we have this strong program to have capacity and to resume growth, even at faster pace. That's it. Thank you all very much. I'll be here to entertain your questions during the Q&A, to talk about any other topics you might want to bring about. Let me invite Linden now to talk about Ipiranga.
[Foreign language] Good. Good morning. Businesses start from their license to operate, at least that's how it should start, and safety is our license to operate. We've been investing resources, time to improve our processes, to improve our infrastructure.
... and build a culture of safety that is compatible with our business. And I, I guess we've evolved very significantly, and the numbers speak for themselves. Whenever we talk about safety, we have to understand that safety should be part of our culture. It should be part of our daily practice. We've increased the scope of incidents being monitored, the risks being monitored, and it gives us more learning opportunities. It gives us a chance to keep on correcting, improving processes, and developing a culture of really diligence in safety. Before addressing Ipiranga, I would like to tell you about the market. As a society, we are all involved in the discussion about energy transition. The business of fuels in Brazil is consistently growing. It's a fact. This year, it has grown more than 5%. It is a resilient business.
At the same time, it's growing, and we can see the share of biofuels, which becomes increasingly more important, but it grows and changes somewhat its distribution. We've talked about that. There is more opening to international market, less dependence on Petrobras supplies, the capacity to bring products from all over the world, therefore, there are more options. But we are still dealing with a factor, which is a challenge, which is irregular trade. Here, you can see on the chart on the right, 17% of the volume distributed in Brazil is distributed by companies classified as being irregular companies or companies that operate in the irregular market because of not paying taxes or not complying with CBIOs goals or not complying with the regulations of mixtures, et cetera.
This is our main challenge, and I don't think it's news to any of you. This is something that has been discussed even through the media. For the past two to three years, we've seen a number of indications of irregularity in the Brazilian market. Special regime, a tax regime on imports, irregular imports of naphtha and others. The something unbranded, so unbranded products. According to the regulations in Brazil, the gas stations of a distributor can have a gas pump using products of another distributor's. Wow! It doesn't make sense. Something difficult to control because, yes, you have to communicate, but it's not communicated, and below that, in the tanks of the gas station, there is no segregation. There is not one tank for one specific pump. One tank would support one, two, or more of the gas pumps.
60% of the gas stations in Brazil have those regional brands or unbranded pumps. So there is no purpose in having the regulations addressing that and saying that they, the stations would be authorized to distribute products with no control whatsoever. That said, if we observe what has happened in the past eighteen months, we can see some positive indications. We've seen the approval of monophase, single-phase taxation in diesel and gasoline, which reduce somewhat the tax failure to pay taxes. We've seen some suspensions of licenses of companies which were repeatedly irregular. And we've seen in the media, in the business, a willingness to address these topics, which is a positive thing. So yes, there is still a lot to be done.
ICL, that we invest and participate in, has a very important role to play, but I've been in the industry for 34 years, and I've been dealing with that for 34 years. But the exposure that we can see today in the media and all the involvement of players against the irregular market had not been heard of before. Probably because we've got to a point where we have to decide whether we want a serious business or something that is open to irregular practices. I'm concerned about that, but I'm also optimistic. I can see a number of effective actions put in place, which didn't use to be common in the past. This is the environment in which we operate. It's not going to change. I hope it gets better, but we cannot simply sit and wait for things to happen.
We have to be prepared to deal with them. In Ipiranga, we've been investing in the four pillars that I've been emphasizing in our communication. They are our work guidelines, focused on what really adds value to the business, and what is really important for the health and progression of a business such as Ipiranga. In logistics, for example, efficiency. In supply chain and trading, we want to have options to bring more competition to the market. Competitiveness, I've already emphasized the importance of have very well-adjusted pricing with clear policies, something that will ultimately generate good competitiveness to our resellers. And finally, strong brand and culture that can engage our internal team, our resellers, and customers. The work throughout the years has generated consistency at Ipiranga. These are some of the characteristics of our business, you all know them. But we've been experiencing significant improvement in our results.
For example, market share of Ipiranga in the branded stations, it has improved in recent years in a business that has a number of adversities, and our NPS, the way we are perceived by our resellers, it's something that has been improving, despite the fact that we are competing in a market with a number of challenges. Now, speaking about the elements of our pillars, I would like to start from logistics and distribution. We need efficiency. We have to improve processes. We have to be more efficient, efficient in using our resources, in redesigning processes that would improve the level of services delivered to our customers. It has provided good results, so significant reduction in our operating times, significant reduction in the number of incidents, especially in our fleet. We've seen increase in fleet productivity. We've reduced the demurrage, which is something quite important.
That said, this is a journey. We still have got a lot to do. We knew that the pillar of logistics and distribution would take longer to capture all the value, but for the next three years, we expect to have BRL 400 million in efficiency to be captured just from the pillar of logistics and distribution. Now, supply and trading, as I told you, the basis of supply and trading is the volume we have. Our volume generates this comfort level to operate in the international market in the most efficient way. But we have to just balance between options and competitiveness. We bring products to Brazil or not, depending on where it's generated. One third of sales through our trading are international sales, but we have really to balance optionality and competitiveness all the time. Businesses in Brazil are increasing.
Brazil will keep on depending more and more on its capacity to originate product outside Brazil, and this is why it's so important to have a trading business which is broad, capable of accessing products at the sources that can bring us enhanced competitiveness. Another important element concerns competitiveness. We've been emphasizing pricing because it was a low-hanging fruit that we attacked right from the beginning of our process and my coming into the company. But it's not only about price, it also involves market intelligence, efficient processes, consistency, transparency, so that resellers understand what's behind the pricing rationale. Strong network, we've been making divestments and really closing down some stations. It makes no sense to carry inefficiency.
... We've increased our share in selling of a premium product. It gives more margin to Ipiranga and to resellers. And cost and capital discipline, which is something that should guide all our activities. This year, we have started a process to replace our ERP, and we already felt the need to do that for a while, and this is also going to add efficiency to Ipiranga businesses. Today, we are the chain with the best productivity in Brazil, precisely because of all the work that we did with consolidation of our businesses. So even if we have fewer stations, we have the best average per station in Brazil. And now, in terms of engagement, and I say engagement due to churn, it's about brand and culture.
We use these elements effectively to engage all stakeholders that have some relationship with the brand Ipiranga. This is a very strong brand. It's been in Brazil for 87 years, got all awards, all prizes, very with great recall among Brazilians, and internally, it generates a feeling of participation in our team that is quite significant. With customers, obviously, their identification of the brand takes place and is very traditional, and it, this is related to the value generation, the capacity to generate value for our customers through our value proposition. One of the points that were very critical for Ipiranga in a transition process was the capacity of finding a successor for critical positions. Today, we no longer have this problem in Ipiranga.
80% of the critical positions have successors mapped, ready or almost ready, to take office in no longer than three years. This is part of a process that started in identifying talents or identifying important talents, retention capacity, and also capacity to train those people. At the same time, we built in Ipiranga an inclusive and diverse environment. I think that the result of this culture we can see in our favorability index that has been growing over the last four years and have reached quite significant rates when we consider companies in the Brazilian scenario. Moreover, as Décio showed, some social programs at Ultracargo, there are some that are very dear to us. One is the women operation. Today, we already have in our bases, women who are operators.
This may sound obvious to you, but this is not. I think that five years ago, we did not have this in Brazil. Today, we already have women in Ipiranga driving those very, very big trucks with 60,000 L , which is not common. But we have been developing this with women, have been attracting women to do this kind of work, and they are performing with excellence. And this is to have the talent. It's not just for showing our ESG in our report, and they correspond to these opportunities. We also have inclusion, which prepared about 300 people that are disabled to operate, especially in technology.
And we have Health on the Road that is very traditional, which is this truck that you are seeing going through Brazilian roads to our stations, and they provide care in those stations, not just for drivers and everyone working there, but for the entire community of that location. This is a significant program with around that has performed almost seven hundred thousand medical appointments over fifteen years. Now, talking a little bit within the pillar of engagement by enchantment, we have Iconic as part of our portfolio. Iconic is a JV of lubricants, of Ipiranga, together with Chevron, and since the beginning, it has been the market leader in Brazil. We've been winning market share. We've been improving satisfaction rates in the relationship with customers. We work with two very high-reputation brands in the market.
We have been expanding our businesses, and we started exploring other sources of growth. So today and last year, we became base oil distributors, and we are dealing with our portfolio, improving our product portfolio to place higher emphasis in products that we did not operate on so intensively. We have invested in our plants, in our port in Rio to so that we could have higher logistic and operational efficiency. We have the main logistic center in South America, capable of developing very high quality products, and this is encouraging for Iconic, with expansion markets, expanding into other markets. So this is important for our value proposition, AmPm, and we did work very similar to what we did in Ipiranga.
The first was our work. We closed stores, something that did not make sense to Ipiranga and didn't make any sense for the people who were selling. Then we changed the stores, and we have higher revenues. Our operations of the business are more efficient and higher satisfaction of our customers in the front lines after executing our business plan. Today, our chain is healthier and stronger. Moreover, we've been doing quite interesting work in AmPm to bring into our value proposition traditional retail brands that add value to the perception of consumers. Obviously, this has generated very positive perceptions that our stores are offering, and this ends up and leads to higher engagement of our resellers. I think that in a nutshell what really translates all of this is our bottom line.
So the market has helped? Yes, of course, this is obvious over the last two years, but obviously and clearly, Ipiranga has been evolving in its results as a result of this focus in things that really make a difference and that are our priority in the running of our business. Now, I would like to show a video with you that summarizes this. Very well. Thank you so much. This is all of Ipiranga for all of us. Thank you so much. And I would like to give the floor to our baby employee, Fabio Schettino, the youngest one in our family.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here representing Hidrovias on the first Ultra Day. This is a great satisfaction.
I've been in the company right since its beginning, and to have a new cycle under new management with very favorable prospects. I'm going to reverse the dynamics and those who are not so familiar with our business. First, I'm going to show you a video, and then I'm going to give you details about the presentation. Just one comment. What you're seeing here on the picture is this convoy that you see on the picture. This has about 350 meters, and 300 meters of width, and about 2,000 trucks is the load. And we have three diesel engines and a fourteen people crew. And I hope I'll be able to show you how efficient this mode of transportation is so effective in a country that has a. It's very favorable for river transportation. Thank you so much.
[Foreign language]Hidrovias do Brasil. ...Corridor South. Our action stands out in the largest waterway on the continent, the Paraná-Paraguay. On this route, we transport iron ore produced in the region of Corumbá, grains originating from Paraguay, cellulose from Uruguay, and as cargo return, fertilizers. Our assets are customized and more flexible, allowing navigation in shallow waters, a differential that brings greater resilience and adaptability to climatic conditions. Cabotage. In our coastal navigation route in the state of Pará, we dedicate two assets to the transport of bauxite.
Operation of Santos. We operate fertilizers and salt in the largest port in Latin America, in an area leased for 25 years. With two pioneer hydraulic cranes, the operation has a handling capacity of 2.5 million tons per year, shipping via road and rail. Hidrovias do Brasil operates in a more efficient, competitive modal, and that generates less socio-environmental impact.
Our commitment goes beyond logistical efficiency. We value our people and prioritize operational safety in all our activities. We focus on serving our clients with excellence, building relationships of trust and the long term. Hidrovias do Brasil, connecting the future of logistics through a more efficient mode of transport.
Okay, so let's start with other sister companies to talk about what is the dearest to us. So we can talk about anything without talking about safety. So number one, we'll talk about safety. We can't talk about anything else, not even sustainability, without assuring and making sure that our employees are going to back home safe and sound. So this is a fundamental change in our approach towards safety. This changed one year ago. This increase in the rate is an increase that comes from the perception that we need to report accidents. Many of these 11 cases, they are low severity, but they should be reported. So this is the beginning. First, we need to get to know, measure, and then manage.
So, and this is very much reinforced in the culture of Ultrapar that reports this and that is contributing with benchmarks to us. And this is one of our pillars, and obviously, we are going to advance this. We have the look of a company. We celebrated 14 years, and we joined a group that is more than 80 years old. This is our concern and our focus on safety. This is a little bit about the history of our company. We celebrated the 14th anniversary just this year. It started from a PowerPoint in 2010. Everything you saw in the video, except for the bulk ships, was greenfield from scratch.
So the company started its activities by mapping the two main locations, so Paraguay-Paraná Waterway and the Amazon Basin, and we had the biggest contract of river navigation in the world, and this is how our company started. So the turning point was this contract with Vale in 2014 . We started operating Paraguay-Paraná Waterway, taking more from Córdoba to Argentina. We bought the land of the Arco Norte, and so the Arco Norte had a small share in the logistics exports from Mato Grosso. And today, a significant share of all grains produced in Mato Grosso goes north through Arco Norte, and started operating this in 2016 .
And then we started the bauxite bulk ships, and they are not pushers or barges, they are bulk ships with coastal navigation, also a long-term contract with Hydro Alunorte, contract controlled by Norsk Hydro. And then we won the lease of the fertilizers and salt terminal in Santos, and we started operating there in 2020, when we had our IPO, and now obviously, in a new phase, under new management, and looking into the second half of growth or, growth cycle of Hidrovias do Brasil. Everything was very fast. Obviously, this company has been increasing and growing at a bit of significantly, a weight average growth of 25% YoY .
And as a reminder, here, we had four years of drought crisis that we need to address, and further on, I will give you more details about what we are doing to solve in a structuring way. But I can tell you, for Brazil, waterway transportation are related to rivers that can support navigation. So something good, that it made it very clear, and we are going to solve it in the medium and long term. Just one detail, my life was not going to become easier because my boss is a naval engineer, so and then now it's easier to interact with the group. In the South Corridor, we have four business lines.
We take ore from Corumbá, from a mine that was controlled by Vale, and today is controlled by J&F, to Argentina, [audio distortion ]
... 600 km. It's 300 tons of the ore. This is the biggest contract that we have. It's take-or-pay contract. Even though the controller of MCR changed, it's still assured by Vale International. And so J&F bought this, and then we kept the guarantee or collateral and all the contracts with the Hidrovias do Brasil, with no exception, have a mechanism of fuel transfer on a tariff, to inflation transfer, and labor, too. So these contracts have stability in terms of cash generation that is really significant. We also operate with grains from Asunción, Paraguay, to be exported to Palmira in Uruguay, and we also have an operation of pulp for the Finnish in Uruguay, taking 1.4 tons of pulp from Uruguay to Palmira in Uruguay.
Everything that is manufactured goes to the barge and then is transported, and then next day, so it's very dynamic, and we have 50% interest of the grain terminal in Montevideo, with 2.5 million tons for the outflow of Uruguay crops and also to complement ships that are not full for ports where the draft is not so deep. We have 18 pushers, more than 200 barges. This is in dollars, everything is dollarized and 100% contracted. So this is what we call the South Corridor. Water is important because rivers are seasonal. The thing is, when it gets below the black or the red lines, it depends on the size of our pushers. Some operate with more or less weight. It's a natural seasonality.
We have a plan of low water level to operate. That's what we're doing as we speak. We've seen the media talking about the water crisis. So either all pushers have all corridors, or we prefer the smaller ones in the area of restriction and have the larger pushers just operating from the mid-low. Important flexibility, and this is a competitive advantage because we have some assets of 6.5 feet, and the competition starts operating about 8, 8.5 feet. Now, North Corridor, what has really made a difference for us. Over 50% of grains from Mato Grosso are exported through this corridor. We've built a transload station, so a truck goes, rather than going to Rondonópolis, get the railway, go to Santos, it goes up through the road, transload in Miritituba, which is a district of Itaituba.
It navigates through the Tapajós River, and it goes through the terminal of Barcarena. As you pointed out, there is a terminal of Ultracargo. We have an export terminal there. 7.2 million tons in the terminal and 6.5 million tons integrated in the North region. This is a vector of growth. World export have been growing, and export of our influence region of Mato Grosso and Pará. The terminal has been taken, really, it's busy, and this is why we are also considering making further investments there. Now, speaking of productivity, when we started the operation, convoys of 16 barges were allowed. That was the standard at that time. So we asked the Navy, Why are we using the Mississippi pattern? Because the Amazon is much larger than the Mississippi River. We've kept on increasing convoys.
Now we have one with 35 barges, 77 million tons. The turnover of terminals, it's a busy business, right? 39 turnover in our terminal, less than 10 days with the loads in the terminal. In Vila do Conde, we are talking about a turnover of 29x . 13 days maximum with the load in the docks. The more we transport, the better. Now, our two last business lines, Port in Santos, 25-year lease. We started our operations with salt. The estimates are here. We had a very aggressive ramp up. The concession was in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, we've just made the investments in modernization and expansion, and now we can see the spike of volume, 1.4 million tons in 2023, and in 2024, we've added salt for the second half. The last contract, coastal navigation.
We are not using pushers and barges, but rather ships, vessels. We have bauxite from Porto Trombetas, navigate through the Amazon, up to the refinery of Alumina, Alunorte. It's a 25-year contract, take or pay. Regardless of variation of volume, what is not performed in volume is paid in EBITDA. EBITDA is constant, even though there is fluctuation of volume. Now, looking ahead, what are we getting ready for? We see an opportunity to have a reorganization of the company. The company was too complex. It was a project finance at first, so we are going to have some tax optimization, and we are also going to analyze the capital structure, and we've heard that last week that's going to be additional investments. In the south and north, we have to focus on climate impacts and mitigation. We can solve the problem.
There's going still be volatility, but in the mid and long term, we expect to guarantee constant navigation. Coastal navigation, it's a more regular business. We have to keep on focusing on operational excellence to expand our results. Adjusted EBITDA, since 2020, the company has experiencing the water crisis, but solving the problems of size of vessels and further investments, I'm sure we're going to have an increase in EBITDA. Thank you all very much. We'll be here for further questions later. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Great to be here, one more day of Ultra Day. I'm going to start talking about the consolidated results of Ultrapar. 2023, it's a year that is setting a new level of company results, very much driven by the results of Ultracargo and Ultragaz, especially 2023, when we have new results of Ipiranga.
Results, added by the cash or the investments of Oxiteno and Ultrafarma, has resulted in decreasing indebtedness and leverage. In June 2024, even considering BRL 1.3 billion for purchasing Hidrovias, we already have that performance, and our leverage is 1.5x or 1.5-2x EBITDA. We used to have access to a line of credit at Ipiranga, but we've maintained still our perception of risk. We've been using that access of BRL 3 billion at 108% of CDI rate, and we are, once again, back into investment grade according to Standard & Poor's after a long period of time. Now, let's talk about net income. In 2023, it reached a different level, over BRL 2 billion for the first time, BRL 2.5 billion, actually.
Our ROIC, return on invested capital, we've had the highest return on investment of the past 10 years, and our goal is greater than 20%. Because of the nature of our business, the investments we've made to improve them, and as we've heard, there's been an improvement in the distribution sector and the ability to deal with all oscillations of the market. Here, we can see the actions and Bovespa index for the past three years. Once we have the improvement of Ipiranga's performance that has impacted this year, we've adjusted expectations. Still, we can see a return much higher than what's stated by Bovespa's indexes. To conclude our results, last year, we launched our ESG indicators for 2030. Our main highlights are the incorporation of all our investments and M&A projects, also ESG indicators, so they are part of our decision-making process.
We are also reviewing our climate risk matrix for all our businesses. I would like to remind you that we've been observing indicators towards our goal of 2030, and they are all available in our website. I have two more slides to share with you. This year, we are celebrating our 25 years of our IPO. We've been focusing on governance, and two relevant aspects should be emphasized: alignment of interest and respect for minority shareholders. There are some important landmarks. First company in the eighties in Latin America to turn executives into relevant shareholders. After the IPO, we were the first Brazilian company that offered 100% tag-along rights to all shareholders, then migration to Novo Mercado. In addition to the renewal of our board, we've also had here relevant share-based incentive plans.
In recent years, we've also been thinking about the role of our holding, really looking ahead towards the future. In this role of generating long-term value. We can see here the main drivers. I'm not going to cover them all, but let me emphasize a few. In drivers, discipline in capital allocation, consider sectors in which we can be the best shareholders, and constant capital cost optimization. In values, there are three important points to make: we work together, collaborative work, we have an entrepreneurial attitude, and we also have long-term vision. As our pillars, we have simple and efficient management model, deep knowledge of the areas where we work.
This year, celebrating the 25 year, or 25 anniversary of our IPO, we've launched our new brand, as we've shown you, and for the internal staff, we wanted to show them our DNA, and this is the video that we are going to show you next.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. Let me now invite Marcos to close our presentation.
Hello, it's great to be here. I'll be very brief. Let me tell you a little bit about what we are building long-term. I'm not very creative, but I always start talking by incidents. This is not only our obligation, this is not a requirement to make sure that everyone can get home safely every day with all fingers in their hands. It also means avoiding things that we do not want to happen. Waste, for example, loss of product, spills, not much productivity. So if the company has low incident rates, it can have high efficiency rates. A very interesting metric, and I recommend that investors should look for that, because companies can do it well, can also do a number of other things equally well.
But the fact is, we've been in the journey. It's the beginning of this journey. There is still a lot that can be improved in terms of efficiency and system, but I am very glad with our results. We've improved our analysis on it. It's it really a very serious violation, not reporting incidents. At first, we start having more and more incidents reported, but that's good, because then you have the right statistics to deal with the topic. Second slide, let me talk about people as a company strategy, and I've said that a number of times before. I believe some of you have heard me addressing it. There is one strategy that does not change: people. We think about market changes, energy transition. Yes, we have to adjust our strategy, but not here. Best teams, best players normally perform better.
Doesn't matter what's the competition, sport, it's a given, and time does not change that. And you've heard, and you've watched the video, especially the one about the brand. We talk about people, kind of profile we look for, how we want it to be, culture... what people should think when they wake up in the morning and go to work? Very important journey in 2022. There was a very important renewal of our leadership. Now it's much more stable. These are executive managers, direct reports, officers, so leaders of the company. We've had a very relevant renewal, and now it's much more stable. Now, speaking about investments in Brazil. We can still see a lot of value in our country.
For those who are investment funds and have experienced the pressure of foreigners who decide to get the capital away from Brazil, I know it's not easy to sell our country. We haven't been growing significantly, a lot of risks going on and competing with investors that have made safe investments. But Brazil always has so many opportunities. It's very well-positioned in terms of energy transition. We have huge opportunities in agribusiness, and we are getting exposed to that continuously. But as Ultracargo, Ultragaz, Ipiranga, and Hidrovias, we are getting more exposure to agribusiness, and we are connected with this GDP, which is extremely resilient. The world doesn't live without Brazil in it. What's happening, and it's really a transformation to us, is that regulatory elements are now a political priority. We can see all governments talking about that, all levels of government talking about that.
The legal department as well are just so, so much more attentive to it. That last number, BRL 70 billion of active debt, a country that has capital scarcity, trying to increase taxes to make ends meet, and there are BRL 70 billion in debt of companies that have really failed to pay their taxes in the area of fuels. We know that this is going to get corrected. This is a pendulum. It takes a long time. In the year 2000, in Paulínia, there were about 90% of its volume for irregular distributors, so there had been even worse situations. Now, things are going back into normal rates, and as Linden has said, as a society, we should not accept that. We have to make a decision. We have to start deciding who we are going to do business with.
We need more ethics there, and I can feel that in our discussions. Now, speaking of Hidrovias, Schettino was here, and this is a very strong step and exposure to agribusiness. It's a company where we can see a lot of value to be added and created. There is a journey of operational efficiency. We are a company of reference. We are now a shareholder, holding 40% of the stake. It was a company that was over-levered, and we are going to correct the course. But there are very important projects in the company. There is a demand that's been increasing. There is a suppressed demand that's further expanding and very interesting projects, and there is something for us to address, and I think this is what Schettino said. We should call it navigable beds in Brazil.
The logic is that navigable beds, it's not waterways that need investment, and we can help with that regard. It's high time we did that. Considering how much the economy of Mato Grosso depends on the North waterways, they need to be much safer and assured so that there is no breakdown of the logistics. There's lots of water. The Amazon has a lot of water. It's nowhere near getting all dry, but to keep navigability is difficult, and we need investment. Now, I would like to talk a little bit about this slide, and it shows a change that we are implementing in our governance, and we are creating more independence, accountability, and speed or agility when CEOs will now report to a board, rather than reporting directly to me at Ultrapar.
Ultrapar, as Rodrigo said, has a clearer and clearer role. Ultrapar needs to be a capital,
...source needs to look at businesses with a colder eye as a capital allocator, and to find where it creates value as an organization. And once companies report to independent board, they also need to start more and more to become more and more prepared to be independent, even in terms of their capital structures and strengthening governance, and increasing how much the boards know about companies. The model that we have designed for that, at first, Ultrapar CEO and CFO, and the CEO of the company will have a board together with two independent members that also sit on Ultrapar board. So it's kind of confusing, right? So each company of Ultrapar, Ipiranga, Ultragaz, and Ultracargo, are going to have two independent board members from Ultrapar, like a committee at Ultrapar, who knows in depth about each company.
But the final decision of the board, this is a final decision, so there will be expanded independence. On the other hand, this generates a discussion that Rodrigo has suggested internally, quite intense and with lots of quality, is that Ultrapar, we need to effectively pave its way for value generation. So it will need to create the discipline and capacity to do that. So this change is taking place right now. In my opinion, it's going to prepare the company to have a structure to add value in the long term and to become increasingly more resilient. And my last slide, about the next 25 years. Of course, we do not know what lies ahead of us in the next 25 years, but very clearly, we have this management model. We always say we want to reinforce discipline and capital allocation.
We are going to look after our capital structure, always to make it more, robust and investment grade, even though our country is not investment grade. This is very important to us. And again, thinking of the long term, we have this model of executive officers as partners with very, very long-term actions for our team as the core of our interest alignment. This is all I had to say. And now I'm going to give the floor to Pizzinatto, so that we can continue, can move on to our Q&A.
Thank you, Marcos. Thank you, everyone. So shortly, we are going to have our Q&A session. While the team organizes the stage, I'm going to use the opportunity to share with us how we are going to manage this session. So if you want to ask a question, please raise your hand.
Once you get the microphone, please stand up, say your name, the company you are representing, so that it's easier for us to identify you, and also for those who are watching us on the Internet. There's a wide audience online. As a reminder, if you are watching us online, yes, you can ask your question through the text box close to the video. So for us to move on, once again, I would like to give the floor to the executive officers to come up to the stage. Okay. Are we ready?
Hello, everyone. Good morning, I am Milene from JP Morgan. First of all, thank you so much for your presentation. It's always very good to have this closer contact.
I think that during all presentations, Ultrapar's focus on long-term value generation and what you're doing to expand to use agribusiness opportunities. As this is the first time, we heard a little bit more about the waterways and everything that we've been seeing going on since last week. Lutz, I would like you to explain a little bit more, how did you define the strategy of increasing your stake at Hidrovias? What is your relationship like since March, since you've increased your stake? And what is your expectation from now on? We see Hidrovias as a fourth pillar in your businesses, but if you could give us some more details about your strategies, I would appreciate.
Okay, very briefly. Well, there's a lot to come.
We do not have a final understanding of all opportunities in Hidrovias, but as Ultra, I look at Hidrovias as a major infrastructure platform for agribusiness. I do not think that the views we have today will be the same in 20 years, but it is a company that provides services to agribusiness, infrastructure services. We can clearly see that the low-hanging fruit is an operational improvement. I think that, yes, there are opportunities to unlock investments to expand current assets. But once again, this can be a place that you combine the customer portfolio from agribusiness with a long-term strategy of Ultra. They haven't even been mapped for this company, and this is indeed a fourth pillar. It's not just the Oxiteno.
There are a few synergies in terms of combining it with any other activity in Ultra. Please.
Thank you so much. Congratulations for your presentation. Vicente from Bradesco BBI. Tabajara, the government has launched a program to encourage consumption of LPG to stop burning wood to buy LPG. What do you think about this program? Do you like it? How could it be better? So there's a program talking about prices, stable prices. Could you tell us a little bit about that? And number two, is about the law for bad payers. So I would like to praise you for the work with ICL. What is the law like if we think of these repeat debtors or the repeat bad payers?
Well, first of all, so far, the main thing is the problem once you address ...
Even in the world, we see many countries going different ways. This is a very serious public health, so the wood, there are statistics about that. We know how much this is harmful for the population, especially for women and children, and this is a worldwide problem. In Brazil, we do have this problem, not as intensely, fortunately, not as bad as in other countries, but still a significant share of the population does that. We had a problem that had been implemented with gas vouchers, but it was a problem that at the end of the day, it was an amount that was given to the population, and they used it as they wished. Now, with this evolution, the program is not yet ready. It's been launched, but there are a few details missing.
It increases potential, and from what we have understood so far, with no specific allocation, so it has a potential of reaching the population that did not have access to the product. And now, thinking as a society, it's much more intelligent than what we did in the past of controlling prices, and I demonstrated here. So dissemination of the product is very large for all social classes, many different applications, controlling prices, it's very difficult, it wouldn't make any sense. And our social investment as a country would be more waste than benefit. So the concept here, I see as something positive to effectively address this concern. Of course, we need to understand there are many things still in the field when we should start discussions.
and this is very positive for society as a whole, and we need to understand the details, just as other programs that we have seen outside Brazil that were implemented. I think that the success of this plan is to reduce the energy poverty in our country or for repeat debtors. And so this has been going on for a long time with pushbacks and push forwards. Now, the climate is more mobilized. This is a project that will need a major political push. The executive branch needs to mobilize, to motivate. I see the press starting to get involved, and everything of organized crime involved with fuels and everything is also kind of stronger in the press, getting more space in the media with a more positive climate to approve that.
It's not simple, it's not easy, but I think that if you try and try it, in the end, it may work.
I would like to take the opportunity and praise you. So you published an article. It was very well done, with significant repercussion and very insignificant. So thank you. I could thank you in private afterwards, but in public is better. So this is Gabriel Barra from Citibank. First, about the holding, I think Lutz talked about the new structure... are having slightly more power for the executive officers of each business line. So those of us who have been following up Ultrapar Group for a long time, so you try and solve the pains of the past, and this is in 2021 , when you joined, there is a new path.
So you look at the holding in a different way. But there are two things that I would like to understand. Number one: how should the holding look at the assets of the company? Looking as a holding, so having 100% of Ipiranga, Ultracargo and Ultragaz, how can we expect a more active management of the assets from the holding? And in terms of Hidrovias, is the only one which is not under that umbrella, but I think that you are likely to follow the same way to have a better alignment of the group as a whole. And if you allow me one last question. For a long time, we've been expecting the comeback of the fuel industry. This has a lot to do with informal commerce, and you said 2020 was the year of the pandemic.
The numbers are very much influenced. If we look back in 1980 and looking at today's margins, this is. I think this is not what it should be. What is your goal today in terms of return, market share? How are you going to generate value? What is your focus today, and how are you thinking about this, looking into the future?
As to our current businesses, yes, you're right. The holding should look at all businesses as businesses. That should look, divest, IPOs, increase stake to actively manage that. The times we are living is not the right time for that. We look at the Brazilian stock exchange, is the cheapest place for you to buy a company. So an IPO today of Ipiranga would be just a waste of money.
But looking in the long term, yes, we should move towards a model where you could allocate more, more or less capital with slightly more flexibility, which we do not have today. This is one point. As a holding, we should help structure the limits for Ipiranga in terms of capital allocation and help Ipiranga to allocate its capital with more and more discipline. But we, as a holding, in terms of our taxpayer number, we should have more flexibility, and in the long term, it will exist, but there will be a time for that to be feasible. Would you like to comment? We see a great value in having partners, and partners bring scrutiny and contributions. So if there is a, an equation, a company to invest at the right time, that would make sense and the portfolio would be natural.
This is not a decision that we take in advance. And Hidrovias somehow follows that model, if you think. I am the chairman of the board, and Rodrigo is the vice chairman. And somehow, we have a model with this independence and this capital freedom in Hidrovias, and we, as holding, can help anchoring capital as we are doing now, but we do not have 100% of responsibility for the company's capital, obviously. It's a high goal. It's the goal that you defined for us. There's no discussion. Number one, yes, you are right. We have seen three or four versions of our presentation, not just mine, but the other companies, too. And each time we cut at the point. Each year has something unique about it.
The pandemic and before, and this and that, and truck driver strike, everything has an impact, get a reference, and let's go for it. But in fact, I think that there is space, and our goal has always been to have a return of at least 20% for our business. But we are dealing with things in the market that we cannot 100% control. If today the margin is not as high as we think it should be, we need to work to make the company more efficient, to have governance and the use of capital, diligence in cost, and opening our options to get to that profitability. So everything that we said today, our business has a held-back value.
The thing is that Brazil, because of irregularities, have totally compressed margin in distribution, and this has nothing to do with final prices for consumers, so there is 0.10 BRL of profit for the distributor and two and half BRL of taxes and other things, so it's not the 0.10 BRL to 0.15 BRL. This is not going to change anything in perception, so this is not the point, really. This is a model that we are within, that we are working in has a significant share of the economy that is not paying the two and half BRL of tax.
...So we should, in fact, look into that and look at prices and fuel margins in the country in the long term, and this is very similar to international market, which is twice as higher than ours. In Argentina, it's much higher than in Brazil.
Good morning. Great day. I'm Pedro Soares with BTG. Going back to what you said last year, investments in Hidrovias was still at the level of speculation, but at that time, you emphasized that you saw, the group creating a power of diversification for the future. Now that you are very well-positioned in fuel distribution for, LPG, liquid, you are positioning logistics in waterways.
But thinking about Ultrapar, that moment of diversification, flexibilization, which will be maintained, will it be at the level of Ultra, or do you think the moment has been consolidated and now each subsidiary will go into diversification? And a second question to Linden. Based on everything you've said, and if we recall the most recent Ultra days, in 2022 , you recognized the mistakes that had taken to poor results in the end of last decade. Last year, you showed much more optimism of everything that was coming, and it has turned to be a reality, considering the margins and results you've reached. To some extent, you've answered that, right?
But from now on, do you agree that the internal work has been almost completed, and now it's time to benefit from regulatory issues, tax issues, or did I get it all wrong?
It's a combination of both things. If we allocate business in our current companies, it's part of our practice. These businesses have to also bring opportunities of return on investments to justify having capital brought from the holding. And sometimes there is internal competition for the resources available. But we want to have more and more capacity to do things outside our current portfolio. Rodrigo, in his presentation, clearly stated that... It was a slide with lots of information. Go back to that specific slide and read it again.
Our capital allocation, to some extent, has been defined there, things where we can be the best shareholder for the asset and where we know well the industry. We have to know it. We don't have to be in it to know it, but we have to be knowledgeable about it. Hidrovias is a good example. I did not know about navigation in waterways, but there were people who had knowledge in our organization. We knew about the market, the volumes. There were a number of things that really gave us the reassurance to do that, and things that reassure us that we can also change things, being the ideal shareholder for the company, and the same may apply to other cases. There is no previous decision that things have to happen, and zero intention to create an empire.
Things have to make sense in the entry price, risks, and consider value, generation, and always be the best shareholder to the company. All elements have to be in place when we are deciding to invest. There is no obligation, but rather an intention. If we come across these elements, we just make an investments, such as the case of Hidrovias. We have one point two times EBITDA of leverage in the last quarter. Zero pressure to spend money. It's okay. We don't want to be highly levered. We can generate dividend, shareholders get happy, no problem. We do not feel the pressure to allocate capital because we are below ideal leverage, right? It's good to make it clear.
Concerning Ipiranga, I think it's we are going to come up with improvement opportunities all the time. It's a never-ending process.
What we've done in the past two years was to approach the low-hanging fruit, the obvious elements, but there is still a process there in place. I can still see a number of opportunities. I've talked about logistics, where we can see value generation coming from. I've talked about RP.... But there are other things. In the process of Ipiranga recovery, we've brought added cost, and now we can work with SG&A, trying to reduce it. I can see so many more opportunities at Ipiranga, differently from what we used to have in the past, which was just transforming and recovering the company. Now it's continuous improvement.
Let's see the next question, please.
Hello, good morning. I'm Leonardo Marcondes with Bank of America. I would like to thank you. Let me focus on Hidrovias. So my two questions are to you, Schettino.
Could you please tell us more about what has changed the understanding of Hidrovias since the acquisition of Ultra? So what has changed in the discussions once you got the holding, investing in the company? Secondly, capital allocation strategy. Could you please tell us more about the projects that should be coming after a capital increase, and what would be the metrics or thresholds that we should bear in mind? Will it be ROIC, TIA, what else? Thank you.
I normally say that having Ultra is having the right shareholder at the right time. There was a private equity, which is important, right? To transform a PowerPoint into a company.
Since I've been there since the very beginning of the company, together with other people, I said, "If we needed a partner to do it again, please count me out." It was a joke, of course, but the company got to a point where there was no way out. We could no longer grow on our own. We needed a transition into a group that had operational knowledge and much more, let's say, skills to grow. I think there are two main pillars of change. First, we have much more operational understanding because of the experience of Ultra Group. They have a very good track record, they have benchmarks, so much more experience. Secondly, we now have a long-term understanding, a long-term vision. I'll give you an example. A minor concern is there is going to be more water volatility this quarter.
If yes, how can we solve it? This is a key positive change for the new company. Everyone is full of energy because the management also saw ourselves in a deadlock. We had to wait three or four years for the capital structure to allow us to capture investment opportunities. They are here, they are very attractive. The operational experience and long-term vision are the two factors that are going to be instrumental to the company. Concerning your second question, let's go back to the market.
There is an expansion in the north. North has capacity. We've been expanding our capacity gradually, and the capital increase is focused on expanding our terminal. This is what we have for the time being. Rashane is here, part of the team coming from Ultra, and further details will come to you later. Well, thank you. I think it takes us to the end of our event. Unfortunately, we haven't answered all your questions, but our Investor Relations team will collect all questions, and we will have them answered to you later. I would like to thank our company executives, all of those who have-