Good afternoon. I bid you welcome to Unipar's earnings call for Q23. We have here Rodrigo Cannaval, Executive Director and IRO, Alexandre de Castro, Commercial Executive Director, and the IR team. This meeting is being recorded. All participants will be in listen-only mode during the presentation. The presentation can be accessed in our platform MZiQ and on our website ri.unipar.com. Slide selection will be controlled by yourselves, and the audio will be available at the company's website after finishing. After the presentation, we'll begin the Q&A session. The questions can be registered via webcast, and they will be answered throughout the session or after the end of the conference by the IR team.
Before we proceed, we would like to reinforce that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Unipar's management and the current information available to the company, also based on information that's currently available. Future considerations are not a guarantee of performance and involve risks and uncertainties in premises as they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should consider that genuine sectorial situations, as other operational factors, may affect Unipar's future results that materially differ from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Now I'd like to give the floor to Rodrigo Cannaval, who will begin his presentation. Please proceed.
Thank you, Raquel. Good afternoon, everybody. On behalf of Unipar, I greet you on my first presentation of results.
As IRO, from April on, I took the company in my hands, and I am available for you to contact me. I thank you all, and I count on the support of all my team here present. Picking up what we approached on the last quarter's global instabilities to impact the value chains in the press, many segments of which our industry depends. The decelerated demand, raising costs of production, the prices of commodities are going low, still our challenge in the South American market. I highlight the scenario of exchange financial and political volatility in Argentina. In the last quarter, there was an important exchange devaluation in Argentina that impacted not only our financial results but also of foreign companies that operate in that country.
In Brazil, besides the pressure of the commodity prices going down, we face the growth or the participation of imported products, and that is affecting irrelevantly the performance of the national chemical industry. I also add that the sector, by means of its associations, has dealt with this topic with the federal government in Mercosur to adopt measures to stimulate competitiveness of the national chemical industry, which is a relevant employer, tax generator, and much investment in the country. We have done our homework, and we are more and more prepared to face these cycles of decline with resilience. According to the most recent data of EBITDA, the segment closed the first nine months of 2023 with a 65% rate of use. In operational excellence, I emphasize our performance that was significantly above the average of the chemical industry in Brazil. Our index figures show our resilience and operational capacity.
We closed 2023 with 81% of use of the average rate of production capacity, considering already the increasing capacity of Santo André and even the climate event that happened in Bahia Blanca in December last year. Besides, remaining resilient, we keep building the future. In spite of the drop cycle of the petrochemical sector, we follow with our strategic view of long-term investing in structuring projects that will improve our performance, profitability, and resilience, and also ensure that we will meet our sustainability commitment. We reached a new CAPEX record in 2023, investing BRL 374 million in the year, and we have announced new investments that, for sure, will make us reach a new record in 2024. The project of technological modernization of Cubatão Plant, for instance, will count on a CAPEX that is above BRL 1 billion between 2023 and 2025. We are already following the planned timeline.
At the end of 2025, Unipar will have the largest membrane operation in South America, with gains of operational efficiency, competitiveness, and sustainability. The expansion in Santo André that counted with investments of BRL 100 million was 100% ready, is ready, and is totally operational, with a 20% increase in our chlorine sodium in chlorine sodium hydroxide capacity, production, besides increasing capacity of production hydrochloric acid. The project of a new unit in Camaçari, Bahia, follows within the timetable. We expect to start it on the last quarter of 2024. In Bahia Blanca, Argentina, we have finished modernization and improvements that were done in the last few years that enabled increasing productivity in production of chlorine, and with that, we are apt to access the market opportunities, especially in lithium mining that has been growing in that country and where hydrochloric acid is a key input.
In front and, regarding excellence, we're advancing digitization. We launched the customer's portal, improving the experience and simplifying transactions with our customers. We have gone beyond 70% of our clients are using the portal. We are beyond that mark. In competitiveness, I emphasize continuous evolution of renewable energy self- production, reaching 59% of the capacity of generation of our farms. So we meet our commitment of having 100% of all energy that feeds our plants in Brazil will be coming from renewable energy until 2025, 80% self- produced and 20% in long-term agreements. In our cooperative, cooperative culture, our objective is to guarantee that everybody acts towards the same direction to ensure resilience, resilience, high performance in deliveries, and a safe and healthy environment, an excellent work to work, place to work.
Recently, we had a large example of Unipar's spirit when we had an extreme climate event in Bahia Blanca that impacted our operations, even paralyzing the activities. On behalf of everybody's safety, we could maintain the operational levels, and we were able to resume the work in a very short period of time. It's worth emphasizing the role of Unipar and their teams in supporting the community of Bahia Blanca with donations that helped alleviate the suffering of people who lost a lot and also contributed for the city to fix the damage caused by the storm. Once again, Unipar showed its commitment with the communities in the surroundings of its plants. In sustainability, we emphasize that we support 48 social projects in education, culture, sport, mission-driven actions, and sanitation that impacted positively more than 2.8 million people.
I also call your attention to the recent achievement of Unipar that we're very proud of, which is the Pro-Ética seal by the Controladoria-Geral da União that acknowledges our governance. Also, an award, well, sort of an award, was that our grade went from C to B in climate change Cycle 2023 of the CDP A List, and we maintained the grade in water resources. Now I will detail our financial results of the fourth Q23. The financial results consolidated in Unipar were extremely impacted by the effects of inflation in 2023 in Argentina and devaluation of the local currency in December 2023. Aiming at better reporting the operational performance of the company, we will present the adjusted results that do not consider the incidence of such effects according to the application of the norm by IAS 29.
In 2023, we reached an adjusted net revenue of BRL 5.5 billion, where we highlight the growth of 6% in sales of chlorine derivatives. This result is from the demands of the sector of sanitation supported by our investments in the production of chlorine and hydrochloric acid in Brazil. In 2023, the adjusted EBITDA of Unipar reached the level of BRL 1.5 billion. Even going through a cycle of drops, the margin was resilient, corresponding to 27% of net revenue. We attribute this resilience to the structuring investments already mentioned here. Therefore, we had an adjusted net profit of BRL 791 million in 2023. In our capital structure, I emphasize the strong operational cash generation of BRL 1.5 billion, resulting in a net generation of BRL 732 million. Additionally, we closed that year with negative net debt, even facing a cycle of drop in the industry.
Throughout 2023, we adjusted the capture structure of the company and strengthened our strengths with financial markets to ensure our sustainable growth. We also approved an additional payout in the value of BRL 148.3 million that added to the payment done in December will be a total of BRL 305 million in 2023, corresponding to 39% of profit in the period, 14 percentage points above the minimum mandatory of 25%. Now I give the floor to Raquel to open for Q&A.
Thank you, Rodrigo. Now we're going to collect the questions. Please, if you're comfortable to send them via webcast. Virtual, anything new in the sense of looking for opportunities, abroad? Good afternoon, Unipar. Has been looking for opportunities, in Brazil and abroad, as has been announced previously, and we'll keep on doing that. And that's it. Thank you, Rodrigo. One question from Vladimir Pinto from XP. Good afternoon.
What was the price drop that you noticed in 4Q?
The international prices of the main commodities behaved as such between 3Q and 4Q. For soda, the drop was around 4%. In the case of PVC, international prices dropped 8%.
Thank you, Rodrigo. We have one more question from Hudson Freitas from Hedge Investments. The energy agreements have been signed, and who is the provider?
We have currently the energy has been already contracted. We have our JVs that in 2025 will correspond to 80% of the energy that's consumed in Brazil and the other 20% in long-term contracts. In the case of high-production energy, we have our partners with AES Tietê and Atlas Renewables.
Question from Vernie Clevery. How is the buyback program going?
This program in Unipar is open.
We have done some operations throughout 2023 and 2024, I'm sorry, and we will go on implementing the program.
Now we're gonna see a few more questions. A question from Rodrigo Almeida from Santander.
I'm gonna ask the first part of the question. What can we consider as recurrent CapEx looking only at maintenance for 2023 in relation to maintenance CapEx after the expansions of the new plant in Camaçari? Should it increase a lot?
CapEx, historically recurrent, around BRL 150 million a year, and with Camaçari plant that has, that is small, when compared to the other companies, this average should not change. With the new investment projects that will work for the best rate of reliability, the trend is to maintain or reduce the CapEx rate in the future.
We have two questions regarding commodities. The first one from Hudson Freitas. What are the perspectives for 2024 regarding commodities? From Shin Lai from Trígono, how are the most important markets behaving of Unipar behaving?
Commodities for 2024 in the beginning of the year, they follow the same trend of the end of last year regarding international markets with the expectation of improvement towards the second half of 2024. Regarding the behavior of the most important markets, they also go along the same lines like it was the end of last year. The perspective for the future is better, not only for Unipar but also for the chemical industry at large.
We have two questions regarding internal revenue service. Rodrigo Almeida from Santander and Matheus from AGF. Why it was positive, if this recurrent?
We would recur for this year. The positive internal revenue was due to some effects, the exclusion of Selic, exclusion on non-recurrent tax debts and also credit on fiscal incentives.
And this may happen or not. And also adjustment of Argentinian inflation that's also, you know, depending on the circumstances, it will depend on Argentinian policy this year, or politics, as a matter of fact.
We have one more question from Rodrigo Almeida from Santander. If you could give us a shade of what are the most important characteristics that the company analyzes for M&As today: complement portfolio, increase volumes of the same products. What are the places where you think there will be more demand today and why? For instance, availability of raw material. In looking at M&A opportunities abroad, what do you imagine are the most important challenges?
Unipar is in the petrochemical sector that lives its cycles of ups and downs.
In aiming at more resilience or softening these ups and downs, our objectives are to, to open our portfolio, to have, different sites, broaden the geography that are important, tools to mitigate the effects of the ups and downs of the petrochemical sector.
A question from Jean Renato, SCF. Why did revenue fall by half? What adjustment did you do?
Well, when we consider the effects of IAS 29 in the consolidations of Argentina, yes, it dropped 53% if you compare third and fourth Q. Without the effects of IAS 29, the drop was of 7% in the same period, especially because of the depreciation of the most important commodities, soda and PVC.
A question from Lucidu. What's the expansion modernization CapEx of Cubatão for 2024? In Cubatão, it's BRL 1 billion within the cycle of from 2023 to 2025. It's another Christian Burns from S&P Global.
What's your perspective for the demand of PVC in the Brazilian market in 2024?
PVC is a plastic resin that depends on civil construction. We are in many segments. However, the civil construction is very important. So PVC, we have to reduce the interest rates in our country and then the resumption of the civil construction market in our region.
Question from Bruno Oliveira from AGF. Do you intend to change the shares? We analyze that oftentimes, but it's not being considered right now. Thank you, Rodrigo. That was on breakdown of shares. One more question from Edson ESDS. If AES Brasil left, how would it affect the joint venture?
There would be no impact. Will go on with his new partner. And we have a 20-year agreement, so it's a long-term relationship.
We are checking other questions. Now the last question.
The IR will be available for any other questions. So Pedro Macedo Ferreira de Melo from Meta Asset asks, what does the company think it may do to try to avoid international competition?
We have been investing in structuring actions to improve our competitiveness internationally-wise. These by the projects of energy, the process of technological modernization of Cubatão that will give us a modern plant that is efficient and competitive. But also, we need governmental policies that will foster competitiveness, and local competitiveness.
Thank you, Rodrigo. We finished Q&A. I would like to give the floor back to Rodrigo for your final considerations.
Well, we got to the end of one more earnings conference call by Unipar. Before I finish, I would like to reinforce some important points approached on this meeting. We were resilient in the cycle of drops, delivering quality results.
This resilience guarantees quality results when we are low, and it's also a trampoline for the high cycles. We go on in the pathway of investment to improve even more our resilience with the projects that have been announced. Our capital structure and access to different sources of loans are leveraged to guarantee our growth with portfolio diversification and expansion to new geographies. We go on committed to value generation, financial health, and paying the shareholders. I reinforce my thanks for our partners and coworkers for being so involved in delivering our strategy, and to the investors and counselors for the support and trust. Thank you all for your participation.