Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the video conference for the Presentation of The Fourth Quarter Results of 2024 from Vittia. We are being recorded and the replay may be accessed on the website of the company, where the presentation will also be available for download. We inform that all participants will only be watching the video conference during the presentation. Later we will begin a Q&A session when further instructions will be supplied. Before beginning, I would like to reinforce that the prospective declarations are based on the creed and suppositions of Vittia and the current information available for the company. These declarations may involve risks and uncertainties, considering that they are regarding future aspects, so they depend on circumstances that may or may not happen.
Investors, analysts, and journalists should consider that environments connected to the macroeconomic events and other effects may differ our results from what they have been expected in our declarations. We have here Mr. Wilson Romanini, CEO, Alexandre Del Nero Frizzo, CFO, and R&D director. Now I would like to pass the floor to Wilson Romanini that will begin the presentation. Wilson, you have the floor.
Thank you, Laís. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here with us. We will now talk about the fourth quarter of the company, the closure of 2024. I believe it is aligned with what we have been passing to you. All the work that Vittia had to do in 2024, and certainly will do in 2025, has been showing the way that we work, the responsibility that we have. Talking about our gross revenue, we are in the biological segment. We have reached BRL 95.7 million, 22.5% more than the previous year, and BRL 249.3 million, 0.4% more than 2023. Our line of biological defensives has registered BRL 76 million, 38%, almost 40% more than the fourth quarter of 2023, and BRL 191.7 million for the whole year, which is 16.1% more than 2023.
The net revenue amounted BRL 255.8 million, 5.1% more than the fourth quarter of 2023, and BRL 786.6 million throughout 2024, 4% more than 2023. The net income totaled BRL 46.4 million, 12.4% more than 2023, and BRL 76.3 million for the whole year, which is minus 22.6% when comparing to 2023. We have been observing the issues that have been happening on the environment. The EBITDA has adjusted itself and totaled BRL 61.3 million, 36.9% more than the quarter of 2023, and BRL 132.3 million, minus 6% when comparing to 2023.
The CapEx totals BRL 6.2 million for the quarter, almost minus 50% for 2023, and BRL 32.8 million in 2024, which is minus 34.7% in 2023. Talking about the performance of the whole year, you have noticed that despite having a challenging year, we had a growth in our revenue. We have been talking to you in an emphatical manner about the rationalization on our expenses. So we were aligned with our SG&A, which has allowed for us to improve our results. We know the agro. We have been there for more than 30 years, and we know that this is a market that has its variations. We always try to leave the company in the level that is comfortable. So we have a comfort in this sense, and in our fourth quarter was a moment that the rains came. There was a recovery in the prices of the commodities.
It is important for us to emphasize that commodities have reached the prices that we were hoping for. In the next months, corn will come in a favorable position for the recovery of prices. We understand that 2025 has major challenges, but effectively it comes healthier and with a more comfortable work environment. It is still a year with many challenges. We are concerned with the credit. Credit has been coming more expensive. The entrance of legal recovery continues. Vittia has an interesting criteria for credit concession. We have a good protection in this regard. But the market is the market, and apart from that, truly, we try to understand it. There is a persistence from the producer side in having a more fractioned purchase, thinking about it better, also seeking an efficiency for their activities. We have fundamentals that are more favorable for this market of inputs.
There is a stabilization of prices for the inputs. We have a stock, and this is within the recovery of 2024. We have a more adjusted stock, and this will propel companies to have an easier market, if I may say so, for 2025. Our position is firm when talking about our financial solidity. As I said to you, a growth rationalization is to understand really well where we will put our resources. We still have this thesis of a low leverage. We have always sought to strengthen our commercial partners, be it in resale, cooperatives.
This is a daily focus of our company, and we are here working, and this is today's world, and we want to make things better for tomorrow. We are working in R&D&I with new products in the biological area. Now I will pass the floor to Frizzo, as he will talk to you about our numbers.
Thank you, Wilson. Good morning, everyone. Entering on our financial performance, we had a year that was challenging. However, we were still able to close the year with a growth in four of our business lines. The fourth quarter gave us a better performance in the area of biopesticides. We had a drought period in the beginning of the crop that ended up slowing down the demand for the biopesticides in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, it came strongly as we were hoping for. In talking about foliar fertilizers, which is a more planned purchase, we had a fourth quarter with a slight drop. However, given the performance that we had in the previous quarters, semesters, we still finished the year with an interesting closure, given the scenario.
Inoculants gave us an atypical year, a year in which we observed a scenario that was complex under the standpoint of competition. Remembering here that this line has a preponderance of inoculants for soy. As we had a market that was delayed in the plantation of soy, we ended up facing an adverse competitive space. We have observed that throughout the year, due to this delay, we noticed a diminishing in the use of inoculants. For many years, we had been growing with the dosage per hectare. Last year, I believe that due to this atypical plantation, we understand that there was a smaller market for inoculants. For organomineral, we are not focusing on growth. We are focusing on finishing the operations. This drop is natural, and these soil conditioners, as the foliars had a drop on the third quarter.
But in the accumulated of the year, we had a growth. The industrial products we have also had a growth, but it ends up not being the focus of the company. This growth is more a recovery on the level of sales that we had. At one point, we were able to sell BRL 70 million in 2022. Even though it grew a lot, there is still a not such a good performance when comparing to what we had once. From the standpoint of our margin, we had a year with a pressure on the prices in all of our lines, in all inputs. We ended up having a year with a drop in almost all of our lines. The soil conditioners, organominerals, micronutrients, we had a better result and we perhaps diminished this drop a little bit.
But in the other lines, we had a slight drop in our margins. Given this scenario in the Brazilian agro, with many adjustments and pressures when talking about prices. In the fourth quarter, we end up having a seasonality and changes in the mix. We even had some varied behaviors for foliar fertilizers and industrial products. We had an increase in our margin comparing to the same quarters of different years, as well as biological products and the soil micronutrients had a drop. But despite this increase in the margin, we understand that these are more seasonal factors, and we still have not seen a price recovery and margin recovery throughout the year. We spent the year with a drop in prices. I believe that in the last quarter, we began to see a stabilization in prices, but it's still not a recovery in and of itself.
Going to the next slide, from the standpoint of SG&A, we fulfilled our objective, understanding the challenging scenario that we would face in 2024. From the end of 2023, we had this directioning to seek more efficiency without obviously dismounting our structures, which will support our growth in a long term. We have been seeking where we would be able to reduce our expenses so as to be more efficient, where the market was not demanding and so it would not make sense for us to attack the market, if we may say so. That is why most of our reduction came on expenses with sales. We were selective in expenses regarding stimulus for sales. We closed the year with a growth of around 1% on our SG&A.
It's worth to highlight that our PDD, despite having gone beyond a reversion of provision to a provision, this was still really small. It was BRL 358,000. We had only just one event that was even compensated by some credit recoveries that we had throughout the year. So we closed the year with a level of non-payment that was really low. Going for the next slide. With this result on this scenario that despite having had a slight increase on the revenue and a small margin drop and control expenses, we were able to hold the drop of the EBITDA. Obviously, the drop of EBITDA is not on our objective, but within the scenario that we had throughout the year, this was a slight drop and much lower than the one we had in 2023, which was of more than 30%.
We were able to reach our objectives on top of a challenging scenario that we were facing. On the next slide, talking about our CapEx. This was a challenging year. We reduced our investment in CapEx, not only due to this challenging year, but due to the fact that we closed our investment cycle in our new plant. Well, actually it is not that new right now, but our biologicals plant that resulted in a higher CapEx on the past years. Now we just had an investment of BRL 8.2 million in this plant to seek some efficiency gains in the biological plants. But now we are with an interesting capacity. We do not see major investments happening in a short term. Investments should be connected to efficiency gains, improvements in our processes.
The other two investments that are highlighted here under the standpoint, they are not as financially relevant, but from a strategic standpoint, we have finalized the transfer of our headquarters to the administrative office in Ribeirão Preto in the interior of São Paulo, which is important for us to reduce our retention of resources. Some areas have occupied spaces here in Ribeirão, and we have used strategically this office and also our microbiological plants, which was finalized in 2024, the year of the ramp up. We hope that in 2025, we will see the fruits of this new plant having an entire year with this plant operating. Okay, for the next one. Talking about the cash flow. We had a challenging year. However, it was understandable. We know that the market is facing credit issues and liquidity. Our due payments had a drop.
Producers end up seeking more time to pay, but we understand that this is normal in every business. There are years in which we have more or less liquidity, so it does not concern us as it is in our history. What would be concerning is if we had non-payment, which is not the case. Due to this slight worsening in our capital, we had a variation that was smaller than last year. However, but this is still really healthy. We close with a net debt that adjusted into 1.1. I like to mention that we had a distribution, a return for the stockholder that was really advantageous in 2024, in which we gave back BRL 80 million between the repurchase plan and the distribution that was made through JCP.
If we had chosen, it was our decision of allocating this capital in the repurchase and JCP, but if we had BRL 80 million in our cash, we would have a smaller net debt. Entering on this fiscal area and financial area, we had a better financial result in 2024. It is worth to highlight here a change in our practice. In 2023, we had allocated around BRL 4.2 million of our tax income in our financial result. It was a historic practice, but we understood that this was not the most adequate one, so we removed this tax from the JCP, from the financial result, and reallocated it into the IR and social control.
However, even though we do not consider this result, we had a financial expense that was lower than 2023 due to a net debt smaller than the past year and also a rate of interest throughout the year that was smaller than 2023. Of course, we all know that this rate is increasing. However, our cost of capitation for 2024 was smaller than 2023. When talking about the fiscal area, as was hoped for, we had a relevant increase on the fiscal charge throughout the year when comparing the PDD, it was BRL 21 million, the margin of social contribution. This due to the end of subvention. This was approved in the end of 2023, by the end, the change of the legislation that would allow for not having subvention on income tax and social contribution.
This was already hoped for, and it had a negative impact in 2024, making us have a more relevant drop in our profitability than our operational drop and financial drop. Now I pass the floor to Edgar, so he can mention our evolutions in innovation.
Thank you, Frizzo. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. We talk about our constant investment in R&D. We continue to focus on the biologicals market. Most of our investments were kept despite having had a difficult year. We have practically the same levels. We have a slight variation of 4.6 more in the quarter, 1.1 for the year. We have been trying to work and not cut anything from this investment segment as we understand that this is what we're bringing in our future. We have a lot of gains. Throughout the year, 13 new recommendations.
We have 14 special registries that we had obtained in 2024. Five are with micronutrients that no one is working right now. We have more innovative things, and nine are new formulations. Some of them will be available soon in our line. They are faster. The innovative microorganisms takes a while, and perhaps people will begin to see our communication, which is the launch of Triunfe. We are in a market with more than BRL 3 million, which is practically the size of the entire market, with a multi-site based on minerals for controlling diseases. We will begin to work on this, and we understand we have a space to work on this year with disclosure and access to the market, performing good businesses. Let's go for the next slide, please. In market development, we are still focused on our product line, specifically on biological products.
We have been growing our BioVittia work, focused on some areas. This is a project to show that biologicals work. We can handle this with 100% of biological defensives without having chemicals. It's not our objective to make everyone organic, but to show that this technology works and biological defensives work, or the biopesticides work despite being biological. We have more than 82 fields, and we've brought a summary of what we have in increments in productivities in each one of our crops. Despite having a similar cost, we had an increase in productivity when we used that, as it doesn't have the collateral effects. Something that is interesting for any biopesticide, you bring a collateral effect for plants. When you use a biological one, you increase the productivity and you stress the plant, too.
We had talked about at the end of the year in our call, we practically had a spin-off of the BioVittia product, which is the Grão de Vittia Grain. We learned with BioVittia, and we were able to understand that coffee, we are easier to have a 100% biological crop. We are taking this as a proposition of management to producers, and we have been working with excellent distributions, major coffee cooperatives, and we are now taking these to producers. We have 22 fields like this. We have a major volume, and this in three Brazilian states.
This is an area of 123 hectares, and we are trying to develop this market, remembering that we have major producers that have already reverted their production to do it 100% biologically after they saw those fields. It is a little bit different. The other one is more for communication. However, the Grão de Vittia is for the market to show this to producers. This is what I had to tell you, Frizzo. Now you have the floor.
Thank you, Edgar. Now talking about the stock market. What I would like to highlight is our repurchase program. We have a fourth program open. We have executed around 25%, 1.1 million in stock. We aim to keep the same strategy, seizing this opportunity, knowing about the detachment between the market price and what we hope is the intrinsic value of the company. This is having a financial relevance for the company, as I said, in 2024. We estimated around BRL 40 million between the second and third and fourth programs in 2024. We had a higher level of layouts where we were able to perform BRL 38.2 million, so reaching around BRL 80 million that I had mentioned in the analysis of our cash flow.
We will now begin the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to make any questions, click on raise your hand to answer by voice or on the Q&A button to write your answer. Our first question comes from Gabriel Barra, sell-side analyst from Citi.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you. I have two questions here. The first one is, I was hoping to see a recovery in volume for this fourth quarter. The fourth quarter came well, but when we see the year's result, we see the EBITDA going down. Even though with a recovering revenue, we see a scenario with, I mean, that is more challenging for the year.
My first question is, what should we hope for 2025? I see that we have an improvement in producers' margins. We see the market, I mean, with resale, talking to other producers of inputs. This is a hard credit market and the producer is more leveraged. They have an increase in the margin, but we still see that this is really difficult. So if you could comment a little bit, what could we hope for 2025 in terms of profitability, increase in stock line? I mean, in general, I think this would help us to understand the dynamics of the sector. Connecting to that, we saw an impact on the company, a relevant consumption in receivables, and it is within my perception, if I am wrong, it has to do with the credit.
I don't know if you could comment and explain the dynamic of the company and if this could be a strength for the next years to be in this credit market for producers. If you could use your balance as one of the forces for propelling growth, giving more credit, trying to get the market share, having a more robust balance. If you could further explain this would be excellent.
Who would like to go? Oh, no, I'm sorry. My audio was closed. Well, the first question I think I can answer, and the second one is you. Well, Gabriel, actually, in the beginning of our presentation, we were even going to. I mean, we see 2025 with many challenges. Some companies will be more efficient and others that didn't perform the correct lessons will have more difficulties.
However, now when we get the 2025 scenario, you have more positive things happening. Everyone has sought an adequacy, has done some important lessons within their business. So it is the following. We have many challenges. However, Vittia believes on the work that we're doing. We began in 2023 by restructuring internally. We allocated more efficiently our resources. So we believe that we will have a healthier year. When comparing this first quarter, we saw some positive points. We're working towards this direction, but obviously, I always say that in an open sky industry, you have many factors that will guide this. However, Vittia, even in its yearly proposition, we estimate a recovery of our numbers when comparing to 2024. Frizzo.
Well, talking about our capital, the worsening is due to the credit scenario. I have mentioned it that you can see that some would even purchase in a short term, and now they're trying to seek a longer term with us. So I believe that it's natural in this restriction of liquidity and more delaying payments. But we have a balance by knowing that some of our clients may be seeking more terms, but they are healthy clients, as we can see from our history of non-payment. So I believe that this is a differential. We know that, as Wilson said, not everyone has such a robust balance as Vittia to be able to support the worsening in our working capital. And we will have to wait to see how things go throughout the year to know this scenario of credit liquidity that concerns everyone in the sector.
We need to truly wait to have a good season, to wait for the financial points, the season plans, the behavior of agents. I believe that this is without a doubt one of the points that makes us more uncomfortable for the year. Given what Wilson said, some other fundamentals in the macro scenario are much better. And we are concerned from the impact among clients and demand, but on the other hand, we are at ease that we will have a leverage to go through any issues with liquidity, credit, and we will even be able to benefit from it. We know that there is a flight to quality of resources, and we were able to obtain excellent access with a low spread. So agents are preferring safer names. So we have an attractive capitation cost in face of what we have seen in the market.
Thank you so much for answering.
Our next question comes from Pedro Fonseca, sell-side analyst from XP.
Good morning, everyone. I hope you are well. Thank you for the opportunity. I would like to make a question or two. The first one is regarding the inoculants market. I saw you mentioning that you speculate that it had diminished in 2024. If you could further explain what you saw that would suggest the drop on this market and what is the expectancy for 2025 if you are going to recover this market. Perhaps the other two follow-ups actually of Barra's question is regarding the restrictive credit. Does it affect your clients? It does affect your other clients, too. Within this scenario, I would like to understand if perhaps this M&A conversation will come back to the table, if you identify potential opportunities within the market.
Still regarding credit, correct me if I am wrong, I think the company, the most important date to receive was in the end of March. Eventually, if they are seeking more time for payment, would it change things for you? These are my questions.
I am going to talk about inoculants, and later you give your input, and then Frizzo. The issue of the inoculants market has an important point, and even the drop in the revenue was not only due to the use. There was an accentuated drop on the prices. Last year, I believe that all producers, agents were concerned, especially we see that these are the normal months when you begin plantation to dry. The industry ended up getting frightened and there was a drop on the prices.
Last year, producers within the major functional norms did what everyone has to do when you have a challenge on the reduction of your revenue and consequently of your profitability. They also did their homework. They sought a better equation. They have been doing inoculations on the previous years. You have a certain reserve on the soil. It is really important for inoculation. This is more than propagated by Embrapa, but they have reduced, truly, the use of inoculants. Automatically, we were caught into two important points, drop in prices and reducing the use. What do we hope for 2025? To come back to normality.
There is a new technology, Azospirillum. This product has been growing and there was an accentuated drop in prices, but it has been growing its use even in other cultures. Other companies are working for new cultures. We understand for 2024, a market that is more normalized. This is our view in our inoculants. Do you want to say something, Edgar?
Well, it is that. It is perfect. Talking about the credit, I think that the companies that have prepared themselves well, will collect fruits in this challenging scenario. As Frizzo passed to you, our balance is good, so we have capabilities for truly financing more. In the other point that you asked if there was an elongation between April and May, it is in alignment. What we did not have was a sale that does happen in a short term to capitalize. They preferred to truly seek an alternative for financing. If you want to say something, Frizzo.
I think you were perfect. We have two dates for receiving, 30 of May and 30 of April. We will have a view on the non-payment for 2024, 2025 in the disclosure of the second quarter of 2024. Right now, we see no indication that it will be better or worse. We are following within normality. As I said, we are in the middle of this game. The season is still going. Of course, some of you know that we have a perspective that it will be a good season with some issues in some regions, but we need to wait. However, we do not hope for anything different from other years. There was no signaling from clients that we would need more time. Our working capital increased in purchase as we offer many options for clients. They can purchase installments or in cash directly.
Okay, thank you. Wilson, Edgar, Frizzo.
Our next question comes from Bruno Tomazetto, a sell-side analyst from Itaú BBA.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Thank you for getting my question. I have two. One is about the simulation that you did on the end of 2024. If you could further detail this. I would like to understand how all of this is distributed today. I would like to know what the opportunities for growth. If you could also discuss what is the expectancy for contribution in the margin top line, how will be the contribution within the company? My other question, trying to talk about the market share on the biologicals industry. There has been a distinct movement within the industry as there were some going really well, some strongly, some were losing their space.
The question is, how intense it is the change, and what were the drivers that contributed with this performance? Do you attribute this to the prices, access through resale? Could this have contributed to some of the companies? If you could share with us, how do you think about 2025? What are the main factors that have contributed to the market share changes? Thank you.
Edgar.
Let's talk about the Triunfe. This is a new site that is extremely used for soy, and there are other registries and so on, citruses. It's done by culture, not by target. Actually, it's culture and target, and it is extremely used. Now we have practically just two that dominate the market with active principles working. They are difficult to apply, and usually there is a difficulty in placing, or there is some stress for the plants depending on the type of product. We are bringing a solution that is easy for competitors. When talking about prices, it is a major issue when talking about compatibility.
I'm talking about a fungicide that is compatible with our biological fungicides. It can be applied together with it. So we have many advantages that we are bringing to producers despite being competitive in prices. We don't have a multinational that has an enormous communication capacity, but we are having many efforts, and we haven't expected for this to be relevant in our result from the first year. However, we see major growth in 2026. This is the reality. Wilson, if you'd like to complement.
Well, I believe Edgar said it all. The product will have a major contribution for our company. We see major growth. We bet on it. It's a differentiated product. We have been talking about the fact that we need to have quality, efficiency. We cannot not have it, and I believe that another important point is we have costs, and the main thing is what Edgar said, the compatibility and the applicability. This is an easy product to apply, so I believe that this comes into disputes as a winner. Talking about the contribution curve, of course, a product that will have its contribution on the results of the company. Then you made other two questions, right?
No, just to discuss the market share of the biologicals industry, the main drivers that you saw throughout the year, and if they should continue to be the same as next year.
What we have seen on the biologicals project, there was an accentuated drop on prices. This is natural. We have many plants that were installed and re-amplified within the country. We work, Vittia has an intense characteristic in the verticalization of the process. The main point is that the only company that goes from A to Z in the production of the biological is Vittia. Many companies end up outsourcing their work. So Vittia has easily structured themselves. This gives us a cost. So we are clear that we need to scale. So when we effectively get what we want as a revenue versus the volume that we produce, it was much bigger.
It is a little difficult as we see some disclosures in the market and numbers that we do not even agree as much. Vittia is an open capital company, and other companies may not have that much of a precision in this. So we see some disclosures that cause a little bit of doubt, and we have some doubts in this sense. This is our driver of truly scaling our process. You can see that even an issue of prices dropping, our margin did not drop as much.
Okay, thank you so much.
The Q&A session is over. We would like to pass the floor to Wilson Romanini so he can make his final remarks.
Once more, thank you. And we continue to have the same goals. I have told you that Vittia is a company that is here, and it will be in 50 years, and we want to do the best as possible. This is our work, our way of being, and I have an excellent expectancy on Vittia's numbers now for 2025. I believe that we have much to feel, but I believe that the work that we have been doing in the company strengthen us to present an interesting number to the market. Thank you so much, everyone. We are always available here.
Vittia's video conference is closed. The investors area is available to answer any other further questions. We thank you all for participating, and have an excellent day.