Good morning. Welcome to the Video Conference For The First Quarter of 2024 from Vittia. This conference is being recorded, and you can access the replay on the company's website and also the official YouTube channel. The presentation is available for download also. 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 given. Before continuing, I will inform first that the declarations are based on the beliefs and suppositions from Vittia and the current information of the company. These declarations may involve risks and uncertainties given they are mean about future events and depend on circumstances that may or not happen.
Investors, analysts, and journalists must consider that events related to the macroeconomic environment and other factors that may make results be different from those in the respective declarations. We have Mr. Wilson Romanini, CEO, Alexandre Del Nero Frizzo, CFO and IR Director, and Henrique Monteiro, R&D Director also. Now I will pass the floor to Mr. Wilson Romanini, that will give the first discussion.
Thank you all for being here. We will talk now about our results for the first quarter 2024. Beginning here, our gross revenue from the biologicals segment reached BRL 50.1 million, a little below the first quarter for 2023, minus 6.9%, being that in biological defensives, we recorded BRL 44.0 million in the first quarter, which is 4.1% less than the previous quarter. Our net revenue amounted to BRL 121.6 million in the first quarter for this year and 18.2% less when comparing to the quarter of 2023. Our net result income was BRL 0.8 million. It was 93.6% less than the previous quarter.
Our EBITDA totaled BRL 6.8 million in our first quarter for this year, 73.1% less than the first quarter for 2023. Our CapEx was around BRL 7.1 million, 37% less than the previous quarter. Speaking about the performance of the first quarter of 2024, as we have said on the last presentation, we come from a complicated year. The end of 2023 continued to be worse in the first quarter of 2024, where we had climate issues surfacing that have already been given an entire problem within the productivity sphere. It's interesting that in the end of the cycle, things slowed down, and the perception that we had that we would have a major reduction in the volume of production in grains in Brazil did not happen. It was not what we hoped, but was not the catastrophe that we were hoping for.
The El Niño was also present, but the strong rains came. Effectively the rural produce had a perception that it should continue their investment. This is based on when we think about the volumes that have showed some instability, but they had a potential and resilience given our technologies. They noticed that our technologies will make the difference in their productivity. The excess of stock that we had within the rural properties and the distributors diminished, which gives a clear perception that there will need a reposition of inputs for this 2024/2025 crop. We have a more favorable expectation when we did the presentation for you of the fourth quarter of 2023. We are right now with a volume of requests that are much greater per year. Things are happening. We no longer see a drop of prices.
Even we have seen, mainly in some products that we need to import, we have seen a big growth in the maritime delivery. We believe that we are even going to have, from the second quarter, a higher price, a higher volume, and consequently, a need to repass and automatically increasing the prices of our products. We have a scenario that is much more ease when regarding the climate area. We are going to El Niño that now establishes a more favorable Harvest point. We can see clearly that things are modifying themselves. The last calculation that we did, we have an expression that we had no light at the end of the tunnel, and now the lights are lighting up right now. We hope that in this year, the company will be able to have a greater volume in revenue and automatically in terms of result.
We now have an important focus. We have a job in the commodities in terms of the inputs and the relationship of exchange, both from soy, cotton, corn, coffee, sugarcane is very favorable right now. We understand clearly that they will do investment seeking to increase productivity. On our position, we continue to invest strongly in our R&D&I, in improving our biological lines, innovating. We are working strongly on this. Later, Henrique will speak about this to you. We have a metric within our company of having a financial solidity. As you can notice, we have worked when we get our SG&A for the fourth quarter of 2023. When comparing to the first quarter of 2024, we have an interesting drop. An important point is this did not modify our shares.
We are now working in an intense way, rationalizing our resources and always strengthening partners, positioning ourselves in an effective way with our current partners. This is our work. Now I will pass the floor to Alexandre. That will continue with the presentation.
Good morning. Now I will detail the operational performance and financial performance of the company. We had an unfavorable quarter. We can see with regards to demand and prices, we had a drop in the quarter of all of our product lines. Of inoculants, we had an important drop. It does not represent the quarter as much, but we had also a basically drop by our product that was launched recently, the RXL with phosphorus. However, the most traditional line, which is inoculants for soy, for corn, had no drop. They even had a small growth in terms of volume.
In biopesticides, under the point of view of the gross revenue, we had an increasing volume of around 6%, which implicates that this drop that we can see here of 4% is on prices. As I said, it happened in all of our lines. We do not see the pressure that we had in the last quarters. The line of biopesticides had a drop of around 10% in prices. This is a drop that is similar to the last quarter of the fourth quarter of 2023. We know that the price of biopesticides tends to go down, mainly due to the technologies that become older. We believe that working with this drop in prices of 10% is a drop that can even be beneficial under the point of view of demand, bringing a competitiveness to the technology when comparing to the other chemical technologies.
The foliar fertilizers also had a small drop impacting prices. The organominerals, I will mention when we speak about other issues, but we are diminishing our rhythm of organominerals. This is a line, as you said, we have been fighting to bring profitability, and usually the more we sell, the more harm we bring. We are seeking to reduce these operations and bring this line to stability in terms of margins. Speaking about soil micronutrients, this is a product that in the first quarter had a more retracted demand, but it is not a product that we hope to have a drop throughout the year. Much like the industrial products and others in this quarter, we can see we had a more retracted demand. It is a product that had a low demand in terms of products.
Highlighting here the biological lines, despite having presented a drop in revenue, we have not seen a drop in the first quarter with regards to volume when comparing the inoculants and biopesticides. Volumes were much close to stability. Speaking about the margins on a quarter with a drop in revenue, we had a small drop in the foliar fertilizers and industrial soil micronutrients. We had a smaller dilution of fixed costs when we enter to the other line that I have mentioned previously, which is of soil conditioners and organominerals. We can see that we once more had a negative result, but as I said, the strategy now is to diminish this negative result and diminish the size of the operation. This was actually quite positive. We are having less revenue, but as you can see, we are losing less.
This line, under the point of view of margin of contribution, not considering other issues, we had a gain of 2.3 percentage points quarter- against- quarter. I think that our challenge here is to re-adequate, and this is happening in our manufacturing structure and our fixed costs, so we can have a small operation, but that delivers at least a neutral result. Up until the moment that we can come back to have a normal situation in the market of organominerals and for us to redefine our direction of this business within our group. I mean I did not speak about the biological products. I think that I left it for last. It is the one that is most relevant for us under the point of view of contributions. We had a drop of margins, a drop of around 12%-13%.
A little smaller when comparing to the fourth quarter. I would like to highlight that this level of drop is not what we expect for the year. We had two atypical quarters. When talking about some aspects, the fourth quarter of last year, there was an impact in our soil fermentation. Like any startup, it brought low levels of productivity, some losses from operation adjustments, and brought a greater impact in dropping the margins. In this first quarter, we have a severe impact, the most relevant one, which was the non-dilution of fixed costs for biologicals. The net revenue is around 15%. This is an operation in which most of the industrial costs are fixed. We have a netting of costs of TGF quarter- against- quarter due to the second phase for the solid fermentation.
In this quarter, what weighed in on margin drop was the increase of fixed costs. This scenario of reducing the revenue of biologicals is not what we work on through the year. We work with the growth of revenue for this line, and so we are going to try to dilute these fixed costs. We do not expect such a drop above 10%. This is not what we hope for. What we have seen on the last quarter and what we are seeing right now, this is not what we hope for the year. We hope to have a margin drop. As I have said, we work with a drop of prices of around 10%. This is a market that is developing itself, having new competitors.
We have a drop of prices on top of technologies that are becoming more consolidated, which is relevant when we see for the fourth quarter and the first quarter, which is our product in the base on both year, and we have this expressed in our numbers. But we understand that the drop of margin for the year will be at most under the guise of percentage. Like last year, I think. We had a drop last year of 6% in the year for the line of biologicals. We are working also to improve the productivity of our manufacture. We have seen with this drop of prices, we saw the market consolidating. We became a focus for initiatives to improve productivity. So if we have success in these initiatives, the drop may be even smaller than 6%.
Summarizing here, it is a quarter where we had a similar drop of the fourth quarter, but we are not working as if it was a normal level of drop. About our expenses, we had a 10% growth in our SG&A, but it is important to talk about the lines that we produce. We had a smaller reversion on the first quarter of 2024 when comparing to the other quarter for 2023. So we can see that we provisioned more than we saw under the point of view of non-payment. It does not mean that we are seeing a higher level of non-payment. It even means actually that the first quarter is aligned with what we have foreseen. What happened is that we had a good year in 2023 and some of the provisions were reverted. It is not the scenario for 2024.
We are having a good performance as to receiving. We have an important receivable in 2024. We had a good performance, but it was as we hoped. That is why we have this difference when talking about reversion. When talking about administrative, we had a reduction aligned with what we see. We have been talking about for the market, about rationalizing the company in this difficult moment and about other expenses. Although we have grown 7%, this was important when comparing to what we were performing last year with a growth around 20% of the selling expenses. We may even see a greater deceleration when comparing to last year. So this is not 100% in the numbers. These adjustments were not 100% captured into the numbers of the first quarter. We obviously do not work with a big reduction.
We work with the goal of staying very close to the revenue of last year or with a small growth. As Wilson said, we are not destructuring our company, we are just seeking to rationalize our efforts. As a result, mainly of the demand and the drop of revenue, we had an important drop in EBITDA. It is important to inform that this is one number that does not represent the year as a whole. Both for the first and the second quarter, the drop really was relevant, but when comparing to the year, it is one that we see that we can manage when we come back to have a good performance for the next quarter so we can deliver a growth EBITDA for the year. About the CapEx, we had around an interesting reduction when comparing to last year.
We have some investments for the year, but with a consolidated level that is lower to the last year. Adjusting to this scenario, we are rationalizing more our CapEx for the main investments, which was to finalize the microbiological plants. That added up BRL 7 million, for example. It is already beginning to operate. It is a facility that is doing a ramp-up in this first quarter. The process of ramp-up for microbiologicals is a little slower than the growth of insects. We inaugurated our administrative office. We talked about the strategy of changing our headquarters to Ribeirão Preto to seek to attract or have a broader base of human resources. Obviously, we will keep our operations in São Joaquim da Barra. Part of the administrative roles will also be there, but the idea is to just aggregate a new hub to contribute to our operations.
It is an investment that is not that relevant in microbiologicals to improve our capacity. About cash flow management, we have a traditional quarter for consuming our flow. We have a natural increase of debt in this quarter. However, we have closed the quarter with a net debt smaller when comparing to the first quarter of 2023. Regarding EBITDA and net debt, we had an increase due to the worst EBITDA performance, but this is the peak of our debt for the year. This is the highest period, and we can see that the level is still very comfortable, remembering that we also did a repurchase program that was very relevant in the first quarter. If it was not for this index of 1.7 would go around one and a half. We had a better performance about the financial result with a net debt of 20% lower.
We even inverted, we had a positive result, especially due to the AVP that ends up being connected to operation, then our position as a net debt. For us to have a net debt about this and have a positive financial result is something that does not make sense, but it is the math that ends up giving this result. When talking about income tax and social contribution, we had a worse performance than last year with a negative of BRL 100,000. This is broadly expected due to the end of subvention, which will increase. As a final result, we had a drop of our net margin and net profit. However, this is still very positive.
So even though we had perhaps one of the worst quarters that we had when talking about financial performance, we are still within a positive scenario in the end, even though it is almost stable. Now I will pass the floor to Henrique to further detail our R&D&I investments.
Thank you, Alexandre. Good morning. Vittia continues strong with its investments in R&D&I, both on projects and the project portfolio, as well as when talking about structuring labs and investing our CapEx. In focusing our investments, it is for developing new technologies, biological products for agriculture, both inoculants as well as biopesticides. But we are still investing in new technologies related to nourishing plants, which are fertilizers, special fertilizers. When comparing the periods, we can see that the first quarter of 2024, our investment in biological product is around BRL 5,618, an increase of 6.4% when comparing to the previous month of 2023. Investment in fertilizers or new technologies for nourishment was aligned with last year's performance with just a small increase of 4.8%, totaling an invest of BRL 1,997,000.
Regarding the CapEx we have invested in the first quarter for 2024, BRL 1.3 million. A third of this investment went for the bioprospection sectors and bioprocesses to equip the acquisition of new equipment related to bioprocesses and equipment for helping in developing formulations. A third of this investment went to structuring our R&D lab for microbiologicals, and the rest of investments went to acquiring and building a new vegetation house in São Joaquim da Barra to help on the demand that comes from the bioprospection sector and bioprocesses. In the first quarter, we had two approvals for the MAPA regarding new recommendations. New recommendations for biological targets in two pesticides, biopesticides from Vittia. We had the approval of the biological target, Caltro, that helps with sugarcane, a product that is very unique for. This is very important.
It is an important disease that is difficult to control, even for the chemical pesticides, and we are able to approve these to control this disease that makes sugarcane red. The other approval was for controlling nematodes in rice. For the first quarter, it is worth to highlight that we are already collecting the fruits, the labors of bioprospection. We have begun requesting RETs, which is the Special Temporary Registry of new microorganisms from bioprospection to control plagues, diseases beyond microorganisms with the role of stabilizing phosphorus, potassium, and others. And they are new microorganisms from Vittia that are new germs and other new species. We have the expectation of collecting the fruits of our labors for these products for the next years. I give the floor back to Alexandre to finalize. Thank you.
About the shares or stock price, we have been suffering from the consolidation of this difficult scenario for the agribusiness. Now within the first quarter, we were below the above when comparing our performances. We begin to think here internally that there is an important detachment of the investor's perception on investing in agribusiness and how this talks to the values of our shares. We understand the issues that weigh in on our shares, like the low index of liquidity. It is a share that is still unknown. And even this scenario that is hard for agribusiness, but we understand that nowadays, each time this is very far from what we have for the company. Even within this, we are performing a repurchase program in the first quarter, where we had an important volume of around BRL 16 million allocated for our repurchase program.
We closed the first one and opened a new one. Now we have around four million shares available so we can execute the repurchase program. I am not saying taking profit, let us say, because we always mentioned it is not our strategy to take profit from a low momentary purchase, but it ends up being like an obligation for us understanding this difference between the company's value and the prices that we need to maximize for our shareholders. We need to maximize the value for them. So we have this program going on. We have another part of it being performed, and we can see that we need to pay attention to this strategy. About our governance, it is worth to highlight that we have a new member in our council. He was elected recently, Fabio Torretta. He is an experienced professional from the sector.
He has been acting in the area, Nufarm's company on specialties. He is coming as a COO for Brazil, and he was also part of the UPL Group after acquiring with the COO Brazil from UPL. He is a person with a lot of market knowledge of specialties, both for defense and nutrition. He will help us to establish our growth strategies. Based on this, we created a strategic growth committee where Fabio will be the head alongside our commercial director, Rodrigo, and our marketing director, Edi Gasanar.
Now we will begin the Q&A session for investor and analysts. If you wish to make any questions, please click on raise your hands or in the Q&A button and write your question. Our first question is from Lais Sampaio, a sell-side analyst from Itaú.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me well?
Yes.
Thank you, Wilson , Frizzo, Henrique, Thiago. Thank you for getting my questions. We are very happy to know that you are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. This was a very interesting comment. My first question is regarding this environment with trust, despite the challenges you have talked during this, that you are trusting the revenue and the EBITDA for the year. I would like to believe that this trust extends to the cash generation. If you can talk more about converting the EBITDA for the year, if you are going to have a difference in CapEx or cash flow. Anything that may convert this.
A second issue that I would like to mention is regarding the mix effect in the margin dynamics. We talked about this during this. We have reported a margin that was pressured when compared to last year, but there was an improvement. You have mentioned the effects, but I would like you to understand, if you could mention about this new dynamic of mix between the first quarter, the second quarter, how much it impacted biologicals. If we can hope to have a positive effect for a mix looking at the next nine months. I think this is a more about product/commercial. These are my two questions. Thank you.
Frizzo, if you would like to begin talking about the cash generation, and then I will talk about the trust issue of mix of products. I think it will give a better dynamic for us to do it like that.
Well, speaking about the generation of cash for the year, December- against- December, we will not have a year of generating a lot of cash because what happens in our sector is, for example, the result when talking about the cash flow ends up coming on the next year. For the end of the year, for the net debt, it is very similar to last year when talking about the nominal issue. This is relative, so we are going to have this due to the leverage as a growth for the EBITDA, considering a lower CapEx, but also with our growth coming back, we are now having more cash flow when comparing to December.
As you know, when we grow, we consume our capital, which is precisely this term that we work on the market of receiving after the end of the crop. This is our expectancy for the year. Without considering new execution of recall programs or M&A, we have space for both strategies. Thank you.
Well, speaking about the trust and that phrase that I said that we have no light at the end of the tunnel. We can notice that people remember this. I think that it is very important is that Vittia will always be a company that is open to those who are on their side for good or for bad. This is natural. This is part of us. We are here in management to effectively show what is happening in the market and what we see at that moment.
But nowadays, the trust is much higher than in the first moment. As I said, we were coming from a period of drought. We had a drop in commodities, mainly in soy, that represents right now 45 million hectares of the 90 million that we have in Brazil, reaching 90, 80 million. So truly, we had a very conservative position. Now the market has changed. We have an increase in commodities, so we had an increase of around 50%. The inputs went down, and we understand that effectively the raw producer will make his investment, and he needs to seek productivity. He wants that. And what I talked about initially, where we had a view of a harvest that is harmed, we did not expect for it to be like so, but it is much better than what we had hoped for the beginning.
When we get the prices that are being, let us say, worked on in terms of soy, there is a price considering a full American harvest. We know that problems in the middle of the path may happen, so we still have, let us say, a possibility of a drop in volume. Broadly speaking, we can reflect about the prices of commodities and so on. We see dollar displays different from the BRL 5 . We can say that this helps in Brazilian agribusiness. Part of the costs are still in reals, and automatically, the producer will have its products traded in dollars. So things are very positive. We are living in a very different moment. I think that thinking internally, I think that all adjustments that we had to do were done, and I think it was well done.
This automatically generates results for the company to have a rationalization. You have a repositioning. The dynamics of the commercial sector is higher now, even with the entrance of the director that we worked on with a directory doing the commercial part and marketing. We segregated this and we are having good results. We have been preparing ourselves in an interesting way with other cultures. That's it. When we speak about mix, this is aligned with what market is doing now. Our thesis for the team is to show the best technologies, and automatically, when you have a higher technology, you have a higher price and automatically a better margin. This is what we are doing. Considering what will happen in 2024 for the harvest 2024-2025, it's clear for us that we are in a much more comfortable situation than we were in the beginning of the year.
Thank you, Wilson. It was very clear. Thank you for the transparency.
Our next question comes from Gabriel Barra, a sell-side analyst from Citi. You have the floor. Okay, let's go for the next question, and then he enters next. Now let's receive Pedro Leduc, sell-side analyst from XP.
Hello. Thank you, Thiago, Frizzo, thank you for getting my question. First of all, I'm sorry we ended up losing this depok because we were in another teleconference. I'm sorry if this was already addressed. My first question is about the requests. You have said that this growth was very strong. If you could talk about how much it would be this very strong, perhaps qualitatively, perhaps it would be interesting for us and even on the charter for the request. My question is, if this has been growing on top of new clients or if you see it through an increase in share of pockets for our clients. This is my first question.
The second question is about allocation of capital. The company went through a difficult year. The worst is down there, and you were able to keep a solid structure. You were doing a repurchase program, but my question is for M&A. Do you see opportunities for M&A given that we have now a solid structure to accelerate growth through M&A? Even on M&A, I'm still talking about M&A, not as recently, but we were talking that you saw less opportunities for biologicals and more in foliar fertilizer. If this is capped, if the opportunities continue to be with this business line than in biologicals. This is my question.
Pedro, regarding the requests, this is much higher than in the same period. We need to do some tie-ups. We had the first quarter restricted in negotiations in our requests, and this began to appear with a greater magnitude in April. So we have May, and there is a very big relevance. It's very relevant. So it is a volume that is very interesting. If we compare it to last year's period, we have a growth of 4x for the charter for this period. When we get the magnitude for right now regarding the requests that entered and effectively are there, we have 20 something percent of increase considering the same period for last year.
So truly, the market began to change. The market changed a lot for 30, 40 days to here. When talking about our charter or wallets, we have both of them. We have an increase in our traditional clients, and also we are doing an interesting opening for new clients. From M&A, I think that Frizzo can talk about this to you.
Well, this strategy persists. We continue to look at M&A on how we can either aggregate new technologies or gain access to the market. When talking about aggregating new technologies, we have been seeing less opportunities available than it would be like in the field that you said, in the biological segments. When we look about biological companies, these are companies that end up not having contributions on new technologies and a very limited contribution when talking about access to the market, and even from the lack of resources and attractiveness. We have a price that is very difficult. It is very better to do a purchase.
When we see segments that can give access to the market, we can see other opportunities and we can see a pricing that makes sense. We continue to have these two strategies. We continue to look at our assets, but in a very disciplined way, so we can just acquire this in the right price, and that can bring value to the shareholders from Vittia. That is it. That is basically that we begin with our strategy.
Excellent. Wilson, Frizzo, thank you.
Our next question comes from Gabriel Barra, sell-side analyst from Citi.
Hi, guys. I think that now it is working. I had just a technical problem here. Wilson, Frizzo, Thiago, thank you. For the questions, I would like to say about two things. First, about the commercial strategy. We have been discussing this, and I think that last year, there was an interview from Wilson talking about the direct sales, participating cooperatives. Then within this scenario that perhaps I would like to hear from Wilson, is that now looking at these two to three years in the long history that Vittia has, if you think that this is the best strategy, if there is a change in courses going forward, if perhaps to leverage this via other channels would make sense. If you could talk about the company's strategy regarding the distribution would help a lot.
The second step, and even coming back to the allocation of the capital, not only talking about M&A and with regards to the growth and repurchase. You have an open repurchase program. Talking about the prices of the company, you can see that we look at a very challenging scenario when talking about prices. How do you see the repurchase in this context of allocating capital and growth? Frizzo spoke about targets and et cetera, but looking at the revenue, when you compare to the company, how do you think about this? Thank you.
Okay, Gabriel. I will talk about the commercial strategy, and then Frizzo can speak about the allocation of capital. The commercial strategy that we have continues to be the same. We are effectively working in the process of direct sales. We have partnerships with distributors, commodities inputs, and so on, and cooperatives. Things stay the same way. We are doing work, working, seeking a better performance of our company. We have created an interesting point, which are distribution centers, and this helps to meet the distributors, and effectively they were a producer. But when we talk about commercial strategy, it is still the same. What we have been doing is to improve our team. Sales need to happen with our partners, but with a major efficiency of having Vittia's team in the field.
So we have been working in this new rationalization that we did. In terms of resources within the company, the team was even strengthened and worked on some important steps for the commercial strategy. It is the same. We have this thesis of being present in this chain, and this is what our work we have. It is important for us to be seeking some places that up until then, we would do this in a less intense way for us to be able to put more businesses within the company. About allocation of capitals, I think that Alexandre can speak better about this.
Well, about repurchase, without a doubt, one of the greatest strategies that we have as to revenue when we look at the financials solely, I think Vittia, about multiples, is cheaper than any other asset now in the market. As I said, within the scenario that we hope for, it would even contribute about profit per share for our shareholders. But about strategies, this is not what we would hope for. We would not like to use all this rest in a repurchase program, knowing that we can have strategic opportunities that will improve the competitive positioning that we have in the market. We are in an incipient market of biologicals. The scale will be important. This being important right now to dilute the cost of production, to absorb R&D&I expenditure.
We know that we need to invest to bring new solutions about efficiency and so on. We need to scale this commercially. This is the path we know that if we do not want to burn what we have and not have this flexibility to use when there is an opportunity of strengthening our position. So basically that is it. It is what I said, we are in the opposite path, which is to have a company that is more expressive and increasing our liquidity. It is what we would not. We execute things because we need to think about the shareholders at the base and about the best opportunities for our shareholders, and repurchase right now for these prices is without a doubt on the top of the list.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Nicholas, an investor. Why is soil conditioners and organominerals with a negative growth margin? Would you like to answer, Frizzo?
Okay. Well, this is something that we have been discussing for many quarters. We have entered this market with an expectancy before the problem that happened with fertilizers, with the beginning of the Russian-Ukraine war, when we had a drastic change. In the logic of fertilizers, where somehow we had given an excessive concern with organominerals, it incentivized many projects, a wrong position from the market.
I think that the bill came not only for us, but most of them are. I am not going to generalize, but for most of the market of organominerals and all companies with a certain difficulty of having this operation, profiting from this operation. So there is an issue that in the last two years, the market worked outside of the logic of what this technology was for four to five years ago, an excess of optimism with that prices scenario that is much higher than the mineral fertilizers and some actions for companies of positioning products. This is a technology that effectively is not being demanded for in the way that it should be due to this positioning. It is not being as demanded by the producer in such a way that all the organomineral companies have a lower demand.
These are lower margins for a technology that is more like a commodity. When you have a demand and a level of sales that is much inferior to what you had planned, which is what we had for its structure, we end up generating a negative result due to this fixed cost. Of course, in some trimesters, this was not the dynamics. This was the dynamics of prices. I think that this is the history for us to not advance that much, because this is a very long story. Right now, we can see that this is a market that will need some time to recover the technology or the correct position.
We have the strategy of not leaving the market, but diminishing as most as possible the operation so we can neutralize the negative impact. Technology is efficient, it works, it is interesting, but due to this dynamics right now, the companies, it is not only Vittia, many companies do not have profitable business models.
Our next question comes from Fabio Renato, WJ News Investor. Good morning. In face of the agribusiness challenges, will the company have any negative impact with Rio Grande do Sul strategy? If you have, which would be the impact on the revenue?
Fabio, the issue of Rio Grande do Sul will impact the agribusiness as a whole, but Vittia is a position that is not that positioned in the south of the country. Each year, we are trying to achieve more places there, but there is a certain difficulty, and this comes from the old days of the company, where we began in 1971 to produce inoculant.
At the time, we had companies that would do this work, would produce this in Rio Grande do Sul, and Vittia developed itself, grew. Our position, mainly in Rio Grande do Sul, is one that is small. When we talk about the impact in Rio Grande do Sul, the effective areas for crop, which are Planalto, the region of Passo Fundo, Erechim. We had effective loss by the excess of rain. We had a soy that was not reduced, so the producer ended up having this argila soy, so it reduced his type of production. But the volume that he had on the field was not that much. In the rice region, I do not have the magnitude, but most of this was already collected. It is below the water. No one knows what will happen for a water technology like so.
But if we analyze Rio Grande do Sul when comparing to two, three years in which there was a big drought, the productivity that year is still big. We do not have effectively major problems in this one due to the volume that we commercialized in Rio Grande do Sul and the losses within Agro were not that significant. I think that Agro in Rio Grande do Sul ends up coming in a position in terms of productivity that is much higher than it had in the last two years.
Our next question comes from William Salton, buy-side analyst from Terra Asset. Good morning. I would like to know what you think it's more irreplicable in the company.
Irreplicable.
Yes.
Okay, Frizzo, can you answer that?
I think the question has to do with our competitive advantages. What I usually say is that we do not have a sole source of advantages. We have some different issues at the company that made us have a truly different positioning. Vittia has a complete portfolio to meet the part of nutrition and defense. We have one of the most complete portfolios of the market. Our biological technologies are in the market. It's the most advanced company in this aspect. We were able to work on the crops with 100% biological ones. This is a company that has many years in the market, recognized, accessing the market in all the regions with a strong team. Vittia is adding up to the competencies that bring a different position in the market. This is our understanding. I don't know if I. We do not have a patent.
If something is truly replicable, what is difficult to replicate is an asset that we have been building for more than 50 years. All of these advantages together in the same company. Do you want to complement?
It's precisely that. The sole point is that you said we have no patent and we have an expertise of more than 50 years. We know that technology is only a top when you are in the market. The market is dynamic. It seeks to mirror works in this sense. I know that Vittia is shown in this sense because we feel very clearly everything that we create of improvement, of new solutions, the market runs to try to do a replica of this. Vittia understands that it works, and I think that one of our greatest strengths is to have this commercial strategy of more than 50 years. R&D&I is very different. Here we have Henrique, a partner for the company. To me, this is a guy that most knows this in terms of Biodefensivos in Brazil, and this is the work that we have been doing.
Our next question comes from Nicholas. What is the capacity of Vittia's plans? A full one. What would be the greatest potential for the revenue?
Look, we have a company that has an extensive portfolio. Of course, we have a thing that we are understanding with soil micronutrients, the plan that we have a certain capacity of increasing, not as strongly when we go to our world of biodefensivos, biopesticides. We have a very interesting capacity of increasing production. We have right now a work from the growth of business of this plant, the part of special fertilizers, we have some issues. Generalizing everything, the company has a growth potential with its CapEx right now. But as to the volume of revenue that we could reach, we do not have this value consolidated to pass to you. I think that's it, Frizzo.
I think we can do some exercises, but I think it's difficult. What we usually said is that on our biological plans, we have a capacity that is still very relevant, of course, depending on some investments. We presented this picture in a more detailed way in our Vittia Day in the end of last year. This still persists, but we can alter this with what we have been working in the industrial part, even improving our productivity. So about the biologicals, without a doubt, we can more than double or triple the revenue of biopesticides in the structure that we have. Of course, with some adjustments. In general, that's it.
Our next question comes from Gabrielle Enge, an investor from Pátria Investimentos. Good morning. After April 3, how is the PDD for the next semester?
I think that Alexandre's call is not working. Well, Gabrielle, we had a level of receivable in April 3 that was very good. Now we have an interesting volume. This coming from the movement from 23 and 30. We hope that we to receive it. There is nothing complex. Even from the question from Fabio, we won't have major problems, but I cannot answer you what would be the provision for PDD. I think those who can talk about this to you is Frizzo.
I'm sorry. I think the internet did not work. You're talking about Rio Grande do Sul. Well, we had already said we had a small charter portfolio in Rio Grande do Sul. We are going to receive around BRL 12 million between 30 of five and also for September and so on, being that I would say that 80% of that is, as Wilson said, in non-affected regions. We have 20% in those who were affected, but we still do not have a clear view of how the non-payment would be, and if would this just be a delay. We still need to wait to have a better view, but you can see that this is not representative when we see the total. So that's around BRL 12 million from the total charter and portfolio around 80%.
So this total that we have in affected regions does not concern us about the non-payment, the total non-payment for the company. Just coming back to the question, you had asked how was the PDD for the second quarter now that April has gone through. It is normal. I mentioned this in the presentation. We are with a normal PDD. Which up until now did not enter any legal recovery. We cannot promise that this will continue like so, but we can say that we did not enter in anyone, and we are hoping May 30 with no surprises. Let's just try to have this view. We're going to just be able to have this view on the next month.
Our next question comes from João Festas, a buy-side analyst from Ody Capital. Hello. What's the component of growth in biologicals based on the recent requests that is referent to the products that were launched recently? Could you talk about the difference of margins in biologicals between new products and old products? And the third, how do you see the impact of generical chemical defenders with smaller prices in adopting biologicals?
Frizzo, would you like to talk about this, and I will talk about the impact?
Sorry. Could you repeat this, the margin?
Of course. Could you talk about the difference of biologicals between new products versus new one?
Well, we do not have products with relevance that were launched in the last, let's say, 12 months. We are not having a big difference, even because the products still have a good margin. What is happening is that we are beginning the process of these products being more consolidated. We have a higher level of competition and so on. It is what we said, we are talking about a margin of around 70%. We cannot say the launches will be at higher margin levels, 80% and so on, but it will depend on the technology. As we said, we had a drop in margins, but we still have a lot of margins, so we do not have this big differential, even though we can see this between old and new products.
Talking about the drop in biodefensives, of course, biopesticides, this will influence the margin of biologicals. An important issue I think that is nowadays, we have right now a few that the producer has not received this, and we can see that this is more efficient than the own biopesticide. When you take cigarrinha, we have an effort around 70% with a chemical defender around 40%. But this is a technology we even have been talking about within the market. This is a work that companies need to do, but without a doubt, the drop in prices in biopesticides impacts the biodefensivos.
The Q&A session is now closed. We would like to pass the floor to Wilson Romanini so he can do his final considerations.
Good morning to all of you. What we can say right now is that we always have said that future will be very clear. We are going to be together with it. In 2023, we had a very challenging 2023. We had right now a beginning of 2024 where we had things were still without any signals, and we begin to see that things are accommodating themselves. Agri is like this. I have been there for more than 30 years, and you have years that are excellent. You have worse years. You have normal years. What we understand right now is that this year of 2024, 2025 will be a good year, a normal. A lot has changed. Things have changed.
We are always seeking to have a company that understands things and has a clear perception of these movements for us to always be able to close this in a positive manner, and that is what I would like to pass to you. The scenario has changed and things will truly happen in a positive way, I think not only for Vittia, but for all the companies from the agribusiness. That is it. Thank you very much.
This video conference is now closed. The area of investors is ready to answer further questions. We thank you for your participation and have a good day.