Good morning. Welcome to the conference to disclose the results of the third quarter of 2023 from Vittia. This video conference is being recorded and can be accessed on the website of the company, like on the official YouTube channel. The presentation is also available for download. We inform that all participants will only be watching the video conference during the presentation, and later we will begin the Q&A session when further instructions will be given. Before continuing, I use the moment to reinforce that the declarations are based on the creeds from Vittia and the current information available for the company. These declarations can involve risks and uncertainties having view that they regard future aspects and depend on circumstances that may or not happen.
Investors, analysts, and journalists must consider that events related to the macroeconomic environment to this segment and other factors that may make the results be materially different than those expressed in the respective prospective declarations. We have in this video conference Mr. Wilson Romanini, CEO, Alexandre Del Nero Frizzo, CFO and Director of IR, and Henrique Monteiro Ferro, Director of R&D. I would like to invite to pass the floor to Wilson Romanini that will begin the presentation.
First of all, good morning to all of you. In this moment, we are going to pass the results of the third quarter of 2023. As Thiago said, we will have time in the end for Q&A that you give. Talking about Vittia in this third quarter, we have a gross revenue in the biological segment of BRL 105 million, 4.6% more comparing to the quarter of the previous year, and BRL 171 million considering the first nine months, 11% more than the previous year. Being that in biological defensives line, we had BRL 55.2 million in the quarter, which is 1% more, and we take the first nine months at almost BRL 110 million, 11% more than the nine months of 2022.
The net revenue amounted BRL 291 million, 5.3% less than the previous quarter of 2022, and BRL 512.1 million in the first months, 17% less than in 2022. The EBITDA totaled BRL 90 million, 22% less than the third quarter of 2022, and BRL 96 million considering the first nine months. We remember that we had the first quarter that was very difficult and this totaled amounted to almost less than 40% considering the first nine months of 2022. The net income was in BRL 58.1 million in the third quarter, 25% less than 2022, and amounted to almost BRL 57 million in the first nine months compared to the first nine months of 2022.
The CapEx, we had BRL 11.3 million in this quarter of 2023, 22.5% less than 2022 and BRL 38 million in the first nine months, 23.3% less when comparing to 2022. You must remember that we basically finished our great investment in the part of the biodefensives. Talking about the performance here, I would like to talk to you. The agribusiness has its characteristics. We live in an industry that is an open sky.
We were in a strong rhythm thinking about 2021, 2022, and now 2023, we had many issues that must be considered. A political picture that is a little concerning within the agribusiness. We have the issue of marco temporal, the safety of private property. So in these days when I was talking to a rural producer, he used an expression that was very interesting. The agri is "ressabiado," is fearful. When we take a situation of the clients that have a perspective that is not as positive and we have an issue like El Niño, the climate. The producer has been purchasing, as we use in the expression here, from hand to mouth. We finished the year of 2022 with high stocks in the storage, so it's been a great challenge. It's interesting for us. We began the third quarter strongly.
But now we are here with a problem where we have today in Brazil, basically 50% of the area with grains. In the same period of last year, we were with more than 70%. So truly there is a slower pace and we had in the period the final days of October or beginning of September, we had a good time with rain, but we are with a little drought that can prolong itself up to the 17th or 20th. And all of this will leave producers concerned and with due reason. And it's obvious that this will affect intensively the industry. You can see the results of the other companies. I even use the example to talk about Yara, that in the third quarter of the last year closed with $402 million. It closed the third with $2 billion in terms of result and profit.
So the agribusiness is going through a challenging scenario. I think that what's important to say here, looking towards Vittia, a company that has a high degree of governance, that truly has a team that is ready with good moments, for the good and bad moments. We leave this strengthened. I think this is very important to notice, and we are going to enter 2024 much more positioned thinking about the Brazilian agribusiness. It's like this. I've been working with this for a while, and sometimes it jokes with us. So it's important for us to have the capability, the management spirit to understand that these moments can come and then go. And who effectively lives well can collect good fruits. And we had an important issue with this challenge, the more daring market.
And without a doubt with a downfall in the prices of inputs, this effectively touches up on our revenue. Let's talk about the scenario. We have a good scenario. We have the cultures being given to producers a good profit, but all of this depends on the climate. How will it be effectively thinking about El Niño? An important thing that you can see in that they did not have such a big growth. We had some informations. The market went down. And you can see that the market of biologicals, although this retraction has been growing. With our position, we still do an entire work in the part of investments, thinking about the PD&I, research and development, RD&I.
There is a downfall in the prices of biological defensives, and it's important for us to effectively bring innovations in terms of new microorganisms that are able to solve the issue of plagues and diseases. This is a constant work for you to truly be able to create value within the process. We continue intensively working in the issue of the relationship, both with producers and distributors, and the opening of new distributors. At every moment, we are working very intensely in new portfolios, products, technologies. Now I pass the floor to Alexandre Del Nero Frizzo.
Good morning. Going for the gross revenue by business line. We have the two lines of biologicals with growth and in the quarter. In the quarter, the defensives grew 1%, inoculants 9%, and both through the year have grown 11%. The ones that have suffered the most were the ones that continue with this process, mainly the organominerals. So in the quarter, they went down 31%. We are with a downfall of 55%, and the industrial products had a 66% fall, both in the quarter and in the year. Soil micronutrients, we had a growth in the quarter, but in average through the year, we have a small downfall. The foliar fertilizers, we have a fall in the quarter and in the year.
Here I would like to highlight, as Wilson Romanini said, we have a pressure on prices. The average price of the company in the year of 2023 goes down 10% against 2022. We have a drop in prices in all the segments. In the segment of biological defensives, the drop is smaller, 4%. In inoculants, it's 9%. In foliar, 16%.
In organominerals, 20% of drop year- per- year. In soil macronutrients, 13%. In industrial, 34%. This is the average price of this segment. Of course, within them, we have an issue of mix. Just to give a magnitude on the pressure of prices, how this has been impacting the company and these lines individually. Regarding the margin, we have a year with a lot of pressure due to this market scenario and the pricing. Our bioproducts, we have a small drop, both in the third quarter and in the year. The price went down, both inoculants and biological defensives, and we are able to fulfill the part of this downfall with productivity gains. The part of foliar fertilizers and industrial products also had a margin drop. Most of this margin drop is due to the industrial products line.
As you have seen, it was a big drop in prices and revenue, but foliar fertilizers also presents a small drop when we see the numbers separately. Soil micronutrients have a drop in the quarter and in the year. A drop that leaves this line within a normal profitability. In 2022, we had a profitability that was a little bit better on what would be the historic average. In organominerals, due to the low volume of sales, we had some inputs with high prices of fertilizers and those standards of the period of the conflict, which made us have, in the quarter, a negative result, and also in the year. But we still have a little bit of this stock, but up to the end of the year, we have this perspective. We can equalize this, and we hope that things will come back to normal in 2024.
Next slide. Well, in the part of selling, general, and administrative expenses, we are keeping our strategy plan. We continue to invest in the part of market development, amplifying the commercial team. This has been a strategy since the beginning of the year. We know that this is a challenging scenario, but we still do not have a long-term perspective equivalent to what we are facing in a short term. For us, even some companies, we have chemicals that have shown their results recently. We do not see this scenario for Vittia. We must hope to have more clarity in the next harvest to understand if some adjustments must be done. Possibly, yes, but no structural adjustments. We understand that the bio market is still very promising, one that has a favorable condition to present high growth rates.
We do not want to dismount or restructure what we already have. Due to the smaller revenues, we have a drop in the EBITDA in the quarter and in the year, and a drop in the margin. We finish by keeping our strategic plan. We finish the amplification of the phase II of the biological plant, doubling our capacity of solid-state fermentation. It is already operating, and we also incremented a little bit in the part of liquid fermentation. We are still with a capacity of liquid fermentation and solid-state fermentation operating in its totality.
Due to the, let us say, stop in the growth and the pressure of our cash flow during connected to the sector where the sellings are different and it imbues an increase of this capital, we have been keeping a financial position that is very solid, and we have a reduction of the debt, both in nominal and relative terms, considering the drop of EBITDA in this period. The company is very strong financially to go through this difficult moment and to use eventual opportunities that may arise during this period. A little bit of our financial results of 2023, much better. Due to this better position of the net debt of the company regarding the income tax and social contribution, we have a drop, so a better result.
In our net profit, we have a little drop, smaller than the one for EBITDA due to our financial result, but a nominal drop and in terms of margin, both in the quarter and the year itself, the nine months. Now I pass the floor to Henrique to talk about RD&I.
Good morning. Vittia is still strong with investments in RD&I, as planned for the budget of 2023, and mainly investing in the new technologies of bioproduct. When we compare quarter- by- quarter of 2023 to 2022, the bio lines had a small reduction in investments of 4.5% and fertilizers 11.2%. But when we look towards the year, the nine months, which is most important, we have increased the investment in 27.9% in the bio lines when we compare 2022, and an increase of 11.4% in investments in technologies related to fertilizers when compared to the nine months of 2022.
Regarding the total amount in the two lines, there was an increase in investment of 23.1% when we compare to the nine months of 2022. Vittia continues strong. We have increased investments for the development of new technologies, both in the bioproducts and fertilizers, but focusing more in the development of products based on biologicals. Regarding the CapEx investment, in 2023, there was a reduction of 72%, and the operation of the OpEx, an increase of 36%. When we see the revenue in P&R&D regarding the net revenue, we have 1.4%.
Regarding the key developments in our development of RD&I, it is worth to highlight, we have the regulation of six, two new products approved by the MAPA. One pesticide that is microbiological based on a fungus Isaria japonica, which is exclusively from Vittia, and an innovative formulation from Vittia also to control the whitefly and psyllid. Psyllid is a plague that can transmit a bacteria that cause a disease called greening in the culture. It is a disease that causes great economic damages for this crop, and Vittia has registered and will put the technology in the market to help citricultures in controlling and handling this plague.
We have also received 11 new recommendations of usage for the products in our portfolio. One of them we will highlight is an inoculant to apply in the air before sowing to increase the profitability and productivity. The other recommendations are related to the new application of special fertilizers, in this case, application via the seeds. Now I will give back to Alexandre.
Talking about our stock market, we still keep a growth regarding the IPO. We had an adjustment in our view due to this challenging scenario for the part of the supplies that we see in international companies in the segment of chemicals. In the part of volume of negotiation, we had a drop in November. We have our repurchase program open, assessing opportunities. The company has no intention to repurchase. We always want to be closer to the market to expand the net value, but within a scenario that can offer us opportunities to the base of the stock market. Our program is approved by the council, and we will use eventual opportunities for prices. And we had the change of the market going through ABAG in the market. Well, now we enter the part of Q&A.
We will begin the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to make a question, please click on the Raise Your Hand or on the Q&A button and write your question. And our first question comes from Gabriel Barra from Citibank.
Hello, thank you for the presentation. I have three points to mention. The first one, looking towards the issue of volume. You have mentioned that there was a drop in prices, and when we compare this with the revenue, you can see some different dynamics, mainly of the biologicals growing volume and a drop in volume for organominerals, chemicals, and et cetera. What I want to understand here, and maybe Wilson and Frizzo could enlighten more how you are viewing this last quarter of the year, in our view, will be the most important quarter for the company.
Even the same question that I did in the last quarter, how much this volume was passed through the end of the year, if there is a possibility to pass this to the beginning of the next year, given this delay in the agriculture in this year, that is more uncertain. The second part about the propylene, the leverage. When you look towards the val, you are actually more in a comfortable position. When we talk and we had this question also in other calls regarding M&A, a sector that is going through a difficult situation. Would like to hear how you see this market in terms of allocation of capital.
You talked about repurchase. There is a limitation due to liquidity. Could you enlighten more how you allocate capital in M&A? Would be very interesting to hear from you. The last one, if I could enlighten RD&I, what is the focus of the company? What can we hope of new products, and where do you see more opportunities to launch products and opportunities for growth? Thank you.
Good morning. Well, Gabriel, regarding the first question, I think you may have seen I mentioned we began the fourth quarter very positively. We had a strong October, and considering even the drop in prices, October was amazing. We have an expectancy of this last quarter that is very strong, but we were taken by surprise with El Niño, which is very complicated, and we are 10 days with no rain in Brazil.
You may have seen the news that replanting in areas in Mato Grosso, stopping the harvest in other regions, a serious problem of excess of rain in the south. So it is what I say, the agribusiness is an open-sky industry. We may do everything in the best way possible, but we must count effectively with the climate. We know that El Niño is not that simple. We have an expectancy now with the return of the rains in the 17th, and without a doubt, the plantation will continue. The producers, as I said, when you take the issue of the culture is profitable, there was an accentuated drop in the price of supplies. Without a doubt, this will cause a bad situation.
We even had last week or the past in Consulti gives an advisory and for you to understand, the producer taking the harvest of soy in some moments, especially in the south, had BRL 15,000 of profitability by acre. Now it is around BRL 5,000. This can be sad for them. When you have income, the more, the better. So to have it so small, it is really bad. The country is profitable, and the producer will use the technologies. We do the applications. You even take when we go for the scenario of foliar fertilizers. Right now, this was the moment to be tractioning even more intensively. So we hope that with the rain, we are going to have a good November and a good December. Without a doubt, with the delay on the planting, there will be a load for January and February. I understand the climate.
It's interesting, in January and February, we will have the possibility of being a strong month. This speaking about this issue of this last third quarter, how will we enter the first and second month of 2024. Regarding the leverage, we took on a position, as I said, Vittia and us, we are very cautious in view of how our business works. For you to understand, we were well-positioned in the M&A around November, October of last year, and then came the elections, these questions on how the agribusiness would be, and we decided, and there were some particularities, but we thought it would be better to leave that in standby and automatically preserving the issue of the financial health of the company.
I have been for more than 30 years in the agribusiness, but one of the things that makes a company a winner is for it to be well-positioned in the financial part. I have seen a lot of people in the agribusiness that truly did much more than they should and ended up disappearing or are living in a situation now that is extremely unfavorable. But we have this characteristic. Of course, we have a department headed by Frizzo. In the issue of M&A, we have a lot of things. We are looking, assessing. Without a doubt, the price of these assets will go down, and we are thinking about this.
This is very important, and that's it. We do not discard anything, but we want to do this in the most positive time. It's the right shot, the way that we conduct our operations here. Well, now I will pass over to you, Henrique.
Thank you, Wilson. Well, Gabriel. In general, we are focusing in bioprospecting of new microorganisms to control plagues and diseases to meet a gap in the portfolio. But of all the market, there are some plagues that are difficult to control, that no chemicals control, and we are trying to control these plagues and diseases. So to meet this gap of the market and consequently of the Vittia portfolio. But Vittia has a complete portfolio of biological technologies to control plagues and diseases, one of the most complete in the market. Thinking about the development of inoculants, which are the products based on bacteria, there is an enormous gap in the market now, inoculants, the technologies, basically for legumes and especially soy. We are looking, developing, seeking microorganisms for many other species, cultures that are planted in Brazil.
Focusing on formulation, it doesn't matter to find a good microorganism to have a good efficiency in lab, but that we cannot take this to the field and the formulation to meet the characteristics is fundamental. So we are focusing on these lines and also in nutrition, the special fertilizers, the adjuvants, biofertilizers. We always seek new competitive materials that are more efficient than what we have in the market. I hope I answered, given an overview to you. Thank you.
Of course. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Pedro Luís Silva Fonseca, a sell-side analyst from XP.
Good morning to all of you. Thank you for taking my question. I would like to first talk about biologicals. Mentioning what Wilson said, that it had an impact of prices in the third quarter. If this affects biologicals, given that we, through these quarters, have seen that this business line has a resistance in prices. As we said in the beginning, even because we have heard that some other competitors would be in a moment of a downfall in prices, as you can see in the competition of this adjustment of prices. This would be the first thing to say. The second point regarding something that Frizzo mentioned regarding the liquidity, how much this is an agenda or a concern of the management, and if it's truly something that the management is interested, if there are more measures aiming to improve the liquidity.
Good morning. Pedro, the issue of the drop in the prices of biological products will happen, without a doubt. The biologicals still has a similarity with chemical products, and the chemical products dropped prices in an absurd way. We will have a drop in biologicals without a doubt. But what has Vittia been doing to support these falling prices? You can see the investment that we did in terms of the manufacture to scale. We are working every time our volume this year is much greater, and we have a very interesting capacity to amplify this.
One of the things that we touch on is the issue of new technology to improve the mix of the business, to have a better result in this operation. The technologies that we have today in the market begin to enter. We have a lot of competitors, and without a doubt, the market notices this, and it will pressure for a reduction in the pricing. What we hope for is a reduction in prices, but we do not have an expectancy of a lot of a margin drop because we will be able to do this through a scale within our process of business and our biological products line. In talking about the role, the liquidity, I will pass to Frizzo, and he will explain better.
Pedro, without a doubt, this is a constant concern, the issue of liquidity. Obviously, we have, as I said, to be a company that is closer to the market of going. We are going through a first phase, but the specific issue of the current moment has two factors. The first one is that we do not have a lot of leverage. A way to increase the liquidity would be to make an offer, but now we see that it makes no sense to do an offer.
We always said that we would have to continue our M&A strategy. Then we are obviously being very cautious, hoping for better opportunities and the best moments to execute this strategy. The second issue in the allocation of capital, as I said, it's not what we desire, but we're going to do this if we put this to the current base of the stock market. As I said, we did not open this. It's not the objective to repurchase. But if we understand that the price is different from the fundamentals, I think that even being not that much leverage, I think that we must use this opportunity for the current stockholders, even though this goes against our strategy to increase the liquidity.
We have a long-term view, but in a short-term, we need to be very cautious and to use the opportunities, as Wilson said we want to do with the M&A. We want to have more scale in the market. But in the short term, we need to be intelligent when executing these strategies. We are going to see the M&A with cautiousness to bring one that can generate value. We are also going to look towards the repurchase programs to give value to the shareholders. We want to have a long-term strategy, but we also want to generate value to our base of shareholders. Unfortunately, it is more important, I do not know if fortunately or unfortunately, to get value for the shareholders in the bases than the liquidity. This is truly in our front in terms of priorities.
Thank you, Wilson and Frizzo, for the answers. If you allow me just to piggyback on the last question. You talked about M&A and allocation of capital, but thinking about CapEx, you mentioned this about CapEx. You did this enormous cycle of CapEx without impacting the leverage. Considering the industrial capability, the company, is it comfortable with the capability that it has for the next years? I know it is a little bit difficult to measure. Each category has a metric of volume. But now, are you comfortable with this industrial capability?
Yes. We have a capacity that is very comfortable. We have a third phase. Obviously, it will depend on the rhythm of growth in terms of volume. But even considering this third phase, that is basically just the purchase of equipment that the entire structure was already done. The CapEx for the industrial part of biologicals is not relevant given that we can reach 10 million liters considering this third phase. Truly, the CapEx for biologicals and industrial, we do not see anything relevant for the next years. We will not even reach the CapEx of the level of the previous years. Of course, we seek opportunities of efficiency investment within our plant. This will create an investment, but truly we do not see nothing that is relevant.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Larissa Pérez, a sell-side analyst from Itaú BBA.
Good morning. Can you hear me well?
Yes.
Okay, good. Good morning, Wilson, Frizzo, Henrique, Thiago. Thank you for taking our questions. If you could just come back on an issue that we talked about in the beginning, but I am certain that many are thinking, which is regarding the delay in planting soy and potential delay in corn. I think that beyond the issues of delay, there is an entire potential of profitability, a reduction of the area of corn. I would like to understand first, how do you see these risks for the next crop? But above all, what can you do in terms of commercial strategy to decrease the risk? Because this is one of the greatest strengths of Vittia. I would like to hear from you on a daily basis, what you have been talking with sellers. I think it would be interesting.
If I could just make another question, thinking more about the short term. We have been seeing issues of replanting soy. Would like to understand if this can push a peak to you, if can impact the results of the fourth quarter to improve the perspectives. What are these two things? Thank you very much.
Okay, let's begin with the replanting. Without a doubt, we have technologies that are highly connected to planting soy. Some products will be used. We have an expectancy yesterday, talking about the daily basis of our work. We were looking towards the part of inoculants. What do we have? We have today the stock within the manufacturer able to supply the entire chart that we have. There is a lot to happen in the region of the country, the Northeast. We are easy regarding this, effectively, the demand that will come. We even made a decision.
We usually, in this time of the year, we migrate directly to other technologies within this lab, which is the case of the Espírito. We decided to leave not in the same intensity that we have, but to leave a little bit of reserves for us to have a capacity to meet these peaks that will come from soy. Obviously, you have an entire issue of foliar fertilizers. Then there are the seedlings, the biofertilizers, and we see an expectancy of having an increase in these lines in face of this problem of replanting, because the problem is very big. We can see that this will effectively enable something in this sense. Speaking about the delay in the soy, without a doubt, we're going to have a drop in the milho safrinha within the expectancies that we have.
I think that corn will have a value that is very big in terms of pricing in the period when the market truly notices the size of this drop. We talk about 20%, 25%. Not only regarding the drop of the planting, but also the technology itself. If you diminish technology, you have a smaller productivity by acre. We hope that even with this reduction of 20% today in regarding milho safrinha, is that the producer that will plant this, that can plant this, without a doubt, they will have this grain valued and will use technology to produce more by acre. Those who can plant this corn in the right window, without a doubt, will have good fruits. With that, of course, you talked about strategies. Vittia has been looking towards the opportunities. We have other markets.
We have a functional focus in the market, a sugarcane market that is very strong, both in the power plants and effectively the supply of sugarcane. Vittia is seeing where it will truly seek a performance to increase its results. This is our great job.
Thank you, Wilson .
Our next question comes from Paulo Valaci, a buy-side analyst from Versa.
Can you hear me well?
Yes.
Thank you for the opportunity. I just have a question for Henrique . Henrique, your comment was interesting about the product on the greening of citrus. From what I understood this year, it's been a headache for the producers in Brazil, and historically it was devastating for Florida, the U.S. Brazil being one of the greatest producers of orange in the world. I thought it was very interesting that there is no cure for greening, but this project, I am curious if it is promising, if it can bring an important solution for those who produce citrus. Given the size of the production in Brazil, what is the level of optimism that you have with this project, given that it is a first project that brings some kind of solution for this problem?
Hello, good morning. Well, truly, this is a worldly problem of those who produce citrus. Here in Brazil it is no different. It is a serious problem. The technology that was developed is another tool for agriculture. We do integrated handling, so it needs to be adopted, but we have many tools to adopt for us to reach integrated handling, and the biological technologies are one of the tools to control the vector, which is the psyllid.
We received the regulation in this last quarter, and now we are going for the development of the market with this technology to integrate this technology to those that already exist. Even with the proposal with other products that we have, biological technologies and reducing little- by- little the chemical defensives given their high biological efficiency. Our next step is to focus on the development of the market and technologies. The expectancy is very positive. We are going to an area of market development, commercial strategies that will be implemented in the next months and years.
Well, thank you. I understood as if it was a cure for greening. It is no cure, it is just a way to try to reduce its proliferation via vector.
As a case. This tool is to control the vector, so killing the vector, there is no introduction of the bacteria that will cause the greening in the plants.
Yes, thank you.
Our next question from Guilherme Marconi, an investor MGK. The third quarter presents an expressively better result than in the second quarter of 2023, but is still below the third quarter of 2022. What is the commercial strategy, mainly regarding the territorial broadness and business partners to improve the result of the next quarter? We can still see a significant evolution in the results of the Southeast region and an involution in the result of the Center, the Midwest region, comparing to the same periods of the previous quarter. What is the action plan that will be taken to improve the result as a whole? Will it be actions in the same regions or the development of new markets? Which ones?
Hi, Guilherme. Well, the issue is the following. As I said to Larissa, Vittia has been seeking how to improve the performance. When we talk about the second quarter regarding the third, we highlight even in the position with you as to the market, the first semester of 2023 was truly very complicated. The third quarter did not come in the same strength that we hoped for. Automatically, we have an interesting expectancy for the fourth quarter. As I said, October was a strong month within the company. We have an expectancy if we have the issue of the climate regulated in November, December also. The issue that we have been working on, you can even see due to the explanation from Frizzo, we have been working with new teams in certain markets.
This position of the Southeast is connected to the coffee market, the position of Vittia in the market of sugarcane, and these markets are less relevant in the Brazilian Midwest. The Midwest has been hurting more than when we see the Southeast and some regions where we have an index of irrigation that is much bigger. Our work is constant. How will we do this effectively? Being closer to our partners, looking towards the opportunities. That is it. This is the work that we do on a daily basis. What we want is to have a good performance, but sometimes I even use an expression here. There is a little logic. Sometimes we cannot take milk from a stone, and we must be wise so as to not lose more money. This is our business model in Vittia.
We are now creating a division in the Northeast, thinking about the coast that has a lot of opportunities, aiming for the market of biological defensives, be it micro, macro. This is the work that we do in the company.
Our next question comes from Luis Guilherme, an investor. Looking towards the next years, what is the perspective of the gross margin for the segment of biological? Will it be aligned with 2023?
We are working towards this, but to be able to effectively land on this issue will depend on the market. The market is more dynamic, it is sovereign. We are working, as I said, we are. Henrique has just given some examples, every moment trying to bring actually new targets, new microorganisms, scaling something that we talk within this world of biological defensives, bioproducts as a whole. We understand that we can preserve this margin for some years. But of course, it will depend on a dynamics within the company, both in innovation as in the scale in the productive process.
Remembering that to make question, just click on raise your hands or Q&A and write your questions. Having no further questions, I declare the Q&A session closed. I would like to pass the floor to Wilson Romanini to close this session.
Thank you, Thiago. Making the final considerations, of course, we always want to show the best that we can. What we have within our work and our philosophy is to show what it is, and we live effectively in a challenging moment within this business. As I said, I have been working in this market for more than 30 years. I have been here since I was born. My father would sell fertilizer, so I always heard about soy, corn, coffee, among others. Particularly, I love this segment. What I can tell is that we have some issues, but what it gives us is much greater.
So me, as an executive of the company, believe in this sector, believe in Vittia. The issues that we are having are a part for us to have a perception that many things can be done within the company, which would be. I would like to leave this to you, so thank you very much.
We are now closing the video conference.