Good morning to you all. Welcome to the video conference to disclose the results of the first quarter from Vittia. This video conference is being recorded, and you can access the replay on the website of the company and in the YouTube channel. The presentation is also available for download. We inform that all the participants will be watching the video conference during the presentation, and then we are going to begin a Q&A when further instructions will be given. Before continuing, I reinforce that the declarations from as the basis into positions from the administration from Vittia and the current information available for the company. These declarations can involve risks and uncertainties having in view that they mean future events. They depend on circumstances that can or not occur.
Investors, analysts, and journalists must consider that the events related to the macroeconomic environment, to the segment and other factors that can make the results be materially different from those expressed in prospective declarations are present in this video conference. Mr. Wilson Romanini, CEO, Mr. Alexandre Del Nero Frizzo, CFO and Director of I&R, and Mr. Henrique Monteiro Ferro, Director of P&D, I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Wilson Romanini that will begin the presentation. Please, Wilson, you can continue.
Thank you, Thiago. First of all, good morning to you all. We are here today to pass the results from Vittia of this first quarter. Okay. I think that we have a revenue in this segment of the biologicals of BRL 53.8 million in the first quarter. It is one that is 45.3% superior to the first quarter of 2022. It shows that the market of Biodefensivos has been increasing, and we have been doing work that we have been applying within the company, being that the line of Biodefensivos has BRL 45.9 million in the first quarter with a growth of almost 40%. The net revenue amounted BRL 148.6 million, a little below the first quarter of 2022. We had effectively a little complicated quarter within agro. I think we are going to talk later for you about this.
Our net income with the revenue has a down of 19.4%, BRL 12.6 million. We were able to adjust the EBIT regarding the first quarter of 2022. CapEx, we totaled BRL 11.2 million in the first quarter, 25.2% inferior to the first quarter of 2022. We still have some works to be done, and what we put as CapEx, we're going to be within what we wish within agribusiness. Then talking about our performance in the first quarter. We have been keeping an accelerated growth in the part of the biofertilizers and also Biodefensivos, reinforcing the part of inoculants. This is always centered with a new technology that we launched last year, a simulator in the fossil, and this has been growing within Vittia.
We have an adverse scenario in this first quarter, being that producers, while seeing that the inputs have been going down in prices, they have been recording the purchase of inputs. We had a milho safra, which is an interesting market. But since we entered, we delayed our plantation of soy. We're in a risk window, and the rural producer contained his investments, postponed his investments, even thinking about a certain problem regarding their climate risk. It's important to highlight this. You see that the part of defense rose.
Without defense, you will not have a plant with the capacity of production. In the nutritional process, the approach to the farmer restricted his usage. We also have an important point to highlight within this scenario, the agro scenario in Brazil, a certain distrust on the producer side, a certain fear, and this restricts their investment. When we talk about our opportunities and risks within the current scenario, we have a favorable scenario. This is a year that we talk about El Niño, but it seems that we are going to have a stability. So probably we are going to have the regular climate within our country, and this makes the producer to plant, they are going to plant a lot, and there will be rentability, profitability. We have, if we do an analysis regarding the same period of last year, an exchange relationship.
It is very favorable for the producer, so he is going to do the investment. He needs productivity. We have noticing in a clear way a greater adoption of sustainable practices. This reinforces, strengthens our Biodefensivos world. Vittia talking about our positioning continues in its investment plans both in research and development and innovation. We have been amplifying understanding in this moment within the structure of Vittia, creating a greater robustness of our commercial platform, always seeking the strengthening alongside rural producers to have a more presence, a better presence within the resellers and also within the cooperatives. We work in a way that is very intense to have a volume of bioproducts for us to meet the Brazilian market. Now I pass the floor to Frizzo, who is going to pass some points to you.
Good morning. Now talking about our financial performance, we had a growth in the lines of biologicals, talking about a relevant growth in inoculants, which was taken mainly due to the MeleiX, our phosphorus extractor during the first quarter of 2022 was not launched yet. In the part of Biodefensivos, we still see a good rhythm, a less accelerated rhythm from what we hope and we have been presenting due to this challenging scenario of caution from the producer side, which impacted the line of foliar fertilizers that we had the growth, but not such a significant growth. But regarding organominerals and soil conditioners, we are having a problem due to all the dynamic that the war caused within the price of the basic fertilizers and which brought a certain problem for the market here in Brazil. So we have been in some quarters suffering with it.
This quarter, we had a strong impact in the pricing because we are comparing a quarter where we have less than half of the first quarter of last year. Remembering that the first quarter of the previous year was when we had the beginning of the conflict, and consequently that speculation that there could be a lack of fertilizers in Brazil due to the conflict. That ended up not happening, so we have a significantly lower price and with a restricted scenario volume. In the soil micronutrients, we had a little downfall. It is a market that we hope that will come back to invest this year, but that is also suffering with the issue of the pricing, like the part of industrial products that even had a deceleration when we see in the quarter and also like the organominerals due to the pricing and volume also.
Now going for the next slide. In terms of margin in the line of foliar fertilizers and industrial products, like the line of bioproducts, we had a margin similar to the previous year with some variations. Our understanding is that this was not significant. We have not seen no tendency in this quarter to compress the margin. In the part of soil micronutrients, we already had a margin reduction, like in the part of organominerals. Organominerals were having a factor that we have already seen in the end of last year of dealing with a very high stock. We ended up dealing with the stock last year due to a charter that was not honored by the producers, and there was a downfall in the prices.
Producers did not renew it, so we ended up having an expensive stock, and then we had a very low level of sales that did not enable us to have a necessary scale to dilute the fixed costs of our two plants of organominerals. Regarding the part of expenses, we continue to invest to structure the company, our commercial network, invest in the part of R&D&I. We hope to have a good year. The fundamentals persist. We are going to have a year of growth, and we continue within this rhythm of gradually structuring the company and preparing ourselves for this year's growth and in the next years. Okay. Let's continue. As a result of this quarter where we had a downfall in revenue, which was compensated by the issue of mix where the biologicals had compensated the fall in the revenue in the more commoditized lines.
We were able to have a growth of a gross profit, so there is a contribution in the gross margin, which was compensated by our growth in the administrative and sales part, resulting in a small decrease in the adjustment that went 3.3% down. Regarding the margin, we had a little growth regarding the issue of mix. Regarding CapEx, we also continue to follow our investment plan, focusing mainly in our biostructure, biological plant. We are going to deliver the phase II for this quarter. It is practically concluded. It ended up that we took even more time than we had imagined. It was investment that was announced in the last quarter of 2021. We took a year and a half to do the stability.
It was something that we had in our radar that could be delayed, but even with delays, we are able to reach the main objective, which is to have this available capacity to meet the crop season 2024. So we are going to have a lot of tranquility to continue to meet the expectations for the growth of biologicals for this year. Regarding the cash flow, this is a quarter where we traditionally consume the capital. So this is a period where we are between the planting and the harvest of soy. We need to conserve 30- 4, 30- 5. We consume a lot. But this year, there is the reduction in these lines of commodities like organominerals and industrial products. We have a smaller consumption of the working capital in the quarter. We had no positive generation.
We actually had a smaller consumption, making us reach, in the end of the quarter, a reduction of the net debt, both in nominal terms and relative terms to the EBITDA. Talking about the financial results and taxes, we had a less negative financial result in the quarter. This was due to our financial revenue, due to the adjustment of the values, which was a significant superior revenue to the first quarter of 2022. This revenue usually refers to the sales of the previous year. If the first quarter of 2021 refers to the sales that were done the previous year, and the 2022 refer to the sales that were concretized in 2021. We have a difference in the rate. Usually, we had an average, one that was more than 2021.
That is why the financial revenue that is appropriate throughout this cycle between sale and receiving was more significant in this first quarter of 2023. Regarding the fiscal part, we had an increase percent, which was important, but in name, was BRL 1 million. It is not something so representative. This was due to the tax basis, some non-deductible expenses that happened in the first quarter of 2023 when compared to the first quarter of 2022. As a result of the EBITDA and the financial performance and fiscal performance, we had a reduction in our net profit that went from BRL 16 million to BRL 12.6 million. We had a small reduction in the margin. Talking about the part of research, I pass the floor to Henrique.
Thank you, Alexandre. Good morning to you all. Vittia continues strong with the investments, increasing our investments in R&D&I. In the first trimester of 2023, the investments were of BRL 27.112 million, an increase regarding the same period of last year of 56.8%. They followed this investment. The foreign investment is adherent to our budget, our program. Looking line- by- line, we have invested and continued to move in the bioproducts and Biodefensivos. A relationship 70/30 regarding the fertilizers. 28% for fertilizers of this total investment. Regarding the net revenue, the investment in the first quarter of 2023 was 4.8% regarding the net revenue. We have developed and was regulated in the first quarter, we regulated a recommendation of six nodes to the use of bios in our products of Biodefensivos through main cultures of great importance like cotton, soy, and corn. I pass the floor to Alexandre.
Talking about the performance of our stock, although we had a downfall, we continue with a significant gain regarding Ibovespa from our IPO. We had an important event in this first quarter in which we completed 18 months from the offer, and so we had the liberation of the negotiations for non-qualified investors. We had a significant impact in terms of number of investors that went from 1,600 to 3,000 investors, but without the impact in terms of volume of negotiations. We had the follow-up of the market, a reduction in the volume in the previous years, and despite this growth in the basis of the investors, the retail investors still have a small representativity in our basis. It is around 3%-5% of the basis of those in the market. Passing for the next slide, we are going to begin the part of Q&A.
Now we are going to begin the Q&A session for analysts and investors. If you wish to make some question, please click and raise your hand to request by voice or in the Q&A button and write your question. Our first question is from Mr. Joaquim Atie from Citi, would like to ask for voice. Please, can you free his mic?
Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning. Thank you for the question. Really, this quarter was complicated for this sector. But would like to look forward, I would like to understand if you could give if the next quarters, if there was, say, an evolution in your chart, this level of stocks that Alexandre commented on, which were expensive, how is it now? Were you able to deal with them? If you were able to possibly see an increase in the image in the next quarter, what lines do you hope that could evolve more? And lastly, the organominerals, how much could we see a recovery in the margin and volume for the next quarters?
Okay, Joaquim, good morning. Well, what do we have in agro? Agro, I think that we all know, is a sector that is very dynamic, one that has been giving a lot of profits in these last three years. This year, we were taken by surprise. I think this is an important thing to say, to highlight here regarding down in the prices, mainly in soy. We had a super crop here in Brazil. We had 156 million tons of soy, but we also had a deficit in Argentina around 25- 30 million tons.
When we effectively take South America and we do an analysis in the year of 2022, 2023, things are correlated, and there is no super offer. But we see clearly that you have the great players, the great trades. They have their movements, and we effectively created a depreciation in the price of the harvested product nowadays. So we understand the following. We have a crisis of distrust. We are with a government where you have a significant volume of land invasions. We have movements within the government that do not effectively give a clear notion on how they are with the agribusiness. There is always this fiscal adjustment, but we live not only in the agro, but in country itself. We are trying to understand what will this year have been and the years that are to come. We see the following.
We are not going to have in agro a good first quarter. Why is that? Because effectively, many people repress the purchase. We have lived with crop 2021, 2022, and even 2022, 2023, with a great expectation due to the lack of inputs. So there was an anticipation of purchase. Everybody ran. Demand was very high. If we take, for example, the Biophos AK product that was BRL 100 the liter, now it is BRL 20 the liter. So the agriculture said that the offer is not that much a problem. We even think that if this retardance continues in terms of purchase, the companies, the industries will have a lot of difficulty to deliver the product. Vittia is here working, preparing itself for this in a measured way, let us say. We cannot put our feet, let us say, in the accelerator, but we are planned here internally.
The wallet of requests will continue to happen. As I said, there was a problem from the part of the producer in terms of purchase, but it will happen when we look the relationship. We do this here internally, the relationship of exchange. If we do the same analysis in the same period of the previous year, the relationship is much more positive. The producer will invest. We see that it seems that we are going to have a normal climate year. They will invest in their crop. They know they need productivity. I think that an important thing within Vittia is that we are knowing more that our technologies, when we talk about Biodefensivos, biopesticides, they now can fight in equal, taking more results regarding productivity, and also a fall in the cost for those who use Biodefensivos.
Vittia is well prepared to perform within this second semester. You talked about our stock. We are a company with a great variability of input. We did the work mainly in the end of last year in trying to work in a certain reduction of the stock. The great stock that we have is still in the part of organominerals, but it's not what we had previously. We see the following. I think that we did great. We learned a lot in the part of organominerals. Now we have a completely independent team effectively working with this line of products. Without a doubt, this will take us to better businesses. I think that another important thing, like I said, we already did the work to reduce this old stock. We begin to have newer stock, and this truly creates a better performance of results.
I think that the main point, one of the points here, is also the great equation that we did in the industrial system. We have a much more versatile manufacturer, one that is more logic in terms of production, and consequently, with a lower cost in the productive process. I think that we understand that we have great challenges in the agribusiness in this crop season 2023, 2024, but I see that Vittia is performed to have a good performance through the year. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Mr. Leonardo Alencar from XP. Please, you can free his mic. Open his mic, actually.
Good morning, Wilson, Henrique, Frizzo. Thank you for receiving my question. I would like to have a little bit more of coloring, let's say, if you can offer both of the MLNs that you're commenting on this project that has had a success to understand what is growth, what it represents in the profit, and a little bit of details regarding the bio. You're going to have a good performance. I see that you're having a good performance, so if you could please see the price as a volume in terms of the bios, it would be interesting. Another point that Wilson commented on, we see the scenario of the sector, the margins of the previous year that are smaller this year who delayed the purchase.
Possibly we have broader margins now, maybe to have a more mixed scenario throughout the year should the producer continue to invest, but there are many who didn't sell the soy. My doubt is in the sense that if you see that this could affect your performance throughout the year, or even if the dynamics of the reselling can be affected throughout the year. Overall, because you have a track record of diminishing, if this scenario could open also for opportunity. I know this is a more sensible point, but I would like to have more details regarding this. Thank you very much.
Leonardo, regarding the issue of MeleiX, it's a project that has an interesting characteristic, which really are able to potentialize the actions mainly of the phosphorus. We have a very interesting budget for this product. We had the first quarter with this project that is infinitely greater because we had nothing in the year of 2000 in the first quarter of 2022. We understand the following, what we have planned, we are going to fulfill. In the issue of bios, it's like you said, Vittia is a company that now has been working in an intense way. That's why Henrique is there. He's the one responsible for the research and development. We are in front of other people in the market in terms of the target. It gives us a great capability of performing in the field.
We have some thesis and some market niches where we want to become a great reference. This is what we are doing here within Vittia. I think that something that is very important to say is that this year we took from the field around basically 40 works where we did 100% of the control of plagues and diseases with the Biodefensivos, and we were so efficient or more efficient than the chemical products. This is reinforcing the work of performance in terms of project. It is the work from Henrique in the development, so to potentialize this microorganism. This is what I talk about when we receive the registry of a product or a target. This was tested side- by- side with a chemical defender, and if we do not have a better or equal performance, we do not have the registry.
This is a great work that Vittia is, I think it's in front of their competitors. Within, it's your last question, even coming back a little bit, the issue of opportunities. Look, we are always paying attention to this. We have a pipeline. We discussed this. I think that this year is one for us to have a greater attention. Vittia is a company that we can, in some moment, have a tendency for this, but we will be observers. We're not going to do any kind of business because we have a stock, so we'd want to do something that aggregates value within the company.
If I could just do a follow-up. You talked about the pipeline in M&A, but if you seek the part of the pipeline in products, we also have many launches, the process of registry. I think it's something very important here. Given this change, macro, political, governmental change, eventually could this impact or has impacted you in the process of registry, launches of product? Just to understand if the size of the pipeline is increasing indeed for more products, or if there is some kind of problem in the system, something that we should be concerned with.
I am going to pass this to Henrique that he is more familiarized with this issue.
Well, Leonardo. Regarding if there was some kind of change, we have not noticed. We have been following the bodies, regulators, IBAMA, and so on, and there was no movement towards the increase of the terms to regulate our products. We are having a close work with the regulating bodies, and we are active in our association. We are not seeing this movement of holding up the registries and retard the processes that are going on. Thank you.
Thank you for the detailing.
Our next question comes from Mr. Leonardo Vicente Paiva from Piva Investors through the chat. It says the following: "Given the potential of the company's growth, mainly in the segment of bios, accelerate the repurchase of stock will not be a way to generate value, so the current stockholders." Please, Frizzo.
Well, this is a theme that we have been discussing. Actually, it is much more broad, which is the allocation of our money. We are a little further. I think that we could leverage more without having great scares, let us say. I think that is a great scenario to work with more than 2.5 in the net. That is not recommended. I think it was never recommended, actually. I have been in the company since 2014, and in the few times at the beginning when we would work close to three, four times, we felt a great problem. Agri has this issue of having the season, the cycles. It is still a little further from the financial market.
We have a limitation regarding that to other sectors. We have the space, and this is one that we are being very cautious to see how we can do this in the best way possible. We have these two great possibilities now. We purchase or the M&A. Our initial plan has always been M&A to seek the company's growth. We are being very cautious when analyzing the opportunities. We had an important change in the scenario from the last year to this year. It has even decelerated something. We are more advanced internally. We are in this discussion, I think that honestly, it is still too early for us to have a position regarding the allocation, and these are possibilities of using basically BRL 200 million , which would be considering the EBITDA that, and it was also an EBITDA that was performed in the next 12 months.
So it is in BRL 200 million and something . So that is it. We have this way of doing, and we need to use it in our favor and even to give tranquility for us to continue to invest in the team and invest in the organic growth. We had a bad trimester or a se mester. We have a lot of tranquility, so we were going to be very cautious to use this and the M&A. I think that, yes, there will be opportunities. I think it is too early. We are talking about one quarter. It's a challenging scenario. We're going to say that it's going to be two. It's not going to be very positive. We are waiting. We have a clear scenario to have assertiveness in the allocation of these capitals. Two things are still on the table.
The next question comes from Vitor Garcia. "Could you talk more about the dynamic of price and volume that you have seen in the Biodefensivos, please?"
Could you please repeat the question?
Can you talk more on the dynamic price and volume that you have seen in the Biodefensivos?
Look, when we effectively look to the issue of price and volume, we see very clearly that the prices of the Biodefensivos are highly compatible for the consumption of the rural producer. We do not see a degradation in terms of prices. We still have a certain limitation regarding the manufacturing in the entire country, so the demand comes very strong and automatically there is no manufacturer to meet this demand. We believe that this demand of Biodefensivos comes very strong this year, and the volume has been growing, let's say, in a very interesting way. Actually, we see a very linear relationship between price and volume, so the revenue truly grows due to the volume.
Our next question comes from Mr. João Festas, analyst from Odin Capital via chat. "Good morning. Could you give more details on the commercial front that you are addressing and what explains the significant increase in R&D in this trimester?"
Frizzo, could you please?
Yes, yes. Well, I said in the presentation, we continue with this possibility of investing in the team, in structure, research and development. We have a quarter or even a semester that was not favorable, and we cannot be adjusting all the company's strategy due to one or two quarters. We look to a longer period to define our strategy. If we were seeing a very bad scenario for the year, a change in fundamentalism in the agro, I think then we should re-discuss internally our plans, expansions, investment in team, structure and personnel, but this is not the case. We have to continue thinking about the short to medium term. Of course, in this trimester, what happens in some quarters, actually, there is a concentration of expenses.
I think this is not the level that the expenses that we hope for the year, but we do not hope to have a reduction of this in any way. As I have said, our year- per- year, we have been trying to grow in structure close to the growth rhythm of the revenue. Of course, like I said, we have the expectancy for the year, so also the expenses will grow. If in a quarter we had a downfall, we are not able to reduce in the quarter and then the other grow and so on. This is a little bit of our dynamics. We hope to have growth for the year, and we are going to grow our structure and DNA. I'm not going to tell you, it will be in the inflation.
It will be in a real growth because we are hiring people and increasing the structure. That's it. We have the strategy of keeping this, and we have been keeping the DNA as a percentage of the revenue in the previous years. We do not look to match the trimester in the rows. We are not going to be able to follow this and look as the percentage of the revenue in the quarter. Talking about commercial front, I do not know if we are to talk about this. We continue to invest in this market doing the field tests, demonstrating our products, increasing the team relationship.
We continue to be active in the commercial part to be able to show our technologies alongside producers and the influencers. We even have incremented the number of demonstrations year- per- year, increasing the number of visitations, the number of relationships and interactions, so we can increase our capillarity and the perceptiveness of our products.
I want to reinforce something about this issue, giving a little bit of a view to you. You can see that we work from Vittia. Of course, we have the attention here from the point of special fertilizer, but this is a more another market that has 20 years showing its efficiency, its need. If we now think about the Biodefensivos part, we are effectively working there for seven years, and we are having a dispute with an industry of 80 years.
Now we talk about this, and our people that we are fighting for are not from the, they are also there. Our competition, we have in the chemical industry. Now we have technologies that are capable of having a similar or better performance of the chemicals with a much more interesting cost for the real producer. For us to disseminate this, we need investment. One thing that we do here every single time is to be within what we understand that is a reasonable number, putting people to disclose the great technology, which is the Biodefensivos. I think that this is why we have an incrementation year- per- year regarding the generation of people within the commercial department.
Next question comes from Mr. Alexandre Yassefi. Congratulations for the results. What type of work has Vittia been doing alongside producers to show the benefits in the substitution of chemical products for bioproducts?
Look, this is a great work from Vittia. Like I said previously, for you to understand, this year Vittia did 200,000 fields, experimental fields. This is relevant. As I said, we did partnerships with great clients, both in the market of soy, the market of cotton, coffee, where we were able to prove in a commercial scale. This is no longer a test. As I said, we did 200,000 testing in 2023, 2024 season. We basically did 35, 40 areas. I think that now it is 40. We have the Bio Safrinha coffee, where we completely took the chemical defenders in a commercial scale. The sole product that we were not able to substitute is the herbicides, the glyphosate, because there is still no technology that solve this problem through Biodefensivos. This is a concept work, so the numbers are there for you to understand what we are doing. Okay?
The next question comes from Mr. Guilherme Lanzoni, an investor. We also talked about the productivity of the bio regarding the chemical. How is the price dynamic for the producer in the defender and inoculant regarding the same period of last year? Could you talk about the spread of pricing of the producer using the chemical regarding the bio?
Guilherme, we have here a lot of data in this sense. Nowadays, we are able to do a control of a crop in a lower cost than the clinical product. It depends on the crop, but each one of them has an operational cost. The thing is, nowadays, we truly can make an inferior cost, and we have been putting a certain increase in productivity.
Remembering that to make questions, just raise your hand or in the Q&A button and write your question. If no further questions, I declare the Q&A session closed. We would like to pass the floor to Mr. Wilson Romanini to make the final considerations of the company.
Well, once more, good morning to you all. What we can tell you is that Vittia currently is a company that is well-prepared for this year of 2023, the crop season 23/24. Of course, we have our challenges. Every business is highly dynamic. It has the small problems, the great changes. I think that more than this, I think that as a public company, Vittia has been doing a good job, and we are happy. Always happy. We see our growth as the great reference, not only in Brazil but in the world. We have every time more people on the planet. People are trying to improve their purchasing power, and this reflects itself in the improvement in the feeding.
We see this clearly regarding proteins. That's it. In a very clear way to you, we are working in a simple way. It's like beans and rice with a lot of dynamics built, and without a doubt, with a lot of intensity for growth. That's what I can pass to you.
The Vittia video conference is closed. The area of relationship with investors can answer the other doubts and questions. We thank your participation and have a great day. Thank you all.
Thank you.