Good morning, everyone. Thanks very much for joining us for another conference call to present the results for the second quarter of 2023 for Verde AgriTech PLC. I'm here today in Belo Horizonte with our Chief Financial Officer, Felipe Paolucci. My name is Cristiano Veloso. I'm the CEO of Verde AgriTech. I would like to thank you for your interest. I would like to thank you for joining our call today. If you're watching this on YouTube, I also would like to thank you for your interest. If you like it, or if you think there might be other people who you know who might like it, please share our video. Please click that like button.
By clicking that like button, that's how you tell YouTube that other people like yourself might also be interested in what Verde AgriTech has been doing, is doing this year, above all, we'll be doing in the coming years. Thank you again for your interest. In the first part of this presentation, Felipe Paolucci will be going through the PowerPoint we put together to discuss the results of this quarter. Then after that, I will be addressing as many questions as you would like to share. At the bottom of your screen, there is a Q&A button where you can type in your question. If you hadn't sent it ahead by email, we will be working through all the questions here. Again, thanks for your interest.
I look forward to talking to you a bit later on. Now let Felipe go through the PowerPoint presentation. As we begin, so the very important disclaimer Felipe is going to go through you. As we begin, I'd like to remind you that our presentation contains some forward-looking statements, and the results might differ. Above all, it's important to read what is on the left-hand side of our screen with some of our, with some of our understanding in terms of risks, in terms of the development, in terms of approach we take to our long-term growth. If you are in the U.S., if you're in Canada, please go online if you're interested in, in, in our product, and you can try it in your own garden, you can try it in your own vegetable plot, you can experiment Super Greensand directly as well.
Felipe.
Beginning, here you can see a summary of the key points that are going through these presentations, in each case that it will be later on, shared also on our website for everyone to, to have access whenever you wish. First of all, talking a bit on market overview. We saw in the, the last, five or six months, a decrease, a significant decrease on soybean price, corn price, among other commodities. This had a relevant impact in our business as well. As we've already disclosed in our MD&A and press release, yesterday, we can see that soybeans price, for example, decreased over 27% in Q2 2023, compared to last year, and also, corn price decreased in a similar amount.
This made some farmers to push, postpone their, their, their purchase, and also it had an, an significant impact for us in the first semester, and especially in Q2, 2023. A bit also here on coffee and cotton, we can see the same trend, even, even higher on cotton, a bit lower on coffee. It also helps us to, to, to understand the current scenario that all the farmers and, and clients of Verde are coming, are facing at this point, in 2023. A bit on our economic scenario, there is on this chart, you can see here, the interest rate from our central bank in Brazil since 2017.
We saw a decrease in the beginning 17% from 7% up to 2% per year. Later on, during the pandemic, a huge increase from 2%- 3.7%. After only maybe over one year and a half around, it started finally to decrease. Last week, we had a 0.5% decrease from 13.75% to 13.25%. Also, you can see here the forecast from the central bank showing that maybe in two to three years, this reduction should be to below 9% per year. This is a very important point since it affects directly our loan costs and interest paid by the company to the banks that we currently have contracts.
This is a positive scenario that started to be facing from now on, especially on interest expenses, and this means also that inflation is under control, and hopefully, the macroeconomic sector will be better days in the coming months. A bit on agricultural inputs and credit. The key point. As a result of the current situation, the farmers, they opt to procure inputs from suppliers that provide extended pay terms, which means, for example, for soybeans, they want to purchase their fertilizers and other products, and pay for it only in May 2024. For coffee, for example, it should be maybe for September 2024.
What they are looking for is for a more competitive interest rate in the marketplace. I will show later on that some other competitors, for sure, they have a lower cost of capital, which makes their sales easier at this kind of situation, where the producers are at low working capital, and they will be needing the suppliers to support them with a long term. This is a bit of our bottleneck at this point. In additional, the Brazil... Sorry, just a minute, yes. Over 20% of the soybeans are still occupying storage facilities.
The farmers, wait-- are waiting as much as they can to sell the, the, the, their product, try-- waiting for the price to get better in the marketplace. On the other hand, also, we saw in Brazil in the last few months, a strong valuation on, on, on Brazilian reais, where it's getting stronger against dollar, and also it impacts the exports of the price of commodities, which is not a good scenario. For these couple of reasons, the farmers are waiting, still waiting as much as they can in order to sell their soybean or to sell their corn and other, and other products that they are producing. Just, as I've mentioned before, you can see here a bit on the market competition and financing.
Where Verde is at this point, we, we have a close cost of debt on 16.6% per year. Normally, we do sell with longer terms to the clients, but charging them closer to 18.6% per year, which is a quite expensive amount for everyone. If you compare with some other companies that are selling similar products or for example, KCl, they do have a much lower cost of cash, and then they are able to provide to the customers a better position on credit lines and also longer terms. Also, a key point, very important point is that our Verde's funds are limited. We are not able to have on hand everything or all the cash needed or credit limit with banks that we wish.
This is a bit also had an impact for us in the first semester of 2023. Addition to it, another point that is very important to highlight here is the potassium chloride price. Since April last year up to June this year, you see a decrease on over 40% only this year. Compared to last year, maybe 60% decrease on the price. Our, our K Forte price follows the KCl most of the time, so this has also a relevant impact, as you can see, in our net revenue per ton, especially if you exclude freight from the, from the metric. On the, on the currency, currency exchange rate, also another impact that negative, negatively impacted us in Q2.
We see that the exchange rate now in Brazil is close to BRL 1 , $1 is close to BRL 4.8 . It was in the beginning of the trimester, over BRL 5 per dollar, and in the end, beginning of the year, BRL 5.10, close to that. Since in the last three weeks, or around, it seems that this trend has stopped. With the expectation from the, from the Central Bank and other banks in Brazil, is that this exchange rate remains close to BRL 4.85- BRL 5 per dollar. When it has this trend of the...
This decreased trend has stopped, it might help us in the business as well, since farmers also will not keep waiting to sell their products, and then come back to the market. A bit on outlook overview. Agricultural commodities price are no longer experiencing a rapid decline. Interest rates in Brazil have started to decrease, and projections indicate a positive outlook for inflation control and stability in coming years. These key points, as I've said before, might provide Verde an additional possibility to improve results in the coming periods. That's the key point here. A bit on the Q2 scenario and highlights.
You can see related to cash, cash and other receivables held by the company Q2, 2003 or $23.8 million. Cash utilized to invest activities decreased significantly, almost 100%, +97%, especially because last year we were on, up on expenses with, with the Plant 2 and access route. From now, since, since February this year, our net level of investments decreased, and that's the expectation for the rest of the year. The bank, the company has successfully secured a bank loan of $5.5 million, with a bridge period of 12 months, and repayment schedule spanning 48 months. Currently, total CapEx and working capital loans to support these two activities are close to $38.4 million.
On profitability, sales by volume were 107,000 tons compared to 202 tons in Q2 2022. It shows that it's like 50% decreases. However, when we compare against 2021, we can see a significant increase as well. On revenue, we decreased from $24.9 to $10.3, basically impacted by volume and price. EBITDA before non-cash rates on Q2 was $2.1 million compared to $10.8 million in Q2 2022. The EBITDA is mainly impacted by all the scenarios and points I've raised before. U.S. dollar, commodities price, then fertilizer price for sure impacted Verde a lot.
At the end of the day, the net profit was CAD 0.2 million compared to CAD 9.6 million profit last year. Equity and liabilities increased from CAD 65.5 million to CAD 97.3 million in Q2 2023. On operation side, Verde has announced the carbon capture properties of its products, as detailed by independent study conducted by Newcastle University under the leadership of Professor David Manning. The CO2 captures is close to 120 kg per ton of K Forte sold, of the Verde product sold. Taking this into consideration, Verde will be one of the world's largest carbon capture projects, with a total of 6 million tons of CO2 permanently subtracted from atmosphere every year.
On financial statements, you can see on the chart - on this chart, a comparison on Q2 2023, against Q2 2022, and also a year-to-date analysis comparison. As I've mentioned, on revenue side, it decreased close to 59%. The production cost, we did also have the decrease, but higher than on revenue and volume, and I can explain that. That's mainly because of the questions related to mix. We sold a significantly lower, a Big Bag or jumbo bags, one-ton jumbo bags products this year compared to last year, which has a very important portion in the cost of the product. Also the sales on BAKS, the mixture is a bit lower as well than last year, the percentage of the total.
For these reasons, the cost per ton has decreased year-over-year. On, as I've mentioned, on interest, it's good to highlight here interest and expenses. It's much higher than last year, as expected, since the group has increased the loan, the loan contracts with banks to support the construction of Plant 2. This, of course, is an impact that was expected to hit our net profit 2023. At the end of the day, we, we year-to-date are slightly profitable than CAD 133,000. When we analyze the cost per ton and revenue per ton, you can see, as I've mentioned before, the cost, production cost per ton decreasing 32%, from CAD 26-CAD 18 per ton.
As I've mentioned, mainly due to mix change. On revenue, we have also a relevant impact. Here we can see, when we exclude the freight, for example, we have over 31%, from 88 CAD to 61 CAD per ton. This is mainly driven by the potash price decrease in the marketplace. However, when we exclude this logistics impact, the gross margin remains stable on 70%, with a gross profit per ton in Q2 2023 of 44 CAD, compared to 62 CAD last year. On SG&A, we divided this in two sections. First, is total sales expenses and then total general expenses.
We faced, this quarter, a relevant increase, in both, but mainly, on sales and marketing, we had this increase mainly due to the implementation of a field sales team, resulting in expenses related to salaries, car rental and travel, which is relevant for this year, and we did not have in the prior periods. On G&A, we had also 108% inflation, and this we can attribute this to a few factors such, for example, severance costs, and also that we included in this quarters.
This, this severance fee expenses, we do expect this reduction of a savings of over CAD 580,000 per year, but it will start to demonstrate it in our numbers, probably from Q3 or half of Q3 or Q4 onwards, onwards. Also, important to highlight, it's not a very significant amount at this point, but we did have the, a bad debt provision of CAD 25,000, for the first time in this, in this last six years of operation. It is a bit relevant, and we decided to disclose it here, although compared to the last 12 months sales of CAD 75 million, it's not relevant at this point. On legal, professional, and consultants also had an increase, this is mainly due to higher expenditures, like, linked to the company relocation to Singapore.
This for sure, in the middle term, we do expect to bring savings for us since operations in Singapore might be a bit cheaper than U.K. On logistic sides, you can see in the left side of the chart, FOB against CIF. Just to remember, FOB is when the producer gets the products in the factory, and CIF is when Verde delivers the product until the farm gate. We did not have a significant change year-over-year of the total mix sold, being around 68% CIF, and the other 32% on FOB. The terms of volume, it decreased the same, then it's 47% lower.
Average freight per, per ton remained stable in Q2 2023, compared to last year, at approximately CAD 34.5 per ton sold. In the right side of the chart, you can see, you can see a graph that demonstrates the sales channels, a percentage of total. We can see that we had a reduction on 6% on direct sales, which was compensated by an increase on sales agent sales from 32%-37% of the total mix, and on distributors, it had no significant change year-on-year. This chart demonstrates since 2018, the volume sold by the company increased, beginning from, beginning from 29,000 tons in 2018, then to up, up to 628,000 tons in 2022.
For this year remains the guidance that we, you know, had at this point, with a range from 800,000 tons to 1.2 million tons. With the three other bars on the right side, you can see, the three phases from our PFS. First, first one of 10 million tons, the second one, 23 million tons, and then the final phase, which is 50 million tons per year expectation. In the loan side, it's important to highlight a few points here. We can see that the total cash and trade receivable held by the company at the end of the Q2 was CAD 23.8 million. We do have to pay and amortize by 2023, from July up to December of this year, $9.4 million.
We have an additional loan secured from $5.7 million, and also we do have cost of loans in close to 16.5% per year. In the right side, you can see the next three years payment flow, going from $9.4 million this year, $18.6 next year, $7.7, 2025 and $5.9, 2026. The total interest and loan, total loans that will be holding, if nothing else changes, up to the end of this year, $29 million, 2024, $13.8, decreasing to $7.2 in 2025, and $4.6 in 2026. These are the key points that I, I bring today for the presentation.
I will now, beginning our Q&A section. I, I will ask Cristiano also for his support on this, and then we'll be here to answer everything is needed for the next hours. Thank you.
Thank you, Felipe. Hope it won't take hours. We have 21 questions so far. First question. In the first half of 2023, you have sold... Hang on. So far, you've sold 200,000 tons in the first half of 2023. Is the goal of CAD 801.2 million for 2023 still attainable? From a production capacity, we can still reach this target, and we will carry on working as hard as we possibly can to achieve that. Next question: I've read microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, have a role in Enhanced Rock Weathering, while basalt rock has a much higher amount of carbon offset per ton applied.
If it is applied on farmland where traditional KCl is used, that will kill microorganisms, is there an argument for whether this carbon offset on farmland being relatively higher than stated, due to allowing more microbial activity, making it relatively more attractive as an option for Enhanced Rock Weathering, carbon capture on farmland? Could scientific research be done to prove this? It is certainly one thesis you're raising here, Mark. It's definitely something worth it investigating, and at the moment, we are exploring how our Bio Revolution technology can accelerate, Enhanced Rock Weathering. This is something that we should definitely be talking more in the coming, in the coming weeks. Next question.
If Verde will pursue greater discounted prices versus KCl through getting carbon credits, how is Verde going to ensure that farmers do not think Verde are trying to sell them glauconite more for getting carbon credits for Verde and not for supplying farmers an outright superior fertilizer to KCl? Do you have a large volume of independent university accredited research that you present to farmers proving glauconite superiority over KCl purely as a fertilizer? There are two questions here. Starting with the second question, yes, we have plenty of research in that regards. We equally have around 100 testimonials on our YouTube channel in Portuguese, of some of our customers talking about what they saw from the benefits of switching from KCl to our product.
The first part of your question, in terms of why or why not carbon credits would be perceived as a way to reduce the importance of the product itself. This is something very important, because it doesn't matter if it captures or doesn't capture carbon, a farmer will only be using our product if he can see a true agronomic benefit. If he's already happy with KCl, we need to prove to them somehow that it's better than conventional potash they're using. It doesn't change too much our marketing efforts in that regards. The next question: with significant carbon credit price volatility, is Verde consulting with farmers to form a product pricing model that will ensure they are confident to purchase year- after- year? Carbon credit price volatility is reality.
Obviously, it's much stronger when you look at reforestation or or the or organic soil carbon or other ways which capture carbon that have been under strong criticism recently because of its lack of permanency. A little bit of more context, why carbon credit has been suffering that, comes from the realization for a number of scientists and also carbon credit buyers, that once you buy carbon credit, which was originated from, for example, planting trees, it's hard for you to provide assurance that a certain forest won't fall, won't be destroyed because of wildfire.
That sort of carbon credit has been under a lot of volatility, and that is also why there has been a very strong interest in any sort of carbon credit originating from permanent carbon credit techniques, such as the one we are doing, such as direct air capture, and, and other ways for you to, to guarantee carbon is being stored for thousands of years rather than for, you know, being subject to, to, to wildfires and other phenomenons which are beyond our, our control. The next question. The next question: Given the strains on working capital and the high interest rate environment were already present at the end of Q4 2022, can you please help us understand the assumptions behind the sales guidance for 2023, and whether you still believe you can achieve it in 2023?
I believe we will carry working as hard as we've been to pursue that target. The next question: transport costs have been similar on a per ton basis to last quarter against the diesel price, which has come down quite a lot in the meantime. Is the transport cost per ton a result of wider geographical sales reach, or is there a lag from diesel prices on your transport costs? It is because we have shipped product further away to customers who are located further away from the mine, which has an impact on the overall cost.
Let me just add something here on freight costs as well. Yes, when we analyze in Brazilian reais, we had a decrease maybe on 9%-10% on freight cost per ton. Additional to it, it's important to say that once we have a price decrease or reduction in the distributors, maybe for example, 10% or 15% from Petrobras, which is the oil and gas company in Brazil, it normally takes a while to go unto the final price that you buy.
It normally it's not 100% passed on, which means, for example, when you have maybe a decrease on 15% or 10%, maybe that only half of this or 75% of it, you can see in the end of the day in the purchase price, since the, the, the distributors take the opportunity to increase their margin. This also has an impact for us. Another point, as I said, if you had a decrease on 10% on freight, you can say as well that when we have maybe...
10% re-reduction in the distributors or in the, from Petrobras distributors, it might become maybe half, 50% of it or 30% of it only at the end of the day, for the final price, in the, the distributors to per vehicle. The next one, please.
The next question: Is the sale of carbon credits gonna be a recurring sale? We would expect, yes, it should become. How is the quantity of carbon credits calculated? It's calculated from the amount of carbon being captured in a given period, minus what you have- what you release in terms of your production process. What you release, your carbon cost, comes from our life cycle analysis, which should soon be announced as well. In terms of the life cycle analysis, a massive advantage we have in Brazil, of course, comes from the fact that in Brazil, electricity is mainly generated from hydroelectric rather than from burning fossil fuels. You would expect a very small carbon footprint from a production perspective. Other question: What sort of companies buy carbon credit? That's a good question.
Essentially, I would say you have two different types of companies buying carbon credits. You have the ones that are doing it to incentivize the space and have very deep pockets, and are looking to try to promote certain types of technologies in that regard. Those companies are usually willing and happy to pay higher prices for carbon credits. Those are, of course, the minority of your buyers. The vast majority of your carbon credit buyers are companies that are looking to mitigate its carbon footprint and face this with, as, as a cost. Those are companies which would be your S&P 500 type of companies, that have made some sort of commitment towards net zero, or for regulatory reasons, have to minimize and offset its emissions.
Usually those companies, they will be looking to put together a portfolio of carbon credits that will include cheaper carbon credits, such as, like reforestation, all the way to the more expensive and permanent types of carbon credits, like the ones we hope to very soon be issuing. Next question. Are there other companies that generate sales via Enhanced Rock Weathering? Yes, there are other companies already monetizing that. Other question: From your customer base, what would be the grower by crop breakout? How does the ERW look? Those are two questions. The last question about ERW, we announce that annually. In terms of the crop breakout, most of our customers are growing soybeans and corn. Next question: Has there been any conversations with Brazilian government or other sources of funding to help the expansion of a more rapid manner?
No, there hasn't been that sort of discussions. How much of a factor is this Enhanced Rock Weathering to Brazil as a country or government to accumulate help in it? It's something we do expect to increase awareness of the government, both on a state level and a federal level, given the importance it has, not just for the country, but for the world. How are customers geographically distributed? What percentage are in Minas Gerais and elsewhere? Most of our customers are in Mato Grosso state, followed by Minas Gerais state. Has the cultural mix of your customers changed, more soybean from last year? Yes, most of our sales last year were from soybeans, as we had discussed in previous calls. Coffee sector suffered, a lot last year.
There is a question, I saw no explicit reference to diesel prices as a component of diminishing freight prices. Is it less relevant due to lower sales? I think Felipe has addressed that in the previous question.
Yes.
The next question: If and when Verde can sell carbon credits, what percentage would be used to directly lower farmer bills? We don't know this at this stage. How much do the studies and accreditations for carbon credit cost? It's expensive, but nothing material that would impact materially our treasury. Next question: If Verde can hopefully boost it, is the next favorite investment? We're not thinking about it right now. It's, it's, as Felipe has shown, it is a very difficult year for the agriculture space. The first quarter was very difficult, and this is what we are focusing on at the moment. How much more product do you think you're able to sell in the current market if you could reduce the price by 50% with the support of carbon credit sales?
Well, there's no doubt farmers are extraordinarily sensitive to price. They have been struggling through the first half of this year, and the sensitivity in terms of, of price, of inputs, lowering their cost is massive. The more you reduce the cost, the less risk they have when they are farming. It, it is, it is definitely significant. How many future carbon credits can you sell since you don't know how much glauconite will be applied the next year? It's a good question. Essentially, you put together a, a project, and that project will look into, for example, let's say you have a partner. That partner has 10,000 hectares. He will be applying 1 ton per hectare. That's 10,000 tons of product being applied. If about 10% of this is carbon captured, it's gonna be about 1 ton of carbon.
Well, a ton on 10,000 tons, 10,000 hectares, with 10,000 tons of product, so 10% of it is gonna be 1,000 tons of carbon captured. That is what you would be generating from carbon credits over the year, and that's how much you would be selling from that specific project. With CFEM figures publicly available, would it be an idea to monthly present your sales volumes? That, that's an interesting question. I, my-
Well, yes, let me try to help you. First off, all the CFEM figures, they even public, they have a delay on the time that we present, or the government presents, and the time that the volume was sold, and it's based on value, not on volume, and it will also depend on the price of the product sold. The analyzing only the public information on CFEM, I don't think it would be enough to measure the volume sold by the company.
Thank you, Felipe. Is it possible to produce K Forte only in Plant 2 without having the repercussions on stocks for your customers? Yes, it's possible. Is it possible to produce another product at Plant 2 other than K Forte at a lower cost? No. Plant 2 is designed for K Forte. You cannot produce BAKS at Plant 2. If your product with the highest margin is BAKS, and it, and it has a high cost, which you haven't had micronutrients, can the company offer a new line of this product without micronutrients at a lower price? Yes, but this product is already K Forte. BAKS is K Forte Plus micronutrients. If we strip micronutrients from BAKS, you go back to K Forte. Is there an approximate date for when Plant 3 will be operational? No.
While research have found carbon prices around $100 per ton, how do you come up with $300-$500 per ton? What's the source of this price? This is a very good report which was recently published, which look into the price of carbon, depending on, on how it originated. As a matter of fact, it shows the average price at $500, with sales even higher than that. Of course, you need to look at liquidity, the volumes which originated that sort of average price, given the fact it's a new source of carbon captured, its liquidity isn't very high yet. The price of $100 is the holy grail, as it's been called by the carbon captured industry, when you look at permanent carbon storage.
That is the number that different parties, different companies, governments, different organizations, they look at for the price of carbon credits and say that this is the best outcome, the most desirable outcome. Read the Financial Times, I think yesterday, there was a criticism to the U.K. government for adopting the long-term price for carbon credits at 150 GBP. Just shows where people are looking at, where this, the price for carbon credits should be settling in the coming years. Could you quickly state what affected your recent earnings release most, and if any of them were one-time occurrences?
Felipe, he went through a detailed presentation where he showed a lot of charts explaining what's going on, in, in, as a summary, and, and before I get into the summary, if you're watching this online, I suggest, you know, you can, or if even for you, Arthur, who asked the question, if you go back to the online version, you will see the details. Essentially, the 1st half of this year has been very, very, very atypical. We saw farmers struggling with working capital because they had to sell their production, mainly corn, at depressed prices. Some of them had borrowed money earlier on when input prices were much higher, so it came to a situation where they were struggling from a working capital perspective because of that.
On the top of that working capital struggle they were facing, the interest rates in Brazil are extraordinarily high, above 13%. Our cost of capital follows that. Our cost of capital of around 18%, this is how we can fund them, and clearly, obviously, there are several other companies in the space which have a materially lower cost of capital and can offer much better terms to farmers. I heard from farmers saying for this half of the year, it wasn't necessarily they, they were able to buy the products they wanted. It was more about being able to buy the products they could finance, and that has hurt our sales. Good news is that it seems to be changing. With interest rates starting coming down in Brazil, price for agricultural commodities stopped coming down as well.
There is some recovery in the horizon. Price of potash from the last few days has started recovering again. Hopefully, it's all beyond us. It was very, very atypical. That's what we tried to talk about in the press release. I would suggest everyone to read the press release. Look at the quotes on the press release. We tried the quotes to address exactly what was behind what we saw in the first half of the year.
If you also are interested in reading press release from other companies similar to ours, operating in Brazil, from agricultural input companies like Lavoro, AgroGalaxy, Bom Futuro, there's several companies listed in Bovespa, reporting in, in English as well, which you can have access to, and helps you to give a broader picture about how challenging the year has been so far for farmers and for us. Next question: What are the reasons why the markets close to you are not demanding replacement rate demand for your product? Why do you need to expand sales reach? Are you losing customers in the markets close to you? If so, why? We look at the market nationally.
We are looking to get to 50 million tons, so we will carry on selling to Mato Grosso state and any other states further away where we can make money in the sale of the product. There isn't a specific, as you suggest in your question, there isn't a specific phenomena of losing customers in market closest to us, which wouldn't be consistent across different markets. There isn't a localized issue, so to say. What you saw is what I addressed in the previous question in terms of farmers are struggling from a working capital perspective. Do you still anticipate first carbon credit deal signed in Q3? We're working very hard towards that. Do you know what percent of shareholders reside in Brazil? What percentage outside of Brazil? It's the vast majority outside Brazil.
There are hardly any shareholders in Brazil. Will you be monitoring the amount of short sellers in Verde? No, I won't. I am afraid I'm monitoring the satisfaction of our, of our customers in Brazil and our progress rather than short sellers. In Brazil, can farmer group themselves participate in the futures market for the commodities they produce? Yes, they, they can and, and, and, and some of them do to a certain extent. That concludes all the questions we have received today. I thank you all for your interest in this presentation. If you're watching it online, thank you for, thank you for watching, getting to, to, to, to the end of the presentation. If you like it, please, please, like that like button. That's how you tell YouTube that other people like yourself might be interested.
If you know anyone who might be interested in learning a little bit more, please do share the video. On our YouTube channel, you will also come across several other videos about what we're doing. We have a new website. If you haven't seen it yet, it's live. If you're watching it online, thank you very much for your interest. Thank you very much for joining us in this call. Thank you very much for sending those questions, and I look forward to several updates in the coming weeks. There's a lot happening. There's absolutely a lot happening, and perhaps I can talk a little bit about some of the stuff which we expect to be happening in the coming weeks.
As we prepare the company for growing production, as we prepare the company for the coming years, we will be adding more senior executives to the company. We should be announcing a Chief Marketing Officer, we should be announcing a Chief Revenue Officer, we should be announcing a Vice President Corporate Development executive. We should be making those three announcements in the coming weeks. We should also be giving an update on some very good results we received from Silício Forte, which is that product portfolio application. Has performed really well on in rice, for example, so we should be press releasing that. We should also be press releasing some results on animal nutrition.
This is some work we've been doing, developing some different products for quite a while, so there should be some update on that as we start looking to develop that market as well. No doubt, the one we are very close to be announcing or a series of press releases on, on carbon credits, so we should be soon announcing how fast preliminary results have shown that we can be capturing that carbon capture. We, we saw from the work by Professor David Manning, the product can capture, so there's a, there's a special research which was carried out in that, in that front. There's, of course, the Life cycle analysis, which is getting to completion, that should be announced. There's several negotiations with, with companies about those carbon credits, which we should soon be announcing during Q3.
It's, it's definitely a very busy, next few weeks. I know most of you are in the Northern Hemisphere. Us, here in the Southern Hemisphere, in Brazil, we, we, we're busy. It isn't. It's just business as usual. This is, this is peak time for us, and, and I hope you're all enjoying the summer. I hope you're enjoying the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, but here, things are, are, are progressing very fast, and we're all very busy. The teams, everyone's very busy moving, moving the product and project along. One more time, thank you very much for your interest. I look forward to talking to you again in the next quarterly, results, there's no doubt you should be reading a lot of press releases in, in the coming weeks, lots of quotes, and, and that's it. Thank you very much again.
I look forward to our next encounter. Thank you. Bye-bye.