Of 2025. My name is Cristiano Veloso. I'm the founder and CEO of Verde AgriTech. Thank you very much. If you're attending this conference now live, thanks for allocating your time to be here. You will have an opportunity to be asking questions live, and we will be delighted to be answering those questions. If you're watching it on YouTube, please feel free to send us any questions, any comments you may have as well. As always, if you like the content, if you're excited about what we're building here at Verde AgriTech, despite the very challenging last couple of years, to say the least, please click the like and share this among other investors or other people who might be interested in what we're doing. We will start the presentation now.
I will be taking you through the initial slides, and then later on, Felipe Paolucci, our Chief Financial Officer, will be going into more details in the financials and our results. Next slide. Before I begin, I would like to remind you that our presentation today contains forward-looking statements. You should review very carefully all of our disclosures and make sure you agree with them. As always, if you are in the U.S., you have the unique opportunity to join thousands of other farmers and gardeners who were able to purchase, try, and benefit from our products. You can go online on amazon.com and read all of the reviews we have received so far, as well as leave your very own review once you have tested our product, Super Green Sand. The next slide, we will start with a market overview.
Which isn't very exciting, unfortunately. We continue to experience very high interest rates in Brazil. There is an expectation that at some point, the Brazilian central bank will start a cycle of lowering interest rates. There's some speculation that as we start talking about presidential elections, there will be a stronger pressure from the current president for the president of the central bank to start cutting rates. Hopefully, this will start sooner rather than later. The exchange rate between Brazilian currency and both the Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar, there was an accelerated devaluation of the Brazilian currency that started mid-2024. More recently, especially against the U.S. dollar, after Trump announced its tariff strategy, there was a weakness of the U.S. dollar against the Brazilian real, which at one time was worth about BRL 6.50. It has come down now to about BRL 6 to about BRL 5.60.
For us, the weaker the Brazilian currency is against the U.S. dollars, the better it is, because the more money Brazilian farmers will be making, because everything they sell is priced in U.S. dollars, all of their commodities. Next slide, please. We can see here the price of KCl from the good old days back in 2022, when we had the suspension of exports via the port in Lithuania from Belarusian potash, which triggered a significant spike in potash prices. That, unfortunately, was followed by a very rapid decrease in potash prices as other logistical venues were developed, identified, and we had record levels of potash hitting the market, combined with a significant decrease in the price of all of the key agricultural commodities. Next slide. Not everything's bad news.
What we are seeing, and I wish this graph went a little bit further to the second half of 2023, what we're seeing here is a recovery in the price of potassium chloride. This price has gone down in 2023 as low as $250, but has now recovered to about $340. We're hearing about $360 being asked for by certain suppliers. There is certainly a trajectory of increase for the price of potash, which ultimately, no matter how better we can be against KCl, there's always an alternative for farmers. That ends up dictating the ultimate price farmers are willing to pay for a product, because they will always have a replacement with potassium chloride, despite all the deleterious impacts potassium chloride has to soil, crops, and the environment. It is encouraging. It is encouraging to see price recovery. Farmers feel that.
Farmers start, who were used to, in the last two, three years, they were used to seeing price of potash coming down. We're back now in a scenario where prices are going up again. We don't think the price will carry on going up much further. We don't see the reasons for that. Most of the analysts don't see the reasons for a strong acceleration of potash prices, unless, as we've always mentioned, as we've always spoken about, as we've spent too much time talking about, unless Putin decides to weaponize fertilizers the same way China has decided to weaponize the supply of rare earths. If people freak out nowadays because of rare earths, it's just because they don't understand how Vladimir Putin rules the world by controlling the supply of potash. No other commodity is as tightly controlled as potash is with Vladimir Putin.
No other commodity will dictate how much weight you will put other than potassium chloride, not even Ozempic. Yeah, that narrative, of course, was quite active in the markets when there was the beginning of the Russian-Ukraine war. People completely moved on and forgot about it. This is a reality. Because this is a reality, potash was included as a critical mineral by the current administration in the U.S. critical minerals list. Next slide. We have more bad news. We can see the catastrophic increase in bankruptcies in the Brazilian agricultural sector.
Prior to this call, we're talking to a lawyer who was just sharing with us how some of the banks have organized themselves to try to alert for how there is an industry at the moment of lawyers and other firms advising farmers of the benefits of filing for insolvency protection rather than paying their bills on time. Of course, we are suffering from that. We have seen record levels of insolvency. We have been trying to operate as conservatively as possible in the last couple of years. It is not about selling as much as we wish we could, because there is not a certainty that we will get paid. We saw in the last couple of years some companies growing significantly, only now to be facing bankruptcy, because they were able to sell a lot, but they are not getting paid.
Of course, we're talking about agricultural input suppliers who grew in this crisis and had some phenomenal press releases out temporarily. However, now they're all filing for bankruptcy, and they're all struggling from that. We had the second largest agricultural input supplier in the country filing for insolvency protection last year. That's a public company that owes us money called AgriGalaxy. You can read all about it online. There is another company now, which, like AgriGalaxy, is backed by private equity, is the biggest one in the country, hasn't paid us for a few weeks now, hasn't paid other suppliers. There is, again, a very strong likelihood that they will be filing for insolvency protection in Brazil and alongside several other farmers. This is disastrous.
This is very bad and has created a very complex situation for us to operate, where we are being very careful about who we sell and who we provide credit to. The advantage of what we're seeing now with our very strong field sales team is that we're being able to, we're being able to hopefully identify farmers who are more likely to pay us back. That's the importance, again, of the field sales team. One of the reasons why we had to really switch to a strong field sales presence to try to mitigate the credit risk. Next slide, please. Results. Now let's allow Felipe Paolucci, our Chief Financial Officer, to go over the results. Let me start with this one, Felipe, because I just gave bad news.
I feel a bit like I should give some good news, and then I will let you go with the bad news. The good news is that our credit team and our field sales team, working together collaboratively for this year, are being able to approve much more orders than they were able to approve in the last couple of years. As a consequence, we are seeing an increase in orders. When we compare the approved and delivered orders so far, we can see a significant growth. Likewise, when we compare just the orders we have received up to this point versus orders we had confirmed, but when I talk about orders, those are confirmed orders, we can equally see a significant growth. We hope we will carry on accelerating throughout the end of the year. Next slide, please. Yes, Felipe, you can take over now.
You can deliver all of the bad news. Although, in all fairness, there's some phenomenal news here, which I might step in again once you get to them. Please go ahead, Felipe.
Okay. Thank you, Cristiano. Thank you, everyone, for joining the conference. As Cristiano has already introduced me, I'm Felipe Paolucci, CFO of the group. I'm starting here to present our Q1 financial results. First, I'll start with the key highlights. You can see that sales volume in Q1 2025 was 48,000 tons, a 44% reduction compared to Q1 2024. In addition, we had a revenue reduction of 44% compared to the prior period in 2024. In terms of cash held by the company, we had a decrease by $0.7 million from $3.2 million to $2.5 million in Q1 2025. Additionally, the company has $7.7 million in short-term receivables, which means that in the next 12 months, besides our cash on hand, we have an additional $7.7 million to be collected. The total cash and short-term receivables are above $10 million as of March 31, 2025.
General and administrative expenses decreased by 23% from $1.3 million to $1 million in this quarter. This was mainly driven by some actions and initiatives made by the directors here. We were able to reduce contracts, we made some layoff of people as well, and adjust the company to stand hold and be prepared for the moment of the company and be ready also to start to grow again from now onwards. In the end, EBITDA, we had $1.4 million below last year, was $1.4 million this year, compared to $0.7 million last year. In terms of net loss, we had CAD -3.8 million compared to CAD -4.8 million in Q1 2024. This was mainly driven by an improvement or reduction in share-based payments that we had in Q1 2025.
A key point on financial statements in Q1 2025, you can see the first rows here and the price and production cost per ton in terms of gross margin. I also have another chart coming in the next one that demonstrates as well the numbers excluding freight, which is very important to analyze in our business. At the end of the day, I think it is very important to highlight here that we had a loss on allowance of expected credit losses, which is called ECL. This was mainly driven by 2022 or 2023 sales that we have made with a long-term payment of 11-12 months. After one year, we must do this provision. Of course, we started with some hard policies on credit, etc., since maybe January 2024 or middle 2023. We do expect this amount to be lower quarter by quarter.
That's our expectation. Then we can see that in the end, as I said before, we had a decrease on EBITDA from -$670,000 to -$1.4 million this year. In terms of operational summary per ton, we can see here that one relevant part to be disclosed is that our production cost per ton has reduced. We had some initiatives as well as a reduction in operational expenses, reviewed some contracts with third party, and also had here some benefit as well related to exchange rates. At the end of the day, we had an improvement on cost of over 20% year-on-year basis, which compensated the revenue in part. We can see that in the second table here, the gross margin increased from 51%- 56% excluding freight.
This means that once the company starts to grow again, we will be able to improve even more our cost due to fixed cost dilution and also improve gross margin and other indicators. We are very optimistic when the volume comes. We are ready to deliver without investments. We have the factory two, plant two, everything ready to grow. It is what we are waiting and waiting, expecting for the coming quarters, an improvement in gross margin and profitability since also SG&A will be highly diluted in a growth scenario. Sales in general and administrative expenses, as I have mentioned, we had an improvement of over 23%. I can say as well on IT, for example, and software, we had a very good renegotiation with our companies that work with us, SAP or Salesforce. We reduced the number of licenses since we have reduced it.
They also had accounts that are using it. In the end of the day, it is supporting us to have these reductions. In parallel as well, we've reviewed contracts with third parties on consultants and other types of alternatives that would be able to try to mitigate a bit the loss on sales and volume. In terms of debt overview, I think that's very good news. We had a press release issued one month ago when we had our debt renegotiation agreement approved. This is very, very good news in terms of cash flow to the company for the coming periods. As you can see in the right side, for example, of this chart, you can see the amount that we would have to pay without this agreement in the next 12 months that had a decrease from $32 million to close to zero.
This will enable us to keep investing in commercial, keep investing in sales, and then bring the company back to a growth cycle. In the end of the day, we were able to restructure nearly 100% of our debts with over 10 years of payment terms. The key one very important point as well is that only 10% of the debt will be paid in the first three years. For example, in the first 12 months after April next year, we are going to pay only 2.5% of the principal. On the other hand as well, we have an interest reduction from 18.1%- 16% per year. Even with Brazil, with a higher Selic rate, as Cristiano said before, and currently is at 14.75, we were able to reduce this interest rate.
Currently, the plan we have, the government rate, which is called CBI, + 1.25, which is a very competitive rate for a kind of loan. Normally, the banks get money with this amount. It means that they have no space for a spread here. I do not think that we would be able to have such a good interest rate, although it is still very high, but compared to the other companies in the marketplace, I think we are in a very good position. Also, in addition, we added some creditors that did not adhere to the plan, which represents over 5% of the total debt. They faced a 75% reduction in principal, which brings to us immediate effect in our impact and reduction on debt over CAD 1.7 million. The grace period on these situations is higher, is 18 months since the plan was initiated.
Also, one very important point here is that the interest rate for these non-adherent creditors is not the other one that I mentioned before, but the one called TR, which is currently less than 1% per year. In these situations, we are going to pay in 10 years with almost no interest rate. That is very good news as well that provides us some cash flow. We are able to provide what our commercial area needs in terms of payment terms, three months, six months, or 12 months, depends on clients, of course. The financial area here is ready to provide what the commercial area needs to sell and make our volumes grow again. These are the key points, Christian. I think now we can go to the section on Q&A answers and anything needed and your also support.
Thank you very much, Felipe. We have several questions here. If throughout the Q&A, if you think about any other question, just please share it. Or if you feel that I did not properly answer the question, please go back and ask me to do a better job. The first question is an easy one. What is Verde's forecast for return to profitability? What quarter of what year? It is an easy one because the short answer is I do not know. I do not know. Everything within our control is being done the best we can so we can get back to profitability and growth as fast as possible.
I think the content from the press release shows some bullishness in terms of the orders and how there is a very positive momentum at the moment, both in an increase in approved orders by our credit team, but also with a substantial reduction on G&A of over 20% in comparison to last year. Next question. Can you explain high staff turnover in recent years? Very often, staff leaving after short periods with the company. And with each new hire, we promise the next superstar, but nothing manifests in sales. Staff turnover is a significant red flag for a company, indicating potential problems with management, company culture, or employee satisfaction. I would completely disagree with your statement. I think, and you will see several of the very successful companies with a fire-fast culture.
The worst thing a company, an organization, a team can be is afraid to fire someone once you realize there was a mistake made in the hire process or for other reasons, you can reduce staff to cut costs. Answering your question here more specifically, we have done a lot of cost reduction. As part of this cost reduction, we reduced. As we use AI, we are being able to cut even further costs. I expect this to be constant. As a fellow Brazilian who puts together a few very successful companies likes to say, costs are like nails you need to be cutting all the time. With AI and improved efficiency from different systems, you have several opportunities, and you just can't be afraid to go ahead and cut costs.
The other point your question brings here, which is important, is yes, we have promoted some people in the past, and we had big hopes, but unfortunately, it did not turn out to be as good as we expected. We are not afraid just because we put the press release or we were able to say a good few words about someone in the past. We do not allow that to hold us back and make the best decision for the business, which in a lot of situations is just to let people go. There is a book I read over 20 years ago from someone who is not as popular nowadays, who is Jack Welch from GE, where he says that in his career, he has never regretted firing someone too soon.
If we have fellow people in this call and watching YouTube who want a little bit of management guidance from Jack Welch, he has never regretted firing someone too soon. I completely can think of several times when I made the mistake of waiting. Another interesting book I recommend reading is No Rules Rules about Netflix, where they have an interesting take on that, which is as soon as they find that someone does not really fit with the organization, they feel like they have an obligation towards that person to let them go as soon as possible because they feel a bit like it is unfair to the person to allow the person to continue in the company when you already know this is not the right fit. You have just given an opportunity to this person to find happiness elsewhere as soon as possible. Next question.
Why can Verde not capture market share domestically in Brazil when international competitors can? This is really concerning. Let's just pause here. If you leave aside the last couple of years where we have this massive crisis going on, where we have two of the largest companies going bankrupt, those two bigger agriculture inputs because of all of that is going on, if you look at our track record in growth, it's phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal how fast we were growing in what we could say was a normal business. The last couple of years, it's a completely different situation. We're hoping that the second half of this year will be a we're going to resume what is a normal market, and we will go back to that growth. I also don't think that is entirely true, that statement. From Q1, a statement of a competitor.
This quarter's performance demonstrates ability to navigate market uncertainties while capitalizing on stronger global demand, particularly in Brazil. Yes, they are selling to the guys who are filing for bankruptcy. We could be doing the same. We could be doing the same. We would just be hurting as much as those other companies do. I suggest you go back now and read the last press releases from the companies going under, AgroGalaxy, and very soon, another massive company listed in the New York Stock Exchange who hasn't paid us for a few weeks and hasn't paid most of the market as well. Q1 results demonstrate a significant improvement in net income and strategic pivot towards global markets, particularly Brazil, to offset challenge in North America. It's the same thing. There's no dispute. There's product moving. It's about what is getting paid.
I will not be surprised, mark my words, if whichever company you read, you took this from, will very soon be putting out on their press releases about how insolvency in Brazil is hurting their business. Only they were a little bit more blunt than most. Can you update us on ERW, Enhanced Rock Weathering, ERW, I presume? In the last call, I went through in detail what was going on. I will do it again. ERW is a very exciting new science, Enhanced Rock Weathering, where scientists are looking at different rocks and their capability of capturing carbon as they weather. If you look, for example, the big Elon Musk Foundation XPRIZE, which we participated in, and we were one of the top 100 applications.
The company that won first place is an ERW company developing a software to accelerate what is currently the biggest issue with ERW, which is quantifying exactly how much carbon is being captured so you can issue reliable carbon credit certificates. It's something we've been navigating, something the science is evolving really well. It's something we have probably the best-informed scientists in the world helping us. We've been doing some long-term trials, and it's something we're very excited about. It's no secret that we are recruiting for a very senior position in ERW, which when you look at the long-term trials we've been doing, it probably means it's something that is happening there. Most people can put two and two together, and it's something very exciting.
It's something very exciting, and we hope very soon to be able to update the market with not speculative, but something very, very, very material. Next one, why the prolonged hold-up in delivering OBI share to investors? This should have been sorted by now, as mentioned in last investor call. This, for context, Verde AgriTech had some rare earth assets that it divested via a capital reduction to an Australian company. That Australian company subsequently merged with an Australian SPAC, raising $1 million to carry on the development of those very exciting rare earth assets. Throughout this process, Verde AgriTech, anyone who was a shareholder in Verde AgriTech on the 27th of January, which was the record date, will be getting shares in the new entity. The new entity, which is the merged entity, the Australian SPAC, will be renamed OBI.
At the moment, the SPAC is called Nautica, is getting renamed OBI. The answering now, after I've given context, the prolonged hold-up, it's an administrative nightmare dealing with both the red stars in Australia and the red stars in Canada. In Canada, you have something called CDS, which is the Canadian Depository System. When we look at our shareholders list, we don't know who our shareholders are because you guys, or most people, they file something when they open their brokerage accounts where they don't allow the broker to tell the company that they are a shareholder. When we look at the shareholders list, what comes up under the first layer that shows up is that CDS, the Canadian Depository System, owns 99% of the company.
Via a red star, which is TMX, which is the Toronto Stock Exchange, you can get some capillarities, but it just goes as far down as looking at which brokers hold shares. We can have a list of the brokers holding shares. The advice was given to us by TMX that owns TSX was to issue shares in this new entity, Nautica, to the brokers, which is what we did. CDS should have done a communication directly to the brokers, which they did not do because they did not get the ISIN, which is a code every security should have for the Australian shell company. The Australian shell company had to apply for an ISIN, which is not something required for companies at that stage in Australia. They had to do that application, which was done.
Now there is an ISIN code, and right now we have TMX talking to CDS so they hopefully very soon can do this internal reallocation. Do not worry, you have your shares if you are a shareholder on the 27th of January. It's a private company, so you can't sell this company, but do appreciate people just want to be able to have them, and we're working to get that done. Next question. I've been invested in Verde since 2019, but I am getting increasingly more worried. Please comment on growing concern of Verde. I think the first comment I have here, we've been going on for since 2004 and 15 years. Throughout the 15 years before you became a shareholder in 2019, we went through some much worse markets and situations than we are now.
It is not the first storm we are navigating, and I am pretty sure it will not be the last one. I am pretty confident on us as a going concern. Carry on with your question. Every quarter is more concerning than the last since 2022, while other fertilizer companies with Brazil footprints are doing relatively much better. That is false. As I have explained, we have the insolvency for the country's two largest agricultural input suppliers, Lavoro and AgriGalaxy. I might have already given some information to anyone who is interested in looking at the stock of a New York Stock Listed company called Lavoro, but that is the reality. The next, there is not. Do not talk to anyone in Brazil who is selling and getting paid for what they are selling that they are excited. If you find someone, if you come across, please let me talk to them.
Please let me talk because I haven't found them yet in the crop nutrition space. General and admin expenses up 123% and now above the Q3, definitely attesting to dramatic turnover turmoil. That's also not correct. I mean, our GNA has come down significantly. What went up as a result of the insolvency crisis in Brazil is the amount of money that's owed to us. You should go back, have a look at the financial statements. The amount of money owed to us has gone up, and that is what had a negative impact, and it's getting reported separately. There is a reduction in GNA because, as I mentioned before, we're also not afraid of firing people. The other one, delivery as percentage of sales up to 39%, making less than delivering further for every ton sold. Not necessarily.
Delivery as percentage of sales up to 39%. I didn't understand the comment here, but most of our sales currently are taking place much closer to the mine because that's where the field sales team is. Even if you choose a sizable credit loss, Verde still lost $19 on every ton sold. That equity up significantly. Those two points are very valid you're bringing here. The reason we're losing money on every ton, it's nothing to do about the underlying business, the underlying sales business. It's about all your added costs and added burden of being a public company. You're paying expensive legal costs, audit costs, and several other costs which a private company wouldn't have. That is what adds the big added burden in terms of cost. If you look at the business itself of the underlying operating company, it's a different situation.
That equity up, yes, that is something that no one can deny. What you should look at is the significant debt renegotiation we were able to accomplish with our creditors. I've heard from an investor that he did not believe. And that's an investor very, very experienced with debt, companies raising debt, and given his previous life. He said he just could not believe what we were able to squeeze out of creditors in this renegotiation without filing for a full-on insolvency protection, which is what a lot of the other companies are doing. It is quite positive. I will tell you, there's more. There's more to come. We're working on more. It's my expectation we should be able to improve terms at some point, even more. Next question.
Can you explain the counterintuitive strategy of building a sales marketing team to improve the sales mix by pitching more premium specialty products during a time when producers are highly price-sensitive, lack access to capital, and have low credit worthiness? That's a very good question. The background of this question is that usually when you talk about premium specialty products, usually companies look to charge a massive premium on those technologies, which do not always translate into better yields for farmers. In our case, because of how those other products are structured, we can actually keep costs flat or even reduce costs for farmers and allow them to buy what we're calling here specialty products.
For example, when you look at sulfur, which is a very important secondary macronutrient farmers buy, they will buy sulfur conventionally from something called a granulated sulfur source, or they will buy that sulfur from Single Superphosphate , or they can get that sulfur from us micronized. The nutrient they're getting is always the same. It's always S. Because we can buy our sulfur as a residue from the oil refinery, we can access sulfur at a very competitive price. Our beneficiation, our technology is very cheap, and it allows us to offer that sulfur for the same price or cheaper, depending on the negotiation, but still securing a very significant margin. Perhaps in the last call, when I mentioned the specialty products, I was not clear enough. I think this is something quite relevant.
After all those years of very limited back sales success, even when farmers are prospering, isn't it time to accept that high volume K Forte sold at volume to MOP within a very tight range to the mine is the only way this operation can survive? That's a very valid point. By your question here, you obviously understand the market very, very well, which I appreciate and respect. I think when we were selling BAKS before, as with an inside sales team, we only had guys operating the phones, trying to sell farmers, asking farmers to buy those different combinations of products, those different technologies. We had no one going to the farms, going to meet those farmers and showing to them on the field how they were getting better results. We have two problems.
First, it's harder for guys to sell specialty products like those over the phone where there's a premium element to it. There's a distinction to the conventional commodities. Also, once you sell, it's very difficult for you unless you're there in the field demonstrating the benefits. It's very difficult for you to be able to show to the farmer the actual gains he was able to accomplish. With now our field sales team, with our customer success team, I hope this is changing. We can already see some evidence that this is changing. I think we will really know this for sure, I would say, next year, once we've given our field sales, our customer success team, at least one cycle to prove their worth. Next question. Please elaborate on the extent of your ERW program. All we know is you have an LCA and one scientist.
How much, if any, MRV equipment has been deployed? Does Verde have any field analysts or lab technicians? Does the ERW community take your project seriously and in league with InPlanet and others that have gained credibility? Phenomenal question. Let's unpack this sentence by sentence. Please elaborate on the extent of your ERW program. We have the key scientists developing, helping us with that. There is a well-structured ERW program with a very well-structured MRV program. The difference, which you point out here or you allude to, which is very true, is that a lot of, and that's where we are weaker than other companies, is in two ways.
The first one, all those other companies, you can read in the media, they are working with the same rock, which is basalt, which is the rock that was originally studied back several years ago when people started looking at ERW before Dave Manning came and approached us, as you all know, two or three years ago. They are dealing with a rock that is well-known. It is well-used and well-studied and consolidated in terms of how much and when it is capturing carbon. They do not need, which is our case, they do not need to show the same level of scrutiny and results of a new rock, which is what we are proposing with glauconites. That is point number one. Point number two is we are talking about dedicated companies.
When we look at the work Undo, Terradot, InPlanet, Lithos, and others, we're talking about startups put together by some very smart people that have raised a lot of private money, a lot of private money from a lot of investors, some of those investors are very smart people, and they have big budgets. They went out and hired a bunch of people. You have companies with 50 scientists working on ERW. That is something we indeed have a massive weakness in comparison to them. They have way more people in there, way more people talking about it. They have the big advantage of focus, focus, focus, focus, focus. The CEO, everyone in the team, that's the only thing they think about is ERW developing the market. That's a challenge.
That's a weakness we have and something perhaps we might be able to address in a very interesting way at some point in the future. Think about this, especially if we can show those good results. We're talking about the possibility and the hope of getting those results out of ERW. The advantage we have with our one scientist is that even though all of those other companies have several scientists working for them, the one scientist who is indeed helping us is the one who is really driving the certification process and behind it and working along to make this concrete. We have this edge, and that's with a very limited budget in comparison to what those other companies are spending on ERW. We're trying to advance it as best as we can.
The other massive advantage we have against the other companies is the fact we are an operating company. We have a mine that we own. We control our own resources. We control, we understand the mineralogical characteristics of our body far better than those other companies. Some of those companies you're mentioning, the problems they're facing is how homogeneous their basalt is. There have been some papers which were showing that some types of basalt were not capturing carbon or were not capturing enough carbon. That was a little bit of a big issue for the industry, for the space. They're trying to resolve it, and that's an advantage we have. That's something, funny enough, Dave Manning, the pioneer on ERW, had already called as a big weakness to the space three years ago when he approached us and said, "Hey, guys, what you have is different.
You have the control. We have the mine you operate. You know what you have. You know how much you have. You can control the quality. This is something very exciting. I hope I'm able to answer your question here. If not, please go back and ask for any further clarification. Next one. Have you had any success developing a specialty product that directly competes with DAP, MAP, which offers far better economics than MOP? That's a very technical question here, and I will unpack it for everyone. Diammonium phosphate is a source of phosphate very used in the Northern Hemisphere, temperate climate. In Brazil, MAP is the main source of phosphate used, very concentrated, 54% P2O5, about 10%-14% nitrogen. It's a source of phosphate. It's a source of phosphate.
What we're doing here is a source of potash, not a source of phosphate. So we don't have in the mine, we don't have a phosphate there. What is relevant to mention is some very exciting agronomic trials, and it's a product we have called USU, where we combine our rock, where we combine our product with MAP. I won't get into detail because it's another five minutes here of a very exciting agronomic talk. We can have a product that is a highly, highly, highly, highly efficient source of phosphate, and we're seeing some phenomenal yields and something I'm pushing the team hard to make sure we set up as many trials with farmers as possible. If you're interested in this one, ask the question again, and at the end, I can go back to it. Few questions about the grace period for the adherent creditors.
What is the start date of the 18? Felipe, I can see you turned your camera on, so you're probably keen to answer this question. Go ahead. Go ahead for each one of the questions.
The question is, what is the start date of the 18-month grace period? The start date is the date that submits the plan, which was last September. The big part, let's say, or the relevant part of the interest rate starts to be paid after April 2026. You have asked, although interest is suspended during the grace period, is interest still accumulating during the grace period? The answer is yes, it's still accumulating. The difference between the BRL 100,000 and the full amount of interest is accumulating to the main debt. What interest rate? This is an important part of the renegotiation. We do not have the old contracts anymore.
We used to have maybe 15 or 18 contracts with banks, and now they all became just one contract, which has the new approved condition, as I mentioned before. We have one contract for the, I mean, we did not sign one contract with the creditors, but at the end of the day, we have the numbers with one contract of the adherent creditors and one situation or contract with the non-adherent. The answer is we are using the amount of interest rates negotiated in the plan, which is like the government rate + 1.25% per year, which I said before, it's a very competitive price. We do not find it easy in the marketplace. Also, this accumulated interest is being capitalized.
Yes, since we are not paying the interest rate, it's going to be included in the principal debt, and then we have to pay, of course, at the end of the day, a bit more of interest. The good part of it is that we are protecting our cash flow for the coming 12 months or 24, 36, and making us free to grow in terms of cash. Thanks. That's it, Cristiano.
Thank you, Felipe. Next one. Are the challenges with the ERW program really just about the ongoing adjustment to industry protocols or more about Verde not being able to afford a qualified CSO along with equipment and staff required to design a robust and scalable program? I think, as I said earlier, it's a different rock, so it's not basalt.
We're having, and we've undertaken, we have gone through now both the mesocosm and the field trial for you to create enough evidence, to create enough data in order to be able to, in order to be able to measure the amount of carbon. How can you say the reason Verde cannot advance is because of all the protocol standard change when so many RWPs were closing lucrative deals in order to scale their operations? The deals, in terms of carbon credit sales the other companies did, those weren't deals done in a recognized carbon credit exchange like Puro or Verra. Those were direct sales to guys like Frontier or Microsoft. They were able to do that with them because they were dealing with a commodity, i.e., basalt, well-known, well-understood.
In our case, we had to go through what we did now, which was the further validation work required to be able to present what you mentioned here as being a robust set of data. Many Brazilian ag input providers are surviving by participating in the barter market to circumvent the capital and liquidity crisis. Why is Verde not pursuing the barter market for a portion of overall sales? We are. We are pursuing barter. We try to offer barter several times. We are trying to add the product within barter. It is already, some of the sales we do, especially via distributors. The distributors will buy the product from us, and then the distributors themselves will be offering the product as barter.
What happens with barter is that usually the farmer will have to offer as a collateral to a barter operation the production of whatever commodity you're doing. In a lot of cases, they will have the farm as well. The farmer will offer that security to a supplier that can offer all of the agricultural input they will need. That is why we access barter much more via some of our distributors than directly because it's not interesting for them to do a barter operation just for the one product. It's better for them to do because of the availability of collateral from the vendors.
When you say here about accessing the barters, it's usually the same companies that are going bankrupt now, like AgroGalaxy, like the other fertilizer blenders that sell everything, nitrogen, phosphate in blended products rather than companies like us that are selling just the one-off nutrient. Market conditions have remained extremely poor for several years. I would say from 2022 onwards. Prior to that, we were growing very fast, and then we had this massive agricultural crisis. Yet Verde sold closer to 100,000 tons per quarter, so it exactly has caused the recent 50% decline in quarterly sales volume just the last two quarters. I think I went through this throughout the presentation. The timing suggests it is extremely high employee turnover beginning Q3, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Absolutely not. The big turnover you're talking about, that was mainly cost reduction, admin cost reduction.
If you look at the sales marketing team, it's the opposite. We're building the field sales team, and the number of people increased a lot with not a significant turnover. Not that I'm afraid of turnover, as I said in the beginning. I embrace it. It's just not factually true. What is here? Next question. How can you justify taking the CEO job at OBI with Verde on financial and operational life support? I've said in the prior call that you were not going to take that role. It's become alarming that as a leader of a business, you can be so flippant with your assurances. Verde co-owners deserve and demand a fully focused, dedicated CEO who's committed to turning around a truly disastrous situation. I would like to think I am this person, fully committed and fully enfranchised in making sure this takes place.
I also trust the board of directors should be constantly reviewing and making sure from an independent perspective that what I believe to be true is indeed true. Looking at OBI, OBI is right now pretty much a dormant company with a strong board of directors as well, a very active chairman, and it's a pre-operational company that even when and if it managed to raise capital, what it will do is to employ a geologist who's going to go there and drill a bunch of drill holes in a first time. What I'm trying to say, anything required from a time commitment at OBI is rather simple. Quite honestly, after doing this thing for 20 years, it's not something that takes a lot of brain power to go on about. I trust, again, both board of directors to fully independently currently assess the situation.
Myself, who is, I believe, the biggest shareholders in both companies, will be the very first one to make sure I can step down from either companies whenever this becomes an issue. Next question. If product results are generally better when compared to potash according to many YouTube videos, then why are previous buyers apparently not loyal repeat customers? Let's stop with the first question. I've covered this before. Sometimes people won't buy back the product because they can get better financial terms elsewhere.
For example, if I am struggling financially as a farmer and I have already committed my collaterals to a distributor, I will, to a certain extent, need or end up buying whatever that distributor will be offering me rather than have the flexibility to buy and pick and choose from different players because I do not have any collateral to offer and my credit is not looking very strong. This is an example among several other reasons why we will lose certain sales, even in some cases from loyal repeat customers. We heard from some of our customers exactly what I described now. There were also some loyal repeat customers who came to buy back from us. When we look at the credit risk, it had deteriorated to a point that we just did not want to take the risk.
The sales team was eager to sell again, and I witnessed some homeric arguments between Felipe and the credit team versus our sales team. In several situations, we just decided not to sell, given how disastrous, how absolutely disastrous the whole situation with insolvency has been in Brazil in the last couple of years. Sales pinned back in 2022, and that was only because farmers desperately locked in discounted product with Verde during escalating prices. The drop-off since then and reported quarterly numbers suggest that farmers really do not find this product compelling or superior to potash, even at a discount. Can you point out where such reasoning is wrong? It will depend. It will depend. It will depend on the farmer. For a lot of farmers, this is exactly what their reasoning will be. They will look at us and say, "Hey, I can just get KCl.
It's something I've already been using. It's something I can get good credit terms. It's something easier to apply. Yes, for a lot of farmers, a lot of farmers, they will think exactly how you just described. The good news, though, is that there are a lot of farmers who see all the value, who see all the benefits, and they go on our YouTube videos and they talk about everything they've seen in better yields, in better soil, in healthier soils, in more crop protection. We believe there's plenty of farmers like those ones in Brazil to allow us to, at least in the first stage, allow us to sell 100% of our production capacity at some point.
In our press release, which you just put out, you talk about how much of Brazil's market share we would need to achieve in order to get to 3 million tons per year production. It's around 4% in a market that has been growing 3%-4% per year. So it's a tiny percentage. That's why you need to keep in mind. It's a tiny percentage of the Brazilian market we need to, tiny market share we need to capture in order to get to full production and in order to very hopefully very soon be able to come up with the numbers we know we can generate in profitability by increasing our production and diluting all of our fixed costs and start generating.
The presentation available on the website has a good slide showing what the business would look like once we hit that full 3 million tons production capacity. You can see how from where we are now to that stage, how exciting it all gets. Let's not forget, very tiny market share we need and how as soon as we start diluting those fixed costs, how exciting it all gets, all becomes in terms of returns. Can you explain this renewed strategy of trying to increase low carbon special product sales, which is considerably more expensive than CAM40 when borrowing costs are so high and BACS has never been more than around 10%-12% sales? I think I discussed that earlier. We're not increasing costs to farmers. We're just replacing the source of nutrients they are getting.
It's expensive versus K Forte, but for the farmer, it carries nutrients like boron, like sulfur that farmers will be buying no matter what. Next one, do you have an approximation of how further credit losses will be this year? Will they be as bad as the 2024 credit losses of $2.3 million? Felipe, do you want to answer that one? I'll go forward to the next question while I look at this one. Does the company have any further debt renegotiation options at its disposal once the grace period expires? With each quarterly release, it's looking very likely that Verde will not be able to generate near enough cash just to service the interest on its sizable debt. The answer is yes. There are absolutely several other options for Verde that we can use. Some of them we're already using.
There's a lot of stuff going on. Very interesting stuff, very exciting stuff, which makes me quite relaxed about the overall situation. I can't say a lot right now at this point, but I haven't been losing my sleep over debt at all. Next question, Felipe. Going back there, do you have an approximation of how further credit losses will be this year? Will they be as bad as the 2024 credit loss of $2.3 million?
As we've seen, sorry, Q1, we had the worst result in the last year. I do expect, as I've mentioned, that Q2 up to Q4 is going to be better than last year, especially in Q4 and Q3. In the end of the day, I'm not able to tell you exactly the number because, for example, we have some clients that should be paying during this year.
If, for example, they get a judicial recovery protection, I must book them as ACL immediately. If you did not have these situations, I would say that it would be better than last year. Since I do not know who else or which company might be or farmer might be joining the Chapter 11 or the protection situation, I'm not able to tell you yet. I would say that I do not expect at all to be worse than last year. The worst case scenario may be equal or similar.
We're approaching very fast the end of the questions. If you feel like you're not happy with my answer or if you have a follow-up question, now it's your chance. The last conference call, we mentioned that an update on ERW was imminent. What has happened to that?
It's been over a year now since we heard something on the subject. I think we, the shareholders of the company, deserve an update, even if there might not be any substantial to report about. I guess many investors believe the carbon credit business is dead for Verde. As I said, anyone following us on social media has seen we're hiring for a very senior ERW position. We're working on some research papers to be published on what the work we did. We're working on an application for something very, very special. There's some other possibilities there. My only worry here, guys, is putting an update because we've done that in the past. Then people come and criticize us. "Oh, you know there was nothing there. Why are you just giving this update? And you know there's nothing material.
We're just trying to, what are you trying to do? It's been my life for the last 20 years. No matter what we do, we get criticized about it, which we're fine. We're used to it by now. It's been 20 years. I just feel a bit like it's such a material business opportunity. You have so much money changing hands on ERW, so much excitement on ERW. When you look at how material it could be, even in terms of generating a fully independent ERW company, it's massive. It's absolutely massive. I think we'll be very diligent on the work we're doing, working with the best anyone could be working with. We just hope very soon we can come up with something very material to address this. I apologize for not just giving the update.
I hope just by the cause we're trying to keep people up to date. That's the last question, unless anyone wants to send another one, at least showing on my screen right now, which is, "Have there been any success in the trials with BioRevolution?" Yes, we have some very good results with BioRevolution. It is something else which, again, we could do press release, showing how good it is and all the benefits, which if you go on our blog, I guess it's important because our marketing materials, we often put out results and how good everything is. We have the videos, which is a way for you guys to get a bit closer to the customers. Again, I'm not sure if we should put a full-on independent press release on BioRevolution, but it's amazing.
It's amazing what it does and how important microbes are for soils. We are looking at different ways to further grow that business. I will make sure there's no more questions here. It doesn't look like there's any more questions. I would like to thank everyone who attended this conference live. I would like to thank you for watching it on YouTube. I would like to thank you even more if you've decided to hit that like button and share it among everyone who might benefit from today's presentation. It hasn't been a very pleasant or easy two years, but I can assure you it's not the first storm we are weathering since 2004. Since 2004, when I started the company, we've seen much worse. We've gone through much harder, tougher situations.
We made a lot of mistakes, and we learned a lot from them. We always came out very strong once the crisis was behind us. It is very unfortunate. We are all struggling and suffering from probably the worst agricultural crisis, financial agricultural crisis in Brazil in a generation. We would like to think the worst is behind us, and we would like to think and hope we will resume our growth trajectory, which honestly was astounding, astonishing, phenomenal prior to the crisis hitting us. That is, again, we have learned from the crisis, and I have every reason to believe we are going to come out of it stronger than ever. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you very much for your understanding. We are always eager to learn more from you via your questions.
Always makes me think, always gives us some discussion points for the next management meetings in Verde AgriTech. People know every time there's a call like this, I come back for the next management meeting full of different ideas and more questions. I appreciate each and every one of those questions you've answered, and you should be absolutely certain that they help us shape our business and the way we think and make us think about different possibilities. Thank you. If there's anything else you want to share, please send us an email. Look forward to seeing you very soon, and hopefully in a much better market. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you.