Brasilagro Companhia Brasileira de Propriedades Agricolas

BOVESPA:AGRO3

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q1

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

We are gathered here together for an earnings call for BrasilAgro. And today, we're going to be presenting the earnings for the first quarter of the harvest year that just began in '24 and '25. If you're keeping up with us in English, just select the English option here. Also, the presentation is available on the website. Enjoy the call, and thank you for your presence.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Good morning once again. Thank you for your participation. It's always a pleasure. I think both calls are really important. And we have the one that we start off with and the one that we wrap up the earnings in the year, right? And so, in this first call, we have many important bits of news with numbers showing a bit of the alignment the company has been designing for '24, '25, which no doubt, we hope will have a bit less climate challenges and a bit more of the commercial challenges when it comes to commodities.

And so, no doubt at all, the company will have to demonstrate resilience as they share these results. And so, how we see this and also a net income in the first 3 months of BRL 97.5 million. 

Then in sequence, we're going to get into a bit more of this, the net income and adjusted EBITDA that come from operational revenues that you'll see up ahead and part of them come from accountability of the Phase 2 of the Alto Taquari Farm. And so, this is an important point to highlight because if you haven't been accompanying our earnings releases for quite a while, about 2 years ago, we started important sales of this business unit, and this business unit was occupied with sugarcane at the time.

So initially, we delivered the areas that were already kind of reaching their full exhaustion and the newer sugarcane plantations, we also now are transferring the ownership. And that's where we actually understand that we're also transferring all of the risks and the owners and bonus of the assets. And that's when we account this in our balance sheet and releases and earnings in the company. So, we're going to show you what the sales were like here.

From an operational aspect, just to wrap up here in this quarter, 1.6 million tonnes harvested. We already started the soy plantations and everything involving the grains market happened at the beginning. And it was a little more delayed or turbulent. But ever since then, things got a lot more normalized.

Mato Grosso should also be reaching -- So, it's a year many challenges, but I think you guys have also been watching our business closely. And once again, the company has brought in resilience with agricultural results and real estate results. And this also reinforces our dedication to deliver results in both pillars. 

I want to remind you that these sales were BRL 525 million for 1,100 per hectare. And the total area sold was 2,694 hectares. And this is a combined Tier, and it's 18.6%. So, initially, we delivered 1,537 hectares to the buyer, and we accounted for this.

And then secondly, that exact surface we're discussing that kind of led the sugarcane plantation to its full exhaustion. And that's where we can see the company's resilience and also in regards to the operational aspects as well. Next, please. 

Well, as I mentioned, it's a year of challenges, commercial challenges, no doubt. And, as always, we have some price reversals and this initial stability of the rain period in Mato Grosso made us have some kind of a generalized delay in the beginning of the soy plantations region. And in this region, we have a bit of a limitation. And that's where we've already seen the market react significantly to the corn prices.

The soy prices, as we've always mentioned, kind of going sideways, and the cotton prices also were a little bit lower. But the main surprise to all of us is, I've been in the business for over 30 years, I've never seen something go up so much in 60 days, the price of cattle and also, of course, reflects this, although it is not that significant in our total EBITDA, but it does bring positive contribution. 

So, ethanol, we've seen significant recovery, and also everything that's been done when it comes to biofuels then we'll see more stability at about 700, and sugar, everyone knows the market very well, but sugar at these levels of about 22.7 are compensating about 25% more than the ethanol production.

So basically, these are the main commodity events and prices we've been accompanying. And after, we'll show you how the company is positioning itself in this price rally. 

Next, well, then the planted surface, we should finish this harvest with about 180,000 hectares, if we were to round that number up. And I think what's really important to highlight above all is that the company is still very relevant for soy and sugarcane, but this has been a shift in our business when we consider the projects we're developing in the company and also distributing this breakdown of these harvests.

So there's a commercialization curve as well, and it demonstrates a bit of the company's trend to search for specificity for other products that will no doubt bring in more added value to our areas.

Then on the photo to the side, we can see how things are doing right now with the hydro capacity and Mato Grosso started off a little bit late. But in exchange, we also experienced things that we hadn't been doing for quite a while.

We started planting in the Mapitoba regions earlier than normally. And we already started to plant in Bahia, Maranhao and also Piauà within the actual month of October. Usually, these regions start plantations around November 5.

Next, please. Well, just to reinforce the calendar a bit on how we're doing and it's important to standardize this so that everyone can get a feel about the agricultural companies and what they do and what's considered a cost or biological asset, what's revenue. And they chart on the side kind of shows the status of the company is over 40% of its area planted, and we started the plantation of beans throughout the beginning of December and cotton as well.

So, we always see that we have the cotton harvest, which is the main harvest, and then we have the second harvest where you have more towards the beginning of January, the cotton in the second harvest, the Safrinha, they call it in Brazil.

So, in cattle raising and the animal protein, we can see the resilience of this activity. It's a quarter where although it's the first quarter that's based, it's basically condensing the drought periods of the year.

So, when we look at the graph from backwards forward, what matters really is the GMD and that's the daily average gains the 510 grams, and we have 0.24 in the first three months. But it's worth mentioning that the first three months are the drought periods, the months where you have basically the maintenance of the kilos and you're working to not lose kilos in the drought periods.

And then, of course, the hydro availability starts now in November. This year, we anticipated this a little bit in Paraguay, but also in Brazil. As we've seen in the Bahia region, I just mentioned, we started planting already. This was great to start off the plantation and also to have the new sprouts of our pasture area. So, this is a photograph of the quarter, but, of course, we have very positive expectations to reach the 510 grams of GMD.

Next, here, we're going to talk about sugarcane and how we're doing today. This is the photograph. This is a photo where we've considered up until the month of October. We already had about 78%, 79% of the harvested area. And so, what we've been seeing is, despite a very rigorous winter, the average productivity in the company are slightly like one ton above what was budgeted. And for this period, we had an average TCH of about 84 tons, and now we have 85.

And it's worth highlighting here with an important piece of information that despite the winter being very rigorous and some units having some irrigation issues, we have an ETR accumulation curve that's greater historically than the last few years, and we're going to see this in the results up ahead when Gustavo is presenting.

So, the productivity of the sugarcane is within what's expected with some slight variations, 1%, 1.5% above. But we've had a content of sugar and the level of sugar sclerosis, let's say, that's higher than what we expected. So, that also contributes a lot to strengthening the company's performance in the first quarter, which Gustavo is going to show you up ahead.

Next, please. I think here, just to show you a bit of our chat session here with the commercial challenges and we are also bringing in a bit of expectation with what we've been doing so far, what we've been handling so far, and it's worth mentioning always that it's not only the absolute price we're looking at. We have the contribution margin here.

So, at certain moments when we are going to sell product or commodity, we're also looking at the cost composition. This is a photograph of the company within these first months, and we have practically 40% of the soy sold at a price of $11.46 and we take a look at the current scenario, it's considered a good price.

Currency has been a huge challenge. You've seen this, and we're taking advantage with the currency volatility a bit more, and we've been using this within our policy with a match of 20%. So, we're a little more advanced the average sugarcane price like 5.54.

It's worth mentioning that we're selling soy and currency for about 6 or 7 months. When you look at the spot photograph now, it's one thing, but this is what we've been doing throughout this process as we prepared for this campaign.

Then on the graph on the top, we have cotton. And then for cotton, we have two photographs of the cotton. The current harvest where cotton was already harvested it's being processed, it's going to be commercialized. And then you have the harvest that is coming up ahead.

In the current harvest, this cotton is was practically already 100% set. When we look at the 557 now, it's worth mentioning that we took on this position back there in the past. So, I think it was a great currency, and we had a price about 90% that was closed at almost $0.83 per pound. So, we're going to talk about '24 and '25. We have 34% sold already. It's a good price range.

When we look at spot, we're talking about 69. We have 79, almost $ 0.10 considering the '24, '25 harvest and also taking advantage of this reflex in the currency for both commodities, cotton and soy.

Then for corn, we know that there's a big challenge for operationalization due to liquidity in the contracts, and it's different than like soy and cotton. We have a huge offering of contracts and in corn, we operate mainly by BMF. And then we have 16% of corn commercialized. But this seemed to be assertive because, where we saw this important recovery and the company is going to try to capture this.

So ethanol is at about 2,700 at the moment, and our hedge of 31% was 2,600. So, it's also worth mentioning that this harvest came in with ethanol at BRL 2300. So, this is the average price we have, and it's way higher than what it was at the beginning of the harvest and maybe a little bit lower than the spot price now. So, this is really important.

We have a total receivable of BRL 900 million. We have over 9,070,000 of soy to receive. So, that comes into our P&L. And, of course, we monitor this. So, we have this receivable of 25. We have a percentage sold through structures with derivatives and at 12.37. And then we've already started to sell a bit of the future receivable dollar and taking advantage of this rally in the last days. 

So, this is a bit of the photograph. It's a year of many challenges. We want to show the resilience and capacity for management in the company. And to summarize, everyone always asks about how the inputs are. Here, we had a bit of a change, and, in the last slides, we were showing this curve in a period of 2 years, and we've reduced this to a 1-year period so that we could demonstrate these variations.

So, I really believe that the company was assertive. Chloride is something that the company bought very well, and it's at a really good margin ratio. And phosphate there was already an expectation. I look at the photograph at the beginning of the year, and that's considering an expectation but considering the market, that's one fact that didn't happen too much and that generated important sustained support, right? So, we're talking about MAP considering about $600.

The company bought this soy at around $590. But as I mentioned, $290 and nitrogen products as well. So, a pretty interesting levels despite the ups and downs. On this side, you can see the percentage that we always see. When you look at the nitrogen aspect, there's a remaining sugarcane amount and also from the second harvest.

The biggest consumption, well, it doesn't really happen in the soy crops, but in the sugarcane and corn crops. So, cotton will be applied from January, February. And so, the second harvest corn as well in this window, and this is mainly due to the non-need to use these inputs in the short term. 

So, for chloride, same thing happens as well. And then we're already visualizing this and so, that's because the levels of chloride are also very attractive. This is the graph on the bottom, where you can see stability in the exchange ratios, and this has been contributing to margin recoveries. I've always been talking about this, and that's where the cost goes up and products drop a lot, but we start seeing this margin getting back to the historical levels. So, Gustavo, I will pass this back to you, and then we'll come back.

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being with us as we look at the results of these first 3 months. As Ana mentioned, this conference mentioning that this is the beginning of our harvest year and our accounting exercise goes from the 1st of July to the 30th of June every year. And just to explain, considering the results of this BRL 97 million.

Here, it's good to take a look at the explanation of the net revenue, right? So, Andres has already mentioned the sale and the accounting for this 1,057 hectares of the Taquari Farm in Mato Grosso.

There was a revenue generated about BRL 192 million, and then it showed this amount was a bit higher. But I want to remind you all that we always calculate the present value. And we compare the Chicago dollar and that's another sale we also had in Bahia with a revenue of BRL 6 million.

They had already anticipated part of this, but both of these combined actions add up to this revenue of BRL 199 million. And after when we discount taxes and the cost of acquisition and investments that we perform, we can reach an EBITDA of BRL 170 million, and we'll get into this a bit more ahead.

Then on the other hand, from an operational aspect during this period, we continue to have our stock sales for soy that we collected in the second quarter of this year between March and June and also corn, which became an important aspect as well in this harvest and also a second harvest that we'll look at. 

This is cotton that we already had only maybe like the last stocks of the previous harvest and they're mainly seeds and other lower quality types of cotton. And then what we intensified here was the production and commercialization of sugarcane, where we have about 50% of all of the production volume for this.

And that also complies with this combination of BRL 325 million that we can see as operational net revenue. So, on the right side, you can see the amount build. And then we can also see about 57,000 tons of soy, 20,000 more than the previous year when we compare the same period. 

And here, it's worth mentioning that we also had the strategy of carrying on a larger stock for sales in the second semester. This decision was correct because we are able to have better pricing through this increment. And the real also had this major loss in value, which helped in a bit. But in exchange, we can also see that we have a lower volume of corn. That's mainly due to composition of the areas that are planted, and we had already talked about this.

And so, we had understood this reduction in margins and the impossibility to recover prices. We had considered we should only plant that surface that would make sense, right? 

So, we always need to try to give it some cover or have like a swap in crops and try to find the best types of productivity in soy. Sugarcane, we have also been reaping at a pretty good pace, 191,000 tons. And Andre was mentioning and the cotton that's commercialized represents a greater volume of seeds and less of the low-quality part of the cotton. And then on the 30th of September, we already have the entire harvest of this cotton that we have just produced. 

And today, we have about over BRL 70 million of cotton in stock, and they're going to be processed and then they'll start the sales from December this year onwards. So, when we consider the unit prices in reais per ton, here, I think what most contributes to improving the operational EBITDA, right? So, the grains had an important recovery. If you see soy at about 3% and also the corn at about 5%. 

But I think this is levered mainly by the internal market. We've seen this increment in demand through plants to start producing ethanol and the perspective we have for some farms where we've been producing very little corn, and we start having the possibility to balance out a bit more and increase our corn production ahead.

So, the main highlight here in regards to the sugarcane price, which we saw 21% last year and we had a problem, which was not all of affected the ethanol prices due to fuel or the gasoline prices. 

Now what we're seeing is that there's a pretty good recovery. And I believe that the market also helped us because lower production in Brazil kind of impacted the price of ethanol, but also a factor with the company's management, we started supplying to a plant that produces sugar, and that improves our price mix.

So then after, you have the cotton price also with a significant drop, but we understand that we should not consider that it's mainly connected, let's say, to commercialize subproducts or low-quality products. 

But on the 30th of September 2024, we're also seeing the total net revenue of BRL 197 million. The main variations that we can see on the graph on the top, where you can see the results. Then we can see, with the incremental pricing, the sugarcane as well, BRL 8 million with a greater sale of volumes, especially for soy.

And we see the sales also contributing in the results and when you see the operational net revenue related to the estimates that are related to this graph as a fair value and also including the financial results that are mainly affected by the present value adjustments when we have transactions provoking this revenue impacting these results. 

When you look at this BRL 79 million, you can see the soy contributing with BRL 26 million and sugarcane with BRL 18 million. And then, of course, we have cotton and administrative expenses as well, where you have a temporality and these contribute a bit downwards. And then the sales, as we mentioned, the BRL 107 million, which is the combined result of the sales. 

So, in the next page, you can see also gross results per crop. And so, we always say that not only soy and sugarcane, but when you add them up, they're about 83% of this revenue and almost 100% of the results. And when you see the main highlights are the returns to historical levels that we're starting to notice in the margins and in the contribution margin.

So, normally, we can see our histories are always close to 10%. So first, we get into the soy, which is a total result of BRL 33 million and the margins then we get back to these values that are historical. And the price of the tons, as we can see, they're always BRL 100 less. But for me, what I can also remind you that the soy where, before the month of June, we were talking about BRL 100 per sack with BRL 1,700 per tonne.

When you consider this cost of BRL 1,436, you had a really low margin. And so, this strategy of carrying on this soy up ahead generated a possibility to capture this premium with the best prices. And then we're considering some margins with a cost of BRL 500 that are lower, especially considering the inputs. And here, these margins were very good and they weren't in our plans before the 30th of June, but we understood that this would be an alternative that could be achieved.

Then we can see this reduction of this amount of the 24 million tonnes against the 48,000. But then here, as we mentioned, the decision was not to plant too much of an area. The previous margins are really negative as we have seen, although the prices had a slight recovery, right? So, maybe 5% or so and about 731 against 631, about 5% approximately. 

And the cost that had an increase in this case also, but not because of the inputs that we established with a harvest that was crops that were cheaper per hectare, but also because here, we have an important area for corn in the second harvest, and we had a smaller area with less productivity and a cost per ton that was higher.

So beans, not too much. [indiscernible] harvest sugarcane also has a gross result, the margins of 23%. And so, these are getting back to the historical levels. The increment in the margins are considering and also the production of greater levels of sugar than what we had expected.

If you remember the situation here with the cost, we had an increment, but especially our areas are all leased out. So, we have all of the production in these areas and an increment in the price would also impact the cost due to this.

The cotton, as I mentioned, we're not going to get into more details about this yet, but we do have a part that was sold in the beginning of this year, and that was already some amounts for disposal. Now, as Andres mentioned, we have the expectation for a very good margin in cattle raising. So, I think we should have approximately BRL 4 million on average of this stock per process.

In the next page, the results of the operations, right? So, the adjusted EBITDA, we've always calculated excluding the earnings of the biological assets, information on the sugarcane and grains, and we also adjust the derivative price, as you can see in the first line, everything we're going to be selling and whenever we have some kind of coverage as well.

Then the depreciation as well, the fixed assets and in the areas that were developed as well as the permanent crops. We also see the first graph on the top, where you can see the share of the adjusted EBITDA and BRL 61 million with a breakdown of the sugarcane as the main crop in this quarter and then the soy with 39% and the other crops not performing any kind of additional contribution.

Then last year, sugarcane also, naturally in this quarter, we see sugarcane really relevant in the results. And so the other products also had some kind of contribution of those 15%.

Then on the next slide here, you can see the level of debt in the company. And here, you can see the cash position and a debt of BRL 737 million with a cost of 99.18% CDI and a net debt of about BRL 550 million. And then you can see the schedule for these amortizations and BRL 438 million, BRL 97 million above 5 years. And it's also important, the sales accounted for this quarter, we have about like 9 million sacks to be received per sale, and this is the present value, which adds up to about BRL 891.8 million of receivables per sale near the farm.

And then on the next slide here, we just want to remind you that the dividends that are going to be paid on the 14th of November on Thursday next week, and it's BRL 1.96 per share. And with this, we can see that the average in the last 5 years that was going to be paid was about 9.5%.

The last point finally is just the recognition, which is a point that Andres always mentions, whenever there's a possibility to share this with you guys and we always say, look, there's 3 important pillars that the company has, right? So, the company's strategy must always be very clear. The processes to be able to keep up with a possible risk materiality matrix that's maybe not always considered or cared for, but we always talk about this with our employees as well because here, the cash belongs to a lot of people, right?

So, we don't have a single owner, and we must take care of this. And also, the third pillar is always people. Without people, we understand that the 2 other pillars are impossible to achieve. And so, we understand that sustainability in the business always depends on having good resources and good people to perform the plans. And in our opinion, these are always very attractive for shareholders.

Here, once again, every 3 years we have a survey done and we see or we try to search for ways to understand the level of satisfaction that the employees have with the company and the certification and if things were done correctly, if we were able to keep up with the certification as a major workplace.

Also, there's another point that's also really important, which is GPTW. We have this new certificate now, and that's a level of satisfaction people have with working with us. And this, by what they explained to us is that it's an important artificial intelligence that monitors and interprets a bit of a [indiscernible] that people have at the moment they fill out this research.

And then we can also say here, it's like a new CEO, let's see, that we're also super grateful for and committed to continue to search for these results through this pillar, personnel pillar. And then the capitals market, just to show you a bit of what the value is. With these shares, the BrasilAgro and in the U.S. also for 32.

Here, as we always mentioned, we have to bring this in and post this as well, investing in the company, understanding that the level of execution as we've been performing and this has been confirming our capacity as well, our desire to continue to learn and improve. And we understand that there's going to be other moments to take on new stock value.

So, we want to invite investors to invest in the company. Well, thank you, and now we're going to hop in with the Q&A.

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

Thank you, Gustavo. I like to wrap up. Now we're going to get into Q&A. So we have Pedro here, and you can open up his mic as well.

[Pedro Soares, analyst]

My first one is about the announcement you guys had with the increase of the area. This, Andre, during his discourse, he talked about the situation with the pricing, but I wanted to understand the drivers. And so, of course, the price is something that's a positive factor.

But I also want to ask if there's any view towards a better scenario and also this acceleration in the plantations as well, which really helped direct this decision saying that there will be a better window for the plantation of corn in the second harvest. And then in this scenario with more profitability and a better contribution margin expected for this crop. 

And then my second point is I want to understand your mindset for sugarcane, '26, '27. And we've been monitoring this drop in productivity significantly due to the drought period, the fungus issues, et cetera. And I wanted to understand if the rains now kind of generate any in regards to productivity, you still have to see a bit more rain. And just thinking, we know this is a very regional issue and to get your market vision as well, that would be really interesting.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Pedro, thank you. Those were very intelligent questions. Let's try to help and clarify those questions. So, first of all, what did we see in the last few days? I'm going to get the numbers from the company that reflect the numbers of Mato Grosso. The last harvest that we started in Mato Grosso, we started planting on the 23rd of September.

Everybody knows that there was a delay in the rainy season, and we started planting in Mato Grosso basically on the 5th of October. So, from the 25th to the 5th, that's approximately 9 days plus 5, 14 days, 2 weeks of delay. And that is a snapshot of the central area of Brazil and Mato Grosso started earlier than Goias. 

Goias took even longer to plant. And so, what does that mean in general? There is no uncertainty on productivity. There is just a delay of 15 days. There should not be any factor of low productivity, but there will be a delay in the yields.

We have historical data that with every delay in the beginning of July, you lose 10% to 12% per week in the second harvest. So, what we saw in the last few days, the last few months was exactly that a delay in the planting process. So, everyone has 10 to 15 days of delay. And then there's a potential of 15% to 20% of production for the second harvest. 

That is the initial focus. So, that means that a lot of people put more windows of operations. And so, people started planting in 24 hours on 2 shifts, 22-hour shifts, and there was a strong recovery in the last few weeks.

The recovery that gives us even more challenges in the business. So, if you plant a lot together, there's a higher challenge to harvest in the future. So, in Mato Grosso, the harvest is wet. That's what happened initially, and that also happened, especially in Mato Grosso. The first areas that were planted besides corn, there are areas where we plant cotton. 

And in Mato Grosso as a whole, we also saw that either they didn't plant soy, so they wouldn't lose the second window of time to plant cotton or they planted soy and the area that they planted soy in with a shorter window, that area makes more sense to have a second harvest because you'll be able to reap corn on the 15th of January, and it will be high productivity corn.

Remembering that on the second harvest, we are talking about the cycle of 120 days and then cotton 180 days. So, the impact of this delay for cotton is much worse than on corn. So, there was, in our case, well, we do not plant a lot of cotton, but I'm sure that this happened in the whole country of Brazil. 

Another thing, Pedro, that undoubtedly is important to mention, I always say that the farmers, and we also look at this is the margin of contribution. When we are working with the budgets, at the same time last year, we were announcing that we were reducing almost 10,000 hectares of corn because financially, it didn't make sense because the cost of production were very high and the cost expectations were very low. That was recovered.

And so, I do not only attribute this recovery in the price of corn to the delay of the planting of soy, but there's also an increase of internal consumption of corn for the production of ethanol. 

So, that has also heated up the price of corn, making corn go back to being more competitive. So, the margins when we made the decision to plant instead of soy or corn, we had margins that were practically 1/3 of the margins of soy. So, we would be planting corn to get BRL 700, BRL 800. That recovered a lot. We saw the price of corn in the average of the company. When I look at Mato Grosso Bia and Bahia, we saw a recovery of almost BRL 10 per bag.

If we have the intermediary or intermittent harvest, there was an increase in the price per bag. That's what we're betting on. We believe that it will improve and corn will be planted more. There's also the detracting factor, which is the window. That's an important aspect. That's my conclusion on corn along these lines.

It's also important to highlight that we are coming from a year of low intensity in the middle of summer, we are changing the phenomenon and theoretically, we get more neutrality. And then if everything continues normal, El Nino comes in and comes out or it will not come in depending on the heating of the ocean. 

What we see is that the phenomenon is losing its strength in the end of February and the beginning of March. And there will be some models that indicate that the neutrality from El Nino will probably in the short term, be weak. If that happens, Pedro, that changes the game.

So, if we see the initial lag today of La Nina moving towards neutrality, that brings us regularity in rain. And what do we expect from the rain? Well, if we have La Nina trying to go to an El Niño of low intensity, there could be a longer rainy season, and that rainy season will make a huge difference in the second harvest of corn.

So, it's too early to know. It's too early to say. I'm giving you the information from our meteorologistic team that works with us, but that is a point of attention that we need to pay attention to that may affect the price of corn. 

Now, let's talk about sugarcane. You were very precise in your questions. Of course, the expectations from the center and southern region of Brazil was very affected by the drought. There was an intense drought in the South. Finally, the rains are more regular.

The intensity of the drought is basically what we commented on. There was an increase of the grade of Sacros because of the longer drought. So the cane took longer to invert. The sugar, when it is stored, it starts losing its TL. And so, this year, since that was delayed, I think all of the mills and none of us, everyone will close at 3 or 4 points higher in the level of sugar harvested because of this. Now, the delay of rains also affects the seedlings of the sugarcane. 

So, I would, if I could have a reserve of sugarcane for next year. So, if you have an October that's very rainy and in November, that's going to be more regular, then everything changes. So there's that example in-house. We joke around in the sense, not in the literal sense, but we just say that, look, the rains of October, they give us 5% or 6% more productivity in sugar for the company.

So, those 5% or 6% more Pedro, I'm just making this comment. Just to tell you what can happen in this scenario. The scenario will not be for the center, South and Midwest. They probably won't have the 5% or 6% more, which is what happened in the last harvest for sugarcane. Our expectation is that everyone knows that, unfortunately, we'll have those historical numbers of sugarcane. It seems like we have an embleglatic mark. 

We're never able to grow consistently. We overcome it and then we go backwards. So, the commercial vision for sugarcane continues to be at the historical numbers. I think there are 2 things that are important to mention here. The issue of the exchange rate in a certain way, it gives us some protection and better revenue for Brazilian commodities in the case of exports of ethanol, and it also undoubtedly brings us better revenue in the case of the mills and in the price of cane.

So, in the short period of time, we believe that it will remain very similar to what it is, obviously, with a strong tendency with the source of biofuels being used and mixture of ethanol and gasoline. This could also sustain ethanol production. 

Now, more recently, we also see the exchange increase, which will probably give more parity to ethanol, more favorable to ethanol. So, in the case of ethanol, I do not see a scenario that is stable. I see a scenario that is stable or that will be better. For sugarcane, it will be the same. I think it will be the levels that are regulated by the market at around GBP 27 pounds per weight. That's what we think is going to happen.

Sometimes there's a huge offer from India, but more and more, we believe as a society that we are evolving with the biofuels, and we will start having a factor of more stability in the production of sugar in a worldwide level when India starts producing ethanol as well. 

So, for sugarcane, Pedro, and productivity, we think it's the same or a bit worse in the next harvest in general. Another thing that's important that I forgot to mention that I think is important to say here is that, we saw an acceleration, an important acceleration in the increase of the cost of capital.

We see that as an important movement for me that can give us some pushback in the renewal of the channels for Canaville. So, in my vision, I think that could be a pushback. If we're talking about planting sugarcane now in January and March, the expectation is that well, you are all better equipped to analyze the interest rates. And, of course, that makes the cost of capital increase, and that can be a factor that will affect the Canaville.

[Pedro Soares, analyst]

Just to make sure I understood exactly, in corn, you were talking about an improvement of BRL 700 plus BRL 1,500?

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

No, just a minute. You have to look at the harvest and the second harvest. This is how we calculate it. We had an approximate cost of BRL 200 or BRL 300 per hectare, and we were able to overcome it with BRL 500 per hectare. So, it was BRL 300 as per cost and BRL 2,000 in margin per hectare.

What happened was that the price of soy continued to be the same and the middle harvest and our expectation today which is the price recovery is that we are expecting BRL 100,000 more in recovery. So, it was BRL 1,000 now it's BRL 2,000.

[Gustavo Troyano, analyst]

Andrea, my question for you is to get your point of view on the global political arena in the United States. The dynamic was affected the price of soy, some things changed from then until now, Brazil is more relevant. But I would like to get your point of view if you think there's any impact for Premium, if you think there will be a similar impact or if it will be different than what happened in the past. I would like to know what your point of view is.

And then the second one, Andre, also connected to the first question in this macro situation, I would like to know if there is any impact in the price of soy combined to the macro impact of the exchange rate and cost of capital. Do you think that next year will be a year of expansion of area? That was something that we discussed in the BrasilAgro Day. So, I would like to hear an update if you think that the expansion of area will accelerate or deaccelerate since the dynamics are not so favorable.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Well, Gustavo, with those 2 questions, I think we can write a thesis, but let's go. Politics and exchange rate is the worst thing to comment on. We do not have any preference for A or B, but let's analyze what happened and let's say what we expect in the future.

No doubt, there could be a worsening of the relations between tariffs between the United States and China. And, of course, that could be converted into benefits for Brazil, which could be an important relevant factor.

I would not say that we are far from, and my expectation, our expectation. I think we are far from seeing a trade war again like we saw in a Chicago DT with 40 positive points and then 50 positive points. I do not think that's what the market expects. That's not what we believe.

But I do think there is a tendency to turn a key for the Chinese to or the market to the Asian market as a whole to give more attention to Brazilian soy and maybe we can strengthen our premiums internally.

It's important to remember, Gustavo, that we cannot forget that in this analysis, there is the supply of soy. When we had the first trade war in the past, when we had the geopolitical conflict, we already had a different situation with soy. We were talking about 130 million tons of soy at that year. Now we are at 178 million tons.

So, taking into account the proportions, the impact of a geopolitical impact is different when you have a higher level of supply. So, it's important to remember that the premium can go up 200 points, and it's very intrinsic at that moment.

At that moment was very intrinsic to the geopolitical situation and the stock of passage. So today, we have 20, at that time, we had 30. So, the effect of that at that time, which, once again, we believe the effect will be more moderate and in our point of view, positive.

On the expansion of area, definitely, I believe -- well, Gustavo, I'm very tactical in saying that it's more related to the margin of contribution of the crop than the cost of capital itself for that transformation. So, if we see soy reacting with a better price, that will accelerate the transformation. I can tell you that we actually looked at this a lot, it's more related to the margin of contribution than eventually the cost of capital.

If soy starts making money again at 1 million per hectare per year, then we're talking about the margins of contribution of 4, 3 million per hectare. That's not what we're seeing. Now the supply, it's at 2,000 per hectare. So, we expect to have expansions of areas regularly. We do not believe in a great expansion of hectares per year.

I also don't believe that, that will, I don't think it will be less than 200,000 or 300,000 hectares per year. That's what we think. Interest rates is a pushback, but not as much as the margin of contribution. I'm not sure if I was able to answer both of your questions?

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

Now we will open Guilherme's microphone from BTG.

[Unknown Analyst]

Just changing the topic to understand a little bit more. How is the market for the sale of the land? How do you see that with the price of commodities with a lower structure? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Okay. Let's go, Guilherme. That's a great question. What I always say is, the Brazilian tax system, especially in agribusiness is a very intelligent system. It provokes reinvestment, and it is successful due to the vocation and dedication of everyone that works in this business, but partly for the possibility of reinvestment being something very attractive.

So, I could say those days of euphoria have passed where we could see every day, at least here in the company, I would receive a fund that wanted to set up to buy land here, and it's been a while since that happened. So, we know that, that has cooled down mainly because of the interest rate, and that's what is the main driver of everything.

But when we look at the other side, I think there's a more rational vision of having a national head and natural protection and always analyze the capacity of payment and capacity and quantity of soy that they can generate. So, if they are producing soy at a cost of 35, 40, they are paying x in their area that is leased. So, there is the remaining area of 10 or 15 bags per year.

What am I going to do with that? We have seen an evolution in my point of view. There has been an evolution in the pillar of land as well as in the pillar of infrastructure and mechanization in the last few years.

The mechanization, yes, it has been provoked. It was provoked by the low interest rates. So, when interest rate was low, the Brazilian fleet, we saw that Mato Grosso suffered a lot. And we are seeing that in the American economy as well. The American farmers have a much better capacity than us.

On one hand, it did not favor investment in machinery, but on the other hand, there's a basket to put money in, which is the expansion of areas, so expansion in neighboring areas. And then no doubt there are opportunities there. So, I think that the capacity of reinvestment will always exist because they are always thinking strategically, how much did it cost me this year? How much is going to be left over? Guilherme, I would tell you that highs and lows are normal.

Productive frustrations is what affects the land market much more than the price of commodities or interest rates because the price of land is very connected to the price of the bag of soy. So, it's mainly that. It's not the climatic frustration. I see that the market is not generally heating up, but there are some small improvements.

I think there will be an increase in sales of land, but I think there will be opportunities and other things that were very leveraged, let's say. And we are very active in this pillar. So as a company, we are oxygenating our portfolio, be it with our own areas or with leases. But I do not think that the market of land has disappeared, but it's more the investments I mean, there is a pillar that's very important, which is storage or deposits, but that also is affected by the interest rates.

So, when we have interest rates of 3% or 4%, 5%, that would favor a lot of the investments in machinery and investments. When the interest rate is that high, you'll do what you can.

So, I think the farmers that did their homework that have their numbers controlled, what they can do is they'll increase the rhythm of their expansion, but there will be expansion.

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

We are a bit over time, but I think there are two more very interesting questions. One from [indiscernible] Francisco. Thank you so much for your message saying that even with a bad day just listening to BrasilAgro's call, you feel better.

So, Andre is going to give us another desertation, but let's try to be brief. So, what are the opportunities considering the climate? And what have you identified with the high leverage in the agro market?

[André Guillaumon, executive]

That is a very good question. It's a question that I always ask whenever I visit any company. It's one of those questions that you asked where you can see the way that the managers evaluate problems and opportunities.

I would say that what do we need to improve as a company, we have a very important pillar in having diversity of crops. We are thinking of dedicating more time to that, in terms of quality. We are talking about beans. We are talking about cotton. I think that was something important that we learned last harvest.

A second very important thing that we learned, I always say that we need to admit new mistakes. If we make the same mistake twice, then that's stupid. So, I think this is a pillar that was hard for us to understand, but everyone dedicated themselves to this.

So, another pillar that we learned a lot with undoubtedly was the rhythm of expansion. I think last year, we started a lot of new operations in Mato Grosso. It's not bad to put them all on max. But when you increase the area of grains, you have to provide all of the services to incorporate false fit and limestone, which does not allow you to have an interesting agitation level, which can cause a drought in the following years.

So, in the state of Mato Grosso, we opened a lot of new areas, a lot of areas with a low coverage plants. So, they say it happens every 40 years, but it happened last harvest, and it did harm our operations in Nova [ Parambi ]and [ Riranguito ]. So, I think those are the 2 lessons we learned.

We do have a vision, a triannual vision now. We've always been paying attention to it. But since we are accelerating our expansion in the pasture areas, there was a lot of soy planted last year in Mato Grosso in the conventional level. I think that was something that we did learn as a company. And it's not what happened in Bahia, Maranhao and Piaui because we've been working very hard there to have regenerative agriculture.

If you have new areas, you do not need to have regenerative agriculture. It's when you are burning organic material, not on the contrary. But from the fertility point of view, you are adding organic material and then that would be regenerative agriculture.

So, that was something that we learned this year from the operational point of view. And the second point you touched on in relation to leverage. Of course, that is something we have been working on a lot.

There are some current transactions. We are working on some of them. That euphoria of the good years of margins of contributions the sector has been leveraged. I don't think it's the fault of the farmers. It's not really the farmer's fault, but it's the fault of the farmers that were trying to become businessmen or businessmen trying to get into the activity and then they leverage themselves and now the interest rate CDI at 12.

The cost of capital is really high. As Gustavo showed you, we have the cost of capital below CDI. So, I think that will generate interesting opportunities in the next few months for the company to oxygenate our areas or our leases.

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

Thank you, Andre. The last question is what was the, this is from Bruno Marks. What was the main drive that we had for the reduction of 26% in the cost per ton compared to last year? He's talking about sugarcane. He didn't say, but I believe so. Yes, cane.

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

Well, I believe that what has been happening in the market, let's remember '22, '23, we had around BRL 5,000 per hectare of cost and with BRL 60 in the bag of soy. And then we went to BRL 4,700 per hectare with a bag at BRL 173. And then for the next year, we're operating at a bag of BRL 110, BRL 120 per bag. The main reason for that is because the first harvest, that's because the price of the seeds are very expensive. The defensives are very expensive.

Glyphosate is $13 per liter. In the last harvest, it was $3 per liter. The fertilizers dropped mainly in chloride, not so much in nitrogen, but in the other ones, they went down a lot and then the logistics also accumulated in lowering the price. And then the price of diesel also dropped.

And so, all of that affects the price of the fertilizer until it reaches the areas where we have plantation. So, it was a combination of all of these different items. In general, there was a correction in the services a little below inflation, but I'm not sure if it was the only item that continues, but the impact of the main fertilizers and seeds generated that economy. And for the next year, we hope to continue correcting it decreasingly.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Very good answer, Gustavo, but just to illustrate a little bit more. Gustavo said we left 5 pre-pandemic, post-pandemic went to 4,500 and then 3,900, then 3,600. So, that is the curve. That's the cost directly from the production of soy per hectare. We're talking about inputs, fertilizers and Agritoxins and services. And Gustavo said that there was also a small correction in logistics.

In general, we did a company -- it's hard to give you a hard number because there's a different number in Bahia Maranhao and the most expensive logistics is Vale do Araguaia and Xingu, but I could say that the combo it would be $50 or $60 per ton. Some regions dropping even more, sorry, reals not dollars, BRL 50 to BRL 60 per ton.

At the peak, we had the most expensive logistics of the company. Xingu reached almost BRL 500 in Barcarena, and that went back to BRL 430. And so, that is part of the cost of those direct cost of production.

[Ana Paula Zerbinati Gama, executive]

Wonderful. I would like to thank everyone, Andre, Gustavo for their participation, everyone who stuck with us until the end, I think we are starting a great harvest after a very challenging harvest. So, we are very optimistic, and I will pass the floor to Andre for his closing comments. Thank you.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Well, once again, thank you so much for listening to us. This is our first call, and you can count on our dedication. Gustavo commented on the certification that we just received. This is something that I insist on. I like to insist on. That's why we are so comfortable with our sustainability in the long term where the company is not 1 or 2 people. There can be 1 or 2 Maestros, but the company is an orchestra.

So, if we have a certification, it means that the Orchestra is working. If the Orchestra wasn't working, we would not have the certification. So, the certification is proof that we have an Orchestra working and that gives us more energy to continue delivering results to our shareholders.

So, we have a robust process to support this process, and we have qualified people to deliver the results of the process that we expect. So, once again, thank you so much who have been with us for this last 1.5 hours, and you can count on us.

The harvest will be less challenging, we hope than last year, but we still have some horizon before us. And so, let's wait and see what will be the results. So, thank you so much, everyone, and have a great weekend.