Brasilagro Companhia Brasileira de Propriedades Agricolas

BOVESPA:AGRO3

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q4

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Good afternoon. We're here once again, closing the year, another safer year 2022, Q4 2022. My name is Ana Paula, I'm responsible for Investor Relations at BrasilAgro. Today, I have with me Mr. André Guillaumon, our CEO; and Gustavo Lopez, our CFO. For those who are hearing our audio in English, the presentation is available in chat. We will have a Q&A session. Once again, thank you for participating. And now I'd like to pass the floor to André.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Good afternoon. Thank you, Ana. Thank you to all the participants who are with us this year. And just correcting a point, Ana is not only the Head of Investor Relations, she is the Head of the BrasilAgro Institute.

So let's begin. Let's see the slides. Well, once again, thank you very much. It's a great satisfaction to be with you here. I believe that the numbers this year show what we said in the last calls with you, telling the story, how the year was going, the results, many problems, adversities. This year began in the middle of the pandemic. In the middle of the year, we have the war in Ukraine, unbalancing supplies. So another year that shows how the company has worked hard with resilience, preparing its talent so we can overcome these problems. And the numbers will show our success, and it's a great satisfaction to bring such positive numbers, records.

So we have a net revenue of BRL 1.5 billion, net profit of BRL 520 million, the highest net profit in the company's history, very important and reinforcing. We will see the strategy that is the winning strategy, real estate and operations, adjusted EBITDA of almost BRL 750 million. Total production, when we add [ cultures ] sugarcane, more than 2.6 million tons and a dividend proposal that we will take in October of BRL 320 million. So these are the numbers, the highlights of the year, and we will give you more color about this.

Well, I believe -- this is a new slide in the presentation to show what the company has been doing for a long time. I always said that ESG is very linked to the DNA of the company, a company that was working, doing a lot in social terms. Due to the characteristics of geographic diversity, we have many -- we work in many poor areas. And a positive relationship that we have with states licensing and governance, too, is linked to the company's D&I, and we have the first agricultural company in Novo Mercado in the stock market.

And here some highlights. This year, we inaugurated the first bio plant, 100% automated plant. Next year, we have another 2 plants totally automated to be inaugurated. So in terms of social area, as I always said, I made a presentation with Ana, and I always say that it was a pillar that we now have in concrete terms with the institute, and this gave us more muscle to have projects. We have 21 projects in Brazil in the institute, especially close to all the units we have around the country and focused on projects that are based on education, projects based on education in these regions.

Another pillar that shows we were elected among the 5 best companies to work in, in agro business. This shows the work we have been doing, developing people. This is 8, 10 years old. We have been working, training the leadership of the company, reinforcing that the company is prepared and well positioned and has muscle for this type of discussion with the market. So we know the market will demand more and more.

Next slide. Well, a little. Many people are here, hearing us that know this better than us. But we saw these curves in the past. And everyone said, oh, it's a peak, it's a peak. And here, the only thing I'd like to say once again, what I always said in these events, what is structural change and what is not. We had some points that increased the prices, but we're also seeing a restriction in inventories on a worldwide basis, and we're seeing the results after the pandemic. So we're, not only as a company, what we see here, the great learning point from the war, the pandemic is that the markets are not that fluid. And this will demand some time for economies to stabilize in new levels.

But we have soybean strong. We had ups and downs during this year, but a very attractive price, which continues paying above the historical average. Corn, cotton, we had a little problem. With some news from the U.S. during this month, we saw a recovery due to the drought in the U.S. And in general, I'd like to reinforce that all the commodities are going to a lower level than the peak, but a level that is very attractive.

Now I believe many people asked in previous calls how the company is positioned and how the company overcame these problems. With all these problems before the war began, we had bought fertilizer when the conflict began. And here, the graph shows these 3 nutrients, when we talk about chloride, this is not internalized price. This is FOB of urea. And here on the right is when the company bought. For example, if you were to buy today, you would be paying at the same levels or even better. But we have a deadline. For example, phosphate, we have -- for example, we have many people using fertilizer. We had a deadline to make a decision, but it was the right decision. We bought phosphate at BRL 980, potassium at BRL 642. And at the peak of the pandemic, it went to BRL 1,200, BRL 1,300. Chloride and nitrogenated, we always know it goes up and down, and we have been buying.

On the right, the pie chart shows the status of the purchases in this year that we began from July 1. We have 82% of our needs for inputs already bought, and we have 18% open to buy. So this 18% is natural because we're talking about a campaign. We're talking about the needs for summer, winter crop and the beginning in April. So these fertilizers that I just mentioned, we haven't bought all of them. We will buy them now. And I believe it was the right decision. It was very correct to do it this way.

At the bottom, the delivery of all of this that we bought, 74% is already inside Brazil. So also, this is a good discussion. Initially, everyone was aware of this problem, then it became a logistics problem, and we'd like to highlight that 74% have already been delivered in our units, and I joked this week talking to investors, no use, it's no use delivering 100% in 1 unit and not having in the other. So all the units have received, so we can plant.

Next, here, an important topic that we have been reinforcing, geographic diversification. This diversification allows diversification of crops. And here, we see the variations we had during the year. We're celebrating a spectacular result in operations and real estate, and the sale 4,100 hectares that are useful that were sold -- delivered, sorry. We sold a little more. We haven't delivered everything in Alto Taquari, it will be delivered in 2024.

We had a movement a year, at the beginning of the year a lot of profitability, some contracts, leasing contracts that had become mature. I believe we took the right decision. Some things that we thought had a good price, we continue. The others, we did not. This means we did not accept the new prices for leasing in some specific units, and this helped us to leave 6,500 hectares that were leased, and we're working to lease others. We have 6,500, and we added 14,000 hectares. These 14,000 hectares, this has been the company's work and this is in Mato Grosso. They should go into production in this harvest, '22, '23, another part in '23, '24. And when we take 14,000 hectares and 70% more in the winter crop, we have units that we'll plant between 80%, 90% winter crop. So in the company, we have more than 25,000 hectares of productive area. The company, in spite of having a difficult year, we have worked to guarantee a sustainable growth.

The next slide. Certainly, there will be questions on this. Ana is -- Ana receives the picture -- Ana receives the questions. This year was not a year with evaluation from Deloitte. We do this evaluation normally every 2 years or when we have a specific need. And we do an internal evaluation. So the evolution, BRL 3.3 billion market value, fundamentally, everyone looks at numbers and says, oh, but it's very close to 2021. Yes, but we removed BRL 500 million. So, yes, there was an increment of prices, an increase in prices. We do this valuation because we're always in this business, making decisions on purchase and sale. We look at the Brazilian land market. We know it has a lot of liquidity. But the duration of the transactions is longer. And the Brazilian market for land is linked to the main commodity produced by Brazil, which is soybean.

So when we look at this curve, we look at the average duration, and this will be always 1 plus 3 installments, 1 plus 4 installments. So when we look at our portfolio, we're looking at 2020, 2021, soybean was worth BRL 134, and this variation between '21 and '22, we're evaluating soybean at the converges, BRL 132. If I place the current price of soybean, then we're talking about BRL 4 billion instead of BRL 3 billion. But we're very consistent in this methodology, and it has been efficient, this type of evaluation.

Here, we see in detail the growth that the company has had in spite of the rotation of portfolio. This is what we will actually plant. Most of the 14,000 are areas that are under preparation. We should plant during 2023 and part of it in 2022, '23. On the right, we want to call this a highlight, agriculture is an open air plant. So it's important to have geographic diversification, different diversification of crops and our pie chart becomes more and more elegant. It's a pie chart with different crops.

If you analyze the company 6 years ago, the pie chart had a very important part sugarcane and soybean, and today, we see other products coming in. And the pie chart shows the land that is cultivated, our own land, leased land, plus a sale that I reinforce is our intelligence leasing land, especially mitigating operational volatility and helping us to have more stability in the results during the years, and also always giving attention to our own land. The leased area mitigates volatility, and our own land brings us a cost reduction, reduces the capital cost. This is our strategy.

The next shows our evolution in the harvest '21, '22. And we have the transparency to say, it was a spectacular year. Most of this is due to the price. I would say that our soybean. When we add our soybean of all the company is practically the same that we estimated in the past. Corn, a little bit lower. Beans, a little lower. Cotton, a lot lower. So if we look at this, most of this result from corn and cotton, corn had the effect of the drought in the Midwest. In the case of Mato Grosso, where we had the winter crop, we had estimated 100. We produced 5 bags of soybean less, of corn less, and especially in [indiscernible], we had a dry March in Paraguay, too. So this hurts the productivity of cotton. But I'm sure that the company is on the right track with these 2 products, preparing itself, looking for technologies to mitigate this volatility.

This is a picture of the year, a company that produced 370,000 tons. Here I'd like to tell you about cattle raising. Once again, I say, cattle raising is an activity that is transitional, temporary. And the first graph, you will see, gee, if it's -- why so much growth, if it's -- we are preparing -- we're converting areas in Mato Grosso from pasture, we have mature areas and an area that will be still converted to grades. There was 1 operation to make feasible the transaction. We bought part of the cattle herd, too. We had the need also to have this herd in the units where we increased cattle raising in [indiscernible], an area that has irrigated land and also cattle raising pasture.

Next, we show the area in pasture. As I said, if this is for a short time, these animals stayed for a short period in our pasture. Most of the herd is being sold, and the females are going to [indiscernible]. And on the right, the last graph, is GMD. GMD average weight gain, which we closed in 0.63, it's an expressive gain if you follow cattle raising, but a little below what we estimated. And basically, this difference, most of it is due to the drought. In Paraguay, we have an operation there, 30% of the area with cattle raising. And with the drought, the drought hurt grains and also hurt pasture.

Here, what we have is sugarcane showing, once again, an activity that is very resilient in the company. We had a variance, a small variance, harvested area is the same and TCH is very interesting around 84%. We were following this, this is the year where we're delivering the results. You all knew that the sugarcane in the south and in the center had cold weather. And for example, we have this in 1977 and now in winter. So 600 hectares of sugarcane that were affected by the cold, and this shows us that we delivered resilient results and an excellent strategy of diversification.

A little about what happened and where we're headed. So harvest '21, '22 is a harvest that we closed all the sale, 96% sold, an average dollar of BRL 533 per dollar here, and we're already -- we have a position for 2022, 2023. In '22, '23, we already have 50% of the soybean sold, sugarcane, too, with an interesting strategy, 0 cost and also something fundamental, the receivables from farms. This is linked to the price of soybean, and we monitor this in the P&L.

Corn is -- 2021, 2022, there's a lot to be sold, corn and also a hedge in '22, '23. We have 20% of the harvest sold, and it seems to be a good strategy because of what has been happening in the last month. Production of corn in the U.S., production of corn in Europe and the production of corn in China. Below that, cotton, 2021, 2022, and '22, '23. And finally, we also have had an interesting strategy for hedge, for ethanol. We produce sugarcane for ethanol, and we have some metrics that allow us to have a position.

So next, Gustavo, you have the floor to detail these highlights now.

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

Thank you, André. Thank you for participating. In this call, we will explain the main numbers of the company. I believe that the main highlight is the profit, as André mentioned, when he began the call, BRL 520 million. And we explained this due to the increase in prices. We see a net operational revenue of BRL 1.2 billion, 76% higher than last year. And what we saw during this harvest, we sold sugarcane 45% more higher price and soybean 50% higher price.

So the company made a decision part of the soybean that we normally sell 60% during the first semester and the rest in the second semester, 85% was sold during this semester. And this leveraged even more the result. In terms of net real estate revenue, already shown, 2 sales of farms, especially Alto Taquari, a sale, a record sale, more than BRL 580 million, 55% of this transaction we recorded in this year.

The next part, when we deliver this farm in 2024, we will record the rest and begin to receive the payment of the sale. But it's a sale that, for us, was a sale that leveraged the real estate results. We had -- we have a farm that has high productivity in sugarcane with an important operational gain, but we understood that it was the right time. We found a technology that increased the profitability of this farm, and we thought it was the time to sell it, and we found a buyer.

Also, we had a sale in the state of Bahia farm that we had bought recently from Agrifirma. We sold for BRL 930 million and 55%. We did this -- we rotated the portfolio. So the company's results, BRL 150 million when we exclude the cost of investments that happened, but we have also taxes. So this is the main reasons why we had this result of BRL 520 million. We have the operational part. We already mentioned very good productivity in soybean, very good productivity in sugarcane, and these are the main crops for the operations of the company. And cotton, we had a drop. We will increase the surface planted with cotton. We would like to have a higher position of cotton. We will continue working on cotton in order to be relevant in our operational portfolio.

But having said this, the increases in price -- increase in costs, too, especially in the winter crop when we compare with the previous years, but this gives us an EBITDA of BRL 500 million, and we see that the EBITDA margin continues to be very attractive, very good if you look at our history and very close to the previous year. And when we see the net margin of the company, we see that this combination of activities, real estate and operations, production of grains and sugarcane is giving us an excellent return, an interesting return. And we believe that we have a margin that we can have next year as long as we are able to sell farms to -- here, we see the result of operations. Here, the EBITDA. We always include the results from derivatives, which corresponds to the sale of this harvest. We excluded the biological assets. We still had part of the winter crop that hadn't been harvested, and cotton also hadn't been harvested, but considering these adjustments, we get to this result.

And on the right, you can see, when we talk to analysts, we also always mention 40. And we see that this year, sugarcane and soybean continue to have this relevance. And during this 2022, we produced 2 million tons of sugarcane. And this price, we were able to capture market and the benefit that we have by contracts for supply in some mills. We're the only supplier, a premium of 20%, and this gave us a revenue of BRL 190 per ton at a cost of BRL 78 per ton. And this was a margin, incredible margin. When we look at this 25,000 hectares, we're talking about this amount per hectare. Historically, we always said 4,500, 4,000, 4,500. And so we see the impact that this price has on our operational results.

On the other hand, in the case of soybean, we sold 230,000 tons, what we harvested this year. We have also had some inventory from last year, and we sold BRL 152 per ton at a cost of BRL 85 per ton. So these were the 2 main crops that contributed for this improvement, and we have our forecast estimates for next year. This pressure with the increase in price of fertilizers, chemicals, fuels, we understand that the trend is to go to a very similar EBITDA close to 2021. So our challenge from now on is to capture volatility in price, soybean and corn to where we have almost 200,000 tons and try to get better prices, [indiscernible] the costs. We anticipated the purchase of fertilizer chemicals to get positive variation above this EBITDA in 2021.

On the next slide. Here we have the company's balance sheet, very healthy. Here we highlight the main lines that had changes, variations, relevant variations, cash we had last year. After the follow-on, here we had reached BRL 1 billion and during this period, we also had a positive cash. We made investments more than BRL 100 million to accelerate the transformation of areas. We had payments of dividends, BRL 260 million in the previous years, BRL 200 million, years after. More than BRL 145 million in anticipated. We bought fertilizer in advance, and we have most of the inventory of corn to be sold. So we still have a very good cash position and accounts receivable that increases.

We're talking about BRL 850 million, and we can -- here, BRL 580 million correspond to receivables from the sale of farms that we will receive in the next 4 years, BRL 100 million per year in receivables. And also, we had payments of some debts with high rates. We understood that it was a good opportunity to anticipate. We had an important reduction in our debt. We have BRL 650 million, and now we have only BRL 450 million in debts.

And to highlight investments, André mentioned our portfolio, more than our company is worth more than BRL 3 billion. And when we consider the net asset value of the company for this excluding the investments, so the value of the company is more than BRL 39 per share. So we continue to increase the value of the company. And this portfolio, we have 30% of hectares with potential to be transformed into land for planting grain. And here, we see we distributed dividends between mandatory and proposed, BRL 320 million, and still a result, accumulated result, so profits in reserve, BRL 400 million and values to be received. Reminding you that part of the farms, more than BRL 200 million, we haven't recorded yet, and we will receive the payment in 2024. So that's the reason why we have a more aggressive proposal for profit.

On the next slide, here, we see our company's debt. As mentioned, total debt, BRL 453 million, BRL 663 million last year. So today, the net debt -- net adjusted debt is almost 0. And on the right, the amortization of these debts, we have a few debts in the short term, a little more in the long term due to the CRA that we issued in 2021, BRL 140 million, and the combined rate, Bolivia, Paraguay 95.5% of the CDI interest rate. We're very comfortable in terms of the company's debt.

On the next slide, here, as mentioned, this proposal between the mandatory and what we're doing, BRL 320 million dividend yield, and this gives us in the last few years an average of 7%. Every time we talk to investors, we're questioned why we don't have a policy. And we say that we want to be -- we want the market, the mandatory amount is 25%. But what we see that we have very good years in terms of price and good productivity. And as I mentioned, with a great amount of receivables due to sale of real estate, we believe it's the time to celebrate and give more dividends for those who have company shares. And it's important to mention, this is a demand also. There is a demand investors of BrasilAgro. Our investors that like dividends, so we understand it's an expectation that we want to also pay more.

Okay, evolution of the price of the share, AGRO3, and also, today, BRL 29.27. Yesterday, as I mentioned, here BRL 39, the value. We're always performing the of the stock market index, but we understand that we have to continue working and closing the symmetry of information so we can be better priced. We have -- we did this during the last 2 years. We increased the liquidity of the shares. We're happy with the results, but we still have a lot of work to attach more value to our share.

So thank you very much. And now let's begin the Q&A session.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Thank you, André. Thank you, Gustavo. Well, I'd like to pass the floor to Thiago Duarte for the first question.

[Thiago Duarte, analyst]

André, Ana and Gustavo I would like to ask the question that you expected. The value of the land. It's clear that the parameter used for the average price of the bag of beans and the average value of the hectare. My question would be, why did you decide to have any independent valuation. When we look at other sources of price of land in Brazil, public or nonpublic, from other companies, we have the impression that the market seems to be booming, paying more higher prices than the ones that you are using based on your internal evaluation. And historically, your evaluation was very consistent, I know. So can you talk more about this?

And the second question, a question that we did on other occasions. And now, with the historical model of BrasilAgro, acquisition of land for development, we haven't seen great news in the last 2 years. So give us more color about your perspectives for the future. And if it's not the time to buy land, do you believe you have opportunity to sell mature, developed land like you did in the last year?

[André Guillaumon, executive]

As always, his questions are very good. I will comment the first, evaluation of the portfolio. Yes, you mentioned well how we have been consistent in evaluating the price of the land. We could have hired an outside auditing company to evaluate the land and capture a little euphoria in the market. We'll have to capture this euphoria with sales. So with your first question, I believe that we will -- we have a lot of business as they see in the jargon. We want to be recurrent in these moments.

So we're conservative. I would say also, Thiago, vis-a-vis when you look at BrasilAgro year-after-year, you have an appreciation that is not less important, almost 20%. But we have sales. So if we correct it by price of soybean, you know that land is sold. According to the price of soybean, we could be capturing higher prices. The challenge, to be transparent. So land capture the amount of soybean we still have and also the exchange rate, giving this to investors in gains. The methodology is consistent year-after-year. We see that it is resilient, and we have a soybean curve, BRL 132 a bag. The sale of farm, the first quarter, you receive with the soybean of BRL 170. We are selling soybean for next year at BRL 160, BRL 157. So you would have a correction around 20%, 22% in the first 2 quarters. But this, if you close the deal, if you don't close the deal. So we're looking this in the -- with the convergence of a bushel, this is our metric.

Second question, I said, yes, we are a company that sells, but we are active looking and I hope soon to give you news about the sale of land. And then you will tell us if it was good or bad acquisition. We have worked on this, too, in acquisitions, too, of course, when the market is booming, it's better to be a seller. But we're always looking at proposed. So I'll give you a number that I showed. I gave this number in the council in 2021. We analyzed, we visited [ in situ ] more than 70 properties in Brazil, things we believe -- some don't make sense because of the price and some that do. What I can see, the prices are maintained. I see a few chances of prices going down for land.

We have an inflationary correction. And we see today the market, I would say, it's not dropping. But the euphoria is flat. So it's time to sell. Producers have money, they're capitalized. They will have another year. We believe with a better climate than the last year, the year beginning with La Niña and should end the first semester next year. Well, this is good for us, especially the second harvest. And you can -- yes.

[Thiago Duarte, analyst]

So let me ask you an addendum. Do you see the liquidity of the market of land changing? Normally, with higher prices, we see liquidity increasing, you have a good capacity to monitor this in the land market. This perception that -- do you see a drop in liquidity, number of transactions, the ticket?

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Well, this is the thermometer that we feel all the time. So since we're on the both sides, buying and selling, there is still a latent liquidity, the euphoria that you mentioned, but the search for assets is very high due to everything we have seen. So I cannot visualize in the short term. I'm talking about 1 or 2 years. In the short space, I believe we have a high liquidity in the Brazilian land market. If you ask me 2, 3 years from now, tell me the margin, I'll tell you the liquidity. But we still have margins above historical levels.

Second, very great margins in the last 2 years. Producers are capitalized, farmers are capitalized, they have money and they're buying. So what I would say to you, the producer is a little different from us. They buy farms. They buy machines. I believe that what happened in the last 16 months, 15 months was a restriction, some restrictions in terms of availability of machinery. So I buy the farm, but I don't have tractors. So these supplies and you follow this? This is becoming normal now. The supply of machinery is normalizing.

Last year, you bought a tractor, it would take 12 months to deliver. Harvesters continue, but the tractors, no. And I believe this removes the insecurity. They had money. They had good margins. They had harvest with good margins. But they had an uncertainty in the supply chain. So machines and fertilizer, the producer also went through all of this in the supply chain, including fertilizer. This is beginning to normalize, if you ask me, if we felt a stabilization. We don't believe it's going back to a peak. But I believe that liquidity has to bear in mind these factors, supply chain. So...

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Pedro Fonseca.

[Pedro Fonseca, analyst]

Congratulations. I'd like to explore with you perspectives for next cycle. Is there space to increase productivity or cost and is it better to be more conservative? And also in terms of hedge, do you intend to finalize hedge? Or is there more optimism concerning the price?

And the second question, I'd like to understand the purchase of fertilizer with all these dynamics, as you said in the release, I'd like to know this -- did it bring any benefit to you in anticipating the selling in advance? Do you believe this can become a trend? Does it make sense to expect that in the future purchases be anticipated too?

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Pedro, thank you. First question, the hedge. I will answer here, and the second inputs. There was an item increase in productivity. Well, increase in productivity, 2 hats, company and market. I believe Brazilian agriculture had an increase in productivity. We had drought last year. That was not normal. We had a drought in Paraná, Minas Gerais. This is not normal. It's -- so we have a correction in Brazil. I just talked about in the previous question when we -- climate conditions, I believe were La Niña, what does La Niña do? La Niña anticipates rain. What's a neutral year? Neutral year, less La Niña, more rain. So if you ask me, what is the ideal Brazil plant with La Niña and collect with El Niño? That's the best. You anticipate rain, anticipate the planting of soybean and then you anticipate the winter crop.

And if you have a first semester with El Niño, then you have more rain what we call a full winter crop. So next year, I would say comes not with El Niño, it comes with neutral, which improves the issue of La Niña in the first semester. La Niña in the first semester does the same as this year. So this is the macro vision. The company's vision is not very different, very similar to this. And I believe that this effect of La Niña in the company if it can have a benefit due to Paraguay. Paraguay, the South region in Brazil and Argentina, Paraguay in terms of La Niña, more than neutral. Now removing, putting BrasilAgro hats, we hope it will be this way and change the fact. We hope there is a change.

Now hedge, concerning hedge, we see within the policy, we do what we understand that is the best. Following the company's policy, you know that our policy until planting, we can't have more than 50%, we have 50%. So in the next month, Pedro, we began to plant, then our policy increases, the amount that can be sold, and we monitor. But I would say to you that it makes sense if we continue having these prices. As Gustavo said well, we anticipated BRL 140 million in fertilizer. The cost of the next harvest we have, we know we now -- the price of sale and the margin.

And as we learned, for example, a small profit won't hurt you with -- I believe that corn were more conservative because if this -- the issue gets worse in the Northern Hemisphere. I believe we will have, once again, China with a great demand, importing corn and a booming market. Cotton, all the uncertainty you know, inflation, recession. Now cotton has 2 aspects that are positive. We just said we saw a drought in the U.S., rain in Pakistan and we have oil with high prices which makes -- which is an umbrella effect for synthetic fabrics that compete with cotton. So with recession, cotton suffers.

Now inputs, your question was right. If this anticipation is here to stay. I would say to you that's not us, but the whole market, they look at the exchange factor. The producer will buy inputs. So I'm removing COVID and war just to go back to what I say, basics. The basics are if we have an exchange, the market is stronger in the first semester. If it's not, the market waits for the second semester to buy inputs. I've been in this business for 30 years, and that's the way it is. So if you have good conditions in the first. So I don't believe it's a trend answering your question because all companies are repositioning themselves in terms of supplies. The dependence, the sources of resources, the imports, they are changing a little this rearrangement, and this will guarantee the offer of supplies. This anticipation will happen in the next few years if we have the margin in the first semester.

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

André, to supplement Pedro's question. We have a policy until we plant, we can sell 50% maximum. Although we're optimistic, we have to continue with this policy. Normally, what happens when we see this exchange relationship, when I buy the inputs automatically I sell. Since we want margin, so we always continue following this process.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

A few more questions in writing, the first Federico [indiscernible]. 2 comments. If we want to invest in the great transformation industry using soybean to produce biodiesel and add more value to production.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Federico, thank you for the question. In a clear way, I say that we don't have to be enchanted with good business. We have to be concerned in not doing bad business. So I would say to you, I will never say never, but we don't intend to invest in this because although you have a unit that produces a lot, it doesn't guarantee the supply of such a plant. This unit, biodiesel, we believe that during the years, will, be sold. So if I put together a plan, thinking of using a crop, and then I sell the farm, I can hurt the plan.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Now André. There's a region the company wants to go into a project, wants to make feasible process, have a guarantee of supply for like we did already with sugarcane.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Yes, we're partners of the ethanol plants in [indiscernible] because we wanted the plants to be installed beside our production units in the Midwest. So some cases with nonrelevant investments, small investments, yes. But now relevant values in large projects is not in our horizon.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Claudio [indiscernible] small caps. I believe most of it André answered.

Concerning the vision of how prices should and costs should behave. So there is a trend for inputs to become cheaper, the price of your products should follow which trend. Do you believe you'll have better margins and real estate? We already answered. If you need more clarification, you can ask again.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Claudio, thank you for the question. Good afternoon. Well, I would say to you since we came from a year of a lot of security. I always joke, for example, it's -- yes, it's easy when you read the newspaper. So we made a position to guarantee supplies to avoid compromising the agricultural work of the company. Most of the cost of the next harvest have already been paid for. So although we see a drop in inputs, yes, it has an effect, not very relevant. As I said, it has an effect on the second harvest. We haven't bought fertilizer for the winter crop or for cotton, winter crop, and we haven't bought for sugarcane.

So yes, but this percentage of purchase is smaller. So I would say that there is a possibility, yes, of recovering some margins on these products, especially in the second half, which is what happened this year. This year, when you look at soybean, it was all bought. It was bought at a very low cost and sold at a high cost. We didn't have the same in the winter crop. When we -- the one that we already -- we just harvested, we bought it with expensive fertilizer. So we see a drop -- a great drop in margin. Now it's the opposite. The second harvest suffered. And I believe it's the chance to see, to have a lower cost from now on.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Concerning our leasing contracts, Gustavo, concerning the average time of leasing of the land, an average cost.

[Gustavo Lopez, executive]

Okay. André showed during the presentation, 60,000 hectares leased, 15,000 in Maranhão sugarcane, and we have 9% of the production. And it has a potential to get to 30 years. Another 14,000 hectares in Piauí. I believe the 2 have 20% for each contract, 1 contract, 10 years. We're in the second year, and the other 12 years, another 2 years. But we're renegotiating to extend. And the other 30,000 we have on Mato Grosso. Mato Grosso, on average, should give us 14 bags, and should have 5 years, we have another 5 years. But we can renegotiate.

And recently, we included also in Mato Grosso 11,000 hectares. The idea with all the potential of harvest in winter crop, we have a table, 12 bags for 12 years. And this is a service with the potential for 18,000 hectares, 1,800 this year, and the other hectares for 2023, 2024.

[André Guillaumon, executive]

Gustavo, very surgical. Just 1 point. The 20% he says in Piauí have a floor for after 48 bags, 20%. Otherwise just to supplement.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Another 2 questions, [indiscernible] concerning exploring, expansion abroad. What are the risks of Bolivia and expansion in Brazil? Is there space to increase cultivated area?

[André Guillaumon, executive]

[indiscernible] Well, first, the difficult one, then the easy one. You said very well the challenge of international expansion when we look at other countries is country risk. We understand this expansion has been done in the case of Bolivia. We expanded this year with 2 properties leased, which has been -- we always said this to you, our project is to be focused on the production of sugarcane.

In Paraguay, we're very active. Paraguay and Uruguay are 2 countries we understand where the country risk is small, Uruguay and Paraguay. Paraguay, we have -- we're looking for land and leasing. We understand the question. The answer should be more where we believe we have good opportunities, and with attenuated risk, it makes sense.

So this -- we look for opportunities. Now potential, Brazil, BrasilAgro, has a volume of land being transformed. It's small. Pasture land transformed into planted area in Brazil. This is the beauty of our sector. Domestic agriculture occupies 70 million hectares. We have 180 million, 190 million hectares of pasture, 45 million, 50 million of these have an important potential for agriculture. So agriculture will grow in pasture in the next few years. If we add these 40 million, 50 million hectares, we're practically doubling the production of the country.

And another factor I'd like to stress, we've made investments, which is an irrigated land. So the company has great irrigation projects in Bahia, and we have the objective of getting to an expressive amount. The projects are working in 2 units, Rio do Melo, we have irrigation. And this is linked to availability of electricity in the case of Bahia. But this, we're monitoring, we're working to make progress growing the land in these 2 projects. So -- and when we look at Brazil, yes, remember, I said we produced 70 million, another 45 million, 50 million where we can where -- which are pasture land and can be converted. And with irrigation, 7 million hectors, all the irrigation. There's rise everything in the 7 million. And Brazil has this potential to get to an irrigated area of 18 million hectares without competing with water resources with civil society, without competing with the rivers that supply cities.

Service in the agriculture has a lot of space to grow. When you say 18,000, 11 million hectares more, with 50 million, this 11 million to harvest. With 50 million, Brazil can double its production.

[Ana Paula Ribeiro, executive]

Well, we're running a little late. I'd like to thank the presence of André and Gustavo here. And call in every quarter, we have new records, records in results, records in participants. And we like to thank you. Have a nice weekend, and see you in the next quarter.