Intelbras SA Industria de Telecomunicacao Eletronica Brasileira

BOVESPA:INTB3

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Welcome to the earnings call for the first semester of 2024. My name is Bruno Teixeira. I'm the Head of Investor Relations from the company, and it's a pleasure to be here with you today. With me is [indiscernible] Silvestri, our CEO, our CFO is also here, also Mr. Paulo, Henrique, and Marcio, our business Superintendent, and we're here to talk to you about our results for this quarter.

We'd like to inform you that this video conference is being recorded, and it will be made available in the company's RI Investor Relations website where this presentation is already available. So at this point, we'll begin the presentation. And at the end, we'll make the recording available to all of you. You may choose the language by clicking the icon interpretation below.

For the Q&A session at the end, we would like you to -- we would like to ask you to please submit your questions using the Q&A icon on the bottom of your screen. Please write your name, your company and the language in which you will be asking your question, and we will answer them in order. Once you're called upon, there will be a request to open up your microphone on the screen, and then you can do so and ask your question.

The information in this presentation and any statements that may be made during the conference call -- about the business perspectives, projections as well as operating and financial targets for Intelbras are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management and on currently available information. Forward-looking statements do not guarantee performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not come to pass. Investors should be aware that general economic and market conditions as well as other operating factors may affect the future performance of Intelbras and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

That said, I'll now give the floor to the speakers for our earnings calls. As usual, we'll start with the key highlights for the first quarter. Revenue has stabilized after 3 consecutive quarters showing a decline versus the previous year, it's a plus 0.2% increase. We've also had good results in terms of EBITDA, 16.1% growth up to BRL 167 million, and net profits are also increasing at the same rate, about 16.6% at about BRL 153 million.

Our ROIC, our return on investment is adequate, about 1.8 percentage points below the previous quarter, but in line with what we saw earlier. This is our historical numbers. Our operation continues to grow at around 20% despite the decline in revenue the previous year. As you can see, the revenue has been stabilized during the first quarter of this year.

I would also like to talk a little bit more about our net revenue quarter-on-quarter. As I often say to our investors, sequentially speaking, the first quarter comes after the fourth quarter of the previous year, and that's usually a lower revenue level. But as the year progresses, revenue tends to go up as you can see in the green arrow in 2022. Last year, however, we had a sequential drop in revenue. And this significantly differs from our track record and from our forecast.

For 2024, we're expecting revenue numbers to fluctuate according to our regular annual numbers or trends. As we can see here, after the second quarter of 2022 and before the fourth quarter of 2022, we saw an inflow of revenue because of our acquisitions. We saw a spike in growth during the 3 or 4 quarters you see in front of you. This is also a result of the evolution of our solar business. This has led to a drop in revenue. If I were to plot a trend line across these numbers we see on screen we'll see that the numbers are pretty much as we expected, and we're resuming our growth trends now. The tough times are now behind us from a revenue perspective. Going forward, we expect our revenue to go back up, and we expect to see better results quarter-on-quarter as we've mentioned.

Now in the first quarter, we've seen significant increase, 16% EBITDA growth, and this has been composed of important improvement in gross profit. We've seen an increase in our margins as well as a tight control over expenditures. This has led to an increase in margin from 14% to 16% between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. Our expenditures are growing at a rate lower than inflation.

Quick comment. Let's talk about consolidated gross profit. Here, we must look at the way the operation is structured. The sum of the parts does not really reflect the strength of everything. This is the message, especially when we look at consolidated gross profit numbers. We have 3 business areas, and each of them is in a different stage. All 3 businesses together will make our business robust, our company robust, and this robustness is what sets us apart from the rest. Our margin is picking back up, especially after the fourth quarter, even despite any adjustments where we put aside the 29%, 20%, 30% gross margin we had before. Now we're seeing energy contributing to this result.

Sequentially, these margins have been improving over the last year. So this mix effect means that our margin is stronger, and this is how we see our business. We're always looking at ways to consolidate our business both in terms of gross profit and EBITDA margins. Let's talk about each and every segment give you a bit more information about the revenues. Security contributes with about 54% of our revenue. Now we know that our growth avenues are playing their roles. They're doing what they must. They're helping us move forward in the markets where we operate. We're increasing our space in those markets.

Now we mentioned this in the last quarter of last year when we looked at the closing numbers. The drought in Manaus had few effects, but we had to go through our safety stocks. We were only able to resume our levels of raw materials early this year. This means that our stores have to remanage their inventory, they have to recompose their portfolios. And this ultimately hindered our security numbers last quarter. When we look at sellout, however, we'll see that everything is going according to plan and things are turning. So it's been a good first quarter for security.

Now in terms of communication, I'd like to call your attention to the fact that we're now calling this ICT, Information and Communication Technologies. This is the new name for this category. The whole portfolio has been well structured. It's quite visible and we've actually started selling it under a broader, more holistic perspective.

Let's talk about seasonality. Let's compare the fourth quarter to the first quarter. There's been a slight drop in revenue, and this is seasonal, especially because the KU band has experienced a seasonal drop, and this is important to our business as a whole. New portfolios have been introduced and are being worked on within our plan and perception from our customers has been very positive. We're expediting the material. We're bringing the product because we want to make the most of this very positive window.

Now even though our revenue did not increase as we expected, even though it's still according to plan, we know that the ICT category has already started to respond. We've been seeing a significant improvement in operational results for the first quarter, and this is what we expect to see happen over the coming quarters as well. Now let's talk about Energy. That accounts for 25% of our revenue. As we always say, our energy portfolio goes beyond just solar. It's been growing higher, in fact, than the company's average numbers, and this was the case in this quarter as well. For solar power, there's been an increase in demand. There's a lot of credit available. Price levels are quite attractive at the moment. People are buying generators. So the situation is overall very positive in the first quarter across all of our energy businesses.

The main point for this segment, is the fact that we want to once again deliver operational results. And that's what we've been doing in the first quarter of this year. The results have been resumed, and we want this to continue over the course of this year. Cash management is also important. Our cash flow is quite robust. We're about BRL 212 million this quarter in terms of cash flow. We have investments and other activities going on according to plan. It's really important that we keep an eye on the robustness of our cash flow so that we may continue our investment.

Let's look at our CapEx. Our CapEx is also within expected parameters, both in terms of maintenance and expansion. This is a snapshot of our distribution center. We've been discussing it over the last few quarters. It's there, and it's been nearly finalized and it's going to go into operations, probably in July. It's now in its final stages of construction. Now for the rest of the year, for the second half of the year, we expect our historical CapEx levels to go down, especially compared to 2022 and 2023. For the first and second quarters, we'll continue to see an increase in CapEx. But after that, that number is expected to drop.

Now let's conclude our presentation and move on to our Q&A session in just a few seconds. But before we do that, let's talk about our forecasts. We expect to continue to execute our plans. We mentioned this several times in our earnings calls. We believe that this year is the year when our 3 areas will continue to grow. They will recover. It's going to be an expensive recovery in terms of results. Results are actually expected to grow in excess of our revenue. This is what we saw in the first quarter, and we expect this to continue over the course of this year. ICT revenue lines. I expect it to start in the second quarter. We expect that to gain strength in the second half of this year.

And what's most important here is that we keep an eye on all of our businesses. We need to continue to grow over the next years. And in order to do so, we've had multiple discussions. We've conducted a review of our growth plans with assistance from a large consultancy company from another country. This means that there's ample room for growth within the company's core business. Growing our core business is a great opportunity, and we're challenging ourselves to avail ourselves of this opportunity as much as we can. And we want this growth to be accompanied by as little risk as possible. This takes into account, of course, our execution capacity that will be put to the test, but we have significantly positive growth plans in our core business, and we expect our core business to continue to grow as the years go by.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

So this is the end of the presentation. I'll go to the questions-and-answers section right now. So feel free to ask any questions you may have, and we'll answer them.

I'll call upon you to ask your questions as you submit them on a first come, first serve basis. The first person is Bernardo. So let's open up his mic, Bernardo, feel free to ask your question.

[Bernardo Guttmann, analyst]

My question is twofold. First, about the revenue levels for security. We saw that this was affected by the problems in Manaus. Now I understand that distributors have to replenish their stock their inventory. They have to recover from the sellout. So I wonder how that's been going on in April, have you managed to accelerate and fill that particular gap. I want to understand how you expect to bring things back to normal in the second quarter.

My second question has to do with the consolidated margin. It seems that you have several clear levers that you can pull to adjust costs and expenditures whenever growth is subpar. It is also clear that you're very excited with the sequential growth rates that you've been experiencing and what you expect to achieve over the rest of the year. So my question to you is, is this margin sustainable? Or should you maybe devote some of that margin towards expediting sales? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that matter.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Okay. I'll give the floor to Paulo. He'll answer your first question, Bernardo. And then I'll give the floor to Mr. Altair so he can answer the second part of your question. Is that okay?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Bernardo, thank you for the question. Yes, there has been an impact. The drought in Manaus really affected our inventory recomposition. So we used a lot more of our safety inventory in the final quarter of last year, and this had an impact on our first quarter of this year. Of course, we have a lot of raw material and the factory is in the process of replenishing its inventory. Now of course, this may have led to the loss of a cellular because of lack of product. But now in the second quarter, we expect things to normalize in terms of supply, both in terms of our security or safety inventory as well as our channel so that we can once again achieve the levels of sales we had prior to the impact we had late last year so that we can go back to business as usual, right? Without really changing anything about our forecasts for the rest of the year, right? We expect the rest of the year to progress as it should, right?

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Okay. Next up is Mr. Altair. You seem to be muted to, please click on the mic icon on the bottom of your screen to unmute yourself.

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

Apologies. Thank you, Bernardo, for the question. Let me add to Paulo's response. Now we're quite at ease when it comes to our revenue because all of this has been included in our plan. We had expected such difficulties with our inventory, with our regulators. Our ramp-up has been normal. New products, new partners are being established gradually as we continue to manage our factory, everything is normal. As for EBITDA levels, of course, yes, we also expect good results this year, as we mentioned in previous calls, we expect those results to be even better than the results for our revenue, which is going back to previous levels. There can be some variation due to the composition of the mix or any increase in competitiveness in the market, but it is not in our plan to reduce our margin significantly, no. It should be at the very least in accordance with historical levels, which means an EBITDA level in excess of 14%. So above what we saw in the past. There can be small variations, of course. But we're not expecting to differ too much from that EBITDA margin I mentioned.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you, Paulo. Thank you, Mr. Altair. Thank you, Bernardo. Next question is from Andre. Andre is next. I don't know if you left the meeting, maybe. Anyway, -- so next up is Marcelo Santos. He's a sell-side analyst from JPMorgan. You may take the mic.

[Marcelo Santos, analyst]

I wanted to focus a bit more on the margin -- let's begin by focusing on the energy business. If we look at the margin in the ITI, it seems that that's been a very strong number, especially quarter-on-quarter, but also year-on-year. So I'd like to ask you about the sustainability of that margin. Is it sustainable? That's question one.

Question two. Now let's focus on the safety margin. From previous earnings calls, I understood that we need to put a bit more pressure on that margin, but the margin would be a bit lower than expected, but it turned out to be quite good. So from a security perspective, what has caused this good performance? And what could change going forward? What are your forecasts for the future?

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Let's begin with Marcio and then Paulo.

[Marcio Ferreira, executive]

Okay. Hello. Good morning. My answer may actually answer similar questions along the same lines. As we've said for many, many months now, the Energy business is not just solar power. It's a very complex mix, as we mentioned in Investor Day late last year. The mix composition is, as we have said earlier, solar growth is experiencing lower growth with a greater focus on profit, whereas the other items that are part of our Energy business are becoming more and more representative as well. This particular channel has been growing at rates above the company's average rates. Now step by steps quarter-on-quarter, we're maintaining these levels. We're sustaining them so that over time, we won't be overly dependent on solar. We know that solar power may be negatively affected by changes in regulation. So we want to achieve sustainability.

As for margin sustainability, well, with the exception of last year because that was an outlier because of different reasons, right? especially between '20 and '23. So we're looking for levels that match historical levels and may even lead to growth. So there could be a bit of a fluctuation, but we're always striving for our historical average. We believe that the mix is strong enough to achieve that. As we've been saying, energy business is not restricted to solar, and it continues to be strong as ever. Thank you Paulo.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Hello, Marcelo. Let's talk about our safety margin. As you can see, it's in line with the margin we showed you in the previous quarter, there has been no significant change. This small change is largely because of the mix. In some semesters, we saw greater performance -- we see greater performance in certain projects or products. So there is a bit of variation. But if we look at the situation quarter-on-quarter, we see that the numbers remain largely the same. There's been no major change. This is a mix as I said. So we've been achieving greater productivity, greater operational results. And this has been contributing positively to our sustainability. We can maintain that sustainability without, however, impacting our margin in any way. Okay. Thank you so much for your answer.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. Andre is also in the call, Andre, -- you're next from UBS.

[Andre Salles, analyst]

I have 2 questions about communication -- how do you -- is there a lot of demand for KU band converters, even though this is a positive impact on revenue, the impact on consolidated margin is not as good. So how do you perceive that demand over the next few quarters. As for communication, maybe you could provide a bit more detail about the revenue mix, maybe talk about the traditional items on the portfolio and do partnerships, especially with fiber to the home, whether the demand has been bigger or smaller than what you expected.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Let me give the floor now to Henrique. Henrique, it seems you're muted, go ahead. You're still muted. We cannot hear you. It seems you are muted.

[Henrique Fernandez, executive]

How about now? Can you hear me?

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Yes, we can. We can hear you well.

[Henrique Fernandez, executive]

Thank you, Andre for your wonderful question. Let's talk about the KU band. Now we're still working closely with IAF. And by the end of the year, we'll see few opportunities pop up, such as an auction. And that's going to encompass all the converters, about 5 million to 6 million converters purchased so far. So far, we've -- so far, 44 million has been purchased. So we're still taking part in some of these bids. And we're expecting to avail ourselves of about 20% to 30% of all the opportunities that show up in the market. So those are -- that's our forecast. And hopefully, by the end of the year, we will have gone through all of the converters available, which are about 1 million.

Let's talk about what we expect from our partnerships. Fiber home, for example, is certainly exceeding our expectations when it comes to the market. There are plenty of opportunities. We have been working very closely with our suppliers because of new technologies because of their position because of the proper pricing. Now we have a foot in the door. Now in the past, we didn't.

Now the volume of investments going into that channel has also increased significantly. This has made us confident enough to continue with our plan. We're still in accordance with the plan. In fact, it's been exceeding our expectations to an extent, that's why we've been investing a lot on inventory.

As for the percentage. Well, it's about 15% of our revenue that comes from these partnerships. So these partnerships represent about 15%, which is still a very small number considering the wealth of opportunities around us.

[Andre Salles, analyst]

Can I do a follow-up question very quickly. I'd like to know more about the margins of these partnerships. Is this very different compared to your traditional portfolio or about the same?

[Henrique Fernandez, executive]

Well, you see the mix here is very, very different. The cable business is pretty much a commodity. So the margin there is lower. It's not in line with our current margin levels because of the mix. Now we're always building this brick by brick. And as I say, in all of our earnings calls, this is about our growth and our gross margin may be lower, but our operations are very well honed and they've been improving every day, leading to and even higher operational profit. That's basically the rationale behind this particular business.

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

Okay Andre. And we've spoken a bit about this before, right? We have many, many different products, a very diversified mix, large-scale products. This means that the margins are also different. Now the gross margin may go slightly up or slightly down, but we remain steadfast in our EBITDA margin. We want to continue. We want to keep healthy margins. Usually, products may have a lower margin, but a larger scale and lower operational expenses tied to it. So we need to be aware of all these factors and place great emphasis on the EBITDA margin because this is really important to us.

[Andre Salles, analyst]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Altair.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you. Andre. Let's go now to Thiago.

[Thiago Kapulskis, analyst]

I have 2 questions for you about security. Most of the questions today have been about security, but I have 2 specific questions about that business area. First, well, it's the situation in Manaus. We know that, that was the main problem you had to contend with in the first quarter of this year. Could you update us on that situation, do we expect any impact from the Manaus situation in the second quarter? Or do you expect that to be settled or to be resolved? I would also like to know more about the competitiveness scenario for security and how that may affect your forecasts when it comes to growth in revenue and whatever else you can tell us about the competitive scenario would be of great help.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Paulo?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Let's talk about Manaus. Also, the impact came in the fourth quarter of last year. That's when the inventory was significantly impacted. Now we've been able to rectify that in the first quarter of this year, but it will take the factory some time to ramp up and replenish its security stock and be able to cater to its mix. It does take time for that to happen. So that was a major impact during the first quarter. We had to replenish our stocks, our inventory. Now things are beginning to normalize in the second quarter. So over Q2, we expect inventory levels to be on par with our internal policies and also with our deliveries to our partners and suppliers.

So I think, yes, the problem is behind us. We're once again healthy in terms of production and inventory.

Now for your second question, you asked about the market dynamics and competitiveness. Since last year, we've seen newcomers come into the market. And we've been monitoring them very, very closely. Now, we've remained competitive. Last year, we've had a few price reductions in order to maintain competitiveness with the rest of the market. There have been other lines at it as well, such as, for example, project solutions. We've been bringing that to our channels, and we also believe we can do a lot by working with our partners.

There are other growth avenues as well in the form of new markets. We have space to build new markets here. So the dynamic is not too different from what we saw last year. We don't expect this to impact our evolution and growth plans for this year at all. What happened last year and early this year, was not actually fully unexpected and will not cause us to deviate from our previous plan.

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

There's been more competition. We've seen such competitors in the past, threats in the past. Now we need to be mindful of productivity and we remain steadfast in our purpose, which is to look after ourselves make sure our relationship with our channels is ever stronger. We need to make sure our customers remain loyal to our channel. We need to incorporate new technologies, new innovations -- we need to make sure that our brand remains highly recognizable. And in doing so we will be shielded from competition, from producers who can offer similar products at lower prices because that's what sets us apart from the rest.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you, Thiago. Have a good day. Next question from Lucas, [indiscernible] analyst.

[Unknown Analyst]

Actually, 2 questions. One of them is about the margin. Now the provisioning adjustments, did that have any effect on this quarter based on what we discussed in the final quarter of last year? That's question one. And question 2 is about energy, is this segment seasonal. Now that we've reached a certain level of normalcy. I'd like to know from you whether we can expect a seasonal improvement next quarter, or are we still seeing the effects from previous quarters where some of the revenue is actually affected. Can you give us your forecast about the revenue for the rest of the year?

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

Right, now we've been saying this since last year. All of what's happened is going on according to plan. And we're very excited. Of course, we've stabilized our inventory. It was not just about that. However, we were also very concerned about the whole situation last year. This is why we reined in our inventory, and that was admittedly a mistake. As Henrique said, -- we have a lot of partnerships. We're being very careful. We're ensuring quality and growth in our factories, and we're very excited about that. But once again, this year is when we resume our normal growth rates from before 2023. We want to become more and more profitable. Each quarter will be more positive than the last especially vis-a-vis revenue now that we are normalizing our inventory. This month, we've had very positive signs, much more so than the previous quarter. So we're very excited.

However, from a sectoral perspective, maybe Bruno can add.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

But before I give the floor to Marcio, let me just say, -- but the whole provisioning issue had a very little effect this year, provisions will happen as they should, are provisioning considering our history is irrelevant, especially considering our first quarter of this year. Let me give the floor now to Marcio, so he can add to my answer about energy.

[Marcio Ferreira, executive]

Thank you. Luca, for the question. We don't often talk about quarter-on-quarter revenue. The numbers for this year are as expected. We wanted to reduce our [indiscernible] inventory in solar last year, and we did. We started this year with healthier sales, Energia Power has been growing more so than the average for the company. We're quite aggressive about that. And for this year, the objective is to according to the plan and to provide results to the company. That's the main message we want to get across when it comes to our energy business. We're taking this on a step-by-step basis. And -- like I said earlier, we need to keep in mind the long term, we need to strike a balance, so as to protect ourselves from any changes in regulation that may impact the solar industry.

Now we know there may be highs and lows in this sector, not because of players, but because of the government. So this unit needs to grow in a consolidated fashion and needs to take into account and be resilient to these changes in government decision. And there are multiple growth avenues to make that happen in our energy market. And all of the measures we had to take -- we did take last year. Hopefully, the solar business will help the company's profit. The increase in revenue is not as strong as we mentioned earlier. But there is an objective, a very clear objective. And over the course of this year, we'll be working to deliver these results. But we're not talking about a quarter-on-quarter comparison here at all.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you. Luca. Now we're moving on to the last 2 questions. These are 2 questions from 2 buy-side analysts. Let me read them out to you. First has to do with gross margin gains. He wants to know whether the detractor over the last quarters was energy, as mentioned. Maybe Marcio wants to talk about the mix and what we've done in that sense. Well, we mentioned how that improves profit, right? Anything you'd like to add to what you've said already?

[Marcio Ferreira, executive]

Well, I think the solar market experienced a few things last year that were common to the entire market, and that had a bearing on our results here at the company. We've mentioned this a number of times again. We've rectified our structure to make sure it is the right size. We've done that. Now all that's left is carrying out the plan.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

And considering the sequential growth of revenue, do you believe there's room for expanding the margin over the course of this year?

[Marcio Ferreira, executive]

As Altair said, yes, the revenue is going up. There may be a bit of a fluctuation in the gross EBITDA margins, yes. But we know, but considering our net results and our operational results, those are going to far exceed the revenue growth by the end of the year. We need to take that into account. When we plan for the upcoming quarters in 2024.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Is that clear, Ricardo. Okay. We have a final question from Pedro Mora, also a buy-side analyst from Reach Capital. What could you tell us about the sell-in, sell-out dynamic this quarter?

Maybe Paulo can take this 1, right? We discussed sell-in and sell-out. In the third quarter, we were focused mostly on security back then. So let me give the floor to Paulo so he can address your question.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

There was a bit of a mismatch in the third quarter, as I showed you in the graph in the previous presentation. In the fourth quarter, however, we noticed that the curve was stabilizing. Sellout was happening as expected in the market. We didn't see anything outside the ordinary. So I think third quarter was really a one-off situation. So since then, we've seen a positive sell-out dynamic in the market. I mean, the market is seasonal, and that's normal as we saw. So yes, the sellout levels are according to plan.

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Paulo. Of course, all of these challenges we faced when it comes to inventory, et cetera, all of this means that the inventory is not suitable at the moment for that channel. We need to recover our inventory and we've been doing just that. We're investing in that sense, and that may have a bearing on our cash because we're investing in production because we want to normalize our inventory for our channel.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Okay. Thank you Mr. Altair. We have a final question from [indiscernible], journalist from [indiscernible]. He would like us to actually talk a little bit about the interest rates and exchange rates and how that actually affects the company, especially when it comes to costs.

Let me take this one. From an interest rate perspective, we've been working with higher interest rates for a while now. As you can see in our financial results, we've structured our cash flow quite well. So this does really impact our operation much. In fact, some of the operational results may be positive, because there's a better match between our cash and our debt levels. So the perception is that if interest rates go down, that's actually going to play positively to our business.

As for the exchange rate situation, we've been in the electronics industry in the country for a long, long time, we're not strangers to market fluctuations, and we know how to deal with it because we know that some of our components are imported. And managing that has been part of our daily operations for a long time. We don't see that as a cause for concern. We don't expect the increase in exchange rates to affect us much. Now let's wait to see just where the exchange rate will go in the near future?

But when it comes to repercussion, our immediate impact, I don't think there's any cause for concern.

Okay, we have no more questions. So without further ado, let me give the floor to Altair for his closing remarks and final message. Go right ahead, Mr. Altair.

[Altair Silvestri, executive]

Okay. everyone. Thank you so much for your participation -- as I've said in our last few earnings calls, I'd like to reiterate that this is a time -- a moment in time when we are -- when we must be confident, all of the negative events are in the past. All of that turbulence has been addressed, and it's now a thing of the past. The plan is moving forward as we expected. Our portfolio, our ramp-up of new products and new technologies is going on. Our inventory is recovering. -- our processes, our structures internally have been changed. They've been tweaked. They've been adjusted, and they're working well, very productively. We've had multiple investments in branding and other areas. We've also had investment in the channels for getting new clients for insuring loyalty as well as our traditional avenues of growth that we mentioned to you on several different occasions.

So once again, this year, we're fully back to our growth rates. So first quarter was not an outlier. It was expected. It was according to plan. Our revenue will continue to grow -- at the traditional levels we've seen in the past with a stronger focus on improving our results, our EBITDA. Our plans for the future are quite exciting. As Bruno said, we had a meeting with the Board, with all the managers to make sure we were all on the same page, all aligned. We discussed our core business because we don't want to lose our focus, right? We also commissioned a renowned international company to help ordinate this work. They really helped us significantly, and at the end of the process, we were very, very happy with our potential with our market potential, considering the market we operate in and also the markets we want to venture into. We will continue to -- we want to continue to grow at the same rates over the next decade. So now, it's all about stepping on the gas and being confident for the upcoming years. I think we're going to be very positive over the next 10 years.

Once again, thank you so much for your participation, and we'll see you in our next call. Thank you.

[Bruno Teixeira, executive]

Thank you, Mr. Altair. Thank you for your kind words. So this completes the first earnings call for 2024, and we wish you all a great day.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]