Unipar Carbocloro SA

BOVESPA:UNIP6

Earnings Call Analysis

Unipar's Resilient Growth Amid Market Challenges

Unipar aims to double in size with a robust EBITDA margin of 21% remaining ambitious despite market instabilities. Maintaining negative net debt, they push for enhanced capital structure. Investing over BRL 1 billion in modernizing their Cubatao plant with membrane technologies, they seek to complete the upgrade by the end of 2025, positioning as South America's largest such facility and notably decreasing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Santo Andre's efficiency gains include 18% energy savings and a CO2 reduction of 2,000 tons annually. Expansion into Argentina's hydrochloric acid market serves the growing lithium mining industry, with initial production set at 50,000 tonnes annually. The innovative Bahia project awaits Q1 2024 transport to enhance chlorine and caustic soda production. Tucano Wind Complex, in joint venture with AES Brasil, leads the energy transition with 322 megawatts of renewable energy added to Brazil's grid, further reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 57,600 tonnes yearly.

Unipar's Ambitious Strides in Unstable Market Conditions

As market instability reigns due to unforeseen global challenges, Unipar has persisted with its commitment to long-term growth and strategy. Despite striking their worst monthly production figures since 2007, they've kept a steady course, reinforced by their strategic pillars and an EBITDA margin of 21% outperforming the industry average. Their prudence has maintained a negative net debt and fortified capital structure, positioning them for future opportunities.

Operational Excellence and Competitiveness

Unipar has embarked on a billion Real technological modernization at its Cubatao plant, projecting completion by the end of 2025. This transition to membrane technology will not only boost their chlorine production capacity by 60% but also promises significant sustainability wins, reducing CO2 emissions by 70,000 tons annually. Additional investments in other plants have expanded production capacities and improved efficiency, signifying Unipar's competitive edge in the market.

Unipar's Commitment to Energy Transition

The Tucano Wind Complex, a joint venture with AES Brasil, marks a pivotal step in Unipar's energy transition journey. This wind complex not only adds 322 megawatts of renewable energy to Brazil's grid but also stands as a testament to social impact, employing an all-female operation and maintenance team. Initiatives like this underline Unipar's dedication to environmental stewardship and empowerment.

Investing in People and Culture

Unipar's focus extends beyond financials into nurturing a strong company culture, professional development, and ethical practices. With over 600 participants in Integrity Week and substantial training for leaders, Unipar is fostering a company-wide adherence to core values and a aligning strategic vision with a uniform culture.

Social Engagement and Impact

The company's social footprint is marked by over 40 active projects aimed at sanitation and human development, impacting more than 15,000 lives. Their dedication to education, environment, and community stems from innovative projects focused on sustainable waste management and sanitation that earned external accolades for Unipar's significant community contributions.

Recognition for Sustainable and Financial Excellence

Unipar's efforts have been acknowledged externally, with top rankings in financial responsibility, governance, EBITDA margins, and environmental commitment — a reflection of their balanced approach to profitable growth and sustainable practices.

Unipar's Financial Performance Amidst Economic Headwinds

In the face of economic pressures and fluctuating global chemical prices, Unipar reported a Q3 net revenue of BRL 1.4 billion and an EBITDA of BRL 283 million. While these numbers signify resilience, they also delineate a reduction in profitability compared to previous years, with EBITDA margin contracting and net profit decreasing by 47% year over year, showcasing the adverse effects of the market on Unipar's financials.

Capital Management and Future Investment Outlook

With a positive cash flow of BRL 1.4 billion, Unipar strategizes for future growth through disciplined capital management demonstrated by an historic BRL 750 million debenture issue. Their prudent review of the capital structure paves the way for potential acquisitions or greenfield projects, gearing the company to seize growth opportunities and expand its industry foothold.

Strategic M&As and Expansion Plans

Unipar remains vigilant for strategic mergers and acquisitions, with a keen interest in assets that may bolster their chemical and petrochemical portfolio. Although the proposal to acquire Braskem has expired with no immediate renewal planned, the expansion of chlorine and PVC operations continues to be deliberated, in line with the lucrative prospects offered by Brazil's sanitation landmark.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Good Afternoon, and welcome to our third quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today, we have with us, Mr. Mauricio Russomanno, CEO; Mr. Antonio Marco Rabello, CFO and Investor Relations Director; and the IR team. This event is being recorded and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the presentation.

The presentation can be accessed via the MZiQ platform and at the company's website at ri.unipar.com. You will all have full control over the slides being displayed. This event's audio will be available on the company's website after the event. [Operator Instructions]

Before we proceed, we'd like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this conference about Unipar's business prospects, projections and operational and financial goals constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information currently available to Unipar.

Future considerations are not guarantees of performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events and, therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts must understand that general conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect Unipar's future results and may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking conditions.

I would now like to pass the floor to Mauricio Russomanno, who will begin the presentation. Please, Mauricio, you may continue.

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Thank you, Raquel. Good afternoon. In recent years, the tone of world markets has been impacted by instability and changing conditions in a fast-paced and unplanned manner. The pandemic, armed conflict and logistics disruption among others, have led to an increase in cost and value chain. For example, the global prices of oil, fuel and energy have remained high, impacting the economic conditions of countries, putting efforts and actions to control inflation at the center of many debates.

Central banks have carried out cycles of increasing interest rates in their countries and as a result, have substantially increased the cost of financing and reduced the activity of different sectors of the economy.

Critical segments for the chemical industry, such as civil engineering, mining, pulp and paper and steel among others, remain under pressure with reduced demand for our products.

Data from the Brazilian Chemical Industry Association, ABIQUIM, translates these impacts into numbers. In August 2023, the sector recorded the worst monthly production results since 2007. The average sales level for July and August 2023 was also the worst 2 months results since 2007. Imports remain high, while domestic demand has seen continuous drops.

In this context, our sector has been mobilizing to raise awareness within the government to adopt measures to improve Brazil's competitiveness and help to reverse this downtrend that we have been seeing in recent years.

A strong chemical industry is the basis for strengthening all other industries with a significant impact on the country's social and economic sustainability, generating jobs and its income, growth and development.

In Slide 4 now, even in this scenario, we remain committed and believe in delivering our vision of the future and strategy. We are a long-term and capital-intensive company. We are alert to the short- and medium-term but we will not give up our perenniality. We are adopting all necessary measures to guarantee the financial health and operational efficiency of Unipar.

This challenging period has demanded from us even more resilience and focus on excellent execution than has been planned. Therefore, we continue to work based on our 5 strategic pillars that guide our activities, sustainable growth, operational excellence, competitiveness, our team and culture and sustainability.

We continue to be ambitious to double in size in the coming years, and we will work to achieve this goal. In this Q3, we delivered an EBITDA margin of 21%, which is well above the sector's average. We also kept our net debt negative and made moves to improve our capital structure. All this could support projects and opportunities. Our CFO, Marco Rabello, will talk about this topic, and I will also bring more details about the structural initiatives that make Unipar even stronger and resilient to face moments of adversity. We are doing our part and we will deliver the future we design.

In Slide 5 now, regarding the use of installed capacity, Unipar has been able to maintain its operations at levels well above the sector's average. According to ABIQUIM's figures, the level of utilization of the segment's installed capacity was at the lowest level in the history of the associations indicated with usage at only 59% in August 2023, after recording 62% in July.

Our average utilization was at 81% in the Q3 '23, in line with the 82% that we posted in Q2. The main highlight was the Santo Andre plant, which even after the expansion in chlorine and soda production capacity recorded an increase of 9 percentage points in utilization, reaching 84%.

Now on the topic of operational excellence and competitiveness on Slide 6. In our operations, one of the main highlights of the period was the announcement of the technological modernization of the Cubatao plant. The investments there will exceed the value of BRL 1 billion. The project has already begun and it is scheduled to be completed for the end of 2025. This project envisions the replacement of mercury and diaphragm technologies with membrane technologies to produce chlorine and soda. After the project is completed, Unipar will have the largest operations in South America with membrane technology and will be the most modern, sustainable and efficient on the market in producing chlorine and soda.

With the unification of technologies, we will guarantee a production capacity of 210,000 tons of chlorine per year, which represents 60% of the unit's current capacity. And so Unipar will reduce its CO2 emission per year by 70,000 tons in addition to generating less solid waste, consuming less energy in both steam and electric, and simplifying on-site operations.

In summary, we will be more efficient, more sustainable and more competitive.

In our other Brazilian unit in Santo Andre, we have finished the quarter with increased capacity for soda, chlorine and hydrochloric acid. The plant's installed capacity rose from 160,000 tonnes a year to 189,000 tonnes per year of liquid chlorine from 180,000 tons per year to 213,000 in liquid caustic soda and 37,000 tons to 129,000 tons of hydrochloric acid. It is worth remembering that the new electrolysis equipment consumes 18% less energy. The new furnace also produces steam and with this, we reduce our emissions by about 2,000 tons of CO2 per year, and reducing our cooling water consumption by 60% compared to conventional furnaces, which do not produce steam.

In Argentina, as a result of the work to modernize and improve the plant that we have carried out in these recent years, we have achieved greater productivity in producing chlorine, and therefore, we've started producing hydrochloric acid, which gives us access to new markets.

The first sales of the product will occur over the next few weeks. Hydrochloric acid is an essential raw material for lithium mining, which is an expanding industry in Argentina. With few local suppliers, Unipar comes to the front to supply the inputs and capture an important business opportunity in the country.

Initially, production will be 50,000 tonnes a year, which can be expanded up to 90,000 tonnes in the second moment. We have further expanded the production capacity of anhydrous caustic soda and chloroform from the current 18,000 tonnes a year in 2022 to 31,000 tonnes a year by the end of 2023.

To conclude this topic, I would like to highlight the progress in the plant, which will be installed in Camacari Petrochemical in Bahia. This project is being carried out using modular technology, which allows for expansion in capacity to be accelerated. The factory is assembled in containers that are then transported to and assembled at the site. This stage has entered its final phase now and transportation will occur in Q1 2024. The unit has a total capacity of 20,000 tonnes of chlorine and 22,000 tonnes of caustic soda, produced using the safest, most modern and most ecologically efficient criteria available, guaranteeing the intelligent use of energy and other inputs.

Now on Slide 7, we look at the energy transition. We also continue to advance in our energy transition journey. At the beginning of October, we held in Salvador, Bahia, the opening ceremony for the Tucano Wind Complex, a joint venture with AES Brasil. The event had the attendance of the state government, Jeronimo Rodrigues and several other authorities who highlighted the strategic nature of this investment due to its social, environmental and economic compact, not just for Bahia but for Brazil as a whole.

The project is the first wind complex in Brazil to have its operation and maintenance carried out locally by a team that is 100% composed of women. Part of the team that operates a complex was formed in an initiative in partnership with the National Industry Learning Service of Bahia [indiscernible], which promoted training program and technical specialization for maintenance and operation of wind farms. This was offered free of charge and exclusively for women in the sector.

Now with the full entrance into operation of this phase, which has 52 wind generators, we will add 322 megawatts of renewable energy to the Brazilian power grid. This project will continue to contribute to avoid the annual emission of 57,600 tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Now with the Tucano and Lar do Sol complexes, our solar joint venture with Atlas Renewable Energy, Unipar has produced a volume of self-production energy corresponding to 52% of the generation capacity of the 3 wind parks where we have participation. [indiscernible]is in its preoperational phase, as is scheduled in the -- schedule previously announced.

Therefore, we continue to pave the way so that Unipar can guarantee access to energy with predictable prices, reduced costs, reduced carbon footprint, and the production of green hydrogen and new green products for our portfolio. We continue to be committed to have by 2025, 100% of all our energy supplying our factories in Brazil, be coming from renewable sources with 80% self-production and 20% from long-term contracts.

In Slide 8, we see people in culture. [indiscernible] professional value and strengthening Unipar [indiscernible] we had the Integrity Week that we held where we emphasized our ethical commitment to conducting our business, which showed that keeping our company within the strictest compliance standard is a duty of each and every one of us. More than 600 people have participated in these activities with very positive reactions from the vast majority.

Culture Day also received the attention of over 650 employees who heard from experts and the leadership about the importance of being aligned in values and purposes. We also carried out during this quarter, training and professional development actions for our leadership. We had 200 leaders and over 200 hours of training conducted during that period. We strengthened our leadership team, and that is a fundamental condition for implementing our strategy with a uniform culture.

In Slide 9, we see social projects. The focus of our social activity are on sanitation and human development. We have over 40 projects underway, and we selected a few for this presentation.

In the last quarter, we had an impact on over 15,000 people with our initiatives, changing lives and encouraging the dreams of children and teenagers. One of the projects we are most proud of, Unipar and the Unipar Institute implemented a project for sanitation [indiscernible] near the Santo Andre plant with the goal of improving environment and the local community's life. And with this project, we will install an alternative project to collect sewage, which will benefit the families that live in the region and reduce the undue disposal of products into the river.

We also use the technology [indiscernible] this is an innovative solution that treats water and rivers with over 90% efficiency that will reduce the problem with the lack of sewage and sanitation.

Now I should highlight that this project, the education and environment project carried out in [indiscernible] in partnership with Unipar, received the ODS Santa Catarina award during the Brazil sustainable development goals for them.

The product uses cutting-edge technology to transform organic waste into biogas, biofertilizer and reused water. The project has a direct benefit on 1,600 children served by this NGO, which is an institution recognized for its commitment to the community.

The installation of biodigesters and chemical toilets have transformed the community, bringing to them dignity, economic support and an impact on the environment through the adequate management of organic waste.

Now still on the topic of culture. We have a legacy in the Biennial Pavilion in Sao Paulo. Unipar has fully financed the renovations in the Pavilion, preserving its heritage and real estate and this has remained until today. We are also sponsors of the 35th Biennial, which occurs until December 10 in Ibirapuera. I recommend everyone to visit it.

Lastly, it's worth remembering that we launched the 2023 edition of the Unipar White Paper, which is open to receive incentivized and non-incentivized projects with a goal to invest in initiatives to promote human development and sanitation, which are our priorities for sustainability.

I'd also take this opportunity to announce that Unipar is now a signatory of the UN Global Compact. This is the largest corporate sustainability initiative in the world with over 16,000 signatories, including companies and organizations from 160 countries. As signatory, we have made clear commitments to the global sustainability agenda with targets until 2030. And with this movement, the company assumes the responsibility of contributing to the 17 sustainable development goals, the SDGs.

With this, we will be participating in global discussion forums with activities from our employees to contribute to reaching these goals. With this additional step, we are now advancing and unifying Unipar's culture of sustainability, social responsibility and commitment to the surrounding communities, which are values that will guarantee the perennity of our business through positive impact on the social, environmental and economic scopes.

Now in Slide 11, about awards and recognition. Coming the end of the first part of this presentation. I'd also like to mention the external recognition that we have received on all efforts where we are dedicating ourselves. In the 2023 addition of [indiscernible] we were the first in the sector in financial responsibility and governance, and second in human resources. In the [indiscernible] Unipar placed second among the best in the chemical and petrochemical sector, in addition to placing the first in EBITDA margin and second place in profitability.

We also attained #2 position in the sector in [indiscernible] another trade magazine, where we placed first in both financial performance and in ESG and social environmental as well as #3 in people. These awards are important benchmarks to compare us with other companies, not just in the chemical industry, but in all of the Brazilian industry.

Now I'll pass the floor to Marco Rabello, our CFO, who will go into detail about our financial results and speak a little bit more about the company's other advances in the past few months.

[Antonio Marco Rabello, executive]

Thank you, Mauricio. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you again in one more earnings call. I will now go through the financial highlights of Q3 2023 and the year-to-date in the first 9 months of the year. Moving on to Slide 12. We posted a net revenue of BRL 1.4 billion in Q3 '23, which is an increase of 4% compared to Q2 this year in spite of the reduction in international prices for caustic soda, which was offset by higher sales volume of PVC during the period.

Now with regard to the distribution of revenue by product type, we saw a slight increase in the representation of chlorine and derivatives in relation to other quarters, which has a local price dynamics in BRL. In PVC, representation increased by 3 percentage points, mainly due to growth in sales volume during the period.

Moving on now to Slide 13. During the year-to-date, in the past 9 months, our net revenue was BRL 4.3 billion, which was 27% lower than in the first 9 months of '22, mainly due to the drop in international prices of caustic soda and PVC compared to 2022 with a greater impact on PVC, which reduced its share of net revenue in 2023 by 9 percentage points.

On Slide 14, we see the consolidated COGS, which was BRL 943 million in Q3 '23, which is an increase of 14% compared to Q2 and due to the greater consumption of raw materials in producing PVC and in prices that remained at high levels, notably ethylene. In the year-to-date, the consolidated COGS dropped by 12%, mainly due to the reduction in production volume that we saw this year.

Now on Slide 15. We see that the EBITDA during this quarter was BRL 283 million, which is a 24% drop compared to the same quarter in the previous year. And as a reflection of the operational results in the period, impacted by the current situation in the chemical sector, reduced spreads, high material costs, and energy and raw materials and strong competition with imports, thus following the downward cycle that took place in 2023 in the sector.

In spite of this environment, we maintained our EBITDA margin for the quarter at levels higher than our international peers in the sector and Unipar reached 21% in this quarter.

Our net profit in the same quarter, Q3 2023, reached BRL 191 million, which benefited from the use of credits from [indiscernible] among others, totaling BRL 79.5 million.

Now in the year-to-date, as we see on Slide 16, our EBITDA reached BRL 1.1 billion with a margin of 27% in the year 2023 to date. We'd like to take the opportunity to reinforce our operation in Argentina, which is a country characterized as a hyperinflationary economy, receives the recurring application of IAS 29 rules. In the third quarter or the implementation of IAS 29 and the exchange rate variation of the Argentine peso, generated a negative effect of BRL 30 million in our EBITDA with our accumulated effect year-to-date of BRL 103 million with no cash effect.

The effect of this application results in the combination of inflationary indexes and income amounts with a counterpart in the financial results and the difference between the conversion of results to BRL at the closing exchange rate of the reporting period and the conversion of the average rate of the year-to-date.

On the same slide, we see our net profit of BRL 630 million in the first 9 months of 2023, which is a reduction of 47% compared to the first 9 months of '22 but tracks the variation in our operating results. And we nevertheless, saw a good conversion of EBITDA into net profits.

Now moving on to Slide 17. Let's talk a little bit about our debt. We remain with a net debt of BRL 260 million in September '23, which in spite of all of the current scenario in downward cycles in the sector, so this demonstrates our very good management, especially in cash.

The operating generation of the first 9 months of the year was BRL 1.4 billion with a positive variation of BRL 192 million in the company's cash flow despite important commitments to dividends, CapEx, financing and income tax that were disbursed over the year of 2023.

Now moving on to Slide 18. I'd like to highlight that in October, we carried out Unipar's eighth debenture issue worth BRL 750 million, which is the largest in our history. And today, is also Unipar's longest running debt. The resources that were raised will be used for the common management of Unipar's business and contribute to extending and improving the terms and conditions of this step. This operation also reinforces the approach to the financial market and the beginning of the review of the capital structure to make the company better prepared for future growth via acquisitions or by reinforcing our greenfield projects.

Before I conclude, it's important to highlight that our investments that contribute to improving efficiency, such as the renewable energy projects that were already mentioned in this call and in previous calls as well, and we also have investments we're making in digital transformation projects using principles of artificial intelligence. As an example of the practical application of these projects, we have anticipated preventive actions in maintenance of our industrial equipment, and we also have more relevant, the new Unipar customer portal that will provide a simpler, digital and transparent relationship. We also take this opportunity to reinforce that we continue with our strategy to have sustainable expansion over the coming years. And in these results, we demonstrate that even in a challenging scenario in a downward cycle, we continue to deliver consistent results.

Now we are concluding this section of the call, and we will open to questions. If it is not possible for us to answer the questions during this webcast, our IR team will contact you later on.

[Operator]

Thank you, Marco. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from [indiscernible]. We received this question by e-mail.

I'd like to know what is the estimate for increasing in revenue with the implementation of the countrywide sanitation landmark, in terms of percentages, an increase of, for example, 10% of the sanitation network, what would be the impact on revenue?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Thank you. Raquel. Thank you, [indiscernible]. There is an estimate by the [indiscernible] Brazil Institute, such as if the sanitation landmark is implemented over the next 10 years, the impact would be BRL 1 trillion in economic benefit. This economic benefit comes obviously from the infrastructure works from a number of different industries that will be mobilized, whether that's for projects, licensing, new tourism regions as well because many of these regions, if they receive good sanitation, they will open the way for visitations by tourists, the real estate value will also go up. There are a number of different aspects. So the economic benefit really is quite high for the country as a whole.

I would actually say that it's the biggest social inclusion project in current days in Brazil as a society. This is something that we have been successful in implementing so far, and this will also improve the quality of life and dignity of the population in these regions.

Now the impact for the soda, chloride and vinyls industry comes in 3 main avenues. The first is the required infrastructure with PVC for tubes and connections that needs to be created. There is also a huge amount, if I'm not mistaken, over 100,000 kilometers of tubes and ducts that will need to be built to reduce losses and replaced and adjusted and once these installations have completed, they will consume chlorine and derivatives to actually treat both the water and the wastewater and sewage. So there's going to be a substantial impact if we can see this program being implemented over the course of the year, not just the sanitation landmark, but all of the designs when implemented.

[Operator]

We have a question from [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

First question, the conversion of the Cubatao plant to the mercury process and diaphragm for the membrane process in 2023, will mean how much time exactly in scheduled maintenance? And will the transformer be reused? Or will a new transformer be necessary?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Thanks for your question. Now speaking as an engineer, thank you for your question because this is a great project. Now this was a significant challenge for the whole engineering and operations team to design and discuss how these technologies would be converted because the Cubatao plant is, let's say, it's a compact plant, and they have some space limits. And so we mapped out many different possibilities and ways and versions for this project, designing how we would build these installations over time. And the replacements were also planned out over one or 2 months.

But during the process, we came up with a new option, which was to acquire some property located next to our plant. This means that we now have real estate that we own adjacent to the plant. And in this plant, this new location, we will build all of the membrane and electrical plants joining the margins of the plant and in parallel, but we will continue to operate and do business with our plant because this new property has no impact on the plant's operations.

And over the next 2 years, we have planned out a number of scheduled and recurring maintenance operations on the plant. And in the meantime, we will build the tie-in conjunctions, the ducts that will be necessary. Also all the [indiscernible] where the ducts and pipes go through, there's a lot of piping that needs to be built. And the sole process is going to have one scheduled maintenance outage in 2025, where we will upgrade all of the cells, we will reactivate the factory on a scheduled outage and connect the new plant which will have all of the Cubatao installations.

Now obviously, this will only occur after all the testing have been completed. So we will have as little scheduled downtime as possible. This is much better than the alternative, which was to prepare the entire plant for sodium and chlorine in a separate location.

Now to answer your second question, we will buy a new transformer.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. We have received a few questions about the distribution of profits. So first, is there a forecast for profit distribution still this year and accordance with the size of Unipar's investment, what is the short- and medium-term forecast for debenture payments?

[Antonio Marco Rabello, executive]

Well, thank you for your question. Thanks to all of you who asked about dividend. Now we are moving into almost through the year -- the end of the fiscal year. The company had good cash generation this year in spite of the challenging cycle. We do not yet have a final decision by the company with regard to anticipating dividend, but this is, of course, a topic that is recurring in all of our discussions. And when a decision is made, we will immediately notify all shareholders. But until the present day, we do not yet have a decision in that sense.

[Operator]

Thank you, Marco. We have a question from [indiscernible]. Does the company intend to do business with other petrochemical products in the nearby future?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Thank you, Raquel. Our strategy is that we have the ambition to double the size of the company in the next few years. So we have 3 directions to that end. The first is to grow and expand our core where we currently do business with new plants and expansion. As we mentioned, the Santo Andre expansion, the Camacari plant where we are upgrading it to serve other geographies. And we're also studying other alternatives.

The second pillar is to grow in adjacent regions, which represent other products in our production chain where we are currently present. And the third pillar would come through acquisitions of companies that are similar to the characteristics of ours with intensive capital, B2B and long-cycle companies.

So this question actually fits in between pillars 2 and 3. There -- we may see new products through acquisitions or we may see new products by expanding the current production chains where we already do business. So we do have viability studies for some technologies and new products that are currently underway.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. We have also received a few questions from [indiscernible]. I will go over them one by one.

Is it possible to go into a bit more detail about what the sales versus production dynamics were like in Q3 '23? Was there a reduction in relevant stock, if so, in any specific products?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

All right. Well, sales and production dynamics first, as a result of our production process, as many of you know, we have a process that begins with water and salt. And when we do electrolysis, we automatically produce chlorine and caustic soda. So these 2 products are always connected. You cannot have one without producing the other. So in one plant in Cubatao, the chlorine goes for sanitation and soda for many industries. Now in Santo Andre and Bahia Blanca, this chlorine is transformed primarily into PVC and now in Santo Andre and Bahia Blanca, we are also starting to produce others, chlorides and chlorates such as hydrochloric acid that will be [indiscernible]. This is the work that will be done step by step.

Now with regard to the production and sales dynamics, when we see the deceleration of one product, you end up producing some more and sometimes you generate more stock in one side or on the other. In our case, what happened was that we had a small drop in sales of PVC compared to our projections.

However, this was not a problem because we had stock and inventory, and we ended up exporting them. We previously were only looking at the internal domestic market. So we can see that in Santo Andre, the numbers have also advanced in production. And this production, we actually sold lots of caustic soda on the market. This is a product that we also had lots of stock and we were carrying it for the past few quarters due to the deceleration of the industry because soda is used in many applications.

So to summarize, our production and sales generally move very close to one another, because we don't have a lot of inventory capacity, but there are some products that we can store to some degree. PVC is easier to store because it's a solid, and soda is a bit more limited. So in Q3, that's what happened, we were able to put into the Brazilian market for exports, some products such as soda by dropping our inventory level, and we also used a lot of PVC primarily for exports.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. Another question from [indiscernible]. Is it possible to let us know some kind of scale or scope for the expected CapEx for 2025? Can we quantify even approximately the gains in efficiency that the various new projects will bring?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Well, to answer your second question, we have year-on-year plans for investments in projects. The projects that are produced by the team go through our Board to be approved. So what projects have been approved so far?

Well, we have the transition and modernization project for the Cubatao plant. This is the project valued at over BRL 1 billion. We also have the Camacari plant project, which is over BRL 250 million. These projects are currently approved in our, let's say, our major pipeline.

So that's the first part. But we also have other projects that are not officially in our pipeline that are being studied, and they are going through all of our governance and approval process, not just in 2024 and '25, but also in the much longer term. So when we quantify the business cases that we bring to our Board, we need to bring, obviously, not just the cost and CapEx, but also what is the expected financial return of these projects and what is the return or the impact that it would cause for our company. We will, of course, reuse these results for our multiyear projects, but also in developing our budgets. But I can't give you a precise answer openly like this. But we do have CapEx being planned, I just gave 2 examples. We have others, but we do also have economic returns in each of these projects where we invest.

Just another aside, we classify the company's CapEx into a few different groups. We have one group that we call sustaining, which is, as the name suggests, intended to sustain the company and its assets and to keep our assets in a good as new level and as up-to-date as possible technologically. We also have CapEx devoted to environmental and health and modernization. We also have part of the CapEx that is earmarked for efficiency projects and productivity and for cost reductions and reducing losses as well to give another example. And we have another group that we call the strategic project CapEx, such as a few of the ones I mentioned now, the expansion and for major transformations within the company.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. Just to add to [indiscernible] question. The company has a robust cash flow, which we understand puts Unipar at a privileged position to consolidate the Brazilian chemical and petrochemical industry. Can you share with us what kinds of opportunities you're aiming at, especially about Unigel? Is Unipar studying eventual possibilities to acquire assets or even a company as a whole?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Well, the answer is that we constantly investigate regardless of the current situation but in light of it. Now we constantly look at opportunities and ideas for M&As or acquisitions of assets that can complement and support our strategies, our expansion, our operating improvements, et cetera. So this is not an ad hoc process. We recently actually made a public offer. And now we are still involved in this process, looking at many different companies and in different geographies.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. Now a question from [indiscernible], adding to another one that was asked is about Braskem. Is Unipar still interested in purchasing Braskem or is that in the past?

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Unipar made an offer that was effective for a time. This proposal was drafted during a time when a very detailed analysis was made, a very -- an offer that was very much aware of the market conditions of the company and the risk and of course, our capacity to finance and obtain returns on this acquisition. This proposal has expired and at the moment, we do not have any plans to renew it or to place another market to acquire Braskem assets.

[Operator]

Thank you, Mauricio. Now a question from [indiscernible] Investment. Congratulations on your results. In a live session with [indiscernible] mentioned a healthy relationship between net debt and EBITDA, that would be between 2 to 3x. Today, we have positive cash or excess cash. So are there forecasts for acquisitions or new projects related to which business industries expanding into PVC or chlorine as a result of the sanitation landmark?

[Antonio Marco Rabello, executive]

Well, congratulations on your question, and thank you for your words. Now of course, this is part of our ongoing studies. We want to acquire funds from third parties, of course. So the company's financial state is an important lever for us to plan out and do business in the coming years.

Now with regard to acquisitions, actually expansions into chlorine and PVC, they are part of the daily discussions that we have in the company and our expansions. Now as a reminder, at the end of the next year, our Camacari plant will enter operation, which is chlorine and soda expansion. There are other internal expansions that are being planned along the same line. And since increasing chlorine and soda makes a lot of sense, given the sanitation landmark, now naturally, this could occur by expansions through either greenfield projects or acquisitions. Now with regard to that, as you mentioned and on the topic of Braskem that has already been discussed, expansion into other chemical and petrochemical field, this may also make sense given Unipar's portfolio. Diversifying our products is also a risk diversification project that makes sense for the group.

[Operator]

Thank you, Marco. We now close the Q&A session. I would like to give the floor once again to Mauricio for his final remarks.

[Mauricio Russomanno, executive]

Well, we've come to the end of another Unipar results presentation. Thank you all very much for taking part in our call. Just remember that if you need any additional answers, please contact our Investor Relations team or Marco Rabello himself or myself. And as always, I give my special thanks to our employees, directors, shareholders and advisers and partners, all of our partners who help build Unipar with a lot of character, enthusiasm, grit and skill.

This is a combination of strategy and technology supported by a winning culture and excellent teams, which will guarantee the future success of our business.

And so in closing, I'd like to reinforce our commitment to transparency and open dialogue. I'm always at the disposal of everyone who wishes to learn more about Unipar, its business and its ambitions. Thank you very much, and have a great weekend.

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