Vibra Energia SA

BOVESPA:VBBR3

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Operator]

Refer to future events and, therefore, rely on circumstances that may or may not materialize. Investors, analysts and journalists must consider that events relating to the macroeconomic environment, the industry and other factors that may lead to materially different results than those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Joining us for this conference are Mr. Andre Natal, Interim CEO and CFO of Vibra as well as a few of the company's executives. Let me now turn it over to Mr. Andre Natal, who will begin the presentation. Please, Mr. Natal, you may proceed.

Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about our Q3 2022 earnings results. We will be sharing a short presentation, after which my colleagues and I will be available to answer any questions you may have. So in this first slide, we have the highlights of this quarter. Our overall adjusted EBITDA was BRL 925 million. And over the course of the presentation, I will talk exactly about the context we faced during this quarter, especially with regard to changes in commodity prices, owing mostly to the changes in tax structures.

And to us, this result clearly shows the company's resilience as well as the industry's resilience in the face of these price fluctuations and overall volatility to maintain quite substantial results even in the face of the most challenging context. When we look at the overall volume of sales during this quarter, we reached 10.3 million cubic meters. This was a 12% increase over Q2 of 2022. Obviously, there's a seasonal aspect. But even when we compare to last year, our volume essentially remained flat with the addition that last year, we had consumption of 600 cubic meters in Q3 of 2021. So correcting for the effect of thermal plants, we also see significant growth in the year-over-year comparison.

The adjusted EBITDA, combined with that volume, provided us an adjusted EBITDA margin of BRL 90 per cubic meter. I can tell you a little bit of the background. But if you remember, we used to have results of about BRL 60, BRL 65 per cubic meter in favorable environments. And today, against a very challenging context, we are seeing BRL 90 per cubic meter, which shows how this business has evolved in terms of efficiency and how well it is expected to do in the next few years.

On the other hand, when we look at the normalized EBITDA margin, which is another indicator that we provide to the market systematically, we see in this number, BRL 250 per meter cubic meter, the highest normalized EBITDA margin for the company. So the result of this loss in inventories, and we will be talking about the magnitude of that later. On the other hand, I think this result shows our pricing power and our ability to coordinate our margins and pricing and the entire operational and and commercial operations of the company within our composition to really face up to the changes in commodity prices. In long time horizons, we consider ourselves as neutral in terms of buyer and seller of these commodities. So our position is neutrally zero.

And I think that we can show during this quarter that we can act quickly to face up to these effects. And we did report the highest normalized result for this quarter, and we believe that we can give this visibility to our investors to help them understand precisely what's behind the underlying result.

Of course, excluding the effects of these changes in commodities. This is a quite significant result in our opinion.

Our results are still very efficient in the company. We are still in the trend of a base 0 budget. Even before privatization, we have invested about BRL 2 billion in terms of recurring annual revenue, which has removed us from the position of high cost and lower -- and narrower margin. So we are now reversing that position, making the most of our scale and our power to generate results.

Lastly, I'd like to highlight our service stations results, which was the same as the previous quarter, but we added in that nearly 200 service stations, which is a very significant rate within the industry. And we feel that this is indicative of a number of things, including how much investors in Brazil have realized Vibra's value proposition and how much we've added to their business. So this increase is, in a way, a way to secure future market share. So as we consistently outperformed the market in the opening of service stations, we have been increasing our footprint, which the market has been feeling. And this is what has translated into our sales figures.

So moving on, we have a longer history. Everyone who has kept track of this industry knows of this history. So looking at our volume, and if we had a similar chart for our market share, we would see a consistent improvement, which is not a product of asymmetric behaviors or price wars. It's actually a consequence of our operation in the market and the way we add and create value for our clients and our clients' clients, which has earned us this place of preeminence in the market. We do not want to improve in an artificial way.

From the expenses perspective, we continue to see those expenses within the expected and even below our targets. We had very aggressive expense reduction targets for this year. We were even able to exceed what we had in 2020. And we have been monitoring month by month in greater detail all of those initiatives. And the net balance of these initiatives has been an operating expense even below the targets we had for the year.

Lastly, our EBITDA. As you can see, this is our reported EBITDA. So it includes the effects of the losses and gains in stock, losses and gains in several aspects, but it's definitely clear how consistent the company has been increasing its results, which is now obtaining significantly better results than it was just a few years ago, all of that without foregoing its resilience in the market. So we see that this increase in margin is a product of our ability to stay at the cusp and making our customers realize the value of what we're doing.

Next, we make it absolutely clear the effects that we faced over the course of this quarter, which made this a really challenging quarter, especially because of the dramatic shifts in prices. Part of these shifts are connected with the international fuel pricing movements, which are still significantly volatile, less so than they were in the second and first quarter, but still significantly above the historical average. But the most substantial part of this decline in prices, which has come to as high as 40% in a few products, has to do with the tax shift, especially because of the rise in prices that we had been seeing until that point.

In June, we saw first a change in the PIS/COFINS contribution over a few fuels back in March. And then over the course of June, we also saw the reduction in PMPF's benchmark price, which became a moving average for 6 months, and also a decrease in the highest ICMS, the interstate goods and services tax, which affected our EBITDA margin, which are about 100, 120, but we saw decreases in gasoline prices that were beyond BRL 3,000 per cubic meter. So several times our entire margin.

So if the same movement took place over the course of the year in a gradual way, this would be significantly different in the way we would respond as compared to when it takes place the way it did. And this chart shows how dramatic that shift was. And even still, it seems to me that the company was able to face up to the situation by capturing margins and better understanding pricing, and therefore, being able to mitigate this effect, generating a still consistent and considerable result.

In the next slide, we talk a little bit about our retail operation. We have over 8,000 points of sale in our retail structure. And we believe that even though this is already the most significant operation in Brazil and has reported very significant results over the past couple of years, we are convinced there's still a great potential to explore in the quality of our operations and standardization of a customer journey as well as the addition of value using convenience stores, we believe that we found the right partnerships in that area, and we believe there's huge potential to be explored with initiatives that are still not being well seized here in Brazil when compared to other countries in Latin America.

So here, we highlight a few of these initiatives, but the company is truly engaged in a very deep strategic effort in the sense that we want to look at ways that we still haven't followed. And we do believe there are a number of opportunities that we could seize.

In branded gas stations, we added 51 during this quarter. I've already talked about the change year-over-year, and a very consistent track record for several years now. Again, this shows that everything that we say on the top and all the strength that we have with the company's retail is actually translating in a perceived value by resellers, both that work with us and don't, but who begin to join us via these negotiations.

Something else that's important to highlight, as we saw in the previous slide, is much of this shift in prices, especially given the change in taxes, affected gasoline. So therefore, also affecting ethanol. So 100% of this shift is focused on retail because there's virtually no sale of that in B2B operations. So the losses that we attribute to the decrease in stocks, and this is just to put this into perspective. Our entire EBITDA for the previous quarter was BRL 1.6 billion, and this was an all-time high for the company. And the EBITDA that we have for this year is higher than that alone. So BRL 1.6 billion is in resale. This effect obviously gives us a much more significant decrease in EBITDA.

Next, we talk about the B2B segment, which shows all of I just said. We also saw a loss in stocks, but it is still less concentrated because this was restricted to move -- to shifts that we saw, especially in diesel, which were much milder results because as they were connected to changes in prices and not so much in the changes in taxes, seeing as diesel already had tax rates lower than the ceiling that have been established. So our B2B operations remain on significantly high levels, and we were able to face up to virtually the entire shift in prices by broadening our margins in restocking.

Also, we have good news in aviation. We saw a significant increase in value of virtually 34% versus the previous year. So this was obviously the industry that took the highest toll from the pandemic, but we are already seeing the levels very close to what we have before the pandemic. So this really goes to show how thriving this industry is. We are seeing record-breaking results in this segment after the effects of the pandemic in 2020. Over the course of 2022, we were able to obtain such huge results. And I think this is striking, and it shows the resilience of our segment.

We went from a result of nearly a 90% decrease to a place where we have a very substantial EBITDA, which exceeds any result that the company has had in the past.

In the lubricant business -- and this is a very -- is a business that we have been in for over 40 years with a very significant business operation. And this was spread between B2B and B2C before, but everything that we understand to be important in capturing opportunities in our core segments, and we understand this to be a core business for the company, we still see huge potential to explore.

So in an effort to give more autonomy and visibility and speed up this industry, we decided to highlight this business along the same lines as other companies have who have even been doing corporate movements to really highlight or shine a spotlight in this industry. So we are trying to give more agility and more visibility to its results. We already have a significant operation in Latin America. Ours is the second best position in Brazil. And the entire development that we achieved over the last 3 or 4 years was not visible to the market precisely because this was not a business that we would highlight in our reports. And we understand that it was important to give the market visibility of this business. And the year before privatization, this was a business that had BRL 170 billion, BRL 180 billion EBITDA.

And only in the first 9 months of 2022, we had a BRL [ 316 ] million EBITDA. So we can only think about the results that we can deliver in the year as a whole. So this is a business of significant unit margins. This obviously has an important aspect in terms of increasing the CPV and the imports of access to raw materials. So there's a number of initiatives in terms of efficiency, but a number of initiatives from the sales and market perspective as well in the sense of opening authorized distributors, which have given a lot more focus in autonomy and direction.

In our sales bridge, we have better control of this channel in a better way to reach the client or the customer and to rightly position our products for end customers, which has translated into more opportunities to widen our margins. And we are now glad to be able to give more visibility to all of investors to these results that we have today.

Here strategic initiatives that we had over the past year were all within what we had established for the company within the context of energy transition. This is something that is not up to us. This is something that is a trend for the entire world. And it's ongoing, and we'll continue to develop, and after a strategic assessment that we had as a company also within our Board, which showed us that these were important initiatives that we needed to make to become an integrated energy company to be able to provide to these clients that we've had for 30, 40 years these solutions. And what we want is to be able to provide whatever source of energy these clients may require in the next few years. So although these are only small initiatives, only small moves, but they were only small moves because there wasn't really a company or an operation underway for renewable energy in Brazil.

And what we understand to be the end game of these moves is we are within Vibra creating this company be by integrated effort, we understand that we need to look at these trends by integrating all of them into a single business, which is what we call renewables. Of course, we have Comerc highlight in the first slide because this was the most significant investment because this was already consolidated and united many of the possible verticals in this type of business with distributed energy management trading. So it already combined all of the fronts where we already had an interest to operate. But obviously, we added other movements to this platform that the market already knows about. And we understand that so far, these were very successful moves.

So one of the advantages here or one of the purposes of opening up to this business was to show to the market that not only will we have thriving results in these businesses moving forward with strong EBITDA, but there's already an EBITDA that we're making and that perhaps the market is not pricing when thinking about Vibra. So when we look at Comerc's at stake results and the results referring to Vibra's stake of 48.70%, we already see BRL 40 million. This is about half. So you can already calculate that's about BRL 80 million over the quarter. By running the numbers in a linear way, we can already have a very simple idea of a few hundred in EBITDA, which is what the company is making today, were we to extrapolate to Q3. So it's already an EBITDA level that seems very much dismissed when pricing Vibra and other companies.

Now another reason why we wanted to show these figures to you is to show that there's a huge pipeline of projects. So this is the starting EBITDA, but there's a significant set of projects that will provide for an increase, and a significant increase, in this business. We believe that this will virtually increase by virtually 5x what we had today. And therefore, the total generation for the company where we to combine all of these, here, we have a combined CG and even solar and wind power sources. We expect to have a generation that's 5x higher than it is today in a very short period of time. So these are the 2 things that we wanted to provide visibility to the market even so that the market can keep track of these projects over time. And these make up a significant part of the value that we have -- we believe this asset provides. And we would like to highlight that this is still the beginning of the journey.

We have joined Comerc in March -- was when we closed the deal in May when we had the secondary. And since then, we have been looking very closely at all the potential synergies and explore the best commercial and other ways to explore those synergies. We have over 400 businesses that we closed together with Comerc with -- working with Vibra's clients, and we see a huge potential that's yet to be realized in this partnership.

Since we announced the acquisition, we can already see an increase in the number of clients in Comerc's management that's grown -- that's growing by over 40%. I'd like to highlight that the integration of Targus, which was the previous trader that we began to call Vibra Commercializer was absolutely successfully integrated, and we can hardly say who came from where. The companies are absolutely integrated, and results are very significant in terms of what we were able to accomplish and add to this company's book over a short period of time. So over BRL 400 million that were added to the trading -- the company's trading book. I'm talking about a VPL that's already locked into the company's results.

And I would like to highlight 2 other points. One is we are very excited about the introduction of Impakta . This is a tool we see as very opportune and very promising. And this is a complete solution for energy transition where we see the opportunity to offer a wider range of energy solutions. So we are the agents of our clients' energy transition. We see this as showing a lot of promise, and we will start to explore that within our client base starting now.

Also, we are going through a corporate restructuring within Comerc. This is already underway. And this shows the opportunity of bringing in a few hundred million reals in terms of savings and tax shields, which are very significant. They hadn't been precisely or accurately priced during the transition. So a number of very interesting moves that make us very optimistic about our long -- this company's long-term prospects. These are the projects that are currently being operated. We wanted to show you the main projects that we are now implementing, we have 2 important pieces of news with the -- both the UF back to the end of 2022. The Helio Valgas is also doing very well. It's completed by 72%, and the wind powers as well by 70% to 80% of complete. So these are extremely positive projects. The places have already been purchased. So they're absolutely within schedule and within the expected time lines.

What we have in GD or distributed generation, we are doing much the same way. These are some of the biggest players in solar power generation in the country. We have seen the opportunity to add new projects to our plan. And as I said, we would be able to more than triple this generation within distributed generation, which we believe will have a lot of space in the market moving forward.

Now in combination with that, we also have Evolua, which is our joint venture with Copersucar. We also believe we found the right partnership in this -- the right partner -- joint venture, very much in line with our strategies and our goals. Evolua is also moving forward with its internal processes and policies and the hiring of executives and goal setting. So already starting its operation. Evolua has virtually no carryover position -- operation, which is expected to be very substantial to this company's projection. So this is a migration process purchase and sale operations, many of which are not included in the company because they are branch -- new branches being open. So I would say there are operations underway that with [drop] part of the potential that we will be able to explore a little bit further down the line.

In addition to that, the way the ethanol acquisition purchases are on an [Azol] basis. And as these [Azol] prices go down, much of our margin for these operations carry over to the following quarters. So here, we corrected this result for that. I mean this doesn't show in Vibra's overall EBITDA result, but there is -- there are tens of thousands in result that should be referring to this period but are not showing in our EBITDA because they will only appear at the beginning of next quarter.

Now a little bit about Zeg. We just closed the deal with Zeg at the end of Q3 in the last few days of September. And this is another initiative where we understand we will be meeting a growing need in terms of energy transition for our clients, which is renewable gas. We have access to raw material, and a very competitive raw material, both from the OpEx perspective and CapEx perspective. We believe there's a potential to be explored within this business. We will move forward with it. Right now, we are already implementing and hiring executives and drawing up contracts with clients. So there are a number of initiatives in place, and we are already kicking off our efforts to realize the value that we believe to exist for this company. And we are now structuring it for the ramp-up that we have planned for in our business plan.

EZVolt is another partner. We have a mutual agreement with -- for recharging stations. We have 450 stations already. This is the largest network that we know of in Brazil. We have also been investing in creating a highway corridor that's also very significant. We have here the snapshot of our Elektro fast station. This is obviously more of a long-term bet, but we can already see the potential to take the most significant -- most relevant points and really build or chart our path for the future.

Lastly, all our ESG issues are connected with our business. So everything I talked about so far is ESG in the sense that we are clearly positioned in the energy transition scenario. And we are working in the sense of making sustainability feasible, especially on the energy consumption size, which is a huge source of the carbon that's being emitted across the world. So in our business, we are looking for different fronts and having several discussions about our ways to increasingly connect our business and our social operations to our purpose to move Brazil to better energy sources. Obviously, this is being acknowledged by several ranking lists relating to ESG.

I'd like to point out the institutional investment that awards over 950 companies in the world, which looked at us and considered us one of the best companies in managing COVID. So these are acknowledgments we are very proud of because these reflect the values of the company. Also acknowledgments in diversity and also in environmental operations. So the company is clearly a part of all of this, and we are making our business more sustainable as we serve our purpose with society.

So I'm available, myself and my colleagues to any questions you may have from this point.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mr. Thiago Duarte with BTG.

[Thiago Duarte, analyst]

I'd like to commend you on the results. And I think that one inevitable discussion that all considering the circumstances that we faced this quarter and the normalized margin, I wanted to hear from you precisely about how you understand this normalized margin when it -- in the sense of its sustainability. I think this -- I think last quarter, we discussed about how the decrease in prices would lead to less stocks, but it also seemed to be translating into that parachute effect with margins significantly stronger. And granted, when we look at those margins, they're stronger than ever. So I wanted you to talk about how you understand that and the sustainability of this.

How much of the parachute effect is playing out here? And how much of the effect of what's been going on in the market for the last few quarters? We also see, I won't say acceleration, but the continued branding of stations seem to be [ invoked ] again. We see that not only with Vibra, but with all the other major brands. So I would like you to talk a little bit about those changes and how that could translate into stronger margins looking obviously to Q4 and other quarters moving forward.

I'd also like to commend you on the breakdown of lubricant data. This is -- this was information that was a bit hidden and has always been very lucrative, but this is a business, when we look at volumes, it's not a business that's been growing over the last few years. So if you could talk a little bit about that right now.

I think productivity and efficiency gains are very clear, but this growth came via revenue as opposed to volume. So if you could talk a little bit more about what you -- how you see growth in the medium and long term for this business, that would be great.

[Andre Natal, executive]

First of all, thank you for your questions and the feedback. All right. About our margins, Thiago, I think every quarter in some way, we always talk a little bit about that. There's a clear negative correlation between gains and losses in stocks, and you mentioned that in your question, and the [ reposition ] margins. This was clear in Q3 when we had a clear loss of stocks, and we had 82 -- in actually Q2, we had BRL 82 million in gains of inventory. And obviously, the industry separates part of the -- of those margins because they already see that happening. And the opposite is also true. When the price collapses the way it did, everyone knows that a loss of stock that's significant is coming up, and everyone tries to up to that by expanding their margins. So obviously, there was a broadening of margins during this quarter. That was precisely because of this significant reduction in prices that would affect our inventories. This is always true.

And what I would say trying to open up a little bit more of our path during this quarter. Just to remind you, we were coming from a time of significantly lagged prices in Brazil, and this drove people away from the import market, but we continue to bring products and transfer prices. And in that second quarter, we were able to achieve significant margins despite the high import prices, precisely because we saw that within a competitive environment, we saw the opportunity to navigate this shortage.

And what happened was [indiscernible] allowing for much of that progress and our margins to take place in the context where there's some shortage in the market, not only in Brazil, but all over the world.

And over the course of September, as international prices fell back, as I showed you in the beginning, bringing Brazilian prices closer to those in the international scenario, that brought back many importers that didn't really bring back on mass, but many of them came back. And this really shows that ability to keep higher margins was fruitful because extra products are coming into the market, which pushes those margins down.

So part of the explanation is in that. And I would say that another part that's more structural, not really connected with the situation, is the tax situation. So once you bring the COFINS contribution to 0 and lower the interstate goods and services tax, you reduce the asymmetry that you have between serious suppliers that are collecting those taxes correctly and those who are not and brings back that ability to improve our margins or with the same margin to increase our volume. So we had a significant increase in volume with our ability to expand our replenishment margins. This was significantly higher than usual. And I would attribute that at least in part to the fact that competition is less asymmetric or less unfavorable to serious peers like ourselves and some of our competitors.

So I would point out these factors in when we look a little bit further into the future, thinking about October, for example, there was a slight delay in the grain season that you obviously monitor very closely, which adds to that volume surplus movement. So you had a trend of some imports coming back, and with that, some delay in the harvest, which produces some surplus for grains in October. And what I feel is the most interesting part was international prices rebounded, and volatility is still high, but prices in Brazil remained rather unchanged.

So again, over the course of October and also November is moving along the same trend. Again, we see a negative disconnection between Brazilian prices and prices overseas, which we believe will remove the potential revenue gains for those independent players who will not be able to accurately price their product. And we believe this could again lead to a scenario where these volumes will dry up in the market again. Then we will see a favorable margin after this slight decrease in the end of the first half of the year and start of the second.

I mean we still have some way to go until the end of this quarter. But more structurally, I would say that the tax situation stays the same from this asymmetry that's now mitigated. And there's some capacity for us to over time increase our volumes. We believe that the market should retain that, but even a high exchange rates and -- high exchange rate is expected to generate higher margins. So these bumps a little bit to the upside and to the downside are more situational. But if you think about a world where oil prices are higher, so there's more capital -- employed capital, and taxes are lower precisely because of that.

It seems interesting to me when the margins should be higher to contain higher employee capital, which is why we have more capacity to add healthier margins. And these are margins that are in keeping with the context. So I do believe that there is part that should be sustainable from a structural standpoint. But in the near term, anything could happen.

And then going back to what you mentioned about our brands. I agree that in the last few years, we have been able to show that now it's more appealing to have a brand in this more challenging scenario in terms of product availability, it's more clear to our clients, our resellers the strength or the power of being connected to a major distribution with appetite and sophistication in dealing with the product and accessing different products and doing what needs to be done to -- at a competitive edge to these stations and these resellers. So we do believe there is a very direct connection, and I know that you pay close attention to the development of number of stations over time. And the figures are showing how well we've been outperforming the market in general. I think a significant way to support everything that we've been doing.

And lastly, on the lubricant side, you're right, much of what we're seeing comes via higher margins as opposed to volumes and also better positioning of our brands, the very gain in SG&A and CPV. So there was no silver bullet. There was no silver bullet with Vibra. We had to do dozens of things at the same time to obtain the results that we're reporting today. And there was an actual decrease in volume, but this was true for the entire market. The market has been decreasing by about 1% a year since 2018. So there's been a decrease in volume across the market.

We were down a little bit more than that, and part of that is actually connected to that repositioning and the fact that we gave prominence to a wider margins. And with the -- virtually the same market share, we were able to catalyze the results of this category or this business within our core business. So I think we have done right in repositioning ourselves. But maybe I think it's important to say, and I may have forgotten this before, that we have just inaugurated the expansion of our plant. So this is now the greatest in Latin America, one of the greatest in the world, with huge potential to now use this capacity not only to complement our line of products, but for potential partnerships with other players so that we can bring industrialization to other players, which is another -- gives another -- or additional potential to expand our volume in addition to our original capacity, which also repositions ourselves from a volume perspective.

So we believe there's a lot that we can explore with this business. This is just the first step, which is to give visibility. In-house, we're still giving this some focus, and we wouldn't have tripled our results if it weren't for that. But you can expect us to, over the course of the next few months and years, announce more interesting things within this business and continue to develop on the volume side, not only on the margin side. I hope I have answered all your points.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Mr. Bruno Montanari with Morgan Stanley.

[Bruno Montanari, analyst]

We have 2 from our side. First of all, if you could please talk a little bit about how the governance process for the succession in the company's high level Board, if there's any update on the process. And then going back to the business. It's clear that the volatility was very unusual and that you just, as major players have, huge capacity to absorb that. And I wanted to understand how that works on the franchisee side, if maybe the network isn't feeling the same sort of pressure, which could even help you on the branding issue. And what steps did you take during this quarter to provide your franchisees some support, especially those who may have struggled with that? And if moving forward, that could maybe mean an increase in integrated capital and higher returns.

[Andre Natal, executive]

Thank you for your questions and for joining us, Bruno. Well, about the succession process, there's no deadline that's been set. What the Board decided after Wilson left was for me to take over in an interim capacity with no time line so that they can conduct the process in a very calm way. Obviously, they are now fully devoted to that, defining a permanent replacement for this position. And they not only asked me to stay, but also asked that this not be a time of only waiting for a transition.

Quite the contrary, the company has -- its calendars has a lot to develop. And I mean all you have to do is look at how much it's been developing over the last few years. But there are opportunities to explore. There are gaps where we haven't acted yet. Perhaps looking at the longer moving picture, we could maybe divide that in major captures. The first, we could call it the big turnaround for the company with pension plans and health insurance and the profit sharing plan, all of that could be called a major turnaround. And then a second big chapter, which is our strategic transition. So we -- gave us the opportunity to look ahead and see what was coming in terms of energy transition and take strategic steps to be able to stand firm in this scenario.

And now I think a third chapter is now starting, which is about really connecting all of that and really becoming a multi-energy solution with integrated solutions for our clients, but also to explore everything that we haven't explored in our core business. And I mentioned that within -- the answer to your question because within what the Board asked us, was giving priority to not only connecting these new energy sources in these new platforms, but also to look into those opportunities on the B2B side and B2C side, just as we were talking a while ago in lubricants where much of our focus right now where we have over 100 leaders in the company involved in a deep discussion. This is what the Board asked us to do. So the company has stopped in implementing and discussing its agenda and tackling these priorities that have been set, both regarding our core business and our new avenues of growth.

So one way to summarize that is perhaps to say that we are now working a lot more on the top line. We were first looking at efficiency at that first chapter. And now we are being able to look more at the client and exploring not only new avenues, but to grow more via our old avenues. So this is what the Board asked us, and this is what we're doing.

We had a Board meeting yesterday, and Board members seemed at ease and the belief that the company is moving in the right direction with solid results. And so we -- they can do what they have to do without any rush. So I can't give you a time line to when the process will end, but the company is still working normally until that [ transition ].

Now about your second question, I would highlight the point that maybe our network is in the same context as we are for much of the quarter at least in the context of a shortage of products, which affects our private label players a lot more than the branded players because, as you said, they have the big players behind them with cargo coming from all different markets and really deploying all that sophistication so that things would take place.

So when our players become very competitive, they can also pass along those margin changes. And they can also remain peaceful and solid because the opportunity to do transfer along those prices is also true. We did not do any of those -- we did not take any of those steps in terms of expanding our margins to the detriment of our partners. Quite the contrary, we had a huge margin expansion during the pandemic. And now our resales are still at a very healthy point. So we see no apparent hiccup in terms of our branded franchisees' health, but it may have been a more challenging situation for the white label ones.

I think that the figures show a lot more than anything else that I could say. They show that we have been able to keep a significant pace in our branding. And this has been really consistent. It's not been full of ups and downs. We have been able to do that with significant attractiveness. And granted, the current context has precisely the effect that you mentioned, which is we can continue to do that with more significant returns and even more so than in other times when you would spend a lot of energy in convincing franchisees that it was worth being branded.

Back in 2015, 2016, it was difficult because the context was very conducive to leading our business in an independent way. But this -- with our results, we see the profitability of this turnaround in business.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Mr. Gabriel Barra with Citi.

[Gabriel Coelho Barra, analyst]

And I'd like to echo that having this information, especially about your new business, makes our job a lot more easier. Now I'd like to follow up on the first question, going back to a point that I think it's very important, which is the replenishment margin. When we look at this quarter, the parachute effect is very important, and we see very significant margins. And I wanted to connect that to cash generation moving forward as well as the deleveraging.

I remember that in your last Investor Day, you have mentioned that 30% of your CapEx was devoted to new businesses, and your cash generation would come by a 70% to 80% rate from new businesses as well. And this has increased with [indiscernible] and all your new businesses. And cash generation, we have not seen that yet, and we expect to see more volume of that moving forward. So if you could help us understand, first of all, the cash generation next year, vis-a-vis the company's cash generation, I think, understanding the dividend payments is going to be very important for Vibra moving forward and also try to understand how you are looking at the market next year.

One of the questions we hear most often is, what risks do you see for the fuel distribution business? Any change in how Petrobras may operate in the market? We've seen importers bringing more products in with even a competitive advantage in using your brands. I know it's early to talk about that, but if you could share a little bit about how you guys are seeing next year and how that could affect the company, the market in general, whether what you're seeing is positive, negative or if the picture remains virtually the same for you. Those are my questions.

[Andre Natal, executive]

Well, first of all, Gabriel, thank you so much for your feedback. It's challenging to break everything down and disclose everything, but we believe that it's important, and we are thankful that you see the value in all of that.

So moving on with your questions. First of all, about capital allocation. You're absolutely right, when we announced recently the change or addition to our dividend project going up to 40%, this is a sign in the same direction that you mentioned, which is the most significant strategic movements that would require capital have been concluded, which is not to say we will never take any other step in that sense. We've always said that we still have ambition to complement our portfolio with GNL, but this is significantly smaller. So I would say that most of what we wanted to do has been done. And with that, we can have a bit more visibility that there's -- we are in a comfortable position to have a significantly higher level than what we've had.

And obviously, this policy is significant, but the payout that we expect is a lot higher than what we've had so far.

And you're right in saying, as I showed you in Comerc's case, I wanted to show 2 things. First of all, that the market neglect the fact that there's an EBITDA that's significant that's underway, and we already have any idea of what it is, 46.8%, and that's being neglected. But also the length of the pipeline of ongoing projects, all of them on track, going as expected. So we understand that there's a pipeline to grow this business. And here, I'm talking about Comerc, but I could be talking about any other where we have allocated capital and are now being structured and starting to realize a few synergies.

But so far, every sign that we've had about these businesses point it much more toward confirming our expectations about the potential of these partnerships than in the sense of detracting from them. So I believe that cash generation, and you know that we can't give you any guidance, so I can't give you a number for next year. But what I can tell you is -- you saw that Comerc's expansion that we mentioned is not for the next 10 years, but the next 1.5 years, by middle 2024. All of this capacity will already be used, generating energy, and 75% of that energy has already been sold. So we're talking about relatively safe cash generation that is already on track and on time.

And here, obviously, it's difficult to say from us, leveraging or deleveraging standpoint, what will be in the short term, which is different from what happens with oil or exchange rate. But if you look at this historically, this generates a lot of cash, and it's a business that deleverages itself on its own. So if you look at the company's payout record, we have a 70% payout.

So the only company that can have a 70% payout is one that does not have to allocate so much capital for its day-to-day operations, but also generates a lot of cash. And if they do not have that big a payout, they will deleverage themselves. So that's the beauty of the business, and this is something that we believe will continue to exist.

And even going back to your question, which is a very good one, the businesses we have dived in are very robust. So growth is expected to translate into higher dividends. So in our opinion, Vibra should pay out in higher multiples than they have historically precisely to refer to what you said in your question. So part of our initiative to make that clearer to the market is so that the market can look and see that the projects are being pursued, that the -- the panels are there and the energy is there, and you will be able to keep track of that cash generation moving forward. And we expect it to make up about 3 -- or 30% of the company's EBITDA by 2027.

When we look at it pro forma, this is the level that we expect to reach. I can't give you a precise number because we can't give you any guidance, but I can tell you that the shape of the company will look a little bit like that. Of course, we are discussing the makeup of the business. But I can tell you that about 30% will come from these new renewable avenues of growth.

About the risks to the market in 2023, I could tell you, first of all, from a supply standpoint, we are very much calm, especially in terms of reducing the stock bands that we've carried over. We are going more to the lower side. That obviously connected to the issue of leverage and not stressing the situation more than we should, within a seemingly quiet situation. We believe that this could change very quickly. But right now, we do not see any dramatic change in 2023.

From the standpoint of Petrobras' operation, it's difficult to say anything at this juncture. But from what we've seen in repricing over the last 3 years in Brazil, we've seen from daily volatility to monthly volatility to annual volatility, we've seen several types of benchmark prices. We've tried every model under the sun. And when you look at distributors across all of the recent decades, those were very resilient despite the -- or regardless of the pricing model adopted at that time.

So we've seen the regular operating that. So I believe we have been able to navigate any scenario. Obviously, we prefer a few of these scenarios than others. We believe that the closest we are to parity international prices, the better. We believe that having on, off prices or local prices, we believe that's the right way to do it. And the closest we can get to that, the more dynamic, we believe, the market will be and the more pulverized it will be. But we believe we'll be able to navigate the scenario, whatever it may be. We have no major concern today. We do not have to spend so much energy in trying to predict how the -- how Petrobras will work over the next few years because our relationship with clients is very strong with our franchises as well. So we will continue to produced results, and I hope I was able to answer all your questions.

[Operator]

This concludes our question-and-answer session. We will now turn the floor back to Interim CEO and CFO, Mr. Andre Natal, for the company's final remarks.

[Andre Natal, executive]

Well, guys, first of all, I'd like to thank everyone for being with us. Of course, we need to interrupt now because of the time, but our IR, which is the best IR team in Latin America, is available as am I to any question. Please feel free to reach out, and we will be happy to help you with anything that you may need.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Have a great weekend.

[Operator]

Vibra's conference is now concluded. We'd like to thank everyone for joining us and wish you a great day.