Ambipar Participações e Empreendimentos S.A. (AMBP3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the results call for this first quarter in 2025. With us here, we have Joao Arruda, Financial Director; and Pedro, Investor Relationship Director. This will be recorded and you can find it on our website. [Operator Instructions] Before continuing that, a few information. I just wanted to let you guys know that some things in this call could have interpretations about the future or expectations about the future, and this is based on risks and uncertainty that we are aware of and possibly could be different in the future, different from what is expected. Now we would like to send -- pass the voice on to Joao Arruda, who is going to start the presentation.

For the investors, thank you for being here, and welcome to our first call for the first quarter of 2025. We're very happy with the expectations that we had for the previous quarter for 2024. And this new quarter has really improved a lot significantly, and we are very happy with our results what has changed our cash inflow on the operation in the company. We have also been able to maintain the leveraging stable, and we are adjusting to those numbers from 2023. We're following the same directions from the previous quarters, consolidating our discipline and our financial sustainability and discipline. Now we're going to highlight the main numbers for this first quarter. So -- as net income, we have these numbers here. You can see on the board, and there is 37.3% growth in comparison to the previous quarter in 2024. The EBITDA is also a record with a growth of 47.4% in comparison to 2024. Our margin -- our EBITDA margin has reached 31.7% with an expansion in comparison to the first quarter in the previous year. And our cash flow before investment, but also the operational one has been BRL 175.3 million. And the CapEx for this quarter has reached 11.2%, showing the demonstration of capital and our budget discipline and the consolidation of expansion projects. So with this, our leveraging has been stable in the beginning of this quarter and our growth. So in summary, we are being able to really find those benefits from the work that we have done in the first quarter. So we've been able to provide this more positive growth with these numbers. So there's also growth in subscriptions and on-site work. So here on the next slide, you can see the operational results. In the Environment, our main indicator is the volume of treated solid waste. And this is also allowing us to calculate the environmental impact and the technology for that. In the first quarter of 2025, we started with volume growing 29.9% in comparison to the previous year and 3.9% larger than the final destination. The average ticket has increased by 29.9%, even with the fall in the price market in Brazil and in Chile, this has still been able to grow and maintain itself. In our operational response, our collaborators are our main assets. That's what differentiates us and our process. So with that, the KPI, the most relevant KPI in our response are how many hours we have worked for our clients in comparison to the amount of hours available. In the first quarter of 2025, we were able to maintain that at 87%. So that means that we were able to use 87% of those hours available in services to our clients. Higher utilization has really contributed in the final ticket for our collaborators, which reached these levels in the first quarter of 2025. Another important aspect for these we have 87 coming from research, field research and services. And we have contracts for emergencies and it's on the standby for that. So we have been able to consolidate the results for the first quarter. We were able to reach a consolidated in comparison to the same quarter in 2024, we were able to increment that revenue. And you can see that here with the volumes. In the Environment segment, we had a really significant growth imposed by [indiscernible]. You can see here, so the water treatment and the movement of residual product. Here in the response area, there was -- in comparison to the first quarter of 2024, there was a strong influence in Europe and North America also with our [indiscernible] and our collaborators. So here in the next slide, we're going to talk a little bit about the EBITDA and the EBITDA margins here in the company. So it reached a record for the period, representing 47.4% growth in comparison to the first quarter in 2024. And the margin EBITDA has also grown 2.2%, reaching the growth rate of 31.7%. This is the result coming from different -- so 4 main indicators that have brought better performance in America and Europe, especially in complex services, more contribution to the environment, which has valued the waste and those specialized processes and also our increase in efficiency calculated by this project called Connecta, which has a lot of incentives. And we've already reached those results, and we are still going to reach more growth, but this is how we are so far, and we plan on keep on working towards the rentability for this growth, not only the operational costs, but also -- so we still have this lower rates due to taxes, costs and interest rates. We still are very committed with the financial administration of this project, especially with the optimization of costs and efficiency. In relation to the CapEx, we are here with the possibility of converting this into cash flow. And our CapEx from 2025 was -- you can see here the numbers, and this represents a percent of 1.2% on our growth. And you can see here how this is increasing both on environment and on response, and there was about 15% on investment, maintaining the strategies for our new fleets and the operation. We were able to build a tower of assets so that the new businesses can rent out their equipment and guaranteeing sharing of those costs. And by consequence, that also increases the efficiency. So we reached BRL 48.5 million for financing and investment. This was actually one of the best historic levels in the company, and it has grown in the quarter in comparison to the 2024. The centralization of purchases and the costs have also had a competitive result. So even in a very macroeconomical challenging situation, we are being able to adjust to that. So here, you can see the leveraging levels after investments, and this allowed us to keep that stable actually in the first quarter of 2025 and 0.52x. This is very relevant because we are currently living through a really high interest rate scenario. And this strategy has been very important for us to control that so that we can keep our leveraging levels and our debt levels at the lowest possible and increasing a more sustainable investment process. We've directed this towards very clear competitive advantages and prioritizing growth towards -- that helps us deleverage our levels here in the company. So you can see the rating from S&P Global, and it's reflecting the trust of the market in our -- in the value that Ambipar has brought. Now let's take a look here at the profile of our debt. So in this quarter, we committed $4,973 million in 2021, and this helped us close our quarter at these levels with our cash flow positions, and that allows us to keep our debt when this was able to actually allow us to increase the debt levels with our date so that we can now have up to 5 years for that range. And this is actually providing us security safeness so that we can pay off debt through 2025. Now let's go to the final slide, where we can see the focus of value towards our investors. So our strategy is still centered in 4 pillars: our team, our governance, integration, financial discipline and communication. The team -- as a team, we've really worked on leadership in North America and Latin America, strengthening high-performance corporate people on our team. And in governance, we've been able to work on our internal controls, and we've expanded our committees and our capital expansion groups as well as new compliance for best practice in each geographic region that we are present. In integration, we've also had very valuable growth in this aspect, especially in Latin America, promoting a fast economy and also some identities. We've been simplifying our processes, strengthening our teams and our financial. We also have a new program here to accelerate this process even more. In financial discipline, we have a process of opening new relationships with banks that have sustainable financial options for our investment and in communication, guaranteeing that our image with our clients and investors, we've really worked on this aspect. We know that this year of 2025 has a lot of challenges, especially in this macroeconomical situation and scenario that we are all living through, but we are very committed to keeping this sustainable and working towards this with our investors. I would also like to really thank all of our collaborators who have made this possible. We are now opening our question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from [ Jaskaran Singh ] from Goldman Sachs.

Can you please tie up the cash flow item from earnings. This list of financial results at BRL 397 million negative. But when I look at the detailed cash flow statement interest paid, that's BRL 304.8 million negative. So with these 2 negative numbers, can I ask what's leading to the difference in both figures? And what was the interest income in the quarter?

We have some integrance within the cash flow and the income statement due to the recognizing process and our cash flow and our interest payments. So they are usually paid in the beginning and the interest from financial investment, that's usually paid in the third and fourth quarter. So that explains those differences. And we can get into details more if you would like to.

Our next question is from Gustavo [indiscernible], an investor.

I'm glad for the results. I would like to know more about Ambipar Water's project. Are you trying to enter municipal markets or other segments?

Gustavo, Ambipar Water was a natural evolution from our portfolio as we are treating our waste -- the physical waste from our clients and that as a result, creates this need for the water treatment as well. So this actually brings an opportunity for us, and that helps us increase our scale. And that way, we can attend at a larger scale, the clients that we have already attended and that helped us grow that business.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from [indiscernible] from Bradesco BB.

In the results, you mentioned that you incorporated 13 new [indiscernible] companies. Could you please show us how that would affect the results for the rest of the 2025 year. And about deleveraging, we realize that you have that and how should we expect those change?

So as we reduce our societal size, we also reduce our costs with different LLCs and societies. So the goal with that is to accelerate the growth with our strategies with our internal numbers, and we hope to reduce those societies that are just raising and increasing our cost that we assess not necessary in the next quarter. So slowly, you'll start seeing that flow with the results. You will see that we are increasing our income with the financial results due to -- since we would like to increase the net income. So we're really excited about reducing that and our competitors are also -- this is something really important. So we've seen this been done in other companies, and it should work, and it will be really positive. So about the leveraging that you mentioned, our company is really working intensely even in this really difficult macroeconomical scenario with historical interest rates in Brazil, we are working strongly towards deleveraging.

The next question comes from Giuliano Ajeje from UBS BB.

Could you pass along what are the priorities for 2025? Aside from that, this tariff war with the United States, will it impact you?

Giuliano, thank you so much for your question. The priorities for 2025 have been -- they're related to what we mentioned in our final slide. We want to keep on working on our journey towards cash flow -- a positive cash flow and we believe that it will strengthen our operation through the 5 pillars that we finalized the presentation with, right? So our team, our biggest asset, but also our biggest cost. So we have to be really diligent with the culture of excellence that we create here in the company so that we can really always increase our efficiency. We want to keep on working with integration and governance so that we can elevate the levels of the company so that we can attain synergies that still exist in the environment. And this work has really been done, but there's still a lot more to work on. And this is the focus of the team. We will bring updates for you throughout the rest of the year with the results for that. Now about the tariff war with the United States per hour. So for now, the segment has not -- and for example, in the North American market, we attend a lot of the local industry, right? So clients -- relevant clients are ports and refineries and oil and gas companies, agriculture companies, which are very essential supply chain elements for the local and international markets, and they've been affected by the tariffs. Now at a lower level, we also have Brazilian exporters that could be more affected with that. But since the company is really diversified, those effects will be diluted within the final results in Ambipar. So we're really following closely this process of this war. And for now, it has not impacted directly our results.

The Q&A section has now ended. We would like to pass along the voice to the company for the final considerations.

Thank you so much, collaborators and investors here at Ambipar. They've dedicated themselves so hardly for these results and our investors specifically to keep on supporting our company. Thank you so much, operator.

The conference has now been ended. We thank everyone, and we hope you have a great day. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]