Corporación Financiera Colombiana S.A. (CORFICOLCF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the results call of fourth quarter 2024 of Corficolombiana. Thank you to everyone who is watching us through this channel. Let me remind you that the documents and the presentation will be on our website on the section of Financial information for shareholders and investors. In this platform, we have enabled the Q&A session, so you can send your concerns through this channel. At the end, we will have some space to solve those problems. I will now give the floor to Milena López, who is the President of Corficolombiana, and she will begin with the presentation.

Good morning to everyone, and thank you for being with us in this conference call to give you the results of the fourth quarter 2024 and to tell you a little bit more about the most relevant topics of last year. The presentation has been divided into 5 sections. I'm going to talk to you about the relevant facts with a short summary of results. Then Lina Mondragon, who is the VP of Sustainability, will talk to you about the results for the year in sustainability. Then we will have our economic research thing with César Pabón, who will talk to you about our macroeconomic overview. Then we will talk about the financial results with Dr. Ramirez, who is our VP, who will talk to you about the results of 2024. And then we will go into details about the results of each of our segments and guidance for 2025 with Alejandro Sánchez, who is our Investors VP. So throughout 2024, in Corficolombiana, we were able to reach something significant, which is the recovery of CapEx, which reflects the level of investment that we have in the places where we invest. We closed 2024 with investments of COP 1.8 trillion. This is an execution of around 96% of what we had forecasted for the year, which is divided mainly in our energy and gas sector, where we had investment for COP 970 billion. I would like to highlight here that this is more than half of the CapEx and a change in the trend that we had before we saw more investments in the infrastructure world. But these have been going down to the extent we complete our construction of roads, and we are increasing investments in the energy and gas sector. Especially this year, we had COP 970 billion, which is 53% of CapEx. In the world of energy and gas, I think the most important project and the Pareto of that invested amount are all the investments that we carried out for the bidirectionality of the gas pipeline, Ballena [ Nortes ]. With respect to infrastructure, we saw investments of COP 822 billion. This were focused mainly on the investments that we have in our roads of Covipacífico and Covioriente, where as we progress, we are very close to the operation and maintenance stage of this infrastructure, completing then the construction phase. So significant levels of investment that reflect the commitment that we have with the country and in the areas in where we operate. And these are figures that -- well, we're proud of them and this is the investment we do to have better results. In financial terms, we closed 2024 with revenues of COP 12.4 trillion, which is a reduction of COP 1 billion, mainly to vis-a-vis last year. And we see that in the world of infrastructure, and as you've heard on previous calls that we've had throughout the year, we see the impact of the finalization of the construction stage, which makes those revenues go down. It's also a dynamic that we observe when we see consolidated EBITDA. We closed the year with a consolidated EBITDA of COP 4.79 trillion (sic) [ COP 4.72 trillion ]. The 2 components are energy and gas, almost COP 2.8 trillion, and infrastructure is COP 1.9 trillion in addition to other activities that we also have in other sectors, which we have a consolidated net profit of COP 870 billion, of which COP 200 billion are attributable to that consolidated with separate net profit we closed again with COP 33 billion, where we see that fall from last year, but it's mainly due to the impact of reduced construction on roads. Gustavo will give you more details about that. Something that I believe it's really important to highlight is the economic value that we generate and we distribute throughout the stakeholders in our value chain. If you see those revenues of COP 12.5 trillion that we showed you, this is really the value that we generate. And the idea of this graph is to show you how this is distributed. So COP 0.96 trillion go to our employees. These are mainly salaries and compensations that we give our employees. From this, COP 6.2 trillion, it's to all our network of goods and services that we have throughout our investments at national level and in other countries. We paid COP 0.95 trillion in taxes, which these are the resources that reached the stage for it to work and invest. We have also investment, COP 0.03 trillion in communities and the environment. We paid COP 2.9 trillion in interests to our affiliates, and COP 0.46 trillion in dividends that were paid in 2025 to our investors. We have a retained value of COP 1 trillion, which are the resources that we use to invest again in our operation, which are the source of that future growth that Corficolombiana will have in the future. I would like to talk to you about the most relevant facts of 2024 in each of the segments where we operate. Let me begin with energy and gas. I think it is important to highlight that this year in Promigas, we exceeded 7.5 billion (sic) [ 7.2 million ] users of energy and gas. This metric is significant. And this also reflects the improvement in the quality of life of the people that receive gas and power in their home. With respect to SPEC, it was very relevant. It was not only relevant for our operation for the country, but also because it was the energy insurance really during the El Nino phenomenon. SPEC backed up 70% of thermal generation and 30% of natural gas demand throughout 2024. So it was key for us to be able to face this Nino phenomenon, which was very complex to the country. As a result, SPEC was highlighted as the best operator according to NGL Global. So it is important that throughout the year, Promigas signs an agreement with senate to improve reliable gas transport system around the country. We had a year where we transported the maximum historic volume within our system. This, again, due to El Nino phenomenon. We were able to transport 825 million cubic feet per day, and we feel very proud of that result. Through the bidirectionality of the gas transport systems of Promigas, we were able to transport. We had a gas dock in the Caribbean coast from Ballena to Cartagena, now it goes both directions back and forth. So the gas that is imported through SPEC, they can reach the center of the country. So that's really important for gas security in the country. And I would like to complete this by telling you about the alliance of Promigas with the IFC, the first social bond issuance for Brilla, which is our nonbanking financial. And we obtained resources amounting to COP 540 billion, and that allows us to place that investment from Brilla. So it is not only a successful business, but it allows access to financing to households to whom we provide services to. And infrastructure, 4G roads -- or concessions really are 95% of progress. So we are almost reaching that operation and maintenance stage, and more importantly the stage where we stop investing resources to build, but we receive the cash from that investment. That is important. Last year, we completed a functional unit of one of Covipacífico, and we have completed functional unit # 2. And I think in the next week the infrastructure that in Antioquia has been highly expected, it will open very soon. And I think that's really important, because it's a new road that will be available to the public. Therefore, it will be very important. Throughout 2024, we received payment of DR8, which was over COP 1.8 trillion in Covioriente. We've been receiving future validities, which is also key for us. And maybe the other important issue to highlight is that the authorization from the government has been granted of a clear scheme to standardize tolls. And so at the end, by the closing of 2025, all public initiatives that were lagging in terms of adjustment according to inflation. So this was important for the cash flow of all our company. Another key issue in terms of infrastructure is that we've entered into an agreement with ANI to extend the term for the concession of the Cali Airport until August 2025. And as you know, we are working on a private initiative to renew that concession. With respect to our holding in Corficolombiana, we've made significant advances in terms of corporate governance, one of those. We now have a Board of Directors with 9 main members; before we had principal and deputy members. So we are moving forward with corporate governance. And there were 2 key issues in terms of that strategic view. We sold our stockholder on Casa de Bolsa to Grupo Aval, and we did exactly the same with the Fiduciaria Corficolombiana. And we created Aval Banca de Inversión. We will partner with Aval, and we have our own investment banking team with an initial investment, to create this investment banking that we believe has a great potential, specifically for financing. Why is this important for Corficolombiana? Because it will enable us to focus on those investments that we have in the industry sectors or the sectors that we consider as core, agroindustry, tourism, infrastructure, and energy and gas. So that will give us greater focus in terms of generating value in the segments where we operate. With respect to agroindustry, I would like to highlight the success of our pilot program, lemon, Tahiti Lemon. We were able to have our first production. This pilot program has been quite successful, and we will continue enhancing this crop. In Mavalle, we renegotiated the conditions of debt where we developed the first phase of our rubber project or caucho. So we were able to bring down the debt, the service of debt. In Unipalma, we achieved a significant milestone. So our biogas plant for renewable energy. So 85% of the energy that we use in that operation, it's renewable and it's based on waste from the plants. In terms of tourism, 3 significant aspects. We bought 35.9% of Hilton Cartagena and now we have in possession 89.9% of Hilton Cartagena. We've seen significant results in driving food and beverages in our hotels. We have restaurants more than the typical restaurant that you find in any hotel. We have restaurants to which the services is open not only to the members of the hotel, but to the public. And this line of business has enabled us to increase revenues. They represent around 30% of the revenue. So this is a very good strategy in terms of generating value with the assets we already have. Another significant milestone, the Intercontinental Hotel in Cali reached historic occupations with -- well, because it was a meeting of COP16. So our occupation in general was 64%. We don't have COTELCO figures for the entire year, but COTELCO figures was well below us. So our performance in terms of hotel occupation is a lot better than the average in the country. I don't want to go into details of the acknowledgments that we have received throughout the year, but I think it's important to highlight significant awards in terms of sustainability, both from Sustainability Yearbook of Standard & Poor's. We were able to retrieve our BBB rating from Wharton, and this is more specifically the Zicklin Bright Index. We are the third best company in Colombia in our commitment for human rights. We're also a leading company in responsible investment. In the evaluation of principles for accounting, we keep 4 of the 5 stars, and we outperform in 6 of our 7 modules assessed. So this is really in terms of what we are doing. In terms of talent, we continue as one of the companies as a Great Place to Work because of the practices carried out in Colombia, renewing our certification of the Biodiversity Chamber. And Merco also acknowledges us as one of the 100 companies with best reputation, and we attract and our employees are loyal. So well beyond the awards specifically, I think this acknowledgment is external acknowledgment that we do things right. And in addition, they allow us to measure ourselves, to compare ourselves. This is a benchmark. And these are the results that we see from the best rankings. So we are doing our work, and we can validate our work with an external party, which just tells us that we are improving every day in how we do things. I will now give the floor to Lina Mondragon, who is our Sustainability VP, and who will talk to you about what we've done in terms of sensitizing, in terms of following our strategy on CorfiSostenible and our commitment that the strategy, as it's here, is sustainability does not only inspire, but it's a core aspect of our strategy and how we do things. So Lina, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Milena, and welcome, everyone. It's a pleasure to greet you. Yes, indeed, going back to what Milena just said, throughout 2024, we continue going in depth with our strategy of CorfiSostenible, which really means that sustainability is cross-cutting in everything we do and in our business model and how we relate with our stakeholders and with the environment. In this regard, throughout 2024, we were acknowledged by quite a few companies that reaffirm that we are moving forward to become a benchmark in all the social, governance, and environmental issues, not from the holding, but also the holding in terms of its relationship with the investments. So going to the 3 key aspects of sustainability in terms of actions in the environment, we increased the risk matrix. In our risk matrix, we included new tools, technical tools to value financial impact of our climate change risks. This is -- we want to include short-term, medium-term and long-term risks and make them visible in our strategy. In addition, with decarbonization, we conducted a significant work to be able to define a very concrete road map of decarbonization for the holding and our investments, and we will be implementing this throughout 2025. Without the greenhouse gas effect, we made a very good decision in line with those new trends and methodologies to account for emissions for the financial sector and financial services companies. And so in that extent, we would like to share with you that we changed the methodology to account for carbon. We used to use the financial sector, which is the one that you see on the left, which says Control Financiero. And we will now begin to account our emissions under the financed emissions methodology, which is a methodology that was developed by PCAF for companies of the financial sector to be more accurate in terms of the stake holding as a holding of investments and being able to account for those emissions in a more accurate way. So this is responsibility with our investors and with the people we finance. So we will continue accounting -- we will be keen to do this. But of course, we will also be reporting under the 2 criteria. But from the control that we have in many of our investments, we continue using the decarbonization strategy. In terms of biodiversity, we made a significant effort to be more clear on how our actions and our activities impact biodiversity. And this was hand-in-hand with Asobancaria's drive for this process. So we are implementing projects to characterize all species, animal and vegetable species, and we are implementing preservation mechanisms together with the investments. And to acknowledge that what we do is in line with preserving biodiversity, we put in place a circular economy. These are some of the examples that are related to biodiversity and circular economy, the project, conservation of [indiscernible] CO2ROZO to preserve forests that capture 1.3 million tons of greenhouse gas in Mavalle. We planted trees. They capture carbon. We planted 5 million trees in Unipalma. Also, we have a cogeneration biogas taking advantage of waste. In Covipacífico, we have a Bird Guide for Titiribí. And in Corfi, we identified the endangered species in the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. And we are also planting trees. And so we are more aware of what we have around our investments and all the investments in which we participate. Something that is quite significant in terms of our sustainability strategy, it's what we do in our social environment and specifically our value chain. We are aware that those who are around us are key for prosperity and so that it reaches everyone. So from that standpoint, we had made a significant effort, as Milena already told you, and was acknowledged by Great Place to Work for the well-being of our collaborators, collaborators from all investments. We're talking around 23,000 employees. We hired new people, almost 3,000 new people. And we are also driving vacancies within the company, within the holding so as to promote people throughout the holding. It's also really important training. It's vital to improve productivity and also to drive growth of people. And so to that extent, there was a significant effort to train our collaborators. From the perspective of the value chain, which is also vital for us, we're talking around 5,000 vendors for Corfi, most of them Colombians, some are foreigners. Through Fundación Corficolombiana, we have made significant effort to learn about their social governance and sustainability, how can we help them improve these measures, and we will continue working and sharing best practices and training them and sharing those learnings that we have adopted in terms of sustainability, and implementing them also in our value chain. So this is really to strengthen their capacities. From the perspective of communities, we made a social investment of COP 93 million, all investment programs where many people were benefited, 317,000, in all the departments and municipalities where we work in the country. Some examples that we wanted to highlight in this view graph in the 4 main sectors where we have, of course, the Misión La Guajira project, which we carried out with Promigas and the leadership of Grupo Aval to provide drinking water and power to support entrepreneurship of artisans and food security. In Infrastructure, working with women households of the family. We also support a peasant, and also road security. In terms of agroindustry, we provide education and training to work in the field. We had training days on health and well-being, income generation programs. And with respect to tourism, we work with vulnerable population and disabled population with programs of financial education for children and adolescents, and we drive development of sustainable tourist destinations with the participation of the community. And with respect to the progress that we've made in 2024, a good governance has been highlighted, and we continue taking strides to improve governance. In 2022, we entered into a cooperation agreement with its controlled company. And throughout 2024, we really followed up what it wants is to really strengthen all the policy lines and to coordinate with them, actions leading to good governance and improve their governance and their management, HR, investment, financial planning, risk management. So it is very important for us to have this permanent communication and to promote sound practices among companies that are part of our portfolio. We also updated corporate policies on responsible investment, human rights, climate change, security and safety and health at work. Our code of ethics and behavior, we define guidelines with the Board of Directors. So our first encounter of Board of Directors, and we really emphasize on all of these aspects to be able to act with more rigor in terms of all these aspects that we talked about. We defined also guidelines for Board of Directors in terms of structure, functioning and sound practices, so that everything we do from the holding radiates down to our investments. And we held our first encounter of Board of Directors to promote this exchange of experiences, which are part of our policies. Also really important, we strengthened the makeup of our Board of Directors of our Holding of Corfi to have more diversified in terms of training and also from the gender perspective. So these aspects and governance were highlighted almost by all monitoring processes conducted. Let us continue, and I will give the floor now to César to give you an update on the macroeconomic overview at the closing of last year and what we foresee for this year.

Lina, thank you very much. Welcome, everyone, and good morning. First of all, from our researcher's team, very, very happy that we received 7 awards, and we would like to thank the President that has supported us and really reinforces our work on having timely, rigorous and independent economic and financial analysis. The macro context, I think, very important news that reaffirms that what we had published at the end of last year in terms of financial perspective, which we call it light at the end of the tunnel with a question mark. I think in terms of production, the GDP, and this is really the most evident light at the end of the tunnel, after that tunnel that you see on GDP, how after the pandemic, we continue improving around 11%, 7.3% in 2021 and 2022. Then it followed with a necessary adjustment than expected of 0.7%. But in 2024, we -- that's why we see some light at the end of the tunnel, some reactivation, which is 1.7%, really close to what we had foreseen. And in the last quarter was 2.3%. And so this is a perspective for the year to maintain this trend with an expected growth of 2.6%. Another news is that due to different components, demand, not only household, which has been quite sound, and you see this in the middle, household are 20 -- they're above the pandemic level, and fixed investment also, which is not only from our team, but from Corficolombiana, we've been insisting on the investment, and we will see in the next graph that civil works were part of this outperforming or this reactivation, although we see a clear trend that is moving forward, especially in the last quarters. We see really a black cloud, and we've made a review in terms of what we did at the closing of last year. In the case of inflation, we were forecasting inflation around 4%, which is the maximum limit of the Central Bank. But unfortunately, well, not only the news of the minimum salary, but due to the news of increases in some utilities and external risks that we foresee that could also affect inflation. We see inflation that will close around 4.5%, which would lead, of course, to Bank de La Republica or Central Bank to be more cautious with the interest rates. I think we -- well, the interest rate is 7.75% right now. A request made by always from an investor, long-term investment perspective. To give you a 10-year perspective, which is the investor perspective, how the sectors of Corfi, how they behave. So in a long-term vision of 10 years, Corfi's sectors continue being above GDP. I think I will highlight the 4 main sectors where Corficolombiana building of roads that has shown -- well, it has slowed down a little bit after the pandemic, but it showed positive and a surprising data last year, growing by 11%. This is due to all the works, and we see reactivation of the civil works sector. We are highly present in the agricultural sector. We grew in excess of 8% throughout 2024. It was driven by the coffee growing sector. And I think there are other sectors in terms of production that have been growing in terms of hotels, as mentioned already by Milena, although its performance wasn't the best. But in any case, we see a positive trend after the pandemic, and we hope that 2025 to have a positive perspective, because we still have tourists visiting the country and a favorable exchange rate. I would like to close with gas and power. These go in line with the GDP. The graph shows that. Last year, I think public utilities were a significant support in cross-cutting problems like the El Nino phenomenon, where they showed a great benefit. And it was a significant impact in a critical moment for the financial or the economy of the country throughout the El Nino phenomenon.

Thank you. To go into the financial data of Corfi of last year, I would like to mention and focus in 2 aspects that we believe are fundamental in our performance. And as you well know, we are completing the cycle of building -- construction of our 4G roads. And this implies that revenues related to these constructions that we've had in the past 5 years, they are -- and this is obviously reflected in a significant manner in how net accounting profit really shows, because those construction projects are over, and therefore, those revenues related there, too. So that basically what explains, it's an accounting change. But every time we see this overview on the other side, we need to analyze cash flow. And the cash flow on the other side is still -- throughout those 5 years that where we maximize accounting profit, the cash effort of the corporation reached its maximum point. And so now that accounting profit goes down because the construction stage goes down, we begin to have that cash flow generation from those projects. So what we see in the evolution of accounting results of the corporation, it's this result in net income, because the infrastructure sector, which is not offset yet by all other sectors, specifically energy, although the energy trend is growing and is significantly growing. Specific details we'll see in the next section with Alejandro. Another topic that I think is important in this medium-term perspective, this investment, what does this really imply, the investment, especially on the investment on roads has been made mainly increasing the level of consolidated debt of the corporation, which is really what we see in the top chart. We see quarter-by-quarter, and it's consolidated by sector in the past 2 years. And we see how the level of debt has gone up really to finance those investments. And this significant growth in indebtedness has coincided with the peaks of interest rates, which is this continuous line that we see on the top chart, reaching its peak around 2023. So that really made the service of debt and financial expenses to show a peak in 2023. The good news is, 2024, we began to revert this trend. And so there are 2 things that have happened. The level of debt has been -- it's now more stable, and it's not growing significantly, as we can see, and it's more stable and around COP 25 trillion or COP 26 trillion. But more importantly, throughout 2024, we see the trend in the reduction of the interest rate. So practically, the interest rate went down by 400 basis points, going from levels of 13.2% in the last quarter of 2023 to 9.6% in the last quarter of 2024. So this is also reflected in reduction of the service of debt. This trend should be maintained throughout this year. The uncertainty really lies on how that interest rate will go down. But we are seeing clearly that the macroeconomic cycle is reverting in terms of interest rates. And that, of course, will improve cash flow in the corporation, but it will also coincide with the cash flow generation, specifically of infrastructure projects, and those revenues would be used to reduce this leverage level that was used to leverage these investments, and we could use it also for new investments. This is the basis of our financial overview of the company. Maybe the last chart on the right-hand side and the lower, it's the profile of consolidated debt of the corporation. It's quite healthy because almost half of its debt is long-term debt, and it expires well beyond 2028. So this pressure to refinance that debt, it's quite healthy. I wanted to focus on those topics before going into the concrete results of our investments.

So to talk about each of the sectors in greater detail, beginning with energy, Milena had already said that SPEC reached a historic level of regasification with a capacity of 50 million cubic feet per day. And when we planned with time in the topics of energy, this began to operate in 2016. And last year, it's fully operational. We are talking about many recharges, 55 of them out of the 119, 55 happened last year, as you can see in the graph. This isn't only an infrastructure that backs up the Colombia, but it also supplies the country. We had regasification throughout SPEC, which is quite significant, and we're very happy about it, because if it hadn't been for SPEC, we would be facing significant problems with respect to having the supply of gas. Moving to other business lines of gas and transport on the lower graph, you can see the behavior of last quarter of last year with a significant transportation also for thermal generation growing specifically in the last 2 months of the year. The distribution business is more stable, as you can see, where volumes are maintained in time. The number of users will continue growing, as was mentioned. We have around 7.5 million (sic) [ 7.2 million ] users between gas and energy in Colombia and Peru. So we impact positively that amount of people. So totally, the energy and gas sector, it's growing soundly, growing its consolidated income year after year, '23 vis-a-vis '24 -- '24 vis-a-vis '23. And so going into infrastructure, as we have seen in previous, we've made significant progress in everything that we do. We have controlled concessions. The traffic levels, as you can see in the lower graph, were maintained relatively stable throughout 2024, with some peaks in some specific projects, but really it was quite stable, maintaining seasonality in general terms. With Coviandina, as you know, this is a project that we completed construction in June 2023, according to the schedule. And this is a private initiative and it's paid off by traffic only. So the traffic last year grew with respect to the previous year. So accumulated income about COP 4 trillion. As Covipacífico, as we mentioned, it's a very significant milestone, delivering Functional Unit #1. And really the Functional Unit #2, we reached 95% of the progress in that report. Remember that in 2023, we had the first revenue, which was really important throughout that year. And in terms of Covioriente, last year, we delivered one of the largest BR for the 4G, which amounted to around COP 900 billion. All this income comes to the trust of the project, and they will be released as the Functional Units are being delivered, which are really the mechanisms and that we are able to receive afterwards the revenues from those constructions. We see the same information that we've seen in previous views and it is the makeup of the revenues of 4G and Coviandina. This is tolls. But Covioriente and Covipacífico, around 50% or 60% of the income comes from the government, and therefore, the importance of what Milena mentioned with the agreement with the government, we've been receiving those monies. On the right-hand side, we have the revenues that we've received from the concessions. If you would remember, especially on Covioriente, we didn't have that BRs that we are beginning to receive. But as of December last year, we would have received 14% of that. In terms of consolidated revenue and EBITDA, this story follows the same trend. So we see the reduction on the CapEx curve and the impact of the IFRS 15 accounting norm that we need to do. This is in the case of Chirajara. With respect to tourism, as you can see that we maintained quite a consistent occupation vis-a-vis COTELCO, which is one of -- we feel quite proud in terms of our average revenue, we continue growth compound rates of over 10%, and RevPAR revenues on available room last year was 7.2%. And one of the important points that we mentioned at the beginning, food and beverages line on the left graph, as you've seen, has grown significantly being diversification in terms of revenues last year, as you can see, and the makeup is quite important within hotels and the corporate market, because it's the most efficient channel for us in terms of revenues and hotel operation. And lastly, both in revenues and EBITDA, hotel operation is quite positive, performing quite well, positive. And so Estelar, we believe, will go into a new phase. Now with respect to agroindustry, our sales volume, both in rice and rubber followed our budget. In the case of palma, we had 3 months of drought, and we weren't able to plant the seeds as we expected. Therefore, the level of palm production has a negative impact. In terms of prices, most of our products show moderate or considerable growth. So performance was quite favorable. Lastly, in the case of agroindustry, we had significant performance, especially in the case of Pajonales and caucho or rubber. So EBITDA grew by 27%. That's considerable. It's a lot more than expected. This is really healthy EBITDA, growing at this pace. We talked about the financial operation behind those figures. And just to have a guidance of our level of investments in the sectors. In terms of infrastructure, we have the bidirectionality, which was significant for the reliability of the system. So gas can go back and forth to connect with the system infrastructure gas, where we continue growing in Peru. And that's one source of growth, which is significant. In Power Solutions, sun or self-generation that has been in Promigas, solar panels and cogeneration. And regasification, we had the compressor of Bogota and the enhancement of Phase 2 at the beginning of Phase 3. And with respect to agroindustry, we want to continue Phase 2 of the caucho project, the rubber project, to replant again palm plantations and to renew the boiler of the crude oil extracting plant and maintenance of hotels. Another important issue that we've talked about in other meetings, it's about new investments. In new investments, we were analyzing sectors and framing them on whether they match. So what are we looking for? We're looking for investment in the sectors where we already have our expertise. So that's infrastructure, energy and gas. We are also considering sectors that we call maybe similar to us, where we can use our know-how or linking operations. And we've been quite rigorous or not waiting for opportunities to arise. But we are analyzing full sectors, and within those sectors, choose exactly what we want to do. We have analyzed a series of sectors as we can see. We are trying to strike a balance between income and cash, which is what we talked about in other meeting, and also to align in terms of where we conduct those investments, whether it's with the holding or some of the affiliate companies. What geographies we prioritize? We have Colombia, Peru, Chile, Central America. We've seen a series of countries and some specific topics in the United States. All this is really linked to our policy of responsible investment. This is how we try to -- as of 2020, we had this policy in place. So every assessment we conduct on every project, we need to go to responsible investment, or ESG, where we consider the criteria of each company and the type of investment to give you an idea in what type of things we've been analyzing in the past year. We have a series of sectors in infrastructure, social infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and some road infrastructure, energy, airports and water and sanitation. All these sectors, we are analyzing and following up on them on a constant matter and looking for opportunities to invest.

Well, having said this, well, this is now the Q&A session. Through the platform, we are receiving concerns and questions that we are grouping to be able to convey them. So please, through that tool, please send your questions. From the first participant, Katherine Ortiz from Davivienda Corredores. She's asking about 3 specific topics. The first one is with respect to the SPO that is ongoing with Mineros. She wants to know whether for Corfi it's important, significant? Is it going to participate? The second question then will be to tell a little bit about Mulalo-Loboguerrero -- the process about Mulalo-Loboguerrero, if there's something relating to future validities of this project? And the last question of Katherine is how do we see the environment, especially for the investments on CapEx in 2025?

Thank you, Katherine, for your questions. So let me start with your first question, the Mineros PSO. I think what we see in Mineros is quite important. It shows that the capital markets is working, and the way things work, it's the way they should work. We've seen with Mineros, it's really 2 different groups trying to really buy out the company that began last year with the first public offer that was made. And so around that time, shareholders (sic) share price were around COP 3,500. Then it went up to COP 4,500. And the last one, I think, is COP 5,200 per share. So I think it's gratifying to see that this buyout has affected the price of the share. And what we see is also the significant increase in gold price and, therefore, the price of the share has gone up. We haven't made a decision with respect to our participation of that public offer of Mineros. We're not going -- we are analyzing whether to participate or not and to see what happens in the market in the next few days, because we've seen quite a few surprises in terms of -- it's an important valuation for our portfolio. Having said that, and it's not a market secret, we have around 8% of Mineros, which therefore we are not the controlling entity in Mineros. So we're far from being. So this might be a transaction that we might -- but we haven't really made a decision on that matter yet. Your second question about Mulalo. Let's go back to steps. We have now an arbitration tribunal. Right now, the tribunal had been suspended because -- and that's part of the process to see if we were able to have a reconciliation with the parties. We had a few conversations, but we weren't able to reach an agreement with ANI. Therefore, the arbitration tribunal began again. It's ongoing as we speak. And we will know what will happen after they complete their assessment. We have future validities. We haven't reached any agreement to extend those future validities. I don't know if that was the question you were asking. And the third question with respect to infrastructure in 2025, as Alejandro showed you in the last few graphs, and if we go back to, when we see CapEx of 2025, I would divide into 2 large components and the most large investments will be in energy and gas and then followed by infrastructure. The CapEx that we have this year is below what we had previous year. This is really in line with the completion of all those other roads that we have. But what we see well beyond infrastructure for 2025, we are working on a series of private initiatives, and we would like to talk for roads and airports, and we're working with the government. So to the extent they progress, we will have more projects in that front. But the possibility that this increases CapEx in 2025, it's quite low because the process of structuring those projects is quite lengthy. But we are also analyzing projects outside Colombia, specifically in Central America, and reviewing opportunities in other countries in Latin America. So it will depend on whether we can close those. There are a series of bids in Colombia, and we decided not to participate.

The question -- the following 2 participants with questions, they agree. Nicolás Gómez from Davivienda Corredores, and Gabriel Pérez from Credicorp. Nicolás asks about details of the values of the sale of Casa de Bolsa and Corficolombiana. And Gabriel is asking about the impact of this transaction.

Let me divide the answer in 2. The first, the valuation, and I will give the floor to Alejandro, and then the impact on the profit and loss statement, how do they impact the P&L? Well, there is a significant thing that we need to mention. Being a transaction between related parties, all the valuation was carried out by an independent. And the parties, we followed the valuations. And in the case of Fiduciaria, we had a multiple around 0.23x, and Casa de Bolsa was less.

Just to mention Global's figures of the transaction in the P&L, they included around COP 12 billion on sale, the difference between the sale price and the cost that was registered. And with respect to cash, those transactions, the corporation received around COP 100 billion.

And we also have a last question from Simon Londono from Bancolombia. And what he is asking is, well, dividends going forward, how would that work?

As we have mentioned and having shown the historic analysis of the cash flow of the company. So the decision or the proposal that we took for the consideration of the stakeholders is what really -- it's valuable for the shareholder, but the return on investments, any dividend payout right now at the actual cost or current cost would destroy value in the long term for shareholders. So therefore, what we have proposed last year and this year is to minimize dividend payment in cash, well, to preferential shares. And to the extent interest rates come down on the one side, and on the other side that we receive the cash flow of the concession projects that is beginning to come in and it will grow significantly in coming years. We will be able to use that new cash flow, well, as I mentioned, in reducing the level of leverage. And so the combination of all those 3 uses will maximize shareholder value. At the end of the day, that's really the justification or the rationale of the proposal that we have made in terms of reducing payment of dividend in cash.

We have some questions related to infrastructure. With respect to BRs and future validities, expectations that we might have for 2025. And from Ashmore Sebastian Gallego, he asks about the double leverage of the company and the project to reduce our expectation, and also the refinancing of Covipacífico.

Let's go, well, first, with respect to expectations for concessionaires. We've talked about it just to give you context. There are 3 important levels. The revenues that come to the project and are in the trust and will be available, they will be released to the concessionaire as functional units are delivered. That money could be then delivered to shareholders. The corporation is not really the only shareholder. There are different vehicles who invest. So that would be a cascade of payments. In the first point of that cascade of payment, Covipacífico should have access to around COP 1.2 trillion that really come from the government and the trust fund in terms of the release of future validities and BRs, which is really the delivery of functional unit. Number two, part of what we're working on is how to organize, in a more efficient way, the flow of that cascade in terms of the cost of transactions, mainly from a tax perspective and analyzing everything really related there too. In the case of Covioriente, that figure should be around COP 160 billion. That the large BR of Covioriente was paid last year. And I think the question about financing of Covipacífico, as we told you, Covipacífico, it's refinancing right now as we speak. So this is a considerable operation, in excess of COP 2 trillion. So it will be ready for June and July. The schedule is for around that time. We are applying for local resources and international resources. And so we can talk to you, but we're within the time frame that we have foreseen.

This is the last question of Juan Diego Mejia from Caxdac. He's asking if it's possible to know what are the main reasons on why investments like the ones that materialized in the last years have not materialized yet.

Well, we've analyzed a lot of opportunities. And really to reach an opportunity, this is a funnel where you put a lot of investments and you discard them on the way. Some of them we discard them at an early stage, because they don't really adapt to our profitability criterion, or they're not of our interest, and others, we are moving forward on structuring the business. And the last ones where we are more advanced, there were some contractual or financial issues that made us dismiss them altogether. But this is the normal structure on how you seek new business, the statistics that you can analyze around 30, 50 initial opportunities to reach 1 or 2. So we are on that process of seeking a type of investment that really fits in with our strategy. And also to highlight that some of those under analysis are in the process. And we're still missing the level of leverages. To give you some context, this level of leverage, some rating companies, which is the difference between accounting book value of investments of the corporation, around COP 28 trillion, and the value of the corporation, which means that our double leverage is closed at around 150% last year, which is the maximum level that we expect to reach. What we do expect more than this level is really to see a trend. This is an indicator that has gone up in previous years because we've increased the level of debt, and we believe that current levels around 150%, 151% should be maximum level. And we hope that towards the future, it can come down. Well, we don't have any more questions. So if there are any more questions on the chat and we didn't have time to answer them, we will answer them directly, and we'll send them. But the team of Investor Relations will be ready to respond to any concerns or questions you may have with respect to the financial results. So we can now close the session. Thank you.

Thank you very much for being with us, and we hope we have provided you with valuable information. Thank you for your questions. I think we foresee a year where we will have many challenges, but also many opportunities. So it depends really on the interest rates and how they will move and really finding those investment opportunities. But we dedicate all our effort on a daily basis, and we are working on those. So to the extent we have new projects, we will announce them on a timely manner. Thank you for being with us.