Iochpe-Maxion S.A. (MYPK3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending. Thank you for being here, and thank you for your interest in our event. Thank you to those who are attending online too. Well, if you don't know me, I am Luis. And we also have Marcos Oliveira, CEO of the company; Pieter Klinkers is also here, the CEO of Maxion Wheels Division; Renato Brighenti is also here with us, the CEO for the Maxion Structural Components division and Zeferino Neto; we all know him as Neto, he is the President of the Maxion Wheels Americas. Just some information regarding the event today, you've received some color bracelets, you're going to receive some instructions, but you're going to be divided into groups according to your color code. We are going to have presentations from Marcos. Marcos is going to talk about Iochpe on a general view. Then Renato and Pieter are going to talk about their division. And for those who -- well, Pieter's presentation is going to be in English. If you do not feel comfortable, we do have [ someone ] interpreting for the event. And those who are online, will have the possibility of watching this in Portuguese or in English. Now I'll give the floor to Marcos Oliveira.

Thank you, Luis. Once again, good morning, everyone. Welcome. It is a pleasure to have you here. We are going to have some great opportunities to share with you all of the efforts that we have in the production of our wheels and components and you're going to see the numbers that you are usually -- are used to and also some information regarding Maxion. The plan today as Luis said, I'm going to give you a general overview regarding Maxion, showing you some of the results for the last quarters, but we are going to focus more on strategic aspects. We are going to talk about the moment -- the economic moment -- the economy moment and the impact that we are seeing here in Brazil and some financial highlights, business highlights concerning the company. Definitely, 2023 was a very complex year. Right after the pandemic, we've been facing successful years that have been very challenging for several reasons. Well, it was first the pandemics and then the lack of semiconductors and then the conflicts in Ukraine and then so many surprises, and we've been adapting to the very difficult moments we've been living. But we are recovering pretty fast and we are being flexible. It's in the DNA of our company. With operations scattered all over the globe, it is important that we have the possibility of being flexible with every country's challenges, every sector, every segment, and we adapt to the variations that are occurring very constantly in the automotive industry. This is one of the reasons why we have a global operation because with this, we can adapt our business in positive and in negative moments, macro and microeconomical challenges, but there's always something happening in some parts of the world. And this makes our business agile, and this is why we need a leadership a team that has the strength to act when needed in regard to the operations and in the different areas of the world and with the different clients we have. As you know, Maxion is the largest automotive wheels producer in the world. And we have a very complete portfolio. It's going to be even more complete, and you're going to see this during this presentation. We produce approximately 50 million wheels every year. In regard to the structural components, we are the leaders in the Americas, especially when we are talking about side rails in chassis and you will be able to see a little bit more about this when Renato presents. You're going to see what we do in the Structural Components division. We have more than 17,000 employees, 33 sites in 14 countries. Our strategy is very much aligned to the trends, not only from an economic perspective, but also concerning mobility, whether with electrified vehicles or autonomous vehicles. Well, we are chasing the news regarding all of the changes in the market, when we are preparing our products so that we can provide the correct attributes for this transformation. Basically, we operate in two divisions. Maxion Wheels, they produce wheels for light and commercial vehicles and for the agri business and aluminum wheels for light vehicles. We are now building our first aluminum wheels for trucks and for commercial vehicles and our portfolio is going to be even more complete with this technology. This is a product that's going to be launched in 2025. But with structural components, we do produce structural components for light vehicles and commercial vehicles. Our focus is commercial vehicles in Brazil and in North America, but we also produce for light vehicles and during the plant tour and when we are in the showroom, you will be able to see a little bit of what we do as far as structural components are concerned. Many of you have had the opportunity to see the portfolio that we have that was last year in Cruzeiro. Of course, we operate with different products in every plant. So during the plant tour you will be able to see what we have right there in the showrooms as far as structural components for light vehicles in Brazil in particular. As I mentioned, we do have 33 plants scattered in 14 countries. And as far as production is concerned, Brazil is the area where we have more production and then Mexico followed by Turkey, the Czech Republic and India, but we do have plants in China, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, the United States. We are well positioned in the globe so that we can deliver exactly what the countries within the many different countries that clients are looking for. So the production is right close to where the customers need the products. And it's interesting for us because it gives us some heading towards the acquisition of raw material and capacity of using the resources of each country where we operate and align these resources to the economic reality of these regions. Our business model has shown to be resilient in the last years, even in the difficult years with a profile of products that are very competitive, depending, of course, on what we [indiscernible] of the segment globally. It's not only about having this capacity of producing high-quality products and delivering them at the right time to the right people. But it also involves the engineering behind all these products, the technical competencies with wheels and structural components is essential for our business. People who see these components, they cannot imagine the much engineering it involves for you. So that you have an idea, we do have a supercomputer that develops wheels here in Brazil, not only for the Brazilian market, but also elsewhere. But the technical and technological competence is much more than this, and this is all behind our product. All of the engineering that involves these products is developed within the plant and the OEMs, it depends on products like the ones we produce, we must be able to deliver what they expect. And of course, the ability to deliver innovative and competitive processes and products in our capacity to transform high-volume raw material that would be steel or aluminum. It makes us the leader in our segment. And also, it allows us to deliver products that are very attractive to our clients. Our global footprint is essential. We can offer solutions to the clients in the different regions where we operate. Our relationship and the long-term customer and supplier relationships sets our reputation. We've been working with the same products and trust and the clients for over 20 years. And they believe in the solution we deliver and we deliver it where they need and when they need. And with the challenges we faced after the pandemic, especially concerning logistics, and shipping freight from country to country. Makes it even more important that we operate with the right suppliers so that we can have that just-in-time delivery meeting the clients' needs. Can you see, for example, if a ship is stopped elsewhere with your freight -- this is going to be a problem. But if you produce locally, this is much better. We have focus on innovation and sustainability. And our organization is multicultural, but it is lean and very engaged with globally. You're going to see further how much we have an engaging company. They understand the business. They are -- they are committed, and they want to do their best. Just a little bit on data now. I've shared them with you before, but they are updated with the most recent information that were sent by IHS Auto and [ LCM ] auto. They are known for their very precise statistics. What you can see that in 2023, we produced around 90 -- we had 90 million vehicles produced in the world. For 2024, the forecast is that we are going to have the same number as last year for light vehicles. So this seems to be a year that is not going to really grow globally. But when we exclude China from these numbers, you will see that the automotive industry is dropping around 2% compared to last year. It's not the case of Brazil. We are in the period in which we see growth, but we see drops in other regions such as Europe and Asia, and these are projections that were worked on by specialists. Although the numbers that we have for the months -- for the previous months, they say otherwise. They state otherwise. Maybe we have a 3% to 4% increase of light vehicles in Europe in the production in sales. For the last 2 months, they seem to have grown. We've grown 2 digits. These are only preliminary data, and this is what the market has been showing, but it's a level of industry that is important. It's a very prominent number. With commercial vehicles, we are going to produce 3.4 vehicles, and it's a growth of 2%. Excluding China, we see a slight drop in number around minus 3%. Brazil is going to another side because although the numbers have dropped and the automotive industry has produced less cars, especially trucks, in commercial vehicles. However, this number seems to be year with little growth, especially in North America, potential loss of -- a potential decrease in Europe and an increase in Brazil. So still for 2024, the forecast of 3.4 million vehicles produced in the world is a prominent number. Some highlights for 2023 for the company. We've shown this in our results publication last week. We had a net revenue of around BRL 15 billion, a gross profit of BRL 1.5 billion with a gross margin of 10.1% in 2023. Our leverage ended the year with 2.93-fold and liquidity, taking the leverage to 2.93. The idea is 1.5. This is what we are looking into. But our liquidity total would be BRL [ 3.462 ] million and a continuous improvement in the elements that concerns sustainability, social and governance. And we are going to see more information and more data concerning this item. But this is one of the important things that we have to mention. For the third year in a row, we are listed in the B3 index. We started taking back 3 years ago, and we are continuously showing on their listing, which shows that the company is working hard on their ESG goals. Last year, our net revenue numbers dropped we got close to BRL 15 million, and it was impacted because of 2 main topics, main aspects. First one, we'll see reduction in raw material costs reflecting in our sales prices. Whether steel or aluminum, the raw material is important in our costs, and we do have a process in which we have a system. We reflect all the changes in our sales prices. Of course, sometimes we hold these costs, and we do not reflect in the final prices every now and then. But the raw material really oscillates numbers and sometimes we cannot refrain from transferring these oscillations to the final prices and sometimes our prices are impacted negatively. Raw material last year, especially teal at the beginning of '21, '22, '23, the production and sales were with good prices, but then the prices dropped and today, the level is relatively stable. And the second factor was the lower production volume of commercial vehicles in Brazil with the transition from EUR 5 to EUR 60. The industry really believe that we would have a drop in production that would be close to 20%, maybe 18%, 20% if compared to 2022, but reality showed that the production dropped 38% to 39%, and it was a prominent drop, especially in the commercial vehicle sector, especially in Brazil because we do produce structural components and wheels for commercial vehicles. A drop of 40% in the segment is of important impact. It impacts revenue, impacts our results. Our EBITDA margin last year was 8.3%. In the fourth quarter, we got to BRL 289 million of adjusted EBITDA for the 4Q '23. And during the year of 2023, we had BRL 1.2 billion. But the important thing is we are in a recovery process for our margin when we've seen this in the last quarters. If you compare our adjusted EBITDA margin, excluding the nonrecurring items, at the end of the semester of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2023, you're going to see an evolution. We went from 6.3% to 8.3% all for the same quarter for '23. So you see 2 percental points of growth. Now getting back to the historical levels of margin, we are going to see this skill. We're going to see the efforts that we are envisioning so that we can get to those numbers. Our goal, our objective is to get back to towards the twofold or maybe 1.5 fold of liquidity over EBITDA. Cash divided. We divide this into cash and short-term debt. May be close to BRL 3.5 billion in liquidity levels of 2.12 fold last year. Our gross debt breakdown is mostly in reals, 45.2%. With Euro, the breakdown is 36.6%. All the currency is 3.5%, but in dollar, 14.6%. You see differences in Thailand and in India, for example. Today, our indebtedness has 75.9% in the long-term debt and short term of 24.1%. Recently, we had a rating increase by Standard & Poor's for the company. We went from BB- to BB and on the global scale. And we went to BRAA+ BRAAA. It shows how much we are working on it in the perspective is that we continue looking into improving the rating, especially for '24. Now our growth path with focus on profitability in the medium and long term, they have 4 pillars. Of course, we do have a broader strategy. It's complex, but there are 4 elements that are important in our planning. One is the Brazilian heavy vehicles market recovery. I'm going to talk about this a little bit because the commercial vehicles, they are important in our business, and this is an important segment for us. Second thing is the increasing volume and productivity in North America. Neto is going to talk about this later on about all of the efforts we are envisioning for this. We do have limited capacity in those plants because of the level of demand that we have today and the projected, but this is an important investment that we are going to make there. And of course, the launching of new products, new technologies and the onboarding of new customers with products with better results, even better margins so that we can meet future demands in the industry. And of course, one important thing is the inflation recovery. In many countries, historically, the level of inflation is very low -- was very low in the past. And history concerning how much the inflation rates are best known to the final price. This was something that did not happen in the past because the levels of inflation were very low. Some countries are facing new realities, and we are working with the clients so that we can pass on the inflation elements. And of course, other situations concerning, for example, raw material because this is a situation in a topic that is well understood now, especially with negotiations and cost in this sense was not a problem, especially with the countries with inflation with very little change. But now we see inflation elsewhere everywhere and people are making all the adjustments. With regards to the recovery of the Brazilian heavy vehicle market, we have the projections for IHS Auto [indiscernible], and we see a large range of forecast growth. We have one extreme IHS stock is about a growth of close to 16%. Another extreme more LMC also talks about the growth of more than 40% in Brazil. And then halfway through that, we have [indiscernible], which are closer to what's happening in the daily operations of the industry and the talk of growth for [indiscernible] of a little bit over 20% and a value of 32%. In our planning, we closed our financial year with a forecast of grow in the industry about 20% when compared to the year 2023. So any value between 20% and 30% is positive is good, and would make us happy and thankful. On the other hand, in the segment of light vehicles, the forecast for Brazil is closer IHS Auto in [indiscernible] about 3% to 3.3% in the production of light vehicles in Brazil. This is our projection for the entire year. And if you look at the first 2 months, the industry has grown 7% in the 2 1st months of this year compared to the first 2 months of 2023. So anything above 3% would make us happy and also. As I mentioned, the increase in capacity and productivity in North America is essential for us to recover margins in the fourth and medium term. First of all, because the commercial segment in North America has been strong. We operate with maximum capacity 7 days a week, 24 hours a day during many months last year, and we have reached our top capacity. So it was essential for us to increase capacity not only to meet the volume, but also to increase productivity. If you have a factory working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that's not efficiency for overtime, productivity and the work of the factory itself. So removing [indiscernible], adding capacity during 2024 is important not only to meet the volumes but to improve operational results and the competitiveness of the company. Launching new products and technologies is essential. They're in the showroom at the end of the [ drill ] have the opportunity of seeing a little bit of these new technologies, but we are in a very good position. We are among the leaders -- global leaders in the development of solutions and technologies in our products to -- for the large OEMs. And we are very well aligned to the current developments and the needs for the future. As I mentioned, inflation recovery is part of our strategy to recover margins, so we can go back to our historical margins. And here, we show a little bit of the statistics we have about that. So we have a reference for markets. The markets for developed countries, we historically worked with inflation of 2% to 3% before the pandemic. And after the pandemic, we have gone up to the level of 7%, 8%, up to 10% in some countries as in Europe which was not something that expected or that these countries had experienced for a long time. So it is important for us to recover from inflation in terms of logistics and organization, and we have strategic plans to work on that and recover the margin. As I mentioned before, historically, raw material prices are included in the process that we try to work on through agreements and everything. It's a factor in terms of time, but it's not a matter of passing the chains, the variation on to the prices or not. When you have a variation as big as we had in the last few years, it may have an effect in the beginning, but then it will kind of stabilize and we then can address other issues that we need to. Our strategy aligned with best practices in the auto industry, regarding ESG is essential. In 2023, we had a reduction of about 30% in our CO2 emissions when compared to the company's baseline. So it is a continuous growth. We have a goal of reduction. It was of 30% by 2025 and of 70% by 2030, so we can meet carbon neutrality by 2040. And we see that reflected in ratings from different organizations that evaluate the company's performance with regards to sustainability. So EcoVadis, for example, we went from a score of 45 in 2021 to 58 in 2023 in a continuous growth in our sustainability index by B3 going from 58% to 76% in the drug sustainability economies in the CDP. We went from B minus to B, and this reflects the continuous work of our team in terms of improving sustainability. And people, people are essential in everything you do. Renato and Pieter are going to talk more about that. And we have a very important strategy in terms of developing internal talent and using the knowledge and experience of our professionals in diversity as part of our business strategy. But offering opportunities for people to grow, develop and perform other activities also in the company. And in terms of social responsibility, the Iochpe Foundation has an important goal of role and impact in the transformation of young people, creating an opportunity of this young people to enter the job market. We have the former product that -- a project that is ongoing for 35 years, affecting over 1,000 students. We have [ 4 ] units and 49 companies in different sectors, not only in the automotive sectors, but other business sectors. We have 63 units, 60 in Brazil and 3 in Mexico, and we are now working on launching the first [indiscernible] unit in Asia, along with the University of [ Pune ] in India. It's a project that will be launched in 2024 in Asia. And that is important because it focused on low-income, young people, young men and young women 50-50% and the employability of these young people, it's great not only in the company, but in other companies, a very high level of employability and depending on the country, it's higher than 90%, which is a very positive index. In our long-term strategy, we have 5 main pillars. When we have -- make our 5-year plan, we look at 5 aspects: innovations, value generation, compliance, growth and people. And this strategy has been consistent through the last few years when we developed our products, our business plans, they all consider these 5 pillars as goals and objectives and as drivers for creating programs that really meet this long-term strategy. We have worked on them consistently globally, and that helps us keep on the path we are going to keep offering more to our customers, our shareholders, our employees and the communities and the society, and the various countries we operate in. With this, I'd like to close my presentation and give the floor to Renato Brighenti. He is the response for structural components divisions and he's going to talk about that division.

Thank you, Marcos. Good morning, everyone. Again, it's a pleasure to have you here with us. For those who don't know me, my name is Renato Brighenti. I'm responsible for Maxion Structural Components division. I've been with the company for 24 years since the beginning of my career. And the main goal of my presentation today is to talk about these topics but try to give you through these topics and understanding of how this division is going to recover the 2-digit margin still in the year 2024. So we're going to start. Before getting into details of the presentations, let's try to kind of go over the products of our division. We have a very broad range and I bring you just a few examples here. If I had to bring you all the items, I'd say we produce about 15,000 different items in the plants in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico. But I brought through an overview of the main products. Commercial vehicles, you see the chances for trucks and buses, which are very important, not only the assembly of the chassis, but you see in the top here, the bins that are part of this chassis and the side rails here on the bottom. Recently, we made a big investment in the Cruzeiro plant in Brazil for stamping in of cabins for Mercedes in Brazil. They are all manufactured at the Cruzeiro plant, and most of our business are focused -- concentrated in chassis for pick ups, production of components for them, for the structure and structural parts for light passenger vehicles. We'll see some other examples here differently from last year's visit where we focused on products for commercial vehicles. Since this plant is a little bit further, we brought our parts for passenger vehicles. So start by talking a little bit about this product that is very important for us, which are the side rails that are part of the chassis. And why are they important? They're very important because we have a large participation in our business, in our revenues, but also because they are essentials for the [indiscernible] themselves. They might seem like a simple product, but they are very complex. But without this part, you can't even start the assembly of a truck. So this is a part that if you don't have stocks and if you cannot meet demand, you will stop production. 90% of the parts that are assembled in the truck, they can start assembly and then you can come back and complement it and complete. It won't hold production, but our products can halt production for trucks. I'm going to bring some of relevant investments that Marcos mentioned and that are very important for our company. First of all, in Brazil, we expect to increase approximately 30% of our capacity to meet the market in Brazil and South America. If you don't know, many of the trucks assembled here are exported to Argentina among other countries. And the first Phase 1 of this project should be completed by 2025 and Phase 2 should be completed by 2026 to 2027. We have several investments. I brought the 2 main ones we are making right now. And the second one is in the Castanos plant in Mexico. 100% of the volumes of this plant go to the North American market, a little bit goes to the internal Mexican market, but most of it goes to the U.S. sometimes assembled in Mexico, but then exported to the U.S. We hope to increase approximately 40% of our production capacity. The first phase of this line should be completed this year. We started in the end of '22, beginning of '23 and the second and third phase should be completed by 2025. And why is this investment important? Of course, when you have a demand, this investment is very important. In the United States, just to give you an idea, the volume of production of trucks is 4x the volume of production we have in Brazil, and we have a share of about 50% of this American market. Of course, this brings revenues but since we are investing in our current lines, we have a big opportunity of diluting fixed costs. We don't have to hire a whole new bunch of employees, new departments and also the technology we are employing in not only in Brazil or Mexico, we are talking about companies that are not that new, the investments we are making are in state-of-the-art brand-new equipment with new technology. So we have increased revenues, dilution of fixed costs and you have a much lower variable costs for production. Now talking a little bit about technology. Mobility is very important. Marcos mentioned this. And when we talked about electrical vehicles for some providers of truck components, that seems like a threat. We know that many current components when you talk about electrical vehicles, they will disappear. And the good news for our business, which has been proven with the base -- with the current OEMs and new startups that are going to produce trucks and we'll talk about that. The components we provide are the same. There are maybe some changes in technologies and material design, but is not -- we're not talking about products that are going to disappear in our segment. Basically a 100% of our portfolio, we remain and will be used in this segment. And we have 3 great opportunities for new revenues and electric vehicles. The first one regards the current large players, the large OEMs. OEMs where we have already a large participation in the current for components, but we are bringing new components, basically, the structures are going to support either hydrogen tanks or natural gas tanks in some cases in Brazil and South America. This is already happening, but mainly the batteries. These are heavy components that require robust structure that with high development level with incorporating new technologies. We have this concept, and we provide already for a very important client in Brazil, and there is another one already we are negotiating. But -- so we are not only maintaining the portfolio we had, but we are bringing new components that are the [ cradles ] for the batteries. Second one is focused not only on the players that we have, but new players too. We do have, for example, Reborn. Reborn is a Chilean company. It's just like the United States, Tesla. We not only have this opportunity of co-designing structures that are going to support the batteries in the process of electrification, but also the other companies that we already provide to other OEMs and to them, of course, we don't provide them those yet, and we can. This is important. And for this business model, companies like Tesla, Reborn, [indiscernible], there are other players that are entering the market. And if the OEMs, they dissolve their engineering, these new companies, they don't have that expertise. And we can use our expertise with a lot of added value for this [ coal ] design projects. This is a very good potential opportunity. And we also have another possibility. As we started last 4 years to dive deeply into electrification of vehicles. We started first to understand the demand that the OEMs have. What are they looking for as solutions for electric vehicles? One difference that we have spotted, first of all, is the following. When we talk about passenger vehicles, the trend is a verticalization of this process. They want to keep the internal [indiscernible] production or battery packs and batteries in -- of their integration systems, integrating batteries in the car. And in case of commercial vehicles, it's exactly the opposite. Most probably because of scalability. What they want is to look for someone in the market with a solution that can have a complete solution for the integration of those batteries into the cars. It is totally different. What we did was the following. Well, if this is what they are looking for, let's try to understand this segment in the market because there is still able to provide the solution, right? So what we found was battery industries, they have absolutely no network with the OEMs. They still don't have that connection. And they don't know about the structures and the integration of those batteries in vehicles. We understood this as a window of opportunity for us. We created 3 years ago an exclusive department in the division. We call Maxion e-mobility. This area is dedicated to developing solutions to OEMs. One of the first actions we've taken when we started this process. And after gathering lots of knowledge concerning this market, analyzing all of the industries, we started a partnership with Forsee Power. They produce battery packs there, French, plus they're global. And with them, we are offering the market this 360 solution. They assemble the battery pack in a way that they are going to fit within the structures we call battery cradles in [ racks ]. And after that, we coupled these structures into the [indiscernible]. This is this 360 solution they are looking for. We are going to have a video that's going to really show you what the idea is all about. [Presentation]

If it's not clear, this partnership, Maxion Forsee is now entering the market with this complete solution. This is a representation, a static representation of what you saw in the video, okay? Maybe you won't be able to see the video again, but so we do have a presentation in the slide for you. Now let's talk about the value creation and competitiveness, how we are positioning ourselves in the market. Now I would like to talk about the operation itself. It's important. It's important for you to know how we create value and we add these values in how to remain competitive. We cannot start this subject without first mentioning people. I think Marcos has mentioned this is something important. It's a very strong aspect in our culture and in our company and how much we do appreciate the people we work with. And we are going to talk a little bit about the operational excellence, cost reduction. I take pride in what I'm going to tell you. Because for 2 times in a row, in partnership with [indiscernible], we collected information concerning the engagement of our employees and the result was 86% of engaged workforce. And trying to explain you what this means is [ Core Ferry], they do have an extensive database. It represents 9 percentage points above average. It is an extremely positive number. And why is engagement so positive and so good? Well, having good people is not enough. Having people being strategically operating in specific positions is not enough. They have to be happy. They have to understand the strategy so that they can work well. On the second slide about this, as a consequence, I have a few features of our people and what do they do to improve their own knowledge and how they can achieve their -- that operational excellence. We have several programs within our division. I can mention some of them. We have the Lean Six Sigma implemented. We have our green belts, our black belts. They are working strong and there are specialists in projects. They managed to work on cost reduction and improvement of manufacturing. We do have Kaizen projects and we have a program called natural working teams. It's a reference so that you know these programs altogether, we expect that in 2024, we are going to reduce 6% to 7% -- actually an increase from 6% to 7% on productivity for the entire division. It's the cost of transformation comparing what we did last year and what we are going to do next -- this year and I've decided to pick one program that we have. We have a natural work teams in a special project. This is a completely different program from what we've seen. It's different from the Six Sigma, from the Kaizen. Usually, what we have is, we have specialists in those programs. They have knowledge about this. They work a very small team, and they work very difficult projects, things that need to be mature before they are executed. And sometimes with some investment of time and effort, they managed to succeed. But with the natural work teams project, we have this done differently. The team creates plans and executes and they do it themselves. We have an expressive number here. We have around 7,000 employees in our division. And of course, this is a process that is still evolving. We are working on the maturity of [ Infogroup ] but around 4,000 people are already involved with [ 218 ] natural work teams within the division. And how does this work? Well, the operators themselves, people themselves, those who are actually working on those cells. They have a group that is going to work towards the same goal. They are being backed up by specialists within tools and themselves with the knowledge that they have, they are going to work on a problem-solving situation and also execute this. And it's very -- it's highly efficient. We are not talking about 5, 6 people doing the same things. We have around 4,000 people committed to improving their own operations. So that you can see -- in 2023, we had more than 200 projects, people who were taught and taught as well during last year. Just some of the examples concerning the many projects that we have, but I want you to understand what we do. For example, plants that work on the reduction of raw material scrap. What is more relevant for us is raw material. We need to reduce the cost and use it the best way we can. And we have projects that work on the improvement of efficients. This is a process that takes, for example, thermal treatment, heat treatment and not only projects that are linked to manufacturing. We also have administrative processes focus. Sometimes administrative processes are just put aside. And it's an excellent way to bring efficiency and excellence for that aspect too. I have 2 projects here as an example. One was the RPAs. These are robots that work digitally, reducing time by doing repetitive tasks. So a person will not do something that a robot can do, especially if it's a repetitive task. There is an effect to it. Of course, there is this side effect. It's the engagement. Who here or anywhere else enjoys filling out Excel spreadsheets, for example. And it's something as important as anything else. 1.5 years ago, we started working on some automation. It's a linear reprogramming process for the acquisition of raw materials. More than 11,000 SKUs that we have within the company. You cannot imagine the amount of raw material, the different raw materials that we have to purchase for those. When we work on optimization is, we purchase less, use more and optimize what we buy. So within our reduction -- price reduction efforts working on projects alone is not enough. The reduction of 6% to 7%, the transformation cost that we have is not going to be enough for us to remain competitive and recover that margin. Marcos mentioned before. We do have historically the competence and the installed processes so that we can best prices on do the final price of each item. But of course, there are variations, as Marcos mentioned, but inflation, we used to not be that big of a concern for us. Especially when we were talking about the U.S. market. But this is -- let me just mention one of the tools that we are already using since last year. It is the construction of the long-term contracts. We call them the LTAs. They are positive. They may seem to be something that only bring advantages to us, but they're not. First, the bring guarantee to the clients because we see the numbers growing. And sometimes, we are the only sources for the products that they need to purchase. During some periods during the year, they will be able to have that specific time allocated for them. And there are some automated triggers so that we can pass on the values of inflation to the enterprise. This is a mechanism that we started using more strongly last year, at the end of last year, and all OEMs, whether in Brazil or Argentina or North America, they should be working with us through LTAs. And last, but not least, I have a summary here right on the screen. I hope I have managed to pass on the information that you wanted concerning the objective of my presentation, but I have listed 6 items here so that we can recap. One, the dilution of fixed costs through investments in current plants among many other investments we have. Increased efficiency with new manufacturing technologies, technologies that are here because we are implementing new lines. This opportunity with the electrified vehicles, especially in the United States, but also very strongly in Brazil with the buses. Continuous investment in people in program of cost reduction programs, this is a cycle, it's never in there. The use of digital tools to increase efficiency and of course, the construction of long-term agreements with main customers. And with this, I will pass the floor to our friend, Pieter Klinkers, so that he can talk about Maxion Wheels.

I'm Pieter. I'm from the Netherlands and I speak faster when I speak English, instead of speaking Portuguese. It's normal for Dutch talk -- speak many languages. It is true, but it's not easy. But the Dutch speak many languages because we are just 17 million people. So we need to speak other languages to be able to talk to other people. So -- the Dutch are best known, I believe for their ability to speak languages for their business and knowledge. But we are not well known for presenting important things in Portuguese. And I'm going to speak English so I can speak faster, okay? I can do better. I'm doing better than last year, I hope. But anyway. Okay. So I wanted to come back, first of all, a little bit to what we talked about in the prior presentations. We talked about growth. We talked about new products, everything around new mobility. So we will do that first. And then we'll go to what we can do internally to improve our margins and also what we need to do externally. We'll come back to that as well to get to the margins that we target. First, let's talk a little bit about new mobilities and what role wheels play in that. And that's a statement from a very important customer of us, a very big American EV producer. You all know who I'm talking about. They made the statement during a process that led to a big gain in wheels from this customer. It's Tesla, right? And so we have a winning big business, big new business with them. That's a statement that was made by one of their top engineers. So I think that's something they don't have to say. They only say, I think I hope when they mean it and when they intend to give us more business in the future. Let's look at the video. [Presentation]

I think there's a lot more around wheels. Just a round thing when you put the tire on and it makes the car go forward, right? Especially when we talk new mobility, there's a lot of things that is going on in the industry. And I think there's a lot of good things that is going on for wheels as well. I reconfirm what I said during prior presentations. And so when we talk about new mobility and solutions for new mobility, we talk, of course, a lot about sustainability. That's what new mobility has to do a lot worse. But we -- you will hear me talk a lot this 20 minutes about affordable solutions because everything around sustainability, if it's not affordable, I think it won't get a lot of traction. That's what's going on with electrical vehicles right now. If governments don't subsidize, people can't afford to buy these cars and you see it a little bit of a slowdown. I think it will come back anyway, but we need to make things more affordable, including wheels. So that's what we're working on. Wheels. As you know, I have a little bit of an advantage over my colleague, Renato. Wheels, there's a styling effect to that, right? It's appealing, it should be appealing. I always say, if you have a very nice vehicle and you put the wrong wheel on there, it's kind of ruining the vehicle. If you have a very bad looking vehicle, put a very nice wheel on there. It's not so bad, right? The ultimate result so. That style is very important for vehicles. And it's easy to put on more style, but it's not so easy to do in a cost-effective way. And we put a lot of effort in making that happen also. Lightweighting. Renato talked about, very important. I mean the world is moving towards heavier vehicles. I mean everything that has a battery, didn't have a battery now is heavier than before. Also, the world is moving from normal limousine to small sedans to more SUVs. So everything is becoming more heavy. That means the components need to be lighter and also that we try to do in a very cost-effective way. And then on top of that, I want to show one or two slides on new project, which is the biggest investment for Maxion Wheels since it exist in 2012, the truck alumina wheels that we are going to produce in Turkey. So affordable, sustainable solutions that wheel on the top is a steel wheel. We call it Maxion BIONIC, we launched it last year and the last year in Munich on the very big automotive fair. Why is it steel, of course, steel is cheaper than aluminum, okay? But steel also has lower CO2 values than aluminum. And aluminum wheel compared to a steel wheel has about 4 to 5x more CO2. So whatever we can do in steel is better for us, better for the world, better for customers, okay? And so this is a steel wheel. It's a little large, right? Normally, steel wheels are a little bit smaller. But when the cars get bigger and especially when it is electrical vehicles, the wheels get larger and thinner. I was last week and that was in the Sao Paulo Formula E. Anyone of you have been there? It was 40 degrees I can tell you. But I was also looking at the -- I always look at the wheels. So I was looking at the wheels and these wheels, if you compare them with Formula 1, right, these wheels are larger. They're larger than Formula 1 wheels, but they're much thinner as to reduce the rolling resistance, right? So you get longer range, you get a range out of this. So we need to have larger steel wheels. This is making that happen. And it's also capable of carrying those higher loads that Renato was already talking about. And this wheel is really the wheel for the future. We're very close to commercializing it. The other one on the bottom here, I'm actually even more excited about. What do you think that wheel is? Is that steel wheel or aluminum wheel? Whatever your answer is right, right? It's a steel rim. The rim is the thing when you look on where you put the tire on and then the disc is from aluminum. Why is that, that? I mean the rim, you don't need any styling, right? The styling is what you look at. And that's made out of aluminum, it's much easier to generate style and you will see it when you walk through the plant with aluminum than with steel, stamping versus casting baking cookies. And so -- it's a steel rim. So lower cost, lower CO2, but you have the styling from the aluminum. Of course, the trigger is how to make these 2 things come together and stick together on a car that is driving 200 kilometers per hour. We've been thinking about working on it sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. I think 10, 15 years. We figured out at least one way now to make it work. And I think we're going to go ahead and make a second process work that may be even better than the one that we have figured out so far. You will see a car in the showroom later on that has wheels that are full aluminum and that has, on the same car, the same wheel, what we call fusion, so with the steel rim. And I challenge you to choose which one is the half steel, half aluminum, which one is the aluminum. I guess we'll not be able to see -- check it out later on. Could be really good for us, guys. If this works, it's better for a company that makes both of those wheels. Most of our competitors, they only make steel wheels or aluminum wheels. So how are you going to do that then? You're going to do a partnership. The customer says, who is responsible? He/she, and we can do both. And many times, like here in Limeira, we can do it in one location, okay? So we're working hard on this. I hope it works, we keep you posted. If we want to go further from a sustainability point of view, we know how to make wheels much more sustainable. As I said in the beginning, the triggers -- can we make it affordable? And it's easy to make a wheel with more than 60% lower CO2, but it's expensive, right? You're going to buy different metal, you're going to buy more expensive utility. And so it's more expensive. And so to the extent that we can make these wheels either closer from a cost point of view to the stand-alones or that governments are going to impose penalties, right? That's happening in Europe. As of 2025, you're going to pay a penalty if you don't reach certain CO2 standards on a vehicle level. That may mean that those wheels that we are able to make, which is making them not today, not too much because nobody is willing to pay for it. But if you have to pay a penalty if you don't use them, then it becomes affordable, okay? So we know how to do it, both in aluminum and in steel, 60% down. We know how to do it. Styling. I think we talked about this the last time as well, but I just wanted to show this once again because we're picking up traction with these wheels. This is what we call a [ versatile ] wheel. It's the wheel in the lower corner there. It really looks like an aluminum wheel, right? We need to tick on it to see if it's a steel or aluminum. But it's a different steel where you can put a cover on there that has much better styling. You can look through the covering. You can see the brakes, so it gives an aluminum kind of styling. You look at these numbers at 2020. 2020 is not so low because we were in the pandemic. 2019 actually was lower, right? So there is an increasing trend and if we sell 3.5 million wheels out of a portfolio of 50 million wheels, this is not meaningless for this wheel because a higher turnover and normal steel wheel. So we have been rolling this out, started in Europe, went to India, now in South America, North America. 58 different wheels on 14 different brands. So this is happening. I'm confirming what we said last time. When we talk about lightweighting, everybody can make things lighter, but we are not hobbyist. I'm not people that just want to do things because that's a big engineering and we want to make money with it, right? Our customers need to be able to afford it. And so the way we try to do this is not by adding processes. There is one famous process that's called Flow Forming. It's a beautiful process. And basically, you put weight away from there where you don't need it to there where you needed it, okay? Flow Forming, but it's a process. And that means it's additional cost of manufacturing, it's additional utility costs, et cetera. We try to -- we can do it, and we do it. But we try to also come up with solutions where we avoid that additional process and do it in another way with supercomputers and super engineering and try to have a rim, in this case, which is only 2 millimeters thickness, 2.25 millimeters. Don't get afraid. We are selling millions of those wheels. So if you buy those mills, they will hold. And but you see these numbers, right? If we can sell 3 million, 4 million wheels of those, compared to standard wheels. These wheels are more expensive. That's a meaningful impact on our portfolio of wheels. And that's what we try to do with lightweighting. Besides all these new innovative products, as Marcos said, we also want to have a new product in our portfolio. We've been waiting for this a long time. Our customers have been waiting for us a long time. It's a big investment. It's the biggest investment we have made since Maxion Wheels was created when Iochpe-Maxion bought Hayes Lemmerz in 2012. This market basically is dominated by one big supplier. It's a public company. You can look at their results. We want to have some of those results as well. We're going to make those wheels. We're building the factory. It's a huge thing. It's only going to make initially 350,000 wheels, but because of the value of this product, this is -- if we go to the second phase which is 600,000 wheels, that's about the same turnover than what we make in the whole Maxion Cruzeiro wheels plant that you -- some of you saw last year. So not so many wheels, but a huge turnover and if we get to anywhere close, hopefully more than the EBITDA that this public company is making, then this is a very welcome addition to our portfolio. Start of production in 2025, in Turkey, where I have to say, we have a very, very, very successful joint venture. Just in my time, 15 years in the company, we launched 3 new plants, 2 aluminum wheel plants for Paccar. Last year, a very important new truck steel wheel plant, it's our base product for trucks. And 80%, 90% of the world is rolling on steel wheels of trucks. So this is in addition to the portfolio, another replacement of the portfolio. But all these plants have been launched very successfully, and they're delivering very well as some of you can read from our financials, and we are committed to make this new plant in Turkey at least as successful as what we've done in the last 15 years. We can make it happen with a fantastic joint venture partner [ entry ]. So if you have all these nice products and new products, there's 2 things that we need to work on, right?. We need to work internally to make all of 50 million wheels more competitive, right, reduce costs, et cetera, all the stuff that I talked about. I will try to go through a little bit quicker because some of that is repetitive, as you will see. Also, we need to work on the external side because we do everything right internally. We don't -- we're not getting paid, then something is wrong, bottom line as well. So I will talk about that as well in a few minutes now. What do we do in Maxion Wheels to improve internally? One thing that we have in place is a very, very robust management system M2S, as just Maxion Management System, 2 Ms, M2S. Okay. But basically, every plant has between 50 and 80 KPIs that we follow up daily, what we ordered monthly, and it's all digitized, right? So if one of those KPIs goes out of the bandwidth, out of the range, it pops up automatically when we put in place action plans to fix it quickly. So we do have a very robust management system in place to monitor the performance of our plants. We also have this innovative culture. We talked about wheels products, right? But a lot of these ideas that come to the [indiscernible] where, I mean, of course, the 20 to 30 ideas that are getting filtered from all the ideas that come in. Half of that -- about half of that is on processes, right? That's not as sensational. We can't show it here on the showroom or outside, but you can see it in the plants. But it's very important for our operational improvement, not only do things better, which is OpEx, but also do things different, which is innovation. So that's part of the way of working as well. And then, of course, if we have a system in place, culture in place. Now we want to train people. So we have almost 3,000 people trained how to improve processes in our plants. We have more than 130 certified black belts. That's a lot for [ 24 ] operations. So we have a lot of training going on, a lot of people involved in that. And then on top of that, when we would have talked about this 10 years ago, is it digital? Is it digitized or digitalized or we don't even know how it's called, right? Today, we're doing a lot more. I can tell you the last few years, 25% year-over-year increase of digitalization in our plants. And today, some plants say, "If I don't do that, I don't know how to improve anymore." So this is becoming very important and people are getting a little bit addicted to it, which is good because the paybacks on these projects are also very different than what we saw 5 years ago. So this has become an important pillar in our way of improving our plans. Now when you have all that, you have the system in place, you have the culture in place. You have the training in place, and you have the tools in place, et cetera. That's all good, right? But ultimately, what do we want? It's bottom line performance, okay? Let's talk about that a little bit. What do we do with all that? I mean ultimately, I can tell you one KPI without going too far, last year, all of the 24 plants and Maxion Wheels improved productivity, so all plants got better. That's easier [ set and then ]. And there's always something that goes wrong. And I know many, many years where some plants went the wrong way, more plans went the right way. Overall, you have positive productivity, but they have all 24 plants improved year-over-year I think that's kind of a proof of the system working. But still things go wrong, right? And then we have these teams in place that try to fix things very quickly, very efficiently. And it's not only this one team, but I can tell you, last year, we had 501 teams projects, not 500, but 501 teams in place to work through projects and to try to improve the plans or to fix issues. And then we do not only work and that we recognize that. That's the Maxion team award that you saw already in Renato's presentation. We make a big deal out of that. And these people get prizes. Now when I say prizes, it's not a big bonus, what they get to do is they get to travel around the world, don't worry [indiscernible]. But those teams get to travel around the world and they get to go to auto plants and replicate their projects. I think that's a very nice one. So this team, for instance, went out, went to 9 other plants or 8 other plants, 9 other plants and replicated what they did in their plant with their project. That's a very strong point. We are, by far, the most global wheel supplier by far the biggest as well, but also by far the most global, and we use this now to do the same in auto plants, what we found out in one of our plants, okay? [Presentation]

Okay. So a very strong tool for our company. Let's look at a few projects, not too many. I promise you. Are you hanging in there still okay. 5 to 10 minutes, okay? So this is one project in one of our aluminum plants that we really replicated around the world. And it's about connecting data and experience and tools. In this particular case, we saved -- we are saving 13% on energy in the most important part of the process, which is [ casting]. Whether it's for you bake the wheel, where you bake the cookie. 13% savings, and we were able to replicate that around the plants because one plant had this idea. Okay. Another one is automation. I will show you a short video after this. Automation is not so -- that's not industry 4.0, it's industry 2.0. But the aim of the game for us, I mean CapEx is limited. It's there, but it's limited. And if you want to do 10 things, you need to choose the one or two things that deliver you the best result quickest. Not until -- when we find something in one plant that is really working out very well, we replicate that around the world. When we do something in one plant that we thought it was going to work out well and it didn't work out so well. We informed the other plants, please don't have the same smart idea because we had this in this experience. This is in Turkey. Look at how many people you see, how many people you don't see. I mean this is around the world, not only in centers, this is Turkey. So when I entered the company in India, which was the best time, the only time we had 3. We had exactly zero robots. Today, it's more than a [ 100 ] at one time. [indiscernible] around the world, not only in [indiscernible]. 80% of the robots that we buy in the second hand. [indiscernible] good equipment around the world that we can perform to make it [ losing outline ]. It's a little bit more challenging, but that how we want to do. We used to have 2 people doing this in the wheel to take off the [indiscernible]. When you ask me if we compete with the chinese, but we took the same [indiscernible]. Last one, Digital Twin. My colleague, Renato will talk about it a little bit when we talk about the plans, particularly Limeira. We started doing this in Brazil. Now we're rolling it out worldwide. It's very efficient. You basically virtualize the product or the process and then you start working on this virtual model before you actually do it on the real product or on the real process. We're getting subsidies to implement this in our plan, and it's a very efficient tool for us to improve productivity without having to spend a lot of money in figuring out what's the best way to do it. So we create a virtual world and do it there. And we add artificial intelligence into it. Makes us look smarter. Okay. So you do all that, right? You have good products and you have good productivity doesn't mean anything, right? If you say you have X% productivity, then you need to give X plus 5% away to the customer, it doesn't help you on the bottom line, right? So I think -- what I would say here is that look at the takeaway, we have a deep experience in managing this. And this has helped us a lot in managing through the last couple of years that we're even more dynamic than what I think automotive industry normally is anyway. And so -- when you talk about raw materials, I think Renato explained well, we have a long history of being able to pass through. Still, we negotiate and we like it because we are good negotiators, I believe. On the aluminum, don't worry about it. We have these contracts in place all over the place with our suppliers, with our customers. And so it's no issue. When it goes down, our pricing goes up, when it goes down, our pricing goes down. When it goes up, our pricing goes up. On the steel, we negotiate, but we have a very long track record of doing that in the right way. Utilities was something new. Who knows the TTF? That's -- on aluminum, we do the formulas based on LME, the London Metal Exchange, it's a public index. We have a similar index on utility is TTF. This TTF went up from EUR 20 per megawatt hour for gas to 350 when Russia invaded Ukraine, okay? Then it went down. It went down to between 50 and 100. Today, I look this morning, is at 28. And so we did a very good job in Maxion Wheels and recovering utilities to the amount that we targeted -- we managed. Now customers are telling us, everything is back to normal, right? And I say 28 is still different than 20, right? And on top of that, governments are increasing the fixed fees on the 28 index. And on top of that, if you want to hedge this, nobody wants to commit for a very long time, the hedging is more expensive. And then it's still more expensive. So we still need to go out even though this thing is way back from where it was when Russia invaded and just after COVID, but we still are going out and recovering to the levels that we target. And then we talk about all the rest inflation mainly labor, but there's a lot of other things that would do freight and packaging and other indirect materials that if you add it up [indiscernible], it's also becoming a big ticket, and we need to recover that as well. I think we have that experience since a long time since ever I think we are much smaller than many of our suppliers and most of our suppliers. We are much smaller than our customers. So since 100 years, I think, we need to do this to survive. This is helping us now a lot, right, to manage through these dynamics. And then on top of that, as we talked before, we want to introduce these new innovative products at a higher margin than what our standard wheels are running at. But that combination, I believe will -- should generate the margins that we target. All of that, guys, this is the most important slide, and it's similar to what Renato was saying, all of that is only possible when you have a global, highly engaged team. And we have similar scores than components, so I'm not going to dwell out on that, but it's very important. And this is global, right? And so I think not always easy to get the right talent in the company. But apparently, we do. And when we get them in, I think people like to work with us. You see that when you walk around, I hope you'll see a little bit of that when you walk around here in Limeira, in the offices, in the plants, people like to work. They're proud of working for us. Having fun and making all of that happen that we talked ourselves. The engagement is very high in the company, and it's very necessary in these kind of environments. So wrapping it up, I think we have an innovative culture. We have benchmark productivity. I'm not going to call a number, but it's benchmark productivity, operational excellence. We want to work. We do work on affordable sustainability, affordable styling, affordable lighting aerodynamics, very important, affordable. And then we have in place this disciplined -- call it disciplined pricing management. It's both a legacy. It's something we do since a long time. And I can tell you it's a commitment of the whole team to make happen what we are making happen, in fact. And then last but not least, you talked about the highly engaged team that we have in Maxion Wheels globally. Thank you very much for your time.

Very good. Pieter, Renato -- thank you for your presentation. Now we would like to open up for questions for a few minutes. Questions you may have, Renato, Pieter, myself, Luis, [ Salum ], we are here available to answer all of your questions. Okay. Okay. I'm going to have a microphone holder for you. Any questions here.

Andre Mazini from Citibank. In regard to your margin recovery. I see how you want to get there. How comfort are you towards your goals? Those that were -- historically, the numbers that you had 5 years ago, your EBITDA margin in 2019. Your numbers were okay. So you gave us a lot of detail concerning raw material. I think it helps. There's the maximum production system, the [ N2M ] and M2S yes, this is going to help. But what are the drivers that you think that are going to lead you towards the historical numbers that you have had in the time frame for and how comfortable you are with this.

Well, thank you, first of all, for your question. Our historical margins in the last 8 to 10 years, pre-pandemic years, of course were margins that were around 11%, 11.5%. Some periods, we had the numbers going up or down, but the average was around 11.8. And the idea is we get back to those numbers. And there is no such a thing as a bullet -- as a silver bullet. It's a combination of factors, as you see. It's a matter of improving productivity and increasing productivity. It's a matter of -- it's a commercial matter concerning our suppliers, baseline and clients. It's a matter of launching new products with new technology and these progress are going to promote better margins. As you can see, you see, for example, the aluminum wheels in India. You see an evolution that is natural and normal for the business. I think it's a combination of factors. And of course, we want this to happen as fast as possible. But our first goal is to get back to a 2-digit margin this year. Not necessarily during the whole year, but we want to see these 2-digit numbers showing until December. And then gradually, we are going to get to our historical numbers and also to overcome those numbers as new technologies are coming in. Well, Pieter was just showing you your new aluminum steel wheels and we hope to get better margins with this. And everything is going to add value to what these are building blocks that are going to be one on top of the other. So that we can achieve this. How much can we trust we are going to get there? Well, we have a committed team, focused team working very hard for this diligently and -- we believe it's feasible. It's not simple. It's not automatic, of course, otherwise, we would have had this done already. But mainly, we are in an environment in which we now have a very much -- a much more stable raw material baseline. And raw material matters have been of concern. And temporarily, this has been negative but in the end, it generates distortions during specific periods in which our margins go up and then dropping. And this affects, of course, our stability and the continuity of this margin maintenance towards that historical number. But with more stable of raw material numbers and productivity and new products and technology, we believe it's feasible. We are working towards this so that this can happen.

Marcelo Motta from JPMorgan. I'd like to know if you can break down into details. The -- your LTA and how many clients are already included in the LTA process. You've mentioned the importance of the inflation in utility costs, manpower. Is there an order to it? And can you elaborate a little bit more on LTAs?

Sure. Motta, this is a process that historically has been used selectively with some cases. But the idea now is that we use this more in a more standardized fashion. We started implementing this more last year, and we are doing this gradually. And as we are launching new programs and products, this is the moment in [indiscernible] introduce clients into this new step. You need to really link them to new launches, for example. But in the end, this is going to promote better a positive impact. It's difficult for me to give you a time frame because it's going to vary according to the country, economical concerns, clients and the aging of certain products, products that have different margins because these were programs, for example, they have been launched earlier. Others were launched recently. We cannot give you the number because this is very diverse, very different because we have structural components. We do have wheels. And as Marcos said, we have more than 10 part numbers in the structural components. Of course, they don't buy all of the portfolio, but for a complete chassis, we have several numbers, for example. This is part of the process and not only with the LTAs, it's only one aspect to it. But this is going to be introduced slowly as we launch products as the contracts are being negotiated.

Fernanda from BTG. Two aspects I would like to explore with you, Marcos. First of all, in your -- at the beginning, you mentioned performance per region, and you said it was better than expected. If you can really elaborate how these first 2 months of this year have been and given a little color concerning what's happening in the U.S. and in Europe, if you can give us numbers for the last 2 months and a more updated situation concerning associations and let's make use of the President of [indiscernible]. In the United States, we know that 2026 is going to be a technological transition for the country. I'd like to know how you see this and how this can impact the dynamic in the U.S., especially for 2024 focusing on '25 and '26?

All right. Briefly, in terms of markets, I've mentioned a little bit about Brazil. With commercial vehicles and light vehicles, we see this happening positively and very much in line with what the year 2024 was going to be. I believe, again, I mentioned we had planned on growing around 20% provided for trucks, but I think it's going to be better. The numbers are going to be better, especially because of what we see at the beginning of the year. And for light vehicles, the first 2 months, we already have the production 6% above what we had last year. And according to the analysts, the projection is 3%. So in Brazil, this scenario is positive. Brazil is important to us, especially for commercial vehicles. But in Europe, we have a mixed bag here. We see commercial vehicles -- their level of production is a little bit lower, which is expected. It was going to be expected like this anyway. And as for live vehicles, it's growing. We see this and the sales of vehicles are above the projection -- above what was projected by the analysts. And we did have a projection of a decrease, and it's been better. What I think our numbers are positive. And in North America, what we see is an interesting dynamic. When we look at the numbers for commercial vehicles in the projections, LMC, ACT and other sources, they mention a decrease in commercial vehicles production of 2 figure only, 2 digits, around 10% to 15%. That's what they say in their projections. But when we talk about this with our clients, they say no, there is no such a drop. The numbers are going to be pretty much like last year's, and maybe we're going to have a marginal drop, not a 2 digit. And to date, what we see is our clients are saying the truth. This is what we see, too. And I believe -- well, remember, North America is in an all-time high in commercial production -- commercial vehicles and truck production. And they've been presenting the numbers as we expected. And the expectation is the emissions in North America are going to go high too. In 2024, we're going to have good numbers, '25, '26 are going to be even better numbers. You see how much we are working on increasing our capacity, not only to meet the current demand but future demand, especially for '25 and '26 because the demand is going to be very high. So in general, what I can say is when we consider the world as a whole, we are not going to grow that much. But in some specific segments, we are going to see healthy growth, and it's part that is interesting in our business. Have I answered your question? Okay.

[ Malik ] from TC. My question is concerning the U.S. You mentioned, especially that one of the main consolidated margin problem is because the United States is working on their capacity. Do you -- what do you think that's going to happen? Because the structural components in Mexico is facing a different Phase 1 in '25 and '26 because of this expansion. What is the effect of this expansion for the region and how can you consolidate everything? Because maybe by the end of the first phase, do you think it's feasible for us to understand that the margin is going to be recovered with this by 2025 or maybe even '24, I'd like to know from you.

Thank you for the question. We don't talk about margins for individual products or regions. But if you look at our consolidated margin, we are operating lower than 2 digits. We are operating at about 80%. This is our gap to go back to 2 digits and it really has to do with the combination of margins in Brazil, in the U.S., in other regions that need to be recovered. We believe that this increasing capacity that is happening in North America is gradual, it should happen throughout the year, and it should reach the levels we are expecting at the beginning of 2025. But it should be growing throughout the year and with the increasing productivity that it is generating out a year, we will also see the margin recovery and improving throughout the year, thanks to higher productivity. Again, last year, we worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during a great part of last year, and that is negative because across those production is higher inefficiencies higher, the time of -- you don't have established time for maintenance, and that reduces efficiency. This should be improving gradually throughout the year. So we believe this is part of the reason our margin should be -- should improve throughout this year. Gaining productivity, not only in North America, but especially in North America, this increased volume of production of trucks in Brazil, we had a drop of about 40% last year. That was a great -- had a great impact on the results. But also, the debates were talking. It's a combination of factors. It's not one or other individual factors, but all these combined ones are going to make our margin low, and I mentioned that during the earnings release. The first quarters of the year usually are the most challenging in terms of volumes and margins because you have vacations and you have other out of the normal activities. In the second -- the third and fourth quarter of the year, usually are the better and the production of trucks is growing in Brazil gradually. We had a growth since the beginning of the year, since the first month and our margin should grow and evolve throughout the quarters this year.

Victor from Bradesco BBI. I have 2 questions. The first one has to do with structural components. When you look at the [indiscernible], it's producing cabins already, [indiscernible]. And when you look at bus market, we have a debate on mono blocks. How do you see that? Is that a trend? Is that an opportunity for [indiscernible] or regarding the cycle of investments in the automotive sector and the amount expected for the OEMs. How do you see these investments? Do you think there's a possibility of bringing more technology for maybe the 5 -- 6 to 7 years in the future, do you think this could bring higher margins?

I'll let Renato answer the first question, and then I will answer the second one, okay?

Talking about the single block buses. There are some models some bus models already use a tubular chassis. This is common practice for a long time, and we don't have any participation, at least in the chassis for this buses. There is a segment. I cannot tell you the share of each one but as it happens in the trucks, it's the same thing. But what we see in the OEMs in terms of development, if there is a growth it doesn't have an impact on our business. We have been developing for most of the bus orders that we have. We have some additional orders for that 100% of the vehicles have chassis that are within our business scope and the OEMs that have been selected for manufacturing are the ones where we have a participation in manufacturing. I don't see that as a problem as a trend or as an impact.

As for the second question, of course, we see all the announcements from the OEMs is very positive for -- in terms of investment for the next few years. And I think the issues that the sector is making. The decisions they are making in terms of electrical vehicles. It's very interesting because it creates opportunities for conversion engines for electrical vehicles. It brings opportunities for the market and for us because our products are kind of agnostic in terms of what kind of engine they have. All this vehicles require chassis and other structural components. So the investments by the OEMs in terms of new products and technologies is positive. This will allow us to keep inserting our products more and the developments that Pieter and Renato have brought with new technology solutions -- for example, smart wheels as we call them or other components with greater added value. This will allow us to grow with the OEMs and offer these solutions so they can have the latest technology in the world in their progress. One of the advantages we bring is that as we operate globally and we operate the OEMs that produce commercial vehicles and light vehicles we have access to what they are developing in Europe, in China, in the U.S., and we can bring these solutions to the Brazilian market quickly and meet the investments made by the OEMs. So we see that as positive, not only for our company, but for Brazil as a country. So it can get back into a broader production market. Brazil at a time, produced 4 million vehicles per year, and we are struggling to produce too. But thinking of production demand of over 3.5 million. I think it's a reasonable amount, and these investments will bring new products that are more affordable for the customers in Brazil.

You talked a little bit about this historical OEM production of standardizing loss production. Lately, we have some rumors that they were studying internalizing wheels production. And do you see any move of that kind, do you see any difference in terms of the electric vehicles and combustion engine vehicles that in are not only in the production of wheels, but the relationship we have with the clients?

Well, the historical movement you've seen for years and up to 3 to 4 years in the past, the OEMs are not going to produce wheels internally. One of the latest ones that produce wheels internally in Europe, Volkswagen fort, they stopped producing in the last 4 to 5 years. So we don't see a trend in that sense and what the volumes are looking at and Renato mentioned, especially the light vehicle is, they are trying to internalize the production of the electric systems for the batteries because there is one challenge they have to overcome. They have to replace engines that they produced internally and they have to use the labor force that they had to produce something else. And what is that the electrical system for the vehicle. So the OEMs introduced light vehicles are tending to produce internally the battery pack, the electrical part of the vehicles, but not go back in an effort to take to their suppliers, many components and subsystems, such as wheels, instrument, dashboards, electronic components, things that they used to produce 30 years ago, historically, they started passing on through their suppliers. We do not see that movement. BID is another different case. They produce aluminum wheels in China, which is far has been part of their model. They produce one part and they buy from other suppliers there with us. In the long term, I don't know what is going to be their strategy. That's not clear. We don't know how much they're going to want to multiply wheels production globally. But the issue in China specifically is that aluminum wheels for a vehicle has been the norm. The world has grown with steel wheels in China enter the automotive world later in group quickly, they grew with aluminum wheels. So the bulk of aluminum wheels production globally in China because you have Chinese suppliers for Chinese producers. And BID, with its growth production, they have that internal manufacturing. And it's not clear for us what's going to be their strategy. If they're going to try to replicate that in other parts of the globe. This would require additional investment -- and we believe that their priority is the electrical part of the vehicles and other systems that is important. Time will tell, but we are talking to all OEMs offering all our products, wheels and structural components because we have installed capacity. We are expanding where necessary -- and most of all, we have the experience and know-how to try to prevent some of the problems or interest, they might have trying to develop a product in a market there. They don't know where you have different driving and road conditions. You have different vehicle loads. The responsibility of the drivers is different. So -- there is a lot of experience we have gained throughout the year, and we can add the years that we can offer this customers in trying to prevent them for making mistakes and trying to figure out the characteristics of a market we already know.

[indiscernible] from Invest. I have 2 questions. [Foreign Language]?

[Foreign Language].

What is the average cost of aluminium wheel for truck versus truck wheel in Europe.

[Foreign Language]. [indiscernible] is here with us again every year [indiscernible] has been with us, so [ Ricardo ]. Thank you. Marcos.

We want to thank you for the opportunity because through 24 years, this relationship has been very important, not only for the analysts associations, but for the entire market, we all learn it's a form that is so open to everyone and also to those who are coming individual investors. So this is a way to democratize information and what we consider so important, so we can do our job and make the numbers -- bring the numbers to debate, very profound debate that really honors what the company deserves. So we learn a lot in this relationship. We believe the company learns with us also. This is a mutual need for formation exchange through our reports or credited analysts and taking this information to investors, to managers in a way that is very transparent and that, again, makes us honor what the company defines as strategic planning. So it's a huge privilege, 24 years of relationship. And I want to thank all the Investor Relations company team and all the employees. Thank you.

Thank you, Ricardo, and everyone from [indiscernible] for your participation. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]