Santos Brasil Participações S.A. (STBP3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Santos Brasil 2023. My name is Juliano. I am responsible for investor relations and strategic areas. We're going to be speaking about strategy, the performance of the company throughout 2023, and what we foresee for 2024. Here with me, we have Antônio Carlos Sepúlveda, the company's CEO; Ricardo dos Buteri, the CEO; Daniel Pedreira Dorea, the CFO and IRO. We're going to begin an announcement for those that are connected and are watching the presentation through streaming. For the question-and-answer session, please send the questions through ri.santosbrasil.com.br. We will be answering the questions once the presentation is finished. Thank you.

Good morning to all of you. It is a pleasure to be with you here today at Santos Brasil. I'm going to speak about the company's strategy and the main opportunities that lie before us for coming years, and ensuing that Ricardo and Daniel will offer you greater details, speak about the year that has just finished, and what we expect for 2024. As you know, we have 3 business units. The Container Terminal, the Logistics Terminal and the Liquid Bulk Terminals. These 3 businesses are basically driving. We have all of our units with capacity and with a very strong demand for the services that we render. And of course, this is a very positive outlook for the future. It's not only for the short term, but also for the long term. And this is what I would like to discuss with you. We have worked carefully on planning. We began this strategy in 2018, putting it in place through a very systematic execution. At the bottom, you can see our enablers. We have execution, not only planning, of course. I won't be speaking about the enablers, but I would like to refer to 2 of them being employee experience. Santos Brasil is a company that renders services, and the team, of course, is essential, enabling us to comply with our goals, and we devote ourselves a great deal to this. Another enabler is the customer experience. We have been enhancing our relationship with the client. We have ever more sophisticated interface, and we're improving our perception in terms of what is needed. Our strategy is to sell premium services, top-level services in the market, and we always deem that the client is able to perceive the offer that Santos Brasil offers. This is present in our product, and we have been able to execute our strategy based on this. I'm going to go through each business unit to go more in depth in terms of our assessment, in terms of CapEx return per unit, and of course, the opportunities that we foresee in each of them. First of all, we have the container and vehicle terminals. We have a flagship, the Tecon Santos, that is the largest port in Brazil. It's very difficult to replicate Tecon Santos. Tecon Santos, along with the vehicle terminal, by far are the port facilities that have the greatest throughput, and they have a privileged situation. We began our investment cycle in 2018, and in that year, we thought that we would have a better balance of supply and demand, and that we should enhance our prices. This is exactly what we did. We recovered the prices that we had lost around 2014, 2015, and we have been working arduously to offer capacity with price and high volumes as our equation. So with its price level that we have been able to deliver, we have had margins that are quite high. Our EBITDA margin goes beyond 50%. And we hope, in the coming years, to reach 57% of EBITDA margins globally for the company, including corporate expenses and logistics, which is an activity that has lower EBITDA margins compared to containers, because they are capital intensive. In 2023, we will finish with 2.4 million TEUs, the use of that capacity is around 2,000 TEUs. It has been a very difficult year, a very weak first semester. The third quarter with poor demand was not good for our Container Terminal, but Tecon was able to absorb all of these ups and downs with all of the lineup that we had at the port, and we began to build this capacity in 2018. And we will continue to do this until 2031, when we will reach 3 million TEUs of capacity. In the short and medium term, we don't foresee a disruption in the capacity at the Port of Santos. The port authority has a good management. At present it is incentivizing investment in the unit that exists in the port, and with this we are able to obtain short-term capacity. With the construction of a new terminal, the capacity would only come about in 5 or 6 years. And the idea is for Port of Santos to continue to provide capacity. This has been -- in a typical year, I have never seen the GDP grow 3% with drops in other areas. The year 2024 should be a year of growth. It should be different. But we have already had better third quarter and second half of the year was better than the first half of the year, but we will be ending the year at Port of Santos with volumes lower than those moved in 2022. But the Port of Santos shows great resiliency. We have improved EBITDA margin in an adverse scenario. And our expectation is for vigorous growth in the coming years. Our investment plan has a very good base. It is being executed very correctly. And we always have an additional capacity of 200, 300 additional TEUs, so that Brasil Santos does not miss out on a single container at Santos Brasil. This is our strategy. This is what happened in 2023, and we want to continue this going forward. We have been following up on the development of other terminals. There are terminals renewing contracts, terminals with investment plans, but they're lagging behind vis-a-vis Santos Brasil. And our expectation is to capture 100% of the growth of the Port of Santos. So doubtlessly, you will witness the fact that Santos Brasil will gradually enhance its market share at the Port of Santos. Our forecast for investments for 2024 for all of the terminals is BRL 500 million to BRL 600 million. We're anticipating investments that have been scheduled for 2025, 2026. Based on this vision, the investment for 2024 will provide capacity for the end of 2025, 2026, and the beginning of 2027. Now what we're using today in terms of capacity is thanks to the investment of '21 and '22. We also have opportunities in Vila do Conde. Ricardo will convey in greater detail the expectation we have for Vila do Conde precisely because of the problems we have in the Amazon River. So we have also anticipated investment for 2024. Imbituba and the vehicle terminal continue with their normal capacity. And Imbituba, well, the characteristic is having a great deal of volatility, and we include automobile there. There has been a change of Argentina for the western part of South America. And our expectation is that at some point in time, Argentina will return to the vehicle export market and this will increase our total capacity. This does not mean that we're not doing well. We're going to have lower results compared to 2022. And in 2024, the expectation is for the vehicle terminal to be very similar to results in 2023, without great surprises. The great change, of course, would be the resumption of Argentina in this market. Very good expectations. Ricardo will convey greater details to you. We have new cabotage lines at the Port of Santos. We have a port for deepening the Port of Santos. This will enable us to have greater transshipment. And this always comes with gateway for imports and exports. So we're being very hasty in this project; if there is a possibility of having greater transshipment, to make sure that the Port of Santos is ready for this. So we're running to offer more capacity because these containers are coming in. I'm going to go on to Logistics. Logistics has, of course, suffered from imports. There has been a drop in imports. We have shown great resiliency. We have lost a bit of market share, but significantly increased our volume. And the strategy here is to invest in technology, to set our services of site, to sell at premium prices based on that strategy that I conveyed a short while ago, to set ourselves aside and to show products where the client will perceive value in products that cannot be replicated. And those who work with the Container Terminal, they help us with Tecon in peak moment, and we have to make the most of the synergy with Tecon Santos. And here, we have the specialization of the company of focusing on SL containers that take containers to several shippers. We have a more sophisticated cargo to operate with. And this is a market where we have been growing steadily. And this market has helped us to increase the average price of containers. At the 2 terminals, we have also invested in 3PL, which is a business with lower margins. Compared to the Port of Santos, the business is much more sophisticated. So far, we have not increased the speed of growth because we're still enhancing our technological platform to penetrate this market with strength, working with cross-selling with Tecon Santos. It was a gigantic market where our market share is minimal. And we are developing plans and projects to grow there and finding sites where we will have greater margin and greater synergy with Tecon Santos. Logistics has grown considerably, and we still have space to double the EBITDA in this business. I draw your attention. We have the outlook of investing BRL 30 million per year for the coming 3 years. This is because of an area that we have that is attached to our port. We're licensing this area. We have eliminated vegetation, and we're going to work with a new yard to be able to service the SL containers. We delayed the beginning of execution this year because there was a drop of imports at the Port of Santos. This is what is left over from COVID. There's a very high interest rate globally. And all of this has impacted the import at the Port of Santos. Our expectation is that consumption and imports will be resumed in Brazil. The interest rate, of course, is steadily dropping. Imports will return, and we do want to be ready to increase our market share and also to do this at Port of Santos and to bring along with us logistics to have a higher profile in our company's portfolio. Now the third and last business unit refers to the Liquid Bulk Terminals. We anticipated the operation of these terminals by 1.5 years. We acquired the assets from the former owners of the terminal. You can see the construction of new tanks. Presently, we have 50,000 cubic meters available with a very high occupation. The Port of Itaqui has high demand for fuel. It services agri business. And it's aligned with what we had foreseen when we acquired this asset. The coming year, in midyear, we will receive an additional 60,000 cubic meters, enabling us to reach 110 cubic meters and making it easier to sell. We already have a positive EBITDA. We will end the year 2023 with positive EBITDA and the expectation is a gradual growth of EBITDA until 2025 when we reach full capacity of this project at 190,000 cubic meters. Now what is going to obtain that EBITDA in 2025, 2026 is the potential of this facility safe side and this is a business that could reach BRL 150 million in terms of EBITDA once it is fully operational, considering the demand at the Itaqui Port. Investments are like clockwork. In 2023, BRL 220 million, BRL 270 million, BRL 240 million, something like that. In 2024, more close to BRL 270 million. And then we end the investment cycle. So we are going to have state-of-the-art, fully automated, very low cost, and we are expecting EBITDA margins in this project in excess of 70%. So this industry is a low labor intensity and this terminal has the highest level possible of automation. We are very, very excited. This is a fragmented business in Brazil. And here our strategy is that this terminal can still grow. We could add another 40,000 cubic meters. We want to leave this for the future. And we will be looking into other opportunities for Liquid Bulk. And we have a very clear objective. Our expectation of return is through and real. So it's 15% to 20%. We are super selective with our assets. They need to be -- can't be replicated, and the cost of acquisition and construction costs need to assure returns in excess of 15%. Now dear friends, ending my presentation, we are going to start 2024 with good prices for all assets that Santos Brasil is operating; all investment budgets, they're right on schedule; and we expect we'll be able to balance our CapEx and OpEx, so that we have a flow of dividends that is very vigorous, so that shareholders can have a return for everything they've invested on Santos Brasil. So thank you so much. I'm going to give the floor to Ricardo Buteri, who's going to give you more details. Oh, I'm sorry. There's another slide that I forgot to talk about. So this is ESG, another very important aspect of our businesses for Santos Brasil. One of the enablers of our strategy. So here, as you can see, I would like to highlight the decarbonization of our operations. Our customers, the shipowners, they're very aggressive in decarbonizing. Society is demanding this from industry, and Santos Brasil cannot escape its responsibility to that. Our goal is to be net zero by 2040. We have already been able to significantly reduce until 2023. We went from 14 CO2 kilos to 9 kilos of CO2 by TEU in the last 5 years, and we are carbon neutral for Scope 2 for energy consumption. And the project I mentioned to you of the terminal that we wanted to expand the quay in Guarujá, they are carbon neutral. Four customers in the state of São Paulo and Tecon Santos is going hand in hand with the shipbuilders, with our customers, to reduce and give them an advantage in the reduction of their carbon footprint. So I think you've been following up there are now ships that run on ethanol to reduce carbon emissions. All pieces of the equipment that we are buying, investments that you mentioned, they're all electrical. We have received eight pieces of equipment that are fully electrical that we use to handle goods in Tecon Santos, the harbor. So for 2024, we'll be receiving another 8 electrical machines, and we gradually reduce our carbon footprint. And I think that by 2030, we will be able to reduce more or less half of what we have today. After 2030, it will be more difficult. We'll need to compensate part of it, but we are completing our project for 2040, so that by then, we are carbon neutral. Other parts that are not less important in our ESG, Brazil has huge social problems. So we delivered 41 projects of social work in the communities that are around our terminals. We have approved 58 social projects for next year. We have a diversity and inclusion committee. We have 35% women in leadership -- or rather 28% women in the leadership, and we want to get to 35% in 2030. Today, we have 25% black people in the leadership of the company and want to get to 30% black people in the company's leadership by 2030. And all the work that we are doing in terms of diversity at Santos Brasil, making it a stronger company. And governance goes in a very striking way, so that we can meet those goals. So we have a compliance committee. We have whistle-blowing channel. So the company wants to provide psychological confidence and security, so that people can work in a discrimination free environment. In terms of ESG, we have ISE, we are in B3 ISE. We are in the new market, Novo Mercado of Brazil. Our Board has 8 members. The Chairman and Vice Chairman are women. So we have a Chairwoman. And this is a modern company ready to generate wealth to provide you the return that you need for your investment. So now I'm going to give it over to Ricardo to give details about our growth strategy.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here, for the opportunity of having an event which is different from a usually conference call where time is very short. The highlights for 2023. Over the topic of my presentation and indications for the simulations that you have, if you follow the Santos Brasil case, it's very good to speak after 01, because the holistic and strategic vision that he shares with you makes it possible for me to put a magnifying lens to show you as much as we can of what we're going through, especially trends. And we need to be very respectful in terms of trends because of the [ CVM ], but these are trends that we minimally bet on as possibilities that they will continue in 2024. So let's talk a little bit about the Port of Santos. So I'm going to give you a very clear sign. Sometimes I'll be more emphatic than others to tell you what's going on. As Antônio Carlos spoke, the Port of Santos has a very challenging scenario for 2023. We've been following that very closely. One thing I would like to highlight in this overview is the resilience of the Port of Santos. The Port of Santos in the first quarter had a completely unexpected first quarter. It could still recover and we are going to close the year at minus 2% margin. Just as a reminder, in Q1, it was minus 13%. So this resilience of the Port of Santos, we want to show this that when we look in absolute numbers in terms of containers, 100,000 containers every year, this is a very marginal, very small number. But there are a few other details that will make it possible for me to emphasize why the competition scenario demonstrates that we have execution discipline, made it possible for us to have a good EBITDA, and also to prove our commercial strategy that was very important for 2023, as there is a slowdown or shrinkage. So here we have the first 9 months of '22 and '23. You see that there is a difference, although it's marginal. We're going to the EBITDA chart to talk a little bit about cargo volumes. It's important to emphasize that what effectively happened in the Port of Santos. When we look at the cargo mix, despite the marginal growth, is that cabotage has grown. Cabotage has grown 10%. Cabotage will continue to grow. And I am proud to say -- I'm very happy to say out in public that we have just been appointed, after recent negotiations, for a new joint venture [indiscernible]. So a joint venture between Hapag-Lloyd and Norsul. They've created a new company called Norcoast. Norcoast, after all analysis of terminals on the Brazilian coast, they defined that Santos will be the terminal for them for in and out of Campinas, number one. Cabotage has grown in 2023. New services have been announced. We had the launch of Norcoast just last week in São Paulo. Santos Brasil and Tecon Santos have already been appointed as the terminal to receive this new volume. This volume doesn't come just for cabotage. Once there is a shipowner as strong as Hapag-Lloyd, everything, all the turnover and all the -- everything that comes from outside, all the movements in terms of transshipment and containers to travel the coast of Brazil. So this is #1 message about cabotage. And this is an indication that in 2024, we are expecting the continuation of the growth. Now talking a little bit about Tecon. So it's the port, but we are going to get into our asset. So Antônio Carlos used a very interesting word. He said, we are prepared. We are ready. We have the capacity to continue to grow. So you know our company's strategic investment plan. We have been following up the execution since 2019, 200,000 new TEUs in capacity. Where does it go in the strategy? How can we not have to depend on price adjustments? Well, there are a few indicators. Look at the legend on the left-hand side about long-haul versus berth window. So how can we read this to help you understand? Number one, the 2 competitors that we have in the Port of Santos receive, in year-to-date numbers or overall, more than 50% of all ships outside the berth windows. So there is a map of windows. You write a contract and define which day of the week and time that, that ship needs to moor, like airplanes. So when we have a vision that the competition has 53% of long-haul getting late no matter how much we normalize supply chain, this has a direct impact on the day, week, month. So who does it impact? It impacts the owner of the terminal adversely because there is inefficiencies that are generated in the chain. It has an impact on Tecon Santos as part of its strategy of adding capacity and having a service level where we can contribute and not allow lines to be formed in the Port of Santos. And so that the rest of the trip along their routes go on well. So 42% of what we received in Santos Brasil is fully on time. But part of that on time may get late. And because of the hourly handling that we have of 13 containers positioned, we take this difference out from late-coming ships. So it's more than obligation of a port handler, port operator that wants to have excellence and is already recognized as such in the market. Now let's see the upside. So far, I've been saying, we are doing our job. The number of extra calls in 2021 by Tecon Santos for the Port of Santos in terms of containers that were not part of the services that we have contracted for Tecon Santos was 80,000 boxes, 2021, post-COVID. So this is a rebound effect. 80,000 boxes, Tecon Santos. Two factors, extra call due to demand post-pandemic and inefficiencies. So what's going on in 2023? And in our opinion, it's completely impossible to change in 2024. 80,000 boxes in 2021, 45,000 extra call boxes in 2022. And we are going to end 2023 with 72 (sic) [ 72,000 ] boxes. Is it another post-COVID? No, of course, not. What's going on is that the demand of the port that you've seen has shrunk. So the demand, instead of being organic extra call due to demand, it's mainly extra call due to inefficiencies because of this leap from 44,000 to 72,000 this year. So these are indications that we are showing here of operational efficiencies, installed capacity, and service level. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a given. This strategy is going on. There is no future planning. This is happening today. And now we would like to go to the right-hand side of the slide to say a few things. Despite a slight shrinkage in the Port of Santos and Tecon, obviously see that the number of stocks in Port of Santos has increased. So 1,172. So in the first 9 months of last year, it was about 1,600, and this year, about 1,700, with no stress. On this other chart here, considering waiting time to moor and quay capacity, so berth, in the land, statics, this is berth. So if we have more ships -- with more ships going around, we have the scenario of late ships, which is not a responsibility of the competitor terminals. The fact is that this happens. So we have today a sophistication and preparation level. We have 72 hours before the ship announces that they will arrive at the Port of Santos, doesn't matter which terminal. We have all the 3 lineups in parallel, which is the terminal capacity, how many movements we're doing per hour, and if the ship will wait and how many hours they will need to wait. The level of sophistication and market intelligence make us be 72 hours before the ship arrives to the Port of Santos. The customers are the same. We can go to shipowner and say, well, gentlemen, there are 2 ships ahead of you, for example, in the terminal of competitor 1. Are you willing, with the volume that you have, that you were handling in 2023, do you want to wait for 5 days when there's an average of 1 day, 1 day in September. So if you take the first half of the year, 8, 9 hours, a direct question, do you really want to wait? Or would you like to moor upon arrival? The service is ours, but the contract, the box rate has been negotiated with the client for other services. What happened? Nobody waits in the queue anymore. And this is a reason why I'm justifying that strategy of inefficiency that is generating the opportunity for returns when it comes to capacity. That service level of eliminating delays, that ensuring that there is a flow after the ship has berthed in the Port of Santos, and this includes containers going abroad. So the Port of Santos is very important because the demand is coming. 70% of the users are berthing. I would like to give you another signal. I'm not even considering the inauguration of December 2021, January 2022 of the extension of the berthing where we went from 1.2 to 1.5 in terms of the length of the quay. Nowadays, we can absorb without having to use partially or totally this new berthing area. We held a show in China and the exhibition of the material was a berth that was completely free. Choose the date, the time, and the volumes you would like to moor at the port of Santos. And of course, this is thanks to the investments that we have made simply respect our return at the Port of Santos. And this is nationwide, of course. So we have a strategy. We have a discipline. And Carlos very clearly mentioned that this was thought of clearly in 2020 and that we have been executing since 2019 with results, even though this year has not been normal. So you see the level of demand of the market and the commercial demand were not sitting back waiting for demand to knock on our door. There is no zone of comfort to wait and understand if opportunities exist or not. We're creating opportunities. And when I say 72 hours, these are one-offs and all the terminals with that detail of the time in which the boat that has moored will be leaving and how this will be ported, but it's going to wait in a queue, and the Port of Santos nowadays has 76% of use and berthing and demand can come in. We have sufficient room for this without, of course, considering the amount of investments we have for 2024. Now in this slide, we will speak about Container Terminals. I'm not speaking only of Santos, although this is an extremely important asset as part of our benchmark. I'd like to speak about the Container Terminal. We speak of Pará, all the way down to Santa Catarina. Here you see the key volumes and the storage volumes year-on-year. Now when we look at this, when we come here, it's not difficult to understand that we do not depend exclusively on volume. And what I would like to underscore here is that the commercial strategy, while you have been following up on it since 2019, the change of methodology, putting this together with strategy, our execution capacity, the growth of the NPS score, all of this enables us, through all of these variables, to obviously deliver higher EBITDA, because you have a reduction in the variable points. Daniel will refer to this. We do have the possibility of renegotiating, but it's not only about renegotiation and price that allows this to materialize. There is no pressure to sit at the table and it is no lack of humility to say your utilization rate at the Port of Santos is 75%. We have a relationship with these clients for 25 years. It's a long story where we have shared so many things together. So an increase in EBITDA, a retraction of almost 40,000 containers, somewhat higher in 2023, and we still haven't seen the news for the fourth quarter. At the last call, we said that there was still a retraction, but everything is underway. We spoke about 77,000 containers in the first quarter, a huge retraction; 88,000 containers in the second quarter; and 99,000 containers in the third quarter. And in November, in our conference call, many asked what happened in November. The year is finishing. Well, it's the same conversation we had in the call. So if we look at the evolution of the average ticket, I would like to emphasize that this is not box rate, it's the quay operation, because of the respect that we have for our shipowner clients and the confidentiality of our negotiations. To remind you, this year, we had 13 negotiations. And one of the assumptions of this foundation is that the Net Promoter Score, when we changed the methodology in 2020, we used the domestic market methodology. We wanted to attain a level of excellence. In 2020, our figure was around 30, and our goal was 50. We reached 50 last year. And to become a reference in Net Promoter Score with retractors growing is a danger. You'll find yourself that it's in a zone that is not a comfort zone. So what we did? We used a publication of Track.co. We looked at all of the companies in this sector, logistics and ports throughout the world, and there was a classification by area. It's interesting. We got to the benchmark. And when we looked at this publication, there's a zone called the zone of quality. And the Net Promoter Score is from 51 to 75, and we went, wow, we're part of the main players in logistics, in port companies in Brazil and throughout the world. But we're going very quickly through the zone of quality. We're seeking the highest level of excellence. And once again, this will only materialize if all of these factors come together. Let's try to put in a conversation the berthing idleness. What is it that you will see? Try to converse about a contract, a 2-year contract, without showing a strategic plan of what will happen in the company to reach those 3 million. Of course, we could work with shipowners, but in Santos Brasil, we don't work with spot with anybody, even though we have some routes stored in our terminals. Of course, there's free will. If you think that you should go to the competitor and pay less, and many return, our churn level is very low. We're speaking about a churn level considering this level of evolution of average ticket of less than 4%, among that number of clients we're speaking about. Another highlight that will help you in your simulation in 9 months of 2023, and this is not annualized, the result of the negotiations that we carried out. We had a very large contract in April. And I can say that the midpoint of this was in September when we went through 2 important players during our negotiation. We're speaking of a single month. For 2024, therefore, the expectation is that we will see the results of this evolution of average tickets for the full 12 months. This is not represented in the slide. And when we speak about quay operations, we do this on purpose. It should be read, these are the part of exports and, of course, the railroad component. We must make sure that all of these gears are working together to preserve the legitimacy of compliance of our agreements. I'm going to speak about the outlook for 2024 for the Port of Santos, and the highlights of 2023, as we're very optimistic regarding some cases. Port of Santos, we have a record harvests of sugar, cotton and coffee. Sugar, for example, as Brazilians, we have a partner in India, and they are global players. We're going to restrict exports to 11 million tons and preserve the rest to comply with their domestic demand. We're lagging behind a bit for the last 2 or 3 months. We have been working with sugar in containers and bags. All of our warehouses have sugar. The harvest is a record. India has now recovered for 2024. Quite the contrary, our approach is to converse about 2024, and structures that could facilitate the logistics, including the vision of the traders here that the value of the freight will not be what we have at present. This would aid and vet us, and we will ensure that we have a growth vis-a-vis what we had last year. Here, you see the variation. When we speak about construction, although this helps the scenario of inflation, what is important is the resumption of the inventory levels. I don't know if I can say that this was the segment that was more hampered, but it's among the top 3 in Brazil. The chemical industry, what I would like to say about this in our conversations with multinational clients that have been with us for more than a decade, that the retraction of imports in the pharmaceutical industry reached minus 40% in the 9 months of the year, and used up all of the inventories that existed in Brazil. So the trend of our clients towards us, of course, is to have a resumption of replenishment of their inventory, because, of course, this will help our business. We have 30% market share in everything that is loaded in the Port of Santos regardless of this being Tecon or not. We have a warehouse in Campos for logistics where 50% is automotive, 50% is for chemicals. So this is of importance for us. And when it comes to the chemical industry, the hygiene and cleaning segment, we point to the fact that in 2024, we will have a positive inflation or positive growth. There are 2 segments that did not come to a standing in 2023, machinery and electrical electronics. Month after month, they had a lower drop of imports in 2023, and cabotage, of course, 10% increase, not only for Tecon Santos, it also happened at Vila do Conde, and what is special here is this movement of consumer goods and capital goods that were given pref to what happened in Manaus, the drought has caused the cabotage volume to pick up at Port of Santos as well as for Manaus. And of course, with a very positive trend because of the entrance of a new player, as I just explained to you. Now if we speak about Vila do Conde, here are the highlights for 2023, and they're interesting in terms of showing you some of the signs we observed. Which are the signs that you can see in the Slide. First, the flexibility of the analysis carried out by Santos Brasil. Well, we were faced with several problems at Tecon Vila do Conde. What we did was to carry out a market analysis and in-depth analysis. As we already have the general cargo terminal there, we tried to see what was happening in the north, all of that area of agribusiness that migrated to the north. What else was there? The region is going through a new cycle of implementation of projects, something gigantic for mining, steel, agriculture and energy. In the first quarter, if we consider the volume of -- we had a great deal of data with business intelligence pricing with Carlos Sepúlveda. We have a proposal for you. We have a [ BTT ] that is we carry out imports for trucks and equipment for the mining company. These are very bold projects. They're not short projects. They are long-term projects. And the proposal is that considering that the occupancy of the Vila do Conde was 60%, and we had idle yard, we have already decided to use the cargo of the project. We visited each of these projects in Belém, Marabá, and you name it, we've visited it. And we signed a commitment. We doubled the area from 7,500 square meters to 15,000 square meters, and this is the result of our representativeness for 2023 and 2024, of course, with a growth. This has not impacted anything at all at the Vila do Conde terminal. We continue with 100,000, 120,000 containers that are being maintained. And our focus, of course, is our main clients. The CapEx is of billions to support us as a port operator and a logistic operator for trucks at Santo Brasil, so that this opportunity, which has been given in 2024, with projects that have been agreed upon. These are not dreams. These are not power points. This CapEx is happening at this point in time in Pará, of course. Antônio Carlos looked at the P&L of our proposal, the entire issue of profitability that cannot be compared to containers. But because of the area, because of the quality of the clients involved, and the project that has been highly detailed, we took the decision, and we will be beginning in April. Now what you see here is the result of only 9 months. This is a narrative that is worthwhile explaining to you. A port operator can have, as a core, the containers. This is what our CEO just mentioned, the Liquid Bulk Terminal. The motivation, look at the CapEx. Who says that a liquid bulk container can't work with other cargoes. We have that project cargo. We have the project for bagged goods. Now we are going to use in the best way possible all of the opportunities we have identified to materialize these opportunities. Another point about Vila do Conde that merits your attention when you follow up on this. Of course, through the media, all of you have seen the drought in the Amazon region. And how difficult it is for the cargo to enter or leave Manaus at present. The Vila do Conde terminal has become a logistics option for the northern area that formerly only had cabotage and long haul. There's now a new transshipment project, storage, sending and receiving finished products since the end of September with a contract that has been signed for 4 months, 3,500 additional containers compared to the demand we already have at Vila do Conde, 3,500 containers, we went from 9,000 to 12,000. So you can see the importance in safeguarding Manaus to include that 33% of additional demand at our terminal with a high level of utilization. We haven't done more for lack of physical space. This is a smaller terminal, 13,000 in October, the same number now in November, and in December, we will still have a leap. Now why do I say leap? The volume of Amazon River has gone up 21 centimeters. It needs another 15 centimeters, so that ships can travel there with the desired capacity and not underloaded. And then Santos Brasil, is this opportunity over? No, no way. This has encouraged a strategic study. Of course, we involve Sepúlveda because there's institutional and regulation issues involved to prepare us for 2 things. So do you have any doubt whether there will be a next drought? Do you know that El Niño will be severe until March 2024? So what do we need to do as a company, so that the 3,500 containers can moor area to keep the exact same conditions on the terminal. For example, we are considering taking out -- considering the volumes of finished products. So we are going to start a study with a doctors' company, not to fit in a barge between long haul and cabotage, so that we have a lineup of barges. So these are our strategies that along time we will be able to say what Santos Brasil can do, and a bigger force like this, we will be better prepared for higher volumes and to make the most of our assets. And if it weren't enough to give the support to Manaus, Republican support, really, I mean it, just overnight, all authorities called Sepúlveda, Daniel, "you need to help us". Yes, of course. So the CEO of Santos. Many customers who weren't really our customers, because they were manufacturing in Manaus, "I want part of your terminal for storage". "I can help you on the carousel in Manaus", because it's not small. We are not selling out customs area for customers. . Not to mention the drought in Manaus. The things that happened were so interesting. We started to understand how it worked. How the barges were working. And so I cannot yet say the product or any customer, mention names, say names of the products and customers. But I can tell you that by February next year, Santos Brasil will open a new product for the north region. We are going to receive long-haul containers and load in our terminal, transship to the barges and then deliver at the customer's home inputs in terms of metal coming from China, for example. So now this is a time of extreme difficulty. We support transshipment, and this is already generating a type of cargo that didn't exist, a type of product that we didn't work with, and in which the ferries and barges that we worked together with Santos Brasil, we have created a product that is in the last phase of approval. And you'll be seeing this so soon as we can talk. In terms of ESG, less handling, environmental. I have to admit that I'm very excited about this product. It's like a child I have been working on for quite a while and we're almost there. Now a little bit about logistics. Antônio Carlos talked about logistics and what we are investing in. And I have the following to say to you. Once again, we are talking about commercial and pricing strategy, in which this yellow here is dwell time. So look at that. Once the bottleneck is right, so dwell time used to be 16 days, has gone down to 13. So slowed down volume. So at the same time, as the dwell time dropped, all our analysis, an entire process, the strategy that we started way back in 2019, has driven the average ticket of this kind of warehousing to go down year after year. So the year-to-date EBITDA for the first 9 months, considering a reduction of 20%. So there's no magic. And this is better analysis to make a decision. And this is studying something that in commerce that we say is lifetime value. How long does the customer spend for the first period? You pay for the minimum of 6. And so this makes it possible for us to redesign the way we integrate with the market. We have a perception where the tariffs of 4, the bonded warehouse, we're going to pay BRL 1,100 million as there is a funnel or a bottleneck. With all this information, all this customer segmentation, we have created campaigns, we've brought together our commercial team. And this is the segment we are going to work in this quarter, these are the priorities, these are the amounts, and this is the new pricing methodology, both in the public tables as well as in our own assets. This is what we are talking about and confirming, which is not new for you. And it has been going on year after year. We would like to emphasize one thing, logistics is not primary. Just as Tecon, all our port competitors in terms of port operators, once they saw the volumes dropping in Q1, what would anyone do? So they retained the cargo in-house. So the challenge for secondary zones and logistics is bigger than the port, because we only get cargoes for the bonded warehousing from ports, and the ports only will let it out if there is demand. So I'm only emphasizing this, so that we can give the right importance and relevance and intensity to the 3 bullets here, so that we know the level of prediction, sales bottlenecks. We have a surgical precision in terms of details. NPS is 59. NPS, just for reference, is not from 0 to 100. 0 to 100 would not be so good. Minus 100 to 100. We hardly ever see a negative NPS. So NPS, customer satisfaction survey is from minus 100 to 100 positive. So the challenge was this. We kept the strategy, we've more database, more BI, and especially, our employees are very much aligned with the strategy, disciplined in execution. We never missed any forums, so that in 9 months we could have this increase despite the volumes that you can see here. And then Liquid Terminals. And Antônio Carlos said, well, we are very motivated when we were successful in B3. So in terms of liquids, we should say a few things here. Number one, when Santos Brasil started working with Liquid Bulk, you made many comments. Have you lost the focus or you want an adventure? What happened to you? What we want and what we sell in liquids is that we do not want to be a player that is positioned in all markets without preserving this. Our excellent NPS. It's not just the quality zone. We want to bring Santos Brasil culture that what we promise is what we deliver. Well, we only have a few customers. The area is small. That's okay. Next year, there will be more. There will be an expansion. So the market share here of 14% is made up exclusively by spot contracts. So spot contracts, there's really a challenge, there's no collateral, no assurance that the volume is going to happen, that the cargo is going to come. So we never miss an opportunity. And this is what happened until October. There is a seasonality in the end of the year, but we have a 14% market share that we won. This is the evolution of EBITDA and margin. And you're going to ask us, so you're going from 52% to 37%. Well, actually, in the second half, when we pay the grant, there is a credit favoring us in terms of taxing, so the margin in the second half is bigger than it effectively happened this quarter, and you will understand why. We had operations without accidents. Many customers spot change in products without any contamination or product losses since the beginning. Our NPS, which is the target for the whole company. So Liquid Bulks, they were the leaders. They started with board and first, and Santos Brasil should have the service level that would be unparalleled to make a difference in our industry. And 2 very important points for 2024, with a few indications here. So customs license expected for the second half of 2024. We'll make it possible for us to store imports. So we receive the ship, pump it straight to the customer, to then have additional revenue from storage, from warehousing of the products that we receive. And also, we are going to expand the brownfield terminals, brownfield by the end of 2024, adding capacity for us to work in an easier way. Now I would like to give the floor to Daniel. Thank you so much for listening to me.

Good morning. Thank you so much for being here in person, and also those of you who are watching us on digital platforms. On my presentation is to share a few numbers with you. To add to what Antônio Carlos and Ricardo Buteri have already said in terms of strategies -- general strategy of the company, commercial strategy of the company, that Ricardo got in details, and a little bit of our vision of the use and positioning of the company in the capitals market. As you can see here, we talked a lot about 2018, and the cycle that started in 2018, a strategy that we laid out in 2018, and its execution ever since. Why do we say that? Because in 2018, we started making the investments in Tecon Santos, in Vila do Conde. Back then, in a scenario that was very much unbalanced in terms of supply and demand with brutal compression of prices, but then the company got together. Company's management said, well, this market will undergo a few changes. And then we started understanding and seeing the signs. So let's be before and advance of the projected curve, so that we can offer the capacity to have supply and maybe have a capacity of, once again, becoming price formers in the markets where we operate. As we are working with infrastructure, we need to take a head start to be slightly before, so that we can execute the necessary investments on demand. We need to position ourselves a little bit earlier to anticipate what's coming out. So this is the strategy that the company has been reporting to you. We've been talking about this with many of you. We know all of you must hear this story with this narrative that we've been sharing with you. We did get it wrong for 1 year. So there was a pandemic in 2020. Well, we couldn't have expected that. But the net revenue, look at the leak between 2020 and 2021. And why is it so? Because 2020, we had made investments. And we had the possibility of starting to renegotiate contracts with the best supply and demand balance in our main assets, which is the Port of Santos. This is the main thing about revenue. And this continued in 2023, and Ricardo said this, we have renegotiated just in quay activities, 13 contracts with all our customers. And once again, we are going to see another step being taken in the future. But the reflex of this is much better. When we look at the company's operating cash generation, and in our case, it's measured by the EBITDA, the margin leaps. So in the first 9 months of 2023, our company has 41.7%. If we look at Q3, we are talking about 48%. This is the level we'll be working on in the future, and from then upwards. These are our consolidated numbers. And we have different businesses when we look at consolidated numbers. If we look at port terminals, operations, just that, we are talking about margins reaching in Q3, 57%. Tecon Santos, this has exceeded 60%. And this is what we always see, a good container terminal that is very well operated, with well-balanced prices. It will have more than 60%, considering the market. And this market, the Port of Santos offers like no one else because this is the gateway of Brazil. It has transshipment, it has cabotage, it has long-haul, exports and imports. Imports are very important for our business considering the number of services that we can offer to the cargo, not just to the shipowner, but also to the cargo. The approach of Santos Brasil right from the beginning, right from 1997, was to have a very differentiated attention to cargo. It's a different way to operate terminals, to have integrated or verticalized terminals that serve much more to their navigation lines. We have a different strategy, 45%, give or take, of our net revenue comes from warehousing or logistics services. Same thing applies to liquid bulk. So we have 26% net margin in Q3. And I believe that both here and there, or any other financial indicator that you may take, will be driven. And why is it so? It's not just because we need more price. It's not about that. This company is highly leveraged in terms of operations, and it is strictly well sized. We expected to operate a value and we sized the company for a volume that didn't come, because it shrunk in the first 9 months in the Port of Santos, not just in the Port of Santos, it dropped 12% in consolidated numbers, and imports dropped 18%, something like that. This is the volume that we lost year-on-year in terms of warehousing. Now the result could have been much higher, and I can say that Tecon Santos, if we maintained the volumes of 2022, and the cargo mix of 2022, would have delivered an additional BRL 200 million in EBITDA at the prices nowadays. Now this is the figure, the strength the Santos Brasil portfolio and especially of Tecon Santos. I'm not concerned about volume. I know that in the company we face the fluctuations every day. We have an app that we look at every day. We're addicted to that, but we're not concerned with volumes when we invest in Santos Brasil. Personally, I have not observed and we have not observed any structural event or fundamental event that will say that the containers in Brazil are slowing down. As we do not see this, we have seen the volumes. In 2024, the volumes have recuperated. We're ending a gap of 6% in the company. The company will end that gap and perhaps more. So we're going from 18% in the first quarter to 15%. This is normalization. And we do expect growth in 2024. We'll be concerned if this growth does not appear in the first Q. We wanted to realign the company regarding its top line, have balanced prices and to work, so that operationally the company would have the right size for the volumes that are coming in without increasing fixed costs. When the volume that has been projected here for 2024, '25, and of course, this justifies the investments mentioned by Carlos at the beginning. Therefore, the company is -- and well, I tend to joke the company is doomed to growing. It will grow because the work that has to be carried out, we have been doing gradually and executing through time. I spoke about the top line, and there's another project underway in the company. The only variable that we do not control in our business is the organic growth of volume, because that, of course, depends on macro conditions mostly and sometimes is due to some domestic issues. Of course, that inorganic growth is easier. We could fight for new services and much more. We do not do this by putting a tight profitability. We do not do that. We don't need to do that. So we're okay losing a few things at present because we're not focused on the quarter or on the year of 2023. Our vision is for the long-term. And if you look at Tecon Santos, this is an asset that extends to 2047. There's an additional point, Ricardo conveyed it, the number of extra calls that this asset can operate. It doesn't have to give up price to fill up the terminal, because year after year, we have observed the need for Tecon Santos to work as a buffer to operate 70,000 containers of imports that are coming from those extra calls. Now what is within our hands? The cost, of course. We're going to continue to obtain the greatest value from the company's operational leverage. What did we do this year? And it's not for the sake of cost. I reiterate the 0-based budget, cut everything out. Well, that gives me the chills quite frankly. We haven't done that at the company. We want to be a benchmark in terms of efficiency of cost and expense management. This company has won billions. Part of this is not manageable because it's the payment of assets that are not under our ownership. But we have a package that represents BRL 600 million. Here, we include traveling, consultancy, benefits, a variety of things. We work with a methodology that I will not detail. What I'm trying to say is that with all of this done, it is our understanding that this year, we could be BRL 40 million, BRL 50 million more efficient in terms of cost. It's a given. We're going to head towards 2024 with BRL 40 million, BRL 50 million lighter in terms of cost. And of course, this has its annualized base. Now there is the opportunity here, the opportunity to invest in this very well. Now if Santos Brasil enters 2024 exactly as it is now without any additional projects, we still are BRL 40 million, BRL 50 million lighter in terms of cost and expense efficiency. And this is a longstanding work, not for 2023, it will go on to 2025, when it has been put in place. So we assess these deviations, the cost of the factors, we hold meetings every month. We go back to the drawing board, and this has been put in place. There's an area called budget and performance where we analyze data. We don't want to hear explanations from the managers. We look at the data first of all to understand where the deviations are and we address them. So the cost is in our hands, and this entire investment strategy is within our hands. The commercial strategy is at hand. What is not at hand is the organic growth of volume, as that depends on external variables. As I do not foresee any disruption, we're not going to change because of the volumes of November, December, January. There will be no changes and there will be no replacement for the Port of Santos, while we invest in Santos Brasil. Let's speak very quickly about our capital structure and our financial leverage. Well, it has changed, perhaps slowly, but we have already changed our stance when it comes to net indebtedness. Since the follow-on that took place in September of 2020, we have been positive in net cash. And we have [indiscernible] cash during a 3-year period. Well, 2 years, and there was an issue there. We had the opportunity because of the infrastructure auctions, opportunities of 2%. We said there will be an opportunity here. We acquired 3 Liquid Bulk Terminals. We were not able to project returns as we wished. And I think that was very quickly mentioned at the beginning. And because of that, we did the following. And of course, the scenario for interest rate change. It went from 3% to 12%, 13%. The opportunities changed, our mindset changed. We're going to use that cash to pay back shareholders, shareholders' equity and dividend. And despite all of this, we did not stop making investments of BRL 1 billion, as you have observed. And what is marvelous, we still have room in the balance. If a good opportunity arises with the right profitability, we can further leverage our balance and carry out an inorganic growth strategy, with a very healthy indebtedness. The indebtedness is in reais. We do not run the risk of foreign exchange, of course. And in the long-term, for Itaqui, we were able to finance 80% of the CapEx with the Bank of Northeast, BNP, 2%, 3% for a 17-year period. Therefore, the company does have access to the capital market. We do have access to banks. We also have access to subsidized financing, and of course the treasury will understand that the social subsidies are important, and they will lend to us. So Santos Brasil is in a very healthy condition to finance its growth and to pay out the capital invested for its shareholders. Nowadays this is our mindset when we speak about capital allocation to invest in our assets, not to go into details, this has already been done, Antônio Carlos gave you that explanation, and in the expansion of Tecon Santos or Vila do Conde and then the expansion of the Liquid Bulk Terminals located in Itaqui. And the long sight is to continue on that path of maximizing value generation for shareholders through the allocation of proceeds. Of course, other instruments may arise. Buyback, we do have a share buyback program that is open. Reduction of capital, that could happen if we have more liquidity than what we can pay out. So there are these instruments at our disposal, but we continue firmly ahead with the payout that is of approximately 95%. Here, it was 135% because we used our profit reserve and we reduced it to 0. This year, we have already paid BRL 265 million in dividends and BRL 0.31 per share. Last year, it was BRL 0.67 per share, and I believe that this will continue to grow going forward. To conclude, I would like to refer to the company performance in general. In 2018, when we began to put in place this strategy that we have mentioned often today, the company was able to perform very well and evolve, which is not our best benchmark, but also in the small-cap index. Now the company liquidity has increased considerably. We went from BRL 5 million, presently we are at BRL 40-and-some million for the average daily traded volume, to a small cap for Santos Brasil, this is good. It allows for the entry of several funds that formerly found a restriction in terms of liquidity, especially abroad. The foreign investors were not acting. We had an increase of 10% in the shareholder base of foreign investors. Presently, we have 26% of funds that have headquarters abroad, especially in Europe, North America, Canada and the United States. And we have seen this on the rise, the interest of foreigners increasing for Santos Brasil because of the excellent work carried out by the Investor Relations group. And you can see how aligned we are and growingly aligned with our partners and investors. We have almost 1% in terms of call managers. And when I say that, honestly, I'm not concerned with volumes. I know the company will continue to grow. I'm saying this because it's my equity, my pocket. And I think everybody can speak based on their own equity, what they will earn from this. And one additional point, we have a shareholder that has 41% of this capital. As a trader, this does not offer liquidity. Despite this, the growth is considerable in terms of the company's liquidity. Very well, these are my remarks. I think I used up my time. And we can make better use of the time in an informal question-and-answer session. This is how we normally do things here. And, very well, we will now open the floor for Q&A. Juliano, if you would like to act as master of ceremonies and open the floor for questions and answers, please?

[Operator Instructions] And of course, we have 3 executives here to answer your questions.

Guilherme Mendes from JPMorgan. A question on your capacity. You spoke about anticipating that investment dynamic, and if we could conciliate this with the STS 10. Now given this anticipation of capacity, this need for volume for the present day terminal, if the STS is finished or what this area could become or if it could become a risk in terms of the investments you're doing at present?

Our anticipation results from the new stance of the port authority. The former project of STS 10 was linked to privatizing the port authority of the Port of Santos. And in terms of strategic decisions, the Port of Santos will no longer be privatized and capacity is being sought out through the present day partners of the port. There is a project to expand the cruising terminal. It will be displaced in the following way. It will be displaced to the area STS 10. Where we had the cruise port, we will now have a fertilizers port that is very close to the railroad near the beach. There will be a general cargo terminal by extending the contract of Ecovias, and in the remaining area, we will possibly add this to BPP. Now at Santos Brasil, we do believe this makes much more sense. First of all, there's a problem in access to that area. If you have any curiosity, if you get in your car and drive to the Port of Santos, you will observe how difficult it is to get to the port. And for a project of that size, without infrastructure, you will simply block the access to the port. So they're thinking of creating a new container terminal, Continental of Santos in the Santa Rita area close to the [indiscernible], but this will demand much more time than the STS 10. It's a 10-year project at a minimum, but this is a project that will not create problems for the local infrastructure of Santos, Cubatão or Guarujá. We think it would be sustainable. And that's why existing terminals have the commitment of supplying the needs in future years. Santos Brasil alone can handle the Port of Santos. Santos has 5 million TEUs. So we are going from [ 32% to 33% ]. So we are really confident with this anticipation of investment. We update this curve every month. And our vision is that. So with this investment anticipation, we can always be 200,000, 300,000 TEUs of capacity in hand. Because Brazil, there's no constant growth in Brazil. So this is all very much related to commodity prices in Brazil. And there are newer cargoes today. There's cotton being shipped out in containers at huge volumes, all this going out through the Port of Santos with huge competitiveness of the Brazilian animal protein growing year after year too. And this year, and I don't know if you've noticed in our presentation, there has been a major drop in imports. Our imports, I'm talking about 2018. This scenario is not going to stay like that. And there is still a potential of increasing transshipment in Santos because of the dredging. So everything is very favorable, and this makes us confident in terms of making the investments in advance. And I don't know if you've noticed, we delayed this curve a little bit. So we should be 2.6 million TEUs next year. We pushed that to 2025. So we are not 400,000 or 500,000 TEUs in idle capacity. So if there is a major fiscal problem in Brazil that will prevent growth that will require the maintenance of high interest rates for a longer time, we can hold that. We can drag that up to 2031, and we are not going to invest BRL 600 million next year. But the vision that we have today, with all information, the data and conversations with shipowners, it's absolutely necessary to do it in advance, so that we have this buffer of 200,000. Why 200,000? Because then we can get an entire shipping line from Asia, Europe, a large number, 200,000 TEUs. And we want to have that capacity in hand because with the service level and price levels that we have, the generation of wealth is really fabulous, it's amazing. So we should see this idle capacity as something good, not bad. Because idle, we think that resources are being misused or underused. So Ricardo has shown a chart. And if you pay attention at distribution of demand, it's not regular or linear. We see what just happened in the first half of the year and what happened in the third quarter. It's a buffer. So this buffer, which is the idleness, that Antônio Carlos is mentioning, is what makes it possible for us to operate these extra boxes and have no queue or no line at all in the Port of Santos, because it has peaks, it's not linear. That's why there are peaks. That's why utilization and waiting time in competitors goes from 9 hours in the Q1 to 29 hours in Q3. So we are always regulating this 200,000, 300,000 extra capacity, not just to sit there and wait, so that when there is a peak, the seasonal peaks, we're capable of operating loads of very, very high value-added. So extra calls, with lots of imports, without mentioning the capacity that Ricardo mentioned, any of our customers to have a berthing window for a new service that they want to add and take to the Port of Santos. So idleness in our case has a strategic component that in many industries are not like that. So usually, idle capacity is waste of capital, wasting production capacity, and that doesn't apply to us.

I'm Lucas Barbosa from Santander. Two questions. Number one, waiting times, which is one of the problems in the port as a whole. How do you see the competition? Do you see them making any investments to reduce waiting times in their terminals? This is question number one. And is the area that we call Praia, how is it evolving? There is plot of land there called Praia or little beach.

Well, the area that is called Praia or Little Beach, there is a community and we want to take out the community, the people who are living there. We need to look at it in the long term. It doesn't really make sense to build a new terminal with 80 hectors just next door. This is state vision, because in 2047, 1 day, the Santos Brasil is going to walk out from the project and someone else will go in. This is part of Brazilian foreign trade. We are just there for some time. And in the world, we compete with large terminals. And large terminals are much more efficient for those who use the terminal, because it makes possible for you to have a hub for many different routes. There is transshipment to use external areas, open air areas. This has a huge carbon generation impact. But we've been following up. This possibility exists, but it's a long way. There are many approvals. The courts need to agree. There are many legal requirements in terms of the contract for which there has been a bid. There is something about it, but there is no access because it's surrounded by a railway and the people who are living there are between the railway and the sea. But from the railway to the next access, there are people living. But there's just -- the access is very limited. And then the project is no longer 13 million TEUs, but it's 4 million TEUs. And the need is to go beyond 2034, 2035. So even if we don't do this in a short term, we believe and we are -- we think this should be, at some point in time, be attached to Tecon. It used to have many terminals over 100,000, 200,000 TEUs. So the ships today use berthing areas of 400 meters, it's a major scale. Well, you can accommodate a ship, but then there is another area, another date. So it's used for something else. Other than attaching the existing project would be extremely inefficient. I'm going to talk about waiting times. There's always some waiting times for the ship to go in because the Port of Santos has a problem with tides. The ships today are very big. So they need to wait for the tide to be full. And then they need to wait for 6 hours until the tide is full for them to go in. So those 9 hours we don't consider it as a line, a waiting line. It's for the convenience of the shipowner. So BTP can do the same thing as us, but these are projects that are necessary for the port that will take a while until they come true. This is not part of -- we are not seeing this as a risk. We think this is necessary. This is part of the port and now our customer portfolio. We are protected from that. And so the history of customers, we have customers that have been our customers for 20 years. I'm going to give it over to Ricardo, who's going to complement.

Thank you very much, Sepúlveda. And Lucas, your questions are always very good. I would like to say the following. We monitor absolutely every single movement in the Port of Santos. We know exactly whether there is something that has been brought and that is being expected. So we have no illusion of where the market is going towards. How the competition is positioning in terms of competitiveness. So my straight answer to you, there is no short-term investment that would make any difference. I agree with Antônio Carlos, 9 hours, that's not the waiting line. So it's a time that you go, come back, and then the whole port for. And these waiting times are absolutely reasonable. The possible change that we see that adds to consensus, they will take out the administrative building for empty containers. So they changed a little bit the layout, not as much as there would be investments that could pose a risk or an evolution in waiting times. This is all under control. There is no reason for any ship owner to wait in line when Santos Brasil has the berthing capacity that we have. This is the reason. This is not going to be additional cost for the shipowner or Brazil cost that we take out from imports. So I would say that with the 200,000 additional TEUs of buffer, we are ready to cater to extra calls because one has 84%, 90% and we are fully available for new services between 80,000 and 100,000 boxes, which is something that ship owners negotiate with us in the Port of Santos.

I'm Pedro from XP. I would like to go back to CapEx. I think you've been reporting in your conference calls this anticipation, especially focusing on Santos Tecon. So what I would like to explore is the distribution or the breakdown of the CapEx looking into the future, because you're going to continue to expand capacity. And I think a year ago, in your other Investor Day, you had an even smaller number for 2024. And this leads to a significant reduction that evolved more linearly until 2030, 2031. I would like to see whether this linearity will continue in the future. You said the continuation of payout. Are we speaking about the same levels for 2023, and whether this anticipation will, in some way, change your strategy, if we look into 2024 onwards?

Well, I'm first going to talk about the CapEx. So this anticipation, that amount, that increase for next year is basically anticipation of purchases plus 8 yard equipment, the RTGs that are used for handy, we would have 16 of 40 electrical -- 16 electrical equipment pieces of equipment out of 40. And we would be paying half of the price of these pieces of equipment that will be delivered at the end of 2024. So this anticipation is to assure the capacity of '25, '26. And our linearity, no, it's not linear. So the following years will have lower CapEx for Tecon centers. What would this number comprehend? This would be the demolition of 2 administrative buildings, building of a new administrative building, new yards and pieces of equipment. From then on, what we have is the change of equipment. We would not need to change what we have is for 2031, which is the deadline for these investments, according to our contract. So after that year, we are going to have a drop. Now a shipowner might say, I want to bring another 300,000 transshipment TEUs and then another 100,000 gateway cargoes for you. Well, we are going to advance the investment. So any increase in CapEx will be necessarily associated to volume and a volume at a very good pace, a volume where there is no oversupply in the port. So I will start talking about dividend. But our commitment with the payout of dividends is very strong, as Daniel said, and as I said. There will be no reduction because the company has no debt. We can even take out that to continue paying out the dividends. So Daniel is going to complement. He's going to give you the more precise numbers of leverage that we can do to do that.

So since you started on dividends, let me just make a short comment in answering to Pedro's question. And on the presentation you referred to, the capacity is 2.6 million TEUs. So here, the scenario, the capacity is getting to 3 million TEUs. And this is very much the result of 2 things, better projection of demand after 1 year and a better scenario that we understand is more pertinent in terms of supply and demand or to capacity offer. So if we were estimating 2 million TEUs for that investment and therefore there is a bigger drop in the execution of CapEx. So there is a decay and CapEx is compressed. Here, in contracts, our capacity projection is that, yes, we do want to get to 3 million TEUs, because the supply and demand balance were healthier by the end of the decade. So it was just a little assigned. . And in terms of dividends, yes, our intention is to continue paying dividends. So we do not have an installed policy that obliges us to pay out 95% of our net income. This will be done considering [indiscernible]. But as Antônio Carlos said, we still have major room to finance CapEx other than with cash generation. It makes sense considering the company's current capital structure. But always keeping the discipline of not over-leveraging the company. And I always say that we see the terminal operation business different from other infrastructure because here, we have free prices. We can freely negotiate with the parties. There's no tariff, not cap, no contracted and mandatory adjustments. And therefore, we need to have a more strict discipline in terms of leverage levels. But considering the growth scenario in terms of cash generation, considering the deleveraging, yes, I agree. I think that the payout may continue very, very high without jeopardizing the execution of the CapEx or the financial health of the company.

This is Andre Ferreira from Bradesco BBI. Could you explain future margins getting to 55% to 57%, more or less. What are the main drivers underlying it, and price negotiations above the inflation in the future? Or does it come from other drivers, costs, something that you said?

An important thing is the Itaqui terminal that will be fully operational at the end of 2026. Its contribution at present is minimum. It has a cost, it's operating, and the EBITDA margin at present is around 30% or 40%, much below the 70% or 75% that we would like to attain. The second point, Tecon Santos, we have been speaking about this and the investments are for marginal capacity increases. The foundation is there. And the operational leverage is very, very large. We can foresee that in the next 3 years, yes, it will come very close to 2.4 million TEUs. And the amount of EBITDA generated will be significant for each container. The invoicing of the container, 70% goes automatically to the EBITDA. So Tecon Santos will push the company's EBITDA upward. What we have as part of our horizon is the balance of the contract of Tecon Vila do Conde and Imbituba. At present, we don't pay for the lease because of the rebalancing that is underway. We're negotiating this, and during this period, we would like to rebalance the contract and reduce the losses that are given by Imbituba. Certainly, this is not significant because of the company's price. But of course, this will aid and affect our EBITDA margin. The 2 main points are the operating leverage of Tecon and Itaqui coming into full operation. Both of these will take our absolute EBITDA to a completely different level with a small change in the company's costs. Well, unlike at present, with disclaimer, 50%, 60%. Please recall that they refer to container terminal units. Why? Because, it's very difficult to reach a 60% margin. We have a logistics business that will not overcome 30% because it's the nature of the business. And this, when we speak about capital investments, the return on capital investment will come with a different magnitude. So we keep this in mind because the portfolio is made up of different animals. It's not consolidated and it has reached 50%, now 60%. I have no doubt that the container unit can reach that and Tecon Santos can go beyond that. This is a hypothetical scenario. If you replicate the average ticket of the consent of presently using the data of '22 for mix and cargo, we would have an additional BRL 200 million of EBITDA. This is that group force that comes from the operational leverage of Tecon Santos. Simply, a parallel comment in terms of negotiations. We spoke about all of the variables that are part of the margin and Daniel also referred to this. Now you asked, is there a gain in negotiation. All of the negotiations of this year were signed until 2025, with free ticket prices, including inflation in 2024 and '25. When we think about fees and shipowners, this already has been fully set forth. I showed you a slide here where the increase of the average ticket for the operation of the quay was around 20%, not annualized once again. We based ourselves on that figure in September. If we annualize it for 12 months, obviously, this will fully support our dissertation in terms of contribution margin. Now when it comes to logistics, differently from the quay, all of the contracts are annualized. We showed you a slide with a drop with the average ticket being increased because of our segmentation strategy. This will not come to a standstill. We have to continue to maintain the service levels we offer, enhancing them constantly. But when it comes to contracts for bonded warehouses, all of these are annualized and they will continue to be negotiated year after year by all of the parties.

This is Marcelo [indiscernible] from BTG. I would like to speak about the contract renegotiation we're discussing. If you have additional contracts that will be renewed in the short, middle and long term? And if you could speak about the competitiveness of box rate in the Port of Santos. If you could please refer to those topics?

Well, speaking about the renegotiation of contracts for the short term. In terms of quays and shipowners, they have all been concluded. Tecon Santos, Vila do Conde and Imbituba, for the next 2 years, the contractual terms have been predefined and you will have greater visibility based on the date of renewal of the contract. You will know about the increments we're speaking about. There is no short-term negotiation for the existing contract. Nevertheless, a number of new ships that have been acquired with larger capacity will also be destined to South America and Brazil. And what I can say is that, yes, there are ongoing negotiations for the 3 terminals, but I will focus on Tecon Santos for services, for the new capacity of ships that are now on this route, Europe and Asia. And we have the opportunity, with everything that has been mentioned here, of our additional capacity, of having a new contract. The ships will be delivered in the first quarter of 2024. But negotiations are underway. Negotiations of new contracts as well aside from the cabotage, where everything has been agreed upon, because this is a new demand that we will face. You spoke about quays, out of the box rate. Well, the box rate is a touchy issue. The reference that you have a box rate refers to the public tariffs. They're public, they have all been approved by ANTAQ, and you have an idea of the amount of box rate and the value for bonded warehousing in the public tariff, there in a certain alignment. If you look at the comparison of the 3, there are no great distortions. Now in negotiations of box rate with shipowners, we have an agreement of confidentiality. That's why we speak about average ticket, we speak about railroads for exports, and much more. We have the commitment of maintaining that. And present to you the impact on EBITDA growth, first of all, to preserve confidentiality. And there are factors such as the cargo mix. I can speak about container shapes, transmission and upfront shipment -- I'm sorry, empty containers. Now the cargo mix and the market can change, whether favorably or not, change the box rate that is already prefixed, predefined. Simply to add to what Ricardo has said, we have moved forward, in terms of the nominal increase of box rates. And as you advance, you're left without pace. We don't want to go out into the international market, but there are other paths to work with the total invoicing per box. You can change the mix and you can work with new products in your product portfolio. You can offer the cargo. So you're offering more services for the same container and you will work with containers that have a higher added value. Now this is the path that we're following in terms of logistics very clearly. We lost market share in logistics, but EBITDA this year will be better than last year because of an improvement in mix and increase in number of products offered for the same containers. Now this second part is what we're going to tend to follow. And what drives the generation of EBITDA is a volume increase. That's why we're investing in capacity. So if there are no further questions, I would like to thank all of you for your presence. It's always a pleasure to be here to speak about Santos Brasil. Our IR is at your entire disposal here at the office in Itaim. And whenever you wish, we can take you to our Santos terminal. This is a work that is under eternal changes. We do invite you to visit us. Thank you very much, and we hope to see you again.