Ultrapar Participações S.A. (UGPA3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Ultra Auditorium. This is a safe environment, and we have our fire brigade on call. We just need a few minutes of your attention for general instructions. We have emergency exits and fire extinguishers. Take a second to visualize the emergency exits and your escape route. Our exit doors have the bars to be easily open. The whole area is also equipped with smoke detectors, and we also have audiovisual alarms. We also have a medical support area and an emergency telephone here to be used any time. Please do not go beyond the rooftop level. Please respect the signage. Smoking is forbidden, and no food can be taken in the auditorium. We have our escape route clearly signed to you in situations of emergencies, follow the instructions of our fire brigade team and the emergency signals. We use safe, organized method to exit the building situations of evacuation. We have 6 safety rooms used the handrail when going downstairs or upstairs, do not carry heavy objects when going downstairs. Do not run downstairs. Use zebra crossing. Do not read your mobile phone while going downstairs. Safe environment is everyone's responsibility. Thank you very much for your attention and enjoy the event. [Presentation]

Good morning. All of those who are with us online. There are over 500 people. Another addition of Ultra Day, first time here, hosting you here in our own facility. Before we start, I would like to share with you safety measures. There is no safety drill today, that have been scheduled. So if for any reason, you hear the fire alarm, our fire brigade team is properly trained to take us out in a safe way. This morning, we have organized our activities to hear from all our business units, followed by Ultrapar's presentation and then we close with a Q&A session. And with that, we close our morning activity, and I'm going to tell you more about it later. Welcome, everyone. I would like to call Linden to start the presentation about Ipiranga.

Good morning, very good moment to talk about Ipiranga, right? The fuel market has been hot news, but before talking about Ipiranga, I would like to talk about safety. Whenever we start operating a business, we always have to provide our permits, even before we start working. And safety is our license to operate. Just for you to have an idea of how big we at Ipiranga. We unload a large amount of trucks with a huge amount of fuel. So we invest in infrastructure, processes, maintenance of our assets mitigation tools and also the culture of safety. So that we can continuously progress in our safety agenda. It's never ending really. We are never going to be over with it. There will always be something else to do. But I think we are doing fine at Ipiranga. We have progressed significantly in the past 4 years. In August, for example, there was no single reportable incident in Ipiranga, and it was not the first time. It has been repeated. No strained ankle, no problems with fingers and hands and anyway, it means a lot to us. Well, our market, I'm sure you've all been following it closely, but just to set the context of our numbers, for the past 4 years. And even before that, I have to say, about 4 years, that's when I joined Ipiranga, the market has grown 4% above GDP, driven by bio fuels, which have been driven by the different mandates that have been set in place in Brazil. But it's also a marketing transformation. In 2021 when I joined the company, that was the time in which Petrobras was not only -- was distributing to agents what was not Petrobras' business really. And at that time, I said, well, that's a very relevant change. Probably one of the most relevant that I've seen being in the market for over 30 years. First, it changed the whole logic of it, with a very relevant role of import, which also applies to price volatility. And secondly, whenever you open the market because some lack of stability, until things get into the regular pace, so it kind of shakes banks, right? So what has happened? Petrobras is still a relevant distributor in the Brazilian market, the main supplier in Brazil but it has lost some of its share to private refineries in Brazil, but primarily to import. The market has been growing, and it depends extensively on imports. Petrobras is losing relevance, therefore, imports gained relevance and new players came into the market. Especially in terms of origin, new agents, new traders in orders, and they also drive regional companies leading to distribution. And let's say this lack of orders, so to speak, has disrupted the whole market, and it has led to some further irregularities because of tax issues. This is a key problem in Brazil. We have tax asymmetry resulting from import. The regional companies that worked with asymmetries have gained more market in the period. Ipiranga has maintained stable market share, but [ IBP ] has lost a significant portion of the market. And this is what has been lost by some regional irregular, especially regular regional operations, the ones that are part of the list of E&P or the ones that have some kind of injunctions which are too difficult to explain. But this is the market we work with -- this is the market we have to be prepared for. Even though this is a very fierce fight that you've been watching for a while, for the past 18 months, I have seen significant improvement, single-phase taxation of ethanol is one of them. We've seen some companies closing down because they were operating regularly, but here in Sao Paulo, we've seen the special taxation regimen, and also tax solidarity which have inhibited to some extent, the Illegal activities, especially for those that would buy from irregular sources. But we've also seen 2 or 3 weeks of code carbon. Since I've joined this business, I've never seen such a relevant operation. It is an operation really of identifying inappropriate actions with great coordination of all the different agents and players. Therefore, it has become a very good operation. However, we shouldn't stop doing it. This is an operation which has started investigating illegal players, bribery inappropriate operations, but it's just the first step so that we can really create a business environment which is more symmetrical and encourage companies that operate appropriately in the industry. In this operation, in the Mega operation of code carbon as they call it, the company's amounts to 7% of the market share of Brazil, 33% of ethanol market in Brazil alone. So as you can see, extremely relevant and part of our operations. But as I told you, these are very positive signs, things that probably we can improve on. What has to be fought against here? First, hydrated ethanol. The single-phase taxation with ICMS tax. Naphtha, which is also a serious problem in Brazil. In September, there were 300 million liters of naphtha coming into Brazil, paying taxes at the petrochemical import, but not directed to petrochemical industry. 300 million liters of naphtha benefiting from lower tax rate and it impacts, of course, the gas distribution in Brazil. Biodiesel mix, today, as we speak, 1 liter was 1,700 cubic meter more than unmixed diesel. If you decide not to mix, you have BRL 0.24 per cubic meter for not mixing. Of course, it has to be fought against, right? It's so obvious. It goes without saying. It impacts the government itself. And it's something that has to be fought against because it really leads to asymmetry. Another pending issue is the CBIOs, the carbon BIOs. There was a legislation that has come up with stricter sanctions for not complying with CBIOs. But there are lots of injunctions and the law ends up not being enforced. CBIOs now have more affordable prices because nobody trusts it in the market, right? But Ipiranga, which has invested between BRL 400 million, BRL 700 million per year in CBIOs, it's impacted by companies that has -- that have not invested 1 single BRL. That's the problem. And finally, those repetitive debtors in the operation of code carbon, we've seen a bill passed in the Senate. Now we have to see how long it's going to take to be fully approved by the whole Congress, but that's a very important project. Anyway, I'm not going to go into details about the benefits of fighting against the irregular market because it goes without saying really. But the illegal market favors only those that would not deserve it. The investors, the government, consumers, nobody benefits from it. It just favors those who do not deserve to be benefited at all. Yes, it is a doggy-dog fight, it is very important, but there are plenty of reasons to believe that we really should embrace this fight, and this is how we have to work, of course, take care of our business and focus on what really matters. For the past 4 we've been very consistent on focusing on our pillars of activities which I have emphasized a number of times before. Efficient logistics, and there is still room for improved gains of efficiency. Supply and trading, that resulted from market opening, At first we had more competitiveness to Ipiranga. But now it's seen as an area that generates for the business, and I'm going to elaborate. Then focus on competitiveness, it results from cost discipline, our very good understanding of the market and having good mechanisms with good market intelligence. Also appropriate pricing process, agile, to the point, and it all leads to the so-called engagement by charming people, by charming all of those players, which eventually interact with our company. So this is our work platform. And we work based on this pillar and most of our initiatives rely on them, and we are going to go further into details soon. 6,000 stations and more or less 17% of market share B2B, and here, we have basically everything. We have railway, industry, mining a large area, of business options, whatever we have engines. We have Ipiranga. This is what I usually say. We also have a portfolio of added products that we encourage being used -- it is beneficial for resellers. We have 85 operational units and Ipiranga has wonderful infrastructure. It grows where the country grows. We have an NPS of 57%. It had an increase of 65%. This is the result of activities we have with resellers and activities we've been carrying out over the years, and we are now struggling for place in the market. We are leaders in convenience and leaders in lubricants. And now going into the elements of these pillars, logistics and distribution are objective to add value or generate value in logistics and distribution is something we've been discussing for a while now. We've made important progress. We've reduced our expenses with storage. We've reduced loading time, our expenses with stay. We have increased the productivity of our freight. Also, we're growing where we have to grow. Our level of service has improved in the past year, and that has an impact on NPS and reducing our logistic costs has become almost like an obsession. We have these chapters. We have had BRL 250 million in benefits to be captured in the next 2 years, and they are evolving it, Ipiranga. Another important chapter. I mentioned in the beginning, the supply and trading. As I commented initially, this is something that we started and we organized it to generate efficiency and competitiveness in Ipiranga's business. Since then we acquired the capacity to originate in a large part of the world being close to producing markets. Today, we are already the largest independent operator of biofuels in Brazil. We've also had some business opportunities. They are very interesting and they are supported on this capacity we have to originate. The spot market in Brazil is volatile, according, is not to our traditional ways and it is related to supply intelligence, and now moving on all of this effort to gain efficiency that we've made has to do with changes in our ERP and we've talked about this. This is a very important project at Ipiranga. We do have a systemic gap. We have inefficiencies that are generated and they demand that we have a control mechanism. And of course, our ERP is in advance in terms of process and efficiency gain. It has been on time and on budget, and our expectation is to have the go live in the beginning of '27. It will be an important contributor for efficiency. And we think that for this last access, we will have about BRL 200 million in benefits of optimization with costs and CapEx expenses. And of course, all of this gain in efficiency has an impact on the business. This capacity to compete results from efficiency gain, but it also results from improvement in our assets. This is something that we've been doing from the very beginning. We remove what is low performance and impacts our efficiency or we remove the stations who are not compliant. We have removed almost 1,000 stations from our network. You've seen that. But we've also qualified our business -- we are working very closely so that added product becomes relevant in our network. We have lubricants as an important contributor, and of course, our brands are very strong. And you can see in our average sales, important evolution -- we are now a little bit below 40,000 liters. And then if you use the data that is published in the sector, this is the largest average and has been achieved so that we can qualify our network. But we don't want to have the best station network in Brazil. We want to have the most complete one. AmPm, our franchise is an important element of this concept as well as in the stations, we've had important advances. We've restructured AmPm businesses. Looking at the franchise, trying to generate value for the reseller, we've changed AmPm's image, and we've tried to establish strategic partnerships to our business where resellers can see a clear value. We did this with Pizza Hut, which is offered exclusively at our stores. And now we have Krispy Kreme which is a joint venture in Brazil and Krispy Kreme was conceived so that we could supply our stores with exclusivity, the inauguration of our first store at JK was so successful. We produced 60,000 doughnuts per day and everything is sold at the store. But because sometimes on Wednesdays, we have some left over we are working more specifically with the stations, but as we're able to balance that out and as new plants are added to our business, we will be taking Krispy Kreme to AmPm, the concept is to have a renewed and strong franchise with efficient distribution with the strategic partnerships so that both the consumer and the reseller can identify the value. Lubricants is another important part of a complete station. And of course, the benefit is not only for the station, but for the business market, and I will talk about it later. ICONIC is our joint venture with Chevron. It is the largest producer and distributor in Brazil. ICONIC started operating in the end of 2017, beginning of 2018. It's been growing, and it's been going to other markets such as the distribution of additives, power generation, special products and the success can be seen here on the screen. We have multiplied the EBITDA of the business 10 fold. It really is an important part of our value proposal. Ipiranga Empresas and the B2B segment has always been seen as a marginal segment where it was important to have clients with a lot of volume and low contribution but they helped us to have scale, but we are somehow changing that at Ipiranga. And if you look at the evolution of consumption and the client base, we had an increase of 35% since '21. And why? Because we are moving to the clients and sectors that demand more services because they are the ones who perceive it, Ipiranga wants to deliver a complete package, lubricant, services and we can operate with client installation, if necessary. But more than that, we have a team that can supported technical support to our clients being in the area of lubricant and especially in the area of lubricants actually, but we want to expand our portfolio, look for segments that will value rendering services and decommoditize our offer. I have another example here. Maritime diesel is a complex sector. It's not simple at all. And this is a segment where we want to be and add value to our capacity of offering services, simulating it to the concept that we apply at Ipiranga Empresas. We have the new diesel company. It is at the mobility, ultramobility Holding. It was created to work with the TRR investments that we've made. So we have a project where we identify relevant companies in the TRR segment in different regions in Brazil. And then it contributes to governance capacity of expansion business structure. We did this in the South first. It is now a successful case. This year, we added [indiscernible] in the North -- and others in Midwest. We add this structure behind governance of the business, and we expect that in this sector, we can be an agent towards advance and transformation in the TRR sector. Very well. This only happens if we have a strong team. Ipiranga is a wonderful company to work for. The environment is very collaborative. You can see this based on the variability index or favorability index. But in the past, we have suffered a gap in capacity and succession. And today, 80% of our critical exposures are mapped for 3 years, and sometimes we have even more than one successor. And this has been a focus for us in the past years. Of course, in this sector, you have to work with people trained. This is what we've been doing -- and I always like to share these examples of our social actions. I like this one. [indiscernible]. It is a truck which travels throughout Brazil to provide medical support for free, be it for drivers, for the population of the municipality by means of a partnership with the municipalities. We've had this truck since 2007. We see 50,000 people per year for free. It is a very nice program held and organized by Ipiranga. Having said all of this about Ipiranga, this is all under the umbrella of a fantastic company. It is amazing, the good feedback that we have on a continuous basis. We're very connected to Brazilian culture, but the brand is possibly our most valuable asset. And then finally, our results and everything we're saying here must be seen in numbers. We've evolved. We have a process, a profitability process, which is very stable, has been growing steadily in a sector that faces all of the challenges that are widely known, doubling our EBITDA -- and of course, we have favorable market conditions, but a lot of work is put into it. And I think that this is, in fact, a journey that requires full-time attention. Now I would like to share with you a quick video with the images. 2025 is a year with a lot of novelty, which completes our journey. [Presentation]

Thank you for your attention. I will be back here shortly. Thank you very much. And I'm going to invite my friend Taba to the podium.

Well, thank you very much, Linden. Thanks, everyone. Good morning. I'm delighted to be here, as Palhares pointed out, welcoming you here in our facilities. Great. I started working here 30 years ago. So it's great after the renovation and really the new area we have here to be able to show you that. For those of you who have been interacting with us for a while, we have a strategic plan that we've been following for a while. And today, we can talk about significant breakthroughs that we have had, reinforcing what we have been doing, but also seeing new perspective, things that we have really bet on and turned out to be successful. The main value that involves all the different areas and businesses of the group is safety, safety and operational excellence. And these 2 things are important in all our companies. For us, it's even more important, being successful in executing our operation is very important. We have a highly diversified model. We have third parties, we have logistics. So we really need to focus on cultural changes. And as you can see, we've been progressing significantly, but we still see a number of challenges. We still have what we've done so far with people and operation. But since last year, we've been focusing on the value chain, service providers, transporting agents. We have lots of third parties working to Ultragaz; 60,000 corporate clients, 90,000 support to those clients. So really 9,000 filling up of all these clients. These are hazardous products, heavy-duty products. So we really have to operate responsibly. We already have in Brazil very safe products because of regulation. We don't have illegal products. So our operation, of course, supports that as well. NEOgas is a company that has been acquired recently with a different level of safety, but we have been raising the bar so that they can operate at the same levels as we do. The market of LPG is a peculiar market. I have here the 4 main characteristics that really sets us apart. First, the fact that we have a mature market. Brazil is a world reference. We are the 10th largest market in terms of volume. Next week, we are going to have the World Association of LPG gathering here in Brazil to understand how you can deliver to households with such a high level of efficiency. 90% of our population depends on LPG for their activities, be it corporate or household. It is a market that has been experiencing problems of supply and demand, but this is not a problem in Brazil. We've maintained the level of supply -- it's a relevant market with social impact. LPG is clean accessible energy. The product is available here in all different cities of the country. It's clean energy, clean cooking, which is very relevant especially in Africa and Asia, the governments have been facing a number of challenges, but we do not have that because LPG is an option. And also, the government has launched a social program, which is called gas to the people, addressing the situation of low-income population who cannot afford an LPG bottle. Rather than subsidizing all the operations, they are just having a focus on specific regions. So we really believe that Brazil can also become a reference in the operations. I would like to highlight the aspect of logistics. We have concentrated supply in Brazil. The primary supply for Ultragaz, more than half of that is done by trucks. We don't have LPG ducts or pipes just have from the refining to the operation. In our cast just half of that. So the inbound side of the process is done through trucks. And this is done throughout Brazil. It's a logistic challenge, of course, but it involves security and also efficiency. 80% of our gas bottles are delivered at home and customers expect to get it within 17 minutes on average. They call a company, they send a WhatsApp, they use the app, and they want to get the bottle within 17 minutes. It's not standard, but our industry is so developed and robust that this is the customer expectation. And this is why there are just so many important steps in the supply chain. And finally, robust regulation. Ultragaz has taken a center stage in advancing the regulation. It gives freedom to our end consumer. They can choose the brand they want, supplier they want. And the whole cost of quality of product lies in the hands of distributors so they can compete and make long-term investments. It's an important achievement that we have made, and we really have to make sure that we move on and forward as is. Let me emphasize a very recent topic, which is a regulatory review. This is something common for all the different Brazilian management agencies and ANP, the Brazilian gas agency is not different from that. Some of the things we are highly supportive of, the main problem is to respect really the brand in the bottle and section filling. We know how these solutions work. No place in the world has succeeded. These are some pictures. I've visited some of these places. When the responsibility lies in the hand of distributors, you end up having poor quality bottles, really not good. In Brazil, we have all these bottles operating in very good level, 180 million specific -- I'm sorry, 133 million bottles. There is no irregular product being sold, thanks to our model of branded bottles. At Ultragaz, we inspect the bottles, we replace it, and it costs about BRL 3 per sales. BRL 3 is what is spent -- if you lose -- if you have a problem with the bottle, that's fine. You just return it to the distributor and distributor is going to take care of having it replaced. So that's good. That's what guarantee top quality in all different settings. Here, we have some price evolution. In our case, we have a profit per bottle of BRL 2. It's net profit, and it's not higher because of competitiveness. All companies are expanding their strategies and then price is a relevant issue. If you buy from a brand and you are going to replace by a different brand, we have this operation and our cost is BRL 0.50 per replace of bottle. That's fine. This is very efficient in Brazil. So that's fine. Consumers can really change brands as they may seem fit because there are those replacing centers. And finally, we've just heard Linden saying you are not going to attract serious companies to operate in the market unless you have very well-regulated markets. So we are really against these changes of branded bottles and all of that. We have invested over BRL 3 billion in all our activities in the last decade and investments are expected to be paid back in upcoming decades. And if you don't have that perspective, of course, it would go against the investments that were made. Let me tell you a little bit about our operation. We emphasized that last year. We always want to use our brand to rely on our great distribution and relationship with our consumers, both in bulk and bottled. And we also offer new energy. This is the model that we have put in place, and I'm going to tell you a little thinking about innovation and expansion, we want to have a unique operation in the bottled and also bulk market. Bottled market is retail market, and we've really evolved in it. We don't work wholesaler because they sell a product that's not your brand, and we've preferred really operate closer with sellers. Bulk is by segment with operational efficiency, but always rely on technology and good infrastructure. Of course, there are new solutions in terms of energy for the same chain of resellers we work with, and we deliver perceived value with operational efficiency. We have to interact closely with our customers so that they can really see the benefit of working with us. So speaking of the bottled gas and this year has been really unique. We want to be a company operating more in retail, as I told you. This year, the percentage of wholesaler is half of what it used to be 5 years ago. And we constantly measure these indicators. We are the market share leaders in retail. not in terms of volume, but in the market that we understand there is a brand valuing appropriate delivery. We are the leaders, and we are going to reinforce this model further. And we have been developing that in this network. The number of resellers is extremely relevant, and we've been getting closer and closer to our resellers. We have an academy, for example, to develop them, to train them, and we've been progressing significantly, always relying on technology as to work closely with our customers. In bulk, completely different from bottled, it's a different business model. To sum up, we can say we work in segments. We offer segmented solutions for all the different industries. And here, there are some of them, but there are a number of others. And we also have operational excellence. There are different solutions for bottled, for household, corporate and the same applies to bulk, generating really solutions that add value to our customers, something that we strongly believe in. And to wrap up, our LPG operation all the supply that I've mentioned, this differentiation, closeness with our resellers. It all depends on operational excellence for value to be perceived and to be able to be captured. We've progressed significantly in recent years. And I have here 3 highlights. All our work of the consortium developed with our competitor of ours, just sharing some basis. We still need some additional investments that are going to be made in the next 2 years, but it has really put us closer to our end customers. Logistics. We have centralized logistics, which has significant gains and process automation. We have a specific solution to our customers without adding or inflating our prices. Now let me speak about something new. There was the approval of the implementation of a product terminal at P100. All the import of Petrobras goes through swap port. And there is an idea of having an import for private because today, this is done in a separated vessel. But that's going to be a terminal placed there. And we want to have a P100 terminal or Pecem rather. Import for Pecem, we are going to change the flow, I'm saying, rather than having cabotage from Rio to North and Northeast, we're going to change that. And it's going to add efficiency. And it's going to unleash really the power of receiving our products, very important driver that is going to bring us closer to our clients through the import through the future Pecem terminal. We have also expanded the range of options to our consumers. These are not separated businesses. This is within our portfolio. And these are all the different business avenues that we've been operating on. I would like to talk about one of them. Electric energy. We started with distributed generation 2 years ago. Last year, we started work a distributor and transmission. We are going to combine both companies by the end of the year with one single energy solution adjusted to profile of customers. This month, we started working with LPG and energy teams approaching customers differently for LPG and electric energy. Regardless of being through commercialization or generated distribution, we have created a strategy. And something that was the opening of free market. And this is happening, the opening of free market in restaurants and hotels, services. And this is going to be a very important leverage for our progression in the future. In addition, biomethane. We started with NEOgas working with fossil fuel 2 years ago. Last year we had the first client of biomethane. This year, we have about 20 customers operating with biomethane. We are going to finish the year with 30 customers, 1 million cubic meters of contracted supplies of biomethane, very interesting market. We are working with industrial solutions and fleet solutions. The model that we are going to put in place is together with Ipiranga to supply the customers very interesting new solution and a number of things that will come into fruition. Now coming to the end of my presentation. The combination of all our initiatives. The main leverage of going into retail has changed our operation. We deliver more value to our end consumer, and we can capture that through our operation. This focus of operational excellence in bulk and focus on new energies has led to consistent increase in profitability, and we have the expectations of keep on moving ahead. Well, that's it. I hope I have given you a good overview. We are very satisfied with the results of our company. And just to give you some visual highlights of what I would say, I'm going to show you our video. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

Thank you very much. Let me invite now Fulvius to carry on. Thank you.

Good morning. It's a great privilege to be with you here today. And I thank you for having come here. We work and we make our day-to-day happen. It is a huge privilege for me to be here talking about this company, Ultracargo, which is a leadership that is translated into our capacity to integrate different logistic modalities, starting different products, including fuels, biofuels, chemical products and so many other things that are part of the day-to-day that our country needs to be able to operate. And now talking about our value and about safety, and we like to start with our colleagues. Ultracargo has evolved on a constant basis. We have had a decrease in our rate of accidents with sick leaves. And we're doing this together with what we're doing, and we will show you the large construction site that Auto Cargo has been transformed into. We were constructing and at the same time, reducing our accident rate, improving safety. And I wanted to show you how this works on the day-to-day. Talking a little bit about our strategy to explain how we work and where we are headed to, I would like to show you in the circle here that we want to be our -- the preferential option of our clients so that they have Ultracargo as an important partner in logistics. You do this using 3 basic pillars, scalability of the business. We want to continue going with the same operation and management model to have scale gains and that this is translated into greater efficiency. We do it with assertiveness, product diversification. And to support all of this, we have safety as #1 among our values. All of our operations are very efficient, and they are integrated with roads, railways in a unique ecosystem throughout the country. A very important aspect and Linden commented about hidden carbon. We are the only logistic companies to be part of this with fair competition in an honest market, which will enable the country to grow. To show you how it works and how Ultracargo operates in the country, the map of Brazil represents the size of our operation. We are present in 4 regions. especially starting with the coast, we have 6 port terminals, which enable auto cargo to receive different products above all fuels. We need to import fuel more and more. And it also enables us to export different products outside Brazil. For example, different countries have ethanol mandates; in Japan in 2030, they are also going to have ethanol mixed in their gas, and it enables us to export. We also want to follow the development of the country. The agri business is an engine for the development of the country. And therefore, our strategy is to go into the inner regions of the country such as Paulinia, Rondonopolis, so that we can be where they need us, taking the field that agribusiness needs, but also being a point of capture where the biofuels are produced and taking it to the consumer markets. This is our strategy to be where Brazil needs to have storage. We've had a very important expansion circle, Rondonopolis, Itaqui, Paulinia, and we had a significant growth year-over-year, totaling 16% in these 3 years. This has represented BRL 1.2 million in investments. 85% has been completed above all because Brazil needs it. But why do we want to grow and why do we want to be close to agribusiness? I think all of us here can see that every week, we have announcements of new businesses, for example, in [indiscernible] our partners communicating the construction of new corn ethanol plants in Mato Grosso. This is very important for the diversification of the Brazilian energy matrix for the migration to a more and more sustainable industry in Brazil and corn ethanol is something that is going to grow a lot in Brazil. And a large part of it is located in the state of Mato Grosso, which is where we have decided to be located. 2/3 of the anticipated growth in this area will come from this state of Mato Grosso. And this is what we want to support. And we want to have this connection with the agribusiness and the consumer markets using the logistic corridors, promoting an efficient system that will enable us to take the feel and come back with the product from those regions. The best example is the so-called central corridor connecting Rondonopolis to Paulinia, and it will be extended to the Santos Terminal. We have the Rondonopolis terminal. It was recently expanded. We have concluded the expansion construction and are only waiting for authorization by AMP to start operating. And this is connected to the Paulinia terminal, where we're also expanding. We have 10,000 cubic meters to be delivered. This is a railway connection and it enables biofuel produced in Rondonopolis with this very large amount of producing plants to be taken to Paulinia and in areas where we've inaugurated in June. This enables us to reduce transit time in 2 days, and that's not even counting the number of trucks that have been removed from the road. So we have a reduction in gases and CO2. We're also expanding our Santos Terminal with 34,000 cubic meters so that we can store the fuel that arrives in Santos. This is one of the largest ports in the country where fuel comes into, and it also enables us to store ethanol. I would like to remind you that in the Northeast, we have an increasing need of ethanol. These regions are growing faster than in the Southeast, and they need to have biofuels since they do not have local production. But we want to improve conditions for our partners, and this is why we have the Vila do Conde terminal, which integrates our northern corridor. The ethanol produced in Mato Grosso can also be taken by rivers and delivered to our terminal in Vila do Conde. And from there, it can be transported to other places in Brazil and also to North America and Europe. So in addition to guaranteeing this transportation we have options so that we can provide complete logistics. Also, we have the Northeast corridor. It is now integrated to our Palmeirante corridor. It's very strategic in the [ Matopiba ] area. Palmeirante is in the central access, and this is why we have constructed this terminal. We concluded it in July this year, according to Ultracargo standards, and it is connected to our Itaqui terminal. And it's being expanded so that we can keep up with the demand with additional storage area. It is essential for us and the country. It represents one of the largest entry ports in the country. And that's why we are expanding, but we're also connecting this region in an efficient manner. It has a lot of agriculture. They're also producing biofuels, which enables us to once again have an efficient transportation corridor, taking fuel for the consumption of the farmers in the region, but also taking biofuels that are manufactured in that region in the most efficient manner possible. And before moving on to this other slide, I would like to ask you for a video because a video sometimes speaks more than numerous words. [Presentation]

So everything that is being built turns the company into a construction site, but also a company that can provide the country what the country needs. We have all of these graphs to show exactly how the distribution takes place and what contracts we have in place here. And of course, because of the energy demand in Brazil and the greater need of fuel consumption as the country goes, we have increasing imports in this area, as shown before, and we have 55% of our contracts are related to fields gas and diesel, but we're also present in energy transition. Today, it represents 8% of our contracts, ethanol-related contracts for export, storage and transportation. We also have different chemical products. I'd like to give you this example. Every time you drink a soft drink, you remember that it has sulfuric acid, which has probably been stored in our tanks. These chemical products include other products and beauty care. We have products related to the export of oil. And this is all done in partnership with our clients. And this is why we have 2/3 of our contracts, which have a duration of up to 3 years, and this is the contract aging, demonstrating the partnership we have for the construction of everything we're showing you. We still have 14% of our contracts for greater than 5 years. And we still have 14% of spot contracts so that we can make the best use of our contracts. To do all of this, if we want to be our clients' preferential option and remain as leaders, we must be efficient at all times in our business. And this is why we have the SOUL center, which focuses on the safety of these operations, but also on their efficiency. SOUL is based on the lean methodology with continuous improvement. And between '21 and '24, we had over 1,200 improvement opportunities in our terminals in the field, trying to analyze how we can contribute so that Ultracargo is more efficient, safer and better. And this is one of the things we have in Ultracargo. We use robots for the cleaning of tanks. Sometimes we also use for internal cleaning that adds efficiency, increases the durability of the tanks, but it also preserves the life and safety of our workers as we eliminate these activities. Also for those of you who visited us on the 10th floor, you will see the CSI, the SOUL center of intelligence to center the monitoring and to standardize operations, unified operations, demonstrating our commitment with operations. We're also going to leave some information for you with sweet cream or the sweeter side of it. We have also to talk about artificial intelligence. AI has dominated so much in the area of innovations, but we also have this language that supports us evaluate contracts, client performance. But we also have an SOP to optimize the use of our tanks. And that's why all of these innovation projects have rendered over BRL 48 million in cost reductions with some tax benefits as well. This is all connected to our ESG goals. We have a goal to have zero landfilling and generation of waste. But the focus of innovation also lies on efficiency. That's why the maritime ability to load and unload the ships operating at Ultracargo terminals has been expanded in 21%. Likewise, this time spent on road transportation was reduced in 28%, which is translated into direct efficiency for our clients who also spend less with stays and so on and so forth. I'm very proud to work for this company. The company received the GPTW for the second consecutive year, and we are very proud that we can deliver the best logistics in this country. According to the seal, we have an evolution. We have had an improvement of 14% in our maturity of leaderships and our current rate is 53%. But also, in addition to this, we train people. We build capacity. We have a capacity building program, not only for our team, but for those who work around our terminals, translating it into trained professionals, leading to improvement in the communities where we are located. Also, as part of our accountability, the company between 2019 and '24, we had an increase of 44% of our storage capacity. And because of the assertiveness of this sector, we have had a 15% increase per year in our profitability. We do this with a lot of discipline with efficiency gain, as I commented, with a scale economy. And this is why despite all of this in the terminals with our operations, we've been able to keep the number of employees constant. So that the employees could improve their performance. And that's why the growth rate of our costs and expenses is almost 1/3 of our revenue growth, demonstrating efficiency, scale economy. And between 2019 and '24, our EBITDA grew from BRL 230 million to almost BRL 670 billion, showing our capacity to have assertive investments and disciplined execution translated into increasing EBITDA, demonstrating our commitment with discipline. 2025 was a more challenging year. Of course, we've had an impact on import arbitration on import was much higher than in previous years. But we also had higher inventory levels of the distributors. They end up using their inventory levels more. But especially for Ultracargo, there was a period in which -- we had commissioning of new terminals, which started in 2025, which means associated cost, but the revenue started increasing gradually as we delivered the terminals in second half of '25 and 2026. This is why we've been working. We want to provide sustainable continuous growth with safety because country needs logistics of Ultracargo. Thank you all very much. I hope to welcome you with the doughnuts of Krispy Kreme in our floor. And now I'm going to introduce the person who has led the growth in recent years, who has a new mission now, which is working with Hidrovias. Décio, please.

[Interpreted] Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here to talk to you about Hidrovias do Brasil. Wonderful presentation, by the way, my friend. But it's important to start talking about safety. Safety is a nonnegotiable value because you cannot negotiate the lives of people. And safety is the basis over which we can create a culture of efficiency, productivity, et cetera, not only safety of people, but also security of assets. There was an accident in the terminal of Barcarena, barges hit a sustainable pillar and the company stopped work. And of course, it impacts the lives of so many people. So safety of people and assets is always a priority. To do that, you have a robust system where you identify all the risks that may lead to catastrophic accident to people, to assets and you allocate resources of the company and projects that would bring safety to your people, assets. And based on that, you create really the structure you need. We are in the initial stage of implementation of a robust system at Hidrovias. At first, we expect an increased rate of accidents because we are increasing the reportable rates, but we want to get to an accident rate below 1.5, which would bring us to the quartiles and to the rates that all the other companies of the company have. 2025 started a new cycle at Hidrovias, and there are a number of very relevant models. First, Ultra is a controlling shareholder, and it changes the idea of creating windows of opportunity for this investment of the previous partner. And now we have a long-term shareholder, someone who is constantly focusing on generating value. And this is great for management because then we can have better capital allocation. With this new shareholder, there had been a significant inflow of capital, which has provided the readjustment of our capital structure, cost of indebtedness, having our balance now at the right level to get more investment is required and identify opportunities. We identified that cabotage business had low synergy and had a different level of possibility of development and we decided to disinvest, and that's going to be completed by the end of 2025. We've also changed a little bit the leadership. We have a senior leadership, which is ready to implement this new growth phase. And this team has already identified a number of opportunities for better use of our assets. This is going to bring gains in capacity and productivity with lower capital allocation than we had initially thought. And on top of that, Hidrovias is part of the government agenda. Waterway system is extremely great in terms of sustainability. We use what, maybe 3% of the capacity of river waterways system that we could have. The government is considering now concessions and grants of waterway systems, probably as of this year, beginning of next year, River Tapajós as well, Sao Paulo speaking about waterway transportation. So that's going to open a great window of growth that we are all going to benefit from. Maybe you are not very familiarized with Hidrovias yet. So I'm going to introduce to you our operations. In the north system, we receive grains from Mato Grosso through BR-103, railroads. We have a system Miritituba in Pará in our terminal. It's taken to Barcarena in Paraná, which is our terminal near Vila do Conde. And we have b load for silos and then load into the vessels. We also receive grains through highways there coming from the Southeast of Pará. This is the North Arc system. In the South, we have the operation of just waterways for ore from Minas Gerais. It's a high-quality iron ore mine with very high capacity. We takes it to Itaguari. And in Paraguay, there are also some loads from grains produced in our neighboring countries. We have a joint venture in Uruguay called TGM. They receive grains from Uruguay, and they load it for export in vessels and the terminal in Santos, which has an operation of salt and fertilizers sending it back to Mato Grosso and receiving the trucks back with grains. I'm going to show you a short video so that you understand how our operations are. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] In 2020, 2021, I presented this strategic framework and I make an analogy with soccer, even though my team just succeeded in Argentina, supports Palmeiras here in Brazil. But it's good to engage people in the company. Of course, we have to improve the capital invested in Hidrovias. How can we do that? We cannot do it without the social license to operate. I have to take care of the safety of people, sustainability, social, the community I really need a culture of people development that really can see the talents that focus on. If it works, the whole system generates productivity and efficiency. Price cannot be controlled. We control cost. So we have to be the lowest cost operator, and that's the operator that suffers the least because of volatility. Part of the value that you generate from efficiency and productivity, you can create competitive solutions to your customers. And this continuous generation of value to our customers makes them become loyal and you become the preferred option of your customers. Once customers are satisfied, you make investments and you grow new routes of growth, new avenues of growth. And it creates a continuous improvement cycle. You define KPIs for each initiative, you create -- you have brainstorms, new projects coming. And that's exactly what we are going to do as we did at Ultracargo, and Fulvius kindly reminded us. We have our very good team in the leadership of Hidrovias, some people coming from the market, some people who were at Ultra, some people at Hidrovias, such as [ Mariana ], who has been there since the beginning, and she has history, technical competence. It's a highly experienced team. But it's a team that is connected with long-term value generation. So the compensation is related with ROIC, EVA, cash flow generation to make sure that we have full alignment and talent development and also the creation of successors. A good team is the first step for this journey that we've been building. Now speaking about efficiency and productivity, I would like to show you that even though we've had a first half of the year with good performance, we've done better in the past. And there are a number of external bottlenecks that we've been focusing on that will help us keep on growing. North corridor, in '23, '24, there was a problem of drought, and it interrupted the operation. Even though this year, the water level is better, we cannot just rely on luck. The government is creating the program for bidding and concession of Tapajós. They are preparing a three-year grant that would be the time for the concession to be granted to ensure navigability. There are solutions helping to reduce one first external bottleneck. Product receiving in Itaituba, which goes by road, there is called Transoceanic road, which is still dirty road with increased volume and our trucks going and coming there are slopes. So interruption of the road is getting more and more frequent. On average in the first half of the year was nearly five hours per day of interruption of traffic. Even with that, we are gaining volume. Imagine when we have it solved. The concessionary has already started the construction of asphalt of pavement. There is another bottleneck here, you can see on the chart, percentage of hours per year that we cannot operate. But we have, of course, revenues coming all the time. There was a restriction of times to get the vessels docked or undocked. If it was not on time to be docked, it would -- the vessel would be closed. So Hidrovias has performed the necessary studies. We've already sent that to the Navy and to the captain of ports, probably by the end of the year, we are going to have more flexibility, both for the transloading station and private use terminal. Vila do Conde happened the same. That's going to increase the capacity. These are three really elements that prevent having more development. For example, turnover rates, '22 in terms of productivity, transported grain or the barges, we performed much better than in 2024. Can you see it? Once we resume things that we used to do and if we eliminate some bottlenecks, we can expect 50% increase. The same for terminal turnover. The turnover of our terminals in 2021 in Miritituba or Porto was 21%, 28%, last year, 26%, 36%, respectively. So we can get productivity and we can get much better results in the system. South corridor. There, we can see the advantage of dragging. Yellow line is the level of water in Ladário, which is a critical point. It's always below the blue line, water level in 2022. We have less draft and less water, lower draft and less water. So the level is greater than 2023. You see we already see the advantage of the activities that we've been doing in the South corridor because sometimes there is an interruption of the convoy. Once we finish, there is going to be much more resiliency in this dredging because of dredging activities, we can really have full capacity. And based on that, we would also have the concession of more waterway systems. So these are all gains that we can come from that by reducing our all specific bottlenecks. In Santos, we operated better than last year, better operation of fertilizers. But Santos this first half of the year received less fertilizers than in its history. Grains were taken to Paranaguá this year, resulting in return of fertilizers. So it has got part of the market share of fertilizers in the first half of the year. But it's probably going to be something cyclic and we are going to keep on growing in this terminal. Now speaking of customers, we have a portfolio of customers almost half of them over five-year contract, which gives us resilience of revenues. And we really want to benefit from this gain of capacity to grow with our customers and to attract new customers. We are going to generate capacity to grow with them and to attract others, improving the level of services by reducing the different bottlenecks that we've pointed out. Now new avenues of growth. We see huge potential in the North area, potential of volume. And the news are good. The government, the conciliation chamber has recommended the approval of the contract of concession of that highway that I mentioned, which means investments in the pavement of a number of these roads. The government is also talking about iron and railway. But just by making these improvements in the pavement conditions, that's going to be a lot. And by doing that, we can also support the distribution of all the products come to us through Miritituba or the south of Pará. How can we just benefit from the short-term growth? There are two investments which are ongoing. We have a floating -- like a floating scale. So the truck gas, it turns the system -- the load into our system into a silo from the silos to the barge. It's a floating really. It's like a floating scale that just flows the whole cargo. low investment, which adds 1.5 million tonnes of load capacity in Miritituba. It is being completed in the second half of '26. It's going to generate benefits as of '27. We are talking about 1.5 million tonnes of additional capacity of receiving. The other investment is ongoing. It's going to be completed in the first half of '26. It's a floating device. We just closed put it close to the vessel, the barge does not unload into the terminal and then go into the vessel. But no, it goes straight into the vessel. Those two investments mean 1.5 million additional tonnes of capacity with a very competitive CapEx level. It's a short-term strategy to add volume into the system in addition to gains of productivity. And now looking at a more robust capacity growth, we are in the final phase of the authorizations required so that we can double the capacity we have there, but we are evaluating a modular investment instead of trying to work with the bottlenecks only. We're trying to work with two simultaneous ships. We're still validating it, but the idea is to invest in modules, which makes it easier to allocate capital. The government has provided a license for Lourenço Pedral, and this may enable us to have a new road. We have the land already to do that and also the river concessions, river transportation concessions, we're also waiting for that. The South corridor very quickly, the expansion points are very large. We want to allocate a good part of our capacity by gaining the transportation market share. And this is very clear and will enable us to grow very quickly. So now talking about profitability, productivity, lower costs, we have to take care of our financial expenses. We have a reprofiling of the debt. We also had a cost decrease and debt decrease with the adjustments made in exchange rates. And also we have improved our EBITDA rate last year, we concluded the year in more comfortable levels, and that enables us to resume investments. Now talking a little bit about figures. In the first half of the year, we had better results than throughout '24. But then when we look at the return on invested capital, this is still very low. With the strategic guidelines I mentioned and new opportunities for growth, productivity, good capital allocation in a reasonable period of time, we want to have the minimal capital we believe that a company should have so that shareholders are in a better position. So this is it. We are going to move on to the Q&A. And I would like to call my colleague, Palhares now.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. Well, once again, it's a pleasure for me to be here for the first time ever. I'm going to the presentation on the finances of the group. When we look at the results here, '23 consolidated a new level of results for the company in '24, we kept the same pace, and that has an impact on the results of Ultragaz and Ultracargo and also the profitability of Ipiranga. So when we look at the first quarter this year, the trend remains the same. And this is translated into very strong working capital and both in '23, '24 and now the trend for the first half of the year, we are going to have strong cash generation based on the results of the business, but also credit generation, which is very important for us. And then when we look at this in terms of leverage added to our cash incoming resources from the results that we've already made, we go from a leverage of 3.5x and now deliver twofold. This takes into account the consolidation of our results, investments in [ Hidrovias ] and rebuy of shares in the first half. Even so, we are still in a very comfortable level between 2.5x to 3x our EBITDA levels. As Decio has already mentioned, in parallel, with favorable market conditions, we try to reduce the cost of our debt, reaching or starting from a higher level in 2020, therefore, improving cash profitability without any additional risk factors and that therefore, we decreased the spread of our debt. In combination, this all enables us to have good credit rates. We are investment grade with two levels higher. We do not have any revenue in dollars. This strengthens our position. And then when we look at this, it is also translated at a different profit level since 2023. And this results from the business cash generation, operational results, contention of leverage, lower costs, and then we reach another level of net profit that helps the company with profitability, ROIC at levels that are totally different from what they were five, six years ago, but still below what we expect for this kind of business, which should be greater than 20%. So how is this translated into the price of shares? We used the window immediately after the divestment strategies. And there is an increase and price adjustment since the end of '23. But before that, we had already incorporated better profitability of the business. Recently, as a result of what Linn has commented and also because of the results of the business, we have improvement in the short term. But even so, our shares is doing substantially better than IBOVESPA. And we also have a return that is much higher now again compared to IBOVESPA. The market is evolving, not only here, but all over the world. Ultrapar, it is the same. Since our last meeting last year, we have evolved with our materiality matrix and a new portfolio of the group. And that leads to a review process of our ESG project, which is related to long-term processes, and we will soon share that or share the results with the market. I wanted to show this slide. This was first presented last year by Rodrigo. This is the result of extensive activities where we have reviewed Ultrapar's role to generate a long-term results. This is used as a basis for discussions that we often have. Also, it has to do with our role as Ultrapar. I'm not going to talk about everything. I will talk about some highlights. Discipline is very strict in the discussions and capital allocation. We focus on optimization, our capital cost, working together, focusing on long-term value generation and a simple and agile management model. This is the result of these activities. They are the pillars of what we do here at Ultrapar. The idea for this presentation was to make a quick one. And so with this, I close my part, and I will now invite Rodrigo so that we can move forward.

[Interpreted] Well, good morning. It is a pleasure to have you here with us today. We thought about having Ultra Day in this year, we decided to do it here. This is very symbolic. First of all, because we're going to have a session in the afternoon with the Q&A with the different business sectors, and you will have an opportunity to get to know and observe the characteristics and the values of the different business, and that also reflects our business model. This building was built in the '60s. So we've been here for over 60 years, just as Ultra, this building has modernized. And all of this has been done without losing our items. But right now, I think it's clear to everyone. Safety is not negotiable. You've seen all of the businesses, the different segments saying the same thing. Here, you can see the consolidated results and the reduction in the accident rate with leave of absence and accident rates of processes tiers 1 and 2. So we have an opportunity to improve our process with a more advanced safety culture here at Ultra. In this slide, I try to summarize the journey we've had in the past years, preparing us for the future. It all started in 2021. That's when we chose to sell Oxiteno, Extrafarma and Conectcar. This review enabled us to do two things. First of all, we focus on the areas that we believed were going to be better for us. And then in the second stage, we wanted to allocate capital to generate more value. My colleagues have already presented a little bit of what we've been doing in terms of developing growth, strengthening businesses. And also, we talked about new energies, investments we've made, also investments in bulk. Linden mentioned what we did to renew the station network and more recently, TRR, our new value generation opportunities. Also, we talked about the expansion and Opla and new Ultracargo terminals. In the past couple of years, we became the controlling shareholder of Hidrovias. This is the largest capital allocation we've had since Ipiranga was acquired. And this also is related to the review of our portfolio. Palhares talked about the rethinking of the role of the holding and how we can help focus on the management to optimize our management and generate more cash while maintaining our financial solidity. It's important to strengthen our institutional capacity so that we can move in the right track. I will get into the details about this later on. But people, everybody has spoken about this, how important they are. We are having a very good moment for development. To wrap up. The remodeling of our management model. And last year, we already talked about governance between our different segments. We redefined our policies and guidelines to make them simpler and more pragmatic. We've also reviewed our payment model to reinforce long-term incentives, transforming executives into partners in value generation. All of this is done with significant leadership renewal. I will share some indicators immediately after. And then going back to the Ultra essence, which is the spirit of an entrepreneur and the mindset of the owner. This is very strategic because we play this role, we have this management model, and we allocate capital efficiently. Now I'm going to share some data about what I've just said. starting with the portfolio review. In the first graph, you can see that today, when compared to the last five years, we have a diversification of our result sources. Ipiranga was the main driver of results for Ultrapar. But for the first time ever, it has less than 50% of our EBITDA. We had a significant growth in Ultragaz and logistics. And here, we're taking the pro forma results. You can see that 1/3 represents 1/3 of our results. In combination to that, we have cash, cash generation, which has enabled us to have this transformation and at the same time, deleveraging the company. So this is the allocation adjustments we've made in the past years, in the recent past. In 2025, with the updated data, we had the largest leadership renewal we've had. Almost half of the positions are now occupied by new people. What is really nice, and you can see here in the first line is that this is done for the first time ever with the high level of internal readjustments that helps us preserve our culture and long-term values. The transition has been significant, but it was all well planned so that we can make best use of our people. And it enables us to develop our internal capacity. This is a slide we shared in Ultra Day last year. There's nothing really new. The new thing is that we have implemented this. Last year, we said we were going to do it, and now we've already done it. So all of our business boards have been formed. We have two members of Ultrapar people in these boards and the governance also enables us to make faster decisions to guarantee that this is done with responsibility. And in Ultrapar's Board, we can have holding decisions, optimization of portfolio governance, talent. So this has all been implemented, is working well this year, and I wanted to share this with you. And now talking about capital allocation. We are sharing some data. Since '21, we evaluated 85 opportunities for acquisition. These are things we evaluated carefully. If we evaluate only what is offered to us and then we give up, this is not included here. This is what we have done some level of investigation, discussions. And of these, eight of them are already concluded transactions. This process where we have a long pipeline enables us to choose the best projects according to our design. Our M&A team is small. And this is done on purpose that helps us have discipline to choose the best projects. Zooming in our main project, Hidrovias, after Decio's presentation, we've tried to sum up what we've been doing in our holding. So that Hidrovias can really reach its potential of generating values and results. And I'm going to go through all elements. People, first of all. We have renewed 90% of the senior leadership of the company. In this renewal process, we try to identify who was really well aligned to the future of the company, who had the right culture for the future of the company and someone who could use the opportunities. The company has huge potential of growth. So we really need to be able to benefit from that from expansion of capacity, but also from commercial relationship. We also have a new model of incentive, much more focused on financial goals and for long-term value generation. In terms of capital, we've increased the capital and the ultra risk when we took over the company has provided a lower cost of capital, what's important for a capital-intensive company such as Hidrovias. Now speaking of focus and simplicity, there was a huge remodeling in terms of report levels. We have a very complete comprehensive report now, but we've reduced the number of committees and boards. And we have also reviewed policies and procedures. The company now the administration doesn't need to dedicate to governance because everything is organized. So now they can focus on the business. Remodeling is part of this value-added proposal. This is really important for everything that I'm showing you. Within a discipline of cost and capital, we have implemented a policy of investment in the company, the same as we have for Ultra, really to learn what has to be improved in the process of decision-making, assumptions, return on investment. We have also excluded most of fiscal inefficiency that we had in our social organization, and we're really focusing on efficiency and efficiency on all different areas. At the same time, it includes operational excellence. As you pointed it out, a complete review of all steps, identifying the bottlenecks of each of the steps so that we can reach the maximum efficiency of everything we do. It's something done day after day, right? You have to broken -- break down the company, work on step, go into the next one to optimize assets, of course. And of course, safety is part of the whole process of operational excellence. And finally, but not less important, focus on client and institutional strengths. Hidrovias is part of the country's agenda really to focus on transporting the grain crop. So it's important to think about efficiency of waterway systems and that mindset of creating value to our customers. We want to serve our customers. The company didn't use to have a commercial department. So we created that commercial department. And now we've been working on expanding the focus. We really need the right people, right capital and long-term vision to reach efficiency and growth. Hidrovias shows the application of that Ultra model in practice. It's something really advanced, and we expect to obtain the results shortly. And the potential has even exceeded our initial forecast when we decided to invest in the company. Now what can we expect of Ultra at large? We are going to keep on developing our management model using capital and discipline, working with a robust capital structure because we have to be well positioned to make movements whenever there are opportunities. Sometimes these are situations in moment of high interest rates. We really have to do it when the right time comes. always thinking about long term, respect to minority shareholders. And Hidrovias is a very good way of how we've done that. and we should always focus on governance, alignment of incentives. We treat executives as our partners, as our shareholders, but always thinking what's the best to the company. Thank you all very much for your attention. Let me now hand it over to Marcos, who is going to wrap up our presentations.

[Interpreted] Well, yes, I'm going to wrap up because everything has been said so far. I would just like to make two brief comments. First, something that I always emphasize is what is a valid company. Everything that we do is within this concept. What do I mean by it? A company that adds value to society, to customers, to employees, to the government, all players. And if the company no longer existed, the society would be worse. Why am I saying that? This is a company that is a valid company. All the businesses that we've seen are businesses that add value to the country, to the society, et cetera. But this is an environment where there are lots of nonvalid companies. So we've been working towards creating the good business environment for fair competition with good players. And what we've heard from the executives is exactly that. We are moving towards that as a country. I really believe that the government in Brazil will eventually charge taxes. We know. But taxes are important for the operation of such heavy-viewed government such as Brazilians one is. And everything that we do, especially in Ipiranga, this system is extremely harmful. So I believe that this is why we have to keep in mind some important elements in this agenda of efficiency for the country, which are really emotion, but it would be extremely beneficial for the country and for Ultra in its strategy. The waterway dredging has not to do with fuels, but it produces such a huge return on investment. If you dredge the waterways for the country, it's going to produce great benefit with very low capital invested. It has been ignored, but now it's back in the agenda in the capital of Brazil, different ministries are talking about that, understanding that with a few dozens thousands Brazilian real, that's going to generate millions of benefits to the country. Also having strong regulatory agencies is something really important. We are talking about strengthening the quality of the people that work in these regulatory agencies, and we've seen some progress there. Also fighting illegal players in the fuel market. Since the recent operation of the hidden carbon that we alluded to, we've seen some changes. I'm sure there are going to be waves of actions resulting from it. And I believe things are going to succeed. Also regulatory improvements in the operation of LPG, LPG could be better and have an important role for the country. Of course, there are some regulatory risks, as Tabajara pointed out. And this is getting clearer and clearer. When we hear Tabajara speaking, for example, it's a no-brainer. We have a good market. We are proud of it. We are a leader in the world. So we cannot really take stepbacks. And whenever he shows data to people, to all the players, they really understand that. And finally, some of those constant approvals that are being discussed of repeated debtors and some other actions that would have a very important impact on fair competition. I am an optimistic, I have to say. And I believe that we are going to have some changes in the upcoming months and years. Now this is my last slide. You've seen the quality of the leaders that we have in this company and the quality of results they deliver. But ultimately, we are here to tell you that we have a very well-organized governance. We have a Board of Directors at Ultrapar, very well organized and disciplined fully aligned of our shareholders, majority shareholders as well, working in a cohesive fashion at the C-suite, at the Board of Directors so that the operations can really run efficiently and smoothly. 2027 is going to be a difficult year regardless of the elections or results. We will need cost reductions, and we will need to deal with more challenging conditions, '27 and the upcoming years, regardless of who wins the election next year. But we have a very resilient portfolio. It's less exposed to GDP variations. Maybe Krispy Kreme doughnuts will be impacted, but that's not relevant to bottom line of Ultrapar. But we are always open to opportunities. We are going to have a deleverage balance, fully aligned team, talented teams in place and really ready to support the Brazilian society in gaining more efficiency, things that we believe we can do and Brazil deserves it. We have all the necessary characteristics to really take this leap in productivity. Well, said that, let me invite Palhares to come back. And let me thank you all of you to have joined us this morning. It's great to have had you all here. And it's also good. We've saving hotel expenses. So we didn't have to rent the venue.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Marcos. Let's start our Q&A session now. I would like to invite our executives to come to stage. Those of you who are with us online you can ask your questions through your screen. You just have to click there then ask you question. And those of you who are here, if you want to ask a question please raise your hand. When you get the microphone tell us your name and the company you work with, so that everyone can identify who is speaking. Shall we start?

[Interpreted] I'm Luiz Carvalho with BTG Pactual. Great to be here. Great presentations. I would like to ask two questions. The first one, Lutz and Rodrigo, you have given us an overview of the strategy of the holding in this new period. What are you thinking about diversification of portfolio? You've talked about the framework of your businesses, but do you think about expanding geographically? Based on what you've said, Lutz, about the challenges and everything that we have here in the country, you've talked about the Ipiranga's share, which was higher, now it's 50% in terms of the whole company. What would be the ideal share of your current companies in the future portfolio? And what is the threshold of return that you expect to have in the investments you are going to make? My second question to Lindon. We've been seeing the regulatory environment for decades. I started at Shell and at that time, ethanol was our main problem. And we've been seeing that the agenda seems to be in the right area. I would like to understand what do you see in terms of upside in terms of margin if these actions are implemented, for example, as repeated debtors, CBIOs, what can we expect? Not for Ipiranga specifically, but what can we expect overall? And if you can please tell us about the competition with, let's say, legal players, right? Yes, there are valid companies. But when you talk about other companies in the area, there are companies which are highly professionalized operating regionally, Petronas, for example, companies in the South and North, not only distribution, but also in the reseller network. They have access to capital, governance. So if you can please tell us more about the current competition, that would be interesting.

[Interpreted] I'm going to start by answering the first question and then someone can take over. When we think about business, we want at least 20% return on investment. That's the return range we expect. But businesses have cycles, Ultracargo right now, highest cycle of expansion ever. So it brings capital before breaking results. But we don't have a goal of share of each business in the total business of Ultrapar. What we try to do is maximize the potential of each business. Ipiranga has the potential of result, which is somewhat reduced because of the business environment. If the business environment improves, Ipiranga would have an increase in its possibility. But that's not a problem. We try to maximize results. We've shown you the case of Hidrovias because it shows how we think about this new industry. There is a number of levers that we can put in motion to have better businesses when it is under our control. Some businesses are closer to us. We can use the levers. Others are further. This is what we've been thinking about for new business. The market issue, you're right. This is something we've been struggling for decades now. And it changes the whole configuration. We have different decisions, legal decisions, but they always have something to do with product alteration or tax evasion. But the difference we had back then and now is that today, I have a feeling that it's more ingrained and it's more difficult. It is more troublesome to get around this, and it requires more mobilization. And this leads to more results. We have stronger states, and this is more in the sense that you can go against evasion, but also against the incentive of those who are trying to survive ending up going to the irregular market. It's always existed. It's changed a bit, but it's there. Over time and with the difficulties we have in making the rules of the game really being forced, sometimes you need a shock therapy to solve things. Regarding the margins and future speculations, honestly, first of all, I would like to see volume because volume is distributed and it went to this irregularity pathway. But of course, in an environment where you have less illegality and less tax evasion, everything works better in any sense. Users will have better product available and then adequate investments will be made and the margin is part of this. But honestly, and also because of the behavior we've seen here in the beginning of the post hidden carbon issue, I want to see volumes. I want to see volume distribution once again in the chain and that will happen before the margin, in my opinion. Regarding competition, regional companies because regional companies in our sector have always existed, and they are an important value proposition. They've been able to survive also because of the regular market, in a company like Ipiranga. If it's hard for us, can you imagine what it's like for those who do not have the same access to capital and to whom it takes longer to grow. Sometimes the region they are located in are impacted by irregular activities and you end up killing these businesses. We have a lot of competent and good people working in this market. As we've always said, actually, Ipiranga was a regional company in the past. We started in Rio Grande do Sul and the first liter of gasoline produced in Brazil was produced by Ipiranga in 1934 by Destilaria Rio-Grandense. Regional companies have always existed. Regional competition is healthy. It forces you -- when you have good regional players, it forces you to be good in the region and not only thinking about the country at a regional level, we have to operate our businesses in the different regions according to the mindset of those regions and that forces us to be better and better. But once again, we go back to our agenda where we have to fight irregular commerce so that we can have regional competitors to establish in the market in a solid manner.

Congratulations for deal today here [indiscernible]. This is Vicente from BBI. First question is, I wanted to understand whether you feel that ANP has decreased its willingness to interfere after the all of the issues with hidden carbon? And my second question, Rodrigo, you mentioned you want to have volume recovery first. July was very emblematic. All 3 gained share. Of course, it's early. It's been only a month, but I would like you to comment how you see the month of August and what share recovery would make sense.

Thank you very much. Well, I'm going to start with the recovery of LPG. In practice, we've gone through the first step, but we have different ones. We have delayed some of this. This year, we will continue and then we will advance. Today, we had the first step of the contributions. This was a more internal contribution. And with dissemination of this activity, I think the society is participating and everybody wants to better understand. Different agents have tried to dive into this topic and relevant information for me in this process in the analysis of the regulatory impact. So we received 350 contributions. 247 are against to what we're saying. They deny the advance. And this has to be dealt with. So we have the civil society participating and now we've had a movement where a lot is happening. And I think this is the right way to go. We are convinced and going back to what Marcos said, what is better for the society. We want to advocate for this, regulate so that we have more competition with better products, improve the well-being of our society. But there are things that should be taking place. We will continue participating and inviting everyone to participate. We believe that this is the way to go. The society has to understand what's going on. Of course, sometimes you see headlines in the news, the regulation has evolved over time. But we are very positive about this and hope that we will keep on evolving in the right track in terms of regulation.

Well, regarding the share, I do expect to have a large gain in August and September, but it's not going to be uniform throughout the country. The impact has been stronger. We see greater volume in our businesses. And all of this is driven by the consumer. Those who were using illegality to have volume in their stations, they probably have a very low income, and they do not really affect us. Consumers seem to behave differently, and therefore, the Ipiranga network as a whole in the city of Sao Paulo is selling more. And of course, we relate this to all of this movement. But of course, this is not uniform throughout the country, honestly. And of course, we have our projections. I'm not going to try to guess numbers here. I think we will see share behaviors varying according to the state also because of the impact that we saw in the shares in the different states.

I am from [ TPG ]. And you commented that the effect on consumers has been -- has happened already, but I would like to know what you think about resale. You're very close to it. And what is the impact of hidden carbon on the interest of resellers and the amounts brought by them? And my second question to Tabajara, is the program called Gás do Povo. And I know that we have more questions than we have answers. But what could you share with us about the expected impact, financials or not for Ultragaz shares in the upcoming months as a result of the evolution of the program?

Well, Monica, if we, as Ipiranga are troubled with the situation of the Illegal market, can you imagine what happens to serious investors. For them, this is harder. And of course, serious entrepreneurs who really invest their money, they are seizing the moment. It's a matter of survival for them. Those who are beginning to see some more volume in their business, even more so. And therefore, there is a positive impact. Yes, indeed. And it is too early. We can see some positive indicators. For example, we've been looked for by resellers or companies that bought from us but no longer do and are trying to renegotiate with us again. I'm looking forward to the day where I can come here and discuss retail practices with you without having to discuss the illegal market so that we don't have to keep on going to Brasilia showing the sector's agenda because I have to pay attention to my business, be more productive, more efficient, reduce costs, have better sales, tools training, people training, my team. This is what everybody would like to happen. All of the serious entrepreneurs want that to happen. Of course, there is a lot of expectation, but we all know that we have to remain careful. We have to remain vigilant. And we know that this business has to keep on getting more space for discussions so that we can attack this issue in a definitive manner.

Well, I like your comment in your question when you said that we have more questions than we have answers, I agree with you. Right now, and once again, we are very active in the LPG market worldwide in Africa and Asia in the business. This is shocking. 85% of the sub-Saharan Africa population does not have access to LPG. They do -- they cannot buy it. So different countries have very complex situations. Here, because of the evolution of the industry, it is different. We have the infrastructure in place. We can buy the bottles, but some people have to cope with rudimentary products all the time. Sometimes they alternate it with LPG. The product is there, but people can't afford it. In the past, we subsidized all of our LPG, but this is absurd amount spent by the government. This movement now is very intelligent because you, in fact, focus where you have to. We already have a program by the government to support with these expenses. The amounts will be expanded. In practice, these things end up not happening. And there is a lot of negative impact on this -- on health care and others. India had a project like this some years ago. The cost was much higher because they didn't have the tools in place. We have the capacity to do it. This is something that troubles us as an industry. We have all of this quality. We are a reference, and we cannot reach this population. Now with this government program, and of course, it's difficult to carry it on but we do want to support the program. There is a lot that is going to be published about this. There's a lot to happen. And I think that there is an impact on volume. It is an evaluation of the success of the program. Our perspective is still marginal. The first account we had with the government would be to add 60 million bottles or they would be available in the program. And a program that is aimed at supporting them. Those who already receive it already buy the gas bottles, but you have to take into account how much you're going to capture of the market. We are prepared to make the program work. We are fortunate at this movement we had to focus on the retail and invested in bottles because our model requires more bottles. We are now at a comfortable position without this program. We could even reduce our perspective and keep the investment level with increments to make the program work. But possibly we would not see a significant transformation in absolute results. When we talk about the company's profitability, we have bulk supply, bottle supply and then we have to take into account geographic location. So the profitability is not the same according to each one of the products. There are regions where the level of competition is also higher. And the impact may be limited in terms of profitability. But as an industry, this is something that will take us to even higher levels so that we can reduce the irregularities in this market.

Well, thank you very much. I'm sorry. Unfortunately, we will have to wrap up here so that we can comply with our agenda. I wanted to thank you all for your participation. I'm sure that we have a lot of questions from the audience here. We also received some questions in writing. But we have to comply with our agenda. We will deal with these pending questions later. Rodrigo has already announced we will go to the ninth floor for lunch. And then after that, we're going to have the meetings on the different floors. Behind your badges, you have the program. You know what floor you have to go to and what times for each one of the meetings. I also wanted to thank the communication teams, IR and all of our partners who have helped us organize this event, and we will keep on talking throughout the day. Thank you very much. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]