Unipar Carbocloro S.A. (UNIP6) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Unipar's Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call present today with us are Mauricio Russomanno, CEO; [ Marco Rabelo, ] CFO and IRO and the IR team. This event is being recorded and [Operator Instructions] The presentation can be accessed through the MZIQ platform and the company's website at irunipar.com. You can flip through the slides at your own convenience. The audio of this event will be available on the company website soon after conclusion. [Operator Instructions] Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that forward-looking statements made during this conference call regarding Unipar's business prospects projections, operating and financial targets are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company management as well as on information currently available to Unipar. Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions they refer to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could impact Unipar's future results and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. I will now hand the floor over to Mauricio Russomanno.

Well, thank you, Jaquel, and welcome to our conference call. I'm going to speak about the operating and financial results for the fourth quarter and consolidated year 2022. I'll give you an overview of the company's performance in its transformation journey and then the CFO, [ Marco Rabelo, ] will detail the financial results. On Slide #2, the company's operating results 2022 represents a milestone in Unipar's trajectory. We reached the highest net revenue and operational EBITDA in our 53 years of BRL 7.3 billion and BRL 2.6 billion, respectively. An increase of 138% and 353% compared to 2019 when we started this transformation journey. This extraordinary performance of Unipar is a result of the execution of our strategy with excellence based on five pillars: sustainable growth, operational excellence, competitiveness, team and culture and sustainability. Our strategy has created clarity of direction structure for initiatives and projects, prioritization of resources and alignment at all company levels. The transformation of our management model. Our employees became protagonists, we increased the autonomy, speed and proximity of decisions at the end to support this, we created committees, communication rituals introduce an evaluation and performance cycle at all levels and a project office among other tools. This was fundamental for the scalability and the competitiveness of the company. What made our year extraordinary were not only our deliveries but this also tested our resiliency and ability to deal with diversity and certain changes of scenarios such as the war in Ukraine, global escalation of inflation, interest rate increases by central banks, hyperinflation and the restrictive measures in Argentina. Today as a group, we can say that we know how to operate in complex environments. We are agile and above all, we're very reliable for our entire ecosystem. These and other evolutions that we implemented were decisive for us to be able to position ourselves very well to capture the maximum value from this positive cycle of recent years and overcome adversities and challenges. Once this contextualization is complete, I will continue with the highlights of the 2022 journey. On Slide #4, we look at the sustainable growth pillar. We started our path of organic and greenfield expansion to expand our production, we will deliver by mid-2023, 15% expansion of our Santo Andre plant. This is one more step towards reliability to guarantee availability of the central products for sanitation. This sector is undergoing a revolution with the ambitious goal of universal sanitation foreseen in the new framework, there will be almost 100,000 additional tons of hydrochloric acid, which will allow the expansion of 50% of the pack supply. One of the main inputs for water and sewage treatment. Another highlight of this project named Artemisia is that the hydrochloric acid from this expansion will be produced with green hydrogen reduced from renewable energy coming from our self production that I will mention further ahead. Our products will be green, once the three power generation plants to wind and on solar come into operation. Another project already underway is our first greenfield for the geographical expansion of Unipar in the Camacari petrochemical complex in Bahia, the first plant in the Northeast, we will have in this Phase I and II the installed capacity of 20,000 tons of chlorine and 22,000 tons of caustic soda. The Northeast is the region that most needs a supply of [click] water and sewage treatment. We want to be present and contribute from the beginning of this journey to utilization of sanitation, and we are proud to contribute to changing the reality and the inclusion of the Brazilian population and sanitation. Unipar will continue to expand its operations to be close to the market, serving clients reliably and increasing geographic and segment diversification of its operations. On Slide #4, we speak about CapEx. We believe that consistent and growing investments in health, safety and the environment, the streamlining of assets, process safety digitization and strategic projects will lead us to operational excellence and ensure the continued generation of value and sustainability of the company. The evolution of investments in recent years proves our long-term vision. In 2022, we invested BRL 305 million, double the amount compared to 2019 and 8% more compared to 2021. On Slide #5, we look at the pillar of operational excellence. The investment program allied with the transformation of management and culture has taken our operations to a high level of excellence. This was a determining factor for exceptional results as we're able to take full advantage of market conditions. We reached another milestone in the history of Unipar, the highest average capacity utilization rate in year-to-date of 84%. This result is 6 percentage points above that obtained in 2021 and 13 percentage points compared to the pandemic period. In the Cubatao plant Capacity utilization was 88% in [Santo Andre] and Bahia Blanca rates are 84% and 81%, respectively. This level of capacity utilization was only possible due to the success of the commercial strategy of market diversification and the expansion of customer base, breaking of production records in the different plans of the company, the production of chlorine and PVC in 2022 where respectively 18% and 20% higher than in 2019. Besides this, we also had an efficiency gain of about 2% in the main raw materials and to strengthen our positioning we have rebranded our brand, consolidating the Unipar Group unit. In Slide #5, we're going to speak about the competitiveness pillar self-production of renewable energy is a priority for the Unipar Group. We are converting our energy metrics with the creation of three joint ventures. By the end of 2023, we will have two wind farms in partnerships with AES and one solar farm in partnership with Atlas Renewable, which will go into operation. Total generation capacity will be 462 megawatts. These are structuring projects with high impact for the company both in terms of economic return and sustainability, they will guarantee access to energy price predictability, cost reduction through tax exemptions, a carbon footprint reduction, green hydrogen production and new green products. 100% of all of the energy that will supply our factories in Brazil will be a renewable origin by 2025, 80% from self production and 20% from long-term contracts. In Slide #6, we're going to speak about the pillar team and culture. I want to reinforce that we are also investing significantly in the team to advance our journey to strengthen Unipar. We have an inclusive, ethical and respectable environment with our 1,400 employees. We have evolved and consolidated our culture and redesigned our values summarized in the abbreviation to SUPEDE, Sustainability, protagonism, ethics and credibility, respect for people and operational excellence. The Culture Committee was created in 2021 and counts on the participation of a diverse and multifunctional group with a mission of evolving and implementing the culture of the company. We held in the first quarter of the year, the first Unipar Culture week to disseminate and engage the team with a culture and values. On this occasion, we launched the program, [ Valoriza Valores ] as a way of recognizing employees who stand out in the company's values. We conducted our first diversity and inclusion sensors and form engagement groups to understand and create action plans to raise awareness about the theme and address the challenges. We keep this team prepared with development programs and evolving with new talent. At the same time, we relaunched the Academia Unipar and employee development program that includes training by level and roller function, and we are preparing a digital tool that will be launched in 2023 that will manage the employee development experience. For the first time in 2022, we achieved a great place to work in Brazil and Argentina. And in January now, our share Uni 6 became part of the B3 IGPTW Index. And in Argentina, we ranked 22nd as the best company to work for. On Slide #5 in the sustainability pillar. We launched on Unipar de our sustainability concept and commitments to the market. Our goal is to be an agent of transformation for a sustainable future, starting with our ecosystem. In the choice of priorities, we use the UN's sustainable development goals as a basis for the construction of the materiality matrix besides listening to our entire ecosystem. We chose safe and healthy -- health risk management, clean energy, responsible water use, waste management and inclusion and diversity as priorities for the company. We also define priorities to impact our ecosystem that brings together customers, suppliers, society, investors and institutions. At this event, we also announced our short, medium and long-term commitments with concrete goals. So that our entire ecosystem can follow and support their fulfillment. Finally, we defined three basic criteria for project selection. The project must have relevant impact, be aligned with our strategy and, of course, have an economic return this way we define 30 projects that will come with an investment of BRL 1.4 billion until 2030 to deliver our commitments I invite all of you to search on our website for the sustainability report, which contains all the details about our sustainability strategy. Slide #6, still on the sustainability pillar. One thing that I would like to highlight are our commitments to society in the biennium 2020, 2021, we invested BRL 7 million in 2022, we invested BRL 11 million, impacting about 800,000 people. For this year 2023, our goal is to impact 900,000 people from 43 selected projects with a social investment of BRL 15 million from direct resources, incentives and donations. The goal defined in our sustainability guideline is to reach 2 million people by 2025, with human development projects in sanitation, education, culture, sports and social actions. These projects were defined according to our guidelines and the needs of the communities that surround our operations. Thus, we connect with the places where we are installed signing a lasting impact of trust, mutual support and sustainable development. Unipar has also acted in a collaborative way in crisis situations as was the case of the pandemic. And now in the strategy on the northern coast of Sao Paulo. We contributed with donations in partnership with HGX, Mega Vale Transporters and Maranata Transportes. We donated 24,000 liters of sanitary water to the city hall of Sao Sebastiao used for disinfection and sanitization of houses and public buildings. Concluding this first stage of the presentation, I would like to end with our vision for the future. Unipar has the ambition to double its size in the next 10 years and to expand to other regions of the world. To achieve our goals, we have a strategy based on five pillars that we will continue to implement with discipline and rigor. In this way, we are confident that we will generate value in a consistent and sustainable way for our shareholders, thus ensuring Unipar's longevity. I would now like to give the floor to [ Marco Rabelo, ] our CFO, who will detail our results.

Thank you, Mauricio. And good afternoon to everybody. It is an honor to be with you in my first announcement of Unipar's results in a year as special as the year 2022. I will move on to the financial highlights of the year 2022 and the fourth quarter, starting on Slide 13. We recorded a net revenue of BRL 7.27 billion, a 16% growth vis-a-vis 2021, resulting from higher sales volumes in the year and the increase in the average price of caustic soda in the international market. Recurring EBITDA grew 15% compared to 2021, reaching BRL 2.628 billion. The 2021 EBITDA included extraordinary effects such as the adjustment of the acquisition price of Unipar in dupa and the recognition of credit rep referring to processes of ICMS exclusion of BRL 884 million raising the EBITDA of '21 to BRL 3.163 billion. The consolidated net income was impacted by these nonrecurring factors in 2021, looking at recurring net income, we went from BRL 1.169 billion in 2021 to BRL 1.334 billion in 2022 up 14% growth. Now if we analyze the impact of nonrecurring items, the 2021 profit was BRL 2 million. On Slide 14, we can see. More detail about the net revenue and COGS of 2022 compared to 2021. In revenue, we had the effect of both international prices, notably caustic soda with an average international price 90% higher than the previous year and the higher volumes sold, highlighting that PVC had its representativeness in revenue reduced by 50% due to the drop in international prices. In [indiscernible] we had an increase in the cost of inputs and also in the volume of products, resulting in a growth of 15%, notably driven by ethylene and natural gas. In EBITDA and net profit on Slide 15, as already mentioned, we had nonrecurring positive effects in 2021 that when excluded shows an improvement in results despite the maintenance of the recurring EBITDA margin, the higher sales volume boosted the net revenue and the EBITDA mass in 2022. Moving on to Slide 16. We can see the variation in the fourth quarter 2022 compared with the third quarter. The 26% reduction in revenue was due to the drop in the international price of PVC, partially offset by the increase in the international price of caustic soda and the lower sales volume due to the typical market seasonality. In [COGS], the reduction was also influenced by the lower sales volume without major variations and input prices compared to the third quarter of '22. On Slide #17, we see that those same effects are reflected in EBITDA and net income, which fell from 57% and 25%, respectively. We move on to information on our indebtedness on Slide #18. We continue with a negative net debt with a balance of BRL 22 million and with no concentration of maturities in a specific year. The company's long-term national rating was maintained at AA+ at the end of last year by titch. And the average cost of debt was below last year. We go on to Slide #19, we observed that in 2022, we had an operational cash flow of BRL 2 billion, which after serving the company's financial and investment obligations made it possible between the payments of dividend and the repurchase of shares to raise BRL 1.4 billion. And of course, cash also standing at BRL 1.4 billion. I would like to point out that in the management proposal for the AGM that will take place in April the management proposes an additional payment of BRL 192 million and profit reserve. These BRL 192 million, along with the BRL 25 million of dividends that were anticipated in 2022 regarding 2022, we will be paying BRL 1.3 billion. Now if approved at the AGM, the payment will take place at the beginning of May. With that, we will be providing our shareholders with a dividend payment of the entire available profit. We now go on to Slide #20. Unipar shares traded on the B3 under the ticker Uni 6 have appreciated 8% in the year 2022 with a market value reaching BRL 8.9 billion in December that year. We are continually improving our corporate governance and to the extent possible adopting the best market practices, given that the company in recent years has changed its level of sales, EBITDA margin investments and profitability for shareholders. Finally, we start 2023 already characterized as a more challenging year, whether because of the scenario of more restrictive prices and margins, the expectation of high inflation in several countries and the continued economic instability in Argentina. However, Unipar continues to be resilient in its results, are we seeking to exceed the operational excellence of our units, reinforcing our sustainability, governance practices and focus on better meeting the needs of our customers, always without compromising our financial health. We will now open up for questions and answers.

[Operator Instructions] Once again, the first question from [indiscernible] in the last quarter, there have been nonrecurring items to explain the drop of BRL 400 million to BRL 193 million. And this will not happen again in the coming quarter. Now we now have BRL 143 million less. What happened? Or will this be a new dynamic going forward?

Thank you for the question, [indiscernible] This is Mauricio. Well, the first information is that there is no impact in the last quarter in terms of reducing provisions or nonrecurring items. What happened was that -- we had a drop of demand in the market. There was a significant drop of demand impacted by elections, the World Cup. Of course, the part of interest rates and the drop in civil construction. Not only did the civil construction have a drop in Brazil, but worldwide and the international price of BBC also had a drop. And consequently, it had a reduction in the region. This is the explanation for that drop for the quarter.

Another question from Jonathan Lopes. If you could speak about two questions. The import hikes announced by the Brazilian government for some polymers and tires are these protectionist policies and if the company could speak about the Brazilian economy, its slowdown and the government's economic policies.

Very well. This is Mauricio once again. Thank you, Jonathan, for the question. I'm going to answer in Portuguese. First of all, when it comes to the levies or tax hikes. There are two arguments. The reduction of aliquots and some plastics have shown that they have an impact on the reduction of [ inflacement. ] The second topic there was a reduction in collections and imported products began to come in, not complying with the calls for the reduction of tariffs. Now this is a technical discussion. And today, we received the information that the [aliquot] for PDC will return to 11.2% beginning on April 1st 2023. The second part of the question about the protectionist policies in terms of imports. These are important for us. It's an issue of competitiveness and inputs vis-a-vis the rest of the world. When we speak about natural gas, ethylene energy, logistics, we're not able to compete on an equal footing -- now the prices in Brazil tend to be much higher than the prices of gas and energy in the United States, which means that we need to prepare ourselves to become more competitive it's important that we work with benchmarks, especially with equipment suppliers and outside consultants. And the results of these benchmarks have had an impact on the ability of our plants that have been able to be as efficient as other global plants. And we have this information from different sources. The problem is not in our ability of producing tons it refers to what is happening in other countries. Now regarding the last question, what are we going to do in terms of the economic slowdown. We're going to do what we have done in the last few years. We're going to [indiscernible] within our strategy, put our strategy in place. And what do I mean by this? First of all, we have to seek avenues for growth in other markets, different applications. We need to look for different product lines that we call adjacent lines and this will bring growth to the company in other geographies. When it comes to operational excellence, which is part of our strategy, we will continue with our reliability projects and I will give you a more concrete example. We carried out the implementation of artificial intelligence in our blast furnaces in Cubatao. And we're using the same technology in Bahia Blanca in Argentina. We have improved our maintenance cycles working with preventive cycles and not corrective cycles, which enhances availability. And when we speak about competitiveness year after year, we're fighting to reduce our variable costs. Now these are reduced through enhancement in processes, operations by eliminating losses and buying raw material more efficiently have had success with our technical team and our operations team in reducing variable costs that have become ever more competitive per tonne.

[Operator Instructions] We have received several questions on what has been happening with the first quarter of 2023, price expectations. And we would like to ask Marcos to comment on that.

Jake, and thank you all for posing your questions. As you know, we do not offer guidance. We are already within the first quarter, what is important to remark is that we are well positioned in some segments, the civil construction segment is very relevant for our company because of the PVC for tubes and joints we're also working in sanitation, another very important segment that brings about growth there is the ambition of universalization, and we're also present in several industries, pulp and paper, mining, as well as in other companies. So depending on our product line, well, PVC goes straight to civil construction, flooring and byproducts go to sanitation and our other products go to commodity industries, among others. And in terms of GDP, we're using this as a marker. We're seeing the performance of some of these segments I don't know if you want to add anything here. Now to connect to the question that was made regarding PVC in the fourth quarter 2022. Of course, quarters are never the same. In the first quarter of 2023. So far, there is no expectation of having a nonrecurring item with a significant impact, for example.

We have two questions from [ Charles demean Carlos Alberto ] Changes. If there's any plan in the company regarding this now for the year 2023, there will be no change in terms of the bonuses.

They will remain as they were last year. And of course, we noticed that they're reaching the level of our social capital to ensure that the reserves are not greater than the social capital we distributed or paid out part of the money we had in the reserves. Now this year, we will make adjustments, which is a common practice. More specifically, this is for the bonuses of the committee.

Yes, we have two questions referring to the operation in Argentina, one from Ricardo. Is there any way of working with exchange rate protection in Argentina, so as not to impact results.

Well, the operation in Argentina is a profitable one, and it does generate cash. Now the cash that we have in Argentina has applications that are packed to inflation and this is what we do throughout the year. We apply them to the bonus to maintain the purchasing power of the cash we have in Argentina. Now to withdraw cash from Argentina as we did the previous year, there are ways to do this. You can withdraw the cash without any penalty. We do have a long-term vision. We have confidence in the country. And we have an investment policy that will use part of our resources for the growth of Unipar in that country. This is one of the ways that we have of maintaining protection on the capital that we hold in that country.

Well, thank you, Marcos. Two more questions referring to our Argentina. A question from Paolo Barauna and [indiscernible] in a summarized way, which are the main learnings obtained from the operation in Argentina in 2023. What can we expect in terms of the 100% inflation a year and view of the situation of Argentina and outlooks for the company.

Well, thank you, Paolo and [indiscernible] for the questions. The main learnings, well, there are some practices and policies that we have adopted that have helped us navigate through this rather challenging scenario in Argentina. This is important for the operation. We have created changes in several points of the operation. As all of you know, there is a scarcity of resources of labor because of the import measures as well. And we have increased our inventories in some input. We're working with more than one local supplier in the case one is unavailable so that we can continue to work with a certain speed. Now when it comes to spare parts, we invested a bit more in some aspects of the operation to guarantee that we will have the lead time to work and to make the repairs or the products that we need to make. So we did implement changes in the critical operation points. A second thing that was decisive for us during the year. We're a very attractive company for Argentina. We buy 95% of the inputs that we produce locally and we export 40% to 45% of these. We're a company that is generating foreign currency for Argentina. And we're also a company that consumes inventory locally. What have we done therefore in a proactive and continuous way we are holding a relationship with the technical groups of local and federal companies as they work with imports whenever we need to import equipment or spare parts because we need to carry out maintenance for a capital-intensive company we are able to quickly identify where the bottleneck is and to gain speed to carry out our imports. The third point the preservation of cash and the preservation of our money, of course, our finance group came up with a very good project. We are careful with inflation or preserving cash according to the movements. We are making sure not to devalue the company and in some cases, we are assessing the speeding up of some local investments for cash burn and to exchange this for productivity. Well, all of this based on the experiences that we have had in Argentina. I did forget another decisive change. We carried out the acquisition of [indiscernible] we also dollarize our sales prices, which has been used to hedge our profitability. These are simply some points that you can reflect on and assess when you hear the presentation. Anything else regarding Argentina?

I think that is it. We have two questions from Charles and Antonio [indiscernible].

The unfolding of shares in 2023 and well, the company is always monitoring and serving all of the shares of the company to enhance their trading to enhance the average daily traded volume, of course, to benefit the shareholders. We did this the previous year, and we will survey doing it this year, but we still have no expectation for the short term.

Thank you, Marcos. Carlos Alberto De Padua. What is happening with the construction of the new plant in [ Camacari ]

Well, thank you, Carlos. The project for the construction of the [ Camacari ] plant is in accordance to the schedule, we are now surveying land. We have carried out the acquisition of some equipment. And it's advancing as foreseen.

We have Charles from Elevate Capital. With the context of uncertainties in 2022, which is your CapEx expectation for this year?

Thank you, Charles, for the question. Nothing changes regarding CapEx. In the last few years, we have had excellent results, and this has enabled us to have a high degree of comfort. We have BRL 1.3 billion in cash. Our leverage is very close to zero. We also had net debt of BRL 1.3 million, our net debt is practically in [indiscernible]. So because of this, the CapEx has been progressive in '19, '20, we invested BRL 650 million in 2021, BRL 265 million. And last year, BRL 365 million. Now CapEx is geared to sustaining to continuity projects for assets, for safety for the environment and much more. And we have invested ever more in these project, we have the [ Artemis ] Group, the [ Camacari ] project that we are investing in as well as several other projects. And our CapEx for the year will probably be higher than that of the year '21 and '22.

Question of Joel regarding renewable energy? And will the cost drop or not?

Joel. Thank you for the question. I think that we have explained that the cost of energy for Unipar will drop in production -- in a regime of self production and in partnership with an investor in wind and solar farms that were carried out the previous year. Now of course, it is true all of this that we will have a reduction in the cost of energy. It will have an impact on our cost matrix and this will begin in January of 2023. We're going to use renewable energy and, of course, work in that self-production regime and this is an issue of having a green seal and decarbonizing our products as caustic soda and other.

We have another question from [ Gutie. ] Is there the possibility of using the cash generating in Argentina and projects linked to the extraction of lithium in the north of Argentina? Or are these still at an priory scape doubtlessly?

we have to think of the best capital allocation in Argentina and productive projects that will also be long-term projects. We would like to begin the lithium project beginning in our Bahia Blanca plant.

I would like to take advantage of the fact that we have gone back to Argentina to answer another question by in, I believe. Regarding Argentina, question that I did not answer -- your vision on the situation of Argentina, the outlook for the company and its results. Well, obviously, I can't refer to this in detail. The situation in Argentina is something we have to follow up closely on the local operation is highly efficient. It operates very well. And when we speak about lessons learned, we are working with processes and measures that are implemented in a very expedition way -- expeditious way to make things happen. And we have to work very closely with the customers and the markets. We work with them closely in terms of inventory, our default levels in Argentina are very low. And this is important to guarantee the soundness of our company and our operations. We follow up on the evolution in the Argentine market. Now regarding outlook, I cannot comment on this. This is a year where they have elections at the end of the year. And we also need to observe the preparation for election and how this will unfold in the country.

Thank you, Mauricio. At this point, we would like to end the question-and-answer session. I would like to return the floor for the closing remarks.

Well, thank you once again for your attendance at our results call. Should you require any clarification, please speak to our IR team or with [ Marco Rabelo ] or myself. Before concluding, I would like to especially thank our employees that build our results day after day, we have had historical results. This is a matter of celebration. It's the work of each person at Unipar that makes the difference and that allows for this exceptional performance. With this we will continue to move along in our trajectory, always with efficiency, safety and of course, with responsibility. I thank the cooperation of all of our as well as the Board of Management that has supported us on this journey. We want open and transparent communication, and I am at your entire disposal, should you have any additional doubts. Thank you very much.