Unipar Carbocloro S.A. ($UNIP6)

Good afternoon, and welcome to the fourth quarter -- First Quarter of 2025 (sic) [ 2026 ] earnings conference call. Joining us today, we have Rodrigo, CEO, Alexandre Jerussalmy, CFO and Investor Relations Officer and the IR team. Please note that this event is being recorded and translated simultaneously. The translation is available by clicking on the interpretation button. For those listening to the conference call in English, there is an option to mute the original audio in Portuguese and by clicking on the mute original audio. The presentation is available for download on the platform and on the company's website ati.unipar.com. After the presentation, we will begin the question-and-answer session with additional instructions to be provided. Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any forward-looking statements that may be made during the conference call regarding Unipar's business prospects, financial and operational projections that goes constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information currently available to Unipar. Forward-looking statements are not guarantee of performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions since they refer to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect Unipar's future results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the floor over to Alexandre Jerussalmy, who will begin the presentation. You may proceed, Jerussalmy.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. It's important to note that the figures presented here are adjusted to exclude the accounting effect of IAS 29 as usual, which is applicable to hyperinflationary economies as is still the case of Argentina. Starting with the highlights of the quarter. We started the year with a new partnership for self-production of solar energy. Now with Casa dos Ventos, through which, we signed a new long-term contract for the purchase of solar energy with an average of 33 megawatts, a term of 15 years and a start date scheduled for 2028. Against the trough of the creation of a joint venture between Unipar and Special Purpose Entity SPE of the Casa dos Ventos Group in which Unipar has the right to acquire a stake up to 9.8% after certain precedent conditions are met. This new contract guarantees Unipar long-term energy supply at competitive prices and from clean sources, demonstrating our strategy of combining economic gains with sustainability benefits. Another highlight of the quarter was the start of operations for the technological modernization of our Cubatao plant, which involved extensive preparation in a very successful ramp-up. So the technology installed in Cubatao is state-of-the-art in electrolysis and will allow Unipar to produce the same amount of chloro-alkali with much less energy consumption and with greater operational reliability. To give you an idea, the reduction in energy consumption involved in this modernization is equivalent to supplying energy to a city of 340,000 inhabitants, just to get a sense of the order of magnitude of the savings and of the energy reduction. And this project had a total value of approximately USD 200 million marks the completion of the largest CapEx cycle in Unipar's track record in addition to having been covered by long-term financing at very competitive costs. And needless to say that the economic gains from this project with lower consumption of feedstocks and greater operational reliability will undoubtedly contribute significantly to Unipar's financial deleveraging going forward. And we recently completed the measurement of our sustainability goals in 2025, which had been established a few years ago. The good news is that we achieved all our goals. And here are 2 examples. The first concerns the reduction of CO2 emissions based on 2020, whose goal was 10% for 2025, and we achieved a 22% reduction. And the other refers to the goal of migrating 60% of Unipar's total electricity consumption to renewable sources, and we reached in 2025, 79%. We have other sustainability commitments that were also fulfilled by the end of 2025, which Cannaval will discuss further in the presentation. Now speaking of the operational highlights, we continue to face pressures stemming from external environment with an additional reduction in the international price of caustic soda when compared to the fourth quarter of 2025 and a slight recovery in the international price of PVC. In other words, the international prices for both caustic soda and PVC remained at excessively low levels on average in the first quarter of 2026. From the macroeconomic perspective, the challenge was depreciation of the real against the U.S. dollar and the persistent inflation in Argentina, which reached approximately 9.5% in the first quarter of 2026. From the viewpoint of electrolysis capacity utilization, we reached 73% in the quarter, which is below the approximately 80% average we have presented in the previous quarter. And the determining factor for this lower rate was the effect of the preparations and the ramp-up related to the start of operations of the new technology in Cubatao. In other words, it has to do with a nonrecurring factor going forward. The good news is that we achieved the PVC sales volume in the quarter that was 29% higher than in the previous quarter. Regarding the economic and financial highlights, our recurring EBITDA reached BRL 145 million in the first quarter of 2026, 20% lower than the fourth quarter of 2025. I'll explain the factors that influenced this quarter's EBITDA later. Our net profit was BRL 37 million, reversing the loss from the previous quarter. And our operating cash generation reached BRL 316 million, meaning that this is another quarter of strong cash generation. And with this, we closed the month of March with a cash position of BRL 1.2 billion, enough to cover 30 months of debt amortization. Our net debt over EBITDA ratio increased here this quarter due to some circumstantial reasons, such as, for example, the completion of Unipar's largest CapEx cycle and the lowest production level in Cubatão, resulting from the implementation of the new technology, as I have previously mentioned. On the other hand, our debt profile remains quite comfortable with an average term of about 6 years and 88% of the debt maturing only from 2029 onwards. In other words, it was another quarter of strong operational cash generation in which we managed to reverse the loss from the previous quarter. Moving on to the next screen. We have here the evolution of the electrolysis utilization rate. As I mentioned earlier, we had a lower rate than usually in Brazil. due to the introduction of the new technology in Cubatão. And the highlight for the quarter was the performance of the Santo Andre and Camacari plant, which operated at very high levels in addition to the plant in Argentina, which had a stable performance. From the energy standpoint, self-generation covered the equivalent of 63% of our demand in Brazil, a level of curtailment and unavailability of resources that reached 27% in the quarter. It's worth remembering that our self-generated energy contracts have sufficient volume to supply 80% of the energy consumed by Unipar Brasil. With no further investments required on our side for the generation of energy in the solar and wind farms. Regarding the evolution of net revenue, on the next screen. We experienced a 10% drop in reals compared to Q1 2025, driven by prices that were 11% lower for caustic soda and 13% lower for our PVC in the international market. And due to the adverse effect of reais 10% depreciation against the U.S. dollar. And these were partially offset by a 17% increase in PVC sales volume in the quarter-on-quarter. In the comparison of the first quarter of 2026 with the fourth quarter of last year, we had a positive revenue variation of 4% and driven by 29% higher PVC sales in the quarter, which offset the effect of lower international caustic soda prices, slightly lower caustic soda sales volume compared to the previous quarter and an adverse effect of the real depreciation against the dollar, which was also observed when comparing this quarter over the previous one. It's important to remember that the optimization of the marketing of chlorinated products remains 1 of our strategic pillars as it's a segment which is not exposed to the petrochemical cycle and with higher added value, where we have scale and differentiated solutions in serving our clients. And in the current environment of geopolitical instability calls by the Iran, the war in Iran, which has led to shortages in the supply of sulfur and sulfuric acids asset in the market. Our clients in the sanitation supply have placed even greater importance on our Brazilian production of chlorinated products because they end up replacing some sulfur-based products that are in short supply with chlorine-based products produced by Unipar. This is an important point that has been observed since the outbreak of the conflict between the United States and Iran. Moving on to the next screen. We have the evolution of our cost of goods sales. In the quarter, we reached BRL 935 million, representing a 4% increase when compared to the first quarter of last year. This reflects the higher volume of PVC in the comparison basis as well as some opportunistic resales of caustic soda from third parties, which were partially offset by an international price of ethylene, 18% lower between the first quarters of 2026 and 2025, fixed cost optimizations that we have been able to capture in the previous quarters and the maintenance of the average exchange rate of the euro against the real. And these were the factors that determined the COGS in the quarterly comparison. When comparing the first quarter with the last quarter of last year, the 9% increase in COGS is related to PVC sales volume, 29% higher in the quarter and some third-party caustic soda resales in the first quarter of 2026, as I have already mentioned. And they were partially offset by a 2% reduction in the average international price of ethylene in a 2% devaluation of the euro against the real now on a comparison basis. On Screen 8, we provide a more detailed breakdown of the quarterly EBITDA comparisons. In the first quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter of 2025, we had a 51% drop in EBITDA due to international prices that were 11% lower for caustic soda and 10% lower for PVC and also the negative effect of the 10% depreciation of the real against the dollar. In the comparison between the first 2026 and the fourth quarter of 2025, the decrease was 4% with a negative effect of the lower international prices of caustic soda and the appreciation of the real being partially offset by the higher sales volumes and also by the international price of PVC. Please note that the calculation of the recurring EBITDA for the first quarter of 2026, we are excluding the nonrecurring positive effect of the reversal of the negative margin provision on PVC inventory that we made this quarter. From the perspective of cash balance evolution, as shown on the next screen, we ended the end of March with BRL 1.2 billion in cash, representing a coverage of 30 months of debt amortization and this was positively impacted by the strong operational cash generation, which inturn was positively affected by the reduction in our inventory levels, especially of PVC. We spent BRL 115 million in the quarter on taxes and debt service. And here is an interesting point. In the next 13 months, we want to capture a significant reduction in income tax payments resulting from the accelerated tax depreciation of the CapEx that we realized and completed recently, which will represent an important tool for the company's financial deleveraging in the coming months. Additionally, in this first quarter of 2026, we had BRL 163 million in CapEx expenses and net disbursement of BRL 93 million of debt in the quarter, mainly from long-term financing from the BNDS, the development bank. Our debt profile as shown on screen 10 remains quite comfortable. As I mentioned earlier, we closed the quarter with an increase in our financial leverage to 2.58x remembering that this increase was circumstantial due to the combination of the completion of our largest CapEx cycle and the lower production at Cubatão plant due to the introduction of new electrolysis technology, as I previously mentioned. We are proceeding with an extended average term of almost 6 years and with 88% of the debt maturing only after 2029 onwards. And the composition of this debt is almost entirely comprised of capital market operations and financials from development banks and ECAs, indicating fluid access to capital markets, and also available credit lines with commercial banks, which Unipar has not used. I now hand over to Cannaval, who will discuss our strategic projects, and I'll be back for the Q&A session. Cannaval, over to you.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Alex, for presenting the results. I thank everyone who is joining us for this teleconference. Before opening the floor for questions, I want to reinforce some important projects. In Cuba, we completed technological modernization of the factory and continue operating with safety and operational stability. The project represents a significant milestones in Unipar's history, increasing efficiency, reducing emission intensity, acquisitioning the factory at a new operational and technological level. In Santander, we continue to advance in the execution of projects to increase chlorine and PVC emotion capacity, expanding operational flexibility and adding value to our portfolio. We also made progress in Camacari with flexibility in the allocation of chlorine, a move that expands commercial possibilities and reinforces our presence in strategic segments, including equity business. Another significant progress was the evolution of our renewable energy agenda. The new joint venture established with Casado Ventos represents another important step in building a more competitive and predictable energy mix and aligned with the long-term challenges of the industry. Looking ahead, we continue to believe in the fundamentals of the chemical and petrochemical industry, a strategic sector for essential segments such as sanitation, civil construction, agri business, health and infrastructure as well as being relevant to the country's industrial competitiveness. This long-term vision is also reflected in how we conduct our sustainability agenda, which at Unipar is not treated as a parallel agenda, but as an integrated component of the business strategy and the sustainable generation of value. We are pleased to state that all sustainability commitments made for 2025 have been fully met. The progress of our strategic projects has directly impacted the fulfillment of these commitments, especially regarding the reduction of CO2 emissions. Our goal was to reduce CO2 emissions by 10% from Scopes 1 and 2 and we came to 22%. Regarding the transition of our energy mix, we were successful in both midments. Our ambition was to reach 6% renewable energy use in our operations and achieve 65% of the volume of manufactured products using the source. We went further and achieved a 79% of renewable electricity usage and reached 86% of product volume from this source. Furthermore, we strengthened our social impact, expanding investments and the projects we support with an impact of 13.5 million people, responsible supply chain management is an important part of our agenda. And we have achieved 100% of our certified base meeting sustainability criteria. Finally, our safety agenda is the company's top priority management. We work with a 0 excellent management approach, implementing recurring safety actions. Details of our commitments and deliverables will be presented in our sustainability report, which will be published later this month. Finally, I would like to reiterate that we continue to operate in a challenging global environment for the chemical industry, marked by geopolitical instability, pressured international supply dynamics and reduced spreads. In this context, discipline and operational excellence, efficiency and consistent execution capacity become even more crucial for preserving competitiveness and resilience in the long term. Our quarterly results reflect our priorities -- maintained our financial health, focusing on generating operating cash flow and actively managing liquidity and debt profile. We will maintain our consistency to navigate the cycles with solidity. Thank you very much. I now hand over -- hand the floor over to Raquel, who will open the Q&A session.

Thank you, Cannaval. [Operator Instructions] We have a first question from Antonio Karos. You may proceed, sir. Second question is from Nicole Alonso with Santander.

I have 2 about working capital and allocation of capital. I would like to understand your expectations in relation to working capital to the end of the year, especially considering the changes in prices of resins and considering the advanced in the modernization of Cubatao. How can we think about the CapEx? Are you going to resume distributing dividends?

Nicol. Good afternoon. -- can you hear me? Well, there was an eco -- just a second, let's we had a technical issue. So Nicole answering your question in relation to the first question, can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you.

Okay. Great. In relation to the first question related to working capital. In relation to working capital, this is what we have. In this quarter, we had a normalization of the inventory levels. As I mentioned in the previous call, we ended 2025 with inventory levels above the average. What we would consider a normalized level for the company in this quarter and in March, we consider that we normalize those inventory levels. So from now up to the end of the year, in principle, we will not have any need or anything related to the work to a need for working capital related to inventory levels. On the other hand, we have the movement of prices, both [indiscernible] PVC in the international market. And this is public information. We have seen that those prices have recovered, especially after the outbreak of the war in Iran, we have seen an increase of the price of caustic soda and also of PVC. And as a consequence, we have an increase of our accounts receivable because we'll be capturing the opportunities from the market and absorb all those higher prices. But there's nothing to be concerned about on the opposite. Our management is very conservative in relation to working capital. And this is something that will not hurt our operational recurring cash generation. And in relation to suppliers for those who have been monitoring what we do, we have an average term of supply -- of suppliers that have been quite constant. We haven't seen a lot of variation in average term for payment. So we do not consider to see any need for working capital from now up to the end of the year. In relation to capital allocation of -- in fact, this is a point where we have a lot of discipline at Unipar. And once again, what we would like to point out is that the CapEx program at the company is very selective. Obviously, we are always looking at safety and reliability at the plant. But all the CapEx projects approved undergo a very federal analysis. And we intend to end the year with the CapEx level significantly lower than what we saw last year when we still had not only the reflects of the project in Cubatao, but also of the greenfield that was the -- the chlor-alkali that we built previously. So this is not something we're going to see this year.

We have a question from Regis Cardoso with XP.

Here are 2 topics on my side. One, I would like to understand the impact of the spreads and prices after the conflict I would like to talk about the evolution of the PVC spreads as well as the caustic soda prices. And what I'm trying to understand and for the second quarter, there should be a very big sequential evolution. We should have seen some effect because of March. Is there a mismatch of the prices maybe the prices are defined 1 month behind. I would like you to tell me about the dynamics of prices in the Mexican market. And if you expect the second quarter to be stronger in terms of results. And if you could mention the recurring level considering the end of this investment cycle.

Thank you very much for the question. We expected some positive impact can see during the conflict in the Middle East, but most contracts take into consideration minus 1 -- so you cannot reflect those effects immediately in terms of pricing. But without a doubt, the trends for the next quarter, is to have improvement in those conditions. Of course, there is a certain level of mismatch because you have an increase of the price of PVC and also the increase in the price of the caustic soda, but there's also the increase in prices of natural gas and ethylene. So we have to be very able in the point in time in managing all those pricing operations. The trend is to see some level of accommodation, and we have to be on the watch out of the behaviors, especially in relation to demand because price is something to be discussed, but also demand is something to be monitored. In relation to CapEx, I will turn over to Jerussalmy.

Thank you very much for the question. In relation to the CapEx, we have level of recurring CapEx related to maintenance and sustaining that is about BRL 180 million to BRL 200 million for the year. So this year, what we have in addition to the maintenance CapEx and sustaining CapEx, we have also CapEx. Part of it is related to the phaseout of the previous technologies in Cubatao. And the other part will be related to the projects that Cannaval commented on, which are the products of Camacari with chlor-alkali port, and we also have a project the project of PVC capacity expansion in the motion in Santander. We also have the expansion of capacity of chlorine also in Santander plant. So in fact, when we put together all those strategic projects with the CapEx of sustaining and maintenance, we are likely to reach a level of about half of what we had last year, when it comes to the total CapEx for the year.

[Operator Instructions] from Bredesco.

I would like to know how the utilization rate should behave in Brazil in the second quarter of 2026 and along the year, considering the resumption of the activities in Quebec.

Thank you for the question. The expectation is a high level of utilization in Brazil because the moment that we see is of high demand in the segment of chlorinated products. This the sanitation market also depends on sulfuric acid that has suffered a lot with the war and the other product would be the chlorinated products. So we are likely to cover this gap of the market with our products. And if we have a well-executed project and if the plant is fully available, the utilization rate tends to be very high in the second half of the year.

We have a question by Eder Lorenzo, considering the current macroeconomic scenario, how does the management see the distribution of dividends and interest on equity. Should we expect regularity in the fancy or total amount at the end of the year?

In relation to dividends, we maintain loyal to our dividend distribution policy, which is 25% in relation to the net result of the closure of the year. Anything above this level is something that will be discussed and decided specifically based on the analysis -- that look at the financial leverage of the company, liquidity situations and debt profile. For this year, what I can say to you is that 1 of our strategies and 1 of our priorities is deleverage and reduce our net debt level at the company, considering that all the instability geopolitical instability, put pressure -- today is a very good day to give us an example. It put pressures on the future curves -- so we have a priority of deleveraging the company, reduce this net debt level of the company and end the year with a lower level than what we have today. It by means of generating operating cash or by capturing any other initiative that may -- the company may adopt to promote this leveraging. So how much are we going to deleverage and how much are we going to distribute as dividends. So this is part of a specific discussion that takes into consideration the scenario of the moment and the projections that we have for the years to come.

We received a number of questions related to international prices and questions related to the geopolitical instability that have already been answered. With this, we close the call, and I turn the floor over to Cannaval.

Once again, thank everyone I would like to thank Unipar's team for the excellent results of the first quarter. It was a quarter of a very complex macro scenario. But when I look at the elements that sustain Unipar's results use of adequate costs and ramp-up of major project, I consider that the first quarter was excellent. I would like to thank the confidence that the board has placed in me and all the investors that continue believing in the future of Unipar. Thank you very much, and have a nice weekend.