Vamos Locação de Caminhões, Máquinas e Equipamentos S.A. (VAMO3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Vamos conference call to discuss the results for the first quarter of 2025. Today with us at this conference call are Mr. Gustavo Couto, Chief Executive Officer of Vamos; and José Cezário, Chief Financial and Investor Relations Officer. This conference call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on the company's website, ri.grupovamos.com.br. The presentation is already available for download in Portuguese and English. [Operator Instructions] Before we move on, we would like to let you know that any statements that may be made during this conference call regarding the company's business outlook, projections, operational and financial goals represent the beliefs and assumptions of Vamos' management and are based on information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. General economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect the company's future results and could cause results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Now I'll hand over to Mr. Gustavo Couto, who will begin the presentation. Mr. Couto, you may go on.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our 1Q '25 earnings conference call. Let me start by highlighting our main achievements in this quarter. We remain focused on pursuing sustainable growth opportunities in the lease segment, prioritizing investments already made through our current inventory of old and used assets. This enables us to grow with less net CapEx, more efficiency and a significant competitive advantage given our scale and the liquidity of our used assets. We've reached net revenue from leasing at 15%, reaching BRL 960 million in the quarter, even after accounting for the volume of early terminations, repossessions of last -- mid last year. Also worth noting, 1Q '25 saw a larger off-season impact from the sugar and ethanol industry than the same period last year. Our team's work to increase used vehicle sales capacity has continued to deliver increasingly consistent results. We grew 82% in used vehicle sales with a record volume of BRL 290 million in the quarter. The strong performance was supported by the greater use of digital tools and expanded commercial reach with more company-owned stores and 78 third-party sales outlets also offering assets. It's important to note that the first quarter of the year is typically the slowest period for used vehicle sales, which highlights the strength of our team, the quality of our assets and the strong liquidity. Given the opportunity and need to improve our capital employed for the third consecutive quarter, we improved our gross fleet utilization rate, reaching 85% in the period. This upward trend reflects: One, new contract deployment; two, contract extensions using the same assets; three, increased used vehicle sales lower need for new purchases and reduction of inventory levels. We'll revisit these points throughout the presentation. But the combination of these efforts provides an opportunity to grow at a steady pace with less need for new capital allocation, creating room for efficiency gains and higher return for Vamos. As for asset deployment, we kept a consistent pace, reaching BRL 1.3 billion this quarter. The volume of deployment is fully aligned with the guidance we provided for 2025. The sugar and ethanol industry, this year specifically demanded less volume of investments compared to previous years. Even so, thanks to our commercial strategy, we've continued to diversify fleet and client base. The BRL 1.3 billion deployed in the quarter represents a 4% increase over 1Q '24, excluding the sales leaseback transaction from that quarter and a 2% increase over 4Q '24. This in sectors such as industrial shippers, service providers, utilities, environment, logistics, e-commerce, intralogistics, food and fuel. Another highlight is asset repossessions. Thanks to improved credit assessment, better processes and increased diversification, asset repossessions are reducing with BRL 217 million this quarter. This is again down the fourth quarter '24 and nearly 30% below the 2024 average. Lastly, reinforcing our cash position capital structure and market access, we've raised BRL 1.9 million in new debt at a very competitive cost already reimbursed by the company. Now I turn over to José Cezário, and then I'll come back later on.

Thanks, Couto. Before we get into the 1Q '25 performance, I'd like to briefly explain the reclassifications we made in the continuing operations results across the quarters of '24. As you all know, we had the spin-off of the dealerships in November. And from that point onwards, we excluded the results from the business. At that time, we concentrated all effects of the spin-off in 4Q '24 since that's when the spin-off occurred. What we've done now without changing the full year results for '24 audited and disclosed at the beginning of the year was to redistribute those effects across each of the quarters of '24. The effects are mainly related to financial income from credit between the leasing and dealership business, which prior to the spin-off were eliminated in consolidation. Once the business were separated, this credit appeared as a positive income under continuing operations. Also, we have the effects related to corporate cost sharing between leasing and dealership segments, which were fully separated at the time of the spin-off. We believe this improves comparability of results and was necessary for the 1Q '24 results to be consistent with 1Q '25. The reclassified continuing operation results for '24 are already reflected in our earnings materials, including the fundamental spreadsheet available in our IR website. On the next slide, we present the results from the Leasing segment. Net revenue from services grew 15% this quarter compared to 1Q '24, mainly driven by incremental revenue from new contract deployments and asset returns between periods. The revenue was impacted by strong seasonal effect than previous year from the sugar and ethanol industry, which tends to occur in the first quarter of the year when we don't bill certain clients who opt to make payments only during the 9 months where their operations are active. This is what we call the harvest period. This has no impact on full year results. This quarter, the off-season effect totaled BRL 40 million compared to BRL 24 million in 1Q '24. EBITDA from services reached BRL 856 million, up 12.6% and EBIT BRL 618.3 million, up 3%. The EBIT margin contraction is explained by the temporary effect of used assets that are still being depreciated, but not generating lease revenue. We expect this effect to be gradually mitigated over the coming quarter as we sell these used assets or lease them again under our Sempre Novo strategy. The next slide shows contracted CapEx volume, which reflects the value of new contracts signed and confirms that demand remains healthy and profitability is strong, even in a higher interest rate environment. Contracted CapEx totaled BRL 1.4 billion this quarter with an average IRR of 21.4%. If we compare the IRR this quarter against 1Q '24, excluding the acquisition of assets for a major beverage company, IRR rose by roughly 2 percentage points with average yield up by 0.3 percentage points or 13% higher year-over-year. The new contracts had an average term of 46 months, as shown on the right side of the slide. Of the total, BRL 924 million were for fleet expansion with new assets, BRL 51 million renewals also with new assets, BRL 310 million in contract extensions with the same assets and BRL 132 million for Sempre Novo contracts, which also had an average IRR of 22% this quarter. The chart in the bottom right corner shows the evolution of asset deployment for already signed contracts, excluding extensions. By the end of the quarter, the pipeline totaled BRL 961 million, which once deployed, will generate additional revenue for the company. Moving on to the next slide, we show deployed CapEx in the quarter, totaling BRL 1.3 billion, reinforcing our confidence in the guidance disclosed at the beginning of the year and which we are reaffirming through the guidance disclosed yesterday. Excluding the volume of deployment in the same quarter last year without the acquisition from the beverage industry, we had growth of 4% in deployment year-over-year, BRL 870 million in new assets for fleet expansion, BRL 5 million in renewals with new assets, BRL 286 million in contract extensions with the same assets and BRL 154 million in Sempre Novo assets deployment as shown in the top right chart. Our backlog reached BRL 13.9 million at the end of 1Q '25, up 2% compared to December '24, reflecting the volume of assets deployed and fewer revenue losses from repossessed assets. The next slide shows information reinforcing our focus on improving fleet utilization by reducing the volume of assets available for lease or sale. Our fleet utilization rate continues to improve, reaching 85% at the end of the quarter. While this still isn't our target level, we believe that we are on the right path to reach more efficient levels in the coming quarters. As for available assets for lease or sale, we had a decrease of BRL 66 million in the quarter, totaling BRL 2.8 billion, comprised of BRL 850 million in new assets, BRL 1.3 billion in Sempre Novo assets and BRL 540 million in used vehicles available for sale as we detail on the chart on the upper part of the slide, which contributes to the utilization rate of 85% this quarter. It's important to say that these values are based on historical acquisition costs without depreciation. For reference, the top left chart shows the net value of these assets after depreciation, just for reference. This quarter, we had BRL 217 million in asset repossessions aligned with our expectations for a reduction in these levels for '25. Compared to the volume of this quarter to the first quarter '24, we had a decline of 20% in repossessions. And when we compare repossessions with the average repossession level of '24, it is an even greater drop of 30%, supporting the trend of improvement we are observing. Also, the slide shows the deployment year of repossessed assets, showing that the 2022 showed the highest level of repossessions. On the next slide, we show in the slide a record or a new high in used vehicle sales, BRL 290 million, up 82% compared to 1Q '24, a fantastic result that validates our success of our strategy to accelerate used asset sales to improve capital structure and fleet utilization. Gross margin on used sales was 7.2% this quarter, slightly below our 10% target. This reflects both the strategy to accelerate sales and also a less appreciated asset mix since newer Sempre Novo assets are being used. The performance reinforces the strong demand for Vamos assets and the strength of our sales network, which now includes 20 Vamos Sempre Novo stores and 78 locations of third parties across the country. As for inventory levels, we continue in line with what we showed in the fourth quarter '24. The next slide shows the history of prices based on the FIPE table representative basket of assets in our fleet, showing first the strong historical correlation between new and used truck prices and also supporting our thesis that the used truck market is resilient and rarely suffers price volatility that negatively impacts the market. We now show the company's consolidated results and quarterly evolution of the key indicators. Net revenue reached BRL 1.3 billion this quarter, a 24% increase year-over-year, driven by all segments, especially the record used vehicle sales that was up 82%. EBIT was in line with 1Q '24 due to the effects we mentioned before in the Leasing segment and EBITDA grew 10% compared to the same period last year. Net income consolidated reached BRL 107.8 million this quarter. The decline is mainly due to the higher financial expenses and a higher effective tax rate compared to 1Q '24, as shown in the bottom right chart of the slide. On the next slide, just for you to better understand the effects on results, we break down the main drivers behind changes in both EBITDA and net income from 1Q '24 to 1Q '25 EBITDA, primarily driven by higher revenue from contracts with our clients, which naturally contributed to profitability. As for net income, despite the positive BRL 82 million EBITDA uplift, the impact of higher depreciation driven by fleet expansion and a greater share of idle assets offset the gain, combined with higher net financial expenses, thus resulted in lower net income for the quarter. Now we are going to the next slide, showing the evolution of our return on invested capital and on equity for continuing operations as of first Q '25 based on the last 12 months. As previously mentioned in the previous quarter, our ROIC is still negatively impacted by lower fleet utilization compared to what we consider normalized level. On the right side of the slide, we show a normalization scenario for the ROIC, assuming a 90% utilization rate over the past 12 months and an average yield of 2.5%, applying reasonable assumptions for margins, EBIT and effective tax rate, our normalized ROIC would have been around 16.1%. It's not a projection. It's a backward-looking analysis, but it does reinforce our focus on optimizing capital already invested and recovering profitability. As for return on equity, the main impact comes from the lower net income, as already discussed. Now going to the next slide, we talk about our net debt profile. Net debt grew 2% in the quarter compared to December '24, mainly reflecting investments made during the period. As shown on the right side of the slide, leverage remained stable at 3.3x net debt to EBITDA, the same level as the year-end '24. At the end of March, we had approximately BRL 4.5 million in cash and financial investments, including available standby credit lines, the figure reached BRL 5.3 billion, enough to cover debt maturities through mid-'27, confirming the company's solid liquidity position. This already includes the BRL 1.9 billion in funding raising at the end of March at close to 100% of the CDI rate as announced in our last earnings call. If we look at the value of our fleet relative to the sum of net debt, working capital accounts and receivables assigned balance, we had a ratio at the end of 1Q '25, 1.2x. We believe this is a conservative metric as it does not consider the market value of our assets, which historically generate positive margins on used vehicle sales. If included, the ratio would be even better. These were my comments. I'll now turn back to Couto for his final remarks and for him to talk about the guidance we released yesterday.

Thanks, Cezário. As you may recall, in November last year, we released a material fact announcing our projected deployed CapEx for '25, BRL 5 billion, a consistent pace with recent years that has supported the expansion of our active client base and our service revenue. To help the market better understand the market with the new Vamos following the spin-off of the dealerships division, we filed a new material fact yesterday, providing more details on the guidance we had already disclosed in November. In this document, we reaffirm our commitment to deliver consistent operational and financial performance, and we do so with full transparency. At the same time that we consolidate the company's trajectory with solid basis that are created. To reach the BRL 5 billion in CapEx deployed in the year, we will need significantly less net CapEx as 34%, that is BRL 1.7 billion will come from used assets that are already in our gross fixed assets. BRL 700 million of the BRL 1.7 billion refer to contract extensions that will mature this year that will be extended with the same assets with price adjustments and backlog growth. This is positive for our clients who avoid paying the higher lease rates for new assets and is positive for Vamos as we are improving returns on previously deployed capital. The remaining BRL 1 billion refers to used assets, the ones we call Sempre Novo. Those returned early and that can now be leased again. And this represents yet another great opportunity for our clients and shows how we are continuing to develop this new business model. In addition, we are already on track to reach at least BRL 1.2 billion in used vehicle sales. These sales are either paid in full or financed by commercial banks and therefore, have a cash impact for Vamos that is immediate. It's within the same year, reducing the need for additional capital to reach our BRL 5 billion goal for '25. As such, our net CapEx guidance for '25 is BRL 2 billion to BRL 2.2 billion. Based on our projections, current pace and the deployment curve, we project EBITDA between BRL 3.85 billion and BRL 4.15 billion. Given higher financial expenses, net income expected to range between BRL 450 million and BRL 550 million in the year and covenant leverage ratio between 3 and 3.2x net debt to EBITDA. Now let's move to the final slide for our closing remarks. Our fleet utilization rate of 85% reflects a gradual improvement in all our business fundamentals, especially the BRL 75 million reduction in asset inventory available for lease or sale. We remain fully focused on reaching the company's recent historical utilization rates. This is a top priority for our teams. Another important point is that 31% of the quarter's contracted CapEx was based on used assets, confirming the accuracy of our commercial strategy and the quality of our fleet. We implemented BRL 1.3 billion in CapEx this quarter and ended with a backlog of nearly BRL 14 billion. Even amid economic fluctuations, our contract origination and deployment capabilities remain consistent quarter after quarter, year after year. In a single quarter, we already completed negotiations for 44% of the contract extensions planned for the year using the same assets. We are close to reaching the BRL 700 million figure we shared. And when that happens, it will mean we've renewed around 70% of all contracts maturing this year with the same assets, therefore, avoiding the need for new investments. Lower asset repossessions already reflect the effectiveness of our control and risk management processes. The drop in repossessed assets, even as the company continues to grow is a key trend and remains a management priority. Our record volume of used vehicle sales, up 82% year-over-year is already tracking towards the 2025 goal we laid out. The secondary truck market remains resilient with stable demand and pricing. The combination of record sales and used market resilience proves the strength of our business model. Finally, our cash position remains solid to support the company's -- our commitment to the company's deleveraging trajectory, combining efficiency gains with sustainable growth. That concludes our presentation. Now we'll move on to the Q&A session, and I thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andre Ferreira from Bradesco BBI.

I would like to approach 2 topics. First, in the quarter, Vamos implemented annualized numbers of about BRL 615 million in Sempre Novo, which is below the guidance of BRL 1 billion, but it is a product that is ramping up. But contract extensions was a positive surprise above BRL 1.1 billion annualized, above your guidance of BRL 700 million that you are mentioning [indiscernible]. Do you see possibilities of closing the year of having more than BRL 700 million in extensions, partially taking the pressure on Seminovos assets? And second, if you could give us a bit more color on the used vehicles margin that is already a good evolution compared to 4Q '24. So what was that changed the margin? Was it the mix? Was it sales acceleration? And what would you consider recurring margin for the coming quarters?

Thanks for your questions. This is Gustavo Couto. As you very well said, BRL 615 million in leases for Sempre Novo annualized is below what we expect for the year. But you also very well said that we are ramping up. This is a product that's been very well accepted, and we see market segments already showing interest in the product. So we do believe that we are on the right track of delivering what we mentioned, which is BRL 1 billion in Sempre Novo leases. We are working, and I believe in this number. And you very well said contract extension makes sense to clients and Vamos. And this is a simpler negotiation because the asset is already there. The client already has the asset. With Sempre Novo, the client has to test, has to get to know the assets. So naturally it takes more time. Extension is as appealing as Sempre Novo, but the asset is already under the possession of clients. They are already operating with the asset. So it is faster and it is doing very well. I particularly expect it to be better than what we are committing to, but we are keeping the guidance of BRL 700 million. We are advanced. And I think that more and more, you're going to see this happening in contract renewals, which is very good for Vamos for several aspects. It's good because I can generate more value with the same asset. And somehow, this will increase the IRR of the project substantially. Second aspect is that it also increases my utilization rates because the asset does not stop. So that increases our utilization rate. And it also removes inventory volume. So from all perspectives, you see that it's positive for both Vamos and clients. So we do believe extensions are going to gain share in new contracts for the future and the coming quarters. As for used vehicle margins, we broke down trucks and other products. Then we are including machine, so we are seeking to accelerate things for some batches for some assets that we decided to sell faster. There is a bit of a decrease in margin. But again, the context is positive because we are no longer carrying inventory given the cost of money and how it has increased in the turn of '24 to '25. So I'm comfortable with the 7% of the year, although we had projected 10% initially, and we are adjusting to the normal this year to something close to what we had in the first quarter. I hope we have answered your question.

Our next question comes from Jens Spiess from Morgan Stanley.

I'll do it in English. So on the subject of contract extension, I just want to understand what percentage or what's the mix approximately of those happening before the contract maturity and how much are done at contract maturity? Because my guess is that with increasing yields, obviously, for some clients, it becomes attractive to probably extend the contract if you do some concession on like rental prices. So I just want to understand how that mix is within that particular division.

Jens, thanks for your question. I'm going to answer in Portuguese, but we have the simultaneous translation for those that are following us in English. Okay. Last year, we did have something like 55% of contracts maturing being renewed with the same assets. So an extension of 55%. And the trend is increasing. So today, I'm considering about 70% of the contracts to mature this year to be extended with the same assets. So there is a larger percentage of contracts that we also renew with new assets. But when we realize that the truck prices of new trucks are going up. The interest rates that we have today and the macroeconomic scenario, it is much better for our clients to accept a price adjustment. This is very important. We are adjusting prices for contract extensions, which improves our yield and profitability. But we see that the trend is there, 55% of contracts extended with new assets last year, more than 70% this year. So this is a trend, I believe, this will continue to happen in the coming years. And this is a consequence of our scale and also purchase strategy. Remember that these are assets that have good utilization. They are very new compared to what companies usually deploy in Brazil. And so it just makes sense that extensions gain room and that we can increase the prices of the leased assets at the end of contracts. I don't know if I answered your question or if you have any more questions, Jens.

Yes. I mean -- but this also includes contracts that didn't mature, but that you're renewing in anticipation because clients obviously might want to -- where you basically adjust the rental price, but less so than you would at maturity. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself. So for example, if you have a contract that will mature, I don't know, in 2 years that you extend it today, that's included here, right? Is it a significant portion of those contract extension? Or is it insignificant?

I understood now. Here, we are talking about contracts to mature in '25 and that are being extended. Of course, we are also in negotiations of having extensions before the year of maturity, but the numbers that we are reporting are for the contracts to mature in '25 and that are being extended for approximately 30 months. So what we are reporting are for contracts maturing this year, okay? So the BRL 300 million negotiated are contracts maturing this year and that are being extended for at least 2 more years.

The next question comes from Guilherme Mendes from JPMorgan.

First is a follow-up of the first question with regards to asset prices and used assets, especially the depreciation line. We see an acceleration because of the fleet mix. So I would like to know your thoughts, first about price of assets for the year and the impact for that on depreciation. And secondly, you talked about new contracts with an IRR above 20%. Could you talk about the main assumptions of this line in terms of capital flow depreciation? Just for us to understand if there is an effect in this number.

This is Gustavo speaking. I'm going to answer the first question, and then I'm going to let Cezário answer the second. Used vehicle and new vehicle prices. OEMs because they were pressured by the dollar exchange and inflation have been announcing price adjustments for '25. It's still early to say what percentage will go because we are seeing the volume of sales going down. That was expected. We should have some stability. So it's too early to say, but OEMs need and are pressuring for an increase in prices in the market. And we see that both in retail and wholesale prices. So this is a given. And that naturally brings the prices of used vehicles up because there is a very high correlation between them. So we see used vehicle prices stable now, but with a possible upward trend. This is what we see now. That's the snapshot of today. The increased depreciation, as you mentioned, is natural, as you also mentioned, if you think of the depreciation of the first quarter this year compared to the last quarter this year, this amount comes from the fixed assets. And second, because I am renewing these assets, I'm bringing new assets that naturally have higher depreciation. And this is something that the company has been saying that for 3 years that we would gradually normalize our depreciation percentage-wise because this is a natural recycling of the assets that we buy and sell. So this is an important portion, more than 25% of the increase comes from there. And there is a small increase that we are also being very transparent about. There is a batch of assets that we are accelerating depression because of the severity of contracts. We identified that. These are contracts ending in 1, 1.5 years, and we decided to accelerate that and that has an effect of about BRL 15 million to BRL 20 million in the quarter. So we are accelerating depression on a onetime batch of assets. But depreciation continues very much in line with what we projected for the year in the 3-year period and very close to what we see in the market. So in depreciation, no surprises, quite the opposite, precisely what we had planned for.

This is Cezário speaking. I'm going to answer your second question about the assumptions on the IRR. I did mention the growth when you exclude the operations that we had with that major beverage company. So when you compare the IRR of that quarter to this one, we had an increase of 10% and yield growth 13%, again, reflecting our policy of passing through our increasing financial costs to leases, especially the increases as of October last year, and we have been talking to the market about that. The assumptions that we have in the calculation of IRR are consistent with what the company has always done, that is the price of asset we pay for conservative depreciation rates, I would say, especially if you take into consideration the effective depreciation rates that we have in our asset portfolio that we know that substantially benefited with important appreciations in the post-pandemic period and also with the change from Euro 5 to Euro 6. And we do not take into consideration. We never did, not even this quarter compared to last quarter ever a scenario projecting any type of the continuity of this effect for the definition of current projects. So what matters here is that the criteria for us to calculate IRR are the same that the company has always used. And again, we see the pass-through of cost to our contracts as a reflect of the macroeconomic scenario. And that I also say, brings no loss of competitiveness given the cost of money is higher not only to us, but to everyone. So we see demand that is consistent and IRR calculation criteria are the same as usual.

And if you allow -- this is Couto speaking. Because contract renewals with the same assets and Sempre Novo leases are a trend for the company this year and for the future, it's important to note that perhaps we're even more conservative, but we think it's right. We use the price of sale of these assets for the IRR calculation. If you think that they are depreciated and they have a much lower amount compared to the purchase price, our calculation could be even greater. But anyway, we are being conservative, and I think that we are right. We use for the calculation of IRR, the price that we get for the sale. We think it's right. And in practice, we have even better results than what we report.

Our next question comes from Filipe Nielsen from Citi.

I have two questions. One related to the guidance. We have more visibility about what you think in terms of EBITDA profit for this year. If you could give us a bit more color in terms of trends for the key variables that is what are you considering in your guidance in terms of utilization, yield, used vehicles margins, just -- depreciation, just for us to have a bit more color of what you're including in your guidance? And the second question would be net CapEx. Considering that we have a scenario of still very high interest rates for the year, if we start to see a bit of a more compressed demand for new contracts, could we perhaps see a net CapEx that would be lower, that is you reducing purchases of new assets and therefore, selling more than buying or perhaps holding your assets for longer to delay utilization of the fleet. So that's -- these are my 2 questions.

Filipe, this is Gustavo. I'm going to start answering the first question and then Cezário, please, you can add to anything that I missed the second. I'm going to start with depreciation. As I mentioned just now, this is very much aligned with what you see in the whole. So I'm talking about something that is consensus that is there is a trend of gradually increasing depreciation as we have more new assets at a rate that goes up slowly. And if you get to the first quarter and you consider a gradual increase along the year, you are going to get to a good proxy in terms of depreciation. New vehicles margin, I did mention that we had projected 10% in the budget last year. We were preparing that in October. But then we had a higher interest rate at the turn of the year. So we decided to accelerate sales, as I did mention before, and the margin is at 7%, and I'm comfortable with that. I think it was the right decision to accelerate sales and perhaps have a lower margin than expected given that prices are very resilient in used vehicles. So the idea is to try to increase utilization and have the cash in company yields. For 2, 3 quarters, we are showing that we're able to price right. That is to pass through the increase in the interest curve to our prices, improving our IRR and that we believe is going to continue along the year. If you consider that the 5-year interest curve, and that's how we price. We don't price based on Selic, but future interest rate curve. If you think the future interest curve is going to go up, we are going also to increase our prices because those who are buying also follow the 5-year curve. And if you think the curve is stable, then you continue to keep good spread considering our cost of debt, and we're going to continue to grow in a healthy manner as we have. Net CapEx -- Cezário, do you have any questions -- any comments about the first question?

He talked about fleet utilization. And I would just add one of the slides which show how much our return on invested capital would be if we looked backwards, considering the last 12 months, which we believe is reachable for the future. And that's what we want to reach until the end of the year, which is 90%. So you see 85% today. We believe we can reach the 90%. So we are working with this target, but for us to reach the target, you have the day-to-day business dynamics, and we are working on that, just that.

And yes, Cezário, and then you're talking about BRL 1 billion something out of our inventory, which reflects our guidance as well. Anyway, net CapEx. We strongly believe this number of BRL 2 billion to BRL 2.2 billion is very much in line with what we are being able to do. Because, first, for new assets, contracts have a consistent demand. We are having a good spread considering the cost of debt and the contracts that are being signed and with the diverse segment. So I think it's a healthy growth. It was healthy in the first quarter, and I do believe it's going to continue so for the future. We see an improvement in used vehicles. I think Andre from BBI said that with the extensions, we moved faster with Sempre Novo, not yet there, but we are getting close. So we are going to continue working on those 2 fronts. And I will always have the option to sell if I don't lease and see, as I mentioned in my presentation, the first quarter for the sale of used vehicles is seasonally weaker. And still we hit an all-time record, very, very good 3 consecutive months. So my expectation is that we can have an even higher volume of used vehicle sales, which obviously would offset any swap in the different lines and not changing the net CapEx that we had targeted that is between BRL 2 billion to BRL 2.2 billion. So I'm keeping the projection and that will not interfere in our BRL 5 billion. We can have 5% more to one line, 5% less to the other, but the BRL 5 billion of the guidance and net CapEx of BRL 2 billion to BRL 2.2 billion, I do not believe will change.

Our next question comes from Daniel Gasparete from Itaú BBA.

Two questions as well. First, I would like to have your view on the impact on credit restrictions for auto financing, if you see an impact that Couto mentioned that you had good sales. Any deceleration at the front end? We see from the Central Bank data that delinquency for companies is more related to heavy vehicles. So are you feeling that? And also about the repossession of trucks. We did see a downward trend. So where do you think you're going to stabilize even in absolute numbers or a percentage of the fleet?

Okay. Credit restriction for clients that buy our used assets. We do see a denial of credit a bit higher, but we are keeping between 50% to 65% of the volume being financed, and this is stable. March was even a bit higher than that when you compare to January and February. So the month that would theoretically would be the worst was the best. So it's -- the things are happening. And Gasparete, what's important to remember is that our assets are very liquid. They are 3 to 5 years old. And they are the assets -- used assets that commercial banks usually finance. So again, we see a lot of interest for this kind of client that take this kind of credit, obviously, at a higher rate, but the demand is there. Another aspect is that we have seen numbers for the secondary truck market being very resilient even with higher interest rates or with lower interest rates. So we see interest rates impacting more the sales of new trucks than old trucks. It's what I say. When new trucks are very high and interest rates are very high, people go for the used trucks. When new trucks are -- have appealing prices, OEMs sometimes cannot even meet demand and respond to demand. And then again, those that need trucks now try and go buy used trucks. And that's why very consistently in the last 15 to 20 years, the used truck market has been very consistent regardless of the cycle, believe it or not, regardless of what's happening in the Brazilian economy. So very healthy demand, and we stick to the numbers that we are showing. As for truck repossessions, as I have been saying in recent calls, I think the worst has passed. That does not mean that a company of our size will not have repossessions. What happened in the grain transportation business, for instance. And we talked a lot about that. Even in last call, we showed that 2% of our fleet is allocated in the sector today. So that shows clearly that what happened in that segment was mostly corrected, but because of our size, we'll always have some reposessions, and we are talking about 5% of our fixed assets being repossessed. And again, the Central Bank delinquency data, 4%, 5%. When we say 5% of repossessions, we are very much in line with what we see now. But again, as we improve our controls, diversify economic sectors, have faster processes together with our legal department, finance department to address repossession situations, we are going to reduce the numbers. But I think that we are very close to normal as you saw in the first quarter.

Our next question comes from Alberto Valerio from UBS.

I think that Vamos is going through a new phase, and this is our expectations of everyone. I'm sorry to insist on used assets, but I think this is going to be the most volatile part of your business now that you don't have the dealerships. Depreciation is at about -- it was 7% of the fleet. Now we are expecting 4% to 5%. What should we see for this line? Do you think that purchase conditions are better now. So we are not going to go back to the 7%. And the second demand for the future contracts for April, if you could give us some color in terms of soybeans and corn and if you are able to capture the volumes that are coming?

This is Cezário, I'm going to start answering your question. I think there are some important aspects to consider. The first is that we do not see any scenario for the future. When we follow the portfolio of our assets and the FIPE price table, whatever perspective you have for the last quarters, you see both trend, no sign that we are going to have a loss in value or that we are going to have a different scenario or a major devaluation of used assets that would make us consider a relevant change in our depreciation rate for the future. Quite the opposite, what we have seen and the macroeconomic scenario tells us that is that we are going to have an appreciation of the new assets and therefore, of used vehicle prices, again, protecting us with a lower devaluation of used assets because of the foreign exchange rate, because of inflation, we have already had adjustments implemented in the first quarter of '25 by OEMs even in an adverse scenario. So I do not see anything for the future that will change the scenario that is very positive for us in terms of depreciation. But obviously, today, we benefit from a lower depreciation rate of what would supposed to be normal because of the post-pandemic effect and also Euro 5 and Euro 6. We are not going to have that for the future. So new projects, I have to take into consideration depreciation rates that are more conservative than what we see in our accounting. And this is something that we have to follow. And the convergence of depreciation rates that I have in my accounts with a portfolio of almost BRL 18 billion assets to something closer to new projects takes time. It's long term. It's not short term. So in a nutshell, I do not see anything that will change depreciation rates for now. But I do see a gradual increase as we have been saying since ever. I don't know if I have addressed your question.

I just have an additional comment, this is Couto speaking, to what Cezário mentioned. If you imagine that this year, 34% of my contracts will be signed with used assets that had strong appreciation and this is happening with contract extensions of about 30 months or using Sempre Novo assets. So these assets will continue having a lower depreciation rate. And that somehow pushes the projection that you have that at some point, we should go back to the 7% that we use in the pricing model. So the matter is that we have Sempre Novo and contract extensions growing proportionally in the volume of new contracts. And therefore, for these assets, depreciation will continue lower. After 6, 7 years, assets depreciate less. They lose less market level than in the first years. So this possibly is going to be observed by you as we are successful in our strategies. For your second question about future demand, we see a demand for our services that is quite diversified. As I mentioned, I talked about different segments, sectors, industries in which we grew. So again, I'm going to mention some e-commerce, very important demand; environment, waste collection, very interesting demand; food, transportation also very interesting demand; fuels and chemicals, also interesting demand. So we see -- and I think I did mention that before, the sugar alcohol, it was weaker this year. The volume of negotiated harvest was lower, but that was offset by other economic sectors that had an interesting demand. And we do have some negotiations of major contracts going on right now with shippers, carriers. So we see a very healthy dynamics and we have been able to grow in this space of the BRL 5 billion with a higher bar in terms of profitability and credit. And the foundations are established for this year. I think that we are being very transparent. We were very comfortable to provide you guidance even with more information given the confidence that the business foundations and the market demands new services. Remember that markets that are a bit more adverse have to reduce their cost. And we are a solution for the situation our clients are in. And so we do see demand going on.

Our next question comes from Rogério Araújo from Bank of America.

I have two on my side. First, it's about the implied yield. It did have a drop quarter-on-quarter. We see lease revenues going down and leased assets increasing by 4%. You talked about the sugar ethanol business that explains part of that. But could you first comment on what else could explain the drop? And also if you can talk a bit about the dynamics of the revenue recognition in sugar and ethanol, that is when do you stop recognition? And when you disclose the yield for new operations, is it the monthly yield of the X months that they operate, that is not 12? Or are you using the 12 months, that is, do you use the actual 9 months and you divide by 12? Or do you use just the months they pay for? This is my first question. And then PIS/COFINS credit, BRL 122 million this quarter, 11.5% of lease revenue. It's a record despite the sale of the dealerships that also had credit. So I would like to understand the increase and the recurring -- the recurrence. What should we see for the future? We estimate 7% to 8% of gross revenue considered the tax depreciation of trucks. But I would like to know if it makes sense, what else could you have in this line and what is going on?

This is Cezário speaking. Okay. I'm going to start and then Couto can say. First, the implied yield. You did mention one of the effects, which is the off-crop revenues, which is suspended. In practice, we have several clients from the sugar ethanol business that negotiates with us. Instead of paying a monthly fee, they pay for 9 months -- 8 to 9 months depending on the situation and not in the other months of the year, especially in the Southeast region. And that makes us recognize less revenue this period. Most of it is concentrated from January to March. There is another one that starts off season in December and things go back to normal as of April for revenue recognition. When we do the calculation of IRR, we do take that into consideration, obviously. And that does not change our dynamics much. It's not even a problem because generally, the deployment of these contracts do happen in the end of the intercrop season. So in the end of the day, there is even a positive effect that is clients start paying the 9 months to be able to save and not pay in the intercrop season. So this is one of the explanations as you very well put it. Another explanation that comes to mind is the fact that when you compare that to the first quarter last year, the first quarter last year had a lot less repossessions, an accumulated balance of repossessions. Today, we have the frustrated revenues of assets that are being sold or that are being leased under the Sempre Novo product. And last year, we had a much lower balance, which explains part of this implied yield that you mentioned. I would mention these 2 points that come to mind as the main explanations for such. Obviously, we have the entire dynamics of contracts that include services, do not include services that may have a token on that, but I do not consider them relevant to your point. As for PIS and COFINS credits, well, first, PIS and COFINS credits in the lease business are proportional to depreciation. So we do not see -- I'm talking about tax depreciation, not accounting depreciation. So it's not accounting depreciation, it's tax depreciation. So we do not see anything that draws our attention. We see the total of the company here. Let me just check with the numbers that you mentioned. Okay, 8% over the revenue I had in the quarter. If I do the same with the previous quarter, I'm going to get the numbers a bit more caution to be able to answer your question. But I would not say there is a change -- there is no change in terms of criteria or the calculation of PIS/COFINS credit. It's a direct relation of the tax depreciation of assets in the lease business. That's the main driver that leads to PIS/COFINS credit.

Cezário, that's perfect. Just a follow-up on the first question that is the sugar ethanol business. So you did mention that when you calculate IRR, you have that into consideration. So if it's a yield of 2.5% and that you're going to charge for 9 months, do you disclose a yield of 2.5% or 1.9% because you are receiving for 9 months, but you get -- you're considering the 12 months?

I do not normalize -- I normalize it to compare to 12 months contracts. That's what I mean. The yield of the 9 months would be higher of what I released because I normalize as if it were 12 months.

The Q&A session is now closed. We are going to hand the call over to Mr. Couto for the company's final remarks.

Well, first, I'd like to thank our team, investors, clients for yet another quarter of hard work where we observe improvements in the business fundamentals, inventory, utilization rate, used vehicle sales, consistency of new contracts and the sale of used assets. So we see all the fundamentals being consistent and those that were doing not as good, recovering. So we are very happy to our journey and where we're going with lots of opportunities, some of which are we are increasing our coverage in the sale of used vehicles. Results are coming. So we have a sales capacity and a capacity to deploy new and used assets. This is proven and will take us together with the new strategy of purchases to reduce inventory and therefore, increase utilization rates. And that will translate as we did in that exercise in the call to our return rates. Second, contract extensions with price adjustments. This is so important. This is an opportunity for the client. It is an opportunity for us and tends to be more and more important, as I did mention before. And the liquidity of the assets that are in our inventory. These are assets that are mostly appreciated, quite new, high quality, and that's why we are being able to sell them and lease them. And as we keep this pace of BRL 5 billion of new -- CapEx of new contracts signed and now using 1/3 of assets that we already have, you can keep a consistent pace of growth without doing away with the deleveraging of the company that we still want to show until the end of the year. So we brought a very transparent guidance that shows our confidence in what we are doing. And for that, I only thank you for your trust and thank our team for the hard work. Thank you very much, and we see you in the next calls release.

Vamos conference call is now closed. We thank you very much for attending, and wish you a good afternoon. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]