Jalles Machado SA

Jalles Machado SA

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Nov 12Next Earn

Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJune 17, 2026

Operator

Joining us today are Mr. Otávio Lage de Siqueira Filho, our CEO, and Mr.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira, CFO and IRO. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr.

Otávio Lage. You may begin, sir.

Otávio Lage de Siqueira Filho

Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to, first and foremost, thank you all for joining this call.

We will, very transparently and very seriously, present our fourth quarter figures of the 2025/2026 crop year. We're very happy to count on our investors.

We know that these have been tough times. Thank you for believing in us.

We hope that these 45 years in Jalles Machado really give evidence to the fact that we're always doing our best to get it right. There will, of course, be harder moments.

We know that there are ups and downs in the market. We have weathered crises before.

This is a good moment for us to innovate, for us to believe in changes, for us to really stand up, dust off, and look out for opportunities. The company has always found opportunities to be stronger at the end of such challenging moments.

I'd also like to thank our team, our CFO and the whole team has been working hard. The team has been devoted, on a daily basis, looking to bring us better results.

Please read the sustainability [laughter] report. It's a quick read.

It's only 117 pages. We did put it together in all transparency.

We really wanted to have this snapshot, this clarity on the company's sustainability. We've always been very careful about the environment.

We've always cared about governance, even way back when it was not in fashion. We've always tried to look after the environment, because the environment allows us to exist.

We're going to present the results. Rodrigo, namely, is going to be presenting them.

This last year was no easy year. We had lower yields, but that has happened before.

We work with nature. We can't control nature.

We can mitigate some risks, as we've always done it. We have irrigation that can be used just to maintain the crops, or even to salvage them if necessary.

We've been investing also in the Santa Vitória plant that we recently bought. We've gone from 59, and we expect to get to 70 tons per hectare.

We know this is no easy task. We need to change crop management.

We need to change varieties. We've been doing it, and we're very happy with the results we've been having.

The pricing has also left quite a bit to be desired this year. We're hoping to see pricing and prices, in general, climb back up.

We've taken a number of measures to reduce costs, to cut back costs. We reduced personnel substantially.

We've been trying to invest in matters that will deliver quick returns. We've also reduced our CapEx.

I'll turn the call over to Rodrigo for him to talk about the operations and the figures. I'd like to thank you all again.

Thank the shareholders, our partners, and all the stakeholders, as well. We hope to see better figures in our next meeting together, with better interest rates, with better cash flow.

We are certain we'll see better days soon. We have had tough moments in the past, and we will survive this, as well.

We'll weather this moment. Again, we hope for better days.

We hope to be smiling due to our good results in the future and very soon. Thank you.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Thank you, Otávio, for your words. This is the last conference call for 2025/2026, for this crop year.

Thank you very much for joining us on this conference call, as well. As Otávio said, we wish this year had been better than it was.

We had okay prices in ethanol and okay prices in sugar, but we had a 15% crop failure. Still, we have highlights that we're going to be looking into.

We were able to keep our debt levels, keep our leverage in spite of the substantial crop failure. We have a hedge for sugar that's quite high for the next two sugar crops.

We know that our irrigation can mitigate the climate risks to a certain extent, and the organic risk, as well. This also helps us not be subject to the seasonality of the sugar and ethanol commodity prices.

Worked to keep the company in a position where we will not need to capture anything in the coming three years, capture any new loans. Let's get started with the presentation, shall we?

Let's talk about the world sugar market. We had a 1.6 million ton surplus, with the use of 41%.

This is from October to September. This is the crop year used on a global scale because of the Northern Hemisphere countries.

These are Datagro data, updated in June 2026. We have a new year starting in October 2026.

We should have about 2.2 deficit, where the supply surpasses demand. The curve here in these past 15 years, as you can see, there's no high supply that starts a deficit.

That doesn't quite match the excesses we see in sugar prices. Why is it that we're going to a surplus to a deficit?

India is going down by about 1 million tons, Thailand by almost 2 million, the European Union is also going down by about 2 million, and Brazil, according to Datagro, we see that the Center-South of Brazil is growing by about 1 million ton. The next sugarcane crop starts in October 2026, with these 2.2 million tons in deficit.

There is a perspective of change, an expectation of change in the coming 12 months. Here we have crushing compared to sugar production.

It should be about 40 million. This is what we've been seeing by most references.

And 640 million tons in crushing, with 47.2% mix. What do we have then for ethanol in the Center-South when it comes to the supply?

We should have about 5 million L more year on year when it comes to supply, some of that coming from corn, about 2 billion, and the rest coming from sugarcane, with higher crushing volumes and with the more ethanol-focused mix from last year. These 5 billion L extra, for a like-to-like comparison, it translates to a 2.9 million L when we compare to the previous crop year.

With E32 that was recently announced by the government, there's another meeting next week, as well. Everything suggests that that should happen.

The industry has met with Minister Alexandre Silveira, with the President. Otávio was present at this meeting.

Everything is said, I would say, so that we see E32 in force as of August. There is the natural Otto cycle.

We're considering 680 million tons. There's 2% more, and so far it's been more than that, the Otto cycle growth.

We're talking about when we have a like-for-like, almost 2.9 billion L that need to be used by the market. That, especially now in the middle of the crop year, this leads to a substantial amount of supply.

Looking into some more data, when we look at the ups and lows and the sugar price cycles, we have an analysis ever since 1998 showing how the prices have behaved. Whenever a price goes down, the corrected historical average, the time it will take to recover is the time it will be below the average.

There were several events like this. Between 2006 and 2009, this is the longest period it took to recover, 20 12 to 2015, and 2017 to 2020.

These were the longest low cycles. 444 days on average.

This is the length of these cycles. Less than 1.5 years.

The longest one between '17 and '20 was almost 4 years long. I had said 444 days, slightly over a year.

Now we've been in a low cycle for 383 days. If we look at the average, it should be close to the end of the low cycle.

We just wanted to share with you the low cycles. Our comfort, we have our sugar well-hedged for the coming two years, following our hedge policies that we applied in the past two years.

It's already lasted over a year. If it lasts for another two, it's going to be three years, and Jalles would be well-hedged when it comes to sugar.

It's a strength of the company. When we look at an SCA forecast, we would see that the petrol prices wouldn't change.

The curve for the average price in São Paulo would be this. The estimated weighted average gross price would be 3.16.

That's a 21-cent decrease year on year. Our forecast is a bit more conservative for the year.

Again, this is the SCA data. We have given no guidance around pricing yet.

We would expect it to be slightly lower than 3.16. Now let's look at our operations.

Let's start talking about the actual company and not so much about the market. We had 10% less crushing year on year, and almost 15% less than expected.

The TCH, the yield, was 84 compared to 74. This year 74, last year 84, a 11% decrease.

Climate had a substantial impact. We're in the states that were most impacted by the climate.

Minas was the state that was most impacted, that had the most crop failures, and Goiás was the second most impacted. The Center-South didn't have such a major impact when it comes to the drought, but these two states, Minas Gerais and Goiás, really felt the impact.

We had 10.4 tons per hectare. Our TRS was 10.4.

We had thought about a higher sugar mix at the start of the year, but at the end of the crop year we're already started focusing on ethanol in the Goiás plants. The average age of the sugarcane field is quite comfortable for us, about 3.2 years.

We have not stopped renewing the sugarcane fields. This is a must for us.

Our sugarcane fields need to be ready to have a good vegetation phase and produce a lot of yield when the climate plays along. Now let's talk about the rainfall.

On every site, we had a higher rainfall than the historical figures. In Minas Gerais, it was quite good.

Only in April and May did it rain less than the historical average. These charts here are from June.

In Santa Vitória, we had a 110 of rain. That was quite good to help the sugarcane field at the end of the crop year.

We've had over 30% of the crop year, this is going to make sure the ratoon is better and that the planting is also better for next year. When it comes to pricing, sugar's gone down by 11%.

It was to a certain extent offset because we had our hedge. With the hedge settlement and the commodity, we're offset.

Ethanol was 10% higher at 3.40. It was our strategy to leave most of our ethanol to be sold in the third and fourth quarters.

We really wanted to have ethanol after the crop year was over so that we could sell. We sold 102% of our production.

We ended last crop year at a higher level, and now we've climbed back to regular levels. We still had a lot of ethanol carrying over from one crop year to the next.

In sugar, we're also more efficient in our inventory management. In the warehouses, we also had a substantial reduction, about R$15 million.

This was thanks to the procurement team managing inventories better, as well. Now financial highlights.

When we look at the hedge and derivatives, we had a positive 5 million result or effect. We had 220 million if we look at the exchange rate, as well.

In the indexer figures, these are swaps that we had for IPCA to CDI rates in our debts. We'll look at the interest rate curve from the start of the past crop year till now.

All of the IPCA, the Brazilian Consumer Price Index rate, had an impact that you can see here. Our adjusted EBIT, EBIT with biologicals and with the hedges, we had a 14% margin and 296 million in adjusted EBIT.

Now adjusted EBITDA was 1,306, with a 61% margin. Net income was 9.5 against 55- last year.

In cash, well, there's depreciation, but other effects, such as biologicals, non-cash hedge, non-cash taxes, without them, we had 120 million+. This was a better year than last year.

Last year wasn't a good year, either. Considering we had a 15% crop failure, it was still a reasonably good year.

Let's look at our indebtedness. We were able to reduce it by almost 1% when we look at our net debt.

Deleveraged went from 1.2 to 1.3 times net debt/EBITDA. This is because our EBITDA was lower because of the crop failure, but we still sustained the debt.

We ended the year with 1.8 million in cash. Only 5% of the debt is due in 2027.

The rest is longer-term. Even with our cash being higher than our liquidity, we'd need to have further capital coming in.

This has already been signed. It's been announced to the market, but this would only take place in about 3 years.

The average debt term goes from 4.7 to 5.2 years. This is quite comfortable, and we've always had this as a policy.

We've always worked to have a robust liquidity. This became even more advantageous because our general capitation cost is the same as our application cost.

We're not carrying over higher cash, we're not having this cost. We're having zero cost, even though we have a higher cash.

The interest we're getting from this cash invested is the same as we're paying for the hedge. 2026/2027 is hedged at 2,489.

This is from the 13th of May, these data. We have 40% higher than the average price.

This has been worse today, because this is the 13th of May and the figures have gotten worse. As per the guidance we released last night, we have 85% fixed of sugar.

That's 100% of the total volume available, because there's always a discount due to a possible crop failure and the partnership that we have with CoperSucana. Sugar's almost 50% of that, this is a natural hedge.

Looking at what is available, we have 100% fixed. Considering the sugar production guidance, if we look at March, we had an even higher volume fixed for this crop year.

As we defined we could be focusing on ethanol in the first months, then we reversed that so that we would not be sold in excess. It wouldn't be sold in excess because of the guidance of lower sugar production.

Everything we publish when it comes to the hedge strategies, we always speak about our sugar production capacity. When we have less sugar capacity, the hedge possibility is higher, spare.

When we look at the next year, and we have almost 50% of our capacity for hedging, if you reduce it or if you have 50% of that for sugar, then it's going to be 100. As we don't have a guidance for the next year, we're looking at the capacity that we have right now so that we don't fail to comply with any CVM requirement.

COGS, we had an increase of 8% in unit costs due to that 15% crop failure. This is a year where if there were or there had been no drought, we would have had a reduction in our costs in production.

The Brazilian real had an increase in value this year in comparison to the American dollar. Production guidance, we had 10% more in crushing.

The ATR, which is the TRS, is a bit lower now because we had a lot of rain at the end of the crop year, we're expecting to be lower. The mix is going to be more ethanol-based, only 41% sugar.

As I said, this year is going to be a decision we're going to be looking at in the course of the year. Maybe we will focus more on sugar at one point and then more on ethanol at another.

As for CapEx, we had lower CapEx at the end of the last crop year, 6% lower than the guidance, and we're expecting to have 12% less for the next year. This is our guidance.

As Otávio said, we are working on reducing our CapEx. We'll reduce OpEx and non-essential CapEx, the ones that don't deliver quick results, quick returns.

We're holding back the CapEx that is not key. We're increasing our irrigation, especially in Santa Vitória.

This is basically it. We've been doing irrigation because this is really very beneficial.

We wanted to be doing it faster, but there are the electric power issues in Santa Vitória. That was it.

We'll now start our Q&A session. Just before we do that, I'd just like to say that there are some real highlights in this crop year: good liquidity, good sugar hedging for the next two years.

This is already considering a very long low cycle for sugar. Working with a cost reduction, an increase in competitiveness.

We've been talking about this a lot: reducing costs, increasing competitiveness and efficiency. This has really been a target we've been pursuing.

This is the time when we really have to be innovative and creative and do what needs to be done for us to be more competitive, as Jalles always done in past crises. All right, let's get started with the Q&A session.

Thank you very much for joining.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now start our Q&A session. To ask a question, please use the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen.

You just need to click the icon. If you want to ask a question verbally, just say you would like to ask a question in the Q&A field, and then your name is going to be called out, and a pop-up will allow you to unmute your microphone.

If you've connected by a phone, you can also ask questions. In this case, just press *9 on your phone.

After your name has been called out, you'll listen to a command to press *6, and you only have to do that once. The first question comes from Guilherme Guttilla from BTG Pactual.

Mr. Guttilla, you may begin, sir.

Can you hear me now?

Guilherme Guttilla

Good afternoon. I've got two questions.

There's a guidance increasing productivity, right? There's a point we discussed on our last call, which was a potential cost reduction.

You said you expected a potential reduction of maybe 5% to 10%. I just wanted to understand if this still applies, if this is something that we should still consider for this year considering the new guidance.

My second question has to do with the mix. You changed the mix substantially in this crop year, right, focusing on the ethanol.

Ethanol prices have been low. We see there's high supply in the market, especially high supply of corn ethanol.

You also said in this sugarcane study that when we look at the low cycle, we're close to the end of the cycle. Can you just give more color on what is behind the strategy, why you should have such a focus on ethanol at this point, and if you think this sugarcane low cycle could take longer to finish this time, or if not?

Thank you.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Hi, Guilherme. Thank you very much for your question.

Thank you for joining the call, as well. We have an increase in harvest of 2%, and the average TCH is 8% higher.

That's what we consider for this guidance, with an increase of 10% in crushing. When we look at this year, and we've been spending on inputs, but we've become more competitive than last year.

When the war first started, we thought that MAP and urea could have an increase in pricing, but we were already hedged for up to August. We had bought all of the crop protection products at a price that was almost 15% lower than last year.

Also the fuel, right, diesel, in spite of the war, we had the subventions, right? As we expect this 8% increase in yield, then we will hold on to this reduction.

We really did our homework to reduce our personnel. We had a 350-person reduction in the three plants.

We've been working with the teams to be more efficient, we continue to hold on to this 5%, 10% that we mentioned on the previous call. Now, as for the more ethanol-focused mix, well, we're in Goiás and Minas Gerais states.

It's been almost 30 days that some plants in São Paulo that focus more on exports and they're closer to the port, they turned, as well. In São Paulo, most of them are focusing more on sugar.

In Minas, at this point, we were getting the same price for ethanol and sugar. Ethanol has a better net present value than sugar at this point.

We're analyzing that on a daily basis. When we look at Goiás, then ethanol is also looking better than sugar with the current prices.

We need to stress the point that we have a hedge. The sugar we're not producing to produce ethanol, that is being reverted in the future market and we're getting the adjustment, it's like I were selling the sugar at a higher price.

If we get a premium for ethanol and sugar, then we're getting it again. When we spoke about the guidance, I said this could change.

Say that sugar starts to recover and it recovers more than we expect the ethanol curve to hold, then maybe we'll shift our strategy. This guidance can change substantially in the course of the year.

We are looking at this matter on a daily basis. When we look at the length of the low cycle, how long it's going to last, well, it's very difficult to predict if it's going to last the average time or longer than the average.

My own personal opinion is that there should be changes for the next crop year. When we look at the premises, inventory to consumption ratios, the deficit, it wouldn't make sense for the price to stay so long for so long.

The challenge is to know when it's going to change, right? For it to surpass the historical average, it's almost 2,300 per ton.

Isn't it? The corrected historical price is 2,400.

We need to go from 1,600 and go to 2,400. That is to surpass the historical average.

Surpassing ethanol is something that should happen sooner.

Guilherme Guttilla

Thank you, Rodrigo.

Operator

Victor Maranhesi from UBS will ask a question.

Victor Martin

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions.

I've got two. The first has to do with the guidance concerning crushing for this year and next year.

In spite of the increase year on year that we see in the guidance, there is still a substantial gap for you to achieve the long-term goal of 9 million, even in a year where the Center-South is close to a record crop, right, or something that is very close to a record crop. Could you break that down a bit?

Can you talk about this gap that we still need to bridge before we get to the 9 million, how much has to do with the climate, how much has to do with increasing the planted area or improvements on irrigation, other types of improvements, say? When do you expect to hit the 9 million target?

When it comes to the ethanol market, you show there was substantial decrease now that has been since April, and this is adding pressure to the grower even more than we expected in the market. In our conversations with the industry, we still see a number of players still with good inventories for the first quarter, which would suggest that there would be a lot of ethanol to be delivered to the market in the coming months.

First I'd like to understand what your inventory management and sales strategies are like for the past months and for the future months. Do you understand that there is a higher inventory volume with the growers, as well, and that could get to the market in the course of the crop year, adding more pressure or increasing the time the pressure is going to be holding on?

These are my two points. Thank you.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Thank you, Victor. Thank you for your questions, and thank you for joining.

They're excellent questions. We said that when we have a climate event, we don't recover everything from one year to the next.

The climate was more favorable, even when we look at rainfall, we had a bit more than the historical average. When it comes to yield, we had an 8% increase.

For us to go back to our normal levels with Santa Vitória at 79 or 80 tons per hectare, we would need to be at 8.4 or 8.5 with this size of sugarcane fields. We have some planned expansion.

We have about 2,000, 2,500 ha more from this crop year onto the next being added. We should quickly get to 8.5, and the next two to three years, we should get to 9, but we're not too close to it yet.

There's no guidance looking forward, but if it were the regular yield productivity of what we had in Santa Vitória at 79, we would be at 8.5, 8. Yeah, 8.4, 8.5.

This 8.4 to 9 increase would be a reference, and would be talking about an additional 4,000 ha, and two 2.5 are being added this year. Just to give you some reference, but we're still below our potential.

The average potential is 80.4, as we put in the guidance. Jalles would be slightly above 90, Santa Vitória about 80, it would be at 87, yeah, 88 on average.

This is what we're pursuing. Of course, some of that depends on the climate, on the weather.

Some depends on crop management and irrigation. When it comes to the sales strategy, in April and May, the first two months of this crop year, we sold the ethanol we're able to sell.

As of June, we started slowing down. We're selling, but much more slowly and lower volumes to increase volume slowly, but also to have time to get better prices in the future.

Because whenever we reduce ethanol consumption in the Brazilian market, when the price goes down, there is some inertia till the price drop gets to the end customers. That the petrol stations, they may hold on to a higher margin for a while, which is horrible for us.

In Goiás, the prices had gone down by R$1, and the petrol stations had only reduced them by 20 cents at one point this year. It takes a little while.

When the price is just decreased, there's a little bit of a delay. It lags behind till the demand grows.

We have the 2.8 additional liters, 2.8 billion L in comparison to last year. When we look at the adjustments of how the market grows with E32, with the inventory reorganization, we had a very low inventory level in the past crop year.

We should sell at a lower rate in the coming months. At the end of the crushing cycle, we should speed up as the market appetite changes.

Did I answer your questions?

Victor Martin

Yes, you did. That's quite clear.

Thank you.

Operator

Bruno Tomazetto from Itaú BBA has got a question.

Bruno Tomazetto

Hi, Otávio, Rodrigo, Natal. Thank you for taking my question.

I have a question that has to do with what Rodrigo just explained, but just trying to understand this increase in TCH in Santa Vitória, almost 20%. Last year, the weather was challenging, and you had these investments.

This increase in yield productivity stems from all of these actions. Can you try and shed some more light on the 20%, how much it comes from the weather, how much it comes from the investments that the company's made?

I've got a second question just to understand your perspective on the El Niño. This is a subject that people have been talking about.

Can you share your perspectives on what the practical impact on Jalles would be? What could we expect when it comes to hedge values and what prices could we expect when it comes to pricing when it comes to El Niño, yeah?

Thank you.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Sorry, I was on mute. Bruno, as for your first question, it's good that you mention that, because there is a an important point I wanted to to mention, as well, when I answered the previous question, I mean.

In this last crop year that ended, we increased 4,500 ha our salvage irrigation capacity in Santa Vitória, and another 700 sprinkler capacity, another 700 ha. This is an important point.

We're better structuring our possibilities. When we talk about going back to normal levels that we used to have in Goiás, and accelerating Santa Vitória, well, we already have the harvest in Santa Vitória for next year, the and we're changing the varieties.

We're improving our crop management. We're improving our planting techniques.

We wish we had been faster. Even on some changes, we had to replace some of the team members to be able to accelerate last year, as well.

We're going to be focusing on that, as well. Another important point is that we opened a non-farm plant in Goiás.

Enriched vinasse, and we were doing it manually in the past, and now we're automating it, and it's much more accurate. We can make sure that we're really getting the nutrients applied homogeneously and also reducing costs.

We've just opened that on-farm plant, and that's another positive this is another positive piece of news. With the 4,500 salvage irrigation hectares, we'll see the impact next next year, the impact next year, yes.

We have another 600, 700 ha sprinkler structure that is starting as of next week. As of the, or rather as for the El Niño, you you ask the El Niño impact, and we we were even talking about that today.

El Niño is normally good to us. It's normally good for us, because if there is an El Niño, there is more rain in the Southern Hemisphere and less in the Northern Hemisphere.

In the in this center where we are, there isn't much of a difference, but most times, El Niño is positive. Maybe this year, if it's too strong, and people have been talking about it, if it's going to be too strong, if it's going to be average strong, it's likely that we're going to have an El Niño over 95% likelihood, and now we don't know if it's going to be an average or strong El Niño.

We're looking at the history and and what the impact was like, but we don't know it yet. We don't know what the El Niño impact is going to be.

If it's too strong, maybe it's going to be harmful for our region. We'll ask Agricola to run an analysis for us on this matter.

There's an advantage of having better irrigation capacity to mitigate the weather matter, the weather issue. Yeah.

Bruno Tomazetto

That's great, Rodrigo. Thank you.

Operator

Giovanni Da Giovanni from Bradesco BBI has got a question.

Giovanni D'Ottaviano

Hello, everyone. Can you hear me?

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Yes, we can.

Giovanni D'Ottaviano

I've got two questions. The first has to do with organic sugar.

What are your expectations in terms of pricing and production of organic sugar? If you could talk a little bit more about the Santa Vitória numbers, when it comes to the credits, if you could just shed some more light upon it.

Giovanni, the second question has to do with credit, ICMS credit, but I had an issue with my headphones, and I didn't hear your first question. My first question had to do with organic sugar.

What do you expect when it comes to volumes and pricing?

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Giovanni, when it comes to organic sugar, well, this year was looking like it was going to be similar to last year when it comes to production and sales. Now there is a question in there.

As the US is our most important market, we need to see whether or not we're going to have the tariff increases. This threat is often made, right?

In normal conditions, then the crop year should be very similar to the last. With a local market increase and also with an increase in Canada.

We grew in Canada in the last crop year. We have our Canadian clients here with us and in Jalles.

They are discussing this contract for this crop year with us. The US is also well on track, but would only see a change if there is a higher tariff than other countries have.

That could impact price and volumes. It's a bit uncertain.

It's a bit too early to talk about it. Price should be about 5% lower than it was last year in US dollars.

We should see a 5% to 6% drop. Agreements are being negotiated now.

These negotiations are going full blast when it comes to volumes and pricing. This is what we can give you at this point.

That's very clear. As for the credit?

In Santa Vitória, we were running a survey. We're not crediting something that was the company's right when we look at the current legislation.

We did that later. That's why it went down in one quarter.

It had this impact. I think it showed 5 years of credit that we're not getting.

I can give you more details on this specific matter, looking at the law that we followed. That was basically it.

The ICMS credit in Santa Vitória is going to be used up quickly, especially with the ethanol focus. We didn't have any credit, we end up using it faster.

We're also monetizing credit, PIS and COFINS credit, especially in Santa Vitória. We're monetizing the ICMS and the PIS/COFINS credits.

That should help the company's cash flow, transforming credit into an offsetting of tax to be paid during the crop year.

Giovanni D'Ottaviano

That's very clear, Rodrigo. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Arthur Davicce from XP. I think Arthur was unable to ask his question.

I think he left the queue. Oh, he's back.

His microphone was mute. Can you hear me now?

Hello, Arthur. We can hear you now.

Arthur Davicce

Hi. Good afternoon.

I've got two questions. Can you give some color on your cost dilution if it's going to be cyclical with crushing, and how much is going to come from the measures you've been taking to improve efficiency?

My second question is more focused on the long term. What would you need to happen for the sugar prices to react?

You talked about the prices that are changing in the course of the year, but it's still lower than we saw in the past years. What would you think we would need to see happen for the prices to change?

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

Hi, Arthur. Thank you very much for joining.

Around the improvements we've been making and how much that adds to the improvements and how much stems from the weather, that's a bit subjective. It's very difficult to isolate the different factors and know how much each factor has contributed, because even if you look at the weather, there are so many variables, because there's sunlight, there's temperature, there's rainfall.

It's difficult to pin down. As Otávio Lage said, whenever there's a climate problem, a weather problem, as we had last year, when you look at Center-South, it wasn't major, but in Goiás and Minas Gerais, there was a bigger impact.

You can't recover all of it from one year to the next. Our normal operations would be 92, 93 in Jalles and Otávio Lage, and we're working to get to 80 in Santa Vitória.

If we were in this scenario, we would be very close to the eight that the 8.5 million. In this one that we gave guidance for, 7.8, from eight and a half to nine, there's still some expansion to be seen.

There's a lot that is happening. We have this on-farm vinasse enrichment plant that I mentioned.

We invested in irrigations, as well. We have new varieties.

The crop management in Jalles and UOL is getting more and more similar to or the one we have in Santa Vitória is more and more similar to these. Santa Vitória, we salvaged 18,000 ha, but it wasn't yet quite as much as we wanted.

We increased it from 80 to 22, and we're working on improving that. When you look at the sprinkler irrigation, we see that the operations weren't too good.

Now the effects last year were a bit better, but because the weather was worse in the other areas, these improvements were not that obvious. We're also increasing the number of sprinklers in 700 ha.

We want to do that every year. There's another project that we're looking at that's going to be almost 2,000 ha that we're working on.

It's a combination of several things. We're sure we're going to make it.

One thing I didn't say today, even though I've said in other meetings, is there are new varieties that we are adopting in Otávio Lage and Jalles and also Santa Vitória. There's a new variety that has been having 25 tons per hectare on top of what the other varieties have.

We're also trying IAC 7207 this year, and this has also had a positive impact. It's not as high as the previous one, which is the IAC 8008, but it's about 15%.

This is still the very first year that we use it. It's a substantial increase.

As these new varieties come into the ground, then we improve our yields, as well. As for the sugar price, you ask that, as well.

This is what's happening. There is a decrease in sugar production in Europe, Thailand, and India.

All of that due to the low prices that we see. In India, well, it doesn't impact that much, because it's mostly production for their own consumption.

There's very little that goes into the global trade. In Thailand, most of the sugar they produce is to be exported.

They are starting to migrate to cassava because manioc, right, because sugar is becoming less viable. Europe is reducing the sugar beet planted area, as well.

If you look at Brazil, if it's hard for a very efficient grower, then people will probably reduce their production. We should have a deficit of over 2 million tons, and this should have an impact on pricing sooner or later.

We have the comfort of Brazil being the most efficient grower. This adjustment is more important in less competitive countries than in Brazil, but even in Brazil, we could see it happen.

A plant that is not protected, is not hedged this year, it's going to be a more challenging year in ethanol and sugar. We believe that in the next year we could have a lower investment when it comes to the sugarcane renewal and management.

Even Brazil could be affected, yes. Thank you very much.

Operator

If there are no further questions, I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Rodrigo Penna for his final remarks.

Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira

I'd like to say thank you very much. Thank you for your questions.

Thank you for your interest in the company. The Brazilian stock market isn't going through its best moment, nor is agribusiness.

It's been a more challenging moment in the commodity cycle. As Otávio said, this is part of the business.

These ups and downs in commodity prices, they are just an inherent part of the business. What we can do is we can mitigate these risks, be it hedging sugar prices, be it improving irrigation structures so that we can mitigate the climate issue, or the climate risk, the energy that we have with substantial revenue from Santa Vitória.

We can always be more efficient. We can always be more innovative.

We can always get better. That's what we're really looking to improve in this first quartile, because in this ups and downs, well, sometimes some may be struck down from the market, right, not only in Brazil, but also abroad.

We're really looking to be a winning player. We should operate in the first quartile of efficiency and productivity and yields and cost.

Thank you very much. I'll see you on the next call.

I'd like to thank our IR team: Luana, Natal. They did all the work concerning the releases, and also supporting me.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Operator

This is the end of the fourth quarter Jalles conference call. Thank you very much.