Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Kepler Weber's earnings video conference for the second quarter of 2026. Joining us today are Mr.
Bernardo Nogueira, Chief Executive Officer, and Renato Arroyo, Chief Financial and Investor Relations Officer. We'd like to inform you that this presentation is being recorded and simultaneously translated.
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We'd like to point out that any statements made during conference call regarding Kepler Weber's business outlook and operating and financial targets are projections made by the company's management and may or may not materialize. Investors should understand that political, macroeconomic, and other operating factors may affect the company's future performance and lead to results that differ materially from the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements.
Before turning the floor over to our executives, we invite everyone to watch two brief videos presenting Kepler Weber's evolution over the past 10 years following the implementation of lean manufacturing, as well as the company's participation in a biodiesel project in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, highlighting its grain storage solution and technologies.
10 years ago, we were a completely different company from the one that we are today. Lean is a philosophy, it's a journey.
It only has a beginning, it has no end. It helped us in efficiency, productivity gains in the factory, in production processes, and visual process management, in decision making that's faster and more accurate, being able to anticipate problems before they happen.
Lean is a mindset. You have to believe in the philosophy and believe that the value stream must be pursued.
It takes a lot of hard work to implement the tools as well. It's a project that worked out, continues to work out, and certainly today the company is on another level.
With the lean philosophy, the perspective completely changed. We learned to look at the value stream, and today this is part of our daily routine: waste reduction at every stage, in all processes.
Setups that used to take an hour began taking minutes. There were great results in reducing lead time, inventory reduction, delivery improvements, delivery compliance, cost reduction, because well-implemented lean improves people's lives, and that's why engagement naturally follows.
Engineering, technology, and large-scale integration. With the Soly 3 project, Kepler Weber expands the client's grain storage and handling capacity through an efficient and innovative solution.
Soly 3 is the result of a partnership between Cotrijal, Cotripal, and Cotrisal, representing a milestone for cooperativism and sustainable development of agribusiness, with a focus on biodiesel production and the production of soybean derivatives. Designed for high operational capacity and future expansions, the facility begins its operations with a storage capacity of 220 metric tons.
The solution integrates receiving, drying, storage, handling, and shipping, with fully automated routes enabling flows of up to 1,000 metric tons per hour. The project was also designed to integrate different shipping modes, ensuring greater logistics agility and operational efficiency.
Soly 3 represents a major step forward for agribusiness infrastructure, strengthening cooperativism and contributing to the sustainable development of the sector. Kepler Weber: built to endure.
Operator
We'll now turn the floor over to Mr. Bernardo Nogueira, who will begin the earnings presentation.
Bernardo Nogueira
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you to share the results of the second quarter as well as perspectives about the market.
We are doing this today, Renato and myself, from Panambi in Rio Grande do Sul where Kepler was born 101 years ago. We are here with the entire Kepler team and all of the customers that are here to accompany us.
We'll start talking about the presentation, and we'll then have a Q&A session. Our net revenue was R$299 million in the quarter, EBITDA of 25.9, and a net income of 6.3.
Now talking about the segments, and here I'd like to break it down because it helps give us context and give perspective to our market, we see a retraction in the farms of 13% in the quarter and 25% in the year-to-date. This retraction continues over the course of 2026.
We keep on seeing that farmers are under a lot of pressure, as we can see in the media. The good news is that through diversification, we're being able to offset this drop in the farms with a significant growth in the agro industries.
We showed you the example of Soly 3, which is a biodiesel project, Kepler fully participates in this reduction of biofuels with maize ethanol or biodiesel with soy and canola. We see a growth of 17% in the revenues with agro industries, and we're going to see the continuity of that in 2026.
Some projects are also being contracted for 2027. We see a portfolio of agro industries in the short and mid-term.
International business drops 46.3% in the quarter, and even though there is a growth in the year, we see a reduction in international business. It's important to say that international business grew 117% from '23 to '25, we had revenue that was consolidated by major projects in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, it was our best year in international business.
When we make this comparison between '23 and 2026, we still see a growth of around 10%, there's a good growth in international business, but the bar is a bit high in the comparison with 2025. We're quite optimistic about Venezuela and Argentina, but the businesses have not yet been brought to the table for this year.
A similar message for ports and terminals: it's a quite reduced volume in the year, but we already have a pipeline that surpasses R$500 million in ports and terminals, it's a very good pipeline where we see a delay in decision-making processes and environmental licenses. That's why we see a drop in the revenue of ports and terminals in 2026, but we're highly confident that we're going to recover that in sales in 2026, and that will be reflected in the revenue for 2027.
That's going to be an important lever for next year. I would also say that it's a pleasure to see that the resilience of replacement and services is good.
It was an investment that we made 10 years ago in 2016. We opened our first distribution centers, now we have nine, and replacement and services has been growing.
We're going to see an even greater growth in the third and fourth quarter. We're going to have a very good year for replacement and services, and there is a potential for replacement and services to become the second biggest business of the company this year.
I've been talking to the R&S team and telling them that this is going to be Kepler Weber's main business line in a not so distant future. We highly believe in R&S.
It's highly resilient. It's in line with reforms, maintenance, opex, it's very resilient to crisis like the ones that we are going through right now.
Renato, he's going to talk about EBITDA.
Renato Arroyo
Good morning, everybody. We're talking from Panambi.
It's a pleasure to be with you. Usually, we are in São Paulo, it's a pleasure to be in Panambi with our team talking to our clients and talking to you, investors and analysts that are following the company.
It's a year that demonstrates the resilience of Kepler. Again, if you look at the second quarter, it was a bit weaker than the same period of last year, but it's worth mentioning a few aspects.
As Bernardo mentioned, we're reporting a second quarter of '26 of 25.9 of EBITDA, that's 8.7% if we compare to last year, 37.9, it's 12.2%. R$11.7 million come from a reduction of the gross profit, and I used to say that we're highly structured from the point of view of CPV and efficiency in the factories and efficiency of implementation, the costs are very well structured for the company.
Now we have one problem only, which is the economic recession that we're seeing, especially in the agribusiness and the agricultural sector, and that makes prices not follow the same lines as the previous years. We have a challenge in this regard, and that's why we see a deterioration in this period.
We have a benefit of R$2.3 million in the quarter. This means that we've been attenuating the inflation impacts by around 5%, and there's a benefit of R$2.3 million.
It's also important to mention that we're almost at the same level of 2024 for SG&A. We've been seeking efficiencies and we'll seek even greater efficiencies because we've made important investments in IT and the order flow, and that will bring about important resources for the company.
Other operational aspects brought about tax benefits to us, and this year we're not seeing the same rewards. If we look at the six months, we had 90.8 million in the first six months of last year, and now it's basically the same thing.
We have the entire concentration in the deterioration of the gross profit that comes from the prices. Again, as I mentioned, the SG&A is very well captured and sanitized, and the other lines are strictly concentrated in the second quarter of 2026.
With that, we deliver R$60 million of EBITDA in the first two quarters, or 9.7% if you look at the entire composition of the six months. This is an aspect that we like to mention, and we've been mentioning it.
A lot of the company's capex is what leads future growth and future strategy. We had an exhaustive agenda on capex for '23, '24, and '25.
We made high investments in information technology and high investments in new products, and I think that the most important aspect here is that even though there's been a decrease of 40% if we compare it with, 43% if you compare it with the second quarter of 2025, effectively we did something way above Kepler's standards for the last years. We prepared the company.
If we look at the previous year, we invested a lot in SAP. We switched to S/4HANA, which is extremely important for the company and is already bringing about improvements.
The most relevant aspect is if you look at the snapshot of the second quarter of 2026, we are reinvesting 30% in new products. Bernardo is going to talk later about how that's going to bring about results for the company and is already generating results.
We invest in modernization. We invested 16% in IT and only 28% in supporting.
That is to say that the company is investing in what is necessary for it to keep on growing. We're going to still see an agenda that's a bit inferior in terms of investments in cash for capex this year vis-a-vis the previous years, but we're fully focusing on the strategy.
We had an agenda that's stronger now and that was reassuring and that allowed us do the capex even in the most challenging moments of the market. This is the company's ROIC: 20%, 6 percentage points vis-a-vis the baseline of the market, 19%, a drop of 7 percentage points in the first quarter of 2026.
That came from the operation that was a little under, and we've been improving the capital invested. We're going to talk about the working capital of the company later and how we're managing it and how we're still able to have a very good balance sheet.
In terms of cash flow, we closed December 2025 at R$316 million, and at the other end, we closed the second quarter with R$354 million, it's a cash improvement of R$37.8 million. Here it's also very important to mention, and we mentioned it in the first page, the confidence and the care, being careful.
We are confident in our thesis in the sector, and here we demonstrate clearly that we're careful. We have a company that generates cash flow, R$45.5 million in adjusted results.
We have a good management of working capital, returning R$9.6 million to the company's working capital, and the recovery of taxes and the management of accounts payable has been very important. In terms of financing, adjustments in the assets for payment of interests, but it's also important to say that the company in this quarter was able to reduce 1% in terms of debt costs.
In difficult market times, the company has a solidity that's enough for it to go to the banks and reduce its debts. The capex, we spent R$27.1 million, mostly invested in new products, closing at R$354 million.
Even to be careful, you need to have solidity. The company is able to be careful in its decisions because it has a very robust financial solidity.
Thank you, Bernardo.
Bernardo Nogueira
That was great. Renato, thank you.
As usual, we give you a perspective, a long-term perspective, to give you the context of how we are versus other cycles of the agribusiness. You can look at the orange line, which is the price of soy in dollars, and we see the levels that we see in the last few years is the lowest historical level.
When we talk about the margins of the soybean farmers, we are at very lower levels when compared to the negative cycles of the past, 2015 and '16, and the interest rates in red, which are also at a very high level. This is the backdrop, and our deliveries, we keep on, as Bernardo said, with resilience and diversification.
We keep on generating cash flow and delivering results that are superior to a similar moment if you look at the price of commodities, similar to the past. I can confidently say, when it comes to confidence and care, I can say confidently that Kepler prepared itself for these adverse times.
It will navigate it much better than it did in the past and will come out of it strengthened. These are the details about the margin of soybean farmers.
Why do we like this graph? To remind you, we have less than 40% of our revenue, it's around 30% of our revenues that come from the farmers, but they end up influencing the year of the entire chain.
That's why we like to look at the year, and the year is measured by how much is left at the end of the year. As you all know, we went through incredible moments in 2021 and 2022.
We can see that there's been a reduction in the profitability of the chain since 2023. There's two aspects here.
First, people sometimes tell me, "Well, we're back to the pre-pandemic levels." No, what we're looking at is inferior to the levels of the pre-pandemic period.
It's much harder. 2026 is much harder, even when compared to 2016 and 2017.
That's the first aspect. Then the second aspect that's worth mentioning, we used to say that agribusiness is based on cycles, and Brazil went from 50 to 360 million tons with these cycles in the last 30 or 35 years.
All cycles, the last adverse cycle lasted three negative years, and the previous one before that, five years, three, it's always between three and five difficult years if you look at the past. If you look at today, we've been through four years, and the last results, we were a bit more impacted in 2025 and 2026, but the agribusiness has been going through four adverse years.
I'm confident that we are moving towards the end of the negative cycle as opposed to the beginning of it. In the short term, 2026 and 2027 will probably going to see challenging times, but the tide's going to turn, and certainly we're going to come out of it even stronger.
This is our last slide. I'm going to comment.
Please feel free to add whatever you want, Renato, but the first thing that Renato mentioned is about the diversification. From 2021 to 2026, the international, ports, and replacement and services businesses went from 26 to 40% of our portfolio.
That had been mapped out. It is in our strategic plan 2030, it's quite in line.
We know that the agribusiness is cyclic, but we prepare ourselves through diversification. It's great to see R&S, again, growing right now, R&S becoming the company's second biggest business, potentially speaking, and in a few years it's going to become the company's biggest business, and we're going to become even more resilient.
It's a point of no return. It's going to be good for the next adverse times in 2036.
The second point is an efficient management, as Renato said, SG&A. At times of crisis, we look for efficiency everywhere, in the operation, in products.
This year, we had R$16 million in terms of cost reduction in products, making products more efficient without losing sight of quality. There's a high focus on expense management in general everywhere at Kepler, and everybody's fully engaged in this process.
This combination allows us to generate cash flow. It's a company that still generates cash flow in the agribusiness with financial solidity, with a very low default levels, a stable default level.
This allows for a strategic capex. To quantify this strategic capex, we use our measures, which is innovation, how the last products launched in the last few years, five years, are impacting the company's revenue.
We go from 3% in 2022 to 12% of our revenue that's coming from new products. We made important launches in the last two or three years, and these launches are contributing to our revenue, to maintain our revenue, and again to allow us to go through, to navigate these adverse times.
Again, it places us at a very good position so that we have an even better portfolio for when the conditions get better, and we'll see an even more robust growth at the company. Along with these new products, we talked about the chain of biofuels.
We saw the growth of agro industries. The biggest businesses since 2016 were São Martinho and Soly 3.
São Martinho and BH are in the execution phase, and Soly 3 is still to execute in 2027. That gives us a very good confidence, again.
It's a virtuous cycle, and it gets us back to cash generation even during a hard period. We do all that being very careful with the team and with the growing engagement of the team.
I see a lot of value in our index going from 4 to 83% at times like this. GPTW, we had to say goodbye to some colleagues due to a reduction in infrastructure, but the team is still increasing its engagement at times like this.
The excellence and the leadership is visible. A shout out.
This is where I end. We'll now take questions.
Operator
We'll now start the Q&A session. As a reminder, to ask questions, please click on the raise hand button, and you will see a request to open your microphone on your screen.
To those interested in asking questions in writing, please use the Q&A button on the bottom toolbar of Zoom. Given the large number of questions we typically receive, and in order to accommodate all participants, questions will be answered in groups according to the topic announced.
Please note that the questions asked via microphone will be given priority in the order in which they're answered. If your question is submitted after the topic has been closed, our investor relations team will provide an answer by email later.
Our first question comes from Mr. Kiefer Kennedy from Citi.
Please proceed.
Kiefer Kennedy
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Renato Arroyo
Yes, please proceed.
Kiefer Kennedy
Thank you, Bernardo and Renato. Thank you for the presentation and the comments.
The context of the storage context is quite clear, as well as the challenges and farms and the agribusiness, but I'd like to explore the other business of the company, especially replacements and services and international businesses. In terms of replacements and services, the company reported an expansion of revenue of 5%, in line with the inflation of the period.
I think this revenue is more or less recurring that grows as the installed bases increases its penetration among its customers. What's the opportunity in the segment that's already so important, accounting for 20% of the company?
In terms of the silos and the installed base, does the company think that it still can grow via new products or existing products, or a marginal growth, most of it should come from resuming the company's main business? I'd like to understand what the opportunities are in the segment.
Also in international businesses, we see lots of companies exposed to the Argentinian market, as is your case, suffering after a very good period for the country. I'd like to understand if Argentina is the main detractor of this business unit, and also why this line as a whole, international businesses, it's 5% of the revenue versus the rest of the company, why it's so small, 5%.
I like part of the strategy of the company to diversify to other geographies more strongly, or others where you're currently absent, so that in the long term, Kepler is able to dilute the Brazilian risk at times of volatility, such as the current one. It's an important view, but with a very small percentage of the company.
What's the opportunity that you see in the segments? Thank you.
Bernardo Nogueira
Thank you, Kiefer. We'll talk about R&S and the international businesses.
R&S has been really gaining relevance in 2019, in the pre-pandemic levels. It was 12%, and now we're at 20, almost 24% in 2026.
It's a very important growth and relevant. The provocation to our team is that we want to be Kepler's biggest business.
What are the opportunities that we see? Undoubtedly, there's portfolio.
We've been adding products that go into R&P. A good example, we talked about seeds.
We've been developing a portfolio organically for seeds that is dealt with in expansions with our clients, as well as the Seletrona device or the grain selector. In 2026, we are in June with all of the sales of 2025.
In terms of special grains, sesame seeds, and all that, and in addition to the installed base, there's two drivers in R&S that we explore very well, which are safety and security adequacies. In an analogy with cars, the cars manufactured in the '80s and '90s had no ABS, airbag, the safety belt, maybe they didn't have three tips.
The same thing goes for storage units. Some things that were common and accepted in the '80s and '90s are now forbidden.
Many of our clients, they want to make adjustments to these Kepler units. Approximately 50% of the units across Brazil are Kepler units, and these units, they need an ABS or they need a three-tip safety belts, in an analogy.
The safety and security adjustments are growing. The second aspect is productivity.
Our clients, we talk to hundreds of clients per year at the fairs, and in all conversations, the workforce comes up. We have clients with more than 500 employees at storage units, and it's increasingly difficult to find professionals.
The solutions of engineering and our products, they're also able to improve productivity and optimize the workforce. The same unit, a unit from the '90s and a current unit with the same capacity, will need 50% fewer people to run the same volumes.
A lot of DRS comes into this in terms of productivity gains for our customers. The third aspect, also making an analogy with cars, the cars from the '90s, their power was 70 or 100 horses, and now it's 300, as well as blow dryers.
70% of our blow dryers up to 2010, they had 150, less than 150 tons/hour, and now more than 70% of them are above that. The speed, the size of harvesters, the speed needs to be increased.
This increased a lot in the fields. The bean producers, the farmers, they approach the R&S to make improvements to their units in terms of capacity.
These are the drivers in general, and again we are very confident that we will keep on growing in terms of R&S. In addition to all that, there's also Procer with the post-harvesting and all that.
We see it with very optimistic eyes. Undoubtedly, it's worth saying that at moments of growth, R&S grows even more, but in a scenario of more restricted investments, clients do what's essential.
They make investments that will lead to the biggest returns. It's good to see that we're growing in 2026 in spite of the scenario.
In international businesses, we understand that international business should surpass 10%, and it does. It reaches 12% of our revenue, and we want to reach 12 or 15% of our revenue.
I don't see, approximately 80% of our international business is leading in Latin America. We have Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Venezuela, it's a leadership in our backyard, to speak.
I don't see that changing in the short term.
Renato Arroyo
We will not focus heavily in Africa or Asia right now. We're focused on strengthening this leadership.
We see great opportunities in Argentina with everything that's happening there, Bolivia. There's big clients in Mato Grosso acquiring large areas in Bolivia for this year that will be followed by investments.
Venezuela is also, there's also a change in the political direction there that will attract more investments. Our focus is in Latin America.
Like I said, it dropped versus 2025 where the stars aligned and we had the best year in terms of international business, but we're still growing versus 2023. Again, we are intent on making it remain a relevant segment this year because, as you said, it helps us improve the diversification of our businesses in Brazil.
I'd just like to bring some color to R&S. Thank you for the question, Kiefer.
An important aspect is that in this scenario, R&S has been showing that the margins are very resilient. We see the other sectors of our industry decreasing a lot more in terms of pricing and gross margin.
Of course, R&S decreases a little bit as well, but the drop in the margin is much lower. It's what demonstrates this growth between 12 to 24% is in the breakdown of the revenue of the company.
Bernardo, he made an analogy with car and car parts. If we look at what Kepler had in terms of storage in the fields 5 or 10 years ago, now we bring to the field silos and warehouses that are 60% above that.
What we're doing now is much more related to the past than with the present, automatically we have a very large fields to explore. In addition to the growth of storage as a whole, we are way below other countries, we still have a lot to do, there's also an industrial base that's been expanded, which represents a greater population of storage areas so that we can expand to in the next few years.
We want to invest in that, and we'll keep on focusing on this very positive agenda of RS.
Kiefer Kennedy
Thank you, that's very clear.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ms. Fernanda Urbano from XP.
Please proceed.
Fernanda Urbano
Good morning, Bernardo, Renato. Thank you.
We have two questions. First, looking at the orders portfolio, you mentioned that the backlog closed the quarter with a drop of 14% versus last year.
I understand that you said that this backlog should not be seen as a forecast of revenue, but still, looking at the recent history of conversion of the company, I'd like to understand if it makes more sense for us to use this order of magnitude as a reference for the pace of activity for the second half, or if you see any external factors for the portfolio conversion into revenue to be very different from the backlog that we're looking at. This is my first question.
The second question is that still looking at the snapshot of the next quarters, on the one hand, we have the Safra plan, the harvest plan, that traditionally helped the demand, especially in the third quarter, and on the other hand, as you said very well, we see a very challenging macro environment, and we've been also seeing a possible concern with the effects of El Niño. I'd like to understand how you look at this balance sheet today.
Maybe you can remind us the geographic diversification of your clients, but also about the climate-related factors. Do you see any change of behavior due to that, or is it too early to see that?
Thank you.
Renato Arroyo
Morning, Fernanda. Thanks for the question.
We'll take this together. Concerning the portfolio, if we compare the portfolio for the second quarter of 2026 compared to the same period of 2025, our backlog dropped by 14%, and that basically came from a decrease in the farms of around 40 to 50% vis-a-vis the total amount.
That comes from the number of farms we have. We are at 7 to 8% below in terms of performed revenue, and certainly this smaller portfolio right now puts us in a position to generate a lower growth for the third and fourth quarter vis-a-vis the last year.
If we look at the past, we grew between the second to the third quarter 36% in revenue, and we're probably going to have a growth from the second to the third quarter, that's part of the seasonality of the business, but it may be a bit compressed due to a slightly smaller portfolio of farms. That's the dynamics of the portfolio.
In this case, we have different pipelines. We have a bit more of agribusiness, but we certainly have a portfolio that's a bit less robust between the first and second halves.
Concerning the PCA and the harvest plan or Safra plan, it's a PCA that's slightly lower than that of last year, with rates that are 0.5% lower in the segment. Of course, it helps the farm segment and it drives the segment in the second half vis-a-vis the first half, but we still see, given the context of the market and the context of margins of rural producers, we still see a very low appetite.
We don't see any growing margins due to the PCA and the Safra plan. Today, in terms of number of farms, that's much lower.
We don't see any expansion of revenue due to the PCA vis-a-vis last year. Thank you.
Bernardo Nogueira
A few quick comments about the portfolio, Fernanda. Renato is right in terms of the mix of the portfolio focused on the industry.
As we could see from the results, the portfolio is a result of this stronger mix in the agro industries. It dilutes and puts pressure on margins.
These are some aspects related to the portfolio. In the short term, we don't see any further deterioration.
It will probably remain at those levels, we're working on not increasing the gap vis-a-vis that of last year. Concerning the second half, the Safra plan, the harvest plan, and the El Niño, historically speaking, and we've been monitoring the climate phenomena, especially the El Niño, we've been monitoring them up close, according to the history, our harvest will be more problematic with less rain in Matopiba and Mato Grosso with certain instability further north, and the southern region, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, with an excessive amount of rain.
That's the classic El Niño. One important strategy is that Kepler is present all over Brazil.
Last year, we had projects in more than 300 municipalities all across Brazil. If one region's a bit more retracted and the other one is accelerating its investments, we're going to be very aware in order to be very well positioned to cover the demands and also with a focus on defaults at times of a stressed out chain.
That's something that we will keep on monitoring every day. We do not have strong concerns, differently from Argentina where La Niña, for instance, will topple the soy production by 30 or 40%.
In Brazil, we have two very distinct geographic regions, and our production reduction is in the range of 10 to 15% at most. That's what we imagine, and that's what we've been monitoring and making adjustments accordingly.
Fernanda Urbano
That's very clear. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question is from Mr. Caio Araujo.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask a question, and congratulations on the results.
We certainly expect even more from the company, but given the current market conditions, I believe you're doing a good job. Could you please give us your assessment of the overall environment surrounding Kepler?
Bernardo mentions that he believes we're approaching the end of a difficult cycle for the agribusiness. Could you highlight the factors that point to this turning point?
Also, what are KW's main competitive advantages over its competitors?
Bernardo Nogueira
Thank you for the question, Caio. It's important to say that from a statistical standpoint, we see that the last negative cycles lasted 4 years.
We are 4 years into the cycle now, statistically speaking, we believe we're closer to the end of the current adverse cycle as opposed to its beginning. Currently, we don't have an improvement in the practical conditions.
What would that be? A decrease in the interest rate, not to 12%, but to levels similar to what we had in 2019, 6%, 8%, 10% of interest rates, and that would be helpful in the investments by our clients and/or, especially, an improvement in the profitability of the chain.
As we saw on our slide, we are at a level of 3% or 4% in terms of net profit of farmers in the north of Mato Grosso, and in the last crisis, they were at 14%. There's a lot of room for improvement in profitability.
Maybe a phenomenon like El Niño, if there is a production restriction, maybe that will increase prices. By improving the farmers' margins, we're going to feel immediately an improvement in our portfolio and consequently an improvement in our results.
Maybe to rephrase the answer, statistically speaking, our cycles last usually 5 years at most, we're at 4, but we can't see a tangible improvement in the macroeconomic scenario. We still see high delinquency, low margins, high interest rates.
That's why our title at the beginning was about confidence. We are in the right market, we're doing everything we can, the team's extremely engaged, but we're still careful at the same time: careful about the investments, about the costs, we're careful in releasing funding and all that.
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Mr. Wesley Araujo.
Good morning, I have a few questions. First, customer advances declined by 43% in the quarter.
Does that reflect lower conversion of backlog into new orders, or is it an accounting effect related to revenue recognition? The second question, G&A expenses are growing faster than the revenue.
Is there a planned ceiling for growth in administrative expenses, or will SAP S/4HANA and other administrative IT initiatives continue to pressure this line? Third, regarding ports and terminals, what do you consider a normalized medium-term margin for this segment?
Renato Arroyo
Good morning, Wesley, and thank you for the great questions. Going back to the previous question by Caio concerning the competitors, I think, well, Kepler has lots of differentiators vis-a-vis its competitors.
The investments the company's been making in the past few years generate a lot of efficiency in the field. There's also a very relevant focus on ESG.
At times of difficulty, as the case today, Kepler's balance sheet allows us to invest in other products and keep on bringing new opportunities and to make a better job of serving our clients right now. Any periods of problems in the market lead us to seek more solidity, and I think our balance sheet distinguishes us from the other competitors, at least the public ones that we have access to.
In terms of advances, to your point, there's two factors involved. First, as you mentioned, the farmers that make these bigger advances when initiating a projects, they're slowing down a little bit.
As we said, the portfolio for farms dropped between 40 and 50%, and this is what leads to a lower advance level to customers. Also international businesses: given the precaution when it comes to credit, 100% of what we sell to international businesses is prepaid.
When there is a decrease in international businesses, we do effectively see this drop here. The G&A, in reality, is growing.
If we take the last two or three years, it's been growing way below inflation levels. The inflation in the last three years was at 14%, and G&A grew by 1%.
It grows above the revenue because the revenue is decreasing. It's something that we're being careful about, we've been making improvements, we're bringing about operational gains.
SAP S/4HANA is a very important evidence the company had. We were able to switch without any impairments.
It's bringing about great benefits for the company, and we switched six months ago, it will keep on bringing benefits for the company. The normalized margin for ports and terminals, it's very difficult.
It's concentrated projects. It's difficult to say what the normalized margin is.
If you take agribusiness and the farms, it's much easier to estimate, but for ports and terminals, it's very hard,
Bernardo Nogueira
but I would say on average it's between 23 and 24% for ports and terminals.
Operator
This concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the floor over to Mr.
Bernardo Nogueira for his closing remarks.
Bernardo Nogueira
That's great, everyone. Again, it was a pleasure having you, talking about the panorama of our businesses, what we've been doing, and what we see moving forward.
Also, doing this from Panambi has a special meaning. I'd like to wrap up with three important comments.
The first one is about efficiency and the constant search for efficiency. We started with a video about the 10 years of lean manufacturing, which seeks to achieve a reduction in wastes, and we've been applying that for 10 years.
We see important reductions in costs and gains in efficiency and important achievements for 2026, and that will certainly reflect in 2027 and 2028 and '29. We are not wasting the crisis when it comes to seeking greater efficiency and becoming even more competitive.
That's point number one. Also what we're doing with the clients: our presence in the field is very strong.
We have created 20% more businesses, and that's 6% more in terms of business value created this year. What is happening, though, is that businesses are taking longer to happen.
There is a demand, there's a proximity with clients, there's interest, but there's also the difficulty in getting funding. At the same time, we're maintaining our presence and our relationship with clients, and we've been having exceptional deliveries in 2026 in terms of the quality of customer service.
This year, we've delivered 197 projects, 197 units or expansions to our clients, and we are at 90% of 94% of these projects delivered within the deadline. In July, 100% of the projects were delivered within the deadline, and our NPS, it's at 77%.
Our NPS is at a level of excellency, which is very significant because 75% of our revenue comes from clients that already bought from Kepler. Serving our clients well will certainly have a good impact on new revenues and better margins as the scenario gets better.
The last comment is that we are in a net position and preserved cash flow that's way above that of the rest of the market right now, and a team that's extremely engaged. We saw this with GPTW that occurred in May.
GPTW grew four points to 82%. We are undoubtedly among the best companies to work for in the agribusiness, and we see that the team is highly engaged, going through adversities, but at the same time doing everything it can.
To wrap up, I'd like to thank our 1,700 collaborators which have orange blood and the trust of more than 7,000 shareholders that trust our work. Thank you, and see you in the third quarter.
Operator
This concludes Kepler Weber's earnings video conference. If you have any questions, please contact our Investor Relations team at the email address provided.
Thank you all for joining us, and have a great day.
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