Irani Papel e Embalagem SA

Irani Papel e Embalagem SA

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 30, 2026

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

All right, I think we can already begin. Now we're going to have our presentation of the earnings in the first quarter, Irani Paper and Packaging.

We'll start off with the results. The public earnings call is in a webinar format where participants have their mics and videos off and the questions can be submitted by Q&A on the chat platform, or we can also open up your mic to submit the question if requested.

Now this meeting is also going to have simultaneous translation into English. You can select the option in translation for second language.

The webinar is going to be recorded and provided on their website. Thank you all for your presence, and we're going to start off considering our performance for the first quarter.

Our first quarter was characterized by some events that impacted our results. First, our scheduled shutdown for machine 5.

We have an investment which is Gaia 11, and we had the shutdown of this machine to be able to deploy all of the new equipment and refurbishing in the machine. In the first quarter this was complete.

It was a absolute success and the machine is already operational ever since the beginning of March, and then there's been a curve on the ramp-up that is above what we planned. We have a one-off event where there was an impact by 20.7 million reais on the EBITDA.

We also had the annual inspection of the boiler, and that's also where we had a shutdown in machine 1 for a certain period. Then we had the impact of machine 1 and 12.6 thousand tons.

This considered this event of 20.7 million. Then we also had a technical issue in the transformer of our turbo generator 4 that impacted our own energy, and with this we had to buy more energy in the market, and that impacted the EBITDA negatively by 6.1 million reais.

That wasn't expected. It wasn't in our plan.

There was a technical issue, but we've already handled this and it was a critical situation that went on, but it's already been addressed and the expectation is that this transformer will go back to operating in May now next month. We'll also have the effect of this technical issue in the second quarter.

Here you have a QR code if you want to have more information on machine 5. There's a video where our team talks about everything that was done and it actually shows the paper machine.

Having said that, we closed the first quarter with a net revenue of 409 million and an adjusted EBITDA of 113 million 707 thousand reais, and a free cash flow in the last 12 months of 19.8%. Here of course considering the ongoing and discontinued operations because in the first quarter we still had Habitasul's operation that was discontinued and that includes this for the second quarter of last year.

With this, you complete the 12 months to calculate this indicator. Now if you look at the comparisons of the net revenue, here on the left side we have the ongoing and discontinued operations, and over here you can see the best comparison because it's clean from the operation we had in the second quarter of last year.

When it comes to official comparisons quarter-over-quarter in the ongoing operation and discontinued operations, that dropped 1.5%. The factors that were impacting this are especially the shutdown of machine 5.

If you only look at the ongoing operations, then you have this issue of the first quarter of last year with the Habitasul operations. We had a drop of 3.1% in the net revenue, and then we entered the fourth quarter with 1.5%.

When you look at the EBITDA, our adjusted EBITDA had a drop of 17.1% in the ongoing and discontinued operations compared to the first quarter 25, and 16.7% in the ongoing operation. As I mentioned, that allows for better comparison.

In regards to the fourth quarter, the EBITDA dropped 11.3%, and in the ongoing operation it dropped 12%. The EBITDA margin, even with the shutdown and these events we had in the first quarter, the EBITDA margin was 27.7% of the net revenue, a very healthy margin.

Then we had the bridge. If we did not have the impact of the first quarter, our EBITDA would have been 140 million.2, which would add to 2.4% in regards to the first quarter.

That's where you can see the 20.6 million. We've been performing slightly above what we had in the first quarter of last year.

Analyzing the net income, here you have ongoing and discontinued operations, and so in the continued operations, the net income had a drop of 66.9% in the first quarter 26 compared to the first quarter 25. It's important to mention that we had some events.

These events we had some bigger impact than what we had in the first quarter of 26, we had even in the first quarter 26 this dropped a bit, so that's why you have the variation in the fair value of the biological assets. When you compare this to the fourth quarter, it's pretty stable.

Now if you look at this without the biological assets, then we've had a drop due to the shutdown on the machines, considering these events in the first quarter, and then due to the comparison with the fourth quarter of 25. In the ongoing operations, the explanation is the numbers change a bit because you had the results of the Habitasul operation in the first quarter of 25 that we don't have.

This is actually disconsidered, and so with this, you have the profit that dropped 68.1% and that the recurring net income, which is without the biological assets, dropped 62.5% due to this shutdown, as already mentioned. Now looking at the segment of packages for paper, paper which gathers the statistical data in the sector discloses this, and in the first quarter 26 there was a total issuance of 2.5% higher than the first quarter 25, and 3.5% below the fourth quarter 25.

In square meters, the numbers are very similar: 2.3% and compared to last quarter of last year, and then here I want to call your attention because our number was lower, as you'll see in the next slide, and we've dropped actually 3.8% in regards to the first quarter 25. Our performance was worse than the market.

When you compare this to the fourth quarter, it's stable. You can see this dropped 3.5%, and we kept this volume stable.

This represented a reduction in our comparison, demonstrating that in the first quarter 26, we've been keeping up a pace that's better, and we're going to talk about this up ahead, because this has been a strategy actually to value profitability above volume, but there's also a limit. We start looking at volumes more, and that's where we already start seeing for the first quarter in the comparison with the fourth quarter with numbers that are better than the rest of the market, although the first quarter of last year had been behind a bit.

In the comparison per square meter, 2.2% below, and also for the same reasons considering this because that measures the width, we lose less in square meters. When you compare with the fourth quarter, we actually gained volume considering that our width was smaller than the rest of the average in the market.

The average prices here we can see in regards to the first quarter of last year, the average price of packaging actually grew 5.5%, and then it was pretty stable, we had stability in this number of price where the market, well, we don't have price data in the market because it's not disclosed, but the market had a drop actually in the volumes in regards to the fourth quarter, and we had stability. These are all positive signs that we are already operating a volume pace that is better than the market.

In square meters, our price grew 3.9% and dropped 1% in the comparison with the fourth quarter. Then moving on to the paper for packaging sector, we transferred most of this to our packaging plants, and part of this is sold to the market.

The total sales dropped 10.8%, 29,000 tons against 32,000. In the comparison with the fourth quarter, it dropped 3.7%.

Here you also have an effect of the shutdown in the machine of the Gaia 11, which is why you have this main impact. Then when it comes to prices, we had a drop of 1.5% and 1.7% in the comparison with the fourth quarter.

Basically, this drop here is related to lower dollar as we export part of this, and then that pushed the average price downward. There was no modification when it comes to price in reais for our sales.

Then for the rigid packaging, which is basically the sale of the smaller part here of the paper, that's where we had stability in regards to the first quarter of last year, and it dropped 3.6% in regards to the fourth quarter. Here this is really influenced by the price of the scraps.

Then on the scraps, the market data where you can see this statistics for the segment, the price dropped, and it dropped 5.2% in regards to the fourth quarter. We have a pretty good supply in the market where we've seen this drop in the prices and now we already have stability.

We have multiple events going on, but we don't notice a pressure for an increase and we also haven't noticed space for drops, additional relevant drops. Our understanding at this moment is stability for these scraps from now on.

Our price has been following the market data, 10.9% and 5.1% in this quarter in the fourth quarter. Now moving on to the financial front, our leverage is at 2.11 times.

It went up a little bit in regards to the fourth quarter of 25 due to the increase of a net debt that we've had through the CAPEX that we performed, and also due to the drop in the EBITDA in the last 12 months, because the EBITDA in the first quarter this year was actually smaller than the first quarter last year. We had a higher drop, and since this is circumstantial, the leverage will tend to be at a downward trend from now on.

We closed the quarter with 750 million in cash, 1.51 billion, and all of our debt is in local currency, only 1% in foreign currency, 20% in the short term, 80% in the long term, and the average cost of our debt is at 13.9%. It's below CDI, in the mix.

We can have some lines that are cheaper, and the average cost of the debt. There's a favorable carryover cost, right?

The moment in Brazil is quite delicate because of the interest rates we've been experiencing. Then the balance sheet of the companies are also impacted, and so we're kind of experiencing a stress test for our financial management policy.

As you all know, we have a leverage target of up to 2.5 times, and there's a reason for this. Due to calculations and studies we had, we're above 2.5, if we get close to 3, then we're already get into a situation where when the interest cycle is high, then you'll have a situation where cash generation is the same as the cash consumption if we were to look at the free cash flow.

That's why we control the leverage to keep it low so we can go through periods with high interest cycles as we're experiencing. What we see here is our financial management policy working.

We have liquidity, we have a controlled leverage, and we've been performing operationally well. We have a capital structure that can really handle the situation we're going through in Brazil.

Interest dropped yesterday, 0.25%, it went to 14.5%, but still extremely high, and it's been high for way too long. I think this is a caution point, and this is under control for us, but when we look at the market as a whole, it's very critical, because high interest rates are already very complex and bad, but imagine if this keeps up for longer, right?

I think that brings in an additional impact of complexity that we must consider. For us, everything's kind of under order, but, and it's also for the economy as a whole, kind of depends on the economy.

We have a ROIC of 12.3% and so in the first quarter, and it's 13.1% spread. This is not a WACC.

It's data that allows everyone to calculate the WACC using their own cost of capital. Investors use their own cost of capital.

Then our target is always to consider the ROIC above the WACC. Then there's a standard levels here of WACC that we can use, but each investor has their own, then we disclose it like this.

Some important data would be that even in the cycle of high interest, we are still, if we calculate the WACC here, you're going to see that our ROIC has been above the, when we look at this, we can still navigate above this, but even in a high interest scenario, the company's still been able to deliver a return on capital that's quite adequate. Then on dividends, in the first quarter, we paid 9 million 783 in dividends, $0.04, in the last 12 months, we had 169 million for dividends, and dividend yield of 8.1%.

We also have a policy for distribution of dividends where we distribute 25% minimum, and then at the end of the year, if leverage is below 2.5, we distribute more, 55%, that represents a payout of over 50% profit, and that allows us to return capital to investors and still retain the other 50% of the profits to reinvest. For the exercise of 25, we've released this in our general shareholders' meeting, and we've released the distribution of 25 cents per share on the floor, and that represents 25% of the profits of 20 25, and that's closing the year below half percent leverage.

For the first quarter of 25, as policy, that's also going to be considered with the distribution of the minimum dividend, which is equivalent to $0.02 per share. When it comes to investments, you have the complete investments.

Then you have Gaia 4 and then you have the restart of the São Luiz. It's already under operation.

The new Santa Catarina printer is also. Here this is actually inverted.

90% here and 73 is machine 5. That's already 90% complete and machine 5 is at 73%.

These are the amounts that we've invested initially, and that's one of the reasons why the net debt went up. Then just recording this in the first quarter, we kept our A rating in a survey with the stakeholders, and this is a survey we performed to understand the perception of the community and stakeholders towards the company, and we're really happy because we're the only publicly-held company in the industrial segment that was able to get all the certifications granted by the institution.

We care for stakeholders, and we care for cause, and we care for people. All four of these categories we were able to achieve.

We're the only industrial company where we see this recognition coming through this research. Besides this, we had two awards, one on the sustainability and the other one is on the decarbonization strategy certified by the Ministry of Environment.

Then we also integrated the index that is the industrial companies in the capital markets. On the 28th of May we'll have our Irani Day.

We're going to talk about our history. We're going to talk about everything we've been doing and about our future, our plans, and how we plan to execute our strategy from now on.

Then this is going to be a really interesting event. If you can keep up, you'll have live transmission through YouTube.

On this day, we're going to be celebrating 85 years, and we hope to count on your presence. Our IR team that everyone already knows, and to understand this, we want to make each investor understand the business model and really see how we can work on this, what's the view of the market, and help us make decisions.

Everyone can also decide on if they're going to invest in the company or not, and feel comfortable. The market has dynamic.

We want to be very transparent with this, everyone's to be comfortable to decide to invest in Irani. I think that's it, and now we can move on to Q&A, and I'll pass this on to André.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Great, good morning everyone, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you. I'm going to conduct the questions here following the order that the questions were sent on chat, starting off by Eduardo Meneses: A question on the technical occurrence on the transformer of the TG4 which led to the acquisition of energy box in the free market.

There's a contingency plan to guarantee the operation of the assets, considering that it represents a high cost per minute, it's a lack of availability. The cost of a transformation tends to be residual, considering the impacts caused by technical problem.

Is it part of the company's plans to increase reliability of the electric infrastructure in the plant? Thank you.

Henrique, can you answer this one?

Henrique Zugman

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for this question. I knew it would come.

First, just to clarify, on our side, all of our electrical parts in the plant are completely automated and modern, you can feel comfortable in regards to this. When we talk about a transformer, this transformer has a useful life cycle of 30 years, and this specific transformer that caused a problem, for 2.5 years it's been functioning with us, and we bought this with WEG.

All of our transformers have always been coming from big manufacturers, and the chances of a transformer like this having some problem is less than 1%. It's kind of like if you were to win in the lottery, right?

Very rarely do companies buy these kind of reserve transformers, right, because they normally last 30 years. When you think about extra spare parts, in the factory as a whole, we have a criteria, we have a formula for this, we're not going to get into details, but we do have a lot of spare parts for the factory to operate as a whole.

For transformers, in this case, that's not a traditional spare part, right, because it's very difficult for us to have this, and then problems with this, and unfortunately we were impacted negatively by this, right, and it happened. It's very rare, but it happened with us.

Soon it'll be back to operation. Great.

I think very low chances of happening what happened, although there is an impact, relevant, so that you'll have the energy to buy that, right, and so you have the financial cost of that, of course, but the fact is the chances of something happening like this are very low. You wouldn't justify having reserve in a situation like this where there's such a low risk probability.

Perfect, perfect.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Now moving on to the next question, Bruno Oliveira sent: Hello everyone, hope you're well. I think that non-recurring events are part of any company, but the question left is the perspectives you had for the year of 2026, have they been adjusted after the results in the first quarter?

If so, what are the new interpretations that you could disclose to the market?

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

I'm going to say that we don't disclose the guidance. That's the first point.

That's really important. I want to reinforce the understanding of what was non-recurring was the technical failure in the transformer of the generator tube, and the impact in the EBITDA in this quarter was very significant, was the shutdown on the machine, right?

This was planned and prepared and it's already part of the planning for the year, and so it's been working with productivity higher than before. There is this planning, you can see that this is compensated when it comes to expectations in the next quarters.

Now in regards to the technical failures, there's no way out. There's an impact, and that's it, life goes on.

It doesn't change our Nothing. The impact is very little.

We have over 500 million in EBITDA, and the impact in the first quarter was 6 million, a bit more than the second quarter, and it's not even a methodological issue.

André Camargo de Carvalho

I'm going to see if I can go over the main questions here of the people that have their hands raised, and then we'll pass the word on to them, and then after, I'll continue to keep reading this.

Lindomar Lima de Souza

Then Guilherme Nippes from XP.

Guilherme Nippes

Good morning everyone, can you hear me? Thanks for the opportunity, Odivan, André.

I have two questions here. The first one is going to follow the price of paper.

In the last quarters, you saw a pretty positive trajectory, and we've seen a drop in the price of rigid paper and flexible paper, and then normally you always pass along the inflation, right, but then my question is more like a one-off. If you could maybe think about what has gone on in the market, and especially with the rigid paper here, if maybe this could pressure packaging, and I wanted to get this confirmed this understanding, right?

My second question is in line with that graph that you mentioned in regards to the shutdowns and the cost of the transformer, and my question here is looking ahead. When you think about the second quarter, can we think of the shutdown impact as reduced or zero?

In regards to TG4, I understood that the impact was in March and that would be solved till May, if there's any other negative impacts in regards to the second quarter, and there would be a second semester in a normalized scenario? I wanted to make sure this understanding is correct.

Thank you.

Exactly this,

Lindomar Lima de Souza

Guilherme. The first quarter the shutdown was on the first quarter, the second quarter will be clean from this impact, and there's going to be the residual of TG4 that's going to impact a bit.

I think that's pretty much it, but the second semester as well is normally a bit stronger. Then, yes, after we can talk about this a little bit more with the inflation compensation measures, and we've been working on some campaigns in the market to increase prices to be able to recover the inflation losses that we've been suffering with the diesel prices and other other factors, right?

Everyone's been watching this closely, and we've been looking into what we can do. Then

Guilherme Nippes

on paper, Lindomar, if you could just talk about the prices, etc.

Lindomar Lima de Souza

Just to add on what appears in the prices of flexible packaging, especially with the dollar issue, we haven't reduced the price. Then adding on to Odivan's point here, in some paper lines, we're already transferring the price from the 1st of May, and so that's already underway to recover all of the inflation that took place in that period.

The same is valid for rigid paper. We don't export almost anything, and so the effect is basically just to keep up with the market.

Once again, considering the inflationary impact, we've also seen an impact in paper prices for packaging for paper, right, to recover the inflation of what's going on now in this year. Any other points or

Guilherme Nippes

No, that's exactly it. Thank you, very clear.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Very good. Now moving on, we have our next hand raised.

We have Marcelo. Good morning.

Hey guys. We had two points that were a little bit different than what we had in our models, and we would like to get some more color from you guys.

First, the cost. We saw costs were a little higher than our estimates, and I wanted to understand if this can be 100% connected to the shutdown factor and the problem with the transformer, or if there's any other factor that could be impacting this, inflation that Odivan mentioned.

In the second point, we saw a CAPEX that was reasonably high, and if you annualize this number, it'll also be above what we had as an estimate for the year. How should we consider this CAPEX further up ahead?

Should this be smoothed out? It's a quarter with a bigger payment.

Then

André Camargo de Carvalho

if you'd allow me one last point here, which is more geared to Odivan, our stocks have been suffering a bit in the last few days, and what you've seen and also if could maybe impact the company from accelerating the share buyback program? Thank you, Marcelo.

I'm going to start off, and you can contribute. On the costs, we still haven't seen structured changes in these costs.

The first quarter is covered by the shutdown. We have no other events impacting this as much that would justify a modification in the cost level.

Even the inflation we mentioned happened, but not to the point of having a structural change, right? Scraps are really well behaved, we have no other event that would justify a structural modification in costs from now on.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

In regards to this, it's pretty much all related to the shutdown. The same answer is applicable to CAPEX.

The CAPEX had this shutdown and that was because of the execution of investments and having to pay multiple suppliers in this period that we had. Then it's also not a number that can be perennial for the rest of the year and consider that as a basis for the rest of the year, right, because it's an isolated impact from the first quarter.

Our CAPEX has a level that we have seen for the maintenance that is not going to have any modifications in regards to 2026. It'll be kept at the same level.

Nothing different on this end. Then about the price of our shares, what we've been seeing is in the last few weeks, we had a lot of the foreign investors selling, and now they've started selling.

They had bought a bunch, and now they had started selling. We see the numbers and we estimate that almost half of the negotiations and the tradings in the last weeks were from foreign investors.

It's a movement we've seen in the market as a whole, and if you look at the numbers, we've also seen that foreign investors that came in this period strongly left recently. We're exposed to the same situation, and that's been impacting the price of our stock.

On the buyback program, that's something we always analyze, because I think the moment now is a moment of caution. Of course, if this drops and it makes sense for shareholders, then we're going to balance with this, right?

We're also look at the levels of interest, our leverage, and it's pretty much controlled, but we don't want to pressure our leverage because of this. There are many other factors we have to consider.

If the price actually justifies this and this generates value for shareholders, we're going to buy back, right? Of course, with this critical view, trying to optimize returns, right?

The variation of stock up or down is for the better or for worse, right? It's natural in periods of peaks or drops, and we're not going to move because of this.

What makes us move is when we see big opportunities that really make sense for our shareholders. I hope that's clear, Marcelo.

Very clear. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you, Odivan and all of the team.

André Camargo de Carvalho

All right, now moving on, our next question is from Edgar Souza. Edgar, please.

Edgar from Itaú, yeah.

Edgar Souza

Good morning, André, Odivan, everyone. How's it going?

We have two points here that we wanted to understand. First, a little more of an understanding and an emphasis on this, but I wanted to look at costs.

If we deduct this impact from the shutdown that's already expected and maybe a non-expected event, that's more of a surprise, let's say, how would you view this dynamic of input cost pressure, right? Maybe for scraps, you're kind of on a dropping trend, but is there anything else in a dropping trend to pass on to the results or still is there any effect of higher fuel costs that should be considered, or any other inflationary pressure, chemicals or any other elements we can foresee?

That's a point we wanted to understand. Then the second point, Odivan, you've really been very vocal in regards to this more challenging scenario than what the market had been seeing when it comes to the interest rates in Brazil, and I think this is not news to anyone.

Now we still had this war in between that maybe led to a reduction in interest rates that was maybe a little slower than what was expected by the team. What's the impact of this in your growth plan?

We saw that Gaia is practically complete with all of its projects. We have a few things missing only.

There's a big plan for growth as well, which is the Neos plan, and then that should probably be phased out. I wanted to hear from you guys how this growth situation is and maybe a Neos phasing, if there's any kind of market or specific project in Neos that you see in a more positive manner that could maybe come before, if you could talk about this a little bit.

I think it would be really interesting.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

Great, thank you, Edgar, and this helps you and me, Henrique and Lindomar. I think for scraps, things are pretty stable.

We have no room for dropping, and I think we've reached stability. Now maybe in the second quarter, there's carryover costs if you consider the entire quarter, and it's also not that significant, though.

Then yes, there's always cost pressure. We've had freight, as you can see, an increase in prices, international freight as well, that we've seen, as well as pressure, and also in the fuel line that of course impacts other inputs.

When you have an increase in freight and diesel, you impact everything, nothing is absurdly relevant here, but there's this inflationary environment, and so inflation has already been headed upwards, but we had one view, one trend, and then all of a sudden, things changed, right, and we had a little more pressure, right? Is there any other points, Henrique and Lindomar, that you felt, besides what I just mentioned?

Lindomar Lima de Souza

No, that's exactly it. Odivan, if I can on this point, just a follow-up point here.

Henrique mentioned that what are the conversations for prices in cardboard papers, right? We know that these are normally in the second semester, but is there already some kind of impact for the team that we can observe in the second quarter?

Can I help you here? I think there's two positive factors.

Besides the positive expectations we've had in regards to volumes, Odivan mentioned that there was a drop in the first quarter, but we're optimistic with the recovery in the volumes in the next months, of course without destroying value, and that's an important point we want to highlight. We're on this campaign for readjustments, and due to the inflationary environment, besides the issues you've been mentioning when it comes to freight increases, right, so that's already happening now in the fuel business, from the months of May, June, this should be happening, right, Edgard Souza: Great, is that clear?

Edgar Souza

Yes, very clear. Thank you, Lindomar.

Lindomar Lima de Souza

Now on the other point on the level of interest and our decisions, this is going to be the topic for the Investor Day, Edgar. We're going to approach this in our next cycle of investments in the company, I can't talk about anything here because first of all this information is not public yet, and it's also a topic that in less than a month we'll be in this event, right?

I think that we should see each other there and we'll talk about this a lot.

Edgar Souza

Very clear. Thanks, guys.

We'll see each other there.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Thank you, Edgar. Great, guys.

Now I'm going to pass the floor on to Pedro Melo from Citibank. Good morning, Pedro.

Pedro Melo

Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me?

André Camargo de Carvalho

Yes, we can hear you.

Pedro Melo

How's it going? Thanks for taking my questions.

The first one is about the normalization in volumes in Q2, and the strategy of value over volume. We want to understand that if you compare with last year, this should be maybe at a level that is similar to the recovery strategy into the segment.

The second question is still about costs. I wanted to follow up on the question to understand the margin guidance for Q2, and the 30% possible effects of the war and the conflict in Iran, and if this impact should be half of what this is, and also the recovery in volumes and price adjustments in part of the portfolio that you guys mentioned to be able to compensate the costs.

To summarize, normalization of volumes and this issue with a margin guidance here.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

All right, do you want to answer that one, Lindomar? We had talked about packaging specifically,

Lindomar Lima de Souza

I think. When it comes to volume, we've already been talking about this repositioning to fill in our capacities, which are relatively small, and so we don't have that much idle capacity, but the small idle capacity we have in both plants, we should already be filling out in the next months.

Volumes are pretty much equated, as I mentioned, with this, it's just about this movement right now from the month of May onwards.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

Actually, we've always been very careful with this issue of the value over volume. You've probably seen this, we have a very strong approach to return on invested capital, maybe we're the companies that most is concerned about this in this sector, and this generates some challenges.

One of the challenges is to profitize the assets we have. This considers we're very skillful in the sales, R&D, innovation, relationship with customers, and so that we can have margins that are adequate for the product and the service that we sell.

Now we always prioritize the margins and price, and we actually lost a bit of this volume. We've been performing a little less than the market, and that demonstrates that this strategy also has limits, right?

As Lindomar mentioned, we also need to look at volumes, right? We lost very little volume, but it wasn't that relevant, but we've been working on this strategy to search for these volumes, right, and with the adequate margins, right, the correct customers and the correct products that can, through innovation and R&D, we can really redesign the projects and bring in adequate margins for our business that compensate our assets and our invested capital.

Our strategy is to always have close attention when it comes to price and margin, but volume is an important component, and we must watch and ensure that we don't lose this to the point where we perform this analysis, right, of the percentage of volume that we can lose to not lose margins and so on, right? This tradeoff is ongoing and it's always very favorable, considering value, right, the margins, etc.

That's what we've been doing. Now I think that's it.

Any other points, Pedro, that you mentioned? I think the margins of the first quarter are not a parameter, but we've been navigating with margins about 30%, and we haven't seen any reason for this to change from now on.

We also don't see any relevant impacts from the wars or political environment, etc., external events in this margin, in this earning level, right? I think our business is historically very resilient, which is always really focused on the food sector.

The only raw material that we have that varies a little bit is scrap, and we have land, we have the forest, we have our own energy, and so it's practically self-sustainable. Our productive integrated chain provides a lot of stability, right?

We don't have exposure to currency, and so it's always going to be very stable. In the top line, it's also stable, considering this in most of our packaging, and that gives us a lot of resilience.

What impacts the results are these events, right, like the shutdown and for maintenance, or even when you have another case of what happened in TG4. I hope that's answered, Pedro.

Pedro Melo

Thank you, Odivan. Thank you.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Great. Now getting back to the questions that came in in writing, Bruno Almeida asks about buying back stock, but I think that was already answered in Guilherme Niets's question.

Another question is about Matheus Wagner: Hi, Odivan, team. Thanks for this space.

Could you talk about if you feel there's a slow down in the demand due to interest, even operating in sectors that are typically resilient, and if this has been impacting the pace of expansion in the company? Do you see there's fragile competition and space maybe for recovering market share?

Do you want to talk about that, Lindomar, and then I can add on?

Lindomar Lima de Souza

The issue with the corrugated cardboard business, not only because of the interest, but also due to the war, these have been directing to other markets, and so we haven't seen any impact in this sense. We also haven't seen fragility to intervene more in the market share when it comes to this.

I don't know if Henrique could add on to this maybe.

Henrique Zugman

In regards to our stock, the demand is pretty stable. I haven't seen any loss of volume in the near horizon, the market has stability and there's actually perspectives of maybe in the second half heating up a bit as we've seen in the last few years.

Actually the fuel sector has been demonstrating some important growth, growing 2.5%, yeah. The demand's really healthy, I'd say.

The interest issue, when you look at the top line, we don't notice it as much, right, because it's food. People have to eat and they switch a more expensive product for a cheaper one, but they still have to eat, right?

Then for the interest, that's important, right, because how are the companies doing, right, when it comes to capital structure? Yes, there are companies that have higher debts, but we haven't seen any big disruptions, maybe smaller companies that are maybe not on our radar that could have some kind of an issue, and so we take advantage of this space to capture some shares.

I think this sector is really well organized and maybe even healthier than what it was like. Companies are better, actually, and so the sector's pretty healthy from a demand perspective, and we don't see any companies where interest could be getting in the way that could motivate some more drastic strategic movement in this sense.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

We can move on, André.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Great. Enzo Rodrigues asks about the status of the Neos platform.

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

As I mentioned, we're going to talk about this on the Investor Day, if you could keep up there, Enzo, we're going to present our plans in regards to Neos and the future. I think it's going to be the right moment to give you guys updates on that.

We can't mention any of this because there's nothing public besides what was already disclosed. We're going to have this event on the 28th, and then we're going to be able to approach this topic.

Everyone is invited to keep up with this.

André Camargo de Carvalho

Perfect. Now Pedro Melo, we've already opened up his mic, we'll move on to the next question.

Then we have Eduardo Meneses. He had two questions here, actually.

The first one is if there's any responsibility from a contractual perspective from the manufacturer with the supplier of TG4, Henrique?

Henrique Zugman

No, there isn't. No one does this in Brazil from the equipment we buy, there's no way to charge the period where we lost profit.

André Camargo de Carvalho

The next question, the constant share sales on behalf of the controller, wouldn't that maybe represent some pessimism in the horizon from who should be believing in it? No,

Odivan Carlos Cargnin

actually the controller continues to keep almost 60% of the company, and possible sales, I haven't even kept up with this recently, but they're related to the financial organization of the group as a whole, right? You have financial commitments in the group that must be considered, and also be performing one-off sales, or maybe when the group has if you buy one company and sell another.

That's normal, but the controller has a very relevant stake and he believes in the company more than anyone else, right? He's been around for over three decades and he will remain in the company and continue to care for the company with his belief in the business and his love for the business.

André Camargo de Carvalho

All right. Then finally, any other participants that may be asked if we could share this percentage of the prices of the reading of May, and I'm going to say no, we can't share this.

We can't talk about future results and give numbers of future results. That's not allowed.

Then I think we answered all of the questions. No other questions?

Okay. We can end this, and I want to invite you all to the Irani Day.

We're going to have the live transmission and we're going to be talking about the future as well a lot. We want to wait for all of you guys there.

Thank you, guys, and have a great day. Bye.

Thank you.