Earnings Labs

Cosan S.A. (CSAN)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Jun 6, 2013

$4.18

+4.76%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to Cosan's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year of 2013 Results Conference Call. Today with us, we have Mr. Marcos Lutz, Cosan's CEO; Mr. Marcelo Martins, CFO and Investor Relations Officer; and Mr. Guilherme Machado, Investor Relations Manager. We would like to inform you that this event is recorded and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the Company's presentation. After Cosan's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for industry analysts. At that time, further instructions will be given. (Operator Instructions). The audio and slide show of this presentation are available through a live webcast at www.cosan.com.br/ir. The slides can also be downloaded from the webcast platform. Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements will be made under the Safe Harbor of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Cosan's management, and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Cosan and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Martins. Mr. Martins, you may now begin your conference.

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Thanks. Well first, I wanted to thank you for participating in our annual earnings call, which coincides with the announcement of the performance of the company over the last quarter of our fiscal year. Just wanted to make some remarks before we start the presentation. We have this year, for the first time, a consolidation of Comgás, and we had only five months of Comgás being reflected in the results that we will present now. We have run some pro forma numbers so that you can basically compare the full year of Comgás with the results of last year, and we will also use this as a base for the comparison with the forthcoming years, when we are going to have Comgás fully consolidated in Cosan. We have also provided some guidance for the next 12 months, even though we are expecting to have only a nine month year this year, because we are going to be going back to the fiscal year coinciding with the calendar year. We have, nevertheless, indicated the next 12 months numbers as the guidance for the performance of the business. I wanted to start my presentation with the consolidated figures for Cosan. We had a positive variation of 28% in the net revenues of the company, which was represented by roughly R$6.7 billion of additional revenues coming from R$23.4 billion to R$30 billion in the year of 2013. The EBITDA of the company also moved 48% from R$2.1 billion to R$3.14 billion, represented by an EBITDA margin of 10.5% compared to 9.1% last year. When we normalize the EBITDA, taking into consideration the full year for Comgás, we are going to get to R$3.7 billion of EBITDA in the fiscal year of 2013. In terms of net income of the company, we saw a…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session for investors and analysts. [Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from Salim Morsy with Bloomberg.

Salim Morsy - Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Analyst

Hi, good morning. This is Salim Morsy from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. I have a question with regards to your exports to the United States of anhydrous ethanol as well hydrous. Have you been sending any hydrous to the Caribbean for dehydration and can you discuss your volumes, your exports to the U.S. and if you have been seeing premiums from the RINs for your own benefit? Thank you.

Marcos Marinho Lutz

Analyst

There is no actual export to the Caribbean. What happened last year was that, we had a record export year for the company, where we basically exported roughly 50% of the overall exports from Brazil, represented by roughly 900 million liters of ethanol being exported mainly to the U.S.

Salim Morsy - Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Juan Tavares with Citi.

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Hi, thank you. Good morning everyone. The first question is, if we can get some sort of update on the transaction with ALL on the bid for the stake in ALL, regarding whether there has been any update in terms of the terms, the shareholders agreement, or the potential timing for conclusions. And my second question is regarding your sugarcane crop, I was specifically focused on, given the percentage that you have hedged and also the favorability clearly on pricing for ethanol versus sugar, what's the minimum in your mix that you could allocate towards sugar, [as I can guess] [ph] your initial target of looking for 50% target for the mix?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Well we are projecting a mix of roughly 50% for the production of sugar and ethanol this year, which is pretty much where we would normally consider our minimum to be, between 48% and 50% sugar. This year we are projecting 50% sugar and 50% ethanol. Sorry, what was your other question, if you could just recap it please?

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Sure, on ALL, just if we can get an update in terms of the timing for the transaction or the bid for the stake?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Sure. Well, ALL at this point in time we are discussing the shareholders agreement, and we have made progress in terms of discussing the potential sellers, this is an agreement that has already been reached. We are now discussing the terms of the shareholders' agreement and see where we stand now. It's hard to predict how long it's going to take, because in the first phase, it took us more than we had originally thought it would, took us over a year to get negotiation of the shareholders' agreement. So I don't want to predict the timing for that, but it's probably the last stage of our negotiation.

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Okay. And just a follow-up from the previous call regarding your charges, financial charges, if you have any visibility on the explanation for the increase there year-over-year?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Yeah well, it was mainly the exchange rate variance that has an impact on our results. I just want to take advantage of your question, just to make a clarification, because we are basically reading on the press now, some mixed interpretations of the performance of the company. The main impact on the net income of Cosan on a consolidated basis for this quarter comes from basically an increase in our leverage as a function of the acquisition of Comgás. In this specific quarter, we had a substantial payment we made, referring to fees paid to the banks, commitment fees paid to the banks for the utilization of the R$3.3 billion credit line, which was disbursed for the acquisition of Comgás. So we had a substantial increase in our financial expenses, which was predicted as a function of the acquisition of Comgás, which had a huge impact on this specific quarter. But again, as I explained before, overall during the year, we had an increase in our net income. Even if we disregard the consolidation of Comgás. So we consider this to be a very positive result, a very positive year, but I understand that there is some misunderstanding in terms of the actual impact that we had in this specific quarter of -- on the net income of the company.

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Just to be clear on that, because I am looking here on page 31 of your press release in English. It kind of references that the impact of the Comgás debt is within the gross debt charges line. But I guess my question is more towards the other charges in monetary variable line, which it might wouldn't really be FX translation gains, right, in this line. So if these were those -- and transaction costs for the debt already embedded here or are they embedded in the gross debt charges?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Juan again, you are talking about the R$116 million, right?

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Yes, yes.

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Again, it's the (inaudible), because what we did differently from what we had done before, we ended up debiting this amount, the R$116 million in crediting (inaudible). in the same amount. So what we basically saw was a move from authorizing (inaudible). That's basically the impact, it's the monetary, it's the exchange rate variance during the period.

Guilherme Machado

Analyst · Citi.

Just adding a little bit more information, this was a reclassification we did in this table, just to reclassify some FX that we had from the accounts receivable we had against Shell -- Raízen had. We were treating these FX on the other charge line, and we realized the correct line would be the FX. So we had an impact of almost R$110 million in this line, other charge, and benefited the FX line. So what we would see in this line, FX line, would be roughly R$20 million, if we had not moved this reclassification.

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Okay. So just to be clear, that is a non-cash impact, it's not a cash impact?

Guilherme Machado

Analyst · Citi.

Just a reclassification, accounting reclassification.

Juan Tavares - Citigroup

Analyst · Citi.

Got it. Okay. Perfect. All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Isabella Simonato with Merrill Lynch.

Fernando Ferreira - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Hi it's actually Fernando Ferreira, and I just wanted to have an update on the simplification of the (inaudible) structure, if you can provide it to us?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Fernando, there is no news. I mean, we continue to work, but we don't have any specific news that should be disclosed at this point in time.

Fernando Ferreira - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

But the plan is still to give some indication to the market until the end of this year?

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

Yes. That's it.

Fernando Ferreira - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Merrill Lynch.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That concludes the question-and-answer session for investors and analysts. I would like to invite Mr. Marcelo Martins to proceed with his closing statements. Please go ahead.

Marcelo Eduardo Martins

Management

All right. Just wanted to emphasize, that we see this as a very positive result of the businesses. All businesses had a very good performance in the year of 2013 compared to the year of 2012, and we foresee an additional good year for the next year, which will be achieved not only through an improvement in macroeconomic conditions, because it is probably the question that lingers at this point in time, but basically, because we have been focusing tremendously on improving our operational performance, and in that regard, I just wanted to highlight the work that has been done at Raízen Energia. I mean, in the year, that was a very challenging year for the industry overall, for the sugar and ethanol industry overall, Raízen ended up being -- probably the only player, one of the very few players that had a very good performance. It was a record year for Raízen Energia. It was a record year for Cosan on a consolidated basis. We are very pleased with the results of the company. There was no, other than what we discussed here, non-recurring items that should be highlighted to the market now and again -- and we foresee a positive year moving forward for all business lines, including the fuels business, fuel distribution business, and so on. I want to thank your participation and we will talk to you next time. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude the Cosan's audio conference for today. Thank you very much for your participation and have a good day.