Suzano S.A. (SUZ) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

April 28, 2023 9:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding and welcome to Suzano's Conference Call to discuss the Results for the First Quarter of 2023. We would like to inform that all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the presentation that will be addressed by the CEO Mr. Walter Schalka and other executive officers. After the company's remarks are completed, there will be a question-and-answer session when further instructions will be given. [Operator Instructions]

Before proceeding, please be aware that any forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Suzano'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.

You should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Suzano and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

Now, I would like to turn the floor over to the company's CEO. Please Mr. Walter Schalka, you may proceed.

Walter Schalka

Welcome everybody to the first quarter release meeting that we are discussing today. It's a great pleasure to have all of you. With me today, we have several members of the C level of the organization. In the end, we'll be prepared to answer your questions.

I think it's very clear that this quarter, we were able to generate R$3.7 billion -- or to invest R$3.7 billion on investments on CapEx. And even on this scenario, we kept our flat debt at $10.9 billion.

On the commercial side, we had sales on the pulp side at 2.5 million, in line with the first quarter of last year. And the paper, we came back from our usual trends that we have lower first quarter, and we were able to increase a little bit our inventories to prepare for the second half. This trend was changed last year due to large volumes on exports. But this year, we revert to the old trend. And our inventory levels at pulp are at below optimal levels.

On operational performance, we had R$6.2 billion on EBITDA, a little bit over 20% higher than the same of last year. Our operation cash generation that we believe there is the right KPI to train Suzano. There is EBITDA less CapEx sustaining, we had R$4.7 billion and our cash cost, and we are going to discuss a little bit more in details, was flat comparing with the previous quarter.