Mariano Bosch
Analyst · BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, Thiago. I am going to address your three questions. Number one, on the yields in Argentina for next year -- this year compared to last year. I would say that the main impact is on three crops, three most important crops that we need to analyze in Argentina, soybean, rice and corn. In rice, we are better off than 2011, and till now what we are seeing of the crops and what we are starting harvesting, we are at least 15% above of last year. That is clear for rice, and we are much better off. In corn and soybean, that is the ones that are mainly affected by the drought, because rice has not been affected at all. I would say that we are still better off than last year, and still better off in our -- how we see the crops till date, between 10% to 15% better than last year, but there is still remaining growth that will occur during March and April. It is important to monitor how the temperatures are going in March and April, so it will depend on the temperatures of April. If it is a normal year or an average year, we should expect higher yields than last year. But we did have this part of the growth to be completed. So that would be the -- your first question. On the second question regarding the ramp-up of Ivinhema and how the margins are going to be affecting, I would clearly say that every year, we are improving our cost of production, and so, the margins according to prices. But the most important thing is that, with this ramp-up, we are being more efficient every year, because of the improvement of each one of the operational efficiencies that we are ramping up, including harvesting, transportation cost, the [EBITDA] to the mill this year, with the ramp-up of Ivinhema, the EBITDA to the mill, because of our sugarcane plantation, it will improve a lot, because we have been planting and securing the area around Ivinhema, with two mills, that is increasing, so I would say that there is a clear ramp-up or there is a clear improvement on overall cost of production for our three crops in the ramp-up of Ivinhema, and we expect that to continue improving. You can see in the past, how we have been improving, and that's more or less the same, how you can project or how we could potentially continue improving. And then, the last part of the question regarding M&A and how the sales in the already transformed farm in Argentina or how that phase could potentially be? We do expect the same pace that we have been doing in the last seven years. So we have been around these $20 million generated off the EBITDA in the last -- in average for the last seven years. We do expect to continue within the same [medium pace].