Suzano - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding, and welcome to Suzano's Conference Call to discuss the results for the third quarter of 2025. 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. Beto Abreu, and other executive officers. This call will be presented in English with simultaneous

Aires Galhardo (Director executive)

Market for production today is operating underwater. And 801 hectares, making a 4% decrease compared to the second quarter. The most significant driver of this reduction was the lower cost, the lower wood cost, mainly due to improving the wood quality, resulting in a lower specific consumption and the operational efficiencies in harvesting and logistics.

Additional contributing factors included a lower consumption and price of key inputs such as caustic soda, chlorine dioxide, and lime, reduced energy costs, especially for natural gas, driven by the decline in the BRL price, and FX appreciation, which lowered the cost of dollar-denominated inputs in local currency. When we compare our cash cost to the third quarter in 2024, the cash cost decreased 7%, reflecting gains from operational efficiencies, input cost reductions, and scale. The key highlight was the broad contribution of Ribas units, which supported improvements across all cash cost components. The highlights of improved performance were wood costs, which saw the most significant reduction driven by shorter average radius, better performance on the field, and a lower diesel price, with scale gains also helping dilute indirect costs.

Lower input consumption, especially caustic soda and fuel oil, supported by operational improvements and fuel-to-gas conversion in the lime kilns at the Ribas and Imperatriz mills. Looking ahead, we are pleased to share that the cash cost production ex-downtime is already running below the BRL 800 per ton mark. This solid performance gives us confidence that we will deliver in the fourth quarter 2024-2025 the most competitive quarterly cash cost of the year, while also supporting a full year average close to the level recorded in fourth quarter 2024. Now, I hand over to Marcos to continue the presentation.

Marcos Moreno Chagas Assumpção (Director of Finance/CFO)

Thank you, Iris. Good morning, everyone. I will start with the leverage. Our leverage in dollar terms ticked up to 3.3 times. Despite our net debt remained stable in the quarter, our EBITDA last 12 months declined mainly because of lower pulp prices.

In terms of our net debt, as I mentioned, it remained stable on a quarter-on-quarter basis. I would like to highlight that we continue to generate positive free cash flow throughout the quarter and that we saw some non-recurring events impacting our liquidity and leverage in the quarter, namely the wood deal that we did with Eldorado Brasil and also the premium we paid for the repurchase of the bonds of 2026 and 2027. These events totaled close to BRL 1 billion. In terms of liability management, we did a lot of different transactions with the highlight of the issuance in September of $1 billion new 10-year bonds for Suzano issued at the lowest corporate spread ever for the company. We also repurchased the bonds maturing in the short term, 2026 and 2027.

The result of that is that we were able to reduce our short-term maturity risk, and we also were able to increase our average terms of our debt from 74 months to 80 months without changing the average cost of our debt, which remained stable at 5%. Moving to slide number eight, we highlight the healthy hedge portfolio that we have at this point with a put option of 564 and a call option above 650. Our total portfolio is at $6 billion. If the BRL remains stable at 5.32, which was the level of the closing of the third quarter, we would have a positive cash impact of nearly BRL 2.5 billion in the upcoming two years, including the fourth quarter, with the impact of positive BRL 800 million in 2026.

Moving to the next slide, number nine, we would like to reinforce our guidance for CAPEX for 2025 at BRL 13.3 billion, which implies a CAPEX of BRL 2.9 billion in the last quarter of the year. Now I would like to hand over to Beto for his final remarks.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Thank you very much, Marcos. A couple of things that we understand that's absolutely key to send as a final message regarding the next couple of quarters. Looking ahead, as I said, we'll keep focusing the whole team in the cash production cost, not only for the fourth quarter, but we understand that that must be a tendency in the way that we manage the business. This is dealing with something that we control to be prepared for any kind of scenario in the long term. That's the first thing.

The second one, it's that we have a couple of investments that we made in the last mainly couple of two years. As I mentioned, Suzano Packaging, there's a new tissue mill in Aracruz that just started up and also keep working in the progress to the closing of the JV with Cascades. This is an investment that we have made that we must keep working to gradually improve performance in packaging in Aracruz, but make sure that we will extract the values and the efficiency that we mentioned when we signed the JV with Cascades. Having said that, the focus is extracting value from the investment that we have made already and not putting other initiatives on the table.

How to summarize this is focusing on what we control with keep reducing cash cost and also making sure that we will extract the value from the investment that we have been making. Having said that, I'll be open for the questions. Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A section for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please click on raise hand. If your question has already been answered, you can leave the queue by clicking on put hand down. Our first question comes from Caio Ribeiro with Bank of America. You can open your microphone. All right. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I wanted to dive into a little bit more detail on your view on the dynamics of wood chips and softwood in the Chinese market specifically.

First of all, I wanted to ask you if you've noted any meaningful changes in terms of the prices of domestic wood chips in China as a result of all of the supply additions that we've been seeing coming from Huatai, Nine Dragons, and in particular, Chenming's announced resumption, right? Whether that has had any meaningful impacts in your perception on the marginal cost of production of pulp in China. Secondly, in terms of softwood, right? Clearly, the dynamics for that fiber have been weaker in comparison to hardwood with prices dropping while hardwood has been on a recovery track. Our perception is that this has largely to do with an abundance of this type of fiber, right? Softwood in Chinese markets as a result of higher domestic production.

I wanted to ask whether you've seen any meaningful changes there in terms of domestic producers in China perhaps reducing softwood output as a result of the recent drop in softwood prices and whether that incentive from customers to switch from softwood into hardwood is still present or if there have been any changes there given that reduction in the spread between both fibers. Thank you very much.

Leonardo Grimaldi (Executive VP)

Caio, this is Leo here. Thank you for your questions. Regarding wood chips, yes, we have seen an uptick in the prices not only of the Chinese wood chips but also of imported wood chips in these last two, three months.

Imported wood chips on a BDMT basis have increased almost $10, which would generate roughly an effect of $20 in the cash cost of bleached hardwood production, while Chinese wood chip prices, as per our monitoring, have increased from $25 and in some cases, $40. That is always a double effect approximately on the cash cost of production. Your assumption is aligned with ours that yes, this will create an effect in an increasing cash cost of Chinese producers, both of market pulp and also integrated paper and packaging producers, which we are seeing that are now more intensely pushing for paper price increases. I believe obviously that this is a consequence of higher costs in their system, and that should support the S&D fundamentals for hardwood for the upcoming months. Regarding softwood, yes, indeed, it is weaker.

Operator (participant)

It seems to be trending in an opposite direction than hardwood for this past month, especially in China. I think there are two effects. First is the availability of the unforeseen softwood chips at a very competitive price, in some cases at the same price as hardwood chips since the beginning of this year due to the infected wood and the policy to try to cut and use this wood as soon as possible. We believe that this wood will last more two to three quarters in the market. That is putting pressure on softwood both by some integrated players now producing softwood in their system and they used to buy it, but also having less, leaving less space for softwood pulp. The second factor, which I would like to call your attention, is the fiber-to-fiber movement.

Obviously, even with the gap that has reduced from over $200 to roughly $150-$160, it's a huge incentive still for fiber substitution. We see a lot of traction, a lot of action in China, many, many customers interested in seeking our support in this journey. In terms of how can they be less and less dependent on softwood and more and more dependent on hardwood fibers like ours. I think it's a double effect that is making the scenario for softwood producers a bit worse than what we see in hardwood today.

Caio Ribeiro (Managing Director)

Thank you for the color, Leo. As always, very interesting.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Danielle Sasson with Itaú BBA. You can open your microphone.

Daniel Sasson (Partner)

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for taking my questions. My first question goes to Iris. Iris, if you could comment a little bit about your cash cost.

You mentioned that you're running already below BRL 800 per ton in the fourth quarter. Considering the deal you announced with Eldorado and the TOD and that you are not that far from your expected cash cost level in 2027, according to your TOD, if there is room for additional improvements or lower cash costs in the medium term, thinking more specifically about 2027, not to anticipate any revisions you might make to your TOD, but to think if this cost-cutting trajectory is going to be somewhat linear throughout 2026 and 2027, or if you have specific events that we should see maybe in 2027 so as to drive your costs down. My second question to Grimaldi, thank you so much for the comprehensive backdrop that you unveiled for pulp prices.

Grimaldi, if you could just discuss a little bit about your expectations for the main topics to be discussed in two weeks at the London Pulp Week or in one week at the London Pulp Week. Last week, Chenming Paper's stoppage was maybe the most important topic. Exactly, you mentioned in your speech that you're thinking that you're still hopeful or optimistic about price increases going through. Is there anything that changed over the past couple of weeks so as to give you or to leave you more optimistic given that the industry was not able to absorb the price increase attempts in September and October, right? Is there anything that changed at all? If you could explain why you are optimistic or more optimistic now than you were in the past maybe two months. Thank you so much, guys.

Aires Galhardo (Director executive)

Danielle, thank you for your question. Iris speaking.

Considering the deal with Eldorado Brasil, we start to supply our facilities in Mato Grosso do Sul with this wood probably in January. We do not suffer any impact, just probably reschedule the sequence that we receive at the facility in the fourth quarter to rebalance, consider these new volumes. The main reason of this deal that I'll give you our rationale to do this was that we reduce our consumption per ton of wood, consumption wood per ton in the coming years. When we compare with the previous analysis, we are considering in the business case and with the first samples that we have of this wood, our reduction of around 4% the necessity of wood per ton in Mato Grosso do Sul.

If you consider that we will supply on average 18 million cubic meters per year, we will need 4% less for the coming years to produce the same amount of pulp. That's the rationale that we have to do this deal. We'll try to explain better in the Suzano days in the next month. The rationale to next year and the other ones is to running always below 800 BRL per ton, per quarter. Of course, we can be affected with some scale of downtimes that will affect in a specific quarter. The idea that we have in our plans, that's our average, we will be below 800 BRL per ton per year. Okay.

Leonardo Grimaldi (Executive VP)

Danielle, now it's Leo here. I'm going to answer the second part of your question regarding expectations for London Pulp Week.

I think first expectation, which is more and more clear, is that this market scenario is completely unsustainable. As we are going to a market that is a core of production of softwood, I think this tone is even higher than what we see or sense when we're talking about South American pulp production. It's completely unsustainable, even if we consider European cash costs and sales into the European market. Again, as I stated in my speech, as per our calculations, more than a year already bleeding 25% of the local hardwood production. This is unsustainable. The fact that the market is unsustainable as is, I think will be one of the main factors being discussed during London Pulp Week. I also think that what will be a topic is the rhythm of unexpected closures.

As I mentioned during the last call, we saw a very low level of unexpected closures in the first half of this year. Our line of thought is that all the instabilities around the world and geopolitical issues made some decisions not to be taken in the short term, as many were on the wait-and-see mode to try to see what would be the scenario after there was a clear view on tariffs. As this is now clear, we see that the addition of this unsustainable scenario with a clarity in terms of tariffs will speed up the amount of unexpected closures, commercial downtimes that we see in the market.

In fact, as per our controls, according to consultancy's numbers, if we compare the unexpected closures of bleached chemical pulp in the first half of the year and just the four months of the second half of the year, meaning until October, there is already a 40% increase on disclosed unexpected closures. Our thought or our line of thought seems to be executing or seems to be happening as we speak. We again believe much more has to happen under this very depressed pricing scenario. Now, regarding your question on my optimism a quarter ago and today, I think my optimism level is slightly better now, despite I was optimist in the last quarter. Thus, the reason we have announced a sequence of three price increases.

The reason why we did that is because obviously we were monitoring ordering flows in all markets and in China, more deeply even with the purchasing patterns of integrated paper producers, the amount of capacity underwater in the world as we speak. This feeling of optimism now has been a bit upgraded, if I could put it this way, due to the fact that we're seeing a reversion in the cost of wood chips to Chinese producers. As I mentioned to Caio previously, we have seen this $25-$40-ish increase on the prices of BDMT, meaning an impact of anywhere from $50-$80 in the cash cost of Chinese producers who are using Chinese wood.

This obviously put pressures in the whole system and establishes a new ground for what they can accept or base their decisions in terms of timing that they buy market pulp rather than consume local wood as well. My optimism increased a bit, I would say, due to the fact of this new scenario regarding regulations on recycled fiber, as I mentioned, and would increase. It is, however, important to say that my optimism is somehow limited. We see gradual price increases, but under this oversupply scenario, unless something major happens on the supply side of the equation, my optimism is not as big as you can imagine. I would just like to point this out. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. I'm sorry, just complementing the first question regarding the TOD that you asked. Just a remark here.

We are completely committed with the guidance that we share with the market regarding what we have to deliver by 2027 and confident that we're going to be able to deliver. Okay.

Daniel Sasson (Partner)

Thank you both to Iris and Grimaldi. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Rafael Barcellos with Bradesco BBI. You can open your microphone.

Rafael Barcellos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hello, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to use one of your highlights during your speech. I mean, congratulations for the results in your US packaging business. It's good to see that you are on track to keep delivering in this new business. My first question is exactly about it. I mean, what can we expect in the coming quarters, or do you have any sense of EBITDA contribution from this business for next year?

Operator (participant)

Ultimately, what is the full potential in the long term for the business? As a second question, Beto, the second question is about Lenzing. If I'm not wrong, you can already exercise the option to acquire an additional stake in the company. Could you please share with us your overall thoughts on the investment? I mean, other than that, after roughly a year, what has changed in terms of how you see Lenzing as part of your portfolio? Thank you.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Thank you very much. Yeah, since October, we already have the option to execute if we want, as you know. We are not considering to use this call in the short term. We're still with the team analyzing all the trends, all the investment in further capacity in the business, mainly on dissolving pulp globally.

This is a market that it's also facing a business environment in terms of competition, mainly in Asia, which we should further analyze. I'd say that the best answer for Lenzing now, we will keep as it is with the 15% and keep analyzing the business and keep studying. There's no plan for using the call in the short term. Regarding Suzano Packaging, as I mentioned, we are very glad to be anticipating, I will say, the business plan, firstly in terms of positive EBITDA. After taking a business that used to have a negative EBITDA, a lot of initiatives have been implemented on the commercial side, on the procurement side, on the logistics side. On the logistics side, we have been able to take the advantage that we have a strong logistics operation in the US that's led by Leo's team in the US.

There is our synergy on those negotiations to do all the logistics for the business. We were able also to adjust the team for the reality that we have in the company and in the market. I would say that it is still a lot to come. Fabio has a clear plan for the next two years, not only for generating positive EBITDA, but also generating the amount of cash that we are expecting for the business. It is a small business, as you know, but it is helping us a lot to understand the market, of course, to extract value from the unit, but also to understand what it is for a company moving abroad, having the chance to implement our principles in terms of management in a different future. I think we are also learning a lot in Pine Bluff that will help us on the KCJV in the future.

I cannot disclose a number in terms of next figures, but I would say that we are very glad regarding what we have delivered so far.

Rafael Barcellos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, Beto, thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Caio Greener with UBS. You can open your microphone.

Caio Greiner (Equity Research Director)

Hello, good morning, everyone. My first question on pulp, Leo, I wanted to go back to that discussion on the long-term fundamentals that Suzano discussed during the investor day. I mean, we've seen a significant amount of capacity additions in China in 2026, but pulp production in China still seems to be growing only gradually. Still, I guess the market in general and investors have been really concerned about this idea of China becoming the dominant player in the industry. Again, I know you provided a deep dive on this during your investor day in 2024.

I just wanted to understand if there are any updates on that structural view, being that maybe a tighter wood chip market, as we already discussed, anti-evolution ideas in China. I guess the question is, since last year, have you become more or less concerned at the margin regarding the structural fundamentals for pulp?

The second question on Kimberly-Clark and following up on this last topic, just maybe Beto or Fabio, if you guys can give us an update of how the asset is performing, if you have been able to dig a bit deeper into each asset that you're acquiring, if there's more clarity on the synergy potential, fiber-to-fiber potential, or maybe if you got the chance to understand if there are any assets that do not really fit quite well into the portfolio that are likely to be sold, anything that you could comment here would be really helpful. Thank you very much.

Leonardo Grimaldi (Executive VP)

Caio, this is Leo here. Trying to answer your question, not taking color out of our Suzano Day 2025, as we are planning to update completely the scenario that we presented last year, bringing insights on the verticalization effect of Chinese production in our hardwood market.

It is important to say that as we have local market intel teams in most major markets, China included, this anticipation of view of trend makes us, I guess, more prepared for any kind of reaction or action that we need to take in terms of what is coming ahead of us. Our view, I would say, is quite neutral at this time. I think the same trend that I have presented to you and to all of you during our last investors call is maintained. We still see this verticalization affecting our market. As you mentioned, we are not seeing this pulp production yet growing.

Obviously, when you put all these projects in a timeline, still a lot of them, I think the effect we're going to see on a bit more short to midterm the next four quarters, which has two ways of looking at this, right? The negative way is impacting, obviously, market fundamentals. The positive way is a much bigger demand for local wood chips and a pressure that this could further pose on wood chip prices. Again, we have to monitor that. As we speak and see what's going on, is that this market prices that we still see, which are low despite their going slightly up from the BRL 494 valley a few months ago, still is incentivizing many, many Chinese producers, paper producers, integrated paper producers to buy market pulp.

This is the reason why we see that pulp production is yet not growing or is not growing while imports of pulp are booming in the market. You probably saw that hardwood pulp, imports of hardwood pulp is growing more than 11% year-to-date to China. However, I would say that our view remains cautious, right? We are in a cautious mode, which obviously will depend on how we interact and see these moving parts in the wood chip prices in China. Also, as I mentioned, this completely unsustainable pricing scenario and how it correlates to cash costs around the world and will depend on supply side adjustments in the near term.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Good. Mike, do you want to jump in and I can complement?

Luiz Renato Costa (Strategy/M&A)

Okay, Beto. Hi, Caio, this is Luis speaking.

As we have already disclosed before, during the phase pre-signing, we have visited all the mills around the globe. We were very positively impressed at that time with the conditions of the plants and also housekeeping and everything. At this stage, we have received more information and have been talking to KC given the constraints that the process requires. We are more positive with the initial estimates that we had. As time goes by, we will have more time to fine-tune the estimates and to build a business plan for closing. Our idea is when we close the deal, we will have already a business plan for the coming two years with the right level of detail on which are the levers to generate value on the deal.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Just to complement on that, we see the value creation in the business that we mentioned.

It's very clear for us the elements that we have analyzed before the deal and maybe further elements that we will find and we are already discovering. I would say that our main concern, it's not regarding the assets. If there's opportunity to optimize the asset, we will do it. If there's opportunity to optimize geographies, we will do it. This is something that usually is not in the agenda of a big multinational, but we will consider portfolio management as if necessary. I would say that the main elements that we should take into account, again, it's not the assets, it's not the carve-out that we have to do, which is difficult, but it's putting two futures to work together with the same values, but having the ability to extract the best of each one. That's the main challenge that this organization has in this process.

Caio Greiner (Equity Research Director)

Thank you very much, guys.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Yuri Pereira with Santander. You can open your microphone.

Yuri Pereira (Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity. I'd like to ask maybe if you have any information about the floods in Southeast Asia, if you see any impacts, any further impacts on wood prices in China. If you have any information, please. Regarding dissolving pulp, do you see more shifts like Brazil's one for the next year? If you can recap for us what's going on in the dissolving pulp market to result in this shift or if it's only low hardwood prices per se. Thank you so much.

Leonardo Grimaldi (Executive VP)

Yuri, this is Leo here. I'm going to answer both questions. Obviously, floods have influenced also wood chip prices in the short term. I didn't mention it because obviously this is very, very punctual and short-termish.

First in the southern part of China. Now, as you probably saw in Vietnam two or three days ago where the daily rainfall was a record all-time high. Yes, obviously this is also influencing wood chip price and its dynamics. In terms of dissolving pulp, what we see is that today prices and DWP is trending higher than the historic average of delta between hardwood and DWP over $250. That is incentivizing this flex capacity to swing in that direction. In this case, yes, we expect that possible new flex capacity moving or shifting from hardwood, which, as I mentioned, is unsustainable to dissolving, is possible.

Yuri Pereira (Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Lucas Lagi with XP. You can open your microphone.

Lucas Laghi (Equity Research VP)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I just have one, I mean, on CAPEX.

Operator (participant)

Could you please provide us an update specifically on expansion CAPEX? I mean, if we exclude the BRL 935 million highs expected from your three main projects, I mean, according to your latest presentation deck, and considering the BRL 1.6 billion highs in the guidance for 2025, I mean, is it reasonable to expect that this line should reduce in the next year proportionally to this reduction on the three main projects that you guys are concluding this year? I mean, should you expect Suzano to continue to approve new competitive projects like those ones already in 2026? If you could also link your rationale for the approval of these competitive-related projects in terms of market conditions, I mean, it would be important as well for us to better understand how to think of this expansion CAPEX line going forward. Thank you very much.

Marcos Moreno Chagas Assumpção (Director of Finance/CFO)

Hi, Lucas. Marcos here.

We will update the market with our guidance for 2026 CAPEX by the end of this month. But I will try to give you a little bit of a trend, what we see in terms of CAPEX. As you mentioned, we still had in 2025 disbursements for the Cerrado project. And we also had the conclusion of some growth projects that we undertook in 2025, namely the fluff project at Limeira Mill, which will start up in the fourth quarter. Also, the additional capacity in tissue at Aracruz Mill and the new biomass boiler at Aracruz as well. Going forward, we sure should expect a declining trend in terms of CAPEX for next year as we will have lower disbursements and also we will have less projects in our pipeline. Great.

Lucas Laghi (Equity Research VP)

Thank you, Marcos.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Enrique Marquez with Goldman Sachs. You can open your microphone.

Enrique Marquez (Investment Banking Analyst & Associate)

Hey, everyone. Thank you for the question. So just regarding pulp prices, I mean, Leo, you mentioned that pulp price situation is unsustainable, but at the same time, the pulp price cycle has been, the hikes have been very gradual, right? I think this is the main difference from what we've seen in other cycles. At the same time, we have APPOK entering the first half of next year alongside other projects in China. Just to get a sense of where exactly do you see pulp price cycles in the future? Do you think we are seeing a derating of this range of prices? In the past, I mean, we would usually see prices going above $700 per ton in both cycles. Nowadays, I think it's hard to think that we'll see prices reaching $700 again.

Operator (participant)

Just wanted to get your sense on what exactly do you see these price ranges going forward? Thank you.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Hi, Enrique. Thank you for this question. It's a tricky one to answer as obviously it has several parts that are connected to our commercial strategy and are very sensitive in that case. Let me try, and I'm going to give a lot of color in terms of how we are seeing the variables that can change this game in the short term and looking forward during our investors' day. In principle, they all originate from the fact that we have now been living a scenario where for several, several months, the industry is bleeding, right? Several things could happen to change this scenario. First is, again, re-intensifying of permanent closures. We have seen a decline in permanent closures in BCP during this year.

Again, we suppose that a lot of that has to do with the uncertainties that these geopolitical interests have created in the decision-making process of these extremely high-cost and unsustainable producers that we see in the northern hemisphere. Second is the unexpected downtime rhythm going forward. Even though I mentioned that we see an uptick already in the four months of the second semester compared to the first semester of this year, it's still low compared to previous years. For the same, we expect or we suppose for the same reasons of the one that I mentioned regarding permanent closures and all the uncertainties during these tariffs and geopolitical timing. This, again, is unsustainable and something should or could happen in that direction. Third point that could change these dynamics is the timing of the new projects being implemented.

Today, we have official news regarding OKI, which are the same as you have, but obviously, all of these more challenging scenarios can stimulate different actions in terms of time to markets of new projects. In the same token, time to market of the verticalized projects in China or their ramp-up curves, right? That is a variable that we have to follow very closely and could change completely the game as we look forward. Fourth and very important is we talk about verticalization in China and the impact it has on reducing demand for hardwood pulp. There is a huge opportunity, which is what we see on the Western world. More than two-thirds of the pulp produced in the world is integrated into paper and packaging production.

Many, many old sites, old mills, which were the origin of paper production and board production are in Europe and in North America. Persisting this trend or this pricing trend, we believe that these mills are unviable or unsustainable. We believe a lot in the thesis of de-verticalization in the Western part of the world as a consequence of what we're seeing in China as we speak.

Enrique Marquez (Investment Banking Analyst & Associate)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Eugenia Cavallero with Morgan Stanley. You can open your microphone.

Eugenia Cavalheiro (VP Equity Research)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to explore a bit more what you're seeing as growth opportunities in the paper market in the US and also on the profitability side. Where do you feel like what level you feel like it's reasonable for the company to achieve and how far are you from that right now?

Thank you so much.

Fabio Almeida de Oliveira (Executive VP)

Eugenia, thank you for the question. Hi, Eugenia. It's Fabio here. I can take that about the U.S. We're still a very small player here in the American market. We have 45% of the SBS market, so still plenty of rooms to grow. At the moment, what we are doing here, Eugenia, is focusing on our growth in food service. It's trying to diversify a little bit from the liquid packaging board market that we are concentrated. It's doing well. Regarding business moving forward and our profitability moving forward, we cannot provide any color on that, but I would like to say that there are still lots of opportunities for us to improve in terms of cost here, and we're going to be addressing that in the next quarters and moving in the next year.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Thank you, Fabio.

Absolutely aligned with what we said in the beginning, which is focus on efficiency. As Fabio said, still a lot of opportunity to improve portfolio and cost in the current facility that we have in the US. Eugenia, there is no further, let's say, inorganic alternative for the US in the short term at this time. We are, again, completely focused on extracting the value from those assets that we have a priority. Okay?

Fabio Almeida de Oliveira (Executive VP)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Joao Alberto Fernandez De Abreu (CEO)

Let me finalize the call here. I want to remember that we have the Suzano Investor Day 2025 on December 11. It will be great to have all of you with us. Thank you for attending the call. The RI team is always available to clarify any further questions. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

The Suzano S.A. third quarter of the 2025 conference call is concluded.

The investor relations department is available to answer further questions you may have. Thank you and have a good day.