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Good morning, and welcome to Grupo Rotoplas conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the environment as we currently see it, and as such, there may be certain risks and uncertainties associated with such statements. Please refer to our press release for more information on the specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, trading events or otherwise. Please allow me to remind you that the company issued its earnings press release yesterday after market close. It can be found in the Investors section of its website. Also, the presentation for the call and the webcast link are in the Investors section. Today's call will be hosted by Mr. Carlos Rojas Aboumrad, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Mario Romero, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Carlos Rojas.
Good morning. Thank you all for being here with us today. We really appreciate the opportunity to discuss our latest results with you. I'm really pleased with the work of our team and the results we have achieved this quarter considering the adverse conditions we have faced, including some significant challenges that will nevertheless allow us to continue building our vision for the future, ensuring our sustainable growth story. We again registered record sales for the quarter with double-digit growth driven by external factors that continue to increase the demand for our solutions and most importantly, by the work done within the company. As we have discussed in previous calls, we have been able to leverage the demand created by the scarcity of water across our markets. Some of these scarcity is due to natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, droughts. Some in due to the lack of adequate infrastructure in the region, but also due to the new normal in our societies. Relocation due to prevalence of remote work increased the need for water efficiency in agricultural production and of course, changes in hygiene and consumption habits that are here to stay. In this context, the demand for domestic, industrial and agricultural decentralized water solutions that we have identified continues unabated. These are all positive trends for our sector in general, but we think our company has been able to leverage them with greater efficiency than the competition due to the improved capabilities of our team. In fact, in the first 9 months, we have grown much faster than the markets, therefore, significantly increasing our market share. For example, we estimate that the overall volume of storage solutions in Mexico grew close to 8% in the first 3 quarters, whereas our sales of these kinds of solutions grew twice as much. And our piping sales grew 3x as fast as the total market, also in terms of volume. We have been able to achieve this growth by continuing to rely on our internal growth drivers. Our transformation process flow is ongoing, and we continue to generate and implement new initiatives that enable us to provide the most innovative solutions for our clients. As a matter of fact, 227 out of more than 1,000 initiatives pertaining to flow have reached operational maturity level and their impact is reflected in the P&L. We continuously rethink our process in order to design new initiatives and keep the ongoing cycle of flow. This quarter, it is worth highlighting the development of new and optimized sales channel that reduce friction and improve the overall experience, strengthening of our value proposition in different regions by bringing 11 new solutions to market and the improvement in our sales efficiency, cross-selling amongst regions. Rotoplas aims to have an innovative top-quality solutions for each and every need, helping our customers make the most efficient use of water. We are, in other words, continuing to invest in building the Rotoplas of the future, ensuring that we strengthen our leadership position by responding with agility to our customer needs now and in the future, while continuing to improve our operational efficiency. In fact, as Mario will discuss in further detail, we have directed our CapEx to introducing technological improvements in our manufacturing plants, and the digitalization projects in some of our business units, increasing our production capacity and our customer outreach. This internal evolution has enabled us to make the most of our sector's growth drivers, allowing us to increase our market share and cement our leadership position. And most importantly, we continue to do so while pursuing our sustainable growth story. And as I outlined in our previous call, developing the impact not just for growth, but for sustainable growth. As a key component of our sustainable growth story is, as we have discussed, creating value for our investors. In this vein, it is worth noting that we continue to register a return on invested capital greater than our cost of capital, in line with our 2021-2025 strategy. Now it is necessary to discuss the challenges we faced as well. Supply chain disruptions remain a significant issue across all industries, including ours. We continue to face increased cost in raw materials and logistics, even though we were able to offset some of them to some extent through the use of our working capital, increased efficiencies and our pricing strategy. In fact, we increased the use of recycled resins by 20% in the first 9 months of the year compared to the same period in 2020, furthering both our production efficiency and our ESG objectives. Also in terms of circular economy in Mexico, we have managed to increase the percentage of recycled resin that is incorporated in storage products, such as tanks and systems. In 2020, we had a content of 17% recycled materials in our most popular products, and that figure has increased to 26% this year. Moreover, I think it's worth noting that as we mentioned in our last call, we were able to leverage our commercial and financial strength to take the opportunity to increase our market share and are now implementing more aggressive pricing strategy in the third and fourth quarter, as Mario will discuss in further detail. We will adjust our approach as necessary. Nevertheless, we believe the strategy we implemented will have significant benefits in the medium and long term, both in terms of our growth and our profitability. We remain committed to the overarching objectives of our sustainable growth strategy for 2021, 2025. And to our triple focus on people, planet and profits. And particularly, in the very short term, we are focused in achieving the annual EBITDA target that is to say MXN 1,800 million, which is in line with our initial EBITDA guidance in absolute terms. Our triple focus on people, planet and profits means that we remain committed to the best ESG practices and to provide best leading solutions across our markets, ensuring that we create value for our investors as well as to other shareholders -- stakeholders. And we do so by boosting our team's talent, capabilities to increase the quality of life of our customers. And last but not least, we aim to have a positive impact on the environment, both by reducing our own footprint and by empowering our clients to use water in efficient and sustainable ways, thus reducing their own footprint. This triple focus at the core of sustainability strategy ensures that our results are not only beneficial to our investors and our customers, but ultimately for our societies and the environment as well. That is our way forward and our reason for being. I will now turn the call to Mario so that he can discuss our results in further detail. We look forward to your questions, and thank you for being with us today.
Thank you, Charlie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for being with us here today. We certainly had a strong but challenging quarter. We believe it highlights our ability to leverage the trends across our markets. But most importantly, it demonstrates the capabilities created by our team, and our transformation program to harness internal growth drivers to ensure that we continue to create value for our investors by having a positive impact on our communities. Our quarterly sales registered on a historical record growth for the company as was the case of the previous quarters. The boost in sales was predominantly driven by the creation of internal capabilities as well as differentiated strategies by country. This compromises the launch of new products and services and new sales channels, cross-selling among regions as well as changes in our sales team's compensation schemes. On the other hand, this growth was also driven by the demand for our solutions in the context of the trends Charlie highlighted before: water stress, a natural phenomenon and the new consumption habits brought about by the pandemic. This means we have been successful in addressing our customer needs and continue to grow in a sustainable fashion. It is worth mentioning that 100% field rates in products and services were experienced by all of our clients and distributors for the first 9 months, speaking well to the company's ability to secure raw materials in such a volatile environment. About [indiscernible] and our operational status, this quarter, we carried on operating without interruption. We continue to comply the strictest, safety and hygiene protocols in our manufacturing operations and in the field. Furthermore, our administrative staff continues to work remotely. As to our financials, net sales increased 21% in the quarter, reflecting our increased market share and also driven by the launch of new solutions and our pricing strategy. As mentioned in the previous call, after keeping competitive prices in order to further strengthen our market share during the first semester of the year, we started to increase prices in the third quarter in order to offset hikes in raw materials. Our price management office is continuously balancing prices with the price elasticity of demand model. Sales also grew 31% year-over-year during the first 3 quarters. Sales of products grew 24% during the quarter and 35% during the first 9 months of the year. The sales of solutions launched during the last 12 months accounted for 1.6% of year-to-date product sales. The continuing strength of products compensated for the effects of the pandemic on service sales. As we mentioned in July's call, the contraction in services is mostly attributable to the fact that school closures affected the drinking water fountain business. On the other hand, our treatment and recycling plant business continues to recover, albeit still slowly. And our drinking water platform, bebbia, continues to grow at a rapid pace, reaching record sales and expanding its subscriber base as a result of the investments we have made in marketing and towards improving the user experience. As a matter of fact, if we were to exclude the drinking water fountain business, sales of services will have grown 4% this quarter. Overall, even though we have expanded our workforce, our group-wide productivity has continued to rise throughout the year. The number of employees increased 5% in the last 12 months, and sales per employee increased 21% in the same period. It's a 4x productivity level. Our gross margin decreased by 660 basis points during the quarter, and 410 basis points in the first 9 months of the year and stood at 13% and 15%, respectively, as we continue to see price increases in raw materials and logistics about what we have forecasted in the previous call. Even though we adjusted our pricing strategy across our markets to account for these increases, compensating only for about 30% of increased expenditures, operating margin and EBITDA were still affected. We estimate that the volatility in raw materials and logistics prices impacted our EBITDA by about MXN 340 million year-to-date. Nevertheless, we have continued to adjust our pricing strategy and are closely monitoring the developments in our supply chain, while leveraging the efficiencies and improved execution discipline brought about by Flow, which enabled us to increase our sales faster than our expenses even in the context of the supply chain disruptions we experienced. As to our net profit, it is worth remembering that we recognized a onetime gain when we closed our FX coverage position at a significant profit in the first quarter of 2020. Excluding this factor, net profit will have increased 82% in the first 9 months of the year. Now let's move forward to our geographic breakdown. Sales in Mexico grew 13% during the quarter and 18% year-to-date due to the strong demand for our storage, water flow and improvement solutions, including the new products we have introduced in the previous months. During the first semester, we maintained competitive prices, nonetheless. In July, we started to make generalized price increases. In previous years, we have usually made 1 price increase during the year. However, due to materials availability and cost hikes in 2021, we have made additional 3 to 4 increases throughout the year. Price adjustments made during the third quarter did not cover input increase completely, but we will see a full effect in the fourth quarter, and we will keep adjusting prices as needed in the coming months. Products growth compensated for the relative weakness in the sales of services that I mentioned earlier, but the gross margin and the EBITDA were affected by the cost volatility. Net quarterly sales in Argentina grew 54% and 69% year-to-date, driven by double-digit growth across all 3 categories: storage, water flow and water heaters as well as pricing strategy that offset the effects of the supply chain disruptions we experienced, driving both growth and profitability in Mexican pesos. It is worth mentioning that Argentina is showing a positive trend of accelerated growth and increased profitability besides being still sustainable. Sales for the United States grew 39% quarterly and 20% year-to-date. We continue to strengthen our septic tank business and our e-commerce operation, improving the user experience and expanding our reach. We were also able to use our purchasing power to acquire inventory before our suppliers increased their prices. And we adjusted prices in an agile fashion, ensuring that our margins remained stable during the quarter. Sales in Central America grew during the quarter and the first 9 months of the year, with double-digit growth in most of the region's markets. However, EBITDA was affected by the volatility of raw materials and logistic prices as well as some currency depreciation effects. Sales in Peru grew as a result of our pricing strategy and the opening of the new retail channels. However, the depreciation of the Peruvian sol led to a contraction in Mexican pesos. As in Mexico, in Central America and Peru, we had additional price increases during the third quarter, and the full impact will be seen in the fourth quarter. Finally, we continue to focus on strengthening the presence of our water-as-a-service platform in Brazil, as our pipeline there grows and we improve our execution and quality of our potential client base as we see signs of increased demand due to the reopening of the economy. In terms of our portfolio mix, sales of products during the quarter and the first 9 months of the year accounted for 96% and 95% of total sales, respectively, growing 24% quarterly and 35% year-to-date. Sales of services, on the other hand, decreased 18% in the quarter and 14% in the first 9 months due to the school closures I mentioned before. However, as I mentioned, our drinking water platform, bebbia, continued to register record sales and continues to gain subscribers. Our treatment and recycling business is recovering, and we're starting to see some traction in Rieggo, which is [indiscernible]. All of which points us to be a very good outlook for our water-as-a-service platform. As for the cash, we optimized our cash conversion cycle by 26 days, and we continue reviewing our terms with related parties through the weekly Cash Flow Control Tower. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 1.2x, even as we continue to take advantage of the opportunities that are arising. It is worth noting that our debt position considers a sustainable bond AGUA 17-2X, which, as we have discussed in the previous quarter, net MXN 4 billion, has a maturity date of June 2027 and was issued at 8.65% fixed rate. We also consider the bridge loan in Argentinian pesos for working capital, which, as we have said, strengthened our balance sheet due to the favorable FX effects. In the quarter, we paid off the loan we had in Peru. As for capital allocation, CapEx was 5% of total sales year-to-date amounting to MXN 378 million. This is in line with our guidance. But it is worth noting that increasing CapEx was directed towards improving our production and customer outreach that is investing in Rotoplas' future. In Mexico, we have invested in new technology to produce water storage solutions and in machinery to increase production capacity in both storage and Flow. In Argentina, investments have been made in the automation of the water heaters plant and improvement in the storage and water flow plants. In the United States, resources have been allocated to the digitalization of operations and the development of the septic business under the ACUANTIA brand. It is also worth noting that we leverage our cash position to ensure that we have an adequate level of working capital to sustain our growth and warranty the availability of raw materials in the context of scarcity and price volatility. In terms of ROIC, as Charlie pointed out, we reached 15.7% as of September 2021, 4 percentage points higher than our cost of capital. As he also mentioned, we achieved this result by pursuing a range of initiatives and actions within the Flow framework, and we will continue to pursue new opportunities as efficiencies to ensure we create value for our investors. We still have more than 800 initiatives at different stages of development, but which have not reached yet the stage of maturity where the impact is reflected in the income statement. Charlie has already explained about our triple focus, people, planet and profits, and the key aspects of our sustainability strategy, 2021, 2025, which it is included in our annual report 2020. I would like to invite you to take a look and learn more about the actions we are taking, if you have not done so already. Additionally, during the quarter, we undertook a number of actions and initiatives in the ESG space, of which I would like to highlight the following. After receiving over 300 proposals for A Fluir, an open call to partner with NGOs to provide and install drinking water collection system in underserved communities, we announced the 5 initiatives that were selected to be implemented. Rotoplas donated approximately 120 rainwater collection systems in Oaxaca, Chiapas, Estado de México, Querétaro and Veracruz, that will provide close to 730,000 liters of water per day. We initiated diversity and inclusion trainings at group level, and we also participated in the Global Compact's Target Gender Equality Accelerator, which will optimize the establishment of gender balance goals and will help align the company's policies and processes to exceed best practices at industry level. As part of continuous improvement measures, we have developed internal auditors specialized in ISO management systems in the areas of quality, environment, occupational health and safety. This will facilitate the achievement of interval certifications and the identification of deviations. And finally, we also obtained a social responsible enterprise badge in Peru, and our Grupo Rotoplas MSCI ESG rating improved from BB to BBB. We are committed to achieving a sustainable growth story, creating value for all of our stakeholders with improving the life of our customers and communities, and helping them to make the most efficient use of increasing scarce water resources. As we have mentioned in other occasions, we create value for our investors by upholding the best ESG standards and practices and crucially becoming an ally for those who work towards the common good. Now I would like to mention that we remain aligned with the updated guidance we provided in our last call. And while our EBITDA margin goals have become more challenging in the context of the volatility I mentioned, management team and every team member of the company are still focused on the total value of EBITDA as we said back in February, meaning MXN 1.8 billion for the full year. Our ROIC and WACC remain in line as well. It's also interesting to note that the analysts that cover our stock have current average target price of about MXN 40 for this year. And finally, before we turn to your questions, in the session of yesterday, the Board of Directors agreed to call an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in November to propose a capital reimbursement in time. The company will distribute shares that it already has in treasury. For payment in kind, the following will be proposed: deliver to each holder of 15 shares of the company, 1 share as a payment in kind for the reimbursement. If in any case, a payment in kind with share results in a fraction of the share, said fraction will be paid in cash to the corresponding shareholder. Estimated date of payment, November 19, 2021. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Now we can open the floor for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from anonymous attendee. When we should see a normalization in the supply chain?
Thank you. Mario, would you like to take this one?
Yes, sure. Thanks for your question. What we've been seeing in the markets and some experts are predicting, we think that at least this quarter and the first half of 2022, some volatility will prevail in logistics and raw material costs. However, we've been seeing in the last 2 months more stability at these raw material price levels flowing into our P&L.
The next question comes from Martín Lara from Miranda Research. I have various questions. What was the total price increase that you implemented in the quarter? And what can we expect in the fourth quarter? We can stop there and then we can go back to the second question.
Yes. I think that's a good idea, going question by question. Mario, would you like to?
Yes, the additional price increase that we implemented in the quarter -- well, first of all, Martín, thanks for joining us this morning. This quarter, we implemented -- I'll give you the exact number. 4.85% net price increase during the quarter. And we expect to increase another 5% going into the fourth quarter.
I think that's related to the next question. Do you expect a higher EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter?
Yes. We are expecting to be in the neighborhood of 18% of EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter.
And the next one, what was the sales contribution of the Flow program in the quarter?
Just a quick comment there, and then I'll let Mario answer more detail. But in terms of Flow, on the first round of Flow, which is the brand Flow that's benefiting most, today's numbers, really optimized cost and expenditures. So they didn't -- those initiatives, they don't drive as much on revenues and the revenue initiatives that we did implement such as new products that are being launched they have a ramp-up all the way up to 2024. And so in terms of revenues, we're not seeing a tremendous impact from Flow. In the initiatives we're implementing today from the second round of Flow, we have much higher level of content in terms of revenue-driving initiatives. But again, all revenue-driving initiatives will have a ramp-up. It takes a little bit of time for new products to be adopted by customers in our industry. Mario, I don't know if you can share more color on this? And maybe in particular, explaining the impact of Flow in EBITDA.
Sure. Let me circle back to -- I was making the math in terms of our revenue impacting -- Flow in terms of revenue explains around 8% of growth for the first 9 months.
Another question, how do you see the performance of the service business going forward?
In terms of services, the bebbia water -- the drinking water fountain since schools carry big contraction as a consequence of all schools being closed since the pandemic started up to now. So those service business, and that one had tremendous reduction in terms of size, which generated a big impact. There was another big impact in waste water treatment plants and water treatment plants in general during the pandemic. These kind of projects were postponed during the pandemic. And we did have a big gap in terms of new booking during this period. In terms of the -- what we see for water treatment plants, we have already started to gain tremendous traction in terms of new bookings. We see a very strong fourth quarter in booking of new water treatment plants that we will report in the next meeting. And we see going forward that our business thesis and our capabilities to service in a decentralized way customers with water treatment plants has tremendous potential. Lastly, bebbia has been performing in terms of sales and new customers very well, growing at a very accelerated pace, but bebbia is a much newer business, and it's of a smaller scale. So bebbia was not able to make up for the impact of these 2 other businesses that I just discussed. Mario, anything else that you'd like to comment?
No, I think you got it all. I was just making the numbers around EBIT -- Flow EBITDA contribution year-to-date. 23% of the EBITDA reported comes from Flow initiatives.
Thank you, Mario.
Next question in line is from Liliana De Leon from GBM. Could you share any other strategies to mitigate higher resin prices?
So I did comment on the use of recycled materials. I think that will help in a relevant way. We're doing this not only for optimizing costs. We're doing it because it offers, in my opinion, a better product in terms of the sustainability strategy. It's a product that performed just as well. But it's a product -- and it's a product that offers on the reuse of onetime use plastics for a purpose of a product that will last for a lifetime. So in this way, we're taking product -- plastics that were just used once and really using the attributes of plastics for producing products that last a lifetime. So for this reason, we're being very aggressive in our strategy to develop much better capabilities in reducing plastics. Now as a consequence, we'll also see on a much more stable and more resilient model in terms of costs for Rotoplas as one of our big raw materials are plastic. Mario, anything else that you like to comment?
Yes. And we are now very focused again, and thanks for joining us this morning, on price management. As you know, I mentioned during the last calls, our best strategy for compensate or offset prices increases in our raw materials are our leading brands. We are certain that the increase in market share has been very good. Charlie was mentioning how fast we are growing when compared to the rest of the market. We're consolidating that market share gain from the second quarter and third quarter. And now, the focus is going to be on bringing back profitability into the business. It's not only resin. We're having effect in everything from cardboard, resin, metals freights. A year ago for a full container, we were paying roughly $1,200. Now we're paying $14,000. It's more than 10x. So we are being really affected with general inflation phenomena all across the board in all the countries. But we feel confident that we have the tools and the skills to bring back profitability and the leading brand position, as mentioned, you will see a good advantage to make that happen and then bring back profitability to the levels that the company is well aware of are the targets.
Now also to complement, there's obviously lessons learned from the experience. And one of them is that the agility that a business has today really contributes in a tremendous way to the resilience of the business in today's highly volatile situation. We were able to be very agile in Argentina, for instance, and also in the United States. The results in both of these operations were really outstanding. We're very, very happy with the results we were able to generate in these 2 countries. Argentina, one of the cases is we're very used to these kind of scenarios. And we have great practices that we've learned from and -- which we're adopting to improve this margin recovery and the pace for that. But in general terms, I think that with Flow starting 2019, partly to strengthen Rotoplas's resilience really gives us this ability to be identifying opportunities and through initiatives that we designed for a particular purpose, making changes in the company in profound and quick ways. So we are very clear on what are the opportunities to be satisfied and serviced. And we are very clear on the initiatives to be executed to make the most of it. So in that sense, I think that Flow and the different practices we have throughout the company show us the way forward to have a much better performance in terms of margins. Thank you, Liliana.
Next in line is Rodrigo Salazar from AM Advisors. Congratulations on the results. I have some questions that are all related. Could you expand on your pricing strategy? When do you expect margins to normalize? And how are clients absorbing these price increases? And lastly, of the market share you have gained, how much do you expect to remain?
Mario, I think you've covered all these, but maybe you can...
Rodrigo, thanks for your question. I think we've been answering in different forms what you've been asking, but if everyone is okay, I will repeat myself. For the first one, we've already explained about what's the thinking around pricing. We're going to be implementing a couple of price increases in the fourth quarter, and we are targeting to have an EBITDA margin in the neighborhood of 18% for the fourth quarter. Getting back the company to the 18%, 19% EBITDA margin that we are targeting for the long term. As for market share, we believe that we have a good chance to secure or gain market share. One of the priorities, and we discussed this in the last call, was securing raw materials and being, I would say, very, very good at fulfilling deliveries to our clients. As mentioned on my script, we delivered 100% of all the purchase orders and service requirements from our clients. It's -- that says a lot on how good the company has been to secure materials and to deliver that. That has translated into market share as well. So we want to follow that path going forward. Price increases are in place. And we've been seeing a very interesting phenomena in all the value chain. Because, as Charlie was mentioning, the whole value chain was not used to such a volatile and inflationary environment. So we've been seeing some of our distributors cut on their margins as well. And that speaks to a little bit of uncertainty in all the different steps of the distribution chain. So we are assessing that. We are seeing and being cautious through the office of price management. But the target now is to consolidate that market share gain and to bring our margins back to a 19% target. And thanks for your question. It's a -- we've been thinking a lot around these for the last 6 months.
We have another question. Do you expect product sales to continue with strong growth in 2022?
We do expect very strong growth in revenues going forward all the way to 2025, 2022 being also part of that. Part of it because, as mentioned, the water stress situation continues to worsen and to be more critical. And for that reason, Rotoplas solutions are needed more. Additional to that, we have focused very much on our customers. We have customer centricity at the center of our culture. And so with this purpose of servicing customers and the environment, we're very aggressively continuing to develop initiatives to satisfy these needs in a better way. So a lot of it is already in the pipeline. A lot of it has already been executed. And we'll continue to generate also revenue growth going forward.
And if I may add up something, Charlie. On top of that, as it is in the press release, 20% of the more than 1,000 initiatives that we have on the transformation are now in the money step. So there is still more than 800 to happen in the next 3, 4 years. So -- and part as Charlie was explaining, most of those initiatives are revenue-linked because really the very first initiative that we execute are more cost related because our like to put itself the low-hanging fruit that you execute up immediately. So now we're going to be seeing the revenue-type initiatives. So we really expect a very good performance not only in products but also in services in the next 4 years.
We have another question. Congratulations on the results. You have mentioned synergies between your operations before. Can you give us more color on these synergies?
Mario, you mentioned a great data point earlier this morning. Maybe you can share that one. But I think also to what also Mario shared, being able to service all purchase orders in these times is, I think, an example of how we made the most of these operational synergies. So please go ahead, Mario.
We -- and this is an internal data, but happy to share. We have -- the way we count we have, as you know, a lot of factories in different parts of America. And so far, year-to-date, we have 5,120 days -- of factory available days. Out of those, we have only stopped operations in 39 days in different factories not at the same time, but 1 factory shutdown accounts for 1 day. So that's 39 days. So that gives you an internal field rate of 99.23% on manufacturing and servicing. Obviously, we have inventory and that inventory has helped to buffer to the clients. So the clients haven't seen any interruption of products or services deliveries in the first 9 months. So it's easy to say, but it's been a lot of work to make it happen. Furthermore on synergies, we are taking our product portfolio in Mexico, which is the most mature into the different marketplaces. We are launching, as explained, the water flow business in Central America, the same in Peru. In Peru, we're starting to gain more market share in that business that we launched last year. So those are like the synergies that we are materializing with different footprint that the company has and different product portfolios that we have. And finally, as you know, you don't need 2 CFOs to run the whole operation. So we're leveraging all of the platform and ensure service centers to serve and help all the different countries and business units to perform at their best level.
Additional -- maybe just an additional comment. We mentioned that we'll continue to find ways to do business in Brazil. And I mentioned that we had seen a lot of traction in the new bookings of wastewater treatment plants. About half of the booking for water treatment plants are coming from Brazil. So we're really being able to leverage tremendous engineering capabilities we have developed in Mexico to be able to service this water needs in Brazil with water treatment plants. That's just another example of what Mario was saying.
Last question. What are the next specific milestones for Flow in 2021 and 2022? Could you talk a bit more about the initiatives you have derived from this transformation process?
So in terms of the initiatives, again, I mentioned that in 2020 -- the first run of Flow in 2020, we were focusing very much on the ECS initiatives to materialize, which were cost and expense related. And we started looking for revenue-driving initiatives. 2021 was much more focused on revenue-driving initiatives, and that will continue to be the case moving forward. So we will continue to find opportunities to optimize our cost and expenses, but those have a much closer limit. When we think about revenues, that has -- sky's the limit, right? So we'll continue to focus on our customers, understanding their needs, and we continue to focus mainly in the American continent. And so we feel that we will find revenue-driving initiatives with new products and better commercial practices to penetrate markets with these new products and services. And one of the things that we've been working on very aggressively is seeing capability building. And the 2 capabilities we've been focusing on is the adoption of agile in terms of development and operations, which will drive the initiatives to be executed in a quicker way with higher levels of aspirations and with lower levels of cost of learning. The other one is in promoting very much digital and analytics. So when doing business through the centralized solutions and to really be massive, you need to replicate this in millions of times, digital and analytics play a very relevant role. So now this capability is being available to companies like Rotoplas. That is another very relevant topic for Rotoplas. Mario, anything else that you'd like to share?
No, I would just probably add up that now Flow and the transformation has become a way of life. And as Charlie mentioned, we are adopting these tools to accelerate initiatives and to execute better at them. We still have 800 to go. But in 2022, February is the time of the year when we do ideation to refill the pipeline. So it's an ongoing thing that we keep on filling up the pipeline with new initiative business cases, and ways to either grow the business or create more profitability within the business. So it's an ongoing program. Now it's been 2 years. People feel very engaged with the program. And I don't know, Charlie, I think it might be worth to mention the OHI, the Organizational Health Index results that they just launched because it's not only about performance, but it's also about how the people is feeling towards this new transformation and the culture we're promoting.
So we -- one evaluation of how our employees feel about the company, our culture. And how we're embracing the culture we designed. We designed a culture of market shapers. And we identified a few practices -- 5 practices that we really wanted to focus on to really drive this market shaper culture. And so we did an evaluation 2 years ago of how our staff felt around these practices and how they feel about them today. And so we had a very relevant improvement in the last 2 years, improving 4 points, which is very good progress in the benchmarks that we make. Where we had the biggest impact, the biggest improvement was in customer centricity, operational discipline, consequence management, talent development, and I'm missing a fifth one, Mario.
And leadership, no?
And a supportive leadership style, particularly leadership style that supports all of our staff so that we can leverage all of their capabilities to really transform the business. And what this means is that even though we were working somewhat remotely during the last 2 years because of the pandemic, we were able to engage our talent with our culture, which was one of the biggest challenges. It was very easy to improve productivity when working from home. It was very feasible to improve some aspects of quality of life without having people to be commuting to work. But on having a high level of engagement with the cultures is very challenging during this pandemic time. And fortunately, we didn't only just manage to maintain it, we managed to improve it in a very relevant way in the direction that we want to move forward. Thank you, Mario.
Thank you, Charlie. And sorry for putting you in the spot with something I just come to my mind, but I think connecting people to performance within the culture, I think it's key within a transformation process.
Thank you.
We have one final question for the 2 minutes that we have left. One more question. What are you expecting on working capital working -- going forward? Do you expect inventories to remain this high?
Well, Rodrigo, yes, the answer is, I think, at least for the next -- well, let me just rephrase it. As long as we need to secure raw materials to deliver on the promise of service to our clients, yes, we will keep inventories high. Once supply chains all around the globe normalize, we'll do the adjustments to bring it back to our -- to a more normal rate.
Thank you, Rodrigo.
Thank you, guys. We have no more questions. So I think that's pretty much all for today. Thank you for joining us, and see you next quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks for joining us today.