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Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the GOL Airlines First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. This morning, the company made its results available. After GOL's presentation, we'll start the question-&-answer section for investors and analysts when further instructions will be provided. This event is also being broadcasted live via Zoom and may be accessed through the company website at www.voegol.com.br/ir.
We would like to inform you that, all participants will only be listening to the conference during the company's presentation and then participants will also be able to send their questions on the platform that will be answered by the management during this conference call or by GOL's Investor Relations team after the end of the conference call. As now, participants are able to submit their questions through the Zoom platform. You just need to click on the Q&A button located at the bottom of your screen, and then type your question.
Before proceeding, we would like to emphasize that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management and on information currently available to GOL. They involve risks and uncertainties given that they are related to future events and therefore depends on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should consider that events related to the macroeconomic scenario, industry and other factors could also cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.
At that time, I will hand the floor over to Mr. Celso Ferrer. Please, Mr. Ferrer, you may proceed.
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. This morning, we posted our Q1 2023 earnings release and a slide presentation on GOL's IR website. So we will make some brief comments and shoot straight to your questions.
As you saw our numbers, 2023 is off to a strong start for GOL with a record net operating revenue, recurring EBITDA, and yields. Delivering safe and reliable air travel remains our top priority and no airline does this better than GOL. I would like to thank our Team of Eagles for all they do for our customers each and every day. Their dedication, professionalism and hard work are the foundations of this company.
We delivered consistent operating results, even surpassing the fourth quarter last year, which is usually our peak seasonal quarter. In the first 3 months of 2023, we transported approximately 8 million passengers to more than 200 markets, totaling more than 57,000 departures, an increase of 17% compared to first quarter last year. We now have a flight every 4 minutes taking off or landing at Congonhas, one of the most important Brazilian airports.
We continue to improve our operational efficiency. Supply measure in ASKs grew by 11% over first quarter 2022, simultaneously with an improvement in load factor by 2.3 percentage points to 83.3%. The utilization of our operational fleet increased by 6% and reached 11.7 hours per day, which is consistent with the utilization we used to have pre-pandemic. Around 40% of this quarter ASKs were produced by Boeing 737-MAX aircraft, which provides improved efficiency in fuel consumption per hour operated.
GOL continues to be the airline with the lowest unit cost in the region even with the spare capacity to further dilute costs. Our objective this year is to resume the high fleet utilization and increase its productivity by investments and bring back all of non-operating aircraft. We remain committed to improving our operational efficiency, leveraged by increasing aircraft utilization. Combine it with a winning proven business model, we will sustain our unit cost advantage over the competitors.
The expansion of our offer in the domestic market with an increase in regional flights and in international routes remain a fundamental piece of our plan for profitable growth. In the domestic market, we reached to a mark of 70,000 additional seats during the Carnival holiday this year, which were mainly allocated to Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Fortaleza. At the peak of the holiday, we reached 790 departures per day, about 10% above the average of departures in 2019.
In the international market, we continue to resume our capacity, registering a growth of around 250% comparing to first quarter '22. Focus on the increase in our presence in markets like Argentina and in United States, this quarter we also announced the codeshare agreement with TAAG Airlines of Angola, which adds 13 new international destinations for our customers. Our recurring unit cost excluding fuel and the operation of our cargo fleet reached $0.39, 7.4% higher than the previous quarter where our offer in ASKs was slightly higher due to the market seasonality. We reached record yields and PRASK. They had growth of 32% and 36% respectively, compared to first quarter last year, even higher than 2019. Our unit revenue RASK grew by 38% comparing to first quarter 2022.
Moving to SMILES, our loyalty program. We had an increase in our customer base by 8.4% compared to first quarter 2022 and a record sales of BRL 1.2 billion. We recently launched Smiles Viagens, a new travel agent, which will enable customers to customize tourism packages easily and effectively through a single platform. The new service enables customers to create travel and leisure activity experiences and provide the opportunity to purchase completely packaged, air travel, hotels, and tours with the added benefit of using GOL's strong network, which provide use of all the main airports in Brazil. Our expectation in that Smiles Viagens will be one of the top 5 largest online travel agencies in Brazil within the next 5 years.
As for our cargo units in April, GOLLOG's fourth quarter cargo aircraft entered into services, leveraging the partnership between GOL and Mercado Livre with foresees an initial fleet of 6 cargo aircraft in operation and an expansion option up to 12 aircrafts in the coming months and next year. Therefore, our ancillary revenues increased 84% over the first quarter last year. Compared to first quarter '19, SMILES practically doubled its billing and GOLLOG expects to reach BRL 1 billion this year compared to approximately BRL 530 million last year.
In the first quarter, GOL had a record net revenue which means 53% and 4% above of first quarter 2022 and fourth quarter 2022 respectively. During this quarter, we also returned 3 Boeing 737-NG aircraft in our fleet. We also conclude the private placement of Senior Secured notes due in 2028 with the Abra Group, GOL's controlling shareholder, in the amount of up to $1.4 billion. This operation was transformational, reducing liabilities, extending debt to matures and increasing cash flow. We are well positioned to grow our operating results and cash flow in 2023 and 2024 with our leading brands, building on a foundation of service and operational reliability and delivering financial results that creates significant long-term value for our stakeholders.
I'll now turn the floor over to Mario, who will present some other highlights. Please, Mario.
Mario Liao
Thanks, Celso. Good morning, everyone. Revenue for the quarter was a record. As mentioned by Celso, we continued our capacity improvement movement and together with our focus on maintaining profitability, we also again delivered strong operating results. Our yields and RASK reached also record values and increased by 32% and 38% respectively, reaching BRL 0.485 and BRL 0.438.
We achieved growth in the average ticket fare, supported by strong demand from leisure passengers. Our sales in this quarter reached BRL 5.4 billion, 33% higher than registered in the first part of last year, even considering a seasonal reduction in sales during the Carnival week, which did not occurred in 2022.
Our recurring EBIT and EBITDA margins reached 17.1% and 25.2% respectively. Our recurring EBITDA totaled BRL 1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2023. As we plan to maintain this new level of yields and expect to have further dilution of unit costs, together with the resumption of supply, we maintain our financial projections for 2023. We continue to be impacted by higher fuel prices, that is around 25% up compared to first quarter of last year, which ended up being a decisive factor in increasing our recurring unit costs on the same basis by around 20%.
As for the cash flow, in the quarter, we had BRL 5 billion of operating inflows. This generated an operational cash flow of BRL 1 billion, excluding interest expenses on that, despite the impacts in the fuel price increase. As mentioned by Celso, with the placement of the senior secured notes due in 2028 with our controlling shareholder, GOL retired approximately BRL 5.6 billion in debt and opened a new source of liquidity of approximately $450 million. With this transaction, GOL reduced its leverage by 1.6x to 7.9x in the methodology that use 7x leases and that is 6x under IFRS 16. Using pro forma numbers in IFRS 16 and excluding those senior notes 2028, gross leverage was 4.6x. And the total liquidity increased by 36% to BRL 4.4 billion. We will remain very focused on balancing debt reduction opportunities and investments in the business while achieving the appropriate levels of liquidity, leveraged by the consistent recovery in our operating results. The company's successful liability management during the pandemic, positioned us into a leading position with the lowest short-term debt ratios among our competitors.
Now I'll turn the floor back to Celso.
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Thank you, Mario. We continue to be optimistic about demand. Even now for the second quarter, seasonally the weakest of the year, we reaffirm our commitment to initiatives that increased productivity and maintain profitability. As the industry leaders with a proven strategy and a strongest execution track record, GOL is well positioned to build on its momentum in 2023. We are confident in our ability to deliver significant improvement in earnings and free cash flow going forward.
So in closing, I would like to thank you again for the Team of Eagles for the elevated service they provide to our customers every day. I'm incredibly proud for their fundamental role in rebuilding the best-performing airline in the region. Operator, you may initiate the Q&A session.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Michael Linenberg from Deutsche Bank.
Michael John Linenberg - MD and Senior Company Research Analyst
Celso, Mario, I guess I have 2 questions. One, congrats on a good March quarter, a strong March quarter. Can you just run us through the -- on the liability management/restructuring, what are the next steps? I know that there is an anticipated rights offering and I think it has to occur within a certain timeframe. Can you just sort of in broad terms, tell us what to expect over the coming, I guess, it's really over the next 12 months or so on the timing on that? And then I have another question.
Mario Liao
We are pretty focused on continue to deleverage the company and reach that level of 5x leverage. As we mentioned that if we exclude the senior note 2028 on the calculation, with the current EBITDA that we're expecting, leverage is going to be going down to 5x. So we -- you remember that most of the times that we presented as future plan in terms of leverage in order to get back to more normalized leverage that, that's going to be or main focus. We don't have specific a timing to do that. You know that ABRA has the time in order to decide in terms to make the second stat in terms of this exchange of senior notes over the course of the maturity, up to 2028. That decision in terms of our rights offering, we expect to do this very soon. But we don't have a specific timing, but that's something we're going to be focused to do this.
Michael John Linenberg - MD and Senior Company Research Analyst
Okay. That makes sense. It's an ABRA decision, but it sounds like it's going to happen sometime in the imminent future. My second question is, just in the release, you highlighted that there were some adjustments that were made to the network and you specifically called out Congonhas Brazilia and Rio and I guess Celso, this is sort of like a 2-part question with Azul adding a lot of new service in Congonhas, have you seen -- like, what has been the competitive -- any sort of noticeable competitive changes in that market? And is this network restructuring that you referred to in the piece, it maybe just rebalancing your aircraft between those 3 airports?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
So first thing, the -- what we call the restructuring is not -- I think, restructuring is a strong word. What we are doing is, as we grow the ASKs and as we go through the seasonal movement in Brazil, which is normal for the year, we exchange -- we invest in 1 airport more than the other and then we go. For Congonhas, we are operating our full capacity there, which means 1 departure or landing every 4 minutes. So we have a very strong network in place right there. Azul entering this market, actually Azul launched 3 new markets, which are Brasilia, Porto Alegre and Curitiba. And what we seeing so far is that Azul came more on a cautiously approach, rational approach, to those markets and our main concern right now regarding Congonhas is the operational capability of the airport itself, because the new capacity came without significant improvements on runways, on taxiway, so we may have a new X-ray machine, but we don't have enough buses. We don't have enough taxiways. So the airport is crowded at this point. So we are -- our main concern is with the level of service to our customers at this point and delays.
We are investing in our operations right there. We are running within the same OTP marks of the competition in Congonhas and that's what we want to improve. And the big concern is, for the high season, how can we, as a Brazilian sector of aviation, can deal with a very busy airports, not only Congonhas but also Santos Dumont. At GOL, what we did is, we are also leading Congonhas and Santos Dumont within a system where we can operate those 2 airports in a very high frequency mode, all the shadows from Congonhas and also launching new shadows from Santos Dumont and other places. And we can isolate this, let's say, this aircraft from the rest of the network that normally runs with a better on-time performance, better regularity, and that's what we are doing in Congonhas and Santos Dumont.
Operator
Our next question comes from Daniel McKenzie from Seaport Global.
Daniel J. McKenzie - Research Analyst
Congrats on the quarter and I guess my first question here. We had a better-than-expected first quarter, yet you left the full-year outlook unchanged. So I guess my first question is, if that's just conservatism? And then, secondly, to clarify the sort of the earnings roadmap from here to get to the full-year profit, it looks like when fares drop, there's a surge in demand. And so I'm just wondering if you can speak to pent-up demand and the pace of the corporate recovery from here? And I guess is the -- as we think about the roadmap for this year, is it just simply one more challenging quarter before we exit on a steadier profit footing? And is that a fair characterization?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Dan, it's Celso. Thank you for joining us and thank you for your question. And yes, first quarter was better than expected on the revenue side. But as always, we have been adjusting capacity. If you look at how was our network in January and then in February, we cut almost 30% of the capacity that we flew in January to February. So we are managing the capacity to make sure that we run a leveraged results. And a way that we are flying with higher load factors than the industry and we are doing exactly what you said, which is, I mean, we are -- inside the aircraft today, I mean, we had different segments and one more inelastic, which is the corporate.
Again, corporate is not there yet. We are proving quarter-by-quarter, but it's always behind a little bit of our expectations. But the good news is that on the leisure side, on the VFR side, we have been able to stimulate the traffic and fly with 83% load factors. So we had different pricing strategies for the same flight. So we have a fair basis which is for the segments -- more in the [inelastic segments in the short APs], whereas we are still stimulating demand because I agree with you that there is -- there's a -- I mean, a lot of people who want to fly and the growth we expect for the high seasonal months and to reach our guidance is exactly based on that.
I mean, there is demand. We are, of course, cautiously adding capacity, making sure that we don't lose control on the cost side, especially on the fuel prices. I mean, we had a very bad experience last year when the fuel spiked and we had -- like, our flights already sold. So we are being very careful in to make sure that we have the right booking curve building process for every, every flight. So we expect to keep the yields at this level. I mean, so we don't expect a big change in the macro yield level, but we expect to -- during the seasonal months, we expect to sometimes stimulate more, let's say, the low-entry level of the curve whereas keep the fares on the short APs at a very high level. And we are seeing the competitors also on a more rational approach.
Daniel J. McKenzie - Research Analyst
That's perfect. Another question here, it looks like CapEx has largely been financed and so the question is, can cash build from here or is the priority to keep cash essentially flat and instead deleverage as fast as you can?
Mario Liao
Dan, you're right. Our priority is to keep -- you don't expect that the cash is going to be changing significantly over the course of the year. And every surplus of cash is going to be reserved in order to reduce the backlog of maintenance that you know, has been on the -- one of our main priorities since the end of pandemic. So we are now delivering the Azul's, but remember, there is still carrying some idleness in the fleet. So when we can address that idleness and pull back all the aircraft that is no operational right now, under operation and we have this capacity deployment over the second half of the year, that, as Celso mentioned, most of the profitability has been concentrated in -- by building that profitability in the second half of the year and depends on those investments as maybe required to pull back those aircraft, that's going to be the main priority. So the cash going to be reserved for investments and continue to leverage the company.
Operator
Our next question comes from Stephen Trent from Citi.
Stephen Trent - Director
I apologize if you already mentioned this, as I ended up joining the call just a little bit late. But I was curious, when we think about the SMILES program and the revenue-generating today, what sort of the view on a long-term basis, regarding how big this program could become? And is there potential for SMILES to actually collaborate, for example, with your partners at American Airlines?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Very good question. I mean, the numbers of SMILES are really growing. Like I said, it's doubled the size since 2019. And I mean, we have already started an international expansion of the program. So we now have SMILES in Argentina. We have management there. We have a company there. And we like that model. We will probably continue on the region, expanding the program. In Brazil, we are expanding the services. We are launching new products every day, and make the program even more attractive. But I think the main big step forward will be with Abra, where we have been working now really close to the Avianca team and also with the Abra management to make sure that we address all the synergies possible.
And the synergies on the Abra Group will be focused on revenues. I mean, we are not talking about 2 companies that has a tremendous overlap that we will start to cancel flights, to make sure that we will have pricing power. That's not the strategy there. The strategy is to create value. So in that specific question, we are talking about the 2 -- top 2 frequent flyer programs, LifeMiles, and SMILES. So with these group together now, we think we can grow a lot the size of SMILES within the region and the customer base.
Stephen Trent - Director
Great color. Really appreciate that. And if I could just kind of wiggle one more in just very quickly, the U.S. airlines, there's a lot of talk up here about how demand-- patterns have changed and now ticket purchase patterns have changed and less close-in bookings than there used to be. I'm wondering from a high level, if you could provide a little color on what you're seeing in your markets?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Yes. Good question. I am also following what is happening in U.S. and my impression is that we are, I mean, some steps behind what is happening in U.S. I think, the corporate market in U.S. recovered faster than ours, and now they are starting to see this differing pattern, how they book, et cetera. While in our case, we are still not there. We are -- on the corporate side, we are still between 75% and 80% of the, let's say, previous demand, pre-pandemic demand. And while we have large corporates still at 50% of they used to be. So -- and we are seeing a slightly growth in the corporate quarter-by-quarter. So we don't expect for the second quarter right now or even for the third quarter right now, a similar pattern that the domestic U.S. are seeing, because we are still recovering. So I think that, we still have this upside on the corporate to be incorporated into our booking.
Operator
Our next question comes from Matt Roberts from Raymond James.
Matthew Burke Roberts - Senior Research Associate
My first question is on your capacity planning and how you're thinking about that. I mean for 2Q, as you scheduled that, I'm looking at 17%. Is that accurate? And then how do you foresee that progressing throughout the rest of the year?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Sorry, Matt. Can you repeat your question. I'm not --
Matthew Burke Roberts - Senior Research Associate
Basically just on capacity planning, how you are looking each quarter to get to that full-year target in 2Q, I'm looking at, schedule that as the 17% year-over-year. So is that accurate? And then how you expect that to trend throughout the rest of the year?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Okay. No, I got it. And yes, we are -- I mean, we are confident with the guidance we put in place. And besides the challenges we may face with MAX delivery, we still have planes on the ground that we can and we are focused on this and bring those planes back. The idea is to set the same number of request line independently. If it's a MAX or NG for the second half of the year. And the growth that we are talking here is basically on the high peak seasons that we have here, July and especially the fourth quarter of this year, where we normally fly much more than the low season. As you know, I mean, we have been managing capacity on a more aggressive way than the competition month-by-month. And so, the growth will be much more concentrated in those high peak months, and also exploring new opportunities in international markets as we are now part of Abra and the synergies will be through network expansions.
Matthew Burke Roberts - Senior Research Associate
And then quickly on the status of the ticket tax suspension, do you expect that to get extended beyond May or how are you thinking about that?
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Yes, Matt. Yeas, we expect to be expanded basically because yesterday we had an approval in our Congress. So there's still progress -- approval to be made by the senate next week. But we are confident that this tax exemption will stay for -- until 2026 at least. So that's an upside regarding our projections now, because we only -- we had of course the benefit in the first quarter, but we were not projecting for the entire year yet.
Mario Liao
Let me take opportunity to -- we received some questions on the Q&A platform. So let me put some of the questions here on the webcast. So there is the first question, that is asking to provide more color about the increase in CASK ex-fuel, the main driver compared to the fourth quarter, and how we should expect to be in the second quarter of this year?
So basically, there are mainly 3 drivers -- 2 drivers that impacted the increase on the call. So first is related to maintenance. You can see there is an increase around BRL 80 million of maintenance compared to the last quarter. That was basically related to the anticipated redelivery of some aircraft. We were expecting to return 4 aircraft this year, where basically 3 aircrafts has been concentrated in the first quarter of this year.
2 aircraft has basically postponed from the fourth quarter. So you probably see for quarter in terms of the maintenance line been much lower than it was the historical trend for this line and that was postponed now to the first quarter. And also, we have basically some of the contracts, especially for passenger services and airport fees, has an impact of -- and an increase in terms of inflation in Brazil. And also we -- in this quarter, even though we carried the same number of ASKs in terms of departures, was little be higher. So we carry more passengers and also we make some adjustments in our stage lengths. So we reduced stage lengths in order to deploy more direct routes, having more higher departures than what we have basically in the fourth quarter that have more connection routes. So that impacted passenger service and airport fees as well.
We expect the second quarter -- the CASK ex-Fuel is going to be neutral to the first quarter. Basically, we have seasonality within the year. So in our guidance, we expect the CASK ex-fuel in U.S. dollars to reach a level between [3.5% to 2.6%]. So as long as we start to continue deploy the capacity that has been preserved during the pandemic, we still have the opportunity to further dilute our costs and have CASK ex-fuel in the second semester of this year, lower than the current quarter. So everything is on track. So nothing was deviating in terms of what expecting the projections as most are related to the season.
And the second question, that basically most of -- we received here in the current session was, how much of the $450 million was entering during the quarter and when expect to obtain approximately $300 million of not received. So we have around $140 million that has been recognized this quarter. $40 million has been basically proceeds costs for the mission and remaining was basically what we already -- lengths this quarter. There is no specific timing for the remaining $300 million. Most of those proceeds is going to be invested in the company over the course of next quarters according to the necessity in terms of the investments of the company. So there is no any restrictions, but there is no specific timing on that.
While the operator continues to look on prompting the questions, there was one additional question as well. That was, how advanced ticket sales remained very high at BRL 3.1 billion. So how the booking curve is now behaving between the second quarter '23 compared to second quarter 2019? And how we expect this booking curve to evolve?
So as we have been consistently delivering in all quarters, our load factors has been achieving levels beyond 80%. So this first quarter, we have a very strong load factor at 83%. We expect that this 80% load factors continue to be consistently delivered over the next quarter. So into our yields that is higher compared to 2018, so the booking curve now for the second quarter has been in the same pace where we have been controlling the capacity for the second quarter, and we expect that by matching the high season in the second semester of the year, we expect that capacity is going to start to ramp up over the course of the second half of the year in order to reach almost the stable or flattish level capacity compared to 2018 in the second semester of the year.
So I see more people in the queue of the Q&A session. So please, Operator, you can move on.
Operator
Our next question comes from Pablo Monsivais from Barclays.
Pablo Monsivais Mendoza - Assistant VP & Lead Research Analyst
I just wanted to have a little bit more visibility on the working capital evolution. It's kind of a follow-up on previous calls -- on previous question, sorry about the booking curve and the air traffic liabilities, what should we expect for working capital to behave for the next 3 quarters?
Mario Liao
Pablo. Thanks for the question. We expect a more neutral working capital going forward. So receivables are going to be continue to grow according to the increase in terms of the revenue. So the revenue is going to be increasing as a combination of the capacity. Additional capacity is going to be stronger for the second half of the year. There are basically not additional capacity, but the capacity has been preserved since the beginning of pandemic. So we are matching that capacity deployment according to -- the expected more stronger demand that is usually in the high season or second quarter -- second semester and stable suppliers payables. So we then expect to continue to maintain payment terms with more so -- same quarter.
So we expect to be neutral in terms of working capital where most of the cash generation that was going to be embedded to the [Vista] is going to be focused on the investments and the CapEx that was needed in order to GOL operate the company with the capacity expected for the second semester. So there is one question that we already answered in the -- in the Portuguese webcast, but they're going to be repeat here. Maybe, Celso, you can emphasize that. What is the impact of the ticket tax exemption for the first quarter? And what do you expect the benefit for the year? And there is also one of the questions that is, are the yields coming under any pressure with lower fuels or is they still holding price? So please, Celso.
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
Thank you, Mario, for the question. So the tax exemption was already in place for the first quarter of the year, which generates around BRL 130 million in net revenues benefit and is -- if we had the approval, we expect to be an exemption of BRL 500 million year-round. So BRL 130 million in the first quarter, BRL 500 million would be the total number for the 2023 guidance that we shared. So it's important to highlight that this is not on the guidance, why we still need to wait for the approvals.
So on your second question if there is any pressure on yields because of the fuel prices. My view is that the fuel prices are still very high. So there is a volatility. February, for example, we had a 13% increase in the fuel price in Brazil. Now we have 10% decrease. But if you look at the level of what we are paying at the fuel pump is still quite high. So I don't see room for any yield reduction because of that. I think any yield pressure will come from overcapacity. And that's why we are leaning those rationale movements market-by-market. We're not talking about let's say, the domestic as a whole, but market-by-market, making sure that we keep the unit revenues at the right momentum that the industry needs at this point.
Mario Liao
So there's 2 remaining questions, mostly related to cash flow. So first is, how we are guiding the cash flow for this year and how has been compared to 2019? Back in 2019, if you look in terms of EBITDA expectations that, EBITDA, there was -- really back in 2019, there was around BRL 3.9 billion, close to 30% EBITDA. There was a number, a margin that generated free cash flow. We are expecting now 24%, that was related to the expected rental payments, the net CapEx of BRL 600 million and also the financial expenses of BRL 2.1 billion that was going to be delivering a neutral free cash flow this year. So that is basically neutral and we expect to continue for the increase along the next coming years. And as we mentioned, that expected EBITDA is going to be important to really put the company in terms of leverage below 5x, considering the current EBITDA structure that we have in our balance sheet right now.
And there's one question that is, how much is the current receivable due to last year's in the first quarter?
That number has been neutral compared to the fourth quarter. As you saw we -- back in December, we issued $196 million -- around $200 million of senior amortizing notes. That was basically refinancing of the commercial debt that we have with lessors that has been switched to a private placement instrument that supports the company in order to expand by almost 3 years, 3 to 4 years. Most of the maturities that is going to be falling in terms of repayments of the deferrals in a much shorter tenure and most recently, we also disclosed a re-tap or additional notes of $26 million of additional deferrals that has been included into this structure. So besides that number, you know, what you see in our balance sheet, that is around $1 million is the number that is volume of leases that is still not included in this transaction and it has been negotiated between the company and in the lessors.
So those are the questions that we received here in the Q&A session. So please, Operator, getting back to you. If not have any additional questions, so you can move forward.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes today's question-and-answer section. I would like to invite Mr. Celso to proceed with the closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.
Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior - CEO & Executive President
So I hope you enjoyed today's webcast. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you again our team for the incredible quarter that we just released at this point, I mean, step-by-step, we are bringing back the GOL profitability and also productivity. So thank you very much, again. And our Investor Relations and Communications team are available to speak with you as needed. Thank you, all, and have a great day.
Operator
This does conclude GOL's Airlines conference call for today. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a wonderful day.