C&A Modas SA

BOVESPA:CEAB3

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning. Welcome to the C&A video conference regarding the results for the first quarter of '24. Paulo Correa, CEO of C&A; Laurence Beltrao Gomes, CFO and DRI; and Fernando Brossi, Vice President of Operations and Financial Services; Donatti, Vice President of the Commercial Department; Carolina Brasil Borghesi, Vice President of People Culture and ESG of C&A; and [indiscernible] Head of Investor Relations, are present here today.

This presentation and the results release are now available in the Results Center of our IR website. We also inform you that this event is being recorded and translated simultaneously into English. Just click on the interpretation button to access the audio. Recording of this video conference will also be available on our IR website. After the presentation, we will have the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this video conference regarding C&A's business prospects, projections, operational and financial goals constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information currently available to C&A. Future considerations are not guarantees of performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect the future results and may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such future conditions.

I now turn over to Paulo, who will start his presentation.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Thank you all for being here with us today. I wanted to start our call by highlighting our solidarity to the hundreds of families, victims of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul. C&A has 12 stores in the region and over 380 members in the state. We have created a multidisciplinary team to support our people, members, clients and partners in the society as a whole. In such a critical moment, we believe in the power of union to minimize all of the hazards faced by these families. We donated 50,000 pieces of clothing, collections of donations in all of our stores and partnerships with local NGOs. I would also like to reinforce our commitment to support the population of Rio Grande do Sul in such challenging moments.

Now let's talk about our results. We are very pleased to share with you the results for the first quarter of '24 in C&A. We understand that the evolution of the performance has been expressive and quite consistent. This performance reflects our focus on our strategy and also on capturing the impact of all of the transformation initiatives, which have generated significant results.

Starting with the highlights for this quarter, we reached a very robust growth in net revenue in the order of 22.2%, totaling over BRL 1,160,000,000. The stores grew 21.9% as a consequence of the excellent expectation of our collections. Our learnings have contributed to understanding the demand.

Once again, I highlight our gross margin. In Apparel, it grew for the ninth consecutive quarter, reaching 54.1%. We continue capturing the benefits of the operational evolutions with a highlight to push and pull. This quarter, it reached 40% of the operation. We were also able to dilute 1.8 percentage points in operating expenses as a percentage of the net revenue due to our discipline in limiting expenses. With that, excluding the gains of the tax effect, we had an increase of 125%, reaching BRL 180 million, a record for the first quarter since the IPO.

I would also like to highlight our financial discipline. And even with an unfavorable seasonality in the first quarter, we maintained our leverage in 1.5x of the EBITDA in the last 12 months. In my understanding, we have started another year with a solid result for the first quarter.

And now in the next slide, the results for the first quarter indicate the improvement of our operational strategies in the market. As we showed you in the C&A Day, we have very special assets as our store portfolio and the power of our brand. That's why we see an opportunity to increase our level of sales per square meter. And this quarter has only shown that we are in the right track. This growth has been highlighted and is above the average in the stores where we have a higher acquisition power. This growth has been observed, especially as a function of the number of pieces sold.

We started '24 with a very healthy stock level. Combined to more effective planning of our purchases, we were able to prepare for a transition collection, which was very well received as we can see in conversion in the physical stores, also in the volume of pieces sold. These collections had a high freshness which is totally aligned with our clients' desire.

The implementation of the push and pull and dynamics have been essential for our price and product strategy in a very efficient manner. This guarantees that clients will find what they are looking for in our stores, but also enables us to adapt prices according to the market, contributing for a ninth consecutive quarter growth year-over-year. This is essential for our products to be well received, leveraging the sustainable development of our brand.

And now on the next slide, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our strategy, the C&A Energy. We first introduced it last month on the C&A Day, and I would like to tell you how it's going. This strategy is based on the expectations and needs of our clients. Based on that, we want to reach a level of personalization and granularity which is leveraged by our analytical and technological capacity. As a consequence, we will increase the sales per square meter in our stores.

By analyzing data, we have continuously optimized products, purchased planning, and these actions have been essential for us to adapt to the specific needs of the market and also to react to consumption trends. An essential part of our strategy is to personalize the experience in each and every one of our stores, including assortments, optimization of the space and area and adaptation of visual and promotional communication to better meet the needs of each different location. With that, we intend not only to meet, but to overcome our clients' expectations in these regions.

We already have some initiatives that are being put into practice in some categories and in some stores. For example, the work done with jeans in the Tambore Mall here in Barueri. It was well received by our clients. Furthermore, we are exploring dispersion among stores. For example, we are analyzing different preferences of clients, assortment. And based on data, we are adapting it to the different stores to reflect this reality. This dispersion project has been implemented in the 25 first stores.

In the journey area, we understand that omni-integration is an essential pillar. Because of that, we're trying to make this journey more fluid and integrated, connecting off and online as an experience. We are also improving our app to enable personalized purchases.

With that, I turn over to our CFO, Laurence, who will continue presenting our results.

[Laurence Gomes, executive]

Good morning, everyone. I will quickly go through numbers with you. Here, we have the revenue figures in the first quarter of '24. The main highlight is the revenue growth of 22% in the Apparel area. It is very significant and results from the good acceptance of our transition collection. Also the analytical capacity to measure volume and also qualitatively with all of the tools we've been discussing with active hearing, trying to understand our clients' desire and this had an impact on this good acceptance.

We had an increase in Apparel, but there is a highlight for the females, for the women's apparel. This sales growth was in volume as commented by Paulo, price corresponded to only a minor part of it. And this is very important, increasing volume right now.

And then finally, in this page, I would like to talk about the decrease in the Electronics, we're closing with BRL 105 (sic) 9 [ BRL 150 million ] and our Beauty area also grew above, even at a higher rate than Apparel.

And now in the next slide, merchandise gross margin, the company expanded and that was leveraged by the good acceptance of the collection. Dynamic pricing, which operates in 100% of our stores. And also the push and pull, which has already reached 40% of the volume and now focused not only on products but on our continued and basic products.

In the next page, I think we can see the dilution of the operational expenses with a good dilution of 2 percentage points in this half of the year. And as Paulo commented, we continue advancing with our C&A strategy, new initiatives. And with that, we are very careful with a granular management with management rituals that are very important in terms of package management and any granular management. We're very careful about that. This is an important part of value generation. We maintain an adjusted structures and are always reviewing how we can improve or what we can no longer do or also review processes and activity scope.

In the next page, we've already talked about this. Operating expenses dilution, and so we had growth of our adjusted EBITDA of [ 105% ], reaching [ BRL 170 million ] in the first quarter of '24. This is a record for C&A in a first quarter.

In Pay, this was another important quarter for Pay. We continue offering credit in a very conscious manner, always paying attention to profitability. But above all, the quality of our credit portfolio. It starts with the concession. We do believe that the differentiated manner that we capture the onboarding without attrition, it's a very fluid experience. It is a natural selection. It is attractive and it contributes for us to have a higher compliance with better quality. And that reflects the quality of our portfolio and also the credit performance.

We had an increase in the net revenue of almost 60% with BRL 889 million for the portfolio at the end of the first quarter. And the share of retail sales, 25%, and that is according to plan. We continue observing improvement in default. This is something that we've observed since at the end of the third quarter last year.

We have better rollouts in all of the different areas, generating a net loss of 4.6%, which is substantially lower than in '23. Our provisioning methodology based on the expected loss model in IFRS, it generates a coverage of 99%, taking into account a coverage of 97.5% in a balance of 75 days, and therefore, in the 2 metrics, we have an increase in the provision when compared to the first quarter -- I'm sorry, to the fourth quarter of last year.

It's important to highlight that even though we observed this improvement in the rollout, and also, we had improved revenue, average revenue, all of the operational indicators are good. They confirm the trend towards improvement. We continue preserving our concession discipline in a conservative manner at C&A Pay.

In the next page, we talk about our investment plan. Investments had a decrease of 16% when compared to last year, but this is just a phasing, and we believe that we will start accelerating after the second quarter as a function of the reorganization, review, planning and adaptation of the C&A strategy.

Next page, and the last page of our presentation, we show you the continuation of our deleveraging our financial discipline. As you know, the first quarter usually includes relevant cash outflow. But even so, we were able to maintain the same level of leverage. And as we mentioned, we will pursue lower leveraging by the end of the year.

With that, we conclude our presentation, and I believe that we can now move on to the Q&A session.

[Operator]

We're now going to start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. Our first question comes from Gustavo Senday from XP.

[Gustavo Senday, analyst]

I have 2 questions. Perhaps the first one is for the short term. In this quarter, we've seen that this half of the year has been a little bit better than in the past. And of all of the leverage that you have used in the past year, such as dynamic pricing, it has helped you navigate in this scenario. But the second question is more regarding the reduction in the performance in some of the stores. And I would like to ask you about the lessons learned and the policies involved in this project? And what can we expect in terms of CapEx?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

The first one, regarding the second quarter, we are, in fact, in the half of this quarter. And what is important to highlight here. And I think that we could divide our performance in this period into 2 large parts. The first one has to do with what we call full collection. The projects that we have available are year long. And we have a continuation of this consumption in these categories.

I think that we've moved at a very fast pace, and we are very confident about the second half of the year. Then we have the winter collection. In this regard, we can see temperatures in April and May, they are a bit higher than what was planned for. But however, I would like to remind you that we have to look at winter as if we were watching a movie and not a picture. Most of the sales happened in June and July. So it's important for us right now to maintain a balance because perhaps what is a bit more challenging in this first half of this semester could change as we start seeing some of the cold fronts. And actually, we are anticipating it to happen in Sao Paulo next week even.

And then I also think it's important for us to consider that we have to look the block as a whole, first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, and we are very confident that we will be able to maintain an accelerated performance for the company.

[Gustavo Senday, analyst]

So is there anything else that you wanted to talk in terms of winter?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Well, I would like to complement. Winter has been warm in the past few years anyway. And so we prepared for this year some lighter collections with wind breakers and we have significantly decreased our heavier products. Another important fact is that we received and started working in our stores a month later than we did last year. This enabled us to have a better balance of our sales plan for the second and third quarters. We also mentioned that we are using our accumulated experience with dynamic pricing. We are already reducing prices for some products that do not have a good performance, but we are increasing the price of those that have a very good performance.

We also continue analyzing all of our stores on a daily and weekly basis. We are showing our clients what they want to buy and not what we want to sell. Also, what has helped us is the strong performance we've had with the products that are sold throughout the year. Also in the warmer regions, and that's where we have our test and learning model, in quick scale. We've been able to escalate and start working with these products in the store at a very fast pace. And this has accelerated our sales.

It is also important to highlight that our main categories, jeans, they do well, but they -- and they suffer less the impact of temperatures, which makes us very optimistic, including for the second half of the year because it continues demonstrating the good acceptance of our products.

We're going to talk a little bit about dispersion. As we talked about in the C&A Day last year, we had 20% of increase in the -- in sales per square meter. We are now in the second wave. We have about 125 stores. This includes layout reviews, assortment review in a more granulary manner, and therefore, with the need of increasing equipment, review, services and the team to be able to support these new sales. In some cases, we've had areas increase even.

We can see the impact at the end of the second quarter. By the end of the year, we will have 2 new waves with more 125 stores. We remain firm with our dispersion plan, aiming at increasing our sales per square meter, which is our focus for '24.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Eric Huang from Santander.

[Eric Huang, analyst]

Congratulations for your results. Could you talk a little bit about the leverage gain in the second quarter, which was very relevant? What can we expect from now on keeping in mind that sales should follow a very strong level. And then C&A Pay, you mentioned it clearly with some level of -- being conservative actually? But I thank you for your answers.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Well, the expectation for the year is very positive. We've consistently captured the impact of all of the initiatives and strategies that we've used in the past years. The company is more and more focused on the understanding and expectations of our clients. Based on that, we've defined our assortments at a very fast pace. And the statistics and analytics that we are developing to adjust prices, distribution volumes. And so this machine is well assembled, it is doing well, and it will continue developing results.

At the same time, as we mentioned before, we understand there are new initiatives that we have this initiative of the dispersion in the stores. We have other dynamics that we're using. And so these are new leverages that should help us with the journey for the second quarter, keeping in mind that this second quarter is different, and we want to have new leverages so that we can keep our pace increasing our levels, as I mentioned in the beginning.

I would like to remind you of how our results for Payday have evolved. We have a credit discipline since the launching of C&A Pay. We have different factors. One of them is the C&A Pay Express, where we capture sales and make sales at the point of cash. The clients have the means to pay, and then we introduce our product in a very simple manner. We can see a significant improvement in the new period.

Also number two, when I talk about the evolution of the models in January, we started working with a new model with this concept of granularity, where we have a granular cut off points spread throughout the country. It is a lot more assertive and has enabled us to have opportunities to have an even better control of credit distribution. And all of that has had an impact on what we do. We have had an improved rollout. We have used technology of channels, WhatsApp, for example, has been very effective.

Part of this improvement has led to better rollouts. Because of this better strategy, we will remain conservative. We're not going to accelerate, but we're going to be consistent with our policy. You know that consistency is very important, and we will continue our journey to use Pay from the retail in a responsible manner. I wanted to highlight something before we move on.

This has been very important for us. The way we look at each of our initiatives, push and pull, C&A Pay, the management of our gross margins. It is important to have consistency if we want to develop brand and value for the company. We consider consistency as a critical element in our business model. And this has to do with the way we look at the business management as a whole.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Pedro Tineo, Safra.

[Pedro Tineo, analyst]

I have two, especially in terms of C&A Pay. I wanted to talk a little bit about over 90. We can see an improvement to 1 quarter over the other. And I would like to know if we can separate the seasonality when we compare quarter-over-quarter. And I also wanted to know a little bit more about the C&A Pay expenses. There are significant differences. And I would like to know if this is a trend to be followed for the rest of the year or not?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

Part of the answer has already been given. There is seasonality. Remember the results we had in the fourth quarter, especially in December. The closure of the fourth quarter includes significant increase in sales, and therefore, the portfolio increases consistently. And if you analyze our curve, there was a reduction that was caused by this higher denominator. So when we look at it in the first quarter, it does not have the same effect because of the seasonality of our business and this explains it largely.

There is no operational indicator, no rollout. So anything that indicates a worsening of credit quality. But the other way around, we've had improvements. The methodology, as Laurence commented, is the same we used throughout last year. And what we've seen is an evolution in the maturity of the portfolio. In December '21, we realized that we would need some more years to reach sales volumes, and we understand that in '24, we do see this and we will renegotiate some contracts, reduce [indiscernible], improving the rollouts with less expenses with invoice.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Andrew Ruben from Morgan Stanley.

[Andrew Ruben, analyst]

We noticed the change in the online definition for site and app. I'd be curious if you could please detail more on what has changed? And then when we look at the penetration for digital, it's come down on the back of it. So trying to understand if there's any implication for how much focus management will have on the online operations.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

What we're doing right now is adjust the design of the energy strategy that we established. During the pandemic, we really had digital sales and everything that somehow involved digital channels were considered as digital sales. Once we clearly defined objectives to increase our sales per square meter in the stores, trying to have an online integration of our client journey, we understood it was better for us to have it very clear, how we were evolving with the upside channel and the square meter performance in the physical stores. So everything we used to do with the WhatsApp journeys, part of the journey, which ends at the physical store, now is moving on to physical store performance.

The part of the WhatsApp journey that end up in the online store are taken into account for the online sales. It's just a different way to look at it, but we continue evolving in both. And we will continue demanding ourselves all the time in terms of the evolution of these channels as a whole and the performance of these channels. The concept of digital sales today, I would say that it's almost 100%. It is very rare for us to have a sales journey and everything that we do only shows this.

This journey does not start with a visit to the social media, a post or a picture in the website. And even if they go to the physical store, the digital journey is part of it. And so the digital concept is something that we came to the conclusion that if we were to consider it very strictly, it would be almost 100% based on strategy that we planned and designed for us to move on with online sales, and the online sales should have their own goals and also specific goals for the physical store. At the same time, it's very important that we keep in mind that both of them are integrated so that we can have a more fluid activity.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from J.P. Andrade, Bradesco BBI.

[João Paulo Andrade, analyst]

Congratulations for your results. It is a quick credit follow-up. Since the creation of the C&A Pay, this is the first half of the year where we had a small reduction of sales penetration. Could you tell us a little bit about this? And what can we expect, also because of the 35% that you've been talking about? And once again, congratulations for your results.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

In general terms, J.P., our vision for the future remains exactly the same. We want to have a share of 35% by '26. If we look at the penetration of Pay when compared to the same quarter last year, it evolved 7 percentage points. It continues with its journey. We had a minor reduction of Bradesco with 3 points, but then we evolved 4 points when compared to last year. Our vision is -- we believe that we will end the year 2 points above what we've seen in this quarter, and so we will continue having growth.

In the first quarter, we closed at levels that were almost 20% higher than last year. So our journey will remain. But I would like to highlight something that Paulo mentioned about the omni activities. So we had activity, and we will reactivate our pay clients, more sales, more recurrence, and we can continue with this intensive growth strategy.

[Operator]

Our last question comes from Victor Rogatis, Itau BBA.

[Victor Rogatis Trevisan, analyst]

You commented that you've seen improvements in the rollout of all of the delay payment areas, which combined to a discipline in credit concession and invoicing results in a healthier portfolio. How can we consider the next quarters, PDD and the size of your portfolio? Because the company reported a significant improvement in year-over-year leveraging in the first quarter. So how can we consider the level of leveraging for the end of '24 and '25?

[Paulo Correa, executive]

I will take the first one. Well, regarding PDD and the expectation for the year, what we see in the first quarter is an evolution when compared to last year within the concept of stability. We have 5.5 million accounts sold. The volume of new sales is less representative. And therefore, we reached some maturity, and so '24 is a year where we will have a decrease. And then from there on, we will evolve with our maturity.

In terms of the portfolio, we will have a decrease of penetration. C&A has also had growth. We will continue till the end of the year. The higher sales volume of a product, which is included in this higher sales margin, could be considered as an evolution of the portfolio.

[Laurence Gomes, executive]

Rogatis, regarding the level of leveraging for '24, as I superficially commented in the beginning, we will try to obtain investment in deleveraging. I think that this is the pathway to go close to one time. This is the way to go. For '25, it depends on the investment plan for '25, the budget, which will respect and will be compliant with our C&A Energy strategy with block of investments for '25 and then another one for '26.

And so depending on the intensity and the way we will be, we have an option to anticipate some payments for '26 or accelerate a little bit more. So we do have this alternative to anticipate some projects and initiatives from '26 to '25, and that will have an impact on a higher investment plan, and this will result in finding a leverage level that is normal or healthy, which is around 1x the EBITDA debt.

[Operator]

The Q&A session is now over. We would like to turn over to Paulo for his final remarks.

[Paulo Correa, executive]

First of all, I wanted to thank all of you who participated in the call. And I would also like to reinstate our trust in the implementation and execution of our strategy. This connection that we've achieved for our clients, this increase in our client base and as a consequence, in the differentiated results we've achieved in sales and margin, leading to a deleveraging as Laurence has just mentioned.

Finally, I would like to thank our audience who always watch our calls. I would like to thank and acknowledge the team for another good performance we've had this quarter. You should receive my warmest welcome from the bottom of my heart.

[Operator]

Well, C&A's video conference is now over. We thank you all for your participation, and wish you a good day.