Atacadao SA

BOVESPA:CRFB3

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Video Conference of Group Carrefour Brasil's Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings. From Group Carrefour Brasil, we have with us CEO, Stephane Maquaire; CFO, David Murciano; Investor Relations Director Natalia Lacava.

To start the presentation, we'd like to inform you that this conference is being recorded and will be uploaded to the company's IR website, where the respective PowerPoint presentation is also available. [Operator Instructions]

We'd also like to say that any information contained in this presentation or any statement that may be made during this conference with regard to the company's business prospects, projections and operating and financial targets are based on beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information currently available.

Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, seeing as they refer to future events and therefore, rely on circumstances that may or may not materialize. Investors must understand that general economic conditions, the state of the market and other operating factors may affect Group Carrefour Brasil's future earnings and lead to results, which are different -- materially different than those expressed in such statements.

We'd also like to inform that should any technical glitch arise in this platform, our call will continue after a short break via landline at the numbers that were informed in the company's Investor Relations website, ri.grupocarrefourbrasil.com.br and on our Zoom chat.

Now, I'd like to turn the floor over to CEO, Stephane Maquaire, to begin our presentation. Mr. Maquaire, please proceed.

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for being with us for our 2021 and Q4 earnings results.

Before diving into the numbers, first, I'd like to say that I see 3 building blocks that are underpinning our strategy. Expansion, digitalization and our responsibility as a company toward our customers, our staff and society at large.

To deliver, what we intended to, to each one of these, we need to change our organization, make it more agile, simpler and more connected. In order to do that, the culture issue is what I see as the basis of everything. And I'd like to tell you in advance that this has been an extremely important theme within my agenda.

Now, a little bit about 2021, which was a year filled with accomplishments in each one of these topics, and I'd like to share some of them with you. On expansion, we kept an accelerated pace exceeding BRL 80 billion in revenue, opening 44 Atacadão stores and 14 Express stores, 11 of them -- 11 of which are cash free or cashier-free stores, which ensured that we increased our market share by 40 basis points in the Brazilian food retail. This was a major achievement, seen as the market leader has major competitive advantages.

In January, we kept the same positive trend, gaining market share. In addition to that, our banking sector continued to grow strongly. And interestingly, we saw a 2x to 3x higher average ticket for our omnichannel client as compared to those who only purchase on one channel. This is a very relevant figure when we think about our potential.

Lastly, excellent piece of news with regard to our acquisition of the BIG Group. We are raising our prospect for synergies through 2025 by at least 15%, seeing as a more detailed work has been prepared by our teams and have advanced with many additional opportunities. As a result, we came to a minimum figure of BRL 2 billion by 2025.

In digitalization, we are making strong headway in food e-commerce, with an increase that was 6.5x -- by 6.5x in 2 years. That reinforces the power of our assets, especially Atacadão, where we have focused on digitalization and on our B2B market, with strong rapid advance, also bringing in new customers.

We have exceeded BRL 3 billion in GMV, and the food sector already accounts for nearly 50% of that total over the quarter and nearly 40% over the year, a massive advance. We've also made headway in our in-store pickup model, which ensures a reduced delivery time and full orders. We have rolled it out across 57 stores and the recent results show that our sales, average tickets and customer figures have more than doubled, being that 40% of that were new customers.

By the end of February in 2022, we should have in-store pickup introduced across all our hypermarkets. Lastly, we've increased our digital acquisition ratio within our bank throughout the year compared to 2020, and it neared 1/3 of new customers.

Now, on the topic of our responsibility as a company to our customers, collaborators and society at large, our achievements were no smaller than the rest. We frozen our private label prices for 3 months to really protect our customers' purchasing power. On diversity, we've brought 2 new women with vast experience into higher management positions in human resources and communication. We opened our first renewable energy store which has the potential to become a 100% cashier-free, and every store opening moving forward should follow the same template.

Finally, we've created programs and internal processes to give more opportunities to black employees, and we're investing BRL 115 million in anti-racism initiatives, including a huge sum in education in one of the largest investments ever made by private initiative.

I'm very pleased with our accomplishments, and I deeply thank our nearly 100,000 collaborators who helped make this happen. We have a lot to do and to change in our business. The journey is only just beginning.

On that note, I'd like to turn it over to David, who will detail our financials.

[David Murciano, executive]

Thank you, Stephane. Good morning, everyone. Now that you've had the opportunity to see our financial results in the release that was put out yesterday, so I will quickly go over the figures for the quarter and the year, starting in Slide 8.

Our gross sales in Q4 came to 2020 -- or actually, BRL 22.8 billion, up 29% in 2 years, driven largely by the accelerated expansion in Atacadão this year, which, as promised, opened 44 new stores and in like-for-like, which increased 15% in 2 years. As a result, we increased our market share by 0.4 percentage point over the entire year for the -- in the group.

In January, the trend remained the same and our consolidated share has increased. Our LfL results in Q4 2021 was challenging, but was specific. So I think it's important to share with you that this trend has been reversed by implementing several new trade strategies with suppliers and customers and by making a huge management effort.

In addition to that, we see a food inflation and unemployment scenario that will moderate over the next few months, and we should have a more normal basis for comparison, so to speak. With all of that, we come into 2022 a lot better, with like-for-like sales overall until February already in positive ground with mid-single approximately.

On Slide 9, we see that the trend for the year was consistent in sales. We ended 2021 with overall gross sales of BRL 81.2 billion, up 9% in the year versus 30% in 2 years. Like-for-like sales were positive at 1% in 2 years, and like-for-like growth was 19%, a result of a resilient business. And it should be reminded that we met the guidance for gross sales with the Atacadão, which mirrors our ability to execute.

In Slide 10, we look at our EBITDA for the quarter, which saw another all-time high at BRL 1.8 billion, growth by 20% versus 2019, which mirrors our very accurate strategy and our powerful ecosystem.

Now, let's look at each business unit. In Slide 11, despite the challenging basis for comparison for 2020. In the full year, we saw growth by -- we saw growth with BRL 5.7 billion in EBITDA, up 20% in 2 years. Now, here, I'd like to highlight the chart on the right side of the slide where we see that despite the challenges in 2021, especially in retail, our EBITDA margin was slightly higher versus 2019, at 5.6% over the year. In Atacadão, the margin remained at the same levels as 2019, about 7.3% despite the events in our expansion.

In Slide 12, we look at our continued operational efficiency, which allowed us to expand and invest in competitiveness. As a result, our -- as a result of those investments, we saw a decline in our gross margin in 2 years, both compared with Q4 and the entire year. We came to 20.6% of gross margin in Q4 '21, with an improved SG&A at 12.2%. Over the year, the same logic applies. Virtually, every margin -- gross margin reduction was offset by efficiency gains in SG&A which came to only 12.5% of revenue versus 14% in 2019 and reinforce the group's focus on working to restructure its managerial structures for the sake of competitiveness.

We are confident and optimistic that when our transaction with Group BIG is approved, we will have even more opportunity to invest our efficiency gains back into the business for the benefit of the client.

With the result I mentioned on previous slides, here on Slide 13, I'd like to highlight the strong net profit we achieved and our cash conversion throughout the year. We saw a 25% increase in net revenue in 2 years. The solid performance of operations and good capital management driving cash generation. Our free cash flow for operations in 2021 increased 14.3% year-over-year, and our free cash flow more than doubled in 2 years, especially because of the macro scenario that we live in.

In Slide 14, a little bit about our indebtedness. We continue to see our indebtedness at healthy levels and our cash generation capacity ensured good funding sources for us. We ended the year with only 0.43x net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, and the average for the year was 1.03x the net debt-to-EBITDA. We have credit lines that have already been granted to have our seasonal refinancing, which we usually have in January at a competitive cost of 12% a year.

And in January, we've had about BRL 3.5 billion in issues and payments. We have high liquidity, and we still have BRL 1.8 billion available for redemption in the intercompany line. In addition to another line to pay the BIG acquisition, which puts us in a very comfortable position with regard to liquidity. These lines do not eliminate the possibility of accessing the local market to ensure lower cost for the company.

Now, running the numbers pro forma using every figure -- every average for 2021, only adding the need for cash to pay BIG, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is not -- is no more than 2x, which puts us, again, in a very comfortable position.

Now, let me talk about our quarterly results for our business units, starting with Atacadão on Slide 16. This was another year where we met our expectations to open new stores, with 44 of them. [ 20 ], of which were converted macro stores and 22 were organic openings with 3 delivery wholesales. We ended 2021 with the amazing landmark of 250 self-service stores, 33 delivery wholesales. We also continue to advance in our digital strategy, with 121 stores and digital sales for B2C and 33 focused on B2B.

Moving to Slide 17. Gross sales with Atacadão in Q4 '21 came to BRL 16.7 billion. Despite the expected negative like-for-like sales in the quarter because of the larger basis for comparison of 2020, bear in mind that in Q4 2020, we grew 27% in LfL. Our knowledge of the market and the advance in our expansion allowed us to grow 7% overall year-over-year and 41% -- actually, 7% year-over-year in Q4 and 41% in 2 years.

In addition to that, in January, we were able to reverse the negative trend and we are already positive by mid-February. I'd also like to highlight that the digital channel has been gaining increasing relevance, accounting for 2% of Atacadão's overall sales in Q4.

To finish my comments on Atacadão on Slide 18. As seen in Q3, in Q4, we again faced an environment of high inflation and reduced elasticity for consumers with regard to price. In light of that scenario, we saw some opportunities for purchases, and we're able to, again, have a competitive price positioning, growing our revenues and achieving high levels of profitability.

Our gross margin, again, came to a high 15.5%, with SG&A as a percentage of sales increasing year-over-year because of the events in our expansion, but stable over the previous period. All of that led to another quarter of record-breaking EBITDA at BRL 1.2 billion, up 12% year-over-year with a 7.9% margin that exceeded the levels of 2020. However, we ended with 41% growth versus 2019.

In Slide 10 (sic) [ Slide 20 ], a little bit about retail. We are still putting the customer increasingly more at the center of our decisions. And as a result, we've had a record NPS at hypermarkets over the quarter. We opened 14 Express stores, 11 of which were cashier-free, with the first encouraging -- very encouraging early results. In-store pickup continue to advance and is already available at 57 of our stores, which allows us to deliver more quickly to customers at the same price as we have in physical stores, and we can already see an improvement in the share of completed requests.

Lastly, committed to our customers, as mentioned early in this call, we froze the prices of our private label products from November 2021 until January this year. The penetration of these products in sales during Q4 came to a record 19.4%, which again, shows the importance of our role in society, especially during times of inflation, volatility and challenges that affect people's purchasing power.

Now, moving on to Slide 21. Our total retail sales decreased over the quarter versus the same period last year and increased by 5% versus 2 years ago, which shows that the trend seen over the course of 2021 have continued. The quarter was defined by a resilient Food segment, which again showed a positive like-for-like sales by 1.4% compared with 2 years earlier. Like-for-like in the Food segment was 15.7%. The food industry is still being affected by a very challenging basis for comparison and also, by the deterioration in the economic environment, as said earlier.

In Slide 22, we see that the pressure or despite the pressure over the last year, we were able to maintain our operational efficiency. Our gross margin decreased slightly in 2021, impacted by the new loyalty program and the trade down of consumers because of inflation, which is why we invested in freezing prices of our private label products. Our SG&A with net sales showed a slight increase by 0.1 percentage point versus Q4 2019. And it's important to bear in mind that we still have additional expenses related to COVID-19. And our EBITDA, lastly, came to BRL 286 million, with a 5.2% margin.

In Slide 24, our digital channel continues to gain room, especially with Atacadão. Our food GMV was 47% of our total GMV in Q4, up 6.5x in 2 years. The non-food industry, just as we saw in physical retail, also had a challenging year in digital. In addition to the strong basis for comparison that was 2020, the deteriorated macro scenario helped the decrease in sales in the industry. But in 2022, we will remain focused on our strategy with digitalization, growing the digital channel and strengthening our partnerships.

In Slide 26, we will speak about the Carrefour Bank, which in Q4 had growth in earnings by 15% and continue to increase diversification, which is shown by the 46% increase in other products. In addition to that, once again, we see the importance of our card in our customers' purses, with earnings off-us still on a strong growth trend with 20.4% year-over-year. Our digital initiatives are still full steam within the bank and 100% of Atacadão stores already offer the Apag machines and the digital account.

Moving on to Slide 27. The seasonal period and the macro challenges have set the pace in Q4. Our revenue grew 39% year-over-year, benefiting from the usual season of the last quarter of the year, but also, mirroring the greater propensity for loans from our customers because of the challenging scenario. Delinquency levels over 30 and over 90 continue to increase after the natural process of aging that we saw since the end of 2020, but they're still under control. The efficiency index, which gauges the efficiency in how the bank's expenses are managed came to 30.8% over the quarter, an all-time high since the group's IPO, which again, shows the benefits of having a streamlined structure.

Lastly, Slide 28, I'd like to stress our EBITDA in the quarter, which returned to pre-pandemic levels at BRL 351 million, up 32% versus Q4 2019. Our net profit also returned to its regular historical levels, reaching BRL 193 million over the quarter despite the increase in our tax rates.

In Slide 30, a little bit about BIG. As you know, a major step was taken with the recommendation for purchase from the Superintendence that was announced, and with 11 stores being pointed as presenting some risk of concentration. The next step in our schedule -- in the schedule is for the court to analyze that and provide its opinion.

Meanwhile, the company under Advent's management is still delivering its business plan. And over the course of '21, we've made major changes to our portfolio. We've had 21 hypermarkets converted to either Maxxi or Sam's. Our group of stores is now made up of 63 wholesale stores, 43 Sam's Club, 86 Hyper's and 196 Super's or proximity stores.

On our side, our teams continue to work a full steam ahead in planning our initiatives, and we already see less than a 15% upside in the synergy figures that we've announced, which lead us to believe that at least BRL 2 billion in synergies will be realized by 2025. We're very confident in the process in working to meet all of the regulators' requirements.

So I'd like to now turn the floor over to Stephane.

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Thank you, David. Well, I'd only like to stress our priority in making Carrefour Brasil a more agile, more digital and more responsible company, making decisions that look toward long-term returns. We are very alert to movements in the hypermarket industry and really putting together analysis to maximize return on our portfolio.

In addition to that, I'm confident that in 2022, we will be on a different level, on a higher level from a competitive standpoint, both because of our physical footprint and because of the diversity of models that we have, which will bring opportunities to improve our prices to customers and reduce our administrative structures.

We will continue to work tirelessly to remain the greatest food retailer in Brasil and to stay close to our customers crossing the borders of our physical stores. In January and February, we already see a positive trend as well for growth, and I'm very confident that 2022 will be a year of change and confirmation of Carrefour's leadership in both physical and digital food retail.

The energy of our teams is high. And in addition to that, we have a lot of support with Genius, one of the great retailers in the industry, with tireless energy, not only in the athletic business, but also in every other aspect. We also have very high-level teams in France, especially in digital. They are supporting us all the time. Our table is full of talent internally, and everyone is very excited with what we see that we'll build together.

So thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Let's hear our first question, which comes from Thiago Macruz, sell-side analyst with Itau BBA.

[Thiago Macruz, analyst]

Can you guys hear me? Talk a little bit about the profits of the company. We were very surprised with the results that exceed our expectations, you mentioned that you saw great opportunities, [indiscernible] purchases that are successfully in the year, on the other hand [indiscernible] continue to suffer and sharp decline and I wanted to understand [indiscernible] do you think that [indiscernible] we should now expect flat [indiscernible] and I understand that M&A process is very challenging in the period for a [indiscernible] the company obviously looking is different from what the buyer had in mind when the purchase was first initiated. So if you could please talk about that, that would be great?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Good morning, Thiago. Well, with regard to profitability, yes, our profitability level was high for Atacadão. We know that this was a particular period. We know that Atacadão can improve its profits, but you know that we are in the volume model. So we are reversing everything to customers. Atacadão has to remain in the regular levels, about 55% level, that's the usual level. After impacts on expansion and now with inflation, but the traditional historical level is among 7.5%. And that has to do with our strong growth, and we will continue to be greedy in terms of increasing our market share.

Now, the profitability in retail. You see that in the year as a whole, we're coming back to what we had in 2019. In our case, the retail model is a profitable one. We've had satisfactory results. It feeds into the bank. It feeds into our database. It feeds into our knowledge of the customer. And we have strong sources of profitability that you don't see in this release, but the way our profitability in retail is progressing is very interesting. Then we have to look at growing our digital and increasing our activities, whether it's in Express stores or in these other stores, we continue to follow the increase in retail.

Now, with regard to the M&A process, this is something that we are now 100% focused on bringing in the BIG stores. As you saw, prospects are bright. We continue to -- we continue our conversations with the antitrust authority. We are very confident our team is really working hard to improve our synergies and realizing our synergies. We found that we had more synergies than we expected that has exceeded our expectations. And we see in the near term that there are more opportunities to consolidate in the industry.

I'm not sure I answered all of your questions. Would you like to add anything?

[David Murciano, executive]

Well, I just wanted to add something about BIG. Our contract gives us confidence that the most is being done to maintain the health of the company. Advent is not a company that can -- an institution that can make -- that can guarantee the management of a company our size, but we have formats with BIG that seem very interesting. In the last few months, we became very confident that we are receiving a very well-organized company with everything that we needed when we acquired it.

[Operator]

Next question comes from Thiago [indiscernible], buy-side analyst from XP. Thiago will now open your microphone so that you can ask your question.

[Unknown Analyst]

[indiscernible] XP. I have 3 questions. First of all, I also like [indiscernible] in talking about [indiscernible] not only [indiscernible] you know about [indiscernible] adjust decision for that become upwards [indiscernible] the largest [indiscernible] multi stores [indiscernible] memories books will be prices better authority is [indiscernible] asking [indiscernible] anything about that?

And then lastly, you also mentioned the positive performance [indiscernible] especially in same-store sales, with positive results [indiscernible]. So my question is what do you guys have in terms of inflation prospects, [indiscernible] what do we expect going forward also in line with [indiscernible] saw that you had maintenance issue especially because [indiscernible] what do you guys remind sort of [indiscernible] of really making the most of this extremely as the leverage to reduce the pressure on customers' purchasing power currently? That's it.

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Thank you, Thiago, for all your questions. Well, about synergies with BIG. What we can say is, well, the conversion of stores will give us a greater opportunity to grow in these formats with more stores in the -- what we call atacarejo or Cash & Carry stores. We also have to know now how to integrate those stores. We saw an Advent in sales which was larger in these stores than we expected. So we also brought in this experience in realizing synergies or capturing synergies, which we are working on with the group as a whole.

Now, about stores that we could potentially have to sell, those would be mostly Cash & Carry stores or actually, hypermarket stores. We have more of them in the Northeast and the South, where BIG has been more consolidated.

Now about inflation and our private label products. What was inflation, what we see is the strength of the decisions the Brazilian Central Bank has made have been really quick in having its effects on inflation in the country. And we expect that by April or May this year, we should have an interest rate at 12% and inflation is likely to decline. In food products, we really expect inflation more -- to be more subdued.

And now, our private label is a very important strategy of our global group -- of global Carrefour Group. We still have the possibility to grow on that front and find more synergies. We see increasingly more in every country within the group that we can take further steps and really differentiate ourselves in terms of quality and price with specific products.

David, I don't know if you want to add something.

[David Murciano, executive]

No, that was it, Stephane. It really seems that in the last few months of 2021 and now, early 2022, we see that food inflation is really starting to slow down much because of the work that's been done by the Brazilian Central Bank and bringing interest rates up. So we've seen a very significant improvement in prices. It's still high inflation, it's still affecting the basic staples categories, especially with Atacadão, but when we look at our trend in the first couple of months of the year, we are very confident that things will improve significantly this year. And the Atacadão model is one that really seizes on opportunities such as ones presented by high inflation, and we are very confident about our performance in 2022.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Felipe Reboredo, a sell-side analyst with Citibank. Now Felipe, we will open your microphone, so you can ask your question.

[Felipe Reboredo, analyst]

We have a quick question here with Citi. We have seen this acceleration in Atacadão with an acceleration that was on the one hand, expected but also, very sharp, especially in retail. So if you could paint us a picture of what you expect, especially from digital retail in 2022, that would be great?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Well, let me start. In retail, as we said, we are starting -- or we are in the middle of rolling out our in-store pickups. And also, in Express, we are analyzing the opportunity of really expanding. So we have a strong development of our new offerings to customers.

Our job is initially to ensure that our customers enjoy amazing service with full orders and deliveries within the same neighborhood. So that's the first front we have to tackle. We have to ensure that later, we will be able to bring in even more customers within this line of service.

So our global growth in food, retail and e-commerce presents a huge opportunity with this work that I mentioned of having amazing service for our customers. The same thing we're doing with Atacadão, more so with B2B. And also, working in Cash & Carry.

[David Murciano, executive]

Yes, I'd just like to add to what Stephane said. We also have to work very -- increasingly more on, and we have new projects on that front, is to have our new projects, especially with a greater contribution from our bank and develop our e-commerce and retail and food retail, we see very great opportunities of providing financial services -- all the financial services of our bank and continue to grow in food retail, also, in a sustainable way with strong profitability. Also, thanks to our bank business -- banking business.

And on Atacadão front, we're working with new customers, new incumbents. And with the strength of the Atacadão model as a price leader, as a market leader that also strengthens our competitiveness and become a very important partner in that. We are seeing a very significant change in our digital model, but we are ready to really bring in that change and lead that change, especially in B2B with BIG.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Nicolas Larrain, sell-side analyst from JPMorgan. Nicolas, we are now opening your microphone so you can ask your questions.

[Nicolas Larrain, analyst]

Still talking about B2B, could you guys give us more color about the CapEx on BIG, once things are approved to 100%?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Our first estimate was around BRL 600 million. But now, we have to continue to assess that a little bit better, considering what the remedy will be. So it will probably be different, won't be the same as what we had when we made the acquisition, and we will reassess that once we have the antitrust authority's decision in terms of how many stores we will be able to convert.

We still do not have the definitive figure because we're still waiting on CADE’s final decision. But once we have that, we will let everyone know. And also, remember the figure that we informed at the time we made the purchase, and we expect it to be a higher figure. That's for sure.

But we don't see any negative surprise. With the CapEx for store, is essentially the same as we expected. The difference will be because of the number of stores that will be converted.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Ruben Couto, a sell-side analyst with Santander. Ruben, we will now open your microphone so you can ask your question.

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to go back to BIG just really quickly. If you guys could talk about what was the performance was like in 2021? What was the margin and the revenues, just so that we can understand your starting point? And also, you show 21 BIG closures with Maxxi's openings and 44 other stores. Were any of those stores closed? Could you guys talk a little bit more about that?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

As you know, BIG is still a competitor, so we are waiting for the antitrust authority's final decision, and it's their decision to talk about sales. We can't speak on behalf of the BIG Group yet. But as Group Carrefour Brasil, what I can say is we do not see a sharp drop in sales as we see with other competitors.

In the market, we see an increase in market share, and is also something that's -- in keeping with how the market has evolved, but we really can't say anything about BIG yet. And we have no adviser from BIG to be able to inform you. But we do not see any red alert in terms of BIG sales.

And with regard to store conversions, the feedback has been positive, but also, we still can't share any figure. But I can say it's been positive feedback with very satisfactory results.

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

So all those Maxxi stores were conversion -- were converted stores?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

No, I think there were 2 organic or -- 1 organic opening better saying, and the rest were stores that were converted from BIG to Maxxi, and from BIG to Sam's.

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

Now, just so that I can see that I understood it correctly, when you were talking about inflation and that you expect it to moderate in 2021. But thinking about performance, both in wholesale and Cash & Carry, do you expect the same pace as what you saw in Q4? Or do you already expect to see an acceleration in Q1 this year?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

No, it's just as we said. In our case, sales have been very positive in the months of January and February. We have seen same-store sales with positive growth at mid-single digit, both in retail and with Atacadão -- for -- single-digit for retail and for Atacadão in Global, very interesting development in January and the first days of February. We are very happy about what we're seeing. We also saw in January talking about the Carrefour Brasil as a whole, we also saw an increase.

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

That's very interesting.

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

I understand that this is a tough time in the market and the figures for the market are challenging, but we are very happy about what we're seeing in terms of growth.

And that only goes to show that the problems we had in Q3 was very one-off. So Q4 for Atacadão was a technical effect because of the basis for comparison, but we are strong with Atacadão, and we are sticking to our strategy on providing the better price for customers and being more price efficient and reverting everything that we can do to the customer, which has been very positive in the long term and has providing very strong growth for Group Carrefour Brasil as a whole.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Irma Sgarz, sell-side analyst from Goldman Sachs. Irma, we will now open your microphone so that you can ask your question.

[Irma Sgarz, analyst]

I'd like to ask; how should we think about the company's profits in 2022? I understand that even with the interest rate hike, you tend not to pass along all of the increase and that you have other lines that are more interesting when we talk about the banks -- the bank's benefits. And if you could also paint some color with regard to your benefits, [ year-on-year ] benefits. And also, along those lines, I wanted to understand, if there is any difference in terms of risk between the Carrefour card and the Atacadão card with regard to your NPL rates?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Thank you, Irma. Well, the trend for the bank is naturally because of the macroeconomic situation, very challenging, and there's also the risk level for the bank. So we are seeing NPL rates over 30% and over 90%, which is following a natural trend. But our banking teams are also looking at new tools for risk control, which allow us to stay on a very comfortable level, to maintain our profitability and even increase it, which is a very complicated procedure.

During the crisis, we learned a lot and we were able to significantly increase our ability to recover the customer's debt. So what we expect is for the trend to remain on the same -- to remain the same because of the economic context. But we expect to keep the same profitability levels moving into the future and increasing it.

Now, with regard to the profile of Atacadão and retail customers, there's a small difference, but it's really negligible. Atacadão customers have a slightly higher NPL rate because of the profile of that customer, which is different from that of retail. So there is a small difference, but nothing that's worth mentioning.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Felipe Cassimiro, sell-side analyst with HSBC. Felipe, we will now open your microphone, and you may ask your question.

[Felipe Cassimiro de Freitas, analyst]

Can you guys hear me? Well, I just wanted to follow-up on the Cash & Carry digital side. If you could guys give us more color on how these operations work with Cash & Carry? And what was the sales share? I understood that it was 2%. And what can we expect for 2022? Is there any new initiative that you plan to put in practice, especially for Atacadão? And what can we expect in terms of how that share of overall sales will perform moving forward?

[David Murciano, executive]

Thank you, Felipe. Yes, sales have developed very well. Those 2% that you mentioned are regarding the quarter -- the last quarter, but we are seeing a very strong performance over the last few months. We're seeing strong activity. We're also working with new customers, new digital customers, so we have new partnerships with them to continue to develop that channel.

This is a channel that's provided very good opportunities for our B2B customers, customers that used to have to pick up the phone for their orders, and they now can do that a lot faster via digital. We have a more digital relationship and that allows us to know our customers better, know better what B2B customers need for their business and also, that helps us develop our service, both our service and our sales.

We will continue to rollout the B2B solution to all our stores across the company and also, the new stores that we're opening will provide that service as well. We also enjoy the advantage of the entire physical infrastructure already exists. So that's an advantage. We already have the structure to deliver to customers. We already have the physical stores. So it's just a matter of providing a technical solution to continue to rollout the service. And this is why it's growing so fast because the physical solution already exists. Stephane?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Yes, we have a huge opportunity here with Atacadão because of our physical footprint. So both in B2B with Atacadão and B2C, we have huge opportunities, and that's what we will work on this year, and we'll continue to strengthen the digitalization of our stores, especially with Atacadão.

[David Murciano, executive]

Yes. Just to add a little bit to that, when we talk about growth in Atacadão and you saw the numbers. So we're talking about the increase in our activities. It's our marketplace our code at best. It's not an activity with a third-party. We also have activities involving third parties with B2C, but in B2B, it is something that is our own initiative and in our own operation. So we have to keep an eye on the data and continue to develop our relationship with our customers.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Bob Ford, sell-side analyst for Bank of America. Bob, will now open your microphone, so you can ask your question.

[Robert Ford, analyst]

What's the increase you're seeing in terms of price elasticity in food categories? And how should we think about the impact of converting the Assai stores on your bottom line?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

Well, with regard to Assai, we were keen to -- proposed to customers that are sort of orphan of their stores. We are helping them to find our stores and our price positioning has really served that strategy really well. So they can't -- so we can really make the most of these stores being closed, showing the strength of our hypermarket format. We have a unique format, and we want to show the relevance of this format to our customers.

These are customers that are within the -- we want to keep those customers within our ecosystem. And in the last few months, because the advance in inflation has lasted for several months. And where we saw increased -- price increases, the numbers begin to decrease in terms of customers. And when we froze prices of our private label, from [Audio Gap]

[Operator]

Andrew Ruben, analyst sell-side with Morgan Stanley. Andrew, [Foreign Language].

[Andrew Ruben, analyst]

Can you please talk more about the loyalty program? How far are you along in the investment cycle? And how are you measuring the benefits?

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

[Foreign Language]

[David Murciano, executive]

[Foreign Language]

[Stephane Maquaire, executive]

[Foreign Language]

[David Murciano, executive]

[Foreign Language]

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]