Lojas Renner SA

BOVESPA:LREN3

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's begin the video conference for the fourth quarter and 2021. I have with me Fabio Faccio, CEO; and Daniel dos Santos, CFO.

Before handing the floor over to them, I'd like to mention a few things. This video conference is being recorded and translated simultaneously. The presentation will be shown only in Portuguese. So we also have the file in English on our website. Any questions that come from journalists, they can be sent to our press relations at 11-3165-9586. And a brief disclaimer that all the statements made here during this video conference related to business perspectives or future projections are based on beliefs and assumptions based on information that is currently available. About the Q&A session, we will take your questions during the presentation, you -- and that will be answered during the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

Before we begin the presentation, I'd like to hand over to Fabio for a brief introduction.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Thank you, Carla. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for participating in our video conference today. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce Daniel Santos. He is our CFO and IR Director as well. Some have had the opportunity of meeting him and some others have not. So to look into the fourth quarter results in 2021, we're going to start with Daniel. He'll talk about the results, and then we'll go on to Q&A.

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

Thank you, Fabio. Thank you, Carla. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your presence. So let's start off talking about the performance of net revenues in retail. The important thing that we have to take into account is that in the fourth quarter of 2021, we have encouraging behavior and robust, as we've seen 22% year-over-year, 23.9% compared to the fourth quarter '19. It's greater than the market, and that enables us to have consistent gains in market share.

Ever since the reopening and recovering the operating hours since April, we've been growing approximately 20% month after month. And that growth trend, it's important to note that it continues in 2022, in January started off a little slow. We had Omicron and flow and speeding up in February that will continue in March. It signals a growth that's very positive. An important aspect in this is that we had positive growth in tickets, and the reason is for -- in pieces of apparel. So we believe that the changes come from mobility and flexibilization, giving us more flow in the stores.

And obviously, we had more tickets, we had more items, and we had a higher acceptance of our summer collection, not only in brick-and-mortar, but also in digital. And the key measures that we have, such as Black Friday and Christmas, also had very good performance, and we cannot forget execution of operations, be it in brick-and-mortar or in digital stores. And all of that enabled us to achieve a growth of 23% and 12.8% over 2019.

And here on digital, GMV for digital, we had consistent growth even with the recovery of brick-and-mortar operations. And a strong base of comparison for the year in the previous period already had expressive growth. In the quarter, we had an increase of 38% over 2020 and 217% compared to 2019. So we achieved a share of digital of approximately 12%, even in period of high relevance of brick-and-mortar stores, which is Christmas, making the flow in brick-and-mortar stores much higher than before.

And that performance is a result of a higher availability of assortment in the virtual store improvement in service level, especially in the last mile and Fabio will talk about the evolution of the last mile indicators in the presentation, improvement in usability for users, content in digital sales. And Fabio will give us some examples, which are the levers of execution of our strategy, and we'll hear more about that further into the presentation. In the year, the growth was 50%, compared to 2020, 2020 versus 2019 and share was 13.5%.

In the app, we had approximately 60% of the sales, absolute leadership in the number of monthly active users compared to domestic players, top of mind in fashion retail throughout the year and the most recalled fashion brand in Black Friday. So there's a trend in our continuity of that growth trend in 2022. And that corroborates the growth of the first quarter that I mentioned.

Gross margin. We had a gross margin in the fourth quarter that was healthy even with all the inflationary pressure. We had a strong evolution not only in the quarter, but also in the year and year-over-year. And specifically in the fourth quarter, when we compare that to 2019, we have a gap, but it's also important to note that the base comparison of 2019 was a record base. It was a bit exceptional compared to the average of that period in 2019. So when we look at the future, we see that the difference will become -- will get back to normal and will be closer to 2019 as we move forward in 2022, and well-balanced and good quality inventory, adequate assortment.

And as I mentioned, in 2022, we will be closer to the average in 2019, and we will see the evolution during the half year of 2022. One thing that I would like to mention is the markdowns, which was a good lever in terms of improvement in our margins. We had the lowest level in markdowns in recent years. And obviously, that's related to higher acceptance of our high summer collection. The model of replenishment that has been -- that was implemented 2 years ago and has bringing on efficiency year after year. Not to mention data use and product allocation and markdown engines, all the data technology that was implemented, enabling us to have the right inventory in the right place enables us to avoid markdowns. So even working on quantity and even the depth of the discounts that we have in the markdown inventory.

An important chapter now, operating expenses. So there were many comments that we've seen in the morning of the many different investors. So it's worth talking about that now. In this, it's important to talk about the SG&A structure before OpEx, and it eliminates rental expenses. So in 2021, even though we had an increase in nominal SG&A, we had an improvement in net revenues, especially because of the gain in scale, so the growth of revenue and also the gains and efficiency that we had. So it's worth noting that gaining efficiency in the digital channel.

However, we have an SG&A that's higher compared to the pre-pandemic phase. So the 4, 6 points that you see in the chart from 2019 to 2021, in that bridge, that chart is trying to prize the major components of that increase. So in the first block, the important aspect is the 0.5 percentage points increase is mainly related to inflation. So IGPM was 27%, and IPC at 15% that highly affects and impacts the store costs. Some stores were inaugurated in 2020, 2021, whose productivity is still lower than usual and also related to the pandemic.

We have a new distribution center that was already mentioned in the past and would soon be inaugurated in 2022. So the new DC brings on some expenses. And during the ramp-up of that new distribution center, we have additional expenses that lead to an incremental cost. And in the second block of 2.5 percentage points is the expenses -- or the expenses of the digital channel. They're still higher than brick-and-mortar. So as we increase the share in that channel, it pressures the total SG&A, so not only in freight, but also in performance marketing.

And the third block are the additional expenses related to all the initiatives to build and gain efficiencies in our ecosystem, our omni ecosystem and digital, new businesses, strides of new content, team structures, reinforcement in IT. So when we put those last 2 blocks into context, the important aspect is that, first of all, pandemic increased the share. So the plans before the pandemic was that we believed that the speed would be slower. We went from 4% to 13% in 2021. And that equation without being fully prepared for that growth led to pressure, be it in freight and handling and expenses with digital marketing.

At the same time, we've expedited our digitalization expenses, which is the third part of the chart and to work on that ecosystem and generate as much efficiency as we can and integrate that omni world, which is the off and on world. Other important aspects that we have to bear in mind is that when the new distribution center is 100% integrated and with the strategy that [indiscernible] explained before will give us efficiency gains and up to 3 percentage points in the digital margin.

Data integration prices freight will also enable us to improve our efficiency in that digital channel equation. At the same time that these CRM efforts that are being done on that front will enable us to generate efficiency in digital marketing with higher retention and recurrence and Fabio will talk more about that later on. And during 2022 and 2023, we will gain efficiency quarter-by-quarter, not only in operating efficiency, but also gains in scale that will enable us to achieve levels that are closer to the levels that we had in 2019.

Now about the quality of credit here and about Realize. Another robust growth in this quarter and consistency in the quality of credit, in the quarter, the results were under the fourth quarter of 2020. And it's important to bear in mind that the base of comparison, I know that there's some questions about that, is that, that base of the fourth quarter in 2020 isn't a good reference because when the pandemic started, there was a worsening of the portfolio, increases in past due and part of that was reverted in the fourth quarter. So that comparison base isn't a good one.

We've been able to increase the new customers. We've been increasing that by more adaptation of the ecosystem without affecting the quality of credit and the perspectives in 2022, we know that there's a more challenging credit environment now, but it's to continue the growth in the portfolio of the revenues, but having a good balance between the credit risk, and we believe that we should be close to historical losses that we had. Always remembering that in 2020 and 2021 together, there are 2 years that we may have to analyze together because the part of the provisions in 2020 were reverted -- reversed in 2020, so the losses in 2021 do not actually reflect good reality.

About the total adjusted EBITDA, the annual EBITDA is almost 2x above last year when we exclude the nonrecurrent effect of COVID that benefited BRL 1,723. The EBITDA was above [ 4 '20 ]. So there was a loss in margin, but mostly because of the profit share program. The EBITDA grew 21.4%, and the margin is stable compared year-over-year. I would like to clarify this point.

First, our profit share program has what was budgeted according to what the actual. So extrapolation proportional to what goes above that. Historically, we had a performance very much aligned to the budget. And our margin of the share profit program never very much compared to revenue. The main metrics of this program that includes sales results and operating results like EBIT and sales. But operating results is a great indicator of doing or not doing this payment. In 2020, we didn't pay the PPR because we did reach the operating results. So it was a pandemic, a year of pandemic, and none of that was budgeted.

In 2021, specifically, the budget was concluded during the second year of COVID, in which we still had stores closed and reduced time -- work time, and this was from the learnings we had from 2020. So what happened is that after the stores opened in April and more work hours, we had a stronger recovery of sales above expectation, especially fourth quarter, it was a positive surprise. We look specifically at -- it was 2/3 of the total profit of the period and which is abnormal compared to the behavior in previous years.

As a consequence, even in years with results more under pressure, we had a historical distribution of PPR, and most of that is nonrecurring. So 2/3 of the additional profit share is nonrecurring. And because of what happened and acknowledging that from now on, we still have a volatile economic environment. We decided to change the dynamics of PPR. We established a ceiling for the extrapolation. We changed the curves and we defined that ceiling to avoid this situation to happen again. And as I mentioned, the total that we achieved in 2021, 1/3 is recurring and the other 2/3 are not recurring.

Now I would like to pass the floor to Fabio to continue with the presentation.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Thank you, Daniel. We also -- in addition to the advances, in the recovery compared to 2020 and the pandemic, the year is showing a recovery. We also have invested to guarantee our future. I would like to remind you the large transformation cycles we've been through. We talked about the 7-year cycles that came from a family-owned company, becoming a corporation, a multinational company, our big data cycle and now the current transformation cycle, like all the previous ones with digital transformation and -- transformation and ecosystem. And this is boosted by these changes in consumer habits that have been taking place and are even more sped up because of the pandemic.

Even during the pandemic, our strategy was right, but we did have to speed up our plans. In 2019, we discussed together, the board, the executives, what were the priorities for the next years. And in 2020, when the pandemic hit us, even in a landscape that pressured our expenses, our margins, our revenues, we were able to speed up our initiatives, which, in some way, what we imagine to happen in 4 years in digital penetration and consumer habits, happened in 2.

And likewise, what we had to do in 4 years, we had to do in 2. So this mainly in 2021 and part of 2022, we will have pressure of these investments in CapEx and OpEx. And as Daniel also showed it's what generates efficiencies and improvements to generate value and have a more sustainable digital penetration. So we've been already having results of these investments. And gradually, these investments will be less significant and will generate more value. And in 2022, we will have a better recovery of our results, compared to what we did in the past. Especially in 2023, we expect it to be even more. We did a lot of things in these past 2 years, especially in the past year and this shows great learning.

We talk about 7-year cycles that we believe in that. But we did experience a few years, in the past year alone, we were able to build initiatives at a very higher speed than they have been in previous cycles. And with this in mind, we also did our follow-on last year. So the plans of accelerating the ecosystem and what we were able to achieve regardless of the landscape that we were forecasting, we had the pandemic at the time and elections this year. So we weren't even thinking about war back then. So the future is uncertain.

We have a lot to do. So at the time, we decided to do our follow-on. And the first day when the resources came in, we've been investing deeply in our in-house, in organic initiatives. And this slide is exactly what we used to use the resources as a follow-on. And -- the expansion of our stores, building the new distribution center and also more offers and investing more in Realize. So digital transformation and creating a retail ecosystem in our fintech in line to what we communicated.

Some issues always come up about acquisitions and usually people ask that and relate these resources directly just to that. And actually, there are several uses. So we acquired Repassa and we're seeing opportunities of possible inorganic transactions, but only those that could leverage or help our transformation. Business that can add services and value to our customers and shareholders as well as some systems, platforms and capabilities that we can work in our ecosystem, especially logistics, data, content.

Our in-house team that has been working hard to look for partnerships and opportunities and not everything is acquisition. We do a lot of partnerships and also possible acquisitions. So last year, we mapped more than 140 startups in our ecosystem. 82% are connected to our team and our ecosystem through 8 threads of open innovation. So we looked at 120 new opportunities, but our view is always the strategy of the ecosystem, and we're going to look for initiatives that generate more value to the ecosystem in the journey that we traced, be them organic or inorganic.

So considering all these topics, we used about BRL 1.3 million between CapEx and OpEx that are for these initiatives in retail and at Realize and also expanding stores, building the new distribution center and Repassa's purchase. And 2022, we will probably invest a similar amount for CapEx and OpEx. Our forecast, including our CVC, which is RX Ventures. All that together will amount to a similar amount of 2021. And we will also open a program to repurchase shares also as a way to generate more value to our shareholders.

So by the end of 2022, we have BRL 3 billion of the BRL 3.9 billion that we got in our IPO and estimated to use in 18 months of the IPO to use these resources, and we might have other opportunities. Just to remind you, the structure of our ecosystem, so the journey is even more relevant for our customers, expand our base, increase recurrence.

And on the next slide, I'll give you some examples of what we did in the same -- main fronts of our ecosystem. Looking at the omnichannel, we had significant improvement of our purchase. We also expanded the brick-and-mortar stores, online sales. And now we're focused on improvement in services and productivity, reducing time and at Renner, we have 45% of the deliveries in the country in up to 2 days -- 1 day or 2.

And the large cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, it's 70% to same day or up to 1 day. We are also recovering with all the stores operating and the flow is resuming with the relaxing of the lift of the restrictions and 15% of our customers that pick up their products at the store, also do additional purchases, leveraging the value of our whole system. And we migrated to a distribution center in the big Sao Paulo area. And this increased the delivery, Renner at 45% is in 2 days, and that goes to 70% in 2 days or even same day. And this improvement of the lead time is to reduce costs and reduce lead time comes with the reduction of cost. So we had an 18% reduction of cost per shipment, which also is -- makes the cost equation better.

From the very beginning, we're working with inventory to reduce shipments per order, which in our model and one of the initiatives that we have to greater sales with a better service level and enchantment for our customers. And as Daniel mentioned, we already concluded the civil works through the third quarter of the new distribution center and now we're setting up the automation equipment, and we'll soon operate the new distribution center, which will give us relevant gains in our operations as well.

And we remain focused in increasing our omni customer base. So we increased the number of channels available. What SAP has advanced in active communication with customers I'd say it's our highest conversion and average ticket in the ecosystem and the sequential growth in sales that already grew 14x year-over-year and the social, so we call it our Renner Favorites, that used to be called bag, increased 12x over 2020. In store operation, we inaugurated 2 units in the last quarter, 32 in the year by adding up all our businesses.

In digitalization of stores and operations, 100% of our units are already working with RFID checkout. So it's not just inventory control in stores, but also the speed, flexibility and agility in checkout as well as the new type of checkout that we offer. In addition to actual checkout counters we have mobile sales wherein the sales clerk finalizes the sale on their own smartphone, self-checkout and digital pay that the customer can do that on the app on their own phone.

So those -- the 3 different modalities, mobile cells, self-checkout and digital pay are available in 100% of the stores. Self-checkout is still available in just a few stores, but now we will invest and grow the number of stores. The stores with all 3 modalities already have 43% of their sales going through those new modalities. Digital pay is also important that already accounts for 10% of the sales in some stores, giving us a lower acquisition cost, recurrence in our apps, and an important service for our customers.

So they can use the app and they use that to buy digitally but also to have a benefit and convenience in the brick-and-mortar stores, so the omni app as well. Our customer base still growing 46% year-over-year, increasing the potential of the ecosystem and when we compare to 2019, 170% as well.

When we look at Marketplace, which is another initiative, we increased the number of categories and assortment that doubles the assortment in digital. So we had 53,000 additional products. Renner within -- with the goal of 100 sellers at the end of 2021, we have over 190 in December, 5% of digital sales, and Renner came from 3P from our sellers. So we're strongly focused on the creatorship of these partners, the categories, developing the platform and streamlining our processes.

It's initiative that adds on products for strengthening our ecosystem. And proof of that is that Youcom and Camicado are sellers at Renner, and they're among the top 5 sellers that shows the importance of the synergy in our brands. Camicado in its marketplace already has 210 sellers. The goal was 200. We passed that a little. And also focusing on curating supplementary categories, generating flow, value for our customers and cross-selling in our products.

Camicado already -- 3P already accounts for over 16% of the digital GMV in the year. In content and branding, we invested in content to have further interaction with our customers. Weekly posts, style tips, series on YouTube to increase recurrence, engagement and loyalty. We went from quarterly live sessions to monthly and now weekly and some even daily. We were the first to have a 3D live shop in Latin America and the first one with fashion products on TikTok.

So that has increased our partnership with influencers as well and activations. We have a network of over 1,400 influencers, micro influencers included, and the results are very significant. We've highly increased the traffic coming from our digital network and posted content as well as increasing the engagement volume of our posts.

And about CRM, we increased our customer base. We have almost 18 million active customers, 25% higher than 2020. Our retention is 12 percentage points higher than 2020. So we not only advanced in size but also in retention and also identifying the customer base. We already have 88% of revenues identified -- of identified customers. Customers are increasingly more integrated, not only in the channels, but also in the businesses. And we can see that customers that buy in our brands and our ecosystem brand have a spend that's 6, 7x higher than others.

Our loyalty issue is about -- is information. We've contracted the platform. We're working on the benefits, testing the benefits, and we'll probably launch our program -- cross-brand program in the second half of the year to leverage that customer participation even more. In the Realize point of view, we're talking about the expensive ecosystem, not only in Renner in capturing but also other businesses, Camicado, Youcom and Ashua, increasing our share and lowering our churn, so increasing the customer base and decreasing the churn.

We had a record TPV. The customer base increased 12% year-over-year. Services revenue gained much more relevance, and that is the trend, continuing to gain relevance in that, which is even more sustainable in the model. We had new operations to fund our sellers. We advanced in the digital account that we launched in November, and it's being tested in a customer group in a place in the countryside of Sao Paulo, and we should soon expand that to -- that as well to others.

When we talk about adjacent services, we had the integration of Repassa, which already inaugurated 2 kiosks in shopping malls. We have one in one of our stores. We strengthened the teams. The Jundiaí headquarters gives us more capacity for operations, increasing our inventory by 3x, and that will lead to more synergies in -- with Repassa and the ecosystem.

On the next slide, we can see some important advances in technology and data. We already have 12 tribes dedicated to the priority initiatives in the ecosystem. We improved the use of our replenishment model by using artificial intelligence for 43% of our sales and also the prediction models in pricing, markdowns, engines and so on, as Daniel mentioned.

In ESG, we continue in line to build a more sustainable and long-lasting ecosystem. In addition to the collaboration measures that we had in the pandemic, we also finalized our public sustainability commitments for 2021 that were established in 2018. So 100% of our supply chain, domestic and international, is socially and environmentally certified and 100% from renewable low-impact sources. Our goal was 75%. We achieved 100%. 31% of reduction of CO2 emissions related to the inventory that we had in 2017. The goal was 20%. We achieved almost 31% and 81.3% of our apparel items have the Re seal of Responsible Fashion, meaning 99%.

We inaugurated our first circular store based on the circular economy concept, and we are very proud of that. That's our Rio Sul shopping mall store. In addition, just to reference all the things and actions that we have done, our company is present in the main portfolios indexes related to ESG. I'd just like to highlight 2 of them. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index based on the S&P Global ESG score, we had the highest score among all global retail companies. In addition, the ISC from B3 we're the general rank -- we're in second and first in general and first in retail.

So in a nutshell, we've done a lot so far. We've invested a lot. We've concluded and completed a lot, but there's still a lot to come. In many of our investment fronts, we started off from scratch or even a lower level and we had important leaps in 2021. And we still have a relevant path to build in 2 or 3 years. So digital assortment increased by 60%, and we will expedite that even more. Here are some of the charts to give you the order of magnitude of the size of transformation.

CRM and our customer base increased by BRL 4.2 million, and we should pretty much double from the starting point. Online service level of deliveries, we started from almost 0 and D+2 on average in the country at 60%, we should achieve 70%, 80%. In omni, our customer base has been increasing. It was less than 6% of the omni customer base, and now we're at 12% of customers using all channels. We continue to grow and regarding cost to attract digital customers. CC over revenues has dropped 10% to 12%, and it should drop approximately 40% in the upcoming years. At Realize, the services revenues has gained more relevance and that should continue to increase, as I mentioned before.

I'd like to ask Daniel to give us a vision about where we are advancing in 2022 and going forward.

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

Thank you, Fabio. We can see all these pillars and levers that Fabio is mentioning, and -- but what does that actually mean for 2022? Let's give you some perspectives of our vision in relation to 2022. First of all, there are many uncertainties, the entire economic scenario that now is moving faster, but a bit uncertain. So we are ready and aware of the opportunities and the challenges. About growing our revenues, our expectation is that we will continue to grow our revenues above historical levels. We will move -- continue to move fast compared to historical levels. We know the macro challenges that we have ahead of us. But we still have opportunities to gain more market share.

Historically, Renner has shown to be resilient in the most challenging economic moments in the past. And we believe that we will continue to have that resilience now in 2022. Our investments in the ecosystem and in technology and in data continue to help us to improve our value proposition even further and will help us to set us apart in the market. We know that there's still a gap in mobility. We know that the e-commerce will continue to grow and expanding our omni customer base, as Fabio mentioned in the previous slide, and the first quarter is already a quarter that's showing that growth trend, and it makes us feel happy with that growth compared to the last quarter.

In gross margin, we will continue to look for sequential improvement. We still have uncertain scenarios. The exchange rate is a little more well behaved. But at the same time, there are inflationary elements that affect us. So even though there's an uncertain environment, we will continue to try to offset the inflation with healthier markdowns, gains in efficiency and as the results of the gains in efficiency and data that we have, so we can evolve the gross margin in a positive way during the year reaching -- getting -- or getting close to the levels in 2019.

About SG&A expenses, we will continue to invest in our ecosystem. So all these pillars and the levers that Fabio mentioned continue as very essential for our success, and we will continue to invest. And that means that we will still have SG&A above historical levels before the pandemic, but we will see an evolution quarter after quarter in terms of gains in efficiency and scale and especially in the digital business that's what we have as our north for 2022.

We expect to continue the path until now. We will have important growth in our portfolio that will increase revenue. And default is closer to historical levels. We want to balance with controlled quality -- credit quality. All of that will allow us to achieve total EBITDA, and a lot of you have that a pre-IFRS EBITDA, the absolute is very close to 2019. So that's the challenge that we have for 2022.

And now I would like to pass the floor back to Fabio.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Thank you, Daniel. And to reiterate, we have a relevant growth in market share. And we always believe that the brand with more meaning with better value propositions to enchant their customers make even more difference in moments like this, like the ones that we've been through these past years. And we see in the past history of the indicator compared to our growth in moments of crisis, we've always gained market share. And as we can see, it is happening again now. But when we also look at other aspects, and we compare in comparable basis, market players -- the data, the information is public. So we can also notice that Renner is the largest player in apparel, but it's not just that. We are the greatest player with the greater scale, the greatest size. But when we look at a comparable basis, even under a larger base, we had a higher growth compared to important players. So we grew more than some of the large players.

And they put pressure in our margins, but EBITDA over net margin and the size of the ball there is the value is grow -- is larger, but also larger generating value. And with more efficiency, even if we do have pressure at the moment. So we continue to have a much better efficiency, aware and sure that this efficiency will get even better. So even starting from right now where we have more pressure, we have been generating growth in a wider basis. And our history shows that we can little by little be more and more efficient. And the initiatives we started are in that direction to continue to grow more, not being just the biggest, but the one that generates more value, more scale and more efficiency. So we're very much aware of the opportunity we have now and definitely the probability of this happening because of the right investments that we made. So we're still committed to our purpose of consolidating more and more our ecosystem, being a leader in this segment and focusing on our customers.

And we expect to invest BRL 1 billion in CapEx, this more or less same amount as last year. And our priorities are the omni journey, opening about 40 stores and continue to speed up our online operation. Also looking at the logistics and technology platform so that we can provide even better service and enchantment and generate more value. We're also going to invest in the marked -- time-to-market team, to have a better chain and better products for our customers and investments and initiatives of Realize. So our focus is to seek to generate more value, gaining productivity and efficiency in our operations. And so that we build that throughout 2020 and forward. And all that to boost enchantment of our customers and return to our shareholders. 91% of our customers were happy a historical record, and shows that we're in the right direction. From that enchantment that we also generate value. We're very confident that this will grow with our company.

I would like to thank all of you. And now pass the floor to Carla. So we can go to the Q&A session because we already talked too much.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

[Operator Instructions]. It's from Ruben Couto from Santander [Operator Instructions]

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

I want to hear more about your comment?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Ruben, can you hear us?

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

Yes, I can.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

I'm going to set the question to Joseph Giordano, JPMorgan, then we'll come back to you. Okay. Ruben, sorry, we can't hear you.

[Joseph Giordano, analyst]

Can you hear me? Fabio.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

Just a minute, please. The audience can hear the question, but we cannot. We are not hearing it here. So we'll just get this technical issue, right?

So I'm going to switch. I'm going to start with the questions that were sent by message. And then we're going to go to the people who are asking their questions.

I have 2 questions. So she wants to know the investments in the quarter and following. How do you see the growth of the first quarter of 2020. And it's from Irma Sgarz. And how do you live in digital through the year?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

As Daniel mentioned, I think the quarter has started January with a little drop, but February was good and March also. So we have a very positive expectation of sales for the quarter. And for the year, we have important news with the lifting of restrictions because of the pandemic and that also has to do with a better landscape of the pandemic and Sao Paulo. Does it lifted the mandatory use of mask, Porto Alegre as well. That shows that the situation is more under control and people are feeling safer with more mobility and that affects our sales positively. Greater mobility, so higher the consumption of the items we sell. We've been feeling that every day the more people feel confident, the more consumption increases. Another positive aspect is the acceptance of our new collection. We have Monday officially, we're going to have a preview of this new collection. But we already have them at our stores and online and the acceptance is very positive of the new collection, which probably will help us to continue to maintain good growth going forward.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

A question from Helena about Realize. What are you thinking about the results for 2020. I think Daniel already mentioned this. Does it make sense? Similar results as 2019. If so, what about if we have a worsening of the NPL?

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

Actually, what is behind that strategy. We want to reach the end of 2022, close to 2019. What's behind that is that we're going to continue to strengthen the partnerships with Camicado and Ashua and what we have in our ecosystem. And how we use the app Renner to encourage the use of the card, so how we can capture more cards of people who already are in our ecosystem. We have some customers that are selected by the card with higher credit. And when we look at the launching of the loyalty program, the card will be an integrated part of this loyalty system so that we make the capture easier and also the use of the cards easier in our ecosystem. As to the results and credit risk, it's what I mentioned at the beginning. We will have an increase of revenue, and we want good quality of credit so that we can keep the losses at historical levels before the pandemic.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

Now I have some questions that we have in the chat. Danny Eiger from XP. The first question is how we see the evolution of the EBITDA margin in the quarter? And if you expect the historical levels?

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

I think this was answered, but let me reiterate what we said. The idea is to have a positive evolution, especially in our quarter after quarter, boosted by scale and efficiency, deeply focused on digital by the first quarter until the end of the year, the goal is at least recover the EBITDA margin before the CF -- before the pandemic. At the levels of the historical margin, but what Fabio said that we showed several indicators, and we follow several indicators, the idea is, throughout the year 2023 and 2024 that we can have gains in scale in our ecosystem so that we can get closer and closer to the historical base of 2019. And that period between those 2, we want to streamline our EBITDA margin and speed it above market. And also with the gain of scale and efficiency to reach that percentage of 2019.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

The second question from Danny is about default and same as Helena.

So we're going to open the Q&A for those who are on audio, going to try to show it with my computer. So the first question is from Ruben Couto.

[Ruben Couto, analyst]

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? So I'm going to ask my question. I want to hear about what Daniel commented about the ramp-up of the new distribution center. Can you tell us a bit about the time line? I think it starts activity in the second quarter. But how long until it reaches a level of usage that brings that benefit of 3 percentage points in the revenue that Daniel had mentioned at the beginning of the presentation and also confirm if these 3 percentage points are on the online revenue only. That's my question.

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

I can answer. Starting with the last part of your question. Yes, it's just about over the digital revenue. The distribution center and our plans is to start in the second quarter. And we have the ramp-up of the distribution centers starting with part of the product portfolio and little by little, we're bringing the entire portfolio there. So of course, distribution center this big with technology, we want to do a controlled ramp-up so we avoid surprises. But we do have to speed up as much as possible so that we can achieve the 3 percentage points that I mentioned throughout 2023. To reach in addition to having the benefit of 3 percentage points as I mentioned, and all the strategy of how we improve the last mile and the strategy will be put into practice as of 2023 as well. So that's the expectations of what -- when we're going to feel the benefits of our -- in our financial statements. And it also brings benefits to our brick-and-mortar stores. The benefits are not as important as the benefit of digital, but it also brings improvement of efficiency, service time and logistics dynamic to our brand.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

Next question, audio from Joseph Giordano from JPMorgan.

[Joseph Giordano, analyst]

Actually, I'd like to explore a couple of points. First of all, capital allocation. You mentioned that it will be more organic than actually M&A. So I'd like to understand if organic growth -- what I'm saying is that like maybe inorganic, would we see any relevant movements, big assets? That's the first point. Second point that I'd like to explore is to separate the profit sharing and try to understand, how much is in the operation? How much is in corporate and how much is in management? That's an important aspect as well because there's the rule, and we can't change the rule when the game is already on. So especially at the end that could have a very positive effect moving forward. And last, I'd like to explore how you see the return of the stores you showed a chart, but I'd like to understand the ROIC for new capital allocation. So openings in shopping malls should slow down in the upcoming years. I'd like to understand how that's behaving, especially stores in streets in smaller cities.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

I'm going to try to answer all 3 and Carla and Daniel can add to that if they wish. About capital allocation and acquisitions, I'd say that we have many inorganic initiatives, and we've been using the capital in those initiatives that generate value. That doesn't mean that there isn't any opportunities for acquisition. We've been studying many things. And nowadays, we don't have anything concrete. I don't see any big movements right now. But obviously, we're always assessing if there are movements that could add value to our shareholders and to the ecosystem, then we will definitely look into it. But today, we do not have anything concrete on that end. There may be good opportunities in the future. We're not ruling that out, but there are many organic initiatives that we can have with the capital allocation as well.

About your second question about profit sharing. If I understood correctly, so you're asking about operation management and the corporate profit sharing is just the executives and admin. So it's not in that line. And we're in the management, so the proposal for 2021 is even lower than the first proposal of '20 before the pandemic when we had the first proposal for '20. Before the pandemic, it was higher. And then with the pandemic, we lowered the proposal because of the pandemic and '21 was lower than the first proposal of '20. So profit sharing is comprised of the operations personnel and executives in operations personnel or staff, we didn't really change that because there was already a limiting factor. For the executives, we had an extrapolation curve, which was sharper in some areas and as it had never happened before, and we had been studying for a while the -- any issues during volatile times. And after we saw that change, we decided to work with the ceiling. And it's still an important model for the executives, but it does protect the company from major volatility, and that's already applied for this year.

Your third question, Joseph, about new stores, right? We see a growing importance of new stores as the omni model. We've been seeing that, especially in new places when we open a new store in a new place, we increased digital sales by 20% in that place. So the store does play an important role in its actual sales, in digital sales and as a place that's close to our customers, so we can continue to decrease or lower our lead times and also increasing the potential of traffic in store, pick up in store, try in store, return in store. So we have more convenience for customers and higher conversion. So our expansion plan continues. Did I cover everything? Please feel free if you want to follow-up.

[Joseph Giordano, analyst]

Yes, you did, Fabio. I'd like to explore ROIC a little further, have seen marginal ROIC of that expansion. So in smaller places, I understand that there's the omni side. So the ROIC preserves itself in time for each store?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Yes, exactly. We've had that model for a while now of smaller stores, smaller than average, in middle-sized places and big cities that give us a return that's even higher to our average in some cases. This week, we were analyzing our top 15 stores in performance, and they're part of that model. So it doesn't dilute it. Actually, we have positive perspectives in that sense.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

Next question is from João Soares from Citi.

[Joao Pedro Soares, analyst]

I'd like to take this -- have a follow-up on the store question. I think it would be interesting to look at a longer horizon, Fabio. It seems like the brick-and-mortar stores, you're giving more importance. They have a strategic character for e-commerce. Would it be correct to say that a slowdown of openings in '23 and '24, can you talk about the longer-term horizon for the stores, and the second aspect is about costs. We still see a relevant increase in the cost of cotton, so I'd like to explore 2 points. How do you see that? And how are you prepared for that increase in cost? And how are you pricing, the pricing environment, what's the competition like, right, the market in general? Is it rational? Do you see any opportunities to increase market share, speed that up? How do you see the pricing environment based on that cost scenario?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Well, let me know if I don't answer anything. So about the importance of stores, you're correct. They do play an increasingly more relevant role. There's the importance of being a showroom, being a point of sales, which is extremely important, a point of experience, a point of collection of shipping and returns. So it's becoming increasingly more important. About the number of stores for upcoming years, I think we can maintain the levels that we expect for this year and even maybe speed that up a little based on what we're going to do this year. We have some projects of those stores in smaller towns, and they're very important for us because they are markets where we were not present, so you don't have cannibalization. The marginal gain is even higher than in other cities in bigger cities. So to the previous question about ROIC, depending on the place, we even have bigger opportunities than larger cities because of lower cost and not having sales cannibalization and important productivity. So we have projects for the next 3 years to maintain that current level or even speed that up a little. Your second question was, can you repeat your second question, please?

[Joao Pedro Soares, analyst]

Yes, of course, about cost and price. We see a relevant increase in cotton?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Oh, yes, that's correct. You asked about the cotton, right? So we had inflationary pressure in raw material, not only cotton, but all raw material cost of shipping. So the inflationary pressure has been going on for a while now already. In the beginning, it was harder for us than now, I'd say. In the beginning, we were in a country, especially Brazil, which has a mentality of non-inflation because we had a while of stability and then strong inflationary pressure coming in and the transfer of inflation to products in the beginning was harder than it is now. Customers weren't accepting it in the beginning because they were used to price stability. Demand elasticity was more affected. And what we currently see is that, yes, we still have inflationary pressure, and we don't think it will give in time. I think it will take a while for that sometimes with different drivers because international shipping was dropping and now fuel is up and then cotton and then oil. So -- and the exchange rate is dropping. So there are pros and cons everywhere, but there's still inflationary pressure.

The difference is that now it's in everything in the price of all kinds of products. So customers are aware that we are in an inflation environment. And we've been able to transfer a higher amount of inflation to product prices and also gain productivity and at the same time, grow more in number of items. And that helps us to mitigate the pressure. Can't say how it will be going forward, but for the first quarter, we are very close. We've been able to navigate closely to the levels in 2019 based on gross margin. So we're able to mitigate that pressure in a more effective way than what we saw at the end of last year or during last -- all of last year.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

So we have some questions here on the chat. I'll ask them. We have 2 questions from Irma from Goldman Sachs. I'll read both, although they are very specific. So the first one is probably for Fabio and the second one for Daniel. The first one, with the inauguration of the new DC in 2022, how long do you think it will take for you to get to the delivery turnaround time by 48 hours from Renner to the level of Youcom or even higher? And the second, do you believe that the share of own cards could go back to historical levels, or is there something more structural in that?

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

On the DC side, the test that we did with Youcom, because you mentioned Youcom. We brought in shipping from Youcom to a smaller DC cross-dock CD that doesn't have automation that we have in Cabreúva. It's not an omni CD -- DC. We just did that to test it. So in the distribution network, we were wondering if we were able to decrease lead time and improve the cost inflation. We were able to do that. Going to another DC in the same macro region with automation because that one doesn't have any and omni operations, gains in efficiency in handling and with the same logistics opportunities that will definitely improve the equation of the group overall. Don't forget that we will operate all our brands from that. So it's Youcom, Ashua, Renner, and we will be able to gain efficiency soon. And we can also gain more synergies with Repassa as well. When we're at that level, we expect that by '24, '25 80%. But of the 45% today, to there, we will gain experience month-over-month in reducing time and reducing cost.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

As to penetration of our own card. Throughout 2020, we had impact on our customer base because of the pandemic. And we had several gains in efficiency and several things we did to improve and go above the previous levels. But what I had answered before is that when we integrate the card with our ecosystem little by little, we recover that purchase base at the Renner -- with the Renner cards at Renner. We think that all those things, be it using my card and other spreads like Ashua, Camicado or using the card as part of our omni that we will be able to recover the share that we lost in '20 and '21.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

My next question is from Robert Ford from Merrill Lynch. It's related to Camicado, the pressure margin and competitive environment at Camicado. And the second part is, how is the cross-border competition, not only at Camicado, but the overall business?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Camicado has a different landscape than fashion. During the pandemic, it was less affected at some point for -- big fashion was more affected than home appliances and decoration. And now we're recovering more fashion, and Camicado is also recovering gradually throughout the month. Camicado suffers a little bit more in gross margin also because it has a greater share of imported goods. So that pressure of international shipping, exchange rate, so it suffered more than our other retail stores and spreads because of -- in gross margin. But we also see Camicado now for the following months with an evolution curve, not at the same level as the fashion brands, but it's still think it will be increasing throughout the year.

About the cross-border competition, we have the Asian players, which we've been talking about, and they're increasing their market share. We think that they are important competitors with good action in the market, but -- and that is relevant in fashion as well. But we have to remember that the fashion market is very much spread out. It's a market that will always trend to be more spread out. The number of players will always be relevant. And on the one hand, we have important players in that market share, and several lost their share. Sometimes, we think about one -- we focus on one player that is growing, but with our value proposition, the number of players is lower than it was before. So that's why we've been gaining market share month-over-month. But we do have important players. We've been mentioning in some of our meetings that they do show good competitiveness in some like product development, speed to market, but especially price and in price part sustained by their business model. It's something we can learn also. But the other part is a tax exemption that I don't know how long it will be sustained, and that really changes the equation, which is one of the greatest competitive advantages of these players. So we will always have players in the market. And regardless of which ones are there, we can improve our company. We always have opportunity for that. And that's also relevant.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

Now we're almost at the end. We are already beyond our time, but I have a question from Richard from BBI that has to do with the D+2 that you answered before. He is talking about the evolution of the D+2, so how we see that evolution for same and next day for the following years. And that's also linked to what you said before. And talk about the pilot of Arujá and how it will be installed?

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Okay. When we talk about up to 2 plus -- D+2, same and next day are included. It's a metric that we use, which is our acceptable apparels country average that we should deliver it 2 days tops. So it's the same proportion of up to 2 days growth, it's part of it, being same day or next day delivery. So we have some stores operating on WhatsApp in hours and promising delivery in hours. It's not even the same day, it's hours after. So the metric that we use is the maximum up to 2 days. But the initiatives are to increase same day and next in delivery as well. As to the pilot of Arujá, we did a pilot in Arujá managing the network, working at the Arujá region to see if we could manage that better what would be the result. And we saw very good results both in positioning of the products and point of sale. We're doing the same thing for couple of others but much wider as the decisions of the investments in our logistics platform. It's a very positive result. So even the test with -- of Youcom with the pilot of Arujá add to each other, so they will be good for all of the companies of the group.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

This is the last question from Bruno from Gavia. And we do have other questions, but since we're almost half an hour out beyond our allotted time, this is the last question. And our -- we are here to answer any questions that we have in. Bruno's question has to do with revisiting the store opening, and how we see the landscape of store opening in the future.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

We used to say 5 to 10 years, so that was our plan. At the moment, we're focusing more in the next 3 years. So for the next 3 years, we're sticking with our plan. We're revisiting the positioning, but we are sticking with our plan. We have projects for street stores in mid size and smaller cities to open and also in existing shopping malls with a smaller share of new stores. But in terms of number of projects and the feasibility of these projects. For the next 3 years, we can maintain our expectation. What's going to happen in 5, 10 years, it's hard to say because it depends on the recovery of the economy. We think that it will happen, but I prefer to focus on the next 3. Our expectation is positive going forward and it will depend on the macro landscape.

[Carla Sffair, executive]

So with this, we conclude our Q&A session. I would like to pass the floor to Fabio and Daniel for their closing comments.

[Daniel dos Santos, executive]

First, thank you. It's my first call. Thank you for your questions, and we're here to answer any questions you might have and anything that we weren't able to clarify during the call. Thank you.

[Fabio Faccio, executive]

Thank you. I would like to thank all of you. And we know that we have the potential. We've been recovering for the past years and especially now with a pandemic after how much it affected us. We have been recovering well, but we know that we have a potential to recover even more. We're very confident with the investments that are putting pressure on us are going to generate value in the future. So we're very confident with our strategy with the team's capabilities and to carry it out. And I would like to thank our investors, our team, our board members for the trust and the support. And we expect to see even better results in the future that will corroborate with that. Thank you very much. Bye.

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