Positivo Tecnologia SA

BOVESPA:POSI3

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Good morning, everyone. Another virtual conference call. And I would like to say that 2020 was a year, not to forget, no one of us will, the pandemic, the force majeure, difficulties, major changes, no one is to forget that so soon.

Back in January last year, we were in New York on a roadshow for our follow-on. And it was then that we started to have the first news of the pandemic. Eventual investors and fans would ask us how the pandemic would impact us. And at the time, we didn't know. We were hearing the first news from China. We tried to talk to our offices in Taipei and Shenzhen to know what was going on. And our stock even started to go down at the time because of the uncertainty of what the pandemic was going to be like. Anyway, we succeeded to have our follow-on at a very reasonable price, adding BRL 360 million to the company, which was very good at the time. And that was a lesson learned.

And from then on, we started to try and understand the dimension of everything. The first impact was on supply. China shut down in February, and then we started moving because most of our components come from China, also Korea, Taiwan and [ United States ], but mostly from China. And we had no parts because plants were shut down. At the end of February, beginning of March, China starts to open up and offer parts. But then what happens in Brazil, the pandemic hits. And by mid-March, the stores started to close.

First, Magazine Luiza, Casas Bahia, then [ Loja Sangue ], store-by-store, everyone shutting down. At the time, 70% of our retail sales were in these stores that were shutting down. Panic. We stopped buying. We decided to reduce everything, have negative forecast to know what was going to happen, what we would do. So back in February, we wanted parts to come in faster and in March, which had stopped. No more parts. To our surprise, in the end of March, beginning of April, there was a resolution in the demand of computers. First, at companies that had to send their employees to home office. Banks just buy out all inventories. They go to the retail to buy notebooks to their employees. There is a strong exchange devaluation at the time that hurt prices. The market takes a bit longer to react. So we have the perfect storm, not knowing what was going on. But the market starts to react. And those sales in physical stores migrate to online.

We all go home by mid-March, learn how to work online from our home offices. All the administrative area of the company goes home. And we start to live this huge digital transformation, which is the highlight on Page 2. This digital transformation has to do with selling online, having more robust websites, going from physical to online stores, having weaker clients being stronger in a faster reaction. So we start to learn how to work from the distance, which is a great learning for the company as a whole.

And then in April, May, searches for notebook on Google rose by 150% compared to the same period last year, quite impressive, incredible sales. We sell out our inventory, so do retailers. There is no inventory left, and no one can replace products because we had slowed down in our purchases, and everyone did the same. And at the same time, everybody reacted at the same time. So everybody fighting for parts, parts going up in prices because of excessive demand.

The third quarter was good. We could deliver a lot to retailers, still not going with inventories back to normal, but retailers with their stores open, selling a lot online, selling a lot -- supermarkets selling a lot, while supermarkets remained open. So it is a segment that grew a lot. We had then a third quarter that was very good and a fourth quarter that since the beginning of the year, we hadn't had deliveries as we had in the fourth quarter.

And remember, the government stopped before the companies after the first movement of buying to have products for their employees to go home starts to recover in the fourth quarter. So it is a convergence of factors: the government recovering, the corporate segment recovery and a very strong consumer segment, which enables us to hit all records in our history with revenues of BRL 887 million.

Added to all that, the demand for computers, and I'm talking a lot about computers. Whatever we prepared for 3 years ago when Positivo became Positivo Tecnologia and having different business areas, the leasing of computers, Positivo home -- intelligent homes. People at home wanted automation. The sales of LANs just exploded. In the Prime Day, we sold 35,000 LANs. Everything just selling out in intelligent home projects. We go to small retailers that are eager to sell, then we start supply to them.

Servers. Everyone needs servers. We had a spectacular year in servers and also a very good 4Q. Everything going on, no area doing poorly, except for Educational Technology because schools were still closed, and physical products like LEGO and MicroBit were no longer demanded. But in the whole of the avenues of growth, everything doing very well, accounting for 19%, which makes us very happy. That is, we are also changing the company profile, adding a bit more profitable businesses to our portfolio. So we already had BRL 473 million of revenues in the avenues of growth.

So in 4Q, a movement that consolidates it all, BRL 887 million revenues, a very positive EBITDA of BRL 400 million. And net income, and Caio is going to talk a bit about our tax recovery, but we had BRL 196 million in our income.

In capital structure, we also bring excellent news. We had 2 very important events. The first was the follow-on in the beginning of the year, BRL 354 million being brought to the company. And in this year, we issued debenture to extend our debt profile. So excellent news.

Moving to the next page, a bit of a market overview. As I mentioned before, again, an explosion in the consumption of computers. And why is that? Because offices migrate to home. People are trying to find computers in their drawers, but they no longer perform much. Everyone in the family needs computers. Children at school, parents at work, everyone needs a computer because the single computer for a family is no longer natural for the family members. So other computers have to be bought so that everyone have them, children to have classes online, parents to continue to work. Everyone needs a computer. Computers go back to being personal computers. One computer per person. Home office, home schooling, telemedicine, all these movements work together and more than that.

It seems to be a movement that is here to stay. It does not look like something that is still just during the pandemic. This is a movement that is going to stay. And therefore, people will need more computers. And this migration to notebooks will also increase sales because the notebook life cycle is lower than a desktop. A desktop will last in a company 5 to 7 years, a notebook 3 to 5 years at the most, more towards 3 than 5. So a longer life cycle. Hybrid work is to stay. Education at distance is to stay. Digitalization of education is huge, and digitalization of society as a whole. So computers go back to being personal.

And if you take a look at the next page, Page #4, and you take a look at the growth chart, it's really amazing. And all analysts start to say that growth is here to stay. That is, we are going to have a new level in computer consumption. It's not that we are going to increase the curve as is, but we are at a new level, which is very similar to what happened to the computer market in 2011. 340 million computers now being reviewed. IDC is to launch a new report mentioning 360 as an estimate for 2021.

Brazil does not react as fast and might not because of a lack of parts. There is really shortage of parts in the market. The market is buying everything that we and other multinational players bring to the country. But also, there is the Brazilian economic prices. Brazil, in the past, accounted for 4.4% back in 2011, '12, '13. Now it accounts for 2% of the world market, now with a forecast of 6.9 million, although still growing from 5.8 million to 6.9 million. So it's growing a lot but not as fast as the world market. So you have repressed demand in Brazil that is huge.

I don't think it's difficult to picture that Brazil should account for 3% of the world market. Well, 3% is a market of 10 million computers in Brazil. And this is what we believe is going to happen in the coming years. We believe the Brazilian market is going to outgrow the world market in the coming years.

Well, now I'm going to the next page. I already talked about the Brazilian market. But here, you see quarter-on-quarter what happened last year. Quite interesting. We started the year very well, 1,475,000, against 1,272,000. Then we go down in the beginning of the crisis. Everybody panics. Then we recover growth, and we outstand growth in 4Q with 2 million computers in the quarter. So you have the forecast of 6.9 million, still preliminary. It depends a lot more on supply than demand. Retailer inventories are really affected. We really sold very well. January and February, again, explosive. Lots of lockdowns. And when there is a lockdown, we sell more, not that we wanted, whatsoever, but this is the reality.

And so we have a lowering and emptying of inventory. And again, inventory days in retail is below 30 days. Normal numbers are above 90 days. Quite impressive. And a lack of components in the world, especially LCD. It's very hard to buy. With that, we have delays and also quite substantial price increases.

Well, now going to Page 6. Well, we tried to shift the company structure, well, not a little; in fact, a lot. And the company now is organized on 3 major pillars: consumer, that is, consumer product; then corporate, that is, everything that is sold to companies; and then public institution, everything that is bought by means of public bids.

Well, in consumer, what we sell in consumer? Well, computers and mobiles and tablets, the peripherals, mouse, keyboards, cellphone covers, memory, extra batteries. And in the Avenues of Growth, we have projects in the consumer market to go to [ Tier 3 ] retail. We have -- we were very good up to retail 100, weak from 101 to 3,000. And now we are focusing on this segment, and expansion is doing very well. Intelligent home, cameras, LANs, plugs, electronic lockers, a huge portfolio, very nice that was really well accepted. And Positivo as a Service is still going from an eventual leasing of computers to consumers for a greater usage.

In corporate, again, computers, mobiles, tablets, peripherals, Hardware as a Service, intelligent home, that is, intelligent office for smaller companies. Educational Technology for private schools. Positivo as a Service is growing and -- for the leasing of computers. Everything is as a service today. This is a world trend that is changing from CapEx to OpEx, buying as a service. With that, you have a series of advantages.

Payment solutions that we are also doing very well. We have just 1 client, the largest acquire, which is Cielo, and now we are selling to other players. So we have a very robust project there. And in public institutions, what do we mean by that? It's Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica, Petrobras, state secretariats, ministries, direct and indirect administrations, public-owned companies, courts, everyone that buys by means of public bids, and they are all in this division. And similarly to corporates, they have the same products. And the electronic ballot box, which is the star of this year and next year because of a bid of the electoral court. And the breakdown of our revenues: 55% consumer, 21% corporate, 21% public institutions. So quite well balanced, 54-55 consumer, 46-44 to corporate and public institutions.

Computers is still accounting for 59% of revenues, then servers with 15.8%, mobiles, tablets, but growing in a category that we're not really growing is services and others, completing our revenues. And a highlight is that we have huge investments in start-ups that are doing very well. And later on, I'm going to share some of the nice investments that we made. We already have invested in 11 start-ups, and we have a venture capital fund in place.

On the next page, we start to talk about each one of these divisions. In consumers, number of computers per home. Well, again, computers are personal. The number increases by home, home office, home schooling, starting April 2020. We believe they are here to stay, not as they are today, but no longer as they were in the past. Hybrid work is probably going to be mandatory in most companies. And for that, you have to have a good computer at home, one at work or a notebook that can come and go.

Then you have distance education, higher education increasing. People realized we can have classes at distance. Even those face-to-face courses have practical classes in person, but then theory classes online. And schools realized that there is no turning back. Technology can be very advantageous in education and then telemedicine and so many other initiatives. The increased demand and limited supply make us increase prices, not only because of demand and supply but because of the exchange rate. With that, the average ticket grew by 25% year-on-year. And later on, we are going to say that this is going to grow further 15%, '21 against '20. So even if we sell the same volume, revenue is going to be higher. But we don't think we are going to sell the same volume. We think we are going to grow in volume as well.

And then there is a movement of computers at the price the middle-class can afford because prices are going up, our ticket goes up to BRL 2,000. The entry level was BRL 1,400, now it is BRL 2,000. And we have 70% share in this segment, which is growing the most, that is, computers up to BRL 2,000. 65% of people are exchanging brands in stores for cheaper options. The gross revenues of the segment was BRL 1.4 billion in 2020.

In corporate, there was a delay of corporate investments. Although there was that initial boom, but equipment are perhaps to be replaced. So companies started to react in the fourth quarter. And it's also showing to be quite appealing this year. IDC predicts a growth of 11% this year. And as in the consumer, the ticket went up last year. There was a 20% increase year-on-year. They are buying cheaper brands, but still, there is a 20% increase in the ticket, and we believe another impact of 15% to 20% this year, year-on-year in the corporate segment.

In public institutions, there is an initial uncertainty. We have no budget forecast. Orders are canceled. Contracts are not signed with bids already won because the government is afraid to buy. But towards the end of the year, things started to change. Those that had to buy started to buy and lots -- state secretariats buy notebooks for public school students. Huge bids, some of which we won as the City Secretariat of São Paulo, the [indiscernible] Ceará, 2 large projects, just as a comparison. At the same time, in '19, we had a backlog of BRL 654 million, and now we have BRL 1.2 billion. So we have a lot more orders than what we had last year. And in addition, we have the electronic ballot boxes that are not included in this BRL 1.2 million -- billion, sorry.

Avenues of growth. We have 7 avenues of growth: servers, Positive as a Service, intelligent home, electronic ballot box, payment solutions, small retail and Educational Technology.

Servers are doing well, BRL 283 million, a 29% growth year-on-year. Migration to hybrid clouds or private and public clouds, but basically hybrid, is huge. Hybrid convergence is the name of the game. People are talking about edge computing that needs services every -- servers everywhere. And with that, the server market is growing a lot.

Hardware as a service is doing very well and growing. Intelligent home, the IoT is really showing substantial growth. We see the number of users in our apps. We go from 12,000 to 24,000, LANs, remote controls, plugs, intelligent cameras and so on. A really expressive growth.

The electronic ballot box. Lots of people are curious about that. Ballot boxes are safe. Rest assured with the Brazilian electoral process. It is very, very safe. The electronic boxes can print votes if that's necessary, although we don't think so. We already have 145,000 ballot boxes in contract. We are probably going to go to 180,000, the full of them, but probably there is going to be an even another amendment. That is, we are already in our portfolio with BRL 650 million and should reach BRL 800 million. And this contract should already take place in this year. We are in the process of validating each of the phase of the electronic ballot box. With the electoral court, again, there is a shortage of components that provides the delay. We don't know if we're going to be able to deliver everything in '21, but we believe that at least 40%, we will.

And I told you of some avenues. I talked about the small retail, Educational Technology that was more affected last year but should recover this year. Now talking still about the avenues of growth, we hired the network of a huge strategic consulting company to consolidate our businesses. We have been working with them for 5 months now, and the work is going very well. We have a very, very good work to be developed there.

In CVC, the idea is to accelerate start-ups that have to do with us, that it's not only our money that is important. And I'm not talking about funds that support management. We support operations, and we are investing with big players. Some of the start-ups, we have Qualcomm, Monashees, Peninsula Endeavor. So we are very much followed. Our star is Hilab that is really doing very well because it sells decentralized COVID tests. The labs are adapted for COVID tests, [indiscernible] 2 million tests from Hilab, and they can know in real time where the most cases are coming from because these equipment pieces are all 4G, so results are immediate and are transmitted to a center. So Hi is doing very well. And we have 38 people of ours that are helping in the production of 2 million tests. Hi produced much less in terms of volume, and we are experienced in projecting value, and we are helping that. That's why I'm saying that it is not management only, it is basically operations. And others, AgroSmart, @Tech, Eunerd. These are maintenance technicians, 6,000 technicians. So very interesting things in our portfolio.

Well, now I'm going to turn the call to our next speaker. I'll come back later on. But now I'm going to turn to Caio Moraes. Caio, so nice story. He was hired as our CFO in the middle of the pandemic. It was a distance hire, and he is doing very well as our CFO, and he's going to give you a bit more color about the numbers that I mentioned in the beginning.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Hélio. So let's talk a bit about our financials. I'm on Slide 17 of our presentation.

So I'm going to start with net revenue. Hélio already mentioned a bit about the quarter. It was a very strong quarter. 40% of the year revenue was for this quarter, which is really a new level that we think is going to be kept for the year of 2021. So a growth of 59% quarter-on-quarter.

Consumer, corporate, public institutions. Consumer, you see that's really the highlight. Because of the retail business, fourth quarter was really good, but also corporate and public institutions showing a recovery in 4Q, although is still slightly lower than '19 because of everything that Hélio mentioned, the schools closed and still the segments with a bit of a repression in terms of budget. But anyway, in terms of net revenue by product, you see computers, notebooks with 45%, but you see we have a very important mix for our revenue.

If you go to the next slide, we are talking about our operating expenses and G&A, general and administrative expenses. You see that although there is growth in volume in terms of commercial expenses, BRL 310 million against BRL 273 million, this is very much connected to the consumer segment performance. We spent more to support growth. And percentage-wise, net revenue, there is a reduction. We are at 12.2% compared to 13.6% in '19. So percentage-wise, there was a reduction. Although nominally, there was an increase. And in general and administrative expenses, we see an important reduction of 26%, very much connected, obviously, to the strong reduction of fixed costs that the company went through along the year, and also with warranties, technical assistance due to the better mix that we talked about.

If you go to the next slide, we talk about our financial results, which is a very important slide. You see in the full year of '19 compared to '20, especially because of the exchange variation of '20, we had gains of BRL 36 million compared to BRL 5 million in '19. So we go from BRL 70 million to BRL 5 million. If you take a look at the fourth quarter, the fourth quarters are very similar, but obviously, in 4Q '20, because of the sudden valuation of real, real was very much depressed, and then it went back to the level of BRL 5.19, a long [ curve ] at the beginning of '21. It went up again. But anyway, [ this value ] in the year did jeopardize a bit our mark-to-market in terms of dollar. But this is a financial effect. That's why, we had minus 24.3 in the fourth Q '20. But remember, the company has a very strict policy in terms of exchange hedging that protects our current and future purchase flow for all business units, consumer, corporate and public institutions. And it's a very effective instrument for hedging. This is mark-to-market. This is not operations, okay?

Let's go to the next slide, and let's talk about our net income. Hélio mentioned in the beginning that is perhaps the major highlight of the release, we had a net income of BRL 196 million. And here, I try to show what's the difference between the accounting net income and the adjusted accounting net income. That would be the operating income of the year, which is still 174% above 2019, BRL 57 million against BRL 20 million. But accounting is even more than that. And we have 3 effects that together are important tax effect. The first, which is the most important, is the exclusion of the value-added tax on the calculation basis for excise tax and others. So this is something that was judged in the end of last year. This is our best judgment. This goes back to 2005. We had very, very strong consulting work to support this. And this is our best estimate that we are accounting for in those results.

In addition to the same, we have an option that the company had to be part of a [ curative ] tax recovery process, which reduced our penalties in 6 lawsuits. And basically, this is tax -- licenses -- taxes on educational licenses. So we could reduce this impact, and we have a cash effect of BRL 18 million. And the third line, which is the impairment of deferred taxes, this is also company choice of enjoy the basis of investments that we make. This is according to the law based on the legal opinion of law firms and basically referring to ICMS forecasted credit. And we make this choice. You have the write-off of these assets. And altogether, if we exclude this effect, we get to adjusted accounting net income of BRL 57 million, which is 174% above that of '19. It's very important to highlight this.

If we go back to the EBITDA slide, adjusted EBITDA growth, 4Q, significant growth, 142%, and EBITDA margin of 11% against 7% year-on-year. So very important. Here, obviously, the growth of EBITDA is connected to 3 main factors: more activity in the period; better product mix, as we already mentioned; passing on costs of imports and materials because of the increasing dollar; and also our cost controls in the company. And that makes the differences that you see, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.

The next slide, we talk about our cash positioning, indebtedness and liability management actions with better profitability and capitalization of the BRL 350 million that Hélio mentioned in the first quarter. We get to a cash position of BRL 535 million in 4Q '20 against BRL 456 million in 4Q '19. With that, we decreased our leverage. We decreased our net debt from BRL 266 million to BRL 223 million quarter-on-quarter and leverage 1.9x net debt-to-EBITDA ratio and -- to 1.4x.

Another important mention is the liability management initiative that we started really changing our indebtedness profile and reducing our debt costs nominally. We are below 100% compared to more than 200% in '19. And also, we had 85% of our debt in the short term in '19, and we go to a breakdown of 45% in the short term and 55% in the long term. And that is a subsequent event. We are talking about the simple debenture issuance that we had in March 10, and these resources were used to amortize -- to pay out higher-cost debt with shorter terms. And of course, that shows the company going back to the capital market. We were able to book this transaction with 15 investment funds. So the company is back to the capital market with the sophistication of funding and -- that are cheaper and with longer tenure.

Now I'm going to turn back to Hélio to talk about a summary of the impact of 2020 and our outlook for '21. Sorry, Hélio, you're on mute.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Sorry, I've got to start again. Well, just to add to what Caio was saying, it's very important to highlight that the BRL 218 million of taxes minus the BRL 18 million that we paid [indiscernible] that's BRL 200 million reflect in our cash in the coming years, a pure cash generation for the next 4 years.

Well, on Page 24, I just would like to reinforce the outlook that we have due to the impact of 2020 and what can happen in '21 and the following year as well. Consumer, we had BRL 1.4 billion revenues, BRL 900 million in computers. The pandemic brought the need for more computers per home. The computers are back to being in person. That's 2020. Average ticket grew by 25% because of the exchange rate and increase of input costs. Computers up to BRL 2,000 gained momentum, and we have 70% share in this level.

Tablets are very much sought for because of homeschooling. The intelligent home, people were at home. They wanted the comfort to turn out their LANs from their bed to have a plug to connect their coffee maker, their air-conditioning, to have a security camera at home. So home -- intelligent home products are really raising the interest of computers. The pilot of computers for those small tier retailers from 101 onwards is yielding very good results.

Prospects for '21. The pandemic is going to be extended, and people realized that home office and education digitalization are here to stay. More aggressive in the pandemic, but they are here to stay after the pandemic. Demand continues high and due to a higher average exchange rate. And new increases in input prices. We are probably going to have another increase of average ticket between 15% to 20%. Home automation will probably continue to grow at double-digit levels. And expansion of small retail is going to happen throughout the whole of Brazil. So no longer in the south, but everywhere.

In corporate, revenue of BRL 550 million in 2020. Companies had, first at peak, to adapt to home office and then they slowed down. In Q4, we started to see them recovering -- resuming sales. Computers and servers average ticket grew 20% year-on-year 2019. And Software as a Service, Hardware as a Service continue to grow. We see it is still low because of the educational segment. But in corporate, it is growing up, and it should grow further this year.

In '21, changing from desktops to notebooks, because people want more mobility, will bring optimistic projections. IDC says about 12.5% on average large companies and 11% in the whole corporate segment. An increase of average ticket between 15% to 20% has continued to grow. And servers with a very heated market. And remember, the migration to public-private clouds, but especially hybrid clouds.

Public institutions. The state-owned companies need to adapt to keep their productivity. They have -- some have very, very old infrastructure. The uncertainty made them slow down, but in the fourth quarter, we saw a huge increase. The Ministry of Economics had a large bid. Caixa, Banco do Brasil, Petrobras and a number of bids for notebooks and tablets for public schools, students is unbelievable everywhere. At state, city levels, everyone is trying to buy tablets, notebooks to their students. So in February '20, we had BRL 600 million in our backlog. And remember, the bids for the electronic box -- ballot boxes, BRL 800 million.

And for '21, we still do see several bids. We are winning several best bids, the state secretariat of São Paulo, [indiscernible] Ceará, the City Administration of Fortaleza. It's a coincidence because they are the city and state administration of important regions in Brazil. Our budget for Brazil increases in terms of investments of technology. And in February '21, we have BRL 973 million in order backlog. So if you compare to '20, very high. And again, it's a pre-electoral year. So we are going to have loads of bids this year. And the electronic ballot box, we already received 147,000 or BRL 650 million confirmed, and we are going probably to deliver 40% of these still this year.

Well, this is what I had. We are very optimistic about the company, very optimistic, both because of our core business, especially in the computer and tablet market that is really increasing. We believe this is here to stay. The road is really increasing in terms of the computer usage. Brazil is not reacting as much, but it will. Brazil is not going to keep as low as the world market. So we believe we have a market for 10 million computers. As a whole, the transformation by means of our avenues of growth starts to be significant, and that's why we are very optimistic about 2021 and the future of the company.

Thank you very much for attending, and we are ready for your questions.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Thank you, Hélio. We do have some. I'm going to ask one by one, and we'll answer them, okay? So the first question comes from [ Sydney ]. I have questions. The shortage of chips and other inputs, will that influence your production?

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Yes, it will. It will influence in terms of costs of MCT because of the MCT chips that are really disputed by several industries, automotive, TVs, we all dispute the same chips from the same factory. And then it really changed slightly in terms of price. For you to have an idea, we would pay $55 for a screen and sometimes now we are paying $52 in some occasions, $48 on average. And in addition to cost, there is always the possibility of delays. It's not very easy. We always had our orders closed. But now things are more complicated. And sometimes we have delays in our delivery. So this is what's going on. There is a shortage, and there is very strong demand. I think the Brazilian market could grow further, but it won't because of this limitation of supply. But still, we are going to be able to get to our forecasted numbers. We see that we are being able to buy with higher costs and with a bit more delays.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

The same person, Sydney, is asking you a second question. In addition to Cielo, are there other acquirers buying your payment machines?

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

This is one of the avenues of growth that we have had. It's particularly this project to expand the sales of payment machines. So we are just starting this movement. We are structuring it for the sale of other types of machines for other acquirers.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

This is [ Sergio Sativa ]. [ Hilab ] is doing very well -- sorry?

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Well, to answer your question, I had another round of investments, huge investments. And we had the expansion of drug stores. And this is being very much valued in our portfolio. I don't know if you would like to add to that.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

No, I think that's it. I think this is one of the stars of our portfolio.

He also asks about another project, super drone spray.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

The super drone is one of the projects that is not going well. This is one of the companies that was not able to make the drone fly on time. The time was up. And we are going to have another round of investments, but we are not really very encouraged.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

A question from [ Danielle ] from [ XP ]. How do you see the impact of the strong devaluation of real on your business? And here, I'm talking about the impact of demand once family's budget is pressured, but also volatility as you have prices in dollars.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

We pass on our price in dollars. We cannot bear the exchange rate fluctuation. This is the common practice in the market. Everyone has a dollar component in their prices. If it were just one or another, that would be a problem, but it is not. So because it is the same for everyone, basically, prices are passed on with a new dollar level to retailers. And we protect ourselves. When we get a public bid, we hedge the contract. And that's why we have a very high amount of hedges that even affected us in the end of the year. So I see no problems in terms of profitability. Profitability is much more a matter of demand and supply than the dollar exchange. And those projects that are marked in reals are hedged.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

And just to add to that, you have a hedge for the year, we have a very strict hedge policy for all business units, as Hélio mentioned.

I have another question. [ Ricardo Piscine ] from [ Targos ]. Are you suffering with the lack of inputs and chips? It's basically the same question we have already answered.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Yes, we have already. Yes, we are being affected. It is -- sometimes, you have to have a new layout of our computer plates to migrate to chips that are not so much in shortage. So we try to use replacements. And we are quite fast to do that to minimize the lack of components.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Okay. Another question from Eleven Financial, also connected to supply chain. He talks about the capacity of delivery, and he believes that this is going to go back to normal. Okay, this is the question. When are we going to go back to normal?

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

That's the one million question. When we take a look at reports of American retailers, they say multinationals are going to normal in terms of American retail inventories. In November, it was just 20% of the regular amount. In February, now it's 50%. So we think by May, June, things are going to go back to normal in the U.S., which is an indicator that in the second half of the year, we might have better supply with more balanced chains. Although, again, the demand is growing hugely, but this growth of demand was also affected by a lack in inventory. So you have no inventory. It takes long for you to go back to normal. And when you go to normal, you have a repressed demand. So let's see what's going to go on.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Okay. One more question from [ Julius César Cuello ] from LatAm Capital. Congratulations on your results. I would like to understand the margins for the electronic ballot box bid. Could you give us a bit more color on EBITDA?

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Well, generally, we do not release the individual profitability of each business. But basically, it's slightly higher than the regular computer business because it is in a specific line of service.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Question from [ Victor Getman Jr ]. Positivo intelligent home. Two questions. If you are going to have an IPO in the short, mid-term, the new releases, and if you're going to go into electronic locks.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Yes, we are almost ready to go. We have to have a universal lock because Brazil has some kinds of locks, square, round. We are trying to have an electronic standardized product. IPO, this is a division inside Positivo Tecnologia. So we don't have anything in mind to spin off the division. And the area is doing very well.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

A question from [ Eduardo Iberra ] from [ Fatur ]. First, congratulations on results. Could you talk about retail sales in '21? Talk about home office, homeschooling, and also bids in states and municipalities in education.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Yes, January and February with very high sales, much more than we expected, which also made inventories to go down. But products are being replaced and demand continues high. There is a strong relation between the sale of computers and people at home. So that should continue. And the same applies to bids. We won several bids more or less at that level that we showed you. We had BRL 690 million in our backlog, and we had sales of BRL 550 million. We have BRL 1 billion in our backlog, which should translate in higher revenues, and we still continue to take part in bids.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

A question from [ Saul Marcelo ]. Congratulations for your results. I would like to know if Positivo wants to expand its share in game computing.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

We have a brand, 2 A.M. that is doing very well. Small volumes. So this is not an area that we gave too much emphasis. We have the gray market on the one hand and big brands on the other. So we are a bit [ at peace ]. But we are doing well with the brands, and we do have a plan to expand it. Yes.

[Caio Moraes, executive]

Okay. These were the questions. We have no further questions, and I think we can close the call.

[Helium Rotenberg, executive]

Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your attention. And we are here for you even after the end of this conference call to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. We thank you, and goodbye.