Raia Drogasil SA

BOVESPA:RADL3

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to RD People, Health and Wellbeing Conference Call, to discuss its 4Q '21 results. The presentation can be found on RD's Investor Relations website, ir.rd.com.br, where the audio for this conference will later be made available. [Operator Instructions]

Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of RD management and on information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and, therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of RD and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

Today with us are Mr. Eugênio De Zagottis, IR, Corporate Planning and M&A Vice President; and Fernando Spinelli, Investor Relations and Business Development Director.

Now I will turn the conference over to Mr. Eugênio De Zagottis. Sir, you may begin your conference.

[Eugenio De Zagottis, executive]

So I'd like to start by saying that 2021 by any criteria was an amazing year for the company. We were able to post very healthy top line growth, driven by a very successful expansion, as always, 240 stores openings. Our gross revenue reached BRL 25.6 billion, 21% growth with 12.4% for mature stores. We posted margin gains, both for the contribution margin, 70 bps gain, 29% growth. The same holds for the adjusted EBITDA, 7.1% margin with 26% growth, and also for net income with 3.1% margin and 31% of net growth.

In addition to that, despite the fact that the company has invested very significantly during the year in all the new strategies, and this is true both when we talk about G&A, OpEx or when you talk about CapEx, we posted in the year pretty much a neutral free cash flow. So it was minus BRL 26 million only of free cash flow, supporting all the increase in CapEx, supporting all the operational pressures that we had because of the new programs that we have. When you look at total cash flow, then it's more negative, but it's big, this is true because of higher payouts to shareholders as well as M&A related to start-ups to build our ecosystem. So all these investments in the new strategies of the company have produced amazing results already in the first year.

If you talk about digital, we did BRL 2.1 billion in revenues coming from digital channels, 79% of growth and ended the year with 9.2% of digital penetration. When you talk about the marketplace, we launched the marketplace, both at Raia and Drogasil apps. We already have 300 sellers, 80,000 SKUs listed in the marketplace. So last year [ was 0 ] from the marketplace. Now the challenge for us is rolling out -- not rolling out, the challenge for us is scaling up the marketplace.

And finally, with the health platform, we launched Vitat. Vitat was constituted based on the acquisition of a startup named tech.fit. That startup had already several programs in terms of lifestyle, weight loss, nutrition, et cetera, exercises. So we were able to leverage these assets and launch the platform with 150 free programs focused on wellness. And obviously, this year, we'll transition Vitat way more towards chronicities, customers with higher customer lifetime value, more complex diseases for us to help them take care.

So when we look at the year from any perspective, this was an amazing year. If you focus on the quarter, though, obviously, this was a challenging quarter because of inflation. And it's important to understand the inflationary trend through the year. When you look at the average inflation of the year, that average inflation was just slightly above the average price increase allowed by the government. If you look at our mature stores growth, which was 12%, was even higher than the overall inflation for the year. So on an annual basis, inflation was not a problem.

But when you look -- through the year, we saw completely different trends in the first semester and in the second semester. In the first semester, with the price cap increase ahead of inflation and mature stores growth even further ahead, we had tons of operating leverage, expense dilution, margin increase, et cetera. In the second semester, as inflation keep rising, we ended the inflation way ahead of the price cap increase of the year and ahead of the mature store growth of the year. So obviously, we have a short-term pressure related to inflation.

That somewhat happened in the third quarter. It happened significantly in the fourth quarter, and it will happen again in the first quarter. But when we talk about the structural strength of the business, we are absolutely confident that this would be a great year because the price will be adjusted in the second quarter of the year, end of March, actually. So we should have a great second quarter with tons of inflationary gain of inventories. And this price increase will get our revenues balanced versus the current inflation that we have. So expense dilution will be normalized. So the trend for the year is a good one. The last year was an amazing year, but the recent quarters, especially this quarter, they were challenging in terms of margin perspective.

While talking about our expansion, we ended the year with nearly 2,500 stores. We opened last year 240 stores. We closed in the year 49 stores. Let's remember that in the previous year, we almost didn't close any stores because of the uncertainty provided by the pandemic. It was difficult to know if the store was doing poorly because of the pandemic or if there was a structural threat. So we were very conservative last year. If you look at the average number of store closures for the 2 years, we did 30 closures a year, which is exactly in line with the average for the company, and this is a healthy number. Just a fraction of those stores closed are recent stores or mature stores. The bulk of them, they are related to portfolio optimizations that we have done.

When we look at our store portfolio, 70% of the stores are matured, 30% of the stores are still undergoing maturation. And finally, we reiterate the guidance for this year of 260 new pharmacies. And we are maintaining for the year the same kind of diversification we have had, both in terms of demography and in terms of geography, both aspects.

When you look at the profile of the recent expansion, last 12-month expansion, it's obviously how different it is from the history of the company, even though it has maintained the same, if not better, returns. There's a huge focus nowadays in entering new cities. So last year alone, we entered in 76 new cities.

So we're talking of 240 stores. And those 240 stores, obviously, there were a lot of existing markets, but 76 new cities that we entered through these openings. And when we look in terms of income profile, when you look at the total store portfolio this day, 33% of the stores, 130 are premium stores, 2/3, they're either hybrid or popular stores. But if you look at the last 12 months expansion, only 12% are premium stores; 88%, they are either hybrid or popular stores that we have opened. So we are entering more and more the B and C class, and there is still some opportunities in the A class, but obviously, they are lesser part every year of our expansion.

When you look at the returns, we are doing internal -- real internal rate of returns of around 25% these days. Let's not forget that we have always focused on 20%. We look at this figure net of cannibalization, and cannibalization these days is way less than in the past because there are more new cities with 0 cannibalization and less stores in highly populated areas by us. Here, we can understand the geography of the expansion. And I'll start by saying that if you think about São Paulo, the state of São Paulo, which is our main market, where both Raia and Drogasil brands were born, we opened only 20% of the stores in the state of São Paulo, 50 over to 40. This is a number that's been reducing over the years.

So there is less cannibalization more and more. And São Paulo is our most populated market. But this is the state of São Paulo. If you're talking about the city of São Paulo, we did only something like 5% of the expansion in the city of São Paulo. And if you look at the A class areas in São Paulo, it's almost nothing. We already are pretty well populated, and the focus has been more in new cities in the countryside and even within the city of São Paulo in B and C class areas.

I mean our presence is a national one. We completed this map. We are now in every single state. We entered in Roraima, Acre and Amapa during the year. So we are now in every state. And I think what's very particular about our expansion is the fact that we are swimming in the blue ocean wherever we go because we have the brand set in virtually all these markets. We've grown with the same return expectations allover Brazil. We have an average revenue per mature store of BRL 900,000 per store per month.

And even if you look at our lowest market, in the lowest revenue market, we are doing BRL 750,000 per for mature stores. Actually, this is way above what the local incumbent in that same market does. So it's easy to understand that we grow with the same returns expectation in every market, and with very similar revenues per store wherever we go. We are now a truly national brand. And this is why we have so much blue ocean [ left to swim ].

If you compare with our competitors, I mean, our competitors, they have like a blue lake somewhere in their native market where these too can open stores and probably with decent returns. But when they look outside of those markets, I mean, this is a huge red ocean, bloody ocean with huge entry barriers. And even at these regional pockets where they have the brand consolidated, if they overdo it, cannibalization becomes very high and, at some point, the blue lake can be -- can easily become a red lake as well. So this is a huge difference between us and all the other competitors.

I'd like to show also how relevant our presence is already in several markets. Obviously, 1,100 stores in São Paulo, that's not a surprise, but 350 stores nearly in the Northeast and close to 300 stores in the South. We are approaching 100. Actually, it's now 84 stores, but it will be, in the short term, 100-plus stores in the Northern region. So we're growing everywhere. The growth these days is not about a single market, it's about growing everywhere. And in terms of market share, we grew share on a national basis with stability in São Paulo and gains in every other single market.

Talking about the top line growth, I mean, as I mentioned, this was an amazing year with 21% top line growth for the year. If you look at the quarter, we did 16.7% growth in the quarter. The difference between 16.7% and 21% lies in the fact that we had a very easy comp base in the second quarter because it was very soft last year in the beginning of the pandemic and the previous year in the beginning of the pandemic and the fact that even the third quarter of 2020 was also another full quarter. So we had a very easy comp base in the second quarter and somewhat easier comp base in the third quarter. Now fourth quarter, we're looking at a normal comp base of the 4Q '20. So it's 16.5%, which is still, I think, a very good number.

When you look at our mix, the highlight has been OTC. And this has also been absolutely related to the pandemic, a lot of seasonal -- not seasonal, a lot of items related to the pandemic, like vitamins, masks, even COVID tests, are classified within OTC. So this was by far the highest growth category.

Talking about our comps. For the -- in the year, we did 12.4% mature store growth. Here, we see what I mentioned before, in the second quarter, when the comp base was really soft, it was a staggering number, north of 20%. In the third quarter, still with easier comp base, [ which is 12% ], now we are at 9% comp base, but we're comparing with absolutely normal quarter last year. So 9% is a great number. It's 150 bps ahead of the price cap increase we got last March, but obviously, this is now below the current expectation, which is in excess of 10%. So this generates short-term pressures in terms of profitability.

It's important to highlight how we have done in terms of digital sales. So digital, I mean, we have had an amazing year here, with a total of BRL 2.1 billion in annual revenues, 79% growth over the previous year. We ended the year with nearly BRL 600 million sales in the quarter, which means BRL 2.4 billion annualized digital sales, still 69% of growth versus the 4Q '20. And the digital penetration reached 9.2% in the end of the year. Why is this important? This is important because customers who become digital, they spend from 20% to [ 25% ] more versus what they spend before. So this means increasing the customer lifetime value and, obviously, this is very highly correlated with overall value creation for the company as well.

Our focus lies in the app. Obviously, we do well through the web as well, but the app is really the focus of what we do. Our stores -- we are driving huge digital onboarding. We have nearly 16 million cumulative app downloads already. But for me, the main number is here, the number of monthly average users that we have compared to our competitors. This is 100 RD as a [ compare ], and then you see the fraction of the other competitors. So we have a much, much, much higher usage than any other competitor here. And obviously, we are a bigger company, so we expected to do that. But if you look our ratios in terms of how much times our revenues are versus these guys, there is an over-indexation when we talk about the MAU of the app. So it's absolutely disproportionate here.

Another thing that we have to consider is that we are not a more regional player. We're a national player. We compete, obviously, in high penetration areas like São Paulo, South, Southeast, but we also compete in markets that are very [ easy ] to the company, that we have still limited density in other markets like the Northeast, that the presence is good, but the usage of the digital, the habit is not there, and they're forming. So as a national company, to be outplaying all even on a relative basis to the revenues, to be over indexed versus every single competitor, this is an amazing number. And if you look at the pace of the growth and the gap that we're opening, this is even more staggering.

Talking about gross margin. The gross margin was one of the highlights of the quarter. So 28.5% of gross margin. This is an unusually high gross margin, and there are a couple of elements in here. First, the mix is a very good one. Because OTC is doing really well, and this is a high-margin category for us. There's a factor here. We are -- December was our record in terms of private-label penetration. So we reached a very high private-label penetration, 8.6% in the front store with 45% of gross margin. So there's a factor here which is helping the gross market.

And finally, because interest rates are higher now, that is also at the adjusted present -- the NPV adjustment that helps these figures as well. Finally, when you talk about cash cycle, we ended the period with a great cash cycle of 55 days. This is a significant reduction versus the previous quarter, 10-day reduction on a sequential basis. If you compare to the 4Q '20, this is a 5-day increase, but let's remember that this was an all-time low number. So this is not a sustainable number. Our normal number for December, January for 55 -- 54, 56. So we have recovered since previous quarters, and we are at total -- normal level for the cash cycle.

Before talking about margin, I would like to provide some details related to inflation that explain what's happening today and how we see the year evolving. This has to do with some of the things I mentioned in the opening. So last year, the average price cap increase granted by the government was 7.5%. This 7.5% originally was much higher than the base inflation. So there was a real component here. So we started the year with price cap increase above inflation. And if you look at our comps in average, mature stores grew 12% through the year. So when you look at revenue growth versus inflation, it was even much higher than this. So this provided for a very strong first semester with tons of operating leverage.

The problem is that through the year, the inflation kept rising. And at some point, the inflation became higher than the price cap increase, and the inflation became even higher than the mature store growth we have posted. This is especially true in the fourth quarter, and this will again be true in the first quarter of next year. So we have right now a very significant inflationary pressure because the inflation is way ahead of the price cap increase and even ahead the mature store growth we are seeing.

The good news is that in the end of February, inflation will still be similar to what it is today. So we will get in March a price cap increase based on this inflation, which very likely will be the full inflation. Having said that, the inflation is expected to decline over the year. So we expect for this year a price cap increase ahead of inflation for the average of the year. So there's an expectation of an 8.6% CPI versus something like 10.4%, 10.5% in expected price categories. So we will recover the inflation. We will have a recomposition that will allow our margins to normalize.

So we have a short-term pressure this quarter. We will have again a short-term pressure in the first quarter for sure. But then from the second quarter onwards, I think, the trend is very positive. And with this kind of price cap increase, particularly in the second quarter, the inflationary gain on inventory should be very high, but this will sustain accelerated revenue growth, which will allow us to dilute the current inflation we see and to get back to the normal margins we used to have. So we are not worried at all about the short-term trend because we know that everything will be normalized from the second quarter onwards.

Okay. So when you talk about the margins, we look at the contribution margin. The contribution margin is a very important number for us because this shows the structural performance of the business because G&A is related to the structure of the company, and we are upgrading a lot the structure of the company to support the new strategies, the marketplace, the platform, et cetera. So contribution margin is just gross margin less sales expenses. So this is the structural health of the business.

We increased 70 bps in the year. And even despite the huge inflation we see today, we only lost 20 bps of contribution margin in the quarter. When we factor the G&A and then we look at the EBITDA, we reinvest G&A to 30 bps for the quarter. So there's still a margin increase of 40 bps in the year, very significant EBITDA growth of 26.5% in the year. If you look in the quarter, then obviously, we have a meaningful pressure versus fourth quarter last year. But I mean, if you look on a sequential basis, there shouldn't be any surprises because in the third quarter, with much lower inflation than we see today, we're already [ suffering ] here and at 6.8%. So the 6.5% is a perfectly normal number for a company who had 6.8% with less inflation in the previous quarter.

So it's important to understand the recent trend, and the recent trend is shown by the sequential numbers, not year-on-year numbers. So we did 6.5%. This is -- there is some pressure in the contribution margin, as I mentioned, but the main pressure is here, on the G&A. This is a mixture of inflation affecting the G&A and also the investment in structure we have pursued to support the new strategy.

In terms of net income, we also saw a significant increase. The net margin amounted to 3.1%, 30 bps margin gain in the year. And even in the quarter, it was a better net margin than the previous quarter, 3% versus 2.7%, but obviously 60 bps below same quarter last year because of the inflationary pressures and because of the G&A investments that we pursued. Finally, when we look in the year, we also have BRL 41 million in nonrecurring gains, which are not factored in this adjusted net income. So we are very diligent when we adjust numbers. And we are always -- I mean either if it's a positive or a negative adjustment, there is no arbitrarity (sic) [ arbitration ]. It's always done really with a very, very consistent way. So sometimes we are adjusting nonrecurring expenses, but very often, we are adjusting nonrecurring gains just like we did this year.

Finally, cash flow, and I think this was probably one of the highlights of the quarter. This is a year in which, if you compare December with December, we have a big cash cycle pressure because we have an all-time low of 50 days last year. So the cash cycle is artificially pressured because the comp base last year, it was very low. Still we had BRL 800-plus million -- BRL 820 million operating cash flow. Our CapEx increased quite a bit. It increased about BRL 180 million because of IT and other investments and still the business took care of that. And we had only BRL 26 million of negative free cash flow. So it's a neutral operating cash generation here.

Obviously, when you look at the total cash flow, then that is a BRL 570 million consumption, but this is based on 2 lines. One is interest on equity. So we increased payout to shareholders. And the other is that we -- the M&As we're doing to put together an ecosystem, we spend on a cash basis close to BRL 140 million already. But the operating side is absolutely pristine and absolutely neutral.

Finally, we have maintained the same leverage of the previous quarters. Just slightly ahead 20 bps -- 0.2% ahead of the same point last year, but still a very good number, only 0.8 of net debt to EBITDA, which gives us all the flexibility to maintain the investment program we are pursuing.

Finally, we had BRL 7.4 billion in value added. 44% of all that went back to the government, federal, state, municipal; BRL 2.4 billion to our people, our 50,000 employees, 32% of the value creation here; then we have third-party providers like landlords, et cetera, with BRL 1 billion; and finally, shareholders with BRL 0.8 billion, 10% of the total.

When you look at our share performance, we had positive offer in the year and positive offer in the quarter. Obviously, we're talking about a tough year with IBOVESPA falling 12%, and our share price was very close to neutral here. The compounding power of this business is staggering. If you compare the current share price with the Drogasil share price or the Raia share price, the annual returns we have been able to deliver have been amazing.

So I'll now try to summarize some of the aspects of the year and how we're looking to -- how we're getting ready for 2022. Before doing that, I would just like to highlight that Raia Drogasil just completed 10 years of history in November. And obviously, I mean, the capacity of the merged company to transform the business, I mean, it was absolutely amazing. So if you look, the sum of the part of 2011, Raia Drogasil versus where we are now, we were a regional player with presence in 9 states, less than 800 stores. To date, we have 2,500 stores, 3x more stores than before.

Our gross revenue in this period was multiplied by 5 times, reaching BRL 25.6 billion. And now -- and we did this with margin increases. Our EBITDA increased 7x from 272 million all the way to more than 1.8 billion in reals. So the last 10 years were an amazing period for the company, and we have done this with a more traditional retail recipe based on things like category management, organic store expansion. So it was really the basics of the retail execution that allows for this to happen, initially getting [ hybrid as you ] to have the best of both, and afterwards, challenging where the best of both was not enough or where we could do better than the best of both and keep evolving, keep improving, and this is what drove this amazing value creation for our shareholders.

When we look for our next decade, which is starting now, we're looking at a very different and much more ambitious but also much more complex recipe than the one we had so far. So we have a new strategy, which is based on 3 pillars: the new pharmacy, which is the classic retail execution; powered by digital/omnichannel; and resignify, getting back to our roots in terms of health care, having a health hub in our stores.

So this is the traditional business we reinvented, but then we have 2 new businesses that we are recreating. The marketplace, which also feeds on the customer relationship, more than 40 million customers that we have, our digital assets like the apps, websites, et cetera. And finally, the health platform. So these 3 pillars are moving us away from being just a pharmaceutical retailer to focus here on integral health.

This is still driven by the same purpose that hasn't changed, of taking close care of people's health and well-being during all times of their lives. And we have a series of enablers where we are working on in order for us to make this very ambitious transformation. And by achieving this, we want to become, by 2030, the corporate group that contributes the most towards a healthier society in Brazil.

In terms of this transformation, I mean, here, we have a highlight of the year. And the highlight is what I mentioned in the beginning. I mean this was an amazing year in which we delivered very robust growth with margin expansion and neutral free cash flow despite investing a lot in pharmacy and especially in all the new businesses, marketplace and the health platform. So we opened 240 new stores this year, and we maintained for 2022 the guidance of 260 stores. We are now in all 27 states of Brazil. We reached a milestone of 50,000 employees. Top line grew 21% with 12% of growth for mature stores. 40 bps EBITDA margin expansion. Net income grew 31% also with margin expansion. And neutral free cash flow, only minus BRL 26 million, despite 27% CapEx increase plus -- or nearly BRL 200 million CapEx versus the previous year to support all these new strategies and support [ it did ] when we look what we accomplished here, especially in the [ new pharmacy ], but also in the initial days of these 2 new businesses, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve last year.

So digital channels reached BRL 2.1 billion in the year. If we analyze the fourth quarter, BRL 2.4 billion. So RD digital is already the sixth or seventh largest drugstore chain in Brazil, and the penetration reached 9.2% by year-end. Why this is important because the digital customer spends more than they spent before. So this has been a driver for this amazing comp growth that we produced in the year and for future comp growth that we expect to produce. The 16 million downloads, Raia Drogasil is respected as the #1 and #2 online pharmacies in Brazil. If we were a separate company, we would be #1 and 2. And obviously, when you look at the monthly average users in the app, it's far above anyone else.

We have 1,500 health hubs that performed a very active role during the pandemic, more than 4 million rapid tests, nearly 200,000 COVID immunization in partnership with municipalities. And even for general vaccination, we have tripled the number of stores providing the service, so we should accelerate a lot into 2022. This was year 1 of the marketplace, 80,000 SKUs, 300 sellers. This -- the marketplace is built into the Raia and Drogasil apps already, and we invested in Conecta La. This is a startup that has an amazing seller center. We have a minority equity here, and we acquired the rights to the code so that Conecta La will become our seller center, and this will improve a lot how we connect to ourselves.

And finally, when you talk about the health platform, this was year 1 of the health platform. We launched Vitat, both the app and the brand. More than 150 free programs that we're offering the customer. As I mentioned in the beginning, Vitat was constituted through the tech.fit acquisition. Tech.fit has programs focused on nutrition and exercise. So the initial execution of Vitat is very focused on lifestyle, but Vitat will migrate more and more towards serving chronic patients, patients who have a very high lifetime value, complex journeys, significant prescription needs. And obviously, we can fish within our data lake. We have 41 million customers, more than 5 million loyal customers, and these customers will drive the growth for the health platform. So it started where the acquired start-up was, but this is starting to shift towards where we want to be in the future.

Another highlight is the fact that we did 7 start-up acquisitions last year. We spent BRL 200 million, and we are building an amazing ecosystem. And the challenge now is also getting this ecosystem to integrate, provide for the interoperability between all its components. In the retail side, obviously, we have a winning portfolio of own brands. We have the 2 main drugstore brands in Brazil, Raia Drogasil, and we also bought a startup here, Conecta La, to empower our marketplace with an amazing seller center. We -- last year was the beginning of Stix, which is our loyalty coalition with Grupo Pão de Açúcar. So we have already 2.5 million customers who are enrolled at Stix.

Half of these customers have already exchanged points for products this year. So this is a very important platform for loyalty increase. We built organically RD Ads, which is our advertising platform. We're looking about digital advertising. We're looking about in-store advertising solutions. So we are in the beginning of RD Ads. RD Ads is already starting to help our profitability by driving advertising revenues. I mean it's obviously in our platform, how powerful and important an advertising solution is.

I mean if you look at Amazon, I think Amazon does more advertising revenues than YouTube. Obviously, the example is there, Mercado Livre does it, and we will do that as well. For us it will be very important, not only for the platform, but even for the physical world of our stores.

And finally, we became a health care company this year for several positions. First, the tech.fit acquisition that bought Workout, Tecnonutri and morphed them into Vitat and the HealthBit acquisition. HealthBit is a startup that helps us reduce health claims for corporate clients as well as improving health outcomes for the beneficiaries of these clients. So this is the entry door for the health platform to be offered in the corporate world, for companies, health insurers, et cetera. When you talk about access and adherence to the prescription specialty, we have had Univers for a long time. This is our PBM, leading PBM in Brazil. We have had 4BIO, which is the leading specialty pharmacy in Brazil, servicing customers of health operators.

And we acquired 2 more start-ups, Manipulaê, which was in the end of 2020. This is an apothecary pharmacy platform. And at the end of the year, we have acquired CUCO Health, which is a company focused on adherence to the treatment. We want to get the team, the technology and put in place a much broader solution, bringing together not only a software that sets a reminder, et cetera, but the dispensation, refilling the prescription, remembering the customer to get back to the physician. So when we integrate the dispensing side with the customer support, we can do things that, I think, can be very powerful here. And CUCO will be instrumental for that.

And finally, consultation and diagnostics with these 2 amazing startups. Amplimed. Amplimed is an electronic medical record platform. It connects 20,000 physicians and other health professionals that it's not only the electronic medical record, but it's also the connectivity between the physician and the health insurer billing. So it's, at the end of the day, [ an ERP ] for the physicians. Amplimed is the data layer, the data repository for the whole platform that we put in place and the tunnel that will connect our platform with physicians to schedule consultations, telemedicine, et cetera.

And finally, Labi Exames. This is a clinical exam [ code ] start-up omnichannel. So it has 20-plus stores. It collects blood from customers or provide vaccinations at home. So we have a very powerful addition here to our ecosystem so that we can have our customers doing lab exams, either directly at the Labi stores, maybe someday in our stores if we get the regulatory clearing, which it is possible, or collecting those exams at home with Labi. So this is a very interesting ecosystem that is starting to operate in an integrated way. This is the challenge for this year.

When we talk about challenges and opportunities for the year. So this is not a lot of new things here. I mean it's the same things we are already doing, but gaining momentum, accelerating digitalization of the relationship with the customer, going beyond 9% of digital channel penetration. In order to do that, we have to improve the experience in the app. We have to reduce delivery times in major urban centers. We want to bring new models involving customer retention and loyalty and recurrence.

This year, it will be very important to strengthen and scale up the marketplace. So the seller center will come this year. The plan for logistics will come this year, not the 3P logistic itself. This is something that we'll have to do as soon as possible, but this year, we are focused on having the logistic master plan for us to use our stores and our DCs for 3P fulfillment. We want our customers to be able to collect tomorrow any 3P items day by [ day ]. They can go to one of the stores and collect with 0 delivery charge. This is the dream. This is the main differential of the marketplace. This is the omnichannel aspect, leveraging the 2,500 stores we have in the best neighborhoods of Brazil, parking, great experience, et cetera.

We will also advance with Vitat, shifting from these lifestyle journeys to chronic patients with more stringent health care needs. We have also to integrate some of these solutions. Vitat today works already integrated with 21 Vitat Spaces, which is like the top version of our health hubs, but we will integrate with that with every single health hub. We have 1,500 health hubs.

And finally, when we talk about the enablers, we'll keep transforming our IT infrastructure, converting systems to microservices, bringing the systems to the cloud, eliminating bottlenecks in development, testing of code, accelerating releases, et cetera, and focusing more and more on our data science capabilities. And finally, evolve into a digital culture, more -- higher focus on the customer, a higher focus on using data, disseminating more the agile management model that we already have. And finally, changing the culture, less hierarchy, more flexibility. We want to be more collaborative, innovative and to foster entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

And finally, sustainability. This is something very important for us. We unveiled, in May last year our sustainability program, which we call Walking Together. We have 8 macro objectives and 35 goals for 2030 that if we're successful, and we will be, we can be by 2030 the corporate group that contributes the most towards a healthier society in Brazil. Already this year, we set several targets. These are not all of them but the main ones, things related to engaging our employees in health programs. So if you want to change society in terms of health improvement, we have to start from inside. We have to start with our employees. So we're already getting success and doing better than the targets we set here.

We set also a lot of diversity targets, especially related to gender equality. We did really well in terms of women in executive leadership. We did well in women in operational leadership. The number is very good here, but we went slightly down with functional leadership. So this is something we have to have a look at. And in terms of supply chain, evaluating all our critical suppliers in critical categories. We did better than we expected. In terms of waste management, we also -- we are also progressing towards where we want to be, but not exactly there.

So -- but the message here is we have this ambition, and we have a program of detailed metrics that we look for the long term but also for the short term and that we keep updating the market on them. And finally, the beginning of this year, we became part of the BOVESPA ISE Index, which is a sustainability index. They have 46 companies selected. We had tried previously for 2 years and we didn't get. And this time, we are part of the sustainability index, and we're very proud of that. This is a collective effort by the company.

So these were our prepared remarks. We are now open for Q&A. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Joseph Giordano from JPMorgan.

[Technical Difficulty]

[Joseph Giordano, analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Eugenio De Zagottis, executive]

Now we can.

[Joseph Giordano, analyst]

Okay. So I have like 3 questions here. So the first one is related to the returns that you mentioned. So you're basically reaching IRRs north of 25%. My question to you is the following, right? So back in the day, digital was not part of the equation when you ran like the store model. So basically, we had like a 10-year [ sit-and-relax ] kind of model, and we incorporated the cannibalization of the surrounding stores based on your data. How do you treat the digital now when you're thinking about the expansion plan? And then the second question here is still on the digital, and the expansions. How does it change the working capital profile of the store, right? Because in theory, the addressable market of the store is expanded by traders of influence, right, within digital, since 50% of the orders are actually Click & Collect. So that's my first question.

The second one goes into like the chains. So about 60% of the market is composed of drugstore chains. You're by far the largest with 14% market share nationwide. But if you take just chains, it's like just about 25%. When we look at this outside Brazil and take the U.S. as a reference, we have chains like with 60% of the market, but basically like 2 or 3 chains. So the drugstore chain side is much more consolidated on this front. So my question to you is, how do you see like this trend shaping up in Brazil and how digital can really accelerate this?

[Eugenio De Zagottis, executive]

Okay. Joe, thanks for the questions. And I mean, you are correct in the first question. So historically, we were looking at the internal rate of return around 20%. This has always been our target. It's still the target. The thing is we have been exceeding our targets. And we look at this internal rate of return net of cannibalization. So cannibalization these days is lower than in the past. So there is more marginality in the new store revenues than we saw in the past. And this is driving these returns. The fact that we are opening new cities, the fact that there's less growth in the A, B areas, especially in areas of São Paulo, the fact that the brand is already more developed than it was in the past in the new markets that we were. So these are all the facts that are driving this.

And digital, it's another factor here. We don't look at separate businesses, physical and digital. Digital is an accelerator of the store business. Let's not remember that 90% of the digital sales are fulfilled in the store, the 50% is Click & Collect, plus neighborhood deliveries, plus ship from -- motorized ship from store. 90% of all the deliveries come from the store. Digital without the stores, it doesn't work in our sector, as simple as that.

So the reason that digital works so well for us is because the store is the customer acquisition machine. We're not spending much money in Google, et cetera. The store is the digital onboarding machine. This is where the customer learns about the app, downloads the app, starts using the app. And the store is the fulfillment machine, with 90% of the fulfillments happening in the store. So we see digital not as something separate but as an accelerator for the strategy. Because we have digital as a new demand driver and because there's less cannibalization, in the end of the day, the comps today are higher than we saw in the past. We talked about [indiscernible] increasing last year 7.5%. And obviously, we did 12% comp growth. There are 2 quarters that were very easy, so they need to start the number.

But even if you look today, 9% is more -- we're talking 150 bps ahead of the price category. So obviously, the effect of digital in the comp growth is already self-evident, in my view, and we expect to have real growth on a recurring basis, driving our productivity forward.

In terms of working capital, in general, today, I mean, the way we manage working capital is we have our algorithms. And the algorithms look at the store -- the recent store demand, and they adapt the number of items on hand of each item based on recent demand. It can increase, it can reduce. For this algorithm, it doesn't matter if it's a pure digital transaction, if it's a pure analog transaction, if it's a Click & Collect. It shows that the system has 1 unit sold, 2 units sold, 3 units sold. So our system is already -- it's already incorporating all these trends driven by digital, okay?

And then to your last question, I think this is a good comparison. I mean all the chains in Brazil have pretty much what 3 chains have in the U.S. Obviously, I mean, when you look at this figure, the opportunity for consolidation is self-evident here. Easy to be exactly like the U.S., the 3 chains will be 60% of the market. Maybe not, maybe not. But for sure, I believe there's a ton of space for us to gain share. I mean we are a huge company, BRL 26 billion in revenues, but let's not forget that we have only 14% in market share.

Even if you put the contracted market share gain from the maturation of existing stores, maybe this is 16%, 17%. I don't have any doubts that we'll go to 20% of market share, but at some point, we have to be even better than that, 25%, maybe 30%. The opportunity is there. How much it will be organic growth, how much will be same-store sales growth driven by digital, that, time will tell. But for sure, the opportunity is there; for sure we are ready to leverage that opportunity.

[Operator]

The next question is from Gustavo Senday from XP Investments.

[Gustavo Senday;XP Inc.;Equity Research Analyst, analyst]

My question is more a long-term one regarding services. If you could give us your perception on how big representative services could be in our sales mix going forward, especially now that the pandemic has brought a higher demand for testing and vaccines? And how could that impact your profitability in the longer term?

[Eugenio De Zagottis, executive]

Okay. Gustavo, thanks. I mean, obviously, when you talk about services, it's very easy to brag about how well the health hubs are doing, when you have a pandemic and we're doing 4 million COVID tests. So obviously, any figures that anyone wants to show right now in terms of the health, it's an amazing picture. But let's be frank here, I mean, as the pandemic wears off, these numbers -- the number will also wear off. Having said that, just like with digital, there is a legacy that the pandemic changed the behavior. I think there's a legacy here in terms of health care, in terms of services in the store, even if the number will go significantly down after we take out the COVID tests. But for sure, we'll be ahead of where we are.

And I think the trend for the future will be a good one because the customers over these 2 years, they learned that the store is very ready to provide services. We have vaccines in stores. We have quick tests in stores. The stores adopt the same kind of sanitary protocols that any lab company adopt. So the consumer built confidence in our capacity to provide the services with high quality and with much higher convenience than any other channel, given the fact that we own 25,000 -- 2,500 stores all over Brazil. We cover 91% of the A class within a mile, et cetera, et cetera, so much convenience with parking spaces, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's very difficult for me to foresee how this will grow. But I'm sure this will grow in a good way. The best example is vaccinations. We now have 3x as more -- as many stores, providing general vaccination, flu shots and other vaccines than we had before. And we're not happy where we are. We want to further grow this.

In the end, the answer to your question depends also on Vitat. As we are able to engage more and more customers in health programs, these health programs will drive procedures to be done at the health hub like point-of-care exams, et cetera. If we are able to package our B2C platform, in a B2B way and offer corporation, we can leverage a lot of these health hubs for employees of these companies to do simple procedures that they will be done in more expensive settings than otherwise. So I don't have the exact answer, which is -- I don't have a clue where the number will be in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, but the trend is a very promising one, and this is something that we are very happy about.

[Operator]

The Q&A session is over. Now Mr. Eugênio will present the final messages.

[Eugenio De Zagottis, executive]

Okay. So first of all, thank you all for attending this conference call. I'd like to summarize on some of the things we discussed here. I mean first and foremost, this was an amazing year, no matter what metrics we look. This was a year with an amazing top line growth driven by a solid, resilient expansion of 240 stores of great returns, driven by 12% mature store growth. Same-store sales were excellent as well. So I mean brilliant top line performance.

This top line performance translated into very good margin growth. Contribution margin grew a lot. EBITDA margin grew a lot. Net margin grew, both in absolute terms and in percentage terms. And despite the fact that we're investing so much in new businesses, they are still not producing pretty much any revenues. In the end of the day, the free cash flow that we generated was neutral. So we have a very healthy business, generating a lot of cash flow, allowing us to increase our CapEx, allowing us to invest in G&A and still having a neutral free cash flow in the end of the day and still ending with a very healthy and low leverage ratio despite the fact that we paid way more interest on capital and dividends than before and despite the fact that we invested, on a cash basis, I think, something like BRL 130 million, BRL 140 million in new startups.

So the ability of the business to be profitable, to be -- to generate value in the future and to -- in the present, sorry, and to fund the future, this is, I think, one of the strongest points about the company. When you talk about the future, obviously, the new pharmacy is a reality. This is not a dream anymore. This is not future anymore. 9% of our revenues are coming from digital. On an annualized basis, this is already a BRL 2.4 billion business. RD digital will probably be like the seventh largest chain in Brazil already, and it will keep rising in the rankings. It's amazing what we did in terms of health services, how we were able to support the population during the pandemic, doing 4 million COVID tests, a lot of COVID vaccines in partnership with cities, advancing, in general, vaccination with 3x as many stores as we had before. So this is all happening. This is today.

Marketplace and health platform are future. I think marketplace is progressing well. We already have a pretty significant number of SKUs in the platform. We have, I think, 80,000 SKUs, 300 sellers already connected. We will now keep improving this execution by implementing the new seller center of the startup we invested. We are devising, as I mentioned before, our master plan for the logistics so that we can do 3P logistics just as well as we do 1P logistics in order to allow any customer who buys a 3P item today to collect tomorrow at a store for free because we are using existing DC infrastructure and existing truck infrastructure. I'm not seeing marginal costs are 0, but I think that the assets we already have, they do allow us to be very cost efficient in this.

And when you get the power of our capillarity, covering 91% of the A class within a mile, a high level of convenience, best corners of Brazil, easy parking, great experience. Nobody has this kind of value proposition that can now be translated to the 3P. There may be other marketplaces, okay? They have Click & Collect here and there, but nobody with the kind of capillarity we have, kind of proximity we have, kind of convenience we have. So this will be absolutely unique about our marketplace. And we are exactly now developing the plan to be able to implement this logistics over the next couple of years. It won't be easy. It will take time. But I think what we can do here in the marketplace is transformational stuff. And the same for the health platform.

We inherited a lot of solutions for more like lifestyle things, eating well, exercise, et cetera. Now we're going towards the real chronic needs, integrate solutions with prescription, integrating of all our health hubs. So it's a very -- and maybe having a B2B version of our platform, then we can offer for corporations and health insurers that can help reduce medical claims while improving the outcomes of their beneficiaries.

So we are advancing on all these fronts. There's so much to do, of course, but a lot has been done already. In terms of the short-term trends, obviously, we had pressure this quarter. We will have pressure next quarter for sure because the inflation gap will still be around -- even if the inflation is now stabilized around 10%, we're still talking about a price cap increase that we had -- March last year, that was much lower than that. Our store comps are great but not as high as inflation right now.

But in the second quarter, end of March, when the price cap adjustment happens, and given the productivity factors that were already unveiled by the government, it's shaping up to be a full inflationary increase, we'll be able to recompose inflation and to rebalance and redilute all our expenses. So we have no worries whatsoever about the year. I think this is shaping up to be a great year. Second quarter, there will be a lot of inflationary gain of inventories.

The price cap readjustment will support us to at least maintain margins, diluting expenses and getting back to where we were. So obviously, we all have to navigate the short-term pressure as well as we can. It was good to see gross margin growing and mitigating some of the pressure. We'll see how it plays out in the first quarter. First quarter is challenging because January is a vacation month, February is a short month. There's a carnival, et cetera. But when we move to the second quarter, we are back in business. And nothing that is happening now is a surprise, and nothing that is happening now affects the structural wealth creation potential of the company.

So thank you all for attending this call, and thank you all for your support to shareholders. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

RD's conference call is now over. We thank you all for participating and wish everyone a good day.