StoneCo Ltd

NASDAQ:STNE

Earnings Call Analysis

Company Projects Strong Growth and Improved Margins in 2024

The company experienced a 20% increase in MSMB TPV year-over-year and expects continued growth with an 18% increase to BRL 412 billion in 2024. Banking client base has tripled and deposits grew by 52%, leading to an average revenue per active client of BRL 28.4 per month. Credit offerings expanded, with disbursements to SMBs increasing the credit portfolio 2.7x quarter-over-quarter. Financial Services revenue grew 24% year-over-year, with a notable EBT margin improvement of over 10 percentage points to 21%. However, Software segment revenues decreased by 3.5% due to the Enterprise business' decline. The year ended with an impressive adjusted net cash position of BRL 5.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of BRL 1.6 billion. For 2024, the company anticipates an increase in MSMB take rates, a significantly larger credit portfolio, and increased adjusted net income by over 22%, with reduced administrative expenses.

Reflecting on a Successful Year and Setting Strategic Priorities

The company has had a successful year, underscored not only by robust financial performance but also by reaching strategic milestones to enhance market position and support future growth. In response to insights gleaned since the CEO's tenure began in 2023, key strategic adjustments have been made, including an organizational restructure, aimed at delivering tailored solutions to various client segments, notably Micro to Medium-sized businesses. Three strategic priorities—winning in MSMBs, driving client engagement, and scaling through platforms—are set to define the focus in the years ahead.

Exceptional Financial Results and Strategic Progress in 2023

2023 marked a significant turnaround from the challenges of 2021, with the fourth quarter showing considerable progress in strategic initiatives. Notably, MSMB TPV grew by 21% annually to BRL 350 billion, while deposits reached BRL 6.1 billion—a sizable yearly increase. Monetization saw uplift with MSMB take rates at 2.43%, 22 basis points higher year-over-year. Net profit jumped to BRL 1.6 billion, and an adjusted net cash position of BRL 5.1 billion was achieved, despite substantial investments in credit and share buybacks. With efforts to scale through platforms, EBT soared, resulting in a margin expansion by over 10 percentage points and improved profitability.

Soft Performance in the Software Segment with Promising Efficiency Initiatives

The software segment faced challenges in 2023, especially in non-strategic verticals where growth slowed. Nonetheless, initiatives to improve efficiency began bearing fruit, with EBITDA margins increasing by 1.9 percentage points to 16.4%. Despite one-off restructuring costs leading to a temporary margin dip in the fourth quarter, these measures are expected to yield savings in 2024, promising improved performance going forward.

Governance Changes and Strong 2024 Guidance

The company is undergoing a significant transition in governance with Andre, its founder, shifting his role from Board member to Reference Shareholder. Two new candidates for Chairman and Vice Chairman positions have been proposed, ensuring maintenance of the company's entrepreneurial spirit and high governance standards. Looking to 2024, growth is anticipated with MSMB TPV projected to surpass BRL 412 billion, client deposits expected to exceed BRL 7 billion, and adjusted net income forecasted to be higher than BRL 1.9 billion. These predictions represent substantial year-over-year growth and illustrate a pathway for demonstrating the combined strength of the company's offerings.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Operator]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StoneCo Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings release. The company also posted a presentation to go along with its call. All material can be found online at investors.stone.co.Throughout this conference call, the company will be presenting non-IFRS financial information, including adjusted net income and adjusted net cash. These are important financial measures for the company but are not financial measures as defined by IFRS. Reconciliations of the company's non-IFRS financial information to the IFRS financial information appear in today's press release.Finally, before we begin our formal remarks, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performances and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations. In addition, many of the risks regarding the business are disclosed in the company's Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is available at www.sec.gov.I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Roberta Noronha, Head of Investor Relations at StoneCo. Please proceed.

[Roberta Noronha, executive]

Thank you, operator, and good evening, everyone. Joining me today on the call is our CEO, Pedro Zinner; our CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Mateus Scherer; and our Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Lia Matos. Today, we will present our fourth quarter 2023 results and provide an updated outlook for our business.I will now pass it over to Pedro, so he can share some highlights of our performance. Pedro?

[Pedro Zinner, executive]

Thank you, Roberta, and good evening, everyone. As I have outlined in our annual shareholders letter, after a year into my role as CEO, I have taken a deeper look at our company, better spotting our strengths and areas of improvement. This journey has been revealing, as it has provided valuable lessons and enhanced my perspective on the opportunities we face.Reflecting on the successful year we had, it is impressive how well our company performed. I am not only referring to our strong financial performance but also acknowledging the strategic milestones that have strengthened our position in the market and paved the way for future growth, as we detailed in our Investor Day.In response to the initial insights and assessment in my role as CEO, in 2023, we have initiated several strategic adjustments to better position our business for the future. We have reorganized ourselves to deliver our solutions more effectively across different client segments, from Micro to Medium businesses, tailoring our go-to-market approach to meet their unique needs. Our new organizational structure aligns with each client segment, while it also strengthens key capabilities around engineering, product, marketing, and innovation, enhancing our ability to address client needs in a unique way.We have sharpened our strategic focus around 3 strategic priorities, which we outlined in our Investor Day. These three priorities, to win in MSMBs, to drive engagement with our clients and to scale through platforms, helped us to set key focus areas for the coming years.The first one, defining where our focus will be in terms of the software and financial services integration efforts. By focusing our execution around 4 priority verticals of retail, gas stations, food, and drugstores, we are increasing our competitive edge and opening a significant growth avenue for the future. Lia will present some initial encouraging results we achieved in the fourth quarter.The second one, to leverage the power of the combination of payments, banking and software. There is a huge opportunity in our installed base to increase engagement with our solutions. As an example, today, only a fraction of our client base can be considered heavy users of our solutions and there is a substantial potential to improve our unit economics as we continue to engage the base. The results we saw in our Financial Services segment in the fourth quarter reflect the success of this strategy around payments and banking.And the third one, the creation of the Stone Platform. Our rapid growth initially focused on development speed, sometimes at the expense of consistency and reusability. This resulted in the existence of multiple data platforms. But over the last 1.5 years, we've made a significant change. We've brought our technology teams together, streamlined how we work, and started to build a solid foundation that we all share, the Stone Platform. As we move forward, especially with new tech like artificial intelligence, we're setting ourselves up to generate new synergies and use our insights even more effectively to serve our clients.Our last strategic adjustment focused on the implementation of cost management and spending controls. Recognizing the potential to unlock substantial operating leverage, we have embarked on initiatives aimed at enhancing profitability even further. Through sustainable cost optimization, we're setting the stage for more efficient and profitable operations. By implementing a shared-service center and a zero-based budgeting, we are enhancing our financial discipline across the organization. While the opportunity is huge, we will seize it through a targeted approach, ensuring we do not dissipate our efforts.Before handing it over to Lia, I would like to briefly talk about our 2023 results. Last year was a milestone for us, marking a complete rebound from the challenges faced in 2021. We closed the year with exceptional results, particularly in the fourth quarter, when we accomplished significant progress in our key strategic initiatives.We posted remarkable growth, achieving a notable increase in MSMB TPV, both annually, with MSMB TPV increasing 21% to BRL 350 billion, and in the fourth quarter, with an acceleration from the previous period. Our banking services also recorded impressive growth, with deposits reaching BRL 6.1 billion by the end of December, a significant increase from 2022. This growth not only reflects higher engagement, but also a better conversion of TPV into deposits.Monetization improved substantially throughout the year, with MSMB take rates achieving 2.43%, up 22 basis points year-over-year. In the fourth quarter, we saw a slight decline of 6 basis points compared to the previous quarter, but that was already expected and purely a result of seasonality. More importantly, we continued to advance in our Credit Solution, reaching a working capital portfolio of BRL 309 million by the end of the year, with very encouraging results regarding the health of the portfolio and NPLs strictly under control. Additionally, our integration efforts in the 4 prioritized verticals have just started to be fruitful, with participation in TPV from these software clients surpassing BRL 20 billion in the year.The push to scale through platforms yielded substantial operational leverage, boosting our EBT to BRL 2 billion, an increase of 3.3x over the previous year. This leap forward improved our EBT margin by more than 10 percentage points, and our adjusted net profit surged to BRL 1.6 billion, up 3.8x from the previous year. Our profitability also translated into cash generation, and we ended the year with an adjusted net cash position of BRL 5.1 billion, even after significant investments in our credit portfolio and share buybacks.On a separate note, the software segment faced challenges in 2023, particularly in non-strategic verticals, where growth was slower. However, our efficiency initiatives already started showing results, with EBITDA margins in 2023 improving by 1.9 percentage points to 16.4%. The fourth quarter recorded a dip due to one-off restructuring costs, but these moves are poised to generate savings in 2024.In summary, 2023 was a year of significant achievements and strategic advancements for us, and our fourth quarter results are positioning us in a good place to deliver our 2024 and 2027 outlook.Now I would like to pass it over to Lia to discuss our fourth quarter 2023 performance and strategic updates. Lia?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Thank you, Pedro, and good evening, everyone. We had important evolutions over the last year in our strategic priorities, while we continued to balance growth with profitability, which you can see on Slide 5.Compared with the fourth quarter of '22, our consolidated revenues grew by 20%, which, combined with lower financial expenses, led to an increase of almost 2.3x in adjusted EBT. These factors, combined with a lower effective tax rate, resulted in adjusted net income increasing by almost threefold year-over-year with an adjusted net margin of 17.4%, up about 10 percentage points in the period.Taking a closer look at our Financial Services segment performance on Slide 6 to 11, I will start on Slide 6 with the performance of our Payments business for MSMBs. Payments active client base increased 37% year-over-year, reaching almost 3.5 million active clients. Sequentially, this represented a net addition of 192,000 clients, lower compared to the previous quarters, mainly as a result of our strategic shift towards larger clients in the hubs and the fact that we have caught up to growth levels in the micro segment. This growth in client base also resulted in healthy and profitable cohorts in all client tiers.As you will see on the pages that follow, and in line with our strategic priorities to win in the MSMB segment and to drive engagement with our solutions, besides optimizing our commercial strategy for growth and market share gains, we're also putting a lot of focus on improving bundled offerings of payments and banking to new client cohorts, both in Ton and Stone, as well as driving further engagement with our solutions for more mature cohorts of clients.As I will show on Slide 7, this approach has resulted in profitable TPV growth with market share gains in the MSMB segment versus the overall market. MSMB TPV increased 20% year-over-year, growing more than twice the industry levels. Considering PIX P2M volumes, which were almost BRL 8 billion in the quarter, MSMB TPV increased 25% year-over-year, an extra 5 percentage points of growth when considering PIX P2M in our overall TPV. We achieved this strong growth performance while also increasing take rates by 22 basis points year-over-year to 2.43%.Take rates were lower versus the third quarter as a natural result of seasonality in the fourth quarter, which always presents higher debit volumes. We're continuously evolving our pricing and bundle strategy to achieve higher levels of engaged clients, helping them more with their jobs to be done. We believe these strong numbers are the result of our competitive advantages around our distribution capabilities, our superior service and more and more the ability to offer more complete solutions to our clients.Now a quick update on our key accounts performance on Slide 8. Key accounts TPV decreased 17.6% year-over-year to BRL 15 billion as we have continued to deprioritize and off-board low-margin clients. Year-over-year, key accounts take rates increased 11 basis points as a result of the adjustments in our commercial policies and a mix shift within the segment.Now let's discuss our banking performance on Slide 9. Banking active client base increased threefold year-over-year to 2.1 million active clients. This evolution was a result of the launch of Super Conta Ton in the beginning of 2023 and the continued activation of banking for Stone clients through our bundle offers. The decrease in growth levels compared to the previous quarters is mainly due to the end of the migration of Ton clients to our full banking solution. This growth in client base was associated with a 52% year-over-year growth in deposits, which reached BRL 6.1 billion in the quarter.This new level of deposits derived both from a positive impact in the cash-in level and engagement due to the effectiveness of our payments and banking bundles; and second, from a seasonal and calendar effect at the end of the quarter. As a result, ARPAC increased 11.4% quarter-over-quarter to BRL 28.4 per month. Despite lower seasonality, this positive trend in client deposits is also seen throughout the first quarter of 2024.On Slide 10, we'll talk about our credit performance. As you know, we've relaunched our working capital solutions to SMBs in 2023 and have seen very positive initial results. In the fourth quarter of '23, we disbursed more than BRL 230 million to around 7,000 clients, reaching a portfolio of BRL 309 million, an increase of 2.7x quarter-over-quarter.Loan loss provision expenses totaled BRL 39 million in the period, an increase of 2.1x sequentially as we constitute provisions of 20% of our portfolio. Although we are taking a conservative approach, the performance of our vintages is above our expectations, with NPLs between 15 and 90 days of 1.96% and NPLs over 90 days of 0.29%. As we have highlighted before, this is a recently launched portfolio, so the ratio of past-due loans should increase as our portfolio matures. This year, we will continue with disbursement without changing our diligence towards risk evaluation and close monitoring of market conditions.Beyond our working capital solution for SMBs, the principal driver of our portfolio growth, this year will mark also the launch of more credit solutions to our clients, such as credit cards and overdrafts. To summarize, the fourth quarter was again marked by above-industry TPV growth and higher take rates, resulting in Financial Services revenue growth of 24% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, reaching BRL 2.9 billion. In turn, adjusted EBT reached BRL 604 million with an adjusted EBT margin of 21%, an increase of more than 10 percentage points year-over-year.Moving to Slide 12, let's talk about our software performance and strategic evolutions. Quarter-over-quarter, MSMB TPV overlap between financial services and software clients increased 19.3%, almost twice the growth we had in our MSMB TPV in the same period. Among the 4 strategic verticals, this performance was mainly driven by gas stations. This relative performance illustrates our continued efforts and first signs of success of our strategy to provide an end-to-end solution that combines management software, payments and banking to our SMB clients.Going forward, we have listed 3 main priorities in order to drive growth and engagement in the 4 priority verticals. First, we're focusing on setting up our go-to-market strategy in order to scale our distribution model for combined software and financial services offerings. Second, we're enhancing the product value proposition to seize the opportunity in the 4 key strategic verticals, with gas stations and retail being the main focus for 2024. And third, we're integrating the post-sales process to guarantee we maintain the superior levels of service our clients expect from us. There still is a huge opportunity for us to target within our software installed client base and to drive engagement with our bundled solutions, and this will be a key focus for the next years.Moving to Slide 13. Software segment revenues decreased 3.5% year-over-year to BRL 363 million as a result of lower revenues from the Enterprise business, which was down 16% in the period. Sequentially, Software revenues decreased 6.4% due to lower yield on cash as well as lower revenues from Enterprise business.As a result of this weaker top line, combined with onetime restructuring costs in the amount of BRL 11.5 million, adjusted EBITDA decreased to BRL 59 million in the quarter with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.2% compared with 20.5% in the third quarter of '23. Excluding these restructuring costs, adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 19.3% in the fourth quarter and as we continue to focus on diligent cost savings and process improvements in our Software segment, we expect margins to improve in 2024.As Pedro mentioned, the fourth quarter marks the closing of an important year of strategic advancements for our business. The combined evolution of our strategic priorities around win, engage and scale through platforms led to the strong results we have seen in the fourth quarter. Reinforcing what Pedro already said, I believe we're well positioned for a strong 2024 and 2027 outlook.Now I want to pass it over to Mateus for him to discuss in more detail our key financial metrics. Mateus?

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Thank you, Lia, and good evening, everyone. I would like to begin on Slide 13, where we discuss the quarter-on-quarter evolution of our cost and expenses on an adjusted basis.Cost of services reached BRL 803 million, increasing 15% year-on-year and 3.8% quarter-on-quarter. Cost of services were sequentially flattish as a percentage of revenues despite provisions for expected credit losses in the amount of BRL 39 million in the fourth quarter as we grew our credit book and higher investment in technology. Excluding provisions for expected credit losses, cost of services would have decreased 50 basis points sequentially as a percentage of revenues, showing continued operational leverage.Administrative expenses decreased 6.5% year-on-year, leading to a 250 basis point reduction as a percentage of revenue when compared to the fourth quarter 2022. Sequentially, administrative expenses increased 14%, up 70 basis points as a percentage of revenues due to higher third-party service expenses combined with personnel expenses, which are seasonally higher in the fourth quarter.As we have shared in our Investor Day, achieving efficiency in G&A will continue to be a priority going forward. We remain committed to our guidance of less than [ BRL 1.125 billion ] of administrative expenses for 2024, which implies a growth of less than 7% for the year.Selling expenses increased 2.6% quarter-on-quarter and remained flat as a percentage of revenues despite higher provisions for variable compensation in the period. Financial expenses decreased 10% quarter-on-quarter, down 430 basis points as a percentage of revenues. This evolution was a result of lower interest rates with average CDI decreasing in the quarter, lower number of working days, a seasonal decline in the average duration of funding lines, and a lower average cash balance in the period.Other expenses increased 47.6% sequentially and 120 basis points as a percentage of revenues because of higher contingencies and tax provisions related to share-based compensation as a result of the share price appreciation in the fourth quarter.Lastly, adjusted effective tax rate reached 11.7% in the fourth quarter. The lower effective tax rate in the period was a result of higher utilization of tax benefits from Lei do Bem as well as gains from subsidiaries abroad subject to different statutory tax rates. For 2024, we continue to expect effective tax rate between 20% to 25%.Turning to Slide 15. Our adjusted net cash position reached BRL 5.1 billion, reflecting an increase of BRL 1.6 billion year-on-year and BRL 196 million for the quarter. The growth in adjusted net cash is especially notable as it came after the deployment of BRL 293 million on share buybacks within the quarter while also continuing to deploy capital towards the expansion of our credit portfolio.Now I would like to turn it back to Pedro.

[Pedro Zinner, executive]

Thank you, Mateus. To wrap it up, today, we also announced a pivotal transition in our leadership. Andre Street, our esteemed Founder and Chairman, has also chosen to conclude his tenure on the Board, stepping aside from reelection at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting scheduled for April 2024. Similarly, Vice Chairman, Conrado Engel, and Board member, Patricia Verderesi, will not seek reelection, honoring their 2-year commitment.Andre will remain connected to the company as a Reference Shareholder, bolstered by special protections in holders agreement and Articles of Association, including the privilege to nominate the Chairman of the Board. This transition marks the culmination of a deliberate, multiyear effort led by Andre to professionalize management and enhance governance standards, a mission that was crystallized by our strong 2023 results and the robust, strategically aligned team now at the helm.The candidates recommended for the upcoming AGM will be Mauricio Luchetti as Chairman and Gilberto Caldart as Vice Chairman. Additionally, a new member will be indicated, Jose Alexandre Scheinkman. We have shared more details about the succession in a separate 6-K filing.We are committed to keeping alive the entrepreneurial spirit created by our founders. Our goal is to maintain high standards of governance as our company grows and continues to be a leader in entrepreneurship and client centricity. With a committed shareholder like Andre, a great team, and a strong business, we are all set to continue to advance our mission forward.Before moving to Q&A, I would like to reinforce our guidance given for 2024. For our growth metrics, we expect MSMB TPV to reach more than BRL 412 billion, an increase of more than 18% compared with 2023, while we expect client deposits of more than BRL 7 billion, increasing more than 14% year-over-year.For monetization, we expect our credit portfolio to surpass BRL 800 million, increasing 2.6x year-over-year with MSMB take rates higher than 2.49%, implying an increase of more than 4 basis points.Lastly, in efficiency, we expect adjusted net income to be higher than BRL 1.9 billion, representing more than 22% year-over-year growth, with administrative expenses of less than BRL 1.125 billion, decreasing 7% compared with 2023. As we close 2023 and kick off 2024, I am more enthusiastic than ever about our business. There is growth ahead of us, and we are closer to demonstrating the power of combining.With that said, operator, can you please open the call up to questions?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from [ Mauricio Pichardo ] with Evercore.

[Sheriq Sumar, analyst]

This is Sheriq Sumar from Evercore ISI. I had a question on the Software business, coming to slide of 13. Just wanted to get a sense as to, I mean, how should we think about the potential benefits of the 4 key verticals heading into 2024, given that it just grew like 0.5 percentage point in the fourth quarter? And when can we expect the impact of the Enterprise to decline so that we can see a growth in the Software business from here?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Sheriq, Lia here. Thank you for the question. So I'm going to kick off talking a little bit about what we highlighted on Page 14, which is regards to how we are advancing on our initiatives to cross-sell financial services into our software client base. So this page talks about the evolution of this strategic priority. And as we shared in the Investor Day, last year, we selected those 4 key verticals because they represent the majority of the opportunity in Financial Services revenues with our installed client base. So we believe that in order to capture these opportunities, it's going to be essential for us to offer our clients better solutions that combine Software and Financial Services and that we can do this in a way that we can leverage the capabilities of our vast distribution footprint and sustain our service differentiation, which really is a cornerstone of our value proposition.So in that regard, the main metric for success in this initiative is the TPV overlap between Financial Services and Software. And this metric reached BRL 5.8 billion in the quarter, which represents a sequential growth of 19%. So we compare this growth with the growth of our MSMB TPV overall. And we can see that this growth is significantly higher than the sequential growth of MSMB TPVs.And as long as we can continue to grow the Financial Services TPV overlap in our Software client base, above the growth of the overall client base, this means we're capturing additional value from this combination. So I think this is the essence of what we talk about in this page. Maybe Mateus can give a bit more highlight on the revenue trends.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Yes, for sure. So I think you also touched upon the Software revenues on a stand-alone basis, which we show on Page 13. And here, I think, especially on Enterprise, we had some negative effects on the quarter related from IAS 29, so hyperinflation, especially in Argentina, that was a direct top line in Enterprise. But I think, like Lia said, the priority here is really not under the revenues for Software stand-alone. I think the focus is really on improving that cross-sell metric for TPV.So again, yes, I think there can be some upside for enterprise software revenues in the future because there was this one-off related to hyperinflation, but the focus is really not there.

[Sheriq Sumar, analyst]

Got it. I just have 1 follow-up question. On the financial expenses, can you help us understand as to how should we think about the first quarter and even for 2024 as well given the prospect of lower interest rates and the use of cash versus going for third-party funding? And also, I know this might be a pretty small impact, but implications of the leap year or for like an extra day in the month of Feb, like would that have any impact on the financial expenses?

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Sure. I will start with the first part, and then I will ask you to repeat the second part. You cut here a little bit. But just to start on financial expenses, I think the trends for 2024 are pretty much similar to what we saw in the quarter, which is the financial expenses should be driven by the changes in interest rates. So as we have interest rates reducing, this should be a positive impact for financial expenses.Cash generation, which I think is a similar trend, as the business evolves, its cash generation, and we use part of this cash to fund repayments and credit. This has a positive impact on financial expenses. And of course, this will be offset from TPV growth. But again, I think these are the same trends that we saw in the quarter itself and it should remain consistent throughout the year. Can you please repeat the second part of the question, Sheriq?

[Sheriq Sumar, analyst]

Yes, sure. So in your comments, you have said that there were lower number of working days in the fourth quarter. But in the first quarter, you're going to see an extra working day because you have an additional day in the month of February. So I know the impact is going to be pretty small, but just wanted to get a sense as to what should -- how should we think about that.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Yes. I think this was the smallest of the effects that we mentioned. So again, when we talk about 1 extra or lower extra day in the quarter is about 3% impact maximum so -- on the delta, right? So it's not material at all, I think.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Eduardo Rosman with BTG.

[Eduardo Rosman, analyst]

I have 2 questions here. The first one is on your credit business, right? You are booking your results now on an accrual basis and also booking upfront provisions, right, which I think makes total sense, but you are still using a cost of risk of 20% while you believe actual losses will be under 10%, right? So just trying to understand here how much time you need to be able to use a lower cost of risk or eventually how much time we need here to be able to see like a convergence of the cost of risk to your actual kind of losses? That would be the first question.And the second one, just trying to understand because the stock is down 10% in the aftermarket. And my sense here is that the numbers were strong, right? So trying to understand here what could be behind the sell-off and many investors, clients you're asking about Street departure. So I just want to -- Andre, right. So I just wanted to -- if you could help us understand how -- what was really his role in the last 12 to 24 months? He remains naturally an important kind of a partner of the company. But if you can remind us like his economic stake is not that large anymore. So if you can help us understand a little bit more about the changes in the Board and maybe that could explain a little bit the sell-off, which to me, doesn't make a lot of sense given the results.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Mateus here. I will start with the credit piece and then hand it over to Pedro to talk about the governance changes. Regarding credit, you're totally right. So we're booking credits on an accrual basis, and we're using the expected credit losses of 20% until we have more confidence on the model itself. The migration for a risk-based approach will occur throughout this year. So it probably will be gradual. So we're going to expect to converge the provisioning models towards our risk models.And then maybe I think it's also worthwhile to provide an update on how we're seeing NPLs as well, which touches upon your comments about the 10% versus the 20% expected loss levels. So this quarter, we started to report NPLs. As you can see, 90 days NPLs are still really low at 0.24%, and NPLs from 15 to 90 days are still at 2%. Of course, this metric is affected by the speed of growth of the portfolio, and that's why the numbers are so low.But even when you look at the cohort data, our over 30-month [ tree ] remains roughly at the same level that we disclosed in Investor Day in the -- between 2% and 4% area. So I think you're right in that point that overall, when we look at the numbers that continues to put us on the right track to land at an expected loss below the 10% level. But again, it is still really soon, and we're taking the cautious approach here. So the migration will be gradual over time.Then maybe, Pedro, if you want to comment about the governance.

[Pedro Zinner, executive]

Yes. Rosman, I think what I tried to do -- I think it's hard to talk about rational or irrational reactions on the investment side. I think I'll try to be a little bit pragmatic in terms of changes we had with the Board and how we see this as we move ahead. So I think Andre's transition is kind of a natural step in the company's journal -- journey, I'm sorry. And I think over the past 2 years or so the company has been personalizing its Board of Directors, bringing a mix of technical expertise, industry and company knowledge, right?I think I was even part of this changing process a couple of years ago, 2 years ago, I joined the Board in April. I think 2022 was a year of a turnaround. And I think 2023, represented very solid results. I think we have a strong management team and a clear strategy as we move ahead. And I think Andre plays a key role in terms of changing the governance and setting the direction as we move ahead. And I think he felt it was right -- was the right time to make the transition, right?I think the important point here to highlight is that despite him stepping back from his former role, he remains as a Reference Shareholder of the company. I think addressing the question, he may -- he holds us off today roughly 7% of the economic -- in terms of economic value for the company and a holding power of roughly 37%, right?I think another point which is worth highlighting is this safeguard regarding the company's Shareholders' Agreement and Articles of Association that is held by Andre. The first one is that as long as he holds at least 15% of the voting rights, he can indicate a Board member. The other safeguard, which is building on that, is that while he holds more than 25% of the voting rights, he decides who is the Chairman among the Board members. So I think in a nutshell, Andre, is still very committed to the company as a reference shareholder. And I think he plays an important role in terms of changing the governance and setting the directions as we move ahead.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Mario Pierry with Bank of America.

[Mario Pierry, analyst]

Let me ask you 2 questions as well. The first one is you recently acquired Financeira license that should help your funding costs going forward. Have we seen any benefits of that so far? Also, if we look at your deposit base, right, strong growth, can you explain to us better what drove this growth? Is it because all of your clients now have a banking account with you or what percentage of your clients already have a banking account and maybe that's why you're seeing the benefits? And can you just remind us if you continue not to remunerate these deposits?And then the second question is related to your tax rate, right? We saw an effective tax rate of only 11%. Can you remind us what is the effective tax rate that you're forecasting on your guidance for the year? So when you talk about net income, adjusted net income of more than BRL 1.9 billion, are you assuming the tax rate should stay around the current levels? Or should we see a more normalized tax rate, which I think had been running closer to 20%?

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Mario, thank you for the questions. I will start with the tax rate piece and then hand it over to Lia to talk about banking. So in terms of the tax rate, I think the main driver for the lower tax rate in the quarter was that we were able to maximize the usage of tax benefits associated with research and development, the Lei do Bem. And just to give some perspective here, even though our company as a whole has been profitable for many years, some of our entities where we have significant R&D expenses were not.So we have been working really hard to make sure that we improve profitability not only at the consolidated level, but also in those main entities. As a result of these efforts, we were able to revert accounting losses at some of our subsidiaries in the fourth quarter and increase the usage of Lei do Bem, which was really concentrated in the fourth quarter of '23.As we move ahead, the level of Lei do Bem usage across the year will not materially change, but the benefit should be more spread out throughout the year. So when we look ahead in terms of tax rate, we continue to expect a tax rate between 20% to 25%, which is what we guided during the Investor Day and that's what is embedded in the guidance that we provided.

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Yes. So Mario, just to give you some color on your questions regarding banking, right? So in terms of the strong results and deposits that we saw, these results were mainly a result -- a consequence of 2 main factors. First is that we continued to put significant efforts around bundling payments and banking. So we talked a lot about this in the Investor Day, right? So payment TPV becomes a relevant cash-in to clients that use banking as domicile, and that was an important driver and increase in deposits, but also our ability to continue to engage more and more clients with our banking solutions.Of course, the fourth quarter does have seasonality in deposits. So there is a seasonality effect there. But we continue to see the same very positive trends throughout the first quarter of '24.So with regards to your question about the Financeira license, we talked -- we gave a lot of color on this in the Investor Day, right, the roadmap that we have ahead of us in terms of banking this year. So investment products are part of our roadmap, and we gave some color on that. And there's not much to say beyond what we already said. We are testing this product for our clients. Our focus is really that we develop a roadmap that can prioritize the main jobs to be done for our clients. So investment is a part of that roadmap, and we will be giving more color on this throughout 2024.

[Mario Pierry, analyst]

Lia, just let me ask you then on the banking domicile. What percentage of your clients today have a banking account?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Today, Mario, between -- around 50% of our clients have a banking domicile. Of course, there's been a significant shift towards 2023 when we migrated all of our Ton clients to the full banking solution, but we continue to drive payments and banking bundles to new sales as well as upsell banking to current clients in the base.

[Mario Pierry, analyst]

Okay. And then you just confirm that you are not remunerating these deposits, and you do not plan on remunerating them, correct?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

So you are correct in the sense that deposits currently, we do not pass through any of the floats. But of course, as long as we decide to scale investment products, that may change. But too early to give any more specifics about that. And just to be clear, our guidance that we gave in the Investor Day for the level of deposits of 2024, that considers that we do not pass through any of the interest to clients.

[Operator]

Our next question from Tiago Binsfeld with Goldman Sachs.

[Tiago Binsfeld, analyst]

I have just one on expenses. When we look at your guidance, growing below 7% in 2024, what do you think are the main challenges and opportunities here? And especially thinking that third-party services and personnel picked up this quarter, are there any new trends to read from these 2 lines? But more broadly, we would appreciate any color you can give on expenses into 2024.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Tiago, thank you for the question. Mateus here. So I'll first address the fourth quarter and then talk about 2024. In regards to the fourth quarter, administrative expenses are seasonally higher in this quarter. And this is mostly a result of 2 drivers. The first one in general is variable compensation because we provision variable compensation according to the expected EBT of each quarter. Naturally, the fourth quarter has a higher result and drives more variable compensation, but also we have a concentration of more corporate events in the quarter, and that drives a lot of the third-party expenses. So I wouldn't read too much into the trends for the quarter. I think that's seasonally expected.Now when it comes to the guidance, we guided BRL 1.125 [ million ] in 2024. This implies a growth slightly below 7% when you compare it to the numbers we closed 2023. And here, I think you have basically 2 drivers. On one hand, we've been doing a lot of efforts to implement zero-based budgeting and shared-services center throughout the company. And when we talk about these 2 processes, I think the main driver behind them is really unifying processes throughout the company that either because we grew too fast or either because we have the Software segment not integrated yet. We may have duplicate processes for some corporate functions.On the other hand, we still need to invest more, especially in the Financial Services segment as we're bringing marketability to the company and improving the processes as a whole. So I think the 7% figure in terms of growth is really the net effect of these 2 trends, on one hand, seeking efficiencies and implementing these initiatives, and on the other hand, continuing to invest in what we see we need to deliver our plans.

[Operator]

Our next question from Neha Agarwala with HSBC.

[Neha Agarwala, analyst]

Congratulations on the results. Just a quick one on volume growth for '24. The guidance remains strong after a good year in 2023. How are you seeing the competition evolve given that most of your competitors are focusing on the SMB segment? You mentioned that you maintained your benchmark status in the SMB segment, but are you seeing a bit more competition from the competitors, both in terms of price aggressiveness as well as adding new sales force on the street is that putting pressure on the volumes? So anything on that would be very helpful.

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Neha, Lia here. Thank you for your question. So I'm going to start talking a little bit about TPV trends and the guidance and then give some color on the competition. So I think regarding TPV, nothing really new in terms of the dynamics that we're seeing. [ Abax ] released recently their outlook for market growth in 2024. And when you compare -- you contrast that with our guidance for 2024 of BRL 412 billion in MSMB TPV, this implies that we will continue to grow more or less twice the market rate of growth, which means essentially we will continue to gain share in the MSMB segment versus the overall market. So we remain committed to this guidance.In terms of competition, nothing really new regarding the competitive environment. Based on the fourth quarter results, we can see that we're starting to experience benefit from reduction in interest rates with financial expenses as a percentage of revenue decreasing 4.3 percentage points. And this is consistent with what we have been saying over time that in the short term to medium term, the competitive environment is much more rational and stable and players will benefit from decrease in interest rates.In terms of competitive dynamics, overall, this is pretty much what we see, a rational market, not anything much new to say about that.

[Operator]

Next question is from Renato Meloni with Autonomous Research.

[Renato Meloni, analyst]

So first on take rates. I wonder if you can give me some more granularity on the decline in 4Q. How much comes from seasonality and how much is coming from the shift in client mix and then the expectation of how that's going to behave throughout 2024? And my second question is a follow-up on financial expenses. The sequential decline, I think it's a little bit more than we expected given the declining rates. So I wonder if there is other factor here there at play. And then if you have some ratio that could help us estimate this for the year?

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Thank you, Renato. I will start with the take rates piece and then move to financial expenses. In regards to take rate, the vast majority of the decline was a result of mix credit versus debit. We also noticed a slight client mix change, but this time around, it was the opposite effect with Ton TPV gaining relevance over Ton TPV in the quarter, which was a different trend than previous quarters. And this slightly offset the increased contribution from banking and credit, which is growing above the pace of payments overall.So in general, take rate, I think the vast majority is purely seasonality. That's why we remain committed with the guidance that we provided, and it was pretty much in line with what we expected.Now in terms of financial expenses, you are right that this quarter, there is a second minor effect. This is related to the mix between sale of receivables versus total debt outstanding. But again, we've always mentioned in the past that from quarter-to-quarter, you can have more effects related to the mix of receivables versus debt. But this is not a cheap material at all when we look at the numbers.I think when we compose the reduction in CDI, the lower amount of working days and the lower average cash balance in the period, you got pretty close to where financial expenses should land. So again, when we look at 2024, I think it's safe to forecast based on these drivers alone and forget about these small variations due to the mix of funding lines that we use.

[Operator]

Next question is from John Coffey with Barclays.

[John Coffey, analyst]

Great. So I just had 2 questions, which are sort of tied to some of the questions that Neha had had. So given the silica has been declining over time and you benefit from that, and you haven't really seen any irrational behavior in the market just yet, I was just wondering like at a very high level, is there a way to think about what has to happen in order for you to start becoming more aggressive on pricing? Is it generally like one key competitor makes a significant change to pricing or you start to see this more broadly over the market?And I guess my second question is as far as the TPV guidance for 2024, is there any kind of view you can give us on the cadence of that growth on a quarter-to-quarter basis? That's it.

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Thank you, John. I'll take the TPV question and then pass it over to Mateus. So I think no news in terms of the cadence of TPV. I think our TPV growth dynamic has been pretty consistent. So the important thing to look out for is the guidance for the year overall. So I think not much to say beyond that. And of course, the seasonalities that tend to be pretty consistent. Mateus, do you want to...

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Yes. In regards to the sensitivity of changes in pricing for the changes in interest rates, I think here, we have to talk about the dynamics of pricing within each segment. So when we look at micro, we mostly address micro through our brand Ton. And when we look at Ton, the dynamics in terms of pricing is one of public prices. So the price is on the website. And if you look today, it's very similar, the pricing for all the main players.Why is that important? With public pricing, whenever you make a move, it's a very expensive move because your clients, in the end of the day, can call you and request the same public price. So we don't think there is any incentive for any player to make a move in the short term. Of course, longer term, if rates really go down in a significant manner, a smaller player has incentive to reduce prices and then the others will most likely follow suit over time, but we don't see that happening in the short to medium term.And then in the SMB, the dynamics in terms of pricing is the opposite, but the effect is quite the same because on SMB, the pricing is done on an individual basis. So very common in Brazil to have, let's say, 2 drugstores, same neighborhood, same size, but with 2 very different pricing profiles. And what that means is that if any player wants to be aggressive in SMB, there's no such thing as being aggressive for the whole base.The behavior occurs in the new sales, and then it really takes a while for the whole base to recycle and to have the effects on the P&L. So that's why we don't see any likelihood of having the negative impact regarding interest rates in terms of pricing. But longer term, I think the strategy that we unveiled at the Investor Day is really not about increasing these present payments, right?I think when you look at the guidance that we provided for take rates for 2027, all the increase can be attributed to the higher engagement of our banking solutions and also with the rollout of new products, especially credit. So again, short to medium term, we think because of this pricing dynamics, it is likely that the benefits of all interest rates will flow through the P&L. Longer term, the focus is not there. The focus is really on improving the engagement with the new solutions.

[Operator]

Next question from Yuri Fernandes with JPMorgan.

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Yuri, I don't know if you're trying to state your question. We can't hear you.

[Operator]

I believe he dropped out of the queue. Can we pass to the next question?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Sure. Let's move on.

[Operator]

Next question from Kyle Washington with Greenwich Capital.

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Let's move to the next person on the queue.

[Operator]

Sure. Next question is from Daniel with Unrivaled Investing.

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Yes, we can hear you.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great. And I wanted to say thank you. You guys have done a wonderful job communicating the strategy and the presentation materials, and I really appreciate the long-form letter from Pedro Zinner this quarter. And I hope to see more in the coming quarters. So once again, my name is Daniel from Unrivaled Investing.My question -- 2 questions really. The first is regarding capital allocation. It's been a treat to hear the commentary on your value proposition, why you think you're winning and that you think you're going to continue growing faster than the underlying market. So that is very helpful, the rational marketplace perspective.Do you have any sort of thoughts on though, the capital allocation because I still think that there's this disconnect with what you're saying, which is you have this very strong value proposition you expect to continue winning and what Wall Street's pricing where the stock is trading around a low-teens earnings multiple. And I'd love to see the buyback last year. So that's the first question. I can ask the second one later.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Thanks for the question, Daniel. So I think in regards to capital allocation, you're pretty spot on. So when you look at the cash generation of the company, the company is consistently generating cash. Fourth quarter, we generated cash despite doing BRL 300 million in buybacks and also deploying capital in credit. And that's why at the end of the day, we approved and announced the new BRL 1 billion buyback plan in Investor Day, right?I think the only question here is that we're planning the execution of the buyback. And we also have to be mindful because when you look at the guidance, especially for the credit book, the BRL 5.5 billion is a sizable increase versus what we have now, but it's really small when compared to the overall credit market in Brazil. So the only thing we need to be mindful in terms of capital allocation longer term is that if we get it right in terms of the credit, there's potentially a lot more to be done in terms of deploying credit there, and we want to have this optionality in maintaining a really strong balance sheet.So again, general terms, we're aligned in doing the buyback plan. It's just a matter of planning the execution. And longer term, we need to be mindful about the credit book.

[Unknown Analyst]

Got it. Super helpful. And so it sounds like the buyback may not be at full capacity if you're thinking about the underlying credit book and the incredible growth you could have there in the coming years. So that's sort of the takeaway there. But the second half of the question, this is a bit of a tougher question, which is, do you see a future where the Software segment, which clearly hasn't performed as well as the financial segment, which has done very well?Do you see a future where the Software segment turns around and really starts to accelerate in the future, really starts to -- where you could say it has that type of value proposition where you're growing significantly faster than the underlying industry where you say, "Hey, the value proposition here is very strong, and that's why we're going to win."

[Lia de Matos, executive]

Yes. So I'm going to take this question. I think, Daniel, so in terms of the growth prospects for Software, as Mateus said at the beginning, right, I think there's a mix -- a little bit of a mixed bag when we talk about the Software business stand-alone. In the Investor Day, we communicated sort of the Software business fragmented in 3 buckets: number one, the 4 key priority verticals; number two, the enterprise business; and number three, the other software assets that we have not prioritized in terms of cross-sell of financial services at this point.I think in the first bucket, those 4 priority verticals, there's a lot that we're doing in terms of driving the integration of Software and Financial Services. We really have set 3 key priorities there. And we believe that there's a vast opportunity for us to continue to grow. Naturally, this growth will come from 2 drivers: number one, our ability to penetrate financial services to the current installed software base, but also as we improve our go to market, improve our wholesales process, improve our value proposition around product, we expect to also continue to drive growth on Software revenue stand-alone.The bucket that we have not prioritized in terms of the other verticals and other software assets that also has a pretty healthy growth, and we see it continuing to grow at healthy levels going forward. I think the dynamics in the Enterprise business is a little different because we already have a pretty large market share there. So I think we can expect less growth from the Enterprise business going forward. So it's hard to talk about one single answer in terms of the Software business. It's really those 3 main buckets that I have just mentioned. Mateus, maybe you can talk a little bit about margin evolution?

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Yes, for sure. So I think we touched upon this in the Investor Day as well and also in the answer about administrative expenses. But when it comes to efficiency in the software, the stand-alone segment, there's a lot to be done in terms of implementing a shared services center and also the zero-based budgeting there. I think 2023 was the first year that we ran the ZBB, but it was mostly focused on the Financial Services segment.We are now rolling it out for the Software segment as well. And that's why we guided that when you look at the EBITDA margin for the Software segment, we reached mid-teens in 2023, and we should be significantly above the 20% threshold for 2024. Most of that will most likely be driven by efficiency in OpEx and not from top line of the software standalone like Lia said.

[Operator]

Next question from Jorge Kuri with Morgan Stanley.

[Jorge Kuri, analyst]

I have 2 questions. The first one is on your NPL ratio on Slide 10. The way you measure it is the -- what you consider to be nonperforming is the total amount of the loan outstanding or only the installment that was missed? And then I'll ask my second question.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

Thank you for the question, Kuri. For the first one, in the Slide 10, we mentioned the full amount of the loan. And then on the Note 6.1, you have also the information regarding the amount of only the installment that was past due. So we have both information put in this slide is the full amount of the loan.

[Jorge Kuri, analyst]

Great. And then my second question is regarding on the news on Andre Street. Thanks for telling us the shares that he still owns on the company, which if I understood correctly, is around 7% of the economic value. My question is, with this announcement, is there any modification or existing lockup that he has on those shares? Is he able -- if he wanted to, I'm not saying he will, theoretical, is he able to sell all of the shares at any point in time? Or is there any sort of like lockup agreement? And then also, is there now or will there be with this move a noncompete agreement signed with Mr. Street?

[Pedro Zinner, executive]

Jorge, Pedro speaking. I think regarding the first question, I don't believe there are any changes at all, right? On the second point, I think a noncompete is actually being elaborated in which he will not engage in any business that competes with Stone's primary activities in Brazil. So -- and this noncompete should be ready before the AGM, which is expected to be held on April 23. So you're going to see more flavor of that in the documents for the AGM.

[Jorge Kuri, analyst]

And that's very clear. And -- but just to clarify the first part, when you say there's no changes, it means that he doesn't have any lockup on his shares.

[Mateus Schwening, executive]

That's right, Jorge.

[Operator]

There are no questions at this time. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn over to Pedro Zinner, CEO at StoneCo, for final considerations.

[Pedro Zinner, executive]

Well, thank you very much, everyone, for participating in the call. And as I mentioned in the letter, I appreciate the value of our shareholders. Hope to see you again next quarter. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

This concludes today's presentation. Thank you for participating.