Allos S.A. (ALOS3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to Aliansce Sonae's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today with us, we have Mr. Rafael Sales, CEO; Mr. Leandro Lopes, COO; and Mr. Jose Baeta Tomas, CFO; and Mrs. Daniella Guanabara, Strategic and IR Officer. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] There will be a replay facility for this call for 1 week. We have simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through Aliansce Sonae's IR website at ir.alianscesonae.com.br. The slide presentation may be downloaded from this website. Please feel free to flip through the slides during the conference call. We would like to inform that the questions can only be asked by telephone. So if you are connected through the webcast, you should e-mail your questions directly to the IR team at [email protected]. Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management and on information currently available to the company. 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 the company and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now I will turn the conference over to Mr. Rafael Sales, who will start the presentation. Mr. Rafael, you may begin the conference.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank you all for your interest in Aliansce Sonae's results. The beginning of 2022 confirmed the retail recovery trend in Brazil and reinforced the positive feeling we have about this year. In this first quarter, our models achieved strong operational and financial results. Considering the process of discount reduction, which we began in the end of 2021, growth in rents has been accelerating, while we kept our malls well occupied with above 96.5% occupancy level. This figure is already higher than that of the last quarter of 2021, which is quite unusual given the seasonality of the first quarters of every year. In the first quarter this year, total sales amounted to BRL 2.4 billion, an expansion of almost 70% compared to first quarter last year and 9% higher than the same period in '19. Our rent revenue was BRL 210 million, a significant growth of 28% versus '19, recording the lowest level of discounts since the first quarter '20. Our operating costs continued to present strong reduction. We reduced cost in 19% compared to first quarter 2019, confirm the strong capture of synergies from the Aliansce Sonae merger. The cost efficiency, coupled with the top line growth, also contributed for the NOI and EBITDA growth that reached BRL 220 million and BRL 180 million, expansions of 25% and 28%, respectively. For the same period, FFO reached BRL 112 million, an increase of 29% despite the hike in interest rates in Brazil. Our operating cash flow remains strong, reaching BRL 174 million in the quarter. These results once again underlines our company's capacity of converting EBITDA into cash. In this quarter, the conversion rate was 94%. We ended the first quarter of the year with a robust balance sheet with a leverage of only 0.8x net debt to EBITDA. We are pleased to announce that another important step has been taken towards the meeting between Aliansce Sonae and brMalls. In April '22, the Board of Directors of brMalls approved the execution of the protocol and justification, the agreements that regulate our merger, and recommended in favor of the approval of the transaction by its shareholders. The meetings that will resolve the merger of both companies will take place in June 8, month from now. The purpose of the merger is to create a combined company with significant growth potential, which will further enable the transformation of the retail and shopping mall sector in Brazil. Integration of our activities with brMalls will allow significant potential for synergies and efficiency gains, especially in the optimization of costs and expenses. Additionally, the combined company will have greater scale to keep exploring different growth avenues and develop its business strategy in the phygital environment. It gives a key condition for maintaining competitive advantage in the longer term. Our focus remains on providing the best consumer experience and the best business opportunities for tenants, and we remain firm in the mission to serve and delight our customers every day. The next slide, we bring you some updates about Alsotech, our retail phygital transformation arm. As you know, Alsotech's strategy is supported by 3 pillars: e-commerce, logistics from our malls and consumer engagement strategy. These pillars are supported by open innovation, venture capital and data analytics initiatives. On our investments, Box Delivery operates in last-mile solutions from our malls and for retail in general. Box Delivery continues to expand strongly, reaching almost 900,000 deliveries per month. In addition, the company closed an important partnership to operate dark stores for Zé Delivery, Ambev's beverage delivery service. We believe that this initiative will generate even more opportunities for our malls, optimizing our real estate potential to grow in different segments of retail. Additionally, still in this logistics segment, Outback Group, the company in Brazil that operates Bloomin’ Brands in restaurants, made an agreement to migrate all its deliveries in malls where we have PEG to Box Delivery, increasing our -- the strength of our ecosystem for the retail phygital strategies. As part of our corporate venture capital initiatives, in April, last month, we invested BRL 10 million in Hi Partners' Capital&Work, a venture capital fund focused on start-ups with high growth potential in the retail tax segment. The fund has a strong team of specialized businessmen with relevant presence in retail and active in digital market. Some of the founders are very experienced entrepreneurs of retail in Brazil. The fund's strategy is fully aligned with Alsotech, which has the goal to invest in solutions for retailers [ who are active ] in Brazil. On the next slide, already on the e-commerce front. We want to highlight that in the last quarter we rolled out our digital mall solution to 4 of our malls in Rio: Bangu, Carioca, Caxias and Grande Rio. The customer experience benefits from individual front-end interfaces, which with a unified back-end management, assessing the stores of the 4 malls. As a result, consumer interaction continues to take place through their preferred mall, but with greater efficiency in delivery, costs, deadlines and commercial scale. In addition, the platform already integrates the institutional smart-site with the e-commerce to provide a unique experience to the to the consumer. Also, I want to highlight that Shopping Leblon will be the next mall to have its own e-commerce channel to operate, which is expected to go live in this second quarter. Now I would like to turn the floor to Daniella, who will continue the presentation. Thank you so much, and I will come back to the Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Rafael. Good morning, everyone. Moving on to the next slide. Here, we can see that the company's occupancy rate ended the first quarter of '22 at 96.6%, higher than the one recorded in the fourth quarter of '21, despite the seasonal effect of the first quarter. The figure surpassed the level of the first quarter of 2019 by 70 bps, starting the year in a very good shape. In particular, Passeio das Águas Shopping increased its occupancy by 5.2 percentage points in the first quarter of '22 compared to the fourth quarter of '21. Our leasing team continues to achieve consistent results. We signed 103 contracts in the first quarter of the year. Among the highlights of recent openings are 2 digital native stores, Ginger at Shopping Leblon; and Madeira Madeira at Parque D. Pedro Shopping. And among the highlights of recently signed contracts are operations such as Nike at Passeio das Águas Shopping; and adidas, a flagship at Boulevard Shopping Belo Horizonte. On the next slide, we can see that in the first quarter of 2022, sales performance continued on an upward trend, once again exceeding the level of the same period in 2019. We reached BRL 2.4 billion in total sales, a level almost 70% higher than in the first quarter of '21, representing an expansion of 8.7% versus the first quarter of '19. The month of February and March corroborate the recovery of activity despite a weaker January, which was still impacted by the accumulated results of the first quarter of the year. Malls in different regions posted double-digit growth in the period, underscoring the strength of Aliansce Sonae's portfolio on a national scale. The highlights with sales growth in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of '19 were: Parque Shopping Belém, with 30.5% growth; Parque Shopping Maceió, posting a 28% growth; Shopping Leblon, with a 24.2% growth; Uberlândia Shopping, with 20.4%; and Manauara shopping with 19.5%. On the next slide, we present the company's cash flow. Aliansce Sonae posted operating cash flow of BRL 174 million in the first quarter of '22, which represents a conversion of EBITDA into cash flow of 94%. In the period, the changes in the cash balance position can be explained in large part by initiatives aligned with the company's long-term strategic planning, such as the funding of BRL 500 million to finance the company's growth strategy and its CapEx. We can see in the chart that 78.4% of the company's debt is linked to CDI, 14.8% is fixed rate and 6.9% is linked to inflation. The company's leverage remains at a very low level at 0.8x net debt EBITDA. On the next slide, we can see that the net delinquency recorded in the quarter was 6.2%, which is 7.4 percentage points lower than in the first quarter of '21. It is worth mentioning that the first quarter usually presents a seasonality effect. PDA represented 4.5% of net revenue in the first quarter of 2022. Moving now to the next slide. We present here some recent achievements and important campaigns, which are in line with Aliansce Sonae's sustainability pillars. We opened another unit of the urban farm BeGreen, now in Passeio das Águas. The new operation occupied 1,100 square meters and will have the capacity to produce every month 2.7 tons of vegetables free of pesticides. In this last quarter, Aliansce Sonae engaged in a partnership with the nonprofit organization, Rio Solidário, to help the victims of the storm that devastated the city of Petrópolis. Our 12 managed mall in the state of Rio de Janeiro received donations of essential goods for basic needs. And for Women's Day, we held the fourth edition of the campaign in #EmpoderaEla, inviting the public to look at women's financial freedom and professional development. Aliansce Sonae chose an inspiring woman to lead the movement, Zica Assis, who is the co-founder of Instituto Beleza Natural, the largest Brazilian network specialized in frizzy and curly hair. Thank you all. Let's now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes the question and answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Rafael Sales for his closing remarks.

Well, I want to thank you all again for the interest in Aliansce Sonae results, and we will be at your disposal to answer further questions you may have. Thank you, and see you next time.

Thank you. This concludes the Aliansce Sonae's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a nice day.