Americanas S.A. (AMER3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Americanas S.A. conference call to discuss Q3 2022 Earnings Release. Here today with us are Mr. Miguel Gutierrez, Americanas S.A. CEO; Anna Saicali, Timotheo Barros and Marcio Cruz, Platforms CEO; Fabien Picavet, Executive Director; and Fabiana Oliver, Director of Investor Relations. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you that there's a slide deck to support today's presentation. It's available at ri.americanas.io. Any statements made during this conference call regarding business prospects, financial and operating projections and goals represent beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as on information currently available. Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events. Therefore, they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect Americanas S.A. performance and could lead to results that will differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. The company clarifies that the accounting information underlying the comment is presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, with the standards issued by the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission, CVM; and in Brazilian reals. Now I would like to turn the call over to Americanas CEO, who will start the presentation. You can proceed, Mr. Gutierrez.

Good afternoon, everyone. Before we start the presentation of the third quarter this year, I would like to make a few comments on our trajectory. In the past few decades, we operated a company guided by strategic cycles for 3, 4 or 5 years. It was like that with the Always More Brazil program with the -- being closer to digital customer cycle and with the We Are More Brazil program, among others. The current 3 years plan will be even more relevant in the day-to-day of our customers was announced in our Investor Day 2019, which was held at Amanhã -- Museum, which is ending today. During that meeting, we announced the 4 most important metrics in this plan: grow the active customer base from 38 million to 46 million; expand the number of transactions from BRL 327 million to BRL 552 million; increase the buying frequency from 8.6 to 12x a year; add O2O customers from 1.3 million to 5.2 million. At that time, these metrics seem to be unattainable. But as we approach the end of the year 2022, we can be proud because we have already exceeded the metrics proposed regarding the number of active customers and the number of O2O customers, and we are very close to exceed the number of transaction and increase in buying frequency. It hasn't been easy, so I'd like to congratulate the whole team. But we didn't stop there. In addition to this focus on reaching the strategic plan metrics, we did a follow-on, which has enabled us to go ahead with an accelerated organic growth. We completed 10 acquisitions entering into new verticals and invest in Ame. These initiatives particularly our entry in new verticals and our investment in Ame strengthen us and provide us with the required flexibility to adjust our growth path as we are doing right now. Additionally, we started in the international debt market issuing 2 bonds, a total of USD 1 billion, which enabled us to significantly lengthen the profile of our debt. In the middle of the road, we had an unexpected and sad global pandemic, where millions of people died. Our #1 priority became the health of our coworkers and customers. We had to adapt the assortment offered and increase the integration between brick-and-mortar and digital stores so that we could better serve and serve more quickly our customers, motivated by the opportunities between brick-and-mortar and digital, which became even more evident during the pandemic. In June 2022 -- '21, sorry, we completed the merger of businesses between Lojas Americanas and B2W, establishing Americanas S.A. Four months later, we simplified our ownership structure. And now we have just one Americanas for customers, investors, suppliers, sellers, merchants, franchisees and partners and also associates. Today, we are experiencing a challenging economic scenario, which demands short-term adjustments so that we can be even more efficient in our continued search for this balance among the many operational and financial variables. We have a commitment to grow with profit but without taking our eyes off the future and of our purpose, which is to add whatever the world has of good things in order to improve people's lives. Additionally, as was announced on August 19, we announced the transition of CEO, something that is underway right now. I'm really proud of the business model we built over the past 20 years, and I'm really confident in -- or trust [indiscernible] and our team who will be leading our company, building together, starting in 2023 a very successful journey. Now I'll give the floor to Fabiana and Fabien, who will be presenting the third quarter. Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Miguel. So let's start on Slide #7 with some operating highlights of Q3. We have reached the landmark of 53 million active customers, 3 million new customers over the last 12 months. During that period, our customers performed 487 million transactions, 22% increase year-over-year. Another indicator I'd like to highlight is the number of items sold. Over the last 12 months, more than BRL 1.7 billion items were sold, a 32% increase in the last 12 months. Let's talk about our stores. We closed this quarter with 3,601 stores considering Americanas, Hortifruti, BR Mania, Local and the Grupo Uni.co brands. We kept our strategy of opening new stores in new municipalities. And over the last 12 months, out of 162 new stores, 123 were in cities where we were not present yet. We also increased the number of sellers in our marketplace, achieving 149,000 formal sellers connected in our platform, a 31% increase compared to the third quarter of 2021. Engaged sellers lead to an increase in assortment and this quarter, we surpassed 175 million items available, a 38% growth. In the third quarter of 2022, 42% of deliveries from stores were took place in up to 3 hours and 66% in 24 hours. We can see the scope of this progress when we think that a year ago, these numbers were [ up ] 15% and 52%. On Slide #8, we see the progress of our GMV. Our sales performance this quarter suffered the impact of the downturn of the high-ticket categories such as electronics combined to the company's decision of being less aggressive commercially in order to protect gross margin, considering this high demand and high competition scenario. This quarter, total GMV was BRL 11.8 billion, representing a variation of minus 8.3%. GMV of our physical platform increased 12.4% this quarter, totaling BRL 3.3 billion. However, the gross revenue on the same-store concept presented a decrease of 2.7%. Digital GMV was BRL 8.5 billion this quarter, minus 14.4%, strongly impacted by the decrease of the 1P GMV that suffered more with the sales of electronics. As for partners GMV, that had an increase of 0.3% this quarter, totaling BRL 5.4 billion leveraged by the increase of long-tail items that offset the drop in the high-ticket sales. Slide #9, we'd like to highlight our strategy of being more relevant on the day-to-day of our customers. This quarter, a combination of factors in the macroeconomic scenario challenged retailers all over the country. There was an increase in prices as a reflex of inflation and high interest rates and Brazilian families in that and with a decreased purchasing power did not buy more expensive items. And also we offer products financed by Ame. We still -- that is done by our partners, and we do not carry the risk of credit in our balance. As for Neotrust, there was a decrease of 20% of sales of electronic items this quarter. Although our customers did not buy more expensive items, we still had an increase of 7% in our customer active database. And as for most sold items and transactions, we saw an increase of 33% and 22%, respectively. This is a very important demonstration that our customers are increasingly engaged and that they keep a very frequent relationship with our company. Slide #3 -- #10 rather, our results. Net revenue had an impact -- suffered impact of performance of electronics with a 13.4% drop totaling BRL 5.4 billion. We made a decision of being less aggressive commercially in order to protect profitability. With that, we had a gross margin increase of 0.5 percentage points compared to the third quarter of 2021 and 1.4 percentage points compared to the first quarter this year, reaching a gross margin of 31.9%. This drop in our revenue demanded a series of adjustments, so we reduced our SG&A by 62 -- 6.2% this quarter. However, the impact of these adjustments will be reflected only in the fourth quarter. And the EBITDA margin had a negative impact with a drop of 1.1 percentage points compared to the third quarter of 2021, achieving 10.7% this quarter. This quarter, our EBITDA was BRL 582.3 million, a decrease of 21.6% compared to the same period to last year and the net result of minus BRL 211.6 million. In Slide 11, we see the main factors that contributed for our cash consumption. As for inventory days, 107, an increase of 11 days. And this increase is related to our preparation for the Q4 events. We closed this quarter with 93 days of suppliers, a drop of 7 days compared to the previous quarter. We maintained a healthy relationship with our suppliers, providing regular payments and also advancing some payments with our own cash via Ame, which we believe to be key to go through this time. With that, we had a worsening of 18 days of financing compared to the second quarter. The positive impact on our cash flow. As for accounts receivable, it improved 29 days compared to last year, achieving 83 days. So the company decided to adopt more conservative policies in providing credit to consumers. Considering all these effects, the cash cycle was 97 days, a decrease by 11 days year-over-year. This drop by 18 days resulting from the difference of finance of our suppliers totaled BRL 991.2 million and account for 46% of cash consumption of BRL 2.1 billion this quarter. This cash consumption is calculated based on the variation of net debt, which we believe to be the best way to consider all of the factors. Financial result of [ BRL 613 million ] had an increase of 114% year-over-year. And that reflects interest rate and also the capital structure of our company, which also contributed for cash consumption. As for our indebtedness, we closed this quarter with a robust cash position of BRL 14 billion and net debt of BRL 5.3 billion, equivalent to a net debt EBITDA over the last 12 months of 1.7x and a healthy relationship cash debt short term of 6.4x. We calculate our net debt, excluding the effects of cash flow hedge accounting because that's an accounting posting and has no impact on cash. We also consider the accounts receivable from the credit card because we know we can advance that any time, and that is a AAA asset. We considered our short-term cash flow adequate, and that's why we decided to reduce the discount of receivables this quarter to 31.9%. This represents 39.8% considering the third quarter of 2021 and 57.8% in the second quarter of 2022. Slide 11 (sic) [ 13 ], we talk about the new role of our brick-and-mortar stores and our ecosystem. Stores are at the center of our strategy and they play a new role. Besides leveraging sales in this environment, it's also now responsible for taking our customers to digital sales and also fintech Ame. Our stores, not only Americanas, but also new business, they allow us to reach more customers in more than 900 cities all over the city or all over the country and being conveniently close to our customers. Our store teams are engaged in order to encourage customers to download Americanas app, presenting a very broad assortment, convenience and fast delivery. We also encourage our customers to download Ame's app, presenting the new functionalities of this platform, and that allows us to generate revenue to the entire ecosystem. The productivity of our stores, they go beyond what is sold at checkout. Slide 14. We talk about our new verticals that are here to add and also to leverage our ecosystem. Hortifruti Natural da Terra is the biggest retailer specialized in fruits and vegetables, and it keeps presenting progress in its operations. Just to share some of them. In the third quarter, HNT presented an increase in market share with sales increasing 5.8 percentage points in Rio and São Paulo. Constant focus in improving our operations and quality of services allowed us to increase our active customer base by 14% and also adding 2 points on our NPS. We also saw the own brands of HNT present an increase of 35% this quarter, also strengthening this brand. On September 30, we had an Extraordinary General Meeting, incorporating HNT to Americanas. That allowed us to simplify our ownership structure, optimize our operating costs and to pursue -- and to improve our synergies. Vem Conveniência also presented important operating progress as well as good financial results. The BR Mania model, we presented a GMV increase of plus 27% and same-store sales of 22%. That was leveraged, thanks to the commercial conditions, new launches in foodservice and also renovation of the stores. The Local model presented a GMV increased by 15%. We renovated 2 pilot stores in order to focus on foodservice and the result was excellent with GMV of these renovated stores increasing by more than 40%. And the news does not stop there. As for the Uni.co Group, owner of Puket, Imaginarium and Love Brands presented an increase on same-store concept of plus 3.8%, leveraging strong growth in September, close to 20%. E-commerce also presented a very strong performance this quarter, reaching 13% of sell-out versus 4% before the pandemic. With the strong top line results and a very good control of our cost, EBITDA increased 18% year-over-year. Now let me turn it over to Fabien to continue the presentation.

Thank you, Fabiana. Starting on Slide 15, we talk about Ame, our fintech, which was established 4 years ago as a smarter way of giving discounts. It has -- it's been very successful, going way beyond our borders. By enhancing revenues with financial services, Ame monetizes the ecosystem as was part of our business plan. The main products offered by Ame are credit marketplace for individuals, advanced accounts receivable for suppliers, the so-called small credit, Ame credit card, digital payment slips in addition to new partnerships and there's much more to come. Products are offered in partnership with specialists who carry the credit risk and the funding of the operations. Having Ame as an asset-light fintech that is growing quickly. Slide 16 will show the highlights for Ame. In the third quarter 2022, Ame went on monetizing the Americanas ecosystem. TPV reached BRL 33 billion in the past 12 months, a 49% growth when compared to the same period in the previous year. EBITDA was BRL 41.5 million and the net profit reached BRL 20.2 million in the third quarter. This is the second quarter in a row where we have positive EBITDA at Ame. Additionally, the platform of financial products and services finished this quarter with 38 million downloads, 31 million accounts, 3.6 million merchants, over 2.1 million credit cards issued and over 100 features. The financial volume granted by the Ame credit marketplace without any credit risk for the company grew 4.4x when compared to the same period in the previous year. On Slide 17, we show the first Ame license that was granted on October 6, 2022. AMI received authorization by the Brazilian Central Bank to operate as a payment institution as electronic currency issuer and creditor. This authorization is an important milestone in the quick success trajectory of Ame, driving forward its strategic business plan and enabling it to participate in the open finance agenda, expanding the offer of products and services in the financial area, which are really meeting the needs of our customers. Slide 18, we show our omnichannel advertisement hub. Current advertising offers a portfolio with over 20 media solutions, technology and content, building communication strategies that are based on behavioral insights, with advertising resources that are totally integrated between digital and brick-and-mortar. In the third quarter, we completed the project of integration of recommendation showcases and search results so that all spaces in our digital platform can be used to sponsor products. This integration is already bringing results. And in this quarter, our partners who contracted a solution with Americanas advertising had a growth of 34%, and the GMV of the products they sponsored. With that, the search for solutions in our advertising hub continue to increase with a growth in revenue of 27% in this platform for the third quarter 2022. On Slide 19, we show the progress in our partnership with Google in August. We signed with Google a strategic long-term partnership with a focus on core innovation that will have a direct impact on the consumption journey of our over 53 million active customers, opening the way to a hyper-personalized experience. The agreement is the first of its kind signed between Google Cloud and a Brazilian retail company. Since the announcement of this partnership, we started migrating to the Google Cloud, and we started implementing AI solutions to provide a more platform and customized experience according to the need of every customer. The partnership with Google Cloud extends to the Polo Tech project, which is a Americanas program aiming at training 70,000 people in the area of technology in the next 5 years. In '22 alone, Polo Tech had over 20,000 people registered from 5 Brazilian states. On Slide 21, we talk about our ESG strategy and we highlight some initiatives. In line with ODS 13 action against global climate change, we developed the Hortifruti Natural da Terra fertilizers in partnership with Organic Cycle based on organic waste from our stores. Talking about social agenda, following the commitment to reduce inequalities, we started the journey of the stamp, yes, to racial quality. And in partnership with the [ IDRBR ] Institute, we are performing affirmative action programs with all coworkers, fighting racial inequality and promoting an antiracist agenda. In our governance agenda, we published the Policy for Diversity, Inclusion and Human Rights of Americanas S.A. This policy is a great achievement, promoting a diverse and inclusive environment in our company. As a consequence of these actions, we got many awards. For the ninth year in a row, we got the Chico Mendes Green Seal. We are #1 in the rankings for turnover and image in the IBEVAR-FIA study. We were #1 in retail in the 100 More Innovative Companies in IT award, given by IT Media. And in the Best and Bigger Award, Americanas S.A. was top 3 in wholesale and retail. Additionally, we got the Sustainable Attitude Award at Rock in Rio, where we had many sustainable initiatives as the conversation around on racial issues, spaces and activation of accessibility, waste management, sustainable gifts and promotion of diversity. On Slide 22, we celebrate our classification in the Great Place to Work ranking. Americanas started in the list of the 10 Best Companies to Work in the Great Place to Work Brazil and the category company with over 10,000 employees. And Ame also is part of the top 10 but in the financial sector, in the category of middle-sized companies. This result reflects our commitment to take what world has of best, improving people's lives, promoting development and inclusion. On Slide 23, we show the Americanas as a strategic view. Americanas is an ecosystem that brings together digital brick-and-mortar platforms, fulfillment fintech and its innovation motor, operating through a strategic model which focuses on providing consumption journeys that are increasingly customized with more convenience to all customer profiles. Our model seeks growth with profitability. Our unique -- with our unique assets and competitive differentials, we'll be able to accelerate our dream to grow organically, led by the development and progress in our platforms. With that, we close our presentation now. We will start the Q&A session. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question, Danniela Eiger from XP Investments.

I have 2 questions. The first one, could you please talk more about how you see the sales dynamics in the fourth quarter and also cash because this third quarter didn't have a usual cash flow. So what can we expect? Should we expect a regular seasonality? Do you see any differences? And the second question is regarding adjustments in structure because it had an impact on this quarter. Could you please say what is the size of this impact because it's not something recurring? And also in terms of economy, what would be it like for the fourth quarter or for next year? What can we expect?

Danniela, this is Marcio speaking. Thank you for your question. Talking about the fourth quarter, some important aspects we have already seen in October. So in October, there was a very important event, Children's Day. And with that, we saw a double-digit increase. And another important event -- another important thing is that we see that customers' behavior is now improving. So when we're close to a specific event, on the day, we see an increase in traffic and that is very positive when we compare to the 2 previous years. This is very good. And we really feel confident about what is coming up, the World Cup, Black Friday and Christmas. So we are really confident about them. As for electronics, as mentioned earlier, and we observed this drop in this segment. But there was not much difference in customers' behavior in October. So the behavior was very close, and that was something we expected as the continuity of this third quarter. And as for the electronics and household appliances. We know that the ticket is very high, and we saw an increase in its purchase during the pandemic. So we believe that customers bought them before, and now we see this drop. Another important factor regarding electronics is that these categories, they also depend on credit. And as for credit, we see some players actually now trying to leverage that, which may represent risks in the future and also the adjustments that we have performed. So we decreased the number of installments so that we can also have a benefit or we can avoid some harms, considering the high interest rate. But just to sum up, this is what observed in October, a positive behavior in Children's Day, and we are prepared now for these events coming up, considering inventory levels and also based on what we saw in October.

Danniela, so let me address the second question about the structure. So when we look at our business and this decreased demand for electronics, this is [indiscernible] to the growth path that we have designed, considering also the companies that we have acquired. And we go through optimizations whenever there are some acquisitions. So when we examine the physical and digital platforms, today with a fully integrated system, so just to give an idea and with the best we had a very good protection or a backup. And that happens today also in the digital world, considering also the distribution centers to stores. Marcio already addressed a number of installments so that we don't face any risk credit. So in the third quarter, we were more restrictive regarding number of installments and also the minimum amount to be paid.

Danniela, this is Fabien. With regard to generating cash and the adjustments that were already addressed by Marcio and Timotheo, those measures were taken in the third quarter in order to reach a balance of the variables considering the whole. After all, we have a network that is fully integrated. And we know that this year has been a typical, considering this drop in the sales of electronics. Well, historically, we generate cash in the third quarter because of the events that take place, starting with Children's Day. And this year, we also have Black Friday, Christmas and the World Cup, so major events ahead of us. And when we examine what happened during Children's Day in October, we had a very positive result with an increase in traffic, and that makes us feel very optimistic. So we are very optimistic regarding Q4.

Next, a question by Eric Huang, Santander.

I think that on our side, you've talked a little bit about impact on sales, but we want to understand looking at the brick-and-mortar stores more specifically. Could you further elaborate on that? What led to the stronger impact in terms of sales? Could also talk more about the mix in terms of sales and brick-and-mortar stores? I think that would help us understand better this dynamic generally speaking, particularly looking the third Q and also maybe the measures you are taking for the fourth Q, thinking about the greater leverage and sales.

Thank you for your questions. This is Timotheo speaking. So let's go back in time. At the beginning of this call, Miguel talked about 2019 when we first introduced this integrated view. Until 2019, we had separate strategic plans for the brick-and-mortar and digital world. So why did we integrate these 2 environments? Because this is how our customers see us. They don't see a brick-and-mortar store in the digital platform. They see Americanas. And that's why we need to deliver a good level of service. So from that point in time, our view was always of having a network, a fully integrated system. So until 2019, well, how people saw stores changed. And today, we have broadened that vision. So brick-and-mortar stores, they are -- they participate in this large network and they enhance the digital platform. Fabiana and Fabien mentioned a series of initiatives and a series of actions that are carried out by the stores. So encouraging customers to download the app or, in this third quarter, 41% of digital were delivered up to 3 hours. So this is really impressive, especially when you consider the size of our country. In 2019, that was not possible. So to us, brick-and-mortar stores, they play a very important role, a much stronger role. They leverage the digital platform in Ame. And that certainly helps us also in increasing our profitability. Just to give an example, we issue Ame cards and we're talking about new cards. We're talking about 500,000 new accounts every month, and that is very impressive because we need to really have a good outreach. So when we examine our full integrated business and considering the adjustments for growth, we have some different behaviors. There's the market behavior, so because customers are buying less electronics, which represents a challenge to us regardless of the platform. On the other hand, when we talk about what we call general merchandising, such as household utilities, toys, those long-tail items, then we see an expressive increase. When we consider the number of items that presented an increase by 22%, a number of transactions by more than 30%. So what we see is transition period so we are going through a transition period.

So Eric, I'd like just to add on what Timotheo just told us. This drop in electronics and the increase in the long-tail items, as he mentioned, they play a very important role in our stores. This is one of the strengths at our stores. But when you do not sell a mobile phone, you sell more chocolate or potato chips. And part of that is that we have an increased number of transactions, increased number of new customers. So that also will benefit Ame and our other platforms. So that really fits our strategy. And I think that, that is the beauty of having these long-tail items. So Eric, another important factor is that when we consider our reach and translating them in numbers, we are present in more than 900 municipalities in Brazil. Last year, we opened 168 brick-and-mortar stores, and brick-and-mortar stores are part of our strategy so that we can boost Ame and the digital platform. And out of 168 new stores, 130 were in municipals where we were not present. So for this year, our goal is to open another 100 stores and also to be present in new municipalities, 79 new municipalities. And when we go to a new municipality, digital boosts sales by 60%. So that attracts new customers, new transactions and Ame also benefits from that. Ame is our digital portfolio with many financial products, so we provide many financial products such as consortium and that is very helpful. And for example, in October, so we have this Ame [indiscernible] increased with different behavior despite all the challenges considering market demand, but general merchandising presented an expedited growth. Although the tickets are lower, we see an increase in traffic. So a number of transactions increased and that was very positive to our business.

Our next question comes from Luiz Guanais with BTG Pactual.

Can you please elaborate on the performance of other categories, so besides electronics? And what do you expect for the future?

This is Marcio. Thank you for your question. Well, talking about 1P in addition to electronics, which we have already talked about. As for the other categories, we have had a very good performance. I think the major highlights. Well, all these things we call market categories, food, beverages, chocolate, cookies. In the digital 1P, we have been growing -- well, we grew 3 digits in this quarter. It was a very significant growth. They have lower tickets, a lot of orders and beauty products, too, we have been growing a lot, 3 digits in digital. Additionally, 2 other highlights were We also grew 2 digits. And generally speaking, these 1P categories and stationary too, so these are all the highlights.

And Marcio, if I could follow-on that, how do you see competition in these categories because we see some players, Shopee, for example, here in Brazil, they're selling with lower average tickets and opening in retail. How do you see competition for these lower-ticket categories?

Our market has always been competitive with these players. You mentioned -- well, they have a relevant lower ticket sales. I think that in this case, we have a major strength, which is in addition to be able to ship these categories from our distribution center, we can ship them from our stores. So our reach really helps in this regard because we are able to use all costs in terms of -- in addition, having faster shipment, it is cheaper. So I think that with this strength, this very fast delivery, so it's really like a convenience purchase with that. We have managed to advance a lot in this category and really stand out. But the market is still very competitive and it will continue to be very competitive. I think it will not change. Additionally, this vision we mentioned in the beginning, we entered in the market verticals with Hortifruti Natural da Terra for fresh producers. And these really complement our portfolio for these products and also contribute to our greater reach because with 3,600 stores, we can be even closer to our customers. So in these verticals, we have been making good progress. And I think that they too our way of meeting the needs and serving our customers and doing so very competitively in terms of provision of services when compared to our competition.

Our next question from Maria Clara with Itaú.

I'd like to better understand how you see brick-and-mortar stores. Considering the challenging scenario, do you intend to be more conservative? And my second question is related to Ame. Can you please give more color regarding which services do you find to be more relevant to that platform and considering what you may prevent considering credit in the future?

Maria Clara, this is Timotheo. Thank you for your participation. Well, I think that in the previous answer, I already touched on our vision for the brick-and-mortar platform. It is at the center of our strategy. So you cannot look with it as a stand-alone vision. So we have to look at our stores in an integrated fashion as integrated to our ecosystem. When I say integrated, from the customer point of view, so Americanas, brick-and-mortar, digital, our customers want closer stores and we want to be closer to our customers. And our way of being closer to our customers is opening stores in other cities and keeping up with the pace of our expansion program. And stores help to speed up digital and also Ame. So this is like a virtuous circle, where you accelerate things by opening new brick-and-mortar stores in new cities. This is what we call expanding our showcases. We are bringing new customers, brick-and-mortar, digital and Ame. And also, when we talk about stores, it's much more than Americanas. We have new verticals now, for instance, Hortifruti, which is for fresh produce, very recurring purchases frequency, over 30, 40 or 60x a year, depending on the customer. Of course, this model depends on logistics platforms and depends on local suppliers. We have 79 Hortifruti fruit and vegetable stores in Rio, São Paulo and starting in the state of Minas Gerais, but this can be replicated and we are very happy. And we showed you the first results. Uni.co, and [indiscernible] this is a new business, this is a new platform for our company. This is a franchise platform. This is a new business for us and this is an avenue for growth. Recently, we did conversions with people from [indiscernible] and [ Muru ]. And they're really happy with our results, and we are very happy to -- we see many opportunities to further expand. So in one of these businesses, you may look at it going forward in an isolated fashion. Well, this is our network actually. So what are the networks? This is a sum of different platforms, brick-and-mortar, digital franchise, logistics, fintech, advertising, everything we have with all our assets, which are our customers, our sellers, our deliverers, our merchants. And the beauty of this is the number of connections we have. We have a number of connections, which is really huge. And what are these connections? The transactions and the digital stores, transactions in Ame. The transactions carried out at the brick-and-mortar stores, the number of deliveries and these transactions generate a lot of data. We are at a phase now where we will take this data and turn this data into knowledge and action. A recent partnership -- this partnership recently announced with Google, we think that with this new partner, Google understands a lot about data. This will help us transform and improve customer experience. Reaching to what we call hyper-personalization. In the [ Vem ] business, we have a partner, Vibra. They are really happy and excited. So together, we want to take our business to new levels. I'll give the floor to Maria Clara.

Well, regarding Ame, I think that what we could say is that we are really happy in spite of all these issues with COVID-19 pandemic and everything we had, crisis and so on. In spite of all that, we could really deliver our business plan. We are in line with our business plan. Well, we had to make some adjustments and adapt. We had to make some changes. This is the second quarter where Ame is generating positive EBITDA and profit. Well, we do have a very bold road map looking forward, and we launched past September. In the second quarter, we launched our loyalty program so we will further enhance this loyalty program because this is Americanas' loyalty program. The credit front Ame gives credit but doesn't take any risk. We have a credit marketplace and we are including more partners. So we have to have more partners in our credit engine. Insurance, an important insurance, we will enter. So PIX Insurance, also car lease programs. We have launched a new program, which is very important because today, we have over 1,000 stores selling actively to customers who are there in our stores, as Timotheo mentioned. And anyone at any time through the app, they can get this money from their retirement and they can use it. So we have a very consistent road map. We are really excited. We think that next year will be a really important year, as has been. So this year, too, we will end this year very happy. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we close our Q&A session. Now let me turn it over to Mr. Gutierrez for his final remarks. Please, Mr. Miguel, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you very much for participating in our conference call. As we all saw, third quarter of 2022 allowed us to continue and carry on our strategic plans by building a single Americanas for our suppliers, sellers, merchants, shareholders, partners and to the entire Brazilian society. We know about the challenges posed by the economic scenario, but we are prepared and we are paying attention so that we can go through that resiliently. We are very optimistic about the future that we are building. Now I take the opportunity to invite you all to visit our podcast available in many streaming platforms. And our goal is to keep on improving every single day. Thank you very much.

Well, with that, we close Americanas S.A. Earnings Release Call. Have a great afternoon, everyone. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]