Empreendimentos Pague Menos S.A. ($PGMN3)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Pague Menos' conference call to discuss the results for Quarter 1 2026. This call is being recorded, and the replay will be available at the company's website, ri.paguemenos.com.br. [Operator Instructions] This call will be conducted in Portuguese by the company's management and we have simultaneous translation into English by clicking on the button, interpretation. The presentation will be shown in Portuguese, and the English version is available for download at ri.paguemenos.com.br. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements made during this conference call relative to the company's business prospects, projections and operational and financial target are based on beliefs and premises of the company's management based on information currently available to the company. These forward-looking statements are no guarantee of future performance, and they involve risks and uncertainties. Today, we have with us Mr. Jonas Marques, CEO; and Luiz Novais, CFO and Investor Relations Director of the company. Now I would like to turn the call to Mr. Jonas Marques to start his presentation. Mr. Marques, you may proceed.

Good morning. Welcome to our earnings call of quarter 1 2026. First, I'd like to start by sending my greetings to our more than 27,000 employees with their families, they are more than 100,000 people. Also, I'd like to wish an excellent day to our shareholders that joined us in the last follow-on. Welcome all, and thank you for trusting our company. And I couldn't start this conference call without expressing our feelings about the climate events in the state of Paraiba and Pernambuco. We saw an example of how the society can mobilize to help. We had more than 20 stores affected and our team worked with the local population to clean our stores and clean the city and now the sun is shining again in our states, and we really hope these families can recover and bounce back quickly. We also had a lot of employees who were directly affected by these natural disasters, and we are supporting them and their families. And this is very important to us because our company is based on citizenship. We also transformed our store in strategic points and into strategic points and collection points, so you can also take part if you want to send your donation to our stores. We follow the example of what the population did in Rio Grande do Sul, and we want to be close to our people and support them because these climate events can really bring unexpected events that are really impactful to the population. So, let's start the earnings call for quarter 1. We have a very special day to celebrate. We are celebrating our 45th anniversary. I'd like to remind you that only 8% of companies reached 45 years of age. So, our anniversary will be on May 19. So, only 8% of the companies reach this age. Only 7% of the companies reached 50 years. And we are working together with a sense of partnership focusing on the perpetuity of the company. And speaking of perpetuity, I'd like to pay tribute on behalf of our 27,000 employees. Today, our leaders are represented by Patriciana Rodriguez, the Chairwoman of our Board. Today, we have 1,700 stores working to meet the demands of our clients, so that we really can bring health with love to all Brazilians. And I cannot go without saying now that we are celebrating 55 years that we looked -- we went after our history. We want to tell our story, and we're launching a book. And since we cannot read the entire book here, we made a video for you. I hope you like it. This video is a symbol of our story, our love and the values of our company. Let's watch it. [Presentation] This beautiful video pays tribute to giants of the lifetime, all the employees that were once with us and helped us build this legacy that we want to carry forward. Now let's move directly to the results of quarter 1. The great highlights of this quarter. We will continue our journey of growth. Let me start by the most important part in my opinion, how we are comparing to the rest of the market. So, 6.7% market share nationwide. We grew in all our core regions except the South of Brazil, but we are looking at that. So, consistent growth in our market share. 14.4% growth and of the 14.4%, 13% same-store sales. This results from our telemetry for a well-rounded operation and the great engagement of our employees. And of course, you may wonder, well, it's different from the 17%, yes, because after growing for practically 2 years at nearly 18%, this is the ninth quarter of double-digit growth in our same-store sales. We're not opening that many stores now. So, this is still a very strong number, followed by our margin, which is really striking and really shows the results of our work fighting losses and improving negotiations with our suppliers. We expanded our margin by 0.7 percentage points, reaching 9.4%. Our EBITDA, I don't know if you remember, but 1 year ago, so in quarter 1, 2025, we reached BRL 115 million. Now look at the great highlight how we expanded our profitability. We're working on our profitability. So, BRL 204.7 million in EBITDA, a 36.1% increase. And this is the seventh #7, seventh consecutive quarter that we show growth above 30% and BRL 55.6 million in net income. So, more than 4x versus quarter 1 2025, also a great increase. And what is the key? The key is to keep increasing the average sales per store, decreasing our expenses and having a sense of partnership, a sense of ownership. We all here want to accelerate our growth and curb our expenses, expenses that can be curbed. So, let's turn expenses into investment. This is something we've been doing really well as well as the engagement of our employees. If you remember, the net income in quarter 1 last year was 13%, and now we extended to 55.6%. So, moving on to the next chart. We have been very consistent. This is a journey of consistency. This is the ninth consecutive quarter where our main indicators show an evolution with special highlights to our average sales per store. We are moving towards BRL 850,000 per store. Our net income, as I said, the LTM reaching nearly BRL 350 million. This is a very solid expansion. We also have been monitoring our earnings per share, and we will be reporting from now on, and you're going to see very positive numbers in Novais presentation. And our commitment, which was the first feedback that I received here nearly 2.5 years ago is reduce your leverage. You can see here the net debt over EBITDA is decreasing from 4, 2 years ago to under 2 in quarter 1. So, very positive numbers. And moreover, our numbers follow our behavior. So, forget about the numbers now, no matter how wonderful they are, let's focus on the behavior now. When we look at our main ESG indices in B 3, we see that less than 5% of the companies are positive for the 4 indicators. We just joined the ICB 3 in 2026. So, less than 5% of the companies -- all companies listed in Brazil, only 11 companies are being in all these indicators. So, this shows that same way we were founded, we want to evolve. This company is based on a tripod that is based on citizenship, caring for people, caring for the environment. So, keep -- stay tuned because this is very important for our evolution as a company. And also on the right side, there's a QR code where you can access our 2025 sustainability report. I invite you all to read it. So, now -- let's turn it over to someone who you expect every quarter to share our excellent results with you, Luiz Novais.

Good morning. Now with all this energy after Jonas' introduction, I will now share with you the detailed numbers and some of the highlights he already mentioned in the beginning of the presentation. So, we had yet another quarter of important advancements in the company. So, it's 7 to 9 -- depending on the metric, it's 7 to 9 consecutive quarters of evolution based on the metric. So, very consistent results. So, on Page 9, the first line in our P&L, the company's gross revenue, we had an increase of 14.4% in quarter 1 versus quarter 1 last year, 13% same-store, so we grew more than 3x the inflation rate, and this has been the case for 7 consecutive quarter now. This is the result of our improvements in several operational indicators. So, the first one is the NPS. So, our operations team is improving the quality of customer service. We reached 77 in the NPS, 11 points more than quarter 4 last year. We are increasing our base of continuous care customers. We are also showing relevant growth in very important categories for our strategy, branded drugs, generics and personal care. And our digital channels are another very important lever for us that has been boosting the company's results. We reached more than 22% share of digital channels in the company's total sales. On the next page, we give highlights to our same-store sales. On the left, we have the consolidated numbers for the last 3 years. And we reached numbers that I had never seen before. This is really relevant for us. We grew 45% of same-store sales in a 3-year period. It is a true achievement for us. And in quarter 1, we grew 13% added to the 2 last year's 45%. And on the right, looking at the breakdown. And the first chart on the top left shows how we're growing by region in the North and Northeast, our growth is similar to the South and Southeast, about 13% or over 13%. Then on the top right, we see that we grew more in -- sorry, on the bottom left, we see by income class. Then on the top right, by location, we grew more in the capital cities, 13.5%. And lastly, the same-store sales by banner. We continue to see a very relevant evolution in our converted stores. We grew more than 19% our same-store sales in the converted stores. On chart -- on Page 11, this is also a reason for price. In our market share, we are between the 9 or 10 -- I think it's the ninth consecutive quarter, expanding our market share without having a relevant number of new openings. So, we reached 6.7% share in Brazil with highlights in the North and Northeast, where we grew 33 and 35 basis points respectively. These are very important regions for us. And on the right, I think the most important takeaway here is the same-store sales growth, like I already mentioned in our previous chart. We grew 12.6% in our same stores compared with the market and the market grew 8.2%. So, it's a very striking difference. We don't have information of the market share growth by product category, but we can tell you that we had very relevant growth in our prescription drug category with and without GLP-1 agonist. So, our market share has been growing very relevantly and also in HPC. On the next chart, this is another piece of excellent news that we have in quarter 1, which is our gross profit. We had a 0.7 percentage point increase year-over-year. There was a one-off positive effect in quarter 1 of 0.2 percentage points coming from the recomposition of the margin of some products that was recommended by the industry. And since we already had bought inventory at lower prices in the past, they were in our margin recomposition. But even excluding this 0.2% effect, we grew 0.5 percentage point in commercial conditions. The mix was also very positive in quarter 1. We had a 23% increase in generics. We're improving the margin of our digital channels. And this all helped increase our margin. So, we reached 29.4% in quarter 1. On the next chart, we have our SG&A expenses. We had a dilution of 0.1 percentage point. It is slightly lower than the dilution that we saw in previous quarters. But we expect now starting in quarter 2 this year, we expect to have a stronger -- we expect to have a stronger dilution index because in 2025, we reinforced our personnel at the stores to be able to improve customer service and offer better and better services to our customers and also support the growth in our revenue. And we -- so we increased the headcount of our stores. So, in quarter 2, '26, we will have more comparable basis, and we have very positive prospects because of that. And in administrative expenses, we are seeing the same level of quarter 4 last year, even if we consider the collective bargaining agreement that becomes effective in the month of March, and we were able to maintain the same level of administrative expenses. On the next chart, like you heard from Jonas, we are in our seventh consecutive quarter, growing our EBITDA over 30%, which demonstrates the consistency in the operational evolution of the company. We reached 204.7% in EBITDA, a 36% increase. The EBITDA margin in the quarter was 4.9%, 0.8% higher year-over-year. This is a record-breaking number since 2001 during COVID when we look at our margin and EBITDA in the first quarter of the year. Now if we add the margin, the EBITDA margin of the last 12 months, we reached 5.8%. This results from very relevant increase in our sales, very relevant improvement in our gross margin in quarter 1 and also the dilution of our expenses in quarter 1. Next page, our net income. As you already heard from Jonas, we had a more than 300% increase in net margin of 1.3% is a 0.9% increase year-over-year despite the still relevant financial expenses, we reached a very positive level in quarter 1. We're going to talk more about that shortly, but we still have a relevant level of financial expenses. But despite this level of financial expenses, we reached a level comparable to quarter 1 last year, and we're very confident about the future because we will continue on this trajectory of improving operational results, combined with the decrease in the base interest rate and the leverage, which is still one of our core focuses. So, we have very good prospect for our net results in the upcoming quarters. And the net earnings per share is a metric that we didn't use to give so much visibility in the past, both internally and also to the market. But since we are seeing a great evolution, and it's very relevant for all of us, we are now looking at it more carefully, and we have an all-time high in our earnings per share, 50%, BRL 0.50 looking at the earnings in the past 12 months. On Page 16, we have our cash cycle. Traditionally, first quarter, we have an evolution in the average stock time. We didn't see that in quarter 1 last year because in quarter 1 last year, we were very much focused on reducing our low turnover stock items. So, in quarter 1 last year, the average stock time was about 104 days in 2026, 109. This is the traditional effect that we see free price increase. We have a few more days of this effect. We are now supplying to our new DC in Para. So, this investment is very, very relevant for us in the past quarter 2 and will continue to be in quarter 2 -- so in quarter 2, we will see a normalization after we supply this distribution center, and we also are reinforcing the inventory on a category that has been growing relevantly, which is the GLP-1. Our average payment time from customers has also increased. So, more branded drugs, more GLP-1 with higher average ticket. So, our clients pay more installments because of that. And also, there was a growth in the popular pharmacy category. We saw a relevant increase year-over-year and the average customer payment time is now slightly longer than the average, which puts some pressure on our average payment time. We are implementing some actions in order to improve this time and generate more operational cash in the upcoming quarters. We have been implementing these plans since last year, and we are now rolling out new actions to decrease our average customer payment times. And it is at about the same level as quarter 1 last year, 70 days. Now on the next page, indebtedness, one of the main objectives of the company is to continue its deleverage trajectory. We went from 2.8x in quarter 1 last year to 1.9x. So, a drop of nearly 1x the EBITDA in 1 year. Of course, we had some positive effects of the company's capitalization, but also significant increase or improvement in our EBITDA with growth over 30% for 7 consecutive quarters and because of our capital allocation discipline in order to continue reducing the company's leverage. When comparing with quarter 4 last year, we are at about the same level of indebtedness. Traditionally, quarter 1 is a cash consumption quarter, but this consumption was neutralized by the capitalization of the company in mid-March. And we have very positive news to share with you today. I'm sure you've heard it, but Fitch has reviewed the company's rating with a positive outlook, considering all the effort the company has put into improving its capital allocation discipline and improving its operational results, generating more cash. So, because of this combination of factors, Fitch has changed their profit to a positive outlook. So, we will keep working so that in our next evaluation, we can have a further improvement of our rating by Fitch. And now finally, one of the most important indicators, the company's ROIC, which results from everything that we shared so far, robust growth in our sales, relevant operational improvement, operational margin optimization and discipline in our capital allocation, resulting in a 21.2% ROIC, an increase of 6.8 percentage points compared with the last 2 years. We're very happy to share these very positive financial and operational advancements with you. And now I turn the conference back to Jonas and he is going to share with us the development in our strategy.

Thank you, Novais. I've been hearing feedback and feedback is always a gift. Jonas, be careful because sometimes your energy can sound like an overpromise, but please do not be mistaken because based on all the work that we have been doing, it's impossible not to have to capture all the energy of our employees' engagement and not convey it to you in this call. We see that our results are very good. We have been delivering very good results for 9 consecutive quarters. So, now let's go to the heart of our strategy and the reason why we're able to our work to deliver such good numbers to you. Our strategic plan, so who do we want to be? We want to be a reference drugstore for continuous care customers. Everything that we do, we have our CTC customer in the center. And all actions that we undertake, I'm not going to explain our [ Mandela ], but I just want to highlight our value generation. So, what are the initiatives that we have already rolled out and that will continue so that we can continue on this growth trajectory. Of the implemented actions, I'd like to highlight our focus on digital, a continuous improvement effort that started 2 years ago in our app as an engine of acquisition and retention of customers. And of course, in parallel to all our other actions to improve customer service, both from the new main standpoint, human center, contact with our employee and also the system standpoint. And the last point here is the nearly 10x increase in our number of vaccination rooms. We have started vaccination rooms in new markets, new cities, and this is creating a lot of track. So, I would like to challenge you, everyone over 50 should go for the herpes zoster vaccine, and we have all these vaccines available in our clinic pharma. Actions under development, slight conversion. You know that the brand conversion or flight conversion is an immediate uplift -- brought an immediate uplift of 30% in our revenues because of the strength of the Pague Menos store. We're now converting all the stores in Maranhao and Ceara. Another important point is the acceleration of our expansion. In the first quarter, we opened only 1 new store, but we -- the plan now is to accelerate new openings. And one very important point is the reinvention of our strategic labels. For the first time, we reached BRL 1 billion in revenue with our private labels, and we are now working on our brand identity to prepare for this new phase, aiming at accelerating the sales of our private labels. We are the largest label in sunscreen, for example, with [ Dove ], our brand. So we really want to capture all the richness from our private labels with our new strategies. So, stay tuned. And you can tell me, well, now I understand why you have so much energy. Yes, because the energy here is fueled by people, people who care for people. Looking at our CCC results. When we brought this concept in the end of 2024 to present to you for the first time, a lot of buzz was generated, a lot of comments, what is CCC are those chronic patients. And our purpose was to improve our assortment and our customer service aiming at this special type of customer, the continued care customer. And when we compare the quarter 4, 2024 and quarter 1, 2026, we had a 10.8% increase in our continued care clients, very expressive. Also in our economics, purchase frequency has been increasing and also the average ticket has been growing. And this contributes to our average sales per store reaching close to what was promised to you, we are closing the gap versus the benchmark. Now let's open for questions. We are available for your questions. So, this is what we wanted to share with you. This has been a very special quarter focusing on profitability and growth.[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Yan Cesquim, BTG.

I have 2 questions on my side. The first one is about GLP-1s. We saw that in quarter 1, you showed 9.1% expansion. This is a good expansion when compared with quarter 1 last year and stability compared with quarter 4 last year. So, what's your perception about the supply, particularly for Mounjaro in the first quarter? And how do you expect this category to behave for the rest of the year? This is the first part of my question. The second part is about capacity expansion, pipeline and capacity expansion. After the follow-on, what is the base case? What are you planning for in terms of store expansion in 2026? And what is your objective?

Novais, would you like to take the first one?

Yes, Yan, thank you for your question. About GLP-1 supply, what we are hearing from our sales team is that there's some irregularity, erratic supply, but this is improving now based on what we -- the feedback from our team. So, availability in quarter 1 was better than in quarter 4 last year. Now about the 9.1% share in our revenue, yes, we saw a relevant increase compared to quarter 1 last year and stability versus quarter 4 last year. But we have a very positive expectation because we still have a lot to see happening in this category. We'll have the similars and generics coming to the market. Supply, there are still opportunities to improve supply. The category can still penetrate other therapeutic classes. And with the advent of similars and generics, this could give rise to a parallel market, which this could actually counterpose to the parallel market that exists for the people who are consuming these drugs in the parallel market. So, the price reduction that will come from similars and generics coming to the market can really boost the market and also the maturation of the prescription. So, we still have a lot to expect from this category in our opinion. And about the expansion, as you heard from Jonas, we only inaugurated 1 store in quarter 1. We are now warming up to continue opening new stores in the coming quarters with the same discipline in our capital allocation. So, except for quarter 1, which is a high cash consumption quarter, starting quarter 2, we have a much stronger operational generation. We can invest in more new openings, balancing our capital allocation and still focusing on reducing the company's debt. But we have very positive expectations of inaugurating more stores looking forward in the upcoming quarters. I hope I answered your question? Anything else, Jonas?

I totally agree with what you said about GLP-1s. We still have a lot of value to be captured within this market, not just by us, but by the entire market. This is truly transformative. We have never seen adjust that can reduce or eliminate compulsion and everybody is reaping the benefits and reading the papers. And now with the generics coming to the market, we'll see a very strong margin expansion. And regarding our expansion, we want to keep behaving in [ scarcity ]. For example, if you look at our cohort of new stores from 2021 to '25, it's always gradually increasing with a higher assertiveness percentage. It's not just because we had a follow-on and we have more money and also helped by the 52% conversion of our EBITDA into cash that we now can make mistakes. No, that's not the case. We have a very solid expansion project with a very good strategy, and we want to continue being assertive in the new openings that we go after.

Our next question is from Rodrigo Gastim, Itau BBA.

I have 2 questions. The first question, I think that every quarter, we have a good opportunity to focus on productivity per store, which is one of your value generation levers. And now I'd like to break it down by category. You mentioned in your release last night, the outstanding growth in generics and also you talked about a potential improvement in branded drugs ex GLP. So, I want to know, what is the evolution that you're seeing in this strategy and what you're doing in fact to continue to capture this productivity, particularly in those categories where you see a larger opportunity to pursue? And the second question, because I think this is a very nice forum to discuss this topic. We were discussing offline the subvention in costs because we heard yesterday that this had helped your gross margin, but this is a nice forum to discuss the impact on your costs, how the cost subsidy is impacting your cost and your prices and what you plan to do in the upcoming quarters?

Thank you, Gastim. Your first question, we have been consistently presenting our growth levers when we talk about average sales per store. We were very strong in generics, and now we have accelerated this even more. Now without going into details about the economics. But when you talk about generics and growth, you look at drug stores and drug store chains that are entry price drugstore chains. 70% of our business is in the North and Northeast. We are absolute market leaders in the North and Northeast. We have a market share over 22% in these states. So, it's very important to stress that in the situation where you have rebalancing of the economy, people will come to Pague Menos. And particularly for the GLP-1 generics, the drugstore chain with the most -- that is the most fit for this expansion for this category is Pague Menos. So, in addition to generics, we're also working on our regular products. And you remember that we have shared before that this was a category where we were growing below the numbers of Abrafarma. So, this is another source of growth that has been a focus for us, and now we'll see some acceleration. I can't really talk about future results, but I want to invite you to our 46th anniversary celebration that will last the entire month of May. We have more than 3,000 products on sales. We are working on installment payments. So, we are offering the option of up to 10 installments to our patients because it's our anniversary. So, this is a special campaign, and we're working on the granularity of the growth of our average sales per store. Moreover, I want to highlight the role of telemetry. With the telemetry that we expanded now in the number of stores connected, we have a simple plan for stores with a lower revenue so that we can expand our telemetry project. And we also have other projects that are -- I can't really disclose right now, but we want to expand our geographies, and we want to turn the store manager into an entrepreneur, the owner of the store. So, there's a behavioral aspect to it as well. Novais, can you talk about the cost subsidy?

Yes, Gastim, thank you for your question. And thank you for the opportunity to clarify this point because this is not just your question. Other investors and analysts have the same question. So, the effect on our gross margin and EBITDA of the cost subsidy is practically 0. There's no change in the rate or in the conditions of the tax evaluation in 2026 compared with last year. Therefore, we didn't have any benefits in our gross margin or our EBITDA because of what I'm going to explain right now. What we had was a positive effect in the line item of our income tax because until quarter 2 last year, we had as representativeness of the cost subsidy as the effect on our income tax line item was about 1.5% of our revenue. And then starting in quarter 3 last year in the middle of last year, the representativeness was slightly higher, 1.8% and then 1.7% at the end of the year, now 1.9% in the start of 2026. So, compared with first half of last year, 1.5%, we are 0.4% of our revenue above last year as basis for calculation of our income tax. So, slightly higher in terms of deduction. So, what happened was that in the State of Ceara, we have a traditional reduction in our tax load, both for internal operations in the state and also products that we ship to other states through the DC in Ceara. But the state government, the economy secretary of the state government until last year, considered as cost subsidy, only the tax benefits for what was shipped to other states. And starting in the second half last year, the benefits for inside the state also started to be considered after June credit, so cost subsidy, and this had a positive impact on our income tax. That's why the rate -- the proportion -- the ratio is slightly higher than last year. But the impact on our income tax or on the company's results is about BRL 6 million. So, the net income of BRL 55 million, if this hadn't happened, would have been BRL 49 million. So, this is the summary, and we are available if you have more questions about this topic. Thank you for your question, Gastim.

Novais, just a follow-on, the impact of the cost subsidies in the new DC in Paraiba is already recorded or we will see it being recorded throughout this year, the cost subsidy for Paraiba.

Well, Paraiba, in this case, yes, we will have a positive effect on the gross margin because the tax rate of Paraiba that we use to supply to Paraiba and neighboring states is lower than the tax rate when we ship products from Ceara to these states. So, in this case, with this DC in Paraiba, we will have a very relevant positive effect on the company's margin, but we will start seeing this impact after the turnover of the stocks. We inaugurated our DC in March. We are now rolling out the stores that are supplied by this DC and we will start capturing these benefits in quarter 3, 2026. As for the COGS subsidy in the income tax line item specifically, we won't have a great impact because of the Paraiba DC because the subsidies that we already have to pay when we ship products from Ceara to Paraiba will continue at the same level when we supply -- when the state of Paraiba made with state tax supplied by the DC in Paraiba. So, the subsidy will not have a great impact on the income tax in this case.

The next question is from Lucas Esteves, Santander.

Congratulations on another excellent quarter. I have 2 questions. The first is about your cash cycle. Your cash cycle in this quarter increased to 72 days. I think this was pulled by your stocks and because of the opening of the new DC in Paraiba and also because of your receivables. How much of this is structural versus one-off? And then what can we expect for the upcoming quarters? And about the same topic, if you can comment on your anticipation of receivables strategy that was decreasing in 2025 and now slightly higher in 2026. And my second question is about your continuous care clients with a share of 28% now in quarter 1 with an increase in purchase frequency and average ticket. How far can you further increase this penetration? And what are the factors for expansion of this base of clients?

I can start here. Well, our cash cycle, we had an increase of 5 days in our average stock time compared with quarter 1 last year. But in quarter 1 last year, we were at 104 days, and we didn't really feel the effect of the additional supply because of the pre-price increase because we were in the middle of the movement of reducing our low turnover stocks. So, I think the outlier point below the average was quarter 1 last year, 109 days of stock for the first quarter of the year like we see now in 2026 is closer to what's normal. But that is a one-off effect of the new DC in Paraiba. And this effect was an additional 2 days. So, still in quarter 2, we should see an equal effect or maybe slightly higher because we are still supplying this DC so that it can supply our stores and then demobilize the stocks of the previous DC because now the stores are migrating to the new one. So, the normalization of the average stock time for the Paraiba DC will only come in quarter 3. But this is a one-off effect. But we do have several levers that we're working on. Our sales team and logistics team are really striving to help us optimize the stock cycle of the company, improving our algorithms and of course, having a new distribution center also helps. And many other levers are being developed, so that we can improve the stock management of the company, which is very relevant for us. Now as for the average time for payments, we also have a few activities that we implemented in the end of last year, we decreased one of the installments of financing for our customers in most of the states and the operations team is focusing on supporting the company in this initiative to convert part of the option for payment installments to an average -- to a shorter receivables time using fixed or rotating credit. Since quarter 1 is a cash consumption quarter, like I said, we are using more of this instrument in quarter 1. But now in quarter 2, we should start to see some decrease. Of course, it will not drop to 0. We will still see relevant numbers. We ended quarter 1 with about BRL 400 million in receivables anticipation. Last year, it was BRL 280 million. So, now starting quarter 2, we will see a reduction in the stock, even if it's a cheaper line, but we -- our banking that is very prolonged now, and we will be able to reduce the volume by the end of the year. Now as for customer care -- for continuous care customers, let me start and then Jonas can add to my answer. On our revenue, Lucas, the share of these CCC customers is about 72% of the company's revenue. So, about 26% of our customers represent 72% of our revenue. And we have other references in our industry of a share of CCCs over 80 -- close to 85%. So, this means that we still have a lot of room to expand the share of these more frequent customers in our base. So, we are now acquiring many of these customers because we are improving our supply and the depth of stock of the 300 molecules that are the most consumed by CCC clients. Also the -- our human resources and our staff, we are improving the quality of customer service. We are building 6 training hubs in Brazil to improve purchasing frequency of these customers. We're investing 10 to 11x more in training than we invested a few years ago. So, there's relevant room to grow the penetration or the share of continuous care clients and consequently improve the revenues of the company.

I would just like to add that we have some CRM actions that we can't really disclose right now, but it's our core focus and I'm very passionate about this type of customer, and we have not yet reached the top of our value capture. The growth will continue through new initiatives and new actions that we are undertaking, and we will also maintain the ones that we already have.

Next question is from Tales Granello, Safra.

I want to explore something Jonas said in the start of the call. He said that the company will continue to transform expenses into investments. I think that in the past 2 years of this new management, you have been doing some great work in curbing your expenses. But is there still room to cut your expenses even more? Or is this more related with the normalization of the number of employees per store that Jonas was talking about?

I think we need to calibrate this answer. So, let me start and then you can continue, Novais. I think, Tales, that I can never say that we have reached the maximum. And I will give you a very clear example because here, we're very open and candid. I will not expose what congress -- conference it is, but if we were in a conference of a supplier and we saw that we were paying BRL 450,000 for the booth and also 20 employees to be there in the conference. And here, we discussed the cost and the value. I don't want to discuss cost only, but the value that it brings to us. So, what did we do this year? We're not -- we're no longer participating in this conference because we cannot afford to have margins that can be expanded and invest this margin and things that will not bring a return. We are also undertaking many initiatives to reward and recognize the managers that are bringing the most efficiencies and savings to us. I think this is a marathon, not a sprint. We're focusing on perpetuity of the company, and we are digging deeper so that we can grab what we need. We will keep decreasing our expenses. I said in the beginning of our last call that part of my time is being invested in fighting our expenses and also fighting our losses. Tales, if you look at the evolution of our losses, it is remarkable in the past 2 years, which contributed to the increase in our gross margin. So, this will continue to be a top priority in our agenda. So, you can expect further positive in the future. Novais, anything to add?

Yes. I'd just like to add some elements to your answer. Tales, thank you for your question. As Jonas said really well, we are still focusing on decreasing our expenses. We had a slightly lower dilution of our expenses in quarter 1 because we're still investing a lot in store maintenance. We also reinforced last year our personnel to be able to improve customer service in our stores. But I can tell you that we have several initiatives ongoing here in the company to reduce our expenses and to have a larger gap. For example, in quarter 1 this year, we had -- the increase in our expenses was 13%, which is a loss. We grew 14.4% of revenue with 13% our expenses. Now continuing that Brazil has an inflation rate of about 4%, we still have a backlog and a gap to normalize the company's expenses. So, some additional indicators. If you look at the number of coupons issued and the number of employees of the company, the number of coupons issued today is better than that of our competitors, which means that productivity of our employees compared to that of the competition is equal or superior, but we still have room to grow to improve. We have a major project going on here in the company with a consulting firm. We're revisiting the entire organizational structure of the company. And of course, we want to optimize productivity and make the company leaner to generate more value with the resources that we have. And this is among other initiatives. So, the lever to improve our EBITDA is still expense dilution. So, growing our revenue and increasing our expenses and enlarging this gap between the 2 increases.

The next question is from Pedro Caravina, XP.

Congratulations on your results. We have been hearing a lot from other companies about challenges in consumption in the Northeast of the country, but you're delivering very healthy growth numbers even with the higher pressure. So, can you share with us what are the main drivers and the mitigators -- if you have more restricted consumption, this will not be a challenge to you. And just a follow-up. In the first question, you talked about the supply of GLP-1 that in quarter 1, it was already better than in quarter 4 last year. Did I understand right? Or is it quarter 2 better than quarter 1, which is what we heard from other players? They talked about stock, particularly in January and February. And it's still about GLP-1. We're looking at import numbers showing a huge increase in the imports of peptide hormones coming from Germany, U.S. and Denmark in March. So, do you already see reflects of these imports in your May sales?

I can start with your last question. First, Pedro, you're right. I was with the Lilly team and they imported, they showed us they invoice, 95 kilos of tirzepatide. This shows that the market is many times greater than the official Mounjaro market that we have right now. Also, I want to confirm that, yes, supply is irregular. We also had some stock-out problems in the start of the year. So, you're right. I don't know if Novais has anything to add. And a third comment, very straightforward comment about consumption. I think that's where our promotional strength comes into place. When you have a more restricted economic scenario, you have to be very fast when responding and activating. So, we start with our commercial strategy, our promotional strategy, accelerating sales without losing margin. This is worth noting because this is what we have agreed with our supplier. Today, we have -- we're bringing opportunities to a region that is in the strategic plan of all the suppliers we negotiate with. I met with 2 CEOs of large companies, global CEOs of 2 large consumer product companies in the first quarter in quarter 1 in Sao Paulo. We were exclusive guests in this meeting. We were the only company there, and all companies are focusing on the North and Northeast. They have already explored the South and Southeast. So, the North and Northeast is the next in line, and we are activating our teams for that. One thing that we are controlling really well is installment payments. You saw that we reduced our installment payments in the last quarter. So, we have a very clear strategy to focus on our anniversary and the black siding sales. And this is really helpful. And with GLP-1, we did a survey, and we saw that there are people that have about BRL 5,000 of family income, and they are on Mounjaro because it fits their budget. So, the granularity in our strategy of how do we ensure our customers have the purchasing power and that our sales are attractive and appealing to our customers is essential.

No, I think you covered the 2 elements in Pedro's question. If I'm not mistaken, I think there was an improvement in the supply in quarter 1 compared with quarter 4 last year. It's still regular, of course, that the industry is still trying to better understand the behavior of this category because it's very recent, but there's room to keep improving because we still have some moments of stock out. So, there's room to improve supply, but it's evolving constantly. And for the North and Northeast, like you heard from Jonas, there is an important -- the North and Northeast, they are very important so that we can grow our market in advance in our consolidation. These are regions with a lower share of digital channels compared to other regions in Brazil that are more mature. It's a region that has a lower average income. So of course, when generics and similars come to the market, this will probably boost the market in these regions with a slightly lower average income compared to other regions in Brazil. And since we are very well positioned in these regions, we will see a very positive impact of these elements. And in one of our charts, we showed you that the North and Northeast is where we are growing the most, where we are gaining the most market share even without the new openings are very few new openings in this region. So, we still have a lot of space to improve our share.

Very clear. Just a quick point, the 95 kilos of tirzepatide was when?

Well, I read about this in February. They didn't really say anything about the specific period, but it's a huge growth. And of course, this drug will be compounded. So, you're seeing [ Anvisa ] and for these closing compounding pharmacies that already have stocks, but this is very small compared to the total. If you divide the 95 kilograms by the number of milligrams you have in, then it's a huge amount.

Next question is from Marcio Osako, Bradesco BBI.

I have 2 questions and one clarification. The first question is about your gross margin. You showed an expansion of 0.8 point year-over-year. Can you give us more light about 2 factors that you mentioned? One was the comparison base of the promotions that you had in quarter 1 last year. So, how much came from that? And how much of this comes from the better commercial conditions that you were able to offer in the past quarter? And the first question is about CMED. What was the average readjustment -- because since generics are gaining share, maybe the average now is slightly different from range 2? And how did you apply this readjustment this year? Was it different because of the competition compared to last year? And the clarification about the store openings. You said this should accelerate from now on, but how many new openings should we expect in 2026?

Thank you, Marcio. I'll go first. About the gross margin, we grew 0.7 percentage points compared with quarter 1 last year. The margin in quarter 1, '25 was 28.7% and the margin for the full year was 29.7%. So, the outlier was quarter 1 last year. So, in the first quarter, quarter 1 this year, it's 29.4%, which is closer to the average of the year. So, of the 0.7% that we increased, 0.2% was due to that price composition. And the other 0.5%, I can't really tell you how much of the 0.5% comes from better commercial conditions or a weaker comparison base. But these are the 2 main elements, the weaker comparison base and better commercial conditions. Commercial team is really striving to help us improve the commercial conditions. And there's a third element, which is the improved mix. So, the growth in generics was 26%. So, 26% in our revenue and 23% in generics. So, there's an important component here of the product mix as well. And of the 0.5%, the only answer I don't have to you now is how much came from each of these elements, comparison base, better commercial conditions and the product mix with generics. So, we can give you more light and maybe in the next call. About the second element, the CMED, the net impact, if I remember right, was 2.2%, 2.3%. There was also a change in price because of fees and co-fees, which was also helpful, and it was nearly 1 percentage point more than the natural CMED growth and the transfer was just like we do every year. In the first -- on the first day, we transferred to the physical stores. And on the digital channel, we monitor the market, and we are able to delay this transfer a little bit, giving the opportunity to our digital customers to buy at the previous prices for a few weeks after April 1. Now for the third item about the new openings, we don't give guidance about new openings. But what I can tell you is that, yes, we are speeding up our new openings. Last year, we inaugurated 30 new stores, and we are boosting our team, intelligence remains the same. We have the same strategy for new openings since 2020. But the prospecting team and the building team, we are expanding this thing because as you heard from Jonas, now we have a better balance, and we will keep reducing the company's level of debt. So, this year, we will have an important number of new openings, maybe not as many as we would like. We will -- you'll see the true acceleration in 2027.

Very clear. And one last question about your gross margin. These 2 effects that you mentioned, do they -- should we see them again in the coming quarters? Or were they a one-off event in quarter 1 and the comparison base will be more normalized starting quarter 2? And maybe the more recurrent event will be the product mix and the DC in Paraiba.

Yes, your reading is correct. We tend to have a margin similar to the same quarter last year. And for the full year, we expect it to be slightly lower than last year, not that much, but slightly lower than last year. The commercial team is working to offset these effects and to improve our EBITDA margin. The EBITDA margin improvement will be relevant this year, just like it was in the 2 previous years.

What are the pressures that you see for the full year EBITDA margin?

Well, until the generics -- semaglutide generic comes to the market, we will have some negative effect of the growth of the semaglutide before the generics. In the 2 previous years, we had a relevant improvement in our stock losses. So, we improved about 30 bps our stock losses compared, when we compare '25 with '24, for example, where we still have more opportunities. So, we will have more good news about stock losses, reduction in stock losses, but at lower levels than the previous year. These are the 2 main elements. The AVP may also have a negative effect like we already saw in quarter 1 in the receivables and stock days and the interest rates. So, the AVP can suffer some negative pressures. So, as I said, it won't be relevantly lower, but marginally lower potentially.

Pedro, I don't know if you're still here, but up-to-date data in 2025, Tirzepatide, they imported approximately 170 kilos, so you heard correctly, 170 kilos of the active ingredients.

Next question is from Guilherme Vilela, JPMorgan.

I have one question about the potential changes in the labor regime of the [ 6 by 1 ] schedule? And what do you expect in terms of impact for Pague Menos if this change actually takes place?

Well, if the end of the 6 by 1 is approved, this will have a relevant impact for us and for everyone in retail and for the industry, not just retail. Yes, the impact will be relevant. What we're doing, we're testing alternative schedules. We're reviewing the store hours. We are reviewing our compensation and commission policies to try to offset at least for part of the impact. We believe that we will have some positive impact in terms of decrease in absenteeism and turnover because of the change. But if it's not possible to compensate with the elements that I mentioned, not just us, but the entire market will have to transfer to prices. Our margins are very high. We won't be able to absorb the impact of this change in the work schedule. So, this will be -- this will have a negative impact to the consumer and the population because the cost is relatively higher than what we have today. And there's a potential positive effect. I know it's sad to say, but a change like that, unfortunately, will impact small and midsized companies more than us. So, if large companies are already having difficulty to absorb and transfer the cost, let along the small ones, right? So, there will be an acceleration in consolidation. Small players will suffer even more with this situation.

The question-and-answer session is now closed. Now I turn the call over to Mr. Marques for his final remarks.

Thank you very much for attending. Thank you for your time, for your question, for your engagement. I would just like to reinforce once again that we're very happy to celebrate our 45th anniversary. And this is our commitment to you. We are here for the long term. We are here to help build this perpetuity and help build this legacy with our entire team distributed throughout Brazil in our DCs, in our tele sales, in our customer service, in our headquarter in Fortaleza, and our headquarter in Sao Paulo and all these people who are working every day so that we can offer the best to our continuous care customers and to our nearly 23 million customers. This is a huge responsibility. So, thank you all for your trust. And I'd like to finish by saying that we can have a lower level of enthusiasm because enthusiasm means energy means positivity. And we believe that we work in a country and in an industry -- we work in an industry and in a country that needs access to health. 75% of the population don't have access to private health. We have a beautiful public health care system, but we will continue to bring health with love to all Brazilians. I'd like to send a big hug to all our 27,000 employees. Please come visit our stores and give us a chance to enchant you as well. We have excellent prices, and it will be a unique opportunity for you to know whether we are walking the talk. If what you hear here in our earnings call is what's really taking place in our stores because this is a real challenge when we have such a large organization to really put our energy and our purposes and our values in the other end in our stores operating with our customers every day. Thank you, Novais, my partner, and I wish you a great rest of your day. Take care. See you next time.

This conference call is now over. Thank you for attending. Have a great day. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]