Grupo Multi S.A. (MLAS3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Grupo Multilaser's conference call today discussing the earnings of the fourth quarter and the year 2025. [Operator Instructions] We inform that this conference is being recorded and will be available on the company's IR website where you will also find the complete set of materials for our earnings release. You can also download the presentation on the chat icon also available in English. [Operator Instructions] Note that the information in this presentation and statements that may be made during this conference call relating to Grupo Multilaser's business prospects, projections and operational and financial targets are based on the company's management's beliefs and assumptions as well as on currently available information. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions as they refer to future events and hence, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors may affect the future performance of Grupo Multilaser and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Here with us today, we have the company's directors, Andre Poroger, CEO; and Eduardo Belelas, CFO. I would like to turn the floor to Andre, to begin the presentation.

Hello. Good morning. I would like to thank you all for attending our conference call. I'll talk a little bit about the highlights of the last quarter of 2025 and the year, the closing of our year. And then I'll turn the floor to Eduardo Belelas, who used to be our Controller and now he's been officialized as our CFO and he'll talk about the numbers and details of our company. Okay, so let's get started. I think it's important to give some color about the year 2025. It was a very important year for our Group. We came from a huge challenge from previous years with two very tough years, as you well know, in terms of results. And this year, as we usually say. We ended up having to replace a tire while the car was running. I think that was the whole motto of the year. We started the second quarter of '25 with a series of adjustments at the company, rearranging all of the company's departments with the support of the full team. The team was fully engaged in this new agenda for the Group. So, it was a year that we were completely cleaning house. And I think the numbers reflect a little bit of that. All of this transformation and restructuring of the Group always has the focus and It's important that everyone knows the focus is on our purpose and our mission to transform people's lives through technology. That's the main mission. The reason for Grupo Multilaser to make technology democratized and transform people's lives. So this huge work that's been done came from an important part that we've been talking about of portfolio optimization. To give you an idea, we had about 3,500 SKUs, different products at the company and we did the work to optimize this portfolio looking at margin, looking at consumer and the needs, and we reduced more than 52%. We went from 3,500 SKUs to 1,700 SKUs approximately. Noting that this revision is continuous, it's ongoing. And still getting into the numbers. Even with the reduction in SKUs that we implemented during the year. The good news is that we've been able to grow top line, grow revenue year on year by 15.8% and in the last quarter we got a record revenue, the highest revenue of the last 14 quarters with a growth of 20.8%. So the good news is that making the portfolio streamlined and all of that has helped us increase revenue. What's most important, more than revenue effectively is that the whole team is very focused and the major figure we look at in terms of efficiency is gross margin. So here also excellent news. We've been able to capture 1.5 percentage points of margin compared to the same period of the previous year. With all the work and the planning, structure, pricing that we implemented this year that has the governance of our sales policies and pricing, approval of discounts. This 1.5 percentage point represents more than BRL 60 million. So that's very important news. And talking about EBITDA getting a little bit of the context. We start 2025, the first quarter with 0.7% EBITDA and we go to the second quarter with 3.3% and over the last two quarters of the year, third and fourth quarters, we get more than 6% EBITDA. So more than twice the growth of EBITDA from 2.2% to 6%, almost three times as much closing the year with BRL 176 million. That's an average of 4.5% versus 1.2%. Noting that the last two quarters are at around 6%. So that's a positive trajectory of EBITDA recovery. A work that we understand is very consistent and should be maintained. And then obviously getting to the bottom line of net income. That's also good news, excellent news. To put it into context, we closed the year 2024 at minus BRL 321 million. So it's a loss of BRL 321 million in 2024. And we now close the year 2025 with all of this restructuring at BRL 136 net income. So it's a resumption, a recovery. If we think about that, it's more than BRL 500 million, almost half a billion, BRL 457 million in terms of growth compared to 2024. So that's also something that makes us very excited to see this recovery and that's the agenda that we'll maintain. It has not been concluded, of course the results makes us very excited to know we're on the right path. On Q4, you'll see the result that's usually negative. It was strongly impacted by the FX variation in the fourth quarter. There's no cash effect and that should already be recovered in the first quarter of this year, so we're not. this was a lot more connected to the foreign exchange variation with EBITDA 6%. So that's the -- this down in net income in the fourth quarter. But I think what's important is the recovery of the year. Another very important indicator that we're on top of, and Edu will detail a little bit more, is cash generation. We saw in the last quarter important cash generation of BRL 209 million. In the context of the year, we started the first quarter of '25 with BRL 330 million of cash burn. That was the first quarter of 2025. And starting from that, we have positive generation through all the quarters BRL 65 million in the second quarter, BRL 131 million of operating cash generation in the third quarter and closing now at BRL 209 million. So with that, our generation in the year is positive, BRL 75.3 million. Seeking a strong cash burn of BRL 330 million in the first quarter. So that's a very positive result. I mean, there's no point in having EBITDA and income without cash. So at the end of the day that's for all of the management. It's evaluated in terms of cash generation. And at the same time, we also have good news in terms of the reduction of indebtedness reduced in 24.4%, closing the year a very sound position of net cash positive at BRL 166 million. So the balance sheet is very sound. We are very excited with this the year of 2026, and we'll talk a little bit more going forward. It's more challenging in this internal and the foreign scenario, but this cash position and net debt and net cash is also very positive for us. And to conclude, we also have good news in terms of the reduction of expenses, it's important to note that we grew revenue in 2025 at 15.7%. In expenses, even considering inflation and collective bargaining, et cetera, we only grew expenses in 7%. So it's the target of our growth, and that helps us with a reduction of 1.8 percentage points that's corresponding to BRL 70 million. So that's reduction, this better efficiency helps us. And then to conclude with the highlights, and Edu gets into the details is about inventories. That's also very strong work done by the team during the year and the closing of the first quarter, we had a record of 218 days of inventory. We -- now we brought to the closing of the year to 173. That's about BRL 350 million of inventory reduction with the optimization of portfolio. And our forecast is this 173 that we have now is to get to 106 days of inventory that should release more cash. So each day of inventory is about BRL 9 million. So we also have an opportunity here to release or free up cash with the optimization of inventories. So we are here. I'll turn the floor to Eduardo Belelas, but basically the numbers this year are very positive. There is sound, consistent recovery. So go ahead, Edu.

Thank you, Andre. Good morning, everyone. As Andre said, the fourth quarter of '25 was another quarter with an increase in sales. We had BRL 160 billion in sales. And year-on-year, we can also see the increase in net revenue. What we had in 2024 was BRL 3.3 billion and now we have BRL 3.9 billion. And what's more important in addition to the increase in sales is gross margin. In the year, we gained 1.5 percentage points in terms of increase of gross margin that reflected in the improvement of this indicator, of course, but also EBITDA. Throughout the year, we were seeing this increase of gross margin, even though we closed 2025 at 24.7% in the last 2 quarters, the level was already 25%. So that gives us a good expectation to continue with that in the beginning of '26. In the following slide, we talk a little bit more about EBITDA. The curve indicates clearly the evolution we had in the year of 2025, as Andre mentioned, in the first half of the year, the average was 2% and the 2 last quarters of 2025, 6%. So that's triple profitability. Although during the year, we had 4.5%. The weighted average is based on the first 2 quarters that were more challenging. So the evolution year-on-year comparing both quarters and the year, it went from 1.2% to 4.5% the EBITDA profitability. So that's a result of the portfolio optimization, the efficient management of expenses and cost reduction. The next slide -- I'm sorry, just going back a little bit. It's also important to mention here, I'm looking at adjusted EBITDA. We had a nonrecurring effect this quarter that was the discontinuity, the termination of our Pet's unit, the manufacturing of hygiene mats, and we had the accounting write-off of BRL 14.8 million of the brands that we had acquired in 2021 and the goodwill of the operation of 2021. So we wrote it off. Here as well, it's an action to optimize portfolio, focusing on profitability. This is -- there is no cash effect. We've been able to pass through all of the inventory to the company that acquired the assets, and this is a nonrecurring effect. That's why we're presenting non-adjusted EBITDA. But still, even with this effect, EBITDA was a lot higher than what we showed in 2024. So now next slide. Adjusted net income for the year with an improvement in the loss from BRL 221 million last year to BRL 136 million positive this year with net margin of 3.5% versus minus 9.5% in the previous year. Here in the fourth quarter, we had the hike of the U.S. dollar related to the BRL. So that had that effect of minus BRL 13.3 million net income in the last quarter, which is due to FX variation. If it wasn't for that, we would have net income on the quarter very close to the net EBITDA with an effect only of the depreciation. On the next slide, reinforcing what Andre mentioned, we have 36 less inventory days when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2024. And this is a continued ongoing movement. It's not a one-off this quarter. It's something that comes from the best purchasing management and accurate sales forecast and strong interaction with S&OP. And this continuity of this movement is what's going to give us the ability to maintain control, maintain the days of inventory, although we have new businesses, new segments, the inventory may increase in absolute volume, but the days of inventory with this turnover that is good that we achieved will maintain this healthy level of inventory. On the next slide, we have cash flow of the fourth quarter of '25. As Andre highlighted, in addition to EBITDA of BRL 72 million, the strong working capital generation that comes from the inventory that we just mentioned, but also accounts receivable we received from the government that helped us get this level of working capital. And we had operational cash generation of BRL 209 million. On the next slide, we talk a little bit about cash flow for the year and there is the EBITDA of BRL 176 million and the consumption of working capital of BRL 20 million. And again, as we had with the EBITDA and the gross margin, it's important to look at the year's evolution. In the first quarter, our capital consumption -- working capital consumption was BRL 227 million, operating cash of BRL 330 million -- consumption of operating cash, and that started to turn around during the year. So that's why we still had positive operational cash generation of BRL 305 million. Despite the strong consumption and cash burn in the first quarter, we had the negotiations with suppliers and so on in '24 with the transportation from Manaus and other elements. And with that, we closed the cash position of 2025 at BRL 656 million, although it's 9% lower than the cash position of December '24, that has allowed us to reduce our debt by 24%. Speaking of debt, the next slide, we closed gross debt at BRL 490 million with cash of BRL 166 million. We now have net cash again -- I'm sorry, cash of BRL 655 million. We have net cash position positive in BRL 166 million. With this cash, we would be able to pay off all of our debt, and we are still making some moves to make this flow even healthier. Now in the first quarter, we allocated part of the debt that would impact short-term cash in 2027, we prolonged it, extended to 2031 with the same cost conditions. And yesterday, when we were closing the material for the presentation today, we received the first tranche from the BNDES. A few quarters ago, we mentioned to the market that we signed this funding commitment of BRL 294 million to make the industry 4.0 in Manaus and there's a variety of documents that we needed to provide to BNDES. We did that. And yesterday, BRL 50 million already came into our cash. So now we have a cash position today that is healthy. We are paying attention to opportunities, but we understand that at this time, Multi does not need to make a lot of movement in the market. Always the opportunities are studied by the company, of course. So that's what I had for the financial side. Thank you very much. Andre, you have the floor.

Thank you, Edu. So talking a little bit about our segments here, getting into a little bit more detail. So this is our portfolio of brands. As you know, we are present in the corporate segment with a B2B business. We'll talk a little bit more, but it's been an important lever for revenue growth, and we have the brands that we're working in partnership with today. In tech consumer, specialized consumer, so consumer tech are all of the brands, either our own brands or partners that we have today in our portfolio, focused on technology, both for direct sales and sales through our retailer partners. And specialized consumer, we have the baby products and toys and health care in this portfolio. And we'll talk a little bit about each one of them. So in corporate, we have significant growth in revenue, as we mentioned in the beginning. This is a margin that although we can get a better mix of margins, especially due to product mix in the fourth quarter, especially we had a bigger share of government with a profitability that is slightly higher than the average we have for the other divisions. We also have here, it's an important segment for telecommunications where we produce -- we have exclusive partnership with [ V-Tech ]. That's one of the largest global manufacturers of optic fibers, equipment and Internet connections. So there's also a bigger contribution to the top line of this segment in the fourth quarter. We have PCs and tablets for government as well that evolved with this increase in gross margin. We have a memory and components divisions, OEM. I'll talk a little bit more about this, but we have in the case of memory, especially processors, electronic components have a lot of cost pressure. We have been able to pass through some of this increase in the fourth quarter, also helping to this contribution. And then in the fitness equipment, we have a new partnership. I'll talk a little bit more later and one of the manufacturing projects in partnership with Oppo and Hisense and our partnership with Royal in motorcycles in Manaus. So this is an area that it's important to say that we remain very strong. Even though the margin is a little bit tighter, these partnerships are long-term contracts. We're less exposed to FX variation risk, revenue risk. So if you look at the brands, here is an operation that is really helpful and has a purpose. In addition to contributing to the top line, it also dilutes expenses for the company, bringing expertise in manufacturing, quality, partnership with excellent global companies. So this is something we're always looking at in terms of potential new partnerships as I'm going to talk about the most recent partnership. So moving to our other segment. This is where we cleaned house. I mean, cleaning house in the sense of reducing the portfolio, optimizing the portfolio. We go from more than 3,000 SKUs to 1,700 SKUs. A lot of them are here in the technology product division. And today, our main products are TV sets. We have notebooks and PCs, an important side of drones that we have the exclusive representation of DJI in Brazil. We have the tablet division as well that's also important. Audio with the Post brand, we're among the top 3 brands in market share in Brazil. We have computer accessory lines and memories and flash drives among others. So all technology products. Here, it's important, and it's very clear. We have a reduction of revenue in the sense that we reduce SKUs, we leave some of the lines, invest in lines that we believe have more adherence with the consumer today. So there's a drop on top line. But when we look at margin, that's what's most important for the company, the margin grows. So we go from 26.2% to 28% and the absolute margin goes from BRL 401 million to BRL 410 million, and that's what we've been seeking strongly. So now we get into 2026 with the house kind of inorganized in terms of this pillar. What we want is to resume growth of revenue, maintaining and growing margin. That's the driver here for the team. We're working very strongly on strengthening the brands, reviewing, revising the portfolio to be more adherent to the needs of consumer and all the macroeconomic factors are considered. So that's the line where we have the ambition to resume growth of revenue. This -- we organized it and we streamlined it. So we want to maximize this margin over time with this mission of always bringing technology to improve people's lives. In specialized consumer, that's the baby, toys and health care lines that represent close to 10% of revenue with BRL 100 million revenue in the quarter. The Pet division left as we discontinued it, sold it last year. And here, we see the same effect. It's a little bit bigger effect. We get good news, bringing a historical margin of 34.7%. It was already an interesting margin to a level of 42.4% that shows our capacity to maintain very well done the work of our teams of looking at the consumer, understanding the portfolios, maximizing this margin of 42.4%. And even with revenue going down, we see the same effect here of absolute margin year-on-year. So that's good news as well. And also as well, we start this year seeking to increase revenue and maintain margin at this level for specialized consumer. Challenges for 2026. Well, I think there's a lot of people from banks listening to us, and you know a lot better what the challenges and context, even foreign and domestic are this year. Now we have a scenario where there are pressures in the price of fuels and there's also an issue with logistics, even though it has not affected us directly, it is a point of attention. So, so far, there's no major disruption in the sector, but it's something we're looking at, especially with the increase of logistical costs that's already a reality. There's also a natural volatility in the scenario of elections this year, interest rates still high and the consumption impact when we talk about the pillars of consumer. But the company overall is very well structured with the inventory level that's a lot more optimized. I think we're beginning -- despite all of this context, we begin the year very confident. In Brazil, there's no such thing as an easy year. We are accustomed to all the scenario, but the company overall and what we can control, we will control. And I'm very excited actually. I think we're going in a very positive direction. An important point that is important to highlight. I don't know if everyone is aware, but we've been getting news and the press has been really talking about this and those of us who are in this industry see this closely, which is a global crisis that happened since the end of last year and continues this year. It should continue. All signs indicate that it will. When you talk to large global companies and in terms of memory devices, this year, it will continue a challenge. There's an overall increase in demand for components and memory, especially memories that are important for electronics. A lot of it due to the demand for the major AI distributors that had a lot of orders for processors and stronger devices with higher tickets, higher margins. But the products like TV sets, tablets, computers and some network products that also need memories and also use processors as their components -- as part of their components suffer pressure because those global manufacturers, the global players, there are a few of them, 5, 6 tops, but they migrated the demand for higher ticket products. And left behind a shortage of the products for the other scenario of memory. So that impacted not only Multilaser, but the global scenario. We look at partners, and we're very involved in the scenario. This is a global market issue, and we've been monitoring this closely. We shouldn't see any major impact. We've been trying to pass through the prices with this increase, and that can help the top line. Of course, it brings a challenge in terms of profitability, and we've been trying as much as possible to control it in this scenario with the FX variation that helps us balance this moment. But we're paying attention to this very closely, taking all the measures possible to avoid any disruption on supply and try to have the smallest effect as possible. We know we can't control it. But looking at the glass half full, the Chinese market works very strongly in democratizing -- I'm sorry, Multilaser works on democratizing technology. And when the market price increases like we see now, all the products, computers, tablets will have price increases. We remain the most competitive product, and that's products with cash in the pocket of most of the population. So in scenarios like that, we may even find a positive outcome looking at this outlook. This here is a very important certificate that we achieved at the beginning of the year, end of last year. It's a certification of partnership with the federal revenue, with the customs authority. There's less than 1,000 companies in Brazil, 800 or some companies in Brazil who have this certification. This is something that not everybody can get. It's major companies who have a good partnership with customs for imports, for all of the tax aspect. And this certificate brings a lot of benefits for the company. We are able to clear our shipments on water. So the products already arrived with customs clearance to Brazil. So the time that it usually takes for clearance, we've been able to reduce this time. We've reduced costs as well. So this is work that's being done. Just to give you an idea, more than 3 years that the team has been working on that certificate. And since the team was very engaged this year, we've been able to achieve it. That's very good to the company to bring this -- and that's another measure that shall help us in operational efficiency. So the initiatives for 2026, we continue -- as we say internally, the restructuring process remains. We are not satisfied. This is a trajectory. It's an ongoing path that we're following. Everyone here is very excited and seeing this resumption, but we're not where we want to be yet. So there's a lot of important work to be done in terms of expenses, as I mentioned, working capital, portfolio optimization continues. And what's new now, what I can say, comparing to last year, last year was a year of cleaning house, restructuring. This year as well, but there's something else here. We're going to pay a lot of attention to the company's DNA to monitor opportunities. In terms of business, M&A that may make sense within our mission of technology of improving people's lives. So we are keeping an eye and studying a lot of opportunities, new lines that we understand that may contribute to the mission and to the sustained growth of the company. And here, finally, we've announced -- and we're very happy when announcing the partnership with the Sennheiser Group, that's a German group, one of the companies -- that's one of the most renowned companies in audio, especially for professional audio, that's the division that we formed this exclusive partnership for Brazil. So starting this year, we start operating the Sennheiser Group in Brazil. It's an exclusive operation that we have in the contract with them. These products join our corporate portfolio. It's more B2B sales. It's professional audio products, high quality, focused on specialized channels for sound -- for audio and music as well as major events, concerts, TV stations, churches, any venue where you communicate to the public when there's an audience present, Sennheiser already has maybe more than 50% of the market with these professional speakers and audio solutions, microphones, speakers, video conference materials or equipment. In this division, basically, the team who was working on the Sennheiser operation in Brazil joined us and they're with us in the group now with a business unit focused on professional audio, the specialized channel. So that team already worked and already brought a profit on that. And we understand that there's great adherence now with technology. It's a new channel that we're implementing. So it adds, it complements our portfolio. So we're very excited that it's a highly professional team that knows this market very well. They're running this operation. So we're very excited with this new partnership. May other good partnerships come in the future. So that's it. I'd like to thank you. I think we try to be as clear and transparent as possible.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is in writing from Gustavo Farias, UBS. The first question is looking forward, how do you see the mix of revenue as the partnerships mature? If you can mention or talk about the dynamics of gross margin looking forward when you see the rollout of partnerships that in theory have lower margins. Gustavo's second question is, how do you prepare for a potential higher pressure in logistic costs?

Thank you, Gustavo, for your question. As for your first point of the partnerships and what we see looking forward, we believe that we have a positive path ahead of us in terms of partnerships. There is a forecast of growth, and we would like to deliver this year. And certainly, it's tighter gross margin. At the same time, it also brings a smaller or lower level of expenses. So it consumes less of the company's expenses. It helps reduce expenses as we've seen in the effects of last year, and it also brings less risk. It's a revenue where we are less reliant on retail, on consumers in the political scenarios with the election coming up. So for us, it's an area that, of course, has margin pressures. I can't deny it. But if we work well and efficiency as we have been working, I think we can get to good results. And this is a division where we're very focused on. About the second point, the logistic costs, I think we need to monitor that you've been monitoring us in the market last -- a few years ago, we had the drought in Manaus. That was another big major pain point. So there's always something. It's incredible how Multilaser in this market. Every year, there's something, there's war or -- so it's something we're accustomed to. We will try to pass through prices, try to renegotiate and optimize whatever we can. But it's a reality for the market. At the end of the day, we -- there's no way around it. We have to pass it through to prices. Obviously, we have the situation of being a first price product. So it has an effect, for everybody that's the same. So it's impossible not to pass this through, and that's the challenge we have here.

Next question, Leonardo Cintra with Itau BBA.