Raia Drogasil S.A. (RADL3) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to RD Saude's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This presentation can be found on RD Saude's Investor Relations website at ri.rdsaude.com.br where the replay for this conference will also be made available later. [Operator Instructions] Before proceeding, I'd like to mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of RD Saude's management and on information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, as they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Our investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of RD Saude and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today, joining us from the RD Saude Studio are Mr. Renato Raduan, CEO; and Mr. Flavio de Correia, CIO and Corporate Affairs Chief Officer. Good morning. Turning it over now to Mr. Renato Raduan.

Hello, good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us in the 4Q, '25 earnings call. We're here to take your questions, give an overview of the business and do our best to clarify any questions you might have. Flavio, how is it going? I expect a lot of questions. I hope you had a good night's sleep Flavio because I believe we're going to have many questions to take at the end. But before that, we are going to go over our presentation and leave some time for Q&A. Usually, in our earnings call, we talk about the highlights of the fourth quarter, but since we issued a material fact notice yesterday, you probably have many questions about 4Bio. And I don't want to delve too deep into the 4Q results. And all the while you will be thinking about the material fact. I'm going to give you an overview of why we have this deal with ProPharma. And then we are going to go over the fourth quarter and take your questions. I believe you are well familiar with 4Bio. I think it is worth explaining why it is such a successful venture. It has a very differentiated proposition in the specialty retail business. It provides the customers -- a very different service to the customers. A last mile service and also a customer service, a customer-centric service, I don't know which camera I'm talking to. That's why 4Bio was so different from the competitors. Another differentiating factor was the human-centric value proposition that it has. And that is part of the reason why it grew so much over the last years, going from BRL 125 million -- that's the number we had the year before we acquired part of the company, and it reached BRL 3.3 billion. Now let me explain to you why we thought it made sense to sell the company. And then I'm going to talk about the financials. What changed in recent years is that the market changed with the pandemic, with medical loss ratios getting higher and operators, carriers became much more price driven due to financial needs. So all the value that we added to the business was no longer the interest of the carriers. They became much more price-oriented. And then the market started to operate on a reverse auction basis with hospitals putting more pressure on prices. So the business characteristics changed and the most relevant factors involving 4Bio became last revelant. And in a business that is much more price-oriented there are owners that feel more natural for this business that could add more value to it than we can. What we had with 4Bio was a cultural fit and a true belief and delivering a different value proposition. But it no longer makes such a different difference in this market. The tax designs should be more efficient. And we believe that a wholesale company like ProPharma can add more value to a business like 4Bio. That is one side of the equation. We understood that 4Bio would be more -- would be stronger competitively with ProPharma, and a company like ProPharma than a company like ours. And also on RD's side, we realized this year very clearly that when we invest our energy and capital in what we do best, which is pharma retail, the results are great, as you're going to see in our 4Q results. When we invest our energy where we have most competencies, we have great results. So this is about focus for RD. That was the rationale behind our strategic decision to go forward with this deal. And financially, it also seemed to make sense. The deal, as we explained to you was at an amount of BRL 600 million with BRL 8 million in cash. So net, it is BRL 520 million. And it is the price that ProPharma is paying. And we believe that it makes sense. We believe that they are going to be able to increase the size of the business. Of course, if you look at our multiple of our net profit in the last 12 months, it would be a multiple of 6. And we ended the year with BRL 72 million, so the multiple is actually 7x. And ProPharma is paying BRL 520 million, but for us it's going to be worth BRL 700 million because we have rights to receive payments. For example, sales tax rate differentials, we are going to receive that money over time and also BRL 60 million in income tax. So for us, the final balance will be BRL 700 million, and we invested BRL 400 million in this asset over time. With primary and secondary stake we paid BRL 400 million, and the IRR is close to 17% with a multiple of almost 10x. We believe that this business is worth more to someone else other than us, and we believe that this is a win-win deal. This is the overview of the strategic decision that we made to sell the business and also the economic rationale. I believe that I have now addressed part of your questions about the deal. But at the end, if necessary, we can take more questions about this. And now I would like to talk about the 4Q results. The numbers were very solid, extremely strong. And in normal conditions, we would be proud of these numbers for sure. But I believe that these numbers become even more important and greater if we consider the starting point that we had. The beginning of the year was very difficult. The end of last year was difficult as well. And to get to the fourth quarter with such numbers starting with such a bad starting point. I believe this is reason for everybody to be proud. We had 3,547 units in operation. We opened 330 new stores with an IRR of over 25%. So this is a very good expansion moment for us in terms of quantity and quality. And it is going to help us be stronger and stronger, and more capable of consolidating the market in the future. We reached 52 million active customers, which is 1/4 of the Brazilian population. And we had 440 million tickets. It's like every Brazilian person bought twice in our stores. But it's actually 42 million people going to our stores on average 8x in the year. And the NPS was [ 91 ]. It is a record-breaking number for the company. I know that it's hard to go to [ 93, 95 from 91 ], right? And we should remember that this NPS is at a very high level. And in order for us to keep such a high level with so many tickets, it's absolutely fantastic. We also had another record-breaking number in the period of 12 months. We had 170 bps of market share gain. We are changing the metric from the manufacturer price to the consumer price. But even considering the previous metric, we would have 180 bps in market share gain. We don't recall reporting such a high market share gain in any other earnings call, and that happens across the board, across all regions. And of course, GLP-1 drugs have a major effect on this, and we take pride on it. We mentioned earlier, in earlier calls, that we were prepared to serve this wave. But even if we exclude GLP-1 drugs from this market share gain, the gain was 100 bps. So it is a record-breaking number. Our digital revenue came to BRL 11.3 billion. I believe we grew by over 50% for the third quarter in a row, and our retail penetration was 29.3%. And we also had an NPS that broke out records on digital channels. And of course, the performance is a natural consequence of our delivery of our execution and everything we provide to our customers. The consolidated numbers look like this. Gross revenue was BRL 47.6 billion, with a growth of 14% year-on-year. And in the fourth quarter, it was 19.8%. Our adjusted EBITDA was BRL 3.4 billion, and our adjusted net income, BRL 1.3 billion. And of course, those numbers were the result of a great extraordinary performance in the third quarter. And now let me show you the details about retail. Gross revenue in Retail was BRL 44 billion. We grew by 22.3% in retail in same-store sales, and mature same-store sales 14.5%, and 11.4 percentage points in relation to cement. And our EBITDA grew by 41.2% in 4Q, '25, reaching almost BRL 1 billion EBITDA, and a net income of BRL 1.2 billion. So looking at the highlights, you can see that this was a very strong quarter. And [ isolatedly ], it would already be very good. But if we consider the starting point and everything that we did over the years, this is a great achievement. We started the year growing by 10%, 12% -- 12.7% in 3Q. And in 4Q, we grew by almost 20%. In retail, we grew by 22.3%, as I said earlier. And we were able to grow so much without letting go of our gross margin. Although there was a lot of pressure from GLP-1 drugs with a smaller margin we were able to grow, keeping our competitiveness with prices, and we only had a loss of 20 bps in gross margin. We were able to dilute our SG&A and especially D&A expenses, and that is part of the achievements that we enjoyed this year, and that took our EBITDA margin to leap from 6.2% to 7.2% after 12 months. And the market share looks just the same with 1.7% growth. Before I turn it over to Flavio, I'd like to show you the quarter-on-quarter view as well. We had 10.8% and then 11.6% then 12.1% and now 13%. You can see that we had a succession of quarters with growing numbers. And in our core business, in the retail business, although we look at quarter-on-quarter numbers and not year-on-year numbers, you can see that the growth was significant. And the fourth quarter is also a reasonable pride for us because we were able to perform very well in HPC. The Black Friday was extremely solid. Last year, we knew that we underperformed, as we told you very transparently. And this year, it was different. We had a growth of almost 18% in HPC. Of course, GLP-1 drugs have a major effect here. And even if you exclude that effect, the growth was a double-digit one. And the major challenge that we had with HPC is behind us. We closed the quarter with 18% growth. And if you look at these numbers, you can see why we take so much pride on them.

Thank you, Raduan. Now let me give you more color on some of those numbers. Considering the overall growth of the company of 19% and looking at the breakdown of the 22% growth in the retail business, we can see that the stores have been growing by 16%, which is a very strong result generated by the 330 stores that we opened in the period. And also as important as that growth is the growth of sales in mature stores standing at 14.5%, a record-breaking growth. We never had any quarter with such huge growth, and that is 11 points more than the CMED inflation rate. Of course, this is pushed by GLP-1 drugs and the digital channel as well, which is very strong and HPC, and also the overall results that we had on Black Friday. Now let me give you more details on the digital channels. Digital reached BRL 11.3 billion in sales. So we surpassed the BRL 10 billion mark. And we had a specific growth this quarter of 78%, and that is boosted by GLP-1 drugs and Black Friday, as I mentioned earlier. So it's important for us to understand the quantity and the quality of these numbers as well. This result, 82% of our digital results came from the app, which is not an open channel. It is a channel used by engaged customers. So it bears witness to how engaged our customers are and how frequently they come to us. Those are all very positive indicators. Our performance was sizable, of course, but at a very high-quality as well. And we believe that this is a business that cannot be replicated. Our digital strategy does not take place only on the digital world. The digital strategy materializes because of our stores. The stores are the main place where the customers engage with us. The drug stores, the pharmacies are where the customers fulfill their deliveries, and that synergy between the physical world and the digital world is where the strength lies here. We reached an 80 -- an NPS of [ 80 ], which is a very solid one, very different from the rest of the competition. And we have also a high number of deliveries happening in less than 1 hour. Concerning market share, we have a new methodology as of this quarter. We've been using price to the consumer, not to the plant. But regardless, our pre price, or customer price, show a very significant growth observed in the year. [ 1.7 ] market share gain in the period throughout the country. This is a record-breaking number. We have never grown that much in recent years with some important highlights. 3 percentage points market share gain in Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo amounts to 1/3 of our sales. And it means 1/3 of the sales of Sao Paulo, for the whole state of Sao Paulo, which means a lot, having a 3 percentage point increase. 2 percentage points growth in the Midwest. We've been progressing significantly there. And another important point of growth in the Northeast, where we've been expanding our scope of work. This is an indication that we have solidly and robustly expanded all categories, which is [ blue ocean model ] with 10% increase of new stores on a yearly basis. And we closed less than 1% of our stores per year, very solid result in the qualitative data of our market share. Gross profit year-over-year, it went from 27.7% to 27.2%, aligned with our strategy of categories. We started the year at a difficult level, but we closed the year in a very positive position. We have HPC here with a lot of commercial activity, more aggressive pricing strategy. We have also had an increased share of GLP-1, which is going up to 2 digits. So low double digit for GLP-1 sales, but diluting our gross margin. In addition to CMED effect, CMED [indiscernible] grew less than CMED this year. And this year, there is a pressure of 10 bps. But in the quarter, the loss has led to 10 bps positive balance. All these pressures have been offset by 10 bps and 4Bio sales and others. In other words, we've lost 50 bps of margin throughout the year, but they were all offset within the quarter and neutralized in the year, thanks to improvement in selling expenses and G&A. Selling expenses. Even though there were a number of pressures leading changes from 17.4% to 17.5%. In 2024, we had a [ weak ] basis of people. Our head count was not enough. And throughout the year of 2025, we've replaced most of our stores' staff and also offered more benefits. This is a pressure that impacts selling. But in the last quarter, thanks to all our adjustments, we had a dilution over what we had last year going to 17.6%. So structurally speaking, we are doing okay. And G&A, as a result of all the decisions we made in the first quarter, pictured in the second quarter. Our structured G&A went from 3.1% in 2024 to 2.6% in 2025. This level is very solid, stable. We do not expect it to go up. This will be our steady state, so to speak. It means EBITDA margin of 7.1%, [ 0.10% ] below what we had the previous year. But offsetting all the pressure imposed on us in the first half of the year. The fourth quarter had a margin of 7.2%, 1 percentage point over what we observed in the fourth quarter last year of 2024. EBITDA of sale -- of retail as we are going to work just in retail, EBITDA [ ex 4Bio ] was 7.5%. This is the number that we have to have as a reference from now on ex 4Bio. Cash cycle was positive. There was an improvement in the number of days in the cash cycle coming from a 5 days inventory level drop year-over-year. Let me go into details on the financial elements, and I believe more questions are going to be asked concerning that. Maybe something that was not there in our release. Our financial expenses was BRL 250 million in the quarter. But financial expenses is structurally higher than in previous quarters because of one specific entry in financial revenues, which result from our supplier finance. Expenses, which were not accounted for in the first quarters and were all concentrated here. It's about BRL 17 million, BRL 18 million in the operation. The results should be increased by BRL 18 million, and the [ previous one ] should be deducted of the same amount. As a consequence, in our net profit, which was BRL 360 million in recurring basis, the BRL 360 million would be BRL 380 million. Set that explanation and making it clear now. Our financial expenses impact the results of the year, going from 1.3% to 1.7%, 40 bps increase, but aligned with higher interest rate in 2025 and higher debt levels because of [ AVP ] and because of a comparison basis of previous year, which was somewhat disproportional. We have really observed that difference. Part of that pressure was offset and recovered in the interest rate because of the profit sharing compared to 2024. And also because of some subsidiaries that we improved. It means 2025, we had net margin of 2.8%. If we revisit 2024 with all that one-off gains that we have observed and have led to a reduced number here and less financial expenses. Our recurring net margin would be 2.8%. Maintaining the year of 2025, very much aligned with previous year results, considering, of course, all the pressure that we were submitted to in the first half of the year. Another important point that you always ask, what is the recurring interest rate the year? 11.2% for the year, and we expect to have a recurring interest rate level of 8.6%. Positive free cash flow, as you can see here, with positive results and BRL 197 million, with a total flow of BRL 175 million negative. For two specific situations. When we speed up the car, it means we consume more fuel. This is what happens in the last quarter. We needed more cash to perform in our operations. But if we are getting to a plateau and this is going to get stable. And also because of dividend distribution at the end of the year, BRL 113 million to optimize the tax opportunities. Well, to wrap up and then finally go into questions. If you were with us in the RD Day in beginning of December, you have seen this slide. We talk about our current position and where we are heading to. We saw that we spent a whole year of 2025 on recovering our performance, a performance that really portrays the assets that we have built through our time. The last quarter of '25, first quarter of '25 did not really show what our company currently is. So throughout 2025, we tried to recover our performance, value proposition, reinvestment in price and competitiveness, logistics, inventory levels. We invested a lot on our pharmacies, offering a greater value proposition to people. We really focus on HPC, improving customer experience. And I believe we've succeeded that can be translated through the NPS. It has all been funded with expenses with discipline. So we adjusted G&A we focused on inventory levels and losses. So now they are at much more acceptable levels. And in addition to that, as I've emphasized, we're focused on obtaining G&A efficiency, but also optimization of investments and capital allocation. The total of efficiency was not only for our recurring corporate infrastructure, but rather everything that we were doing in terms of investments of capital, and it has really improved significantly. The 4Bio transaction is not in isolation. It's part of our reanalysis of capital allocation 4Bio sales is exactly part of that focus on the core that we've had throughout the year. I said that once we have achieved the level that we had envisioned, which is exactly our current position. We would go into level where the whole management and the executives could rather focus on something else rather than focusing on recovery of performance. Now we are taking one first step and moving ahead, adding additional layers to create stronger modes. We have revisited our strategy. We have very much clear -- clarity on the most relevant segment of customers that need the pharmacies. We have paid attention, listened to their concerns, what would be important for them in terms of value proposition, and how we can resort to our own assets to achieve that. So focusing on optimizing our culture of efficiency, evolving in the use of AI, allocating capital to where we have the right to win with our competencies lie. And we are going to keep on accelerating those different elements. And this is going to take us into a cycle of gains, which is disproportional really. Exceptional. Not only because we are reinforcing and establishing our moats, but because of market elements as well. GLP-1 is going to be part of that. It is a growing relevant segment for the future of pharma retail. And we have the right of having [indiscernible] here that has been built throughout the dockets. It is going to really mean a lot to us. We have more investment power than our competitors. Our [indiscernible] is [ 3.4 ]. BRL 1.3 billion is our profit range. AI technology will be essential for successful companies. We have an investment power in technology and AI, which is much higher than our competitors. The more digital our customers go, the better because we have a competitive advantage in terms of our digital solutions. And our -- the experience of our app is very similar to the leaders in this area. So there are a number of market factors combined with all our strategy and focus in terms of proposition mode that will take to greater shares. Of course, this is an ongoing process. As we improve value proposition, we are going to get more -- gain more scale and share -- the more share in scale, the better our performance and investment power, more we can invest in people, in value proposition to customers, the more we invest, the more we accelerate gains of scale and share and so on and so forth. This is the flywheel, which is going to take us to even greater gains in share because this is all built up on our years of history. We have been also in our venture for 15 years, the merge of our 15-year merge, emphasizing all the elements of this strategy. Well, now we are ready to answer your questions related to 4Bio, to the quarter, to the year. Anything you need to know to understand better our business. Thank you all very much. Let's now open for the questions.

We have here a good cop bad cop strategy. We tend to get sometimes questions that go very, very deep. So please let's ask one question at a time. One question per participant. So please focus on your most important topics of interest.

Thank you very much, Raduan and Flavio. Let's now open for the questions and answer. The first question is by Luiz Guanais with BTG Pactual.

You see Raduan, concerning what you've just talked about GLP-1 opportunities, could you please tell us more about what we can expect in terms of working capital? First, with improvement of the supply of Mounjaro. You know how to deal with that quite well, but still it was an issue. And secondly, once you have generics, I believe that it has changed somewhat as of the second half? And Flavio, when you talked about the adjustment in your financial results with supply and finance, BRL 18 million per quarter, right? So the adjustment of BRL 18 million in the last quarter, but all the other quarters had similar adjustments. Did I get that right?

Raduan now answering. First, I'm going to talk about GLP-1. Yes, it has favored us in working capital. It is -- if it's a product with a short demand. The -- of course, the inventory turn over is very, really high. Customers used to pay cash. And then we had -- we could pay installments to our suppliers. With time, things change. Now we can sell also installments, 6 installments. The terms of our suppliers haven't changed, but as there is no more shortage of the product in the market where we can have higher inventory levels, when we consider the net of the working capital, it will receive some more pressure. But If you consider GLP-1, the working capital cycle will be better than the whole company. If we have a good management of coverage and inventory policies. But still, it has been creating value to us, to our competitors and more is coming off, of course. It's a lot. It is a market of BRL 10 billion -- amounted to BRL 10 billion last year. If you'll get to BRL 50 billion in upcoming years. We will keep on having over share. Maybe there is going to be some decrease with generic prices may come down, but the average price is [ BRL 40 ]. if it goes from BRL 1,600 to BRL 400, it's still 10x higher than the price of regular medication. So we are going to maintain the over share, of course, and we're going to work towards that. The adjustment that you mentioned about the financial expenses, they should have been the BRL 9 million in the second and third quarter, as they were not accounted for in the second and third quarter. We entered BRL 18 million in the last quarter. So BRL 18 million is the total number, but the BRL 18 million was a combination of 2 other quarters, second and third quarter, no carryover from the first quarter.

Great. So BRL 18 million is the year effect? Thank you for your answers.

Yes, the annual effect is zero -- within the year was zero. It was just -- those that should have been second and third quarter were not entered. So net profit was BRL 9 million higher. The [ 400 ] on the second and third quarters should have been [ BRL 390 million ]. So the BRL 18 million were launched, or entry [indiscernible] saying in the last quarter. So it should have been [ 380 ] and it was [ 362 ]. It was subtracted. That was the fact in the year, zero net effect.

The next question comes from with Mauricio Cepeda Morgan Stanley.

My question is about your strategy and your focus on simplifying the strategy. In previous calls, we talked about this for different reasons, but now with the sale of 4Bio, it seems to me that you are treating that path of focusing on simplifying the processes. Is it fair to say that you are going towards a pure retail strategy? For example, reducing the health care services at the stores and simplifying the business in general. And I would also like to know if that open space for you to reduce your G&A and CapEx and have more productivity at the store? Because your staff works on the retail side and also on the services side at those stores, right?

That is a great question, Cepeda. It's all about balance. We are going to focus more on our core, but our core is not pure retail. Our differentiating factors, our value proposition is to be a health care agent in the communities where we are located. We support health care of the people who surround us in our communities, offering added value services to the distribution of medication. So yes, we are simplifying the strategy, especially when it comes to the health care part of our strategy but we still have our ambition to step out of our core business and go towards services and added of things, but it's not the same strategy that we had in the past of pure retail. Now the segment that we want to address is defined and we believe that they are the most relevant ones. And we want to focus our best assets to offer the best value proposition. And that includes the retail operation. That also includes the digital capabilities that we've built over the years, and it also includes the services, the low-complexity services that the pharmacist can offer at the stores. In the service rooms and also the counter solutions in terms of compliance to treatment and subscriptions as well. So yes, we are simplifying, but be careful so as not to interpret as an extreme simplification. The differentiating factors will be maintained and the digital players will not be able to offer the same solutions that we do. And that is -- remains part of our strategy. But yes, we do have a sharper focus on health care and digital assets. Especially in the competencies that we have the right to win in. We don't want to steer away too far from our strengths where we can make a difference. And we should also remember, Cepeda, that we are the biggest employer for pharmacists in Brazil, 15,000 pharmacists. Most of our store managers are pharmacists. So we provide specialized service. It's not just selling boxes of medicines to our customers. [ Melissa ], our VP of Operations, is actually finishing her studies as to become a pharmacist. So we are doing everything we can to make this company a health care one which is also a retailer, and not the other way around. And from our numbers, you can see that very clearly Cepeda. All the customers that received some sort of healthcare service has a higher engagement level, be it health care service, customers compared against those who never had any service at the stores, the lifetime value of those customers is longer. And if we look at those customers' journey, we can see that our role in their lives increases over time. For example, when the pharmacist get in contact with them to see if the treatment is going well, and we compare the intensity of their contact with us before and after that contact, and the LTV always increases. So in a health care layer that we can add in our territory adds a lot of value, and we become even more important in the lives of our customers in the segments where we are present. And it's just about sharpening our focus and getting a little bit closer to the core, those areas where we can deliver much more than the competitors can.

And do you think you can reduce expenses because of that?

I think that expenses in general will continue to be diluted over time. I don't see major investments happening in the future. And I don't think that there's going to be a major reduction either as the one that we have this year with 50 bps in our G&A. And I believe that most of that reduction effort is behind us, but we do see a continuous improvement over time.

The next one comes from Danniela Eiger with XP.

Congratulations on the results. My question is about growth. I think was the main highlight. The growth was exceptional this quarter. And what really caught my eye is that the growth happened across the board. GLP-1 is an obvious strength for you, but also HPC was a very good surprise. So many things caught my attention in that growth. And thinking about this quarter since it was so strong, let's look forward and think about the main levers for your growth. GLP-1 is a very obvious one. But if you can talk about other opportunities, any specific factors that are going to drive your growth, I don't know maybe you can expand your over share because you see potential in it. If you can give us any more color about how you are going to maintain that pace of growth? And what kind of intensity can we consider for the future in the main categories that would be very helpful?

Thank you very much. I cannot give you any specific guidance, but I can give you overall numbers. Well, the sales performance was indeed very strong. We had a market share gain across the board. We gained market share in the market because we believe that the independent players are losing strength because they are not participating in the GLP-1 game, or maybe because they do not go digital. But when we look at the main change we gained market share from them because we strengthened our value proposition. So we won against the big ones as well. Now we are looking at things less by category, but more by customer segments, the segments that we want to cater to with a stronger value proposition, which is going to make us more important in those customers' lives. Of course, GLP-1 drugs are growing on a starting point that was not so high last year because inventory struggled a little bit. And the second half, the GLP-1 starting point was a little bit higher. But also in the second half, we started to see generics, or at least we believe that we are going to start seeing generics coming into this game. I believe that we can have a growth base that is going to depend on our aggressiveness on OTC and HPC and the entire medication operation. So we want to grow in a balanced way across all categories, excluding GLP-1. I don't think one category is going to grow much more than the others. Generics grew a little bit more recently because there were two patent expirations that were very significant. But I expect to see a well-balanced growth across the board, excluding GLP-1 trucks. I talked about the [ 1.7% ] growth year-on-year, but more than 1 point in our growth -- in our share growth came from GLP-1. So it is, of course, important, but it does not account for all that growth. And over the year 2025, we decided to exercise a few muscles that were not so active in 2024 and earlier than that, which is HPC. We learned how to manage the HPC prices more actively and more frequently. We learned how to put products on sale and then remove them from those promotions. We learned how to do things with influencers and digital channels. We used to do that in the past, but not so intensely. And we decided to exercise that muscle and gain strength on that side of the business as well. And that's going to make a difference going forward. This year is very important for us because we have many public holidays and the World Cup as well. So we need to know how to communicate with those customers effectively. It's going to make a huge difference.

The next question comes from Joseph Giordano with JPMorgan.

I want to talk more about expansion. You said that was a record-breaking growth with an IRR of 25%. So I want to know more about that expansion. We might not have seen such great expansion in previous periods. And why is it happening now? Are you investing in larger stores in better locations? If we look at the industry as a whole, 2025 was the first year where we had a net decrease in the number of pharmacies in Brazil. So I'd like to isolate those factors and understand the picture a little bit better. And inventory increased significantly. So I would like to know more about that. Is that related to GLP-1 drugs? Or is it just because you need inventory to grow the business?

Thank you very much for your question, Joe. It is a pleasure to talk about the expansion of our store base. I work very actively on that front since I joined the company 14 years ago. The returns have been better and better. The main factor here is the quality. There's a whole science behind finding the best locations to open stores. We actually opened many more stores than the 3,500 stores, considering that we closed a few units. But we are obsessed about managing the new stores very actively. And we also created a toolkit that allows us to apply all the "scientific knowledge" that we have on this. And of course, with our culture, our people, that's the unique factor about us. So our decisions about this are also very qualified. And of course, we have a great -- we have great skills. We know how to do it, how to open new stores. But that is not reason for us to simply open stores for the sake of opening new stores. Our focus and our criteria, strong set of criteria that we have continues the same. We need to take all of those skills into account and talk about the possibility of opening new stores with a committee that meets every Monday. So it is a process that takes a lot of things into account. We are not opening larger stores with more parking spaces. What's happening is that we are being even more selective about the places where we decide to open stores. We have smaller stores as well in underprivileged neighborhoods because other stores are closing. So that open space for us to push the frontiers going to underprivileged neighborhoods and also in other towns, smaller towns, all around Brazil. Another thing that favors our expansion, Joe, is that we created a brand that is strong and renowned all around the country. The fact that we build a brand and a value proposition that is equally recognized regardless of where you are in Brazil favors the efforts of opening new stores. If our brand was only strong in our place of origin, and in other regions the branch was not that strong, the results wouldn't come. So the expansion also lies on the factor that we created a differentiated value proposition all around Brazil. Our competitors don't have the same benefit, and that's why they are limited in terms of expansion. When it comes to inventory, we had a change in the inventory front. Our new VP of Supply Chain is here with us at the studio. He has been working with us for most of our year and many of the improvements in our logistics chain was spearheaded by [indiscernible] and his team. He used to be a consultant and now he is the leader of that department. He is now part of our family. And I'm certain that there is still a lot of work to be done by himself and his team, and they will continue to reduce inventory, improving our cash cycle. But again, we don't want to see a sharp reduction quarter-on-quarter, or month-on-month. But I do expect to see an improvement. I don't think our inventory level is the optimal one. I believe that it is going to change from now on.

And now the next question comes from Irma Sgarz from Goldman Sachs.

Assuming that the environment for your company and retail and digital platforms in general, will continue to be intense in some categories? Do you think that you need to make more investments in prices and promotions? And what are the efficiency levers in terms of promotions and sales and negotiation with suppliers, you will use to be able to offset that pressure on your margins, on your gross margins in particular?

Thank you, Irma. Well, over the last months, we did not feel the need to invest in more and more promotions and sales. We signaled that we would increase the density on promotional actions to improve our competitiveness. And in the second half of the year, we got to a level that is a little bit higher than the past, but it is now stable. And therefore, we have been growing in HPC at healthy levels. And that is -- is that guarantee that it is going to be stable forever? No. The market might take steps further, and we will react accordingly. We were able to offset that factor, thanks to partnerships with the industry, with the suppliers, with negotiation strategies that proved efficient. They help us be more competitive, and we were able to do that by finding the sweet spot in the prices. And now we have a project with a consulting firm that specializes in pricing and promotions. And the consulting firm is starting this month to help us be more efficient in investments in gross margin. So I feel very confident that the competition in HPC will continue as it is right now. And even if we see more aggressiveness from competitors, we are going -- we will make use of the lessons we learned over the years to offset part of the investments, or we might divest in some categories, or regions, so as to offset those effects, which we did last year. We were very fortunate to find the right places to invest and divest, allowing us to invest more in HPC and adding HPC to our performance. So we have been very accurate in our decisions to invest in all of those factors. And we want to be more and more precise about those investments. Building up on that and sharing some of the figures, our gross margin went to 27.6% in the quarter, 27.6% to 27.4%, 20 bps of drop in the quarter year-over-year. Considering that in 2024, we had not even half of GLP-1 as we have it. GLP-1 alone amounts to the hold solution if we had just this indicator, it would amount and explain all dilution. All effects ex GLP-1 were neutral, or contributed positively to our gross profit. The market likes to see all the different lines, but I think you'll have to consider EBITDA. What is our strategy? We want to activate stores. Our unit economics based on one store. It's a store with fixed expenses, rental, salary. These are fixed expenses throughout the year. So additional sales will help us dilute our fixed expenses. If thanks to investment in competitiveness, we are bringing more flow and sales, the delta we have is offset. If we do it well, it gets further improved and bring positive results to us such as the third quarter and fourth quarter results.

Next question by Tales Granello from [ Safra ] .

I'd like to talk further about efficiency in your expenses and your new project of stores focused on well-being, HPC. Have you opened any new stores with this new format? In the Investors Day, you talked about it. I don't know whether you have open new stores or not towards that. And what is the performance of the stores? Do they need consultants? Do they need different staff? And how does it interact with your expenses from now on, and the expansion of this kind of store?

Concerning gain of efficiency and expenses, let me give you a general guidance because we expect to maintain this wave of dilution. We focus on efficiency, and we want to have discipline in capital allocation. And these are very strong drivers in our company. We know how important it is. We were very fortunate during 2025. We have delivered excellent results. We've really improved what we expected. Digital practices, for example, we have reorganized our squads and we have evolved so much in the use of technology and AI to develop code that on the second half of the year, we had a smaller number of people but we need, and the support that we had was better than in previous years. Even though we had fewer staff present. And we expect a natural progression towards that. So we expect to keep on improving our OpEx and CapEx efficiency, allocating accordingly our capital, really focus on, we have the right win and where we can have quick returns, but no further additional steps. Second part, we haven't opened this new pharmacy with a comprehensive extended experience into beauty. We expect to open the first one in the beginning of the next half of the year. It's not only an expanded assortment. It's a different experience. So assortment, layout, service of beauty consultants, yes, health services that can really offer the best. It's a different store, bringing the best to offer for us. But of course, it is going to impact a lot the experience, expanding the assortment of beauty products. It's expected to be going into the second half of the year. And it's going also to teach us a lot about learnings. So how can we adapt different clusters, how based on the learnings of HPC with a more expanded assortment? What can be learned from it and help us make adaptmentto our shopping mall stores, where we can have more focus on beauty, skin care, more than medication or regular HPC? This is a type of store that's going to teach us a lot for the company as a whole. Not open yet. You are all going to be invited when we open our store, but we expect it to be half of the year.

Next question, Leandro Bastos with Citi.

I have a question about GLP-1. You've talked about the penetration of low double digit, as you mentioned. But considering the market potential and all advantages, that you mentioned for the company in the category, what would be the speed of sales penetration? Would there be a similar kind of gain in sales of GLP-1 or not? That will be my first point. Secondly, a specific question about supply finance. To understand the nature of this entry, is it something new that you've started just done?

Second part, Flavio will answer. Now GLP. It's all supply and demand. Unrestricted demand. This is what we see. We had 5% market share even before Mounjaro was being sold in the last quarter. We reached our doublet low double-digit number. Can it go above that? Well, it could, or would depending on the supply. We still have intermittent supply by the industry, especially dosage of 2.5 and 5. If in the first half of the year, we have higher inventory levels, probably numbers will go up. Second half of the year, when generic comes into the market, there is going to be broader access. In the first half, I cannot anticipate what kind of an increase it will be depending on the supply. Demand is a given. If we had higher inventory, we would certainly grow. I would like to thank the main players of GLP-1. They've been working hard to provide product availability. It's been increasing quarter-over-quarter. They've been helping, but there are some global limitations of raw material. It's a demand from all over the world. But it depends on product availability. We will grow depending on product availability.

[indiscernible] and I have been involved in calls, sometimes just 1 hour call to talk about GLP-1. There are just so many layers involved. What Raduan has said is varied to the point. But I'd like to talk from the perspective of [indiscernible] and the right to win. Our company has been in existence for over 100 years. And its first pharmacy has always been focused on serving the population. Yes, we were opened in the high-income areas of the city. And now we have 3,500 stores within 1 kilometer radius, which just cover a lot of the high income social classes. They are here around our stores million Brazilian consumers that buy from us every year at an average frequency of 8 transactions per year. The most sophisticated consumers, they can afford these kind of products. We have frequency. We have engagement. So this is right to win. On the suppliers' perspective, we are the largest partner of the suppliers, and they want to sell to us as well. It is a constant dynamic. Concerning supply finance, this is a very simple activity. It is an anticipation of payment to our suppliers, or retail does it no secrets there. It brings a lot of positive results to us. There were some entries which in terms of expenses were not made. The activity contributes positively to our results, revenues and expenses. In expenses, for 3 continuous quarters, we didn't make any entry. And this is why you're seeing the results, financial expenses, offsetting the previous quarters. In other words, if we had accounted for all expenses, nobody would even notice that because it's negligible. When we add that to the revenues, this is really positive and contributes a lot to our results. What was -- what were the revenues in terms of supply finance? This is not a result that we share. I apologize.

Our next question comes from Rodrigo Gastim of Itau BBA.

Let me go back to GLP-1. A Specific question I'm going to ask your help to try to understand seasonality throughout the year. It's a new product. We don't have any track record, yes, yet. Just trying to understand how seasonality of the product should be? Have you observed any changes? I don't know if there was a problem of supply, of some of the suppliers? We've heard that from some other pharmacies. Has there been a drop in GLP-1 at beginning of the year, meaning that the second half GLP-1 drugs are used more frequently because of summer time? I don't know. I think it would be interesting to try to understand seasonality of the product and understand the dynamic of GLP-1 in the first part of the year. Maybe nothing has changed. I don't know. Secondly, about the discount of generics. This week, there was a price reduction. Second, [indiscernible] free. Now that you're going into generics. How are you dealing with that changing prices? Have you already fine-tuned how this is going to be? And how are you getting prepared to that?

Thank you. I don't know, you were -- specialist in GLP-1, wonderful paper you wrote. Great. We don't know that consumers are always getting prepared to go to the summer vacation, getting -- trying to get slimmer and all that. But it's difficult to predict anything because there has been always a shortage of product throughout the year. So we don't know really how demand oscillate or fluctuates. It's not because of demand, but rather a supply based on numbers, I wouldn't be able to infer any kind of seasonality. Maybe before the summer season, there would be an increased demand similar to other characteristics of cosmetic and well-being, I don't know. But the gains for well-being, for sales team are just so significant. And people say, I've seen what my friends have experienced, they feel much better. These are real life world, real-life examples, and that will go beyond the idea of winter, summer. I believe people are going to have continuing treatment with GLP-1 regardless of any seasonality. We've also seen that it should be continum treatment, even though it's going to be a smaller dosage offered at a higher intervals rather than having initial treatment, losing weight, and then just quit using the drug. It's expected to have a continuous use of the medication throughout time. I don't think seasonality will be major, but based on data, we cannot really say anything. Second part of your question about price. This is macroeconomic supply and demand again. There are two similar programs. [ Semaglutide, liraglutide ], but as there are various few competitors, they just got into the market with prices closer to the main agent, and they haven't got any relevant penetration yet. When new generic agents come into the market, there's going to be a higher [indiscernible] of price. As there are going to be similar agents, generic agents, naturally the reference agents will try to offer more attractive agents as we've seen for Wegovy. What you've said in terms of projection in your papers are very good references. Maybe there would be a 20%, 30% drop. Maybe eventually, it will get to 50%. But rather than BRL 20 billion, it will be a BRL 50 billion market. I don't see anything differently from what I've read in your paper. You talked about the second unit for free. The offer is the first treatment, the first spend of the treatment is offered for free. But if you buy the whole treatment, and of course it impacts somewhat. It's the first spend for free, not the second one. All the different papers, all the different publications in the market. They've emphasized a number of points. And I've just heard today, according to WHO, in Brazil, 50% of adolescents are already overweight. This is a different kind of audience, different kind of consumers. In GLP-1 what we have all been addressing is 1 million boxes being sold per month. Once additional needs are identified, the market will inevitably be extended.

Next question by [indiscernible] with UBS.

I have two questions. First, GLP-1 again. You've talked about the fact that you have 1/3 of share in the category. Considering the strong performance of same stores of 14.4%, has the share increase in the fourth quarter or not of GLP-1? Could you break down the share by molecule, [ semaglutide, dozipatide ], or at least tell us whether the share you currently have of Mounjaro is higher than 1/3? Second, about 4Bio. You said that the sales would -- sale would generate BRL 60 million of income tax. Could you please tell us a bit more about the time you expect to monetize that amount? That would be great.

Our market share in GLP-1 drugs is difficult to track because of how intermittent it is. It really depends on your inventory of 2.5 grams and 5 grams. The competitors have an inventory while we don't have an inventory of those products and the other way around. And I am sure that in general, our market share is higher than 1/3, the 1/3 that you mentioned, be it in GLP-1 or Mounjaro. It is higher than that if you look at a longer track record. And we believe that it is going to continue to be -- so it is continue -- to continue to be higher than the competitors because we are closer to the consumers, and there is a discount [indiscernible] purchase the products online and our digital channels offer a better journey than the competitor's journey. So it's not just the fact that we have customers in the high income segment of the population, but also because we are present in digital channels. That's why we have that over share. And we expect the situation to continue. Now about the BRL 60 million, it's actually simple. We have that amount to recover because of the shareholders' equity invested. We have -- we are entitled to that amount, the BRL 60 million. It was not monetizable before because we had deferred shareholders' equity. But after the transaction, we are going to be entitled to receiving that amount. And because of tax incentives, our shareholders' equity was completely detached from the investment of BRL 400 million. And now we will be able to recover part of that equity as income tax. And we estimate it is going to be around BRL 60 million. It could be a little bit more or less than that. I think we have one last question.

The next one comes from Gustavo [indiscernible] with Bank of America.

Your online sales have been growing consistently, but still the pressure on gross margin is under control. I believe you gave us some indications of why that happens, including the increase in our market share from the app. But I would like to know more about the difference between your margins in brick-and-mortar stores and digital channels. And also, I would like to know more about the flow of customers into your stores. Do you think the growth of sales comes from new customers, or maybe higher tickets, including GLP-1 drugs? Or maybe those customers come into the stores, trying to buy those products and end up buying other products as well? What do you think about that?

Well, we invested in HPC to be able to fund the promotions in HPC and we believe that the characteristic of digital customers is different from the average in the market. Those are not people who are just surfing the Internet trying to find the best prices and receive the products at home. Our app is usually used for convenience and also access to better prices. And that allows us to put the prices online closer to the brick-and-mortar prices. And also, we have the [ Click and Collect ] initiative. The customers can purchase the products online and come to the store to get their products. And -- that's how we do it through the Click and Collect journey. And our delivery services are very different from the competition. We promised to deliver the products in less than 1 hour. And that's how we have been operating with very competitive shipping costs. We usually deliver the products in 40 minutes on average. And that's why we don't feel mandated to offer the best prices online because the prices are just part of the overall value proposition. And that's why the prices -- the difference of prices between the online channels and brick-and-mortar stores is not that large. And also penetration of the GLP-1 drugs is very important. The penetration is 29%. If you look at GLP-1 alone, the online participation of those drugs is completely insane. If you look at the market as a whole, the customers usually originate their orders online. And that's why the growth has been exceeding 50%. And even if you exclude GLP-1 drugs, the structural growth in all segments online is still higher than the growth that we have in brick-and-mortar stores. And as a complement, it is important to highlight that the digital transactions are not just digital transactions with any customers. Those customers are recurring ones. Only 3% of our digital transactions base is done by customers that only buy online. That means that 97% of customers buying online also by other stores. So the digital channels are just for convenience, the convenience of customers who are already engaged with the company and not really specific channels fighting against other specific digital channels. And that converts into LTV. We are giving customers more flexibility depending on the time where they want to buy a product, they can choose to buy online or at a store. Also, the economics of the digital channels are very close to the economics of the stores. So the contribution margin of a digital transaction is basically the same, or very close to the contribution margin of a transaction at the store. So the digital channels will give us lower margin because of the prices that are lower. But that difference is growing smaller and smaller. The digital world also has a very light expense base because we just dilute the expenses that happen at the store. So at the end of the day, if there's a gap, it's basically, totally offset due to the expense dilution. So for us, it doesn't matter. We just want customers to buy however they want to us, it doesn't make any difference.

With that, we conclude the Q&A session for today. And now I would like to turn it over to our executives for their closing remarks.

Well, first of all, it is a pleasure for me to be here. I'm proud to be here reporting such great results, thanks to all of our employees who are behind these great results that we are reporting in Q4. It is record-breaking quarter for us. We grew by 23% on retail, which is not to be [ sneezed ] at. And not only that, we also gained 170 bps of market share in 12 months. We delivered a record-breaking NPS at the stores and also on the digital channels. HPC went back to the performance, we wanted it to have. We diluted our G&A expenses in 50 bps in the year. We grew our EBITDA by 100 bps quarter-on-quarter and 50% year-on-year. So across the board, we delivered solid results. Having said that, we are not here thinking that we won the game and that we don't need to do anything else. We are confident we are happy. We have an understanding that these great results bear witness to our hard work, but we are committed to continue on this journey. I was here in the difficult moments. And I was not here to give you excuses which are different from explanations. We gave you the explanations. We told you that the results were short of what we wanted the results to be. It was a reason for frustration for us and you as well. We shared our frustration with you. We were honest, transparent, and we told you what we were going to do. We tried to show you that the results were not on par with the company that we built over so many years. And the numbers are here. The number is compatible with our potential are here. We delivered them this quarter. And I have the pleasure to be accompanied by the other leaders in the company, motivating them. But who actually delivered the results were the 72,000 employees, our biggest assets. And only we have such a great workforce. We don't have just one team. We have the team, that complement the assets that we built over the years. I am confident that there is still a lot of great things line in store for us. So we are going to deliver to the society and our shareholders. If you put together our assets, which are unique, we are second to none in terms of brand, culture, proximity to the customers. And if you add that to the strength of our team, and what the team did this year where we started and where we got, and we add speed, nobody else can do what we did. If you put together our assets and our team, we have a bright future ahead of us. And if we add a third element, the lessons that we learned and how humble we were to learn the lessons and understand that we need to focus more on our core and the areas where we have the right to win, putting more attention to efficiency and capital discipline. If we add our team, the assets and the lessons that we learned and our focus, I'm sure that we are going to build extraordinary things going forward. Thank you very much, each and everyone of you in our team. Thank you to the Board members, the controllers that helped and supported us in the difficult moments. And thank you, the investors, the shareholders, especially the ones that believe does in the moment of difficulty. The ones that were able to look past the results, snapshots, and we're confident that there was more to our story. You can count on my commitment, the commitment of those 72,000 people that work with us. We will continue delivering great results to you and the society as a whole. Thank you very much. See you in 3 months.