Sonae, SGPS, S.A. (SON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Sonae's Full Year 2020 Results Conference Call. During the introduction hosted by Mr. João Dolores, Sonae's CFO, [Operator Instructions] I now hand over to Mr. João Dolores. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you're all doing well. Welcome to Sonae's 2020 Annual Results Conference Call. As usual, besides myself and the Investor Relations team, we have on the call today the following CFOs of our portfolio company: so Rui Almeida from Sonae MC; Paulo Simões from Worten; Hugo Martins from Sonae Fashion; Luis Mota Duarte from Sonae Sierra; and Cristina Novais from Sonae Investment Management. In this presentation, I will basically cover a brief overview of the year. And afterwards, I will present our financial results, business by business and at the end the final consolidated results for the group. At the end, and as usual, we will open up the session for Q&A. So starting with the overview of the year. 2020 was a very challenging year for society at large, obviously, and naturally also for Sonae. The last 12 months were a huge test to our purpose, to our values and to our businesses. And I'm happy to say that we stood up to the challenge. Just a brief reminder of how our life changed in just 1 month. In just a month, we had to move more than 6,000 people, central structure employees, to work remotely from home. Our network traffic in telecommunications increased by 70% in fixed Internet. We saw huge increase in online demand, e-commerce in our retail businesses, around 600%, for instance, in Worten -- only in Worten in Portugal. The needs in terms of order processing in our -- both physical and digital operations increased dramatically. We saw huge disruptions in our warehouses. And we had a number of stores -- more than 1,000 stores closed during those initial moments and then throughout the year with a number of different restrictions that kept changing the rules of the game up to the end of the year and still today. We had different impacts in different businesses, as you all know. We had some businesses that had their operations highly stressed, such as Sonae MC and Worten, not only in the physical world, but also online. We had NOS, which I already mentioned, in terms of network traffic. We had Sonae IM with its investment activity significantly affected initially. And then we had a number of businesses that were either temporarily closed or faced very strong restrictions to its activity. I would include there a number of banners under Sonae MC, obviously, also Sonae Sierra, Worten in Spain, Sonae Fashion and Iberian Sports Retail Group, both in Portugal and in Spain. Also, at NOS, we had the cinemas business practically closed throughout large periods of the year. We had the suspension of paid sports premium channels as well. And at Sonae Financial Services, we had a number of business lines, which were highly affected, such as personal loans and also ATM withdrawal. It was a bit of a tsunami that we faced. But I would like to start by saying that we remain completely committed to our purpose. During 2020, we continued fully committed to our people in our community. We paid out bonuses to reward exceptional work at the front line in our retail businesses in -- a total of EUR 9 million. We did not introduce any layoff schemes in the businesses that we control in Portugal. Our community support grew significantly to EUR 14 million. We donated thousands of goods, not only food and electronics products, but also personal protective equipment. We supported several initiatives to fight the pandemic, namely the Coronavirus Global Response with a financial donation. We created advance payment programs to our suppliers -- to our small suppliers to improve their treasury conditions. So I would like to start by emphasizing that, really, we were there for our people. We were there for our partners. We were there for our communities. And that is very important to us. On the other hand, we remain committed to our ambitious targets in terms of environmental value creation. We sized -- businesses in total reduced by 29% versus 2018, their GHG emissions. We announced our commitment to have carbon neutral operations by 2040, anticipating by 10 years the Paris Agreement we had adhered to previously. 73% of our packaging in 2020 was recyclable, a significant step forward in our commitment to have 100% of reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic by 2025. And 36% of our women -- of our leadership positions were filled by women, in line with our target of reaching 39% by 2023. At the same time, also during 2020, the group was recognized as a world leader by CDP with an A rating because of our environmental efforts. We were also distinguished by MSCI with an A rating in ESG and were considered the Portuguese company with the highest representation of women in leadership positions in the Leading Together Index. Additionally, Sonae Sierra was also recognized as Green Star in the 2020 GRESB Assessment, the leading investor-led ESG benchmark for real asset. And our brand-new Sonae Tech Hub was recognized with the LEED Platinum score by the United States Green Building Council and is today 1 of the top 100 eco-friendly buildings in the world according to their standard. But we also accelerated digitization across the portfolio. Digitization was crucial to achieve the results that we achieved in 2020. It's really impossible to summarize everything we did on this front last year. But the investments we made in recent years in building our e-commerce platforms, developing them, bringing in new talent into the organization, all of this was critical to ensure our level of readiness for this tsunami that hit us this year. We were ready. We were ready and we -- the results show that. But we also had to innovate. And we had to adapt in real time. We launched new channels, we established new partnerships, accelerated the digitization of customer touch points, implemented new digital payment solutions, et cetera. I have to say that the agility of our teams was outstanding, and this goes to prove that the decision that was made at Sonae a few years back to provide more autonomy to each business was the right decision. All this resulted in online sales more than doubling versus 2019 as we reached aggregated online sales of almost EUR 500 million in the year and are today the clear e-commerce leader in Portugal. We accelerated digitization, but we also continue to actively manage our portfolio of investments. And we had a number of very important milestones in 2020. We reinforced our stake in NOS and established Sonae undoubtedly as the reference shareholder in the company. We acquired the remaining 50% of Salsa. And we continue to execute follow-on investments in our tech portfolio at Sonae IM and also invested in 5 new companies in areas such as AI, cloud infrastructure, 3D imaging, cybersecurity and digital catalogs for refill, all areas that we believe to be at the forefront of what is being done in their respective fields. We also executed very important divestments, and these divestments were critical to improve the group's liquidity and financial position. I would like to stress the partnership with APG, Allianz and Elo to create Sierra Prime, which enabled EUR 188 million of cash proceeds for the group at the beginning of the year. Further sale-leaseback transactions at Sonae MC in the amount of EUR 50 million. The completion of the towers sale deal by NOS with Cellnex, which represented EUR 375 million of upfront cash proceeds with the potential to reach EUR 550 million. And also at Sonae IM, we had the redemption of participation units held in the Armilar Funds, which produced another EUR 22 million in proceeds. Very well. I will now move on to the financial performance of each business and also to the consolidated status. Starting with Sonae MC. I would say that Sonae MC had really an extraordinary year, a year in which it faced huge challenges, but it stood up to those challenges and reinforced its leadership position in Portugal, both leadership in terms of sales but also in terms of customer satisfaction and recognition. This very good sales performance led to a growth of 10% to EUR 5.15 billion in 2020. And this was underpinned by the physical store footprint, but also by our digital sales growth, which achieved -- which reached 80% in the year, thus reinforcing Sonae MC's leading position in the food e-commerce market in Portugal. In terms of profitability, Sonae MC, despite the additional costs, which were quite significant in 2020 related to the pandemic and also despite the fact that many of its banners were closed in large periods of the year, it was able to maintain its level of profitability, delivering a 10.2% underlying EBITDA margin, which is a benchmark profitability margin internationally. All in all, the business was able to deliver a very solid cash flow generation, more than doubling free cash flow versus 2019. This was obviously fueled by the company's positive operating performance and good working capital management, controlled CapEx and, obviously, the completion of the sale-leaseback transaction that I mentioned previously. As a consequence, Sonae MC ended 2020 with a better net financial debt position, which led to an improved ratio of 3x total net debt to underlying EBITDA, a reduction from 3.3x at the end of 2019. Moving on to Worten. Worten had once again -- had a very good year, and we have already mentioned that in our last call in Q3 but Q4 was even an acceleration of that performance. Worten ended the year with a very strong growth, 7%, to EUR 1.16 billion. And you have to bear in mind that we restructured the operation in Spain Mainland, so the growth in Portugal was even higher than that, around double that figure, around 14%. So it really goes to show the good performance of Worten in 2020. And again, this was not only off-line but also online. Worten, this year, 2020 was the first year in history in which the online market share surpassed its off-line market share. In terms of profitability, Worten's strong performance led to an improvement in underlying EBITDA from 5.2% last year to 6.4% this year. And here, obviously, with the contribution -- positive contribution from both the Portuguese operation, which excels versus the competition and also the performance -- the restructuring in Spain, which was very much accretive to profitability, we expect this impact to be further enhanced in 2021. Moving on to Sonae Fashion. Sonae Fashion, as you all know, had a very tough year, has happened with the whole fashion sector. We -- this sector was 1 of the most affected sectors by the pandemic globally and Q4 was no exception. But our performance in Q4 was actually very positive. We showed a total decrease in revenues in the year of 12%, which was well above what the market saw with Western markets has decreased by around 30% to 33% in the year. And so the performance at Sonae Fashion was much better. This was due to a number of things. It was due to the resourcefulness of our teams in serving its customers. It was due to online sales. Obviously, as you can see, we had an increase of roughly 80% of online sales during the year. And it was also due to the innovation that our teams were able to implement in designing new products that cater to the needs of our customers. And I think the biggest example of that is the development of the MOxAd-Tech mask, which accounted for a significant amount of sales this year at Sonae Fashion. Obviously, profitability took a hit. We -- it decreased EUR 31 million to EUR 13 million this year, a 3.8% underlying EBITDA margin and also a significant negative cash flow in the year, which, obviously, we had to sustain. But I mean, again, the current solid financial position of Sonae was able to withstand this impact, and we are looking forward to 2021 to be able to perform better and go back on track in terms of the transformation program we were implementing at Sonae Fashion. In Sports Retail -- and these figures you see here are the last 12 months as of October, because, as you know, we have a financial -- a fiscal calendar at ISRG, which is slightly different from the 1 we have at Sonae. But here, you can already see the impact of the pandemic, obviously. The company did well. It only decreased turnover by 2% to EUR 660 million. And again, here, online was critical to achieve this performance. ISRG's e-commerce sales increased by more than 3x in the year. And this was a huge evolution for the company and ensured that the total turnover evolution was much smoother than it would have otherwise been without this e-commerce performance. EBITDA took a hit, 31% down versus last year, but still with the positive contribution of EUR 48 million in the last 12 months. As for Sonae Sierra. Sonae Sierra, as you all know, was probably the most impacted business in our portfolio by the pandemic. 2020 was a difficult year. We saw significant rent discounts being attributed in Portugal. And this had to do with a law, which we already discussed in our previous calls, which was highly detrimental to the sector and much -- a lot different from what happened in other countries in Europe. Net results came down from EUR 60 million in 2019 to 42 -- minus EUR 42 million in 2020, and EUR 90 million -- a decrease of EUR 90 million happened only in the last 12 months -- in the last 9 months of the year. And so the performance of Sierra took a hit in terms of operating results, but also in terms of devaluation. And we saw the NAV of the portfolio going down from EUR 1.38 billion at the end of 2019 to roughly EUR 900 million by the end of 2020. Obviously, this decrease has 2 effects. The most important 1 has to do with the asset sales and dividends that were distributed by the company throughout 2020. And then we have also a lesser impact from property devaluations in the year. Still, it was a year in which the company had a number of strategic milestones, which were very important and which were completed. I already talked about the Sierra Prime transaction, which the company also opened up a new facility -- new assets in Spain -- in the South of Spain, in Málaga, a designer outlet. It did an expansion in non-shopping portal and continued to sign multiple new services contracts in its services activity. Regarding Sonae Financial Services. The activity of FS was also indirectly impacted by COVID-19, and we had a slowdown during the year, especially due to the reduction in product consumption. However, I would like to highlight that the Universo Card continued to grow and ended the year with almost 900,000 customers. Half of those customers are already digital. So customers that use the app and a number of services and products in -- through the app and we increased our market share in the credit card production market to 13.8%, 1 percentage point above last year. As for Sonae IM, during 2020, I would say the operational activity of Sonae IM was virtually stable. We saw a very strong performance from cybersecurity companies, which was then offset by a less positive performance by other businesses in the portfolio. At the end of the day, turnover was practically flat. Underlying profitability improved actually versus 2019, but we saw very significant developments in the portfolio management activity, mainly with Arctic Wolf, the new unicorn in Sonae IM's portfolio, which had an important impact also in the group's consolidated results; and also Outsystems, the other unicorn in the portfolio, increasing its valuation at the end of the year and also having an important contribution to the group's results and to the value of Sonae IM's overall portfolio. As for NOS. NOS, as you know, already published its full year results last week. NOS showed a very resilient performance in 2020. The decrease in sales and EBITDA has mostly to do with the cinemas business, which was highly impacted with the restrictions in 2020. The core telecommunications business showed a very, very resilient performance and enabled the company to sustain this level of revenues and also EBITDA. The EBITDA margin actually increased slightly due to the significant cost savings measures that were pulled throughout the year. In terms of CapEx, the company continued to invest in its business, but was able to generate a very high level of free cash flow due to the Cellnex deal, which I mentioned before, and so was able to basically maintain its dividend payout also at the end of the year. In terms of leverage, the company continues with a very conservative level of leverage, and we'll touch upon that in the futures -- in a while as well. And there is -- obviously, the Cellnex transaction was instrumental to achieve a very low level of net debt-to-EBITDA at the end of 2020. So overall, in terms of the consolidated performance, turnover grew by just over 6% to EUR 6.8 billion, mostly driven by the positive contributions of Sonae IM and Worten, which more than compensated the evolutions at Sonae Sierra and Sonae Fashion. This -- again, this top line growth was significantly influenced by our online sales, which accounted for around half of our total growth in the year. Underlying EBITDA was practically flat, which, again, given the additional cost that we had with the pandemic and the number of businesses that closed down during the year, I would say, it's a very resilient performance. And total net results for the group decreased significantly, around EUR 95 million, here, with the contribution of a number of provisions and impairments and also due to the devaluation of Sonae Sierra's assets. In terms of cash flow, Sonae generated a very strong cash flow in 2020 with improved operational cash flow from its fully consolidated businesses, which, coupled with asset sales, the ones that we covered before, and more than compensated the cash that we spent in M&A activity, like the NOS, Salsa and IM deals -- transactions that I mentioned before. And so at the end of the day, we generated EUR 220 million of free cash flow before dividends. In terms of leverage. Sonae's free cash flow generation was obviously critical to make sure that after dividends paid throughout the year to minority shareholders that Sonae, Sonaecom and Sonae Sierra, we were able to reduce our net debt further by EUR 47 million to EUR 1.1 billion. We were able to not only reduce leverage. We reduced also our holding loan-to-value. And we currently have a very strong financial situation. We've refinanced more than EUR 750 million in the year in terms of long-term facilities. We also were able to finance around EUR 225 million of ESG and green loans in the year, also stressing our strong commitment with a sustainable future. Additionally, all companies in Sonae's portfolio continue to hold conservative and solid balance sheets, I would say, investment-grade level leverage profile. Sonae MC ended the year, as I said before, with the 3x net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. NOS, with its free cash flow generation helped by the Cellnex transaction, also reached 1.5x net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. And Sonae Sierra maintained a net LTV of 26% in the year. I would like also to point out, as you probably saw already, that the Board has proposed a 5% dividend increase to EUR 0.0486 per share, a total of EUR 97 million, in line with our historical practice. This corresponds to a dividend yield of around 7% at current share price levels and a payout ratio of 85%. Before wrapping up, I would just say that Sonae's consolidated performance in such a challenging year clearly proved the benefits of a well-balanced portfolio. Despite having been impacted by severe operating restrictions in some sectors, overall, our portfolio showed a remarkable performance on the back of the strong value propositions, digital ratings and also the ability to rapidly adapt to a volatile context. The next few months and the next few years will be different, no doubt. The world will likely see some structural changes in terms of digitization, disruption in supply chains and changes in supply chain patterns, new interaction patterns, new working patterns, the increased relevance of sustainability and ESG issues. And obviously, we need to be ready for that. We need to be -- and we will be ready for that. We want to continue to be -- to have benchmark growth and profitability. We want to continue to be -- to have the same level of agility and digital ratings that proves critical for us in 2020. We will continue to innovate, and we will continue to take good care of our people, our communities and the planet. 2021 will be another challenging year. We will continue focus on reinforcing our leadership positions at both Sonae MC and Worten, leveraging our premium physical locations, but also our leading positions in e-commerce, while we continue to invest more in the digital front. At ISRG and Fashion, we trust that 2021 will be a year of recovery, where these businesses will be able to function with a higher degree of normality and recover the performance levels we have seen recently, and the businesses are ready to do so. Regarding Sonae Sierra, 2021 will certainly be another year significantly affected by COVID-19, at least in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, the company will remain focused on protecting the value of its assets, while also looking for further opportunities in the real estate market, mainly in investment management, services and selective developments. Sonae Financial Services will continue to strengthen its market positioning, leveraging the success of the Universo Card. And Sonae IM will continue to invest according to the latest technology trends in retail, digital infrastructure and cybersecurity. Finally, NOS will continue to play a crucial role in the digitization of society, and will be prepared to embrace all the opportunities associated with 5G. Sonae will naturally remain committed to provide the company with the necessary shareholder stability for the execution of its strategy. Final note in terms of financing. Sonae currently holds a strong liquidity position, as I said before. We do not foresee any additional financing needs for the next 18 months, nor do we expect in the short-term any breach of any existing corporate debt covenants in any portfolio company. So thank you very much for listening, and you can now please open the question -- the session to Q&A, please.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from José Rito of Caixabank.

Yes. So I have some quick questions on Sonae MC. So looking back, 2020 was a very strong year with a like-for-like of 6.6%. So my question is -- and you mentioned in the release that you started well the year, but I think that the comparable ways will be a little bit stronger, harder over the coming months. So the question is, if you think that it should reach positive like-for-like this year? Also on Sonae MC, basically, if you can detail which players have been winning market share, apart from Sonae? And a question is Mercadona has already been noticeable as a competitor in some of the regions where they are present, are not quite. I would prefer to -- if you can answer these questions on Sonae MC, and then I can continue with some 2 additional questions.

Okay. José, thank you for your questions. I will ask Rui to answer the 2 questions directly.

Could you repeat, if you don't mind, the second question, because I failed to understand the question, regarding Mercadona?

Yes. Basically, if there's been already a relevant competitor, where -- in the regions where they are present?

Okay, okay. Well, talking about the like-for-like for this year, well, this is too soon to give you a proper guidance regarding the like-for-like. We started the year very soon, and we are in the different condition that we were having last year by this time -- by this period because we start with the confinement and lockdown. And as you may understand, the food area -- the food businesses benefit from the fact that people don't have the possibility to reach out of home. In this particular case, we benefit from the situation. And the market is growing according to the data that we collect from Nielsen. Market is growing at double digits. And we are, again, gaining market share. But the bigger sales started last year by this season -- by the second half of -- the second half of March. So yes, we will have -- we are confident. We are very positive regarding sales this year, but, again, is hesitant to give you a proper guidance. But we -- again, we continue to believe that we will be able to continue to gain market share. Regarding Mercadona. Well, Mercadona is another player coming to Portugal. We respect a lot Mercadona, as we respect other players in the Portuguese arena. We respect all players. And to -- yes, they are considering some -- we are suffering a lot because they increased around more than 35,000 square meters in the Portugal area. As you may understand, we noticed the presence of Mercadona around this. But we were able to increase our market share in Portugal area in the last 18 months. So we are tremendously positive with our value proposal for the Portuguese market, where we, as João said a while ago, we continue to increase the levels of positive perception that we are collecting from our customers. Yes, we suffered from their operations as we suffer from other players in the Portuguese market because the Portuguese market is tremendously aggressive in terms of competition these days. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Understood. But -- so which players they've been winning market share, apart from Sonae?

The other player winning market share, it was little in the year -- last year, little -- won some 30 basis points in market share and we won 60 basis points in terms of market share.

Okay. Okay. So now I have a second question on Sierra basically. If you can share why Grosvenor, your partner, is selling? And just to confirm if they could sell the entire stake over the coming years? And also on Sierra, basically, which was the implicit yield evolution on Sierra's portfolio in 2020?

Okay. Thank you. I'll take the first one, and then I'll ask Luis to take the second one. Regarding the sale of the stake that Grosvenor just completed, we've always said that Grosvenor has important minority rights at Sonae Sierra, including enterprise. And so they exercised at this moment in time the option to sell an additional 10% stake in the company. That operation has already been completed by yesterday. Look, we do not know what is going to be Grosvenor's decision in the future. Right now, they have a 20% stake. We have an 80% stake. We've always said that we like having Grosvenor as shareholders in the business. And Grosvenor has been very committed also with Sonae Sierra supporting its strategy. I would like to highlight that the acquisition that we did for the initial 20% stake a couple of years ago and also these 10% were done at a significant discount versus NAV, which, as you know, is mark-to-market at each moment in time. And so we feel, obviously, proud to reinforce our stake at Sierra, a company that we know very well, obviously, and that has a strategy of growth and is probably -- or not probably, for certain our most international company in the portfolio. Luis, do you want to take the second one?

Yes, sure. That's a very simple one. The answer to the second question is 50 basis points. That's what the yield increased from the blended yield last year to this year.

Yes. Okay. And do you have a view on how yields could evolve in 2021?

I have to confess I was expecting that question. So I mean, as you know, we are operating in an uncertain environment. The valuations that we have on our books now are qualified by the material valuation uncertainty clause. Our portfolio is heavily geared towards dominant prime assets in geographies that are less prone to the whole e-commerce dynamics and definitely very far away from the dynamics you see in the U.K. and the U.S. From a yield point of view, we continue to see, as I'm sure you will know much better than us, that interest rates will not rise anytime soon. We continue to see high -- historically high record spreads between real estate yields, particularly shopping centers, and the risk effect. And we saw good signs of operating performance at a time when the restrictions were lighter. Meaning we saw demand for people to go back to shopping centers and to return to normal. Bear in mind that in Portugal, we had the toughest restrictions on footfall. Basically, the limitation of people to 100 square meters in Portugal was, as far as I'm aware, the tightest in Europe, which obviously limited hours significantly. There were many days when -- and moments when we had to close our shopping centers because we had achieved the maximum. So we see good, positive signs. In the current context, where we operate of uncertainty, it's much more difficult to give you proper guidance, but this is, I think, the building blocks that we see and which -- with which we form our views.

Okay. Okay. Understood. So just a final question on the rental discounts that you said, the 26% on average that we saw in 2020. Is this expected to reverse in 2021 or at least when the lockdowns are over?

Well, in Portugal, a couple of things. In Portugal, we had discounts in the order of 50%, 55%, which is by far the highest level in any country, which reports these figures. The average across Europe that we saw is in the order of 20%, 25%. So this discrepancy that you can see is purely the result of this extraordinary law in 2020. The law in 2021, which is in place until March, could potentially be extended depending on the government's decision. It's a more logical law, whereby the discounts are purely proportional to the decline in sales, so rather than what we had before, with a cap of 50%. So we would expect the discount in rents to be a lot more aligned with the evolution of sales than what it was in the past. And we would expect Portugal to present the same sort of statistics that any other country in Western Europe presents.

Okay. Understood. But even for the rest of the European assets, this 20% to 25%, you expect this to revert in 2021 as soon as we get back to normality, let's say, that's my...

Yes. I mean, as soon as the -- the answer to your question is really it depends on the evolution of COVID. But we -- at the moment, we're going through is extraordinary and the level of discounts we're giving is extraordinary. So the moment things lift, so the moment sales return to more normalized levels, we would expect rent to have the same sort of evolution. So discounts should decrease.

Our next question comes from João Pinto of JB Capital.

The first 1 on Outsystems. Can you give us some color on what the valuation reached in the recent investments round means for Sonae? Using that valuation as a reference, could you give us any detail on the part attributable to your indirect stake? Second 1 on Sonae MC. Can you elaborate on sales growth in the first month of the year? And what's your current market share? The third one on Sierra. Can you update us on future plans? How are you positioning the company for the challenges that are persisting? And what initiatives will you implement to recover footfall on a post-COVID basis? And last one, where do you see net debt in 2021?

João, net debt at the group level?

Yes.

Okay. Sure. Look, I'll start with that one, and then I'll hand it over to Cristina, Rui and Luis to cover the 3 questions on Outsystems, Sonae MC and Sierra. Starting with net debt. As you know, we did not provide guidance on any financial indicators to the market. What I would like to stress is that Sonae has had in the last year is a consistent downward trajectory of its net debt level. And we -- all things being equal, we expect to continue with that downward trajectory, given the solid financial operating cash flow of our businesses and also given the portfolio management that we have been able to do in recent years to be able to decrease leverage as well. Cristina, do you want to start with the Outsystems one?

Yes, of course. Thank you. So Sonae IM position in Outsystems is, as you said, an indirect stake held through Armilar Venture Funds. The information related to funds is not public, and we can only provide limited information about our stake in those funds. And that confirms the recent transaction and particularly its simplest integration. We believe it is the market recognition of Outsystems' strong evolution. And of course, it is a very positive sign. The Armilar management team reviewed Outsystems valuation at the end of the year, adopting, of course, the best market practices, because there's market multiples. And that generated a positive net impact in our accounts, around more or less EUR 23 million. The referred transaction is, of course, relevant at the point, but it's relatively small dimension to be considered as the value at this moment. So what I can tell about our stake is that, at the moment, we have more or less 44% in the fund that's on Outsystems and value that we attribute to that stake in the firm is more or less EUR 96 million gross of incentive plans.

Okay.

Passing back to Rui.

Rui?

Thank you. And according and listening you, it seems to me, according to your tone of your voice, you are totally okay, which is great, great, great. Well, starting by market share. Again, as you may understand, it's very difficult to give you an exact figure of market share because there isn't 1 universal independent identity -- our entity, which provide us with the proper data. What we can see is, according to our research and the available data, we estimate being for the 2020 we would have more than 23.5% of market share. And more important than that is we were able to increase 60 basis points comparing to 2019. And we grew a lot in the last -- we were the operator -- that we presented the most higher level of growth in Portugal. Well, coming to the sales growth of the first phase of 2021, as you may understand, we are not used to provide update -- those figures. But what we can say is that the market is growing in the first 2 months of this year. And according to Nielsen data, the market grew more than 10%, and we were able to grow our market share in the Portuguese market.

Luis?

Yes. Sure. So talking a bit about something different there. So talking about our future and our strategy. There are quite a few things I can tell...

Just try to take less than 20 minutes, please.

I'll try to make it to the point. Look, we are focusing our future on a couple of principles. The first one, around our shopping center portfolio. What we are trying to do and what we're focusing on is: one, to rebalance the portfolio; and two, to future proof it. Rebalancing means reducing our stakes in assets where we are overweight and in assets which are less strategic to us, which is not that much going forward, at least compared to what it was in the past, but there are still a few assets where we would like to do that. Future-proofing is something we have continuously done and which we will continuously do and which obviously has been accelerated through COVID. That has to do with -- through partnerships and close contact with our key tenants, it's not with all tenants, to make sure that we can embed the shopping centers as a key player in the whole omnichannel offering; continuously innovate and improve and introduce new concepts into the tenant mix, like we have constantly done, particularly with services; and to make sure that -- and this has also been emphasized through COVID -- is to offer different degrees of customer contact with the shopping center, i.e., allowing customers to buy at the shopping center with entering and getting the full experience with just staying at the parking or doing it away. That's the important thing from us for the future-proofing part. The second thing we're trying to do from developments, on the development side, i.e., new constructions, we will not focus much or we don't see significant opportunities for developments in Europe, develop a shopping center development. We will prudently and selectively do them in Latin America, where we have done it very selectively, but we're talking about something not that material for the business. What we are going to do is we are extending and leveraging on our retail experience and our complex project management experience to expand into retail anchored mixed-use projects, which obviously fits well -- very well into the whole proximity convenience trend. The -- and that's something we are currently investing quite a lot of time, and we are very positive about. The third part of our strategy has to do with our investment management business. And this is something probably most of you don't -- haven't fully realized because we don't talk about it very proactively. But we manage quite a lot of funds right now. We manage funds with institutional blue-chip investors, funds/investment vehicles, but we also have vehicles, which are owned by private wealth, private banking type customers. And we do that for 2 reasons. One is we are -- we have a lot of experience in real estate. Generally, of course, we are prudent investors. We are active investors. We are a safe pair of hands. So we have that track record and that reputation with investors to give us the confidence for us to manage their investments. And two, we have a unique origination network where we can originate significant transactions off-market, particularly in Iberia, in Italy, and Germany, et cetera. So the combination of these factors gives us a lot of confidence that in the growing market of institutional and private wealth investors, investing increasingly into alternative assets, particularly real estate and looking for a safe pair of hands to generate stable, robust returns, that we can play a very good role there. So if you talk to your asset management colleagues at your firms, please send them our way because I'm sure there are a lot of good things that we can do. This isn't very short. I think what we are focusing on going forward we are very excited about it and very happy to talk about it any time.

Our next question comes from António Seladas of A|S Independent Research.

Congratulations for the figures. The first 1 is still related with Grosvenor deal. I don't know if you can say if Grosvenor can sell the remaining 20% in the next 3 years, in the next 2 years. I don't know if you can say something about this. Second question is still related with Sierra and the net asset value for the current year. I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about it because shopping center -- well, [ Wuri ] is starting very -- on the very bad. So I don't know if your current net asset value already incorporates the [ Wuri's ] beginning. Second -- third question is relative to ZOPT. If you can explain what is the current situation of the joint ventures. And the last question is related to the financial services capital spending on the fourth quarter -- on financial service was about EUR 15 million or EUR 16 million. And I don't -- we don't see anything in explanation. Maybe I missed it, but if you can explain it, it will be nice.

Thank you, António. I will let Luis answer the one on Sierra's NAV, and then I'll take the other 3.

I can, and I'm very happy to answer the question. But I think I'm afraid it's going to be the same answer that I gave to José Rito earlier, I think. It's very difficult to forecast at this point in time valuation evolution. So the assets are valued -- qualified by material uncertainty clause. We have a portfolio that is dominant -- sorry, that is focused on dominant prime assets. We have a portfolio that is in solid geographies, far away from the dynamics you see in the U.K. and the U.S. We don't see personal reasons for yields to move. We see encouraging signs on the operating side, but we see value as being very significantly influenced by the whole angle of that sentiment. So very difficult to tell you. But what I can tell you, when I look at the research reports that you guys issue, I see 50% discount to NAV, 30% discount to NAV. That already includes the end of the world already built into your valuation. So I wouldn't worry about the short term.

Okay, António. I'll take the other 3. Regarding Grosvenor's possibility to sell their remaining stake in the business. As I said before, Grosvenor has exit rights. And so yes, it can exercise those exit rights progressively in the future, as can we exercise reverse options to acquire their stake in the business. So it's -- that's the way this was structured. And so I mean, again, we -- currently, we have -- we are happy with the 80/20 partnership. We will need to wait for the future to understand if there's going to be any change in that scenario in the near future. Regarding ZOPT, we have covered the ZOPT situation quite extensively in these calls in the past. As you know, we have announced in August last year the agreements that are park -- to terminate the partnership. That hasn't happened yet because we are still working together with the court to ensure that we have a clean and peaceful termination of the partnership. Currently, as you know, we still have a seizure, which intends on half of the NOS shares held by ZOPT. And so we need that seizure to basically be removed, so that we can smoothly execute the termination of the partnership. Our expectation is still that the solution will occur in the near future in the next few months, but we are still waiting for a court decision to enable that termination of the partnership. Regarding Sonae FS, I think we've discussed this before as well. We have, in December 2020, the partnership that we had with BNP came to an end. And so we stopped with the existing commissioning model with BNP up until that pace. And we started investing in a new model, which I hope I can announce to the market very soon for the Universo Card, and that's the reason for that level of investment at the end of the year.

Our next question comes from [ Ricardo Olivera ] of the European Investment Bank.

Congratulations for year-end results. I have a few questions related to Sonae MC. The first 1 would be because I didn't get this. Do you have a split sales between online and physical sales for all year? The second 1 would be regarding looking forward. The investment or the CapEx in -- on the online channels and on physical stores. Could you give us any update on this? Third question would be, is there any margin impact of online digital sales and on the physical store sales? And last 1 is regarding leverage. At some point in time, the company -- well, this was a while ago, but the company mentioned that it would also help the Portuguese economy by reducing the payment days to suppliers, which is a substantial source of financing. Do you continue with the same policy? And also vis-à-vis the CapEx requirements, where do you see the leverage going on the near term?

Okay. Thank you, [ Ricardo ]. So all of the questions for Rui. Rui feel free to answer.

Okay. I will start to answer to your question regarding the online and off-line split between our -- in our report. No, we don't split that information to -- we don't speak that information. But the online/off-line we grew last year -- grew around 7% at the very beginning, 8% in terms of sales. The off-line grew as well, but we don't split the rate of off-line and rate of online in our report. But all we can say, that's what we generally say is the online continues to weight a very marginal value in our portfolio of sales. And we need to consider that today a channel has a huge potential to continue to grow where we are investing a lot. But it's not yet -- we didn't expect the decision to split the information and to provide you with the proper information regarding that channel. Regarding CapEx, we are totally committed to continue to invest in proximity stores. And as proximity stores play a very important role in terms of the omnichannel approach that we are intended to follow in our portfolio of assets, combining the online with the off-line businesses. We continue to reinforce our presence in the proximity stores with supermarkets, mainly in Lisbon and the Porto metropolitan areas where we mainly in Lisbon, the name, we can -- we feel that we could increase our market share without cannibalization or at least without significant levels of technicalization to the presence of what we are having today. We have a tremendous pipeline of stores to continue to grow in those particular areas. And we feel that we will be totally committed with our strategy to continue to increase our footprint in those formats. Comparing to the levels of investment that we are -- we will have next this year. So we tend to say, last year, we have EUR 200 million, as João said in the very beginning. We were a little bit more prudent in the very beginning of last year to continue to invest. We decided to postpone some of our investments that we will basically finish and complete this year. And I would tend to say that our investment will be totally aligned with the investment that we had last year, probably a little bit higher. If we consider the investments of refurbishment in terms of some stores, that will be totally completed this year comparing to last year. The other issue was regarding the decisions that we are taking, giving some help to suppliers in terms of funding. Yes, we will continue. We are doing that, and we will continue as well to invest. But we will totally -- we will be totally committed with our economic and finance priorities, which is continued to deliver profitable growth, to continue to have highest levels of return in the company, and to provide with a very sound capital structure. Meaning our ambition is to have a capital structure or at least the debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5x. And we are totally devoted to that. Why? Because if we continue to grow, we continue to grow with very good projects and continue to invest a lot in terms of efficiency. And those gains will provide us to continue to help the portions of smallest suppliers in our portfolio of suppliers and to continue to invest -- to have a positive cycle in terms of gains and investment at the same time, as we see, there is a huge potential to continue to grow in Portugal, mainly on the proximity format, to complete and to help the omnichannel approach that we are investing in our company. Thank you.

If I may add, do you see any difference in terms of margin evolution between online sales and physical sales?

Sorry, sorry. I forgot to answer to that question. Well, yes, we are improving our operation in terms of the online, we're improving significantly, and the off-line. Yes, last year, as João said a while ago, we were affected by the costs that we had in our operation regarding the pandemic. We have more than EUR 30 million in terms of cost related to pandemic between PPEs, between staff costs, bonuses that we give to our staff to continue to fight the pandemic that they were fighting during the first months of last year. Even some costs regarding the cleaning and safety that we supported in order to give a proper environment and due to our customers during the purchase moment that we were having in our stores. And we supported more than EUR 30 million, almost EUR 33 million. And the off-line business was tremendously impacted by this amount of cost. Given that -- even though the margins kept a very high level last year. So we are very confident with our value proposal, and we are very confident at the level of the excellence of the execution of our strategies. We are tremendously confident for this year as well.

We have a follow-up question from José Rito of Caixabank.

Yes. So on -- a question on Worten and also on Sonae Investment Management. So in the case of Worten just to confirm that if online is accretive to margins, at least in Portugal. And also in Worten, if following this sale restructuring in Spain, which result in some dense downsizing, if it should impact the purchasing power, at least when dealing with the most relevant supplier? So these will be the questions for Worten. Then on Sonae Investment Management. If you plan to sell some of the unicorns, stakes that you have there, and in case of relevant cash if you could consider extra dividend.

Okay. Thank you, José. Paulo, do you want to take the first couple of questions on Worten?

Yes. Sure. Thank you, José. José, can you repeat the second question on Worten, please? I don't think that I get it.

I think it's the restructuring process and further purchasing power with suppliers.

Sorry. Again, maybe I'm listening -- I have some problems listening in.

If the decision that we made to restructure the Spanish operation are our purchasing power with suppliers at Worten as a whole.

Okay. Yes, okay. Understood. Okay. So regarding the online, yes, the online operation is profitable. So it is adding to our EBITDA margin. And we believe that with the additional scale that we should be able to obtain going forward because we expect online could keep growing. And our strategy is designed to continue growing the online business in Iberia as a whole, both on 1P and 3P products. So with that growth, we believe that profitability on the online should continue to increase, and the operations should contribute more and more to our profitability. Regarding the purchase...

But are -- yes, but are margins higher than in the physical stores?

I think the level the store a bit. So if you consider the direct cost of each operation, our internal analysis indicates that the EBITDA margin is comparable at the store level. So I'm not considering here central costs of the operation because then, I mean, people that are producing content for our web page, we are not putting it here, for example, because they contribute to sales on the stores and also online. So everything is very, very mixed between channels. We have an omnichannel value proposition, as you know. So there's a lot of shared costs. We also have people in the store that are delivering products at temperatures we don't mind, but then are picked up in store. So it's quite difficult to have a very clear analysis that is not debatable on customer location. Having said all this, looking at direct cost of each operation, that tells you margins are not that very far apart from -- to operations. Regarding the purchase power on -- after the transaction and the restructuring in Spain. For the moment, we didn't feel any significant impact. Our relationship with suppliers continues to be healthy. We are trying to centralize part of our purchases for Iberia in Portugal because we have a lot of items that are common to all geographies. So for those who would like to centralize purchase in Portugal and logistics also. So we are looking into that, but it's still ongoing, but we don't foresee any relevant impact in margins because of the operation in Spain.

Okay.

Then maybe I can take the one on Sonae Investment Management. So if we plan to sell the space that we have in the unicorn companies -- I think that was the first question.

Yes. Yes.

Look, the activity of Sonae Investment Management is to do an active portfolio management. And to do an active portfolio management, you always have to pick the right time to invest and, obviously, the right time to divest as well. And that's the activity -- the core activity of the subholding and that's what we will continue to do. So eventually, yes. Eventually, we envisage an exit option from those investments as we do for other investments in the portfolio. I cannot tell you at this moment in time what the exact moment will be. We still see upside potential in both of those investments. And so we will have to continue monitoring the performance of the business and also the valuation that we see there. In case that we do a significant sale and divestment and cash in on those transactions, we -- obviously, we will need to analyze what makes sense at that moment in time as well. I have to tell you that Sonaecom has maintained a quite stable dividend practice over recent years, around 50% of its results -- of its net results. And the company has had an active portfolio management throughout all these years. And so we've made significant divestments throughout the years, and we did not change our dividend distribution policy. And typically, when we do a divestment, that is reflected in terms of capital gains in the P&L accounts. And so implicitly, we are distributing more dividends in years in which we perform very attractive divestments in our portfolio.

There are no further questions from the participant line. So I'll hand the floor back to Mr. João Dolores.

Thank you very much. So we have an extra question that was sent to us online, a written question. I'm going to read it out loud, and then I'm going to answer it briefly. It's from [ Bruno Barbosa ], and the question is, what is the reasoning for the proposed raise of dividend per share with such a high payout ratio when times ahead are still quite uncertain? Thank you, Bruno, for the question. Our dividend practice is quite stable one. We have been increasing our dividend per share by 5% for the last 2 years. It's a commitment that we have to our shareholders, and this is the reason why we're doing it. Our dividend payout -- our dividend practice is not related with the results that we have -- directly related to the results that we have in the year. So we don't typically -- it's not related to payout. It's basically a quite stable dividend per share with a 5% year-over-year increase. And we always look at this by looking at the current financial liquidity in the group, right? And so we have currently total liquidity between available credit lines and cash of over EUR 1.3 billion at this moment in time and we have a solid balance sheet. And so we feel that maintaining our commitment and the expectation that our shareholders have to have a 5% increase in dividend per share this year is the right proposal to be made at the general assembly, and that's what we are going to propose. And I think we've run out of questions. So thank you, operator. You may now terminate the call. Thank you, everyone, for participating. Thank you for all your questions, and we will talk again soon in May in our Q1 results. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's event. We thank you for your presence today. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines.