Good morning, and welcome to the Allied Tecnologia video conference for the results of the first quarter of 2021. Our first call as a listed company. I am Fabiana Lawant, IR Manager, and I would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and simultaneously translated.
The presentation on the screen is in English, but there is a Portuguese version at the IR website. Participants will only listen during the presentation, after which we will open the Q&A session. You can send the questions through the chat available on the video conference screen. Any forward-looking statements related to the business perspectives and projections are based on the company's assumptions and are subjected to uncertainties, and therefore may not occur. Today, we have Silvio Stagni, CEO of the company, and Gustavo Antunes, CFO. I would like to give the floor to Silvio to present the quarter's highlights. Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you for your participation. It is an honor to have you here. This is our first call. I am very happy with what we are going to present you. You saw last night the disclosure, but the objective is to show some details, and then Gustavo will dive on the financial results so you can have a good understanding of the company's results. I would like to start talking about 2020. We had an excellent result. We increased it 27% in revenue, and 47% in EBITDA and the net profit. These were successful. But in the first quarter, we overcame, we exceeded all of this. We increased 37% in revenue comparing at 1Q and to last year. If you look at the three pillars in the distribution, we grew 24%, showing that our strategy to diversify product line is improving our growth.
The really highlight is the digital retail area. We grew 178%. Brazil grew 72%, and we 178%. It shows that all the initiatives we had in Mobcom center stores, partner stores are being well accepted by the market. The digital part in this first quarter is now 15.4% of the companies. Again, 17% last year. The digital part increases the relevance, which was our objective. In the B&M retail, we grew 25% from 19% with the stores closed. But during 2020, we continued to bet on this arm, and now we have 258 points of sales against 78 we had last year, so a 24% increase. EBITDA had a leverage because with the results of volume of sales, we had a strong cost control and a strong discipline on how to sell.
Since the market still has supply problems, and we being 20 years in this market have a privileged position, we were able to sell better. This combination of more sales, controlled cost, a better discipline to manage the margin made our EBITDA to increase. It is almost the double of last year. Our EBITDA last year was 4.1%, and now it is 7.1%. We almost double. The same happens with net profit, the same leverages. Last year it was 1.1%, and we went to 4.1%.
As volume, it was 29% of growth. We sold 11 million of a product, and now we have 258 points of sales this year against 29 of last year. Now let us see some highlights of these three channels, distribution, digital, and B&M retail. Start with digital. We opened two new stores. Mobcom is also at the C&A Mobcom and as always, in the Zoom App Marketplace.
We close this with 29 stores online, 17 Mobcom, and 12 of our partners. This is not sacrificing the quality. We are very happy with this. We are also betting on the efficiency and quality. In this quarter, we have the less cost by unity in our sector. Little by little, we are transforming our logistic mesh being served by private companies, and the consequence of this will be quality, accuracy, and cost. We still have room to improve in our digital stores. The second highlight in digital retail is our omnichannel strategy. We are betting on this strategy. These 258 B&M points of sales are connected to Mobcom. For you to understand their relevance, in March, 20% of the sales came from omnichannel. We have all the omnichannel solutions, drive-through stores in Happy Delivery Center, click and collect, social sellers.
All the available solutions in the market, and increasing our sales, in part, through this type of solution. The other highlight of the digital is our services platform. Four or five years ago, we gave to Magalu a solution that we put on the hands of their salespeople, where he could sell any cell phone plan directly from the apps. They didn't need to go into the site of the telecom company operator. With one app on the hands of the salesperson, we simplified the selling of cell phone plans, and we reduced the time of sales, and this is already implemented for five years. Now we're adding new services to this platform. Today, you can sell not only cell phones. You can sell iFood, Google, insurance. We are incorporating in the platform our financing instrument to the consumer. Now it's a platform for several services.
You put on the hands of the salesperson. We had Magalu, Eletrozema, Carrefour, Grupo BIG. In this first quarter, we also implemented in Lojas Americanas. With this, the solution now has 5,200 points of sales, which is also important for the results of our digital retail. The last point I want to mention in digital retail is a project that we developed with Fiat and TIM. Our DNA is to be an enabler of this ecosystem, this system of manufacturer, retail operators. We provide the solutions. It's very similar to iPhone Forever, where Itaú had a project, and us, we developed what was necessary for that to work. This project of the connected car is the same thing. Fiat launched the first connected car in Brazil, which is the Jeep Compass. You buy the car, and you can turn it into a Wi-Fi hub.
To do this, you go in the system where you select the type of plan you want, you activate what you want, you manage your plan. Everything is done by Allied. It's one more solution we are providing to the market. We are solving the problems of our technology partners. These were the highlights for the digital retail. In the B&M retail, we had a new partner, MM Santos, four stores in Santos, two in the ABC Region for Samsung's partners. It was important because when we acquire these stores in Santos, provide us the potential to explore the entire region. It's a new possibility to expand in the best place of Brazil in terms of sales volume for Samsung, which is the state of São Paulo. We have now Samsung stores, six, and we are doing this with quality driven growth.
The NPS was 83%, and you knowing retail, you know that this is very significant for the Brazilian retail or even the world retail. We closed the first quarter with 4% of sales. What we think is very good because this was a very different quarter in relation to last year. We have our learnings last year made it possible to keep a good sales volume comparing store to store. In the B&M retail, we have a solution that will improve our results. We have a machine learning solution now with the number of stores we have, it's important that the store to store planning must be very accurate to provide efficiency, and with our market partner makes this tool to learn every day the demand of every store, every day of the week. With this, we will increase our forecast accuracy very significantly.
These were the highlights for the B&M retail. Now I'd like to talk about distribution. A very important fact is the agreement we have with Vivo and Apple, and now we are the suppliers of iPhones and iPads for Vivo to the corporate market of Vivo. We continue in this journey to bring new categories. The first one is the connected home. We are with Google and i2GO. In white goods, we had started with Whirlpool, with some clients, and now we are distributing Midea in Brazil, a large white goods manufacturer, and we are their key partners to distribution in Brazil. These are the highlights. But before giving the floor back to Gustavo, I'd like to say that for the second year in a row, we were awarded as the Top Employer in the journey with our collaborators. It shows we are in the right path.
Here we have the score of 78%. If you follow this rate of eNPS, it's the rate of companies like Google. So we are very proud with these results. Top Employer. Of all the companies that were qualified, they selected 40 best practices over the world, and one of the practices is ours. We have an app where you can praise your colleague. You can say, Congratulations, you did this, you did that. Once a quarter, we award the best colleague, and this was selected as one of the 40 world's best practices. This is what I had to share with you for the first quarter results. Now I will give the floor to Gustavo, who will detail the financial results of the company.
Thank you, Silvio. Good morning. I'm Gustavo Antunes, the financial director of the company. We are very proud to share with you the results. As Silvio and Fabiana mentioned, we are very proud to present the first quarter of 2021. As you see in the results, we grew almost 37% in gross revenue, and this is a result of our product diversification, channel diversification, and many commercial initiatives combined with operational leverage. We will talk more about this.
I'd like to mention that when we compare with last year, last March was a very difficult month. The first month of the pandemic, the stores closed, people went to work from home. So the first quarter of last year, even though in January, February, our growth rate was high. So we are not comparing different moments in the market. The initiatives brought the growth, and this was sustained during the first quarter. The following slides will show you some details.
I'd like to show you that I have almost BRL 1.4 billion in revenue, BRL 86 million EBITDA, and BRL 46 million in net profit, which is 5x higher than last year. We see now the distribution in details. We grew 24% in revenue, BRL 837 million in net revenue. We have two important information on the right corner of the slide, and this is the result of diversification. Sales in 12 months, in the first quarter of last year is slightly below 8 million products, and this year, above 10 million products. When you go to the lower part of the graph, we see in line the percentage of mobile in our distributions, cellphone. We went from 72% in 2019 to 55% in 2021. This is the reflex of bringing TVs, video games, audio, accessories, computers.
It's part of our distribution strategy that resulted in more sales, as you see in the bar of the graphic, more diversification with a margin higher than last year, from 9.1% to 11% of gross margin. This is our result of our discipline and diversification in supply, the national retail with this demand and supply. This is basically a flash of the distribution. The next slide shows the retail as a whole. On the upper side, you see 85% increase in our retail, B&M, and digital. More store, more sales, more digital stores, and different initiatives in the digital world. When we break this into B&M and digital retail, we see 180% growth in digital retails and 24% in the B&M. Digital retail in our universe of retail accounted for 60% in the first quarter.
This consolidates our online sales with several channels representing several brands, which is very robust. Last year, digital retail was 40%. When we go back to the left side, to the down part, we went from BRL 48 million to BRL 89 million. The next slide, please. When we talk about digital retail and distribution, see how we go from, in 12 months, accumulated the first quarter of last year from 200,000 units to 600,000. This brought us more capillarity, more sales, and more initiatives. Silvio mentioned that we have our sales platform, Soudi, with more than 5,000 points of sales. A huge universe to explore. On the right, you have our initiatives in our digital financial services. In 2019, we had a pilot, and we closed with 21,000 active customers, accounting for 6% of our B&M retail. A portfolio of BRL 20 million in receivables.
We still have a lot to grow. We are very happy, and we are sure that in the next quarter, this will be important leverage of our B&M retail. In B&M retail, I'd like to give you three messages. On the left side, we show five quarters. Four from last year, the first of this year. You see a period of great instability, several restrictions over the quarter. Even though we opened stores, 100 points of sales more this year, we grew in Samsung retail. We did important acquisitions. So we navigated in this instability period. We increased our presence and our geographical footprint. We are present almost in all states of Brazil and keeping the quality. We are known with our quality in service, an NPS of 83%.
We had a very turbulent period, but even though we were successful, increasing the average ticket. This made our retail big, profitable, and as these uncertainties are reduced, our retail will be even better. In the next slide, we talk about our results in general. I talked about the revenue, EBITDA, and gross margin, but I'd like to show you the expenses control. Our growth in revenue translated in a higher EBITDA. We grew one quarter to the other almost 40%, but EBITDA was more than 100%. In addition to this growth of 153%, BRL 35 million last year to BRL 88 million this year, 1/5 came from operational leverage initiatives. We renegotiate costs on freight and transportation. We renegotiate our occupation costs and third-party services. We kept what was fundamental for us. We improved the commercial conditions.
If we kept all our expenses in the same percentage as last year, our expenses would be higher, approximately BRL 16 million. This is the gain of our efforts, looking carefully to our expenses so 4/5 are commercial initiatives, new sales, and pricing. Finally, our debt, if you look to the last line, we have a low leverage. This provides us room to grow, invest in working capital, and also possible acquisitions. The company has room to grow. We used some cash in this first quarter. We closed the first quarter with a well-positioning inventory for commemoration dates, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, so we supplied the retail. We paid almost BRL 23 million of principle in our debentures and also BRL 46 million in dividends to our shareholders.
We closed the first quarter not only with very positive results and profit, but with the company very healthy, and our initiatives and strategies will have space to grow in the short term. I thank you, and I give the floor back to Fabiana.
Thank you, Gustavo. Now we will open the Q&A session. You can send your questions using the chat button on your screen. We will begin with a question from Daniela from [audio distortion]. Two questions to Silvio. The first about the perspectives for the year, and if you can also share your performance in the beginning of the quarter. And the second, the program iPhone Forever, if you are going to extrapolate to other banks.
Thank you, Fabiana. Well, let's start with iPhone Forever. Today, we have a partnership with Apple Itaú, and this partnership, in principle, will invest for a long time and with exclusivity among the three of us. This has a term. I prefer not to mention the period, okay, the term, because of our strategy. But after this period, we can consider. Today, it's not on the radar to bring another bank. It's on the radar to bring other products. We want to have iPhone Forever, something like Apple Forever. The possible development of this plan, and also because we have consumers who love to change their iPhone every year. And so we have also the financing possibility to make it more flexible. And perspectives for the year and the quarter.
The second quarter starts very strong in the same pace we had for the first quarter with uncertainties because we will see during the year some impact on supply. You have the dispute among the companies, manufacturers of computers, cell phones, cars, the manufacturers of semiconductors. This year will require the management of the market due to the supply chain we have. Since we have a strong partnership with everybody, this plays in our favor. We have the possibility of having inventories while many other players in the market didn't have. This will be a year to manage the supply. Number two, Coronavoucher had a positive impact last year. We believe that its return, even with a lower value, will help us.
Just for you to have an idea of the strength of the market, the average ticket of the cell phone grew 37% if you compare the first quarter of last year and last year. The volume increased. The electronic market had zero impact on the major electronic product in the world. This year, we have to manage daily the demand due to the economic situations in Brazil, to the ups and downs of the pandemic. We need to manage the supply due to all the problems of supply. It's important to have a close look, a close care. The first quarter was excellent, and the second is taking us to a very good place in the same level.
Thank you, Silvio. Now, we have a question from Rodrigo from SulAmérica. He congratulates for the results, and he wants to know how was the lockdown in 2021 in relation to 2020, and how is this return with the flexibilization?
The lockdown in 2021, on one hand, we knew how to deal with this. In 2020, all the stores closed overnight. It was March 15 last year the stores closed. We could act more uniformly in all these terms. We used all the measures that the government provided, reducing the working hours. This year, it's not so uniform. Some stores opened, some stores closed. It was not the same period for everyone. We didn't have any measure for 2021. Our stores were already with the minimum number of employees as necessary. We didn't benefit up to now of no benefits that the government disclosed.
Last year, we didn't know how to deal, but it was all the stores at the same time opening and closing, so we were able to coordinate. This year, no. Stores are opening and closing different moments, so it's difficult to benefit from what the government is making available. I think that's it.
I'd like to add a comment. I think that the uncertainty about business closing last year was higher than this year. Our partners, our suppliers, banks, clients, all of them had a high level of uncertainty. One year later, everybody learned and adapted to possible risks. Last year, there was a run towards credit, and nobody knew what would be the impact on the retail. This year, we didn't see this, so we didn't do this year, didn't create a liquidity buffer.
Because of the initiatives of digital retail were established, our partners, retailers, and operators also had their strategy established. I think that during the year in distribution, we were always very close to our clients, understanding their financial robustness, their plans. We learned and understood the possible risks. All of this was part of a process of adaptation and maturation. Even we had this messy opening and closing, but we also had some uncertainties, and now we are much better than last year when nobody knew what would happen. Fabi .
Following this line, we have a question from João, from Bradesco. He says we have a 60% concentration on large customers or clients, and he is asking how these clients are performing and their financial robustness.
We sell to the national retail, and during the year, we changed some clients, but they are large retailers and national retailers. There are two ways of following this. First, our company has a credit insurance where most of the receivables, especially from distribution, credit cards. In distribution, we offer credit to the retailer, and a great part of this is insured, but we monitor this very close. The second part, which is smaller, we have the risk beyond what is protected by the insurance company. Since March, we did not have any default problem or some requests to increase or extend the payment. It was normal. Many retailers had their stores closed, but nothing that made us turn a red flag. Nothing is out of the usual. In our view, there is no deterioration of our clients. We are careful looking at it, but nothing different.
Another question from João to Silvio. How do you see the competitiveness of the Samsung stores in comparison to the Mobcom?
Samsung stores play a different role than Mobcom or other retailers. We see this clearly when we see the average ticket of Samsung. Usually, it is BRL 1,000, and for Samsung, it is BRL 3,000. The Brazilian customer does not buy a product of high value in the general retail. Suppose a product of BRL 8,000. You do not buy it online. You go to a Samsung store where you have the portfolio, all colors, and all memories. You transfer everything from your old cell phone to the new one. We sell insurance, so it is totally different. Samsung gives us the arms to be competitive. If you want to buy a new Samsung cell phone, we will buy the old one for a much better price than the market.
With a promotion of BRL 2,000 in accessories. When you buy a Galaxy S21, you get BRL 2,000 in accessories. It is a package of benefits that you do not find in any other channel. The cell phones of mid-high and high price, we have only three sales channels. The operators with their loyalty programs or the shop that attracts the consumer or the Samsung stores. I do not know the percentage, but the great majority of sales of a Galaxy Note were sold by Samsung stores. The consumer profile is different going to Samsung and Mobcom. In Mobcom, he looks for price, and this is tougher. The Samsung store, until now, plays this role, the same one that Apple Store plays to Apple. This is the secret of the continuity of the success of the Samsung stores in Brazil.
Silvio, there is a question now from Thiago Gomes. What do you expect in terms of exchange variation and how this can affect the numbers of the company?
This is difficult. Exchange variation is hard to answer. I doubt if someone knows the answer, but it is important for us that all products we buy in Brazil, we do not have exchange variation. 50% of the products, Kindle, Google Chromecast, are imported, but it is not relevant. However, the manufacturing cost of a smartphone, computer or TV is very high because the components are imported. This is where dollar impacts us. The price of an electronic product can go up or down. We buy and we sell with the same margin if the dollar is at BRL 5 or BRL 6, and the impact is with the price at the end increasing, we may have demand variations, but not for the company.
The demand increases or not, but the profitability, the margin we work with continues the same because we buy in reais and we sell in reais.
Now I will give the floor to Gustavo. It is a question from Francisco Cobos. He congratulates for the results and to a strong increase in margins and expenses control. He asks, how sustainable and scalable are the current margins?
I want to divide my questions into three parts. Retail, whether it is B&M or digital. We are in a standard margin of the business as it is today, so it is not better than the usual, and we are sure we are in a normal standard. In distribution, all this imbalance in supply, I think that we are in a better period than usual.
Since the second half of last year, it is a part of our business that due to market situations, all the players in the chain were able to achieve a margin that is balanced. Finally, is the expenses. This is a structural part, the discipline to renegotiate or to change the way we transport the product, the freight less to renegotiate third parties service, to automate services with machine learning. This is a structure. What is not is the occupation. As we return, I think that we will have people in the shopping malls, et cetera, but part will remain in digital.
Now we have one more question. Some people ask the same question. Silvio, what are the 5G expectations?
5G will have a big impact on the market. If we look the history of new technologies production and the impact of these introductions in the market. A new technology always bring a peak in the product, and 5G is much more disruptive than any other technology, not only because of the speed, but because of the so-called low latency. You can make machines to talk one to the other with a low latency. The driverless cars are driven through a 5G technology. The schedule of the Anatel is that June next year, all Brazilian capital cities will have 5G installed. This will generate a huge demand for new smartphones, but they will also be very expensive unless they come with huge capacity. This will bring increase on demand, increase on average ticket. What will be very important, especially for 2022. We start to sell 5G now.
We have some smartphones in the market with 5G, but you cannot benefit from it right now. It is important to have the installed base when in 2022, it will be launched, we will have a higher base, and the word of mouth will spread, and we will have positive factors that will increase the market demand. It is very important demand for the cellphone market in 2022.
Well, I think that to close, we have one last question. You mentioned already the perspective for the year, Silvio, but we have more questions about it. If you want to add, we are in the middle of 2021, so what are the trends you see for the quarter, and how do you see the year? Do you expect any recovery in the activity?
Well, I will divide this answer in some parts. As for product demand, we believe it will continue very strong all over the year. This impact of working from home is staying longer at home. You look for best ways to work and to have fun, and this effect will not end in the short term. The pandemic effect is not short term, and it will change the relation we have with the time we spend at home and outside home. So we expect a strong demand for electronic products to work better at home and to have more fun at home. You see also a change in how people are working. We depend much less on the flow of people to make a sale.
If you see the conversion point, the people flow drops a lot, but distribution increases, not only because you have delivery centers, but people when go to the shopping malls, they go more assertive, and this is a trend that came to stay. The conversion will be even better. Online is what we see. People learning how to work online, and this communication with the B&M stores will be more effective. We believe, as we did the forecast for 2021, our forecast was very timid.