[Foreign Language]
Morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the video conference to announce the results of the Fourth Quarter of 2024 of Alpargatas. I'd like to point out to those who need simultaneous translation that we have these two available on platform. To access it, simply click on the interpretation button using the globe icon at the bottom of the screen and choose your preferred language: Portuguese or English.
For those listening to the video conference in English, there is an option to mute the original audio in Portuguese by clicking on "Mute Original Audio." We inform you that this video conference is being recorded, and it will be made available on the company's Investors' Relations website, ri.alpargatas.com.br, where the complete material of our results announcement is available. You can also download the presentation from the chat icon, including in English.
During the company's presentation, all participants will have their microphones disabled. Then we will begin the question-and-answer session. To ask questions, click on the icon "Q&A" at the bottom of your screen and type your question to enter the queue. When you are announced, a prompt to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and you must then activate your microphone to ask your question.
We recommend that you ask all questions at once. We emphasize that the information contained in this presentation and any statements that may be made during the video conference relating to the business prospects, projections, and operational and financial goals of Alpargatas are based on beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as on information currently available. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance.
They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events and, therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors that may affect the future performance of Alpargatas and lead to results that differ materially from those expressing such forward-looking statements. Today, we are joined by the following executives from the company: Mr. Liel Miranda, CEO, Mr. André Natal, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, and Ms. Melina Rodrigues, Director of Investor Relations, M&A, and Treasury. I'll give the floor now to Mr. Liel.
[Foreign Language]
Good morning, everyone. It's a big pleasure to be here to talk to you all today. I would like to start by talking about our turnaround process, which we announced from the beginning of last year when we went through a period of 2023 of a lot of focus and financial discipline. In 2024, it was about the recovery of the competitiveness in Brazil to build the foundations that would take us to the resumption of sustainable growth. As we imagined and as we announced it as part of our strategy, the year of 2024 was a year of transition, and as such, we overcame a few challenges that had been created in 2022 and 2023 and created the foundations, so starting in 2025, we start our journey of sustainable growth.
In this transition, we saw some significant progress, especially in our operational efficiency, where we saw reduced product costs, improved efficiency at factories, improved distribution, reaching results in terms of on-time in-full levels, improving and reducing distribution costs, so all of our operational efficiency saw great progress. Another great progress was our financial discipline, where we now hold a net cash position where we maintain costs under control, and all the variables of the financial discipline were set in 2023, and we reached our goals in 2024. Another few things. We saw some evolution in some things, but not as we wanted.
For instance, our portfolio was reduced in 50%. We launched a new product to cover gaps that we had in our portfolio, especially in the men's products, but there are many other opportunities to continue evolving with our portfolio and competitiveness in Brazil. We also saw progress in that. We gained market share in the modern market since May. So over the last eight months, we have been gaining market share, which helps to balance our sell-out. Yet not enough to completely compensate for the sell-out fall that we have seen in the traditional channels where we are usually very strong.
Either way, we can already reach this competitiveness back, especially in the channels where we had a smaller participation: modern, specialized, and direct-to-consumer channels. Where we suffered in 2024, because this is the reminiscent elements from the past, and we need to continue to evolve, is the write-off. We saw an elevated number of write-offs from past collections that had been accumulated over the past two years. We made a big effort to sell all of those products. We had a good result in most of them, but unfortunately, some of those products, either they were too old and therefore were not adequate to be sold, or they were not competitive to be sold.
So we made a write-off for those products in 2024, which sets a new and healthy inventory for us to operate from 2025 on, and André will go deeper into that. Another large remaining element from previous years that we have not yet seen a progress in 2024 was our international performance. Although we put many efforts, we did not revert the decrease in sales in 2022 to 2023 because of the lack of investment in the brand and difficulties in the distributions and operations. This all was maintained in 2024, so we expect that in 2025 we will see a change in these regards.
So with things progressing very fast in 2024 and some things still in transition, and with certain things that we are still resolving, which are reminiscent of the past. In the next slide, we're going to look at some indicators of our strategy. We announced this strategy at the beginning of 2023. It basically has two constitutive elements. One is focus and competitiveness, discipline to ensure that where we are strong, we continue to be strong and evolve.
For instance, in Brazil, for instance, in the category of female products, we maintained the process of simplification of everything we do and how we do to reduce costs and to accelerate our speed to serve the market. We keep developing competencies which are fundamental for our development, especially in supply chain and factory efficiency, where in the past they were bottlenecks. We eliminated those bottlenecks, and we will continue evolving that.
In our portfolio strategy, as I said, we are very strong in Brazil. We are very strong in the category of female products, but we still have a lot of space for growing other segments, such as products for kids, men, and in some channels such as the specialized channel. This is a very strong step of our strategy: focus and competitiveness. The second largest step is the sustainable growth, where we have been putting our focus on the international growth, recovery of our competitiveness in Europe, correction of our profitability in some countries operated through distributors.
We saw progress in 2024, but as I said, this is an area where we have not yet evolved enough, so it still yielded negative results. As for strengthening our capacities, we continue evolving in investing in marketing. Our market investment reached a level of about 7% of our revenue, which is what we expect to maintain from now on, because we believe this is necessary to keep this brand active and growing not only here in Brazil, but also internationally.
As for developing our capabilities, we showed our capacity of gaining market share in the modern market and gained market share in the products of the segment of male products. We saw 21% in growth in sales in the men's collection, and we also have been gaining market share in the modern channels, especially through a very effective event during Black Friday. As for resource allocation, we saw Rothy's, which was an underperformer in 2023, to make a positive contribution in 2024. So as a sum-up of the results of 2024, here are the highlights.
On the last slide, to give you some direction for 2025, the only message on this slide is the consistency of our strategy. We're not changing the strategy for 2025. We will continue to focus on what we need to build in terms of competitiveness, where we are strong, and what we need to accelerate to reach our sustainable growth in the international market and in the segments where we still do not have a very expressive market share.
This is the message for 2025, that the year of 2024 was a transition year with good and bad things still remaining from the past. We expect that 2025 is the beginning of the sustainable growth, and we are maintaining absolute consistency in our strategy. In everything you saw and everything you saw that we were able to do between 2023 and 2024, you were going to see the continuation and even better results in 2025. Now I give the floor to André Natal, our CFO, and then I'll be back here for the Q&A.
Good morning, everyone. Following on now with the numbers, we see one more quarter. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of positive cash maintenance. In this sequence, this comes in the sequence of a very accumulated build-up of inventory that we have been getting rid of. And you can also see a recovery of our acquisition of raw material after a long time without buying raw material. I will go into details later on, but we have been releasing working capital along the quarters, and this was one more quarter with a positive variation.
When we look at the discipline in terms of CapEx, we see that in the fourth quarter there was a slight acceleration. In the previous semester, we had a very low investment, but in the fourth semester, we caught up, especially to deliver the projects we had committed to deliver in 2024, so this level of BRL 160 million, approximately over the year, is very similar to the value we had budgeted and approved for as our CapEx for 2024.
It's worth saying that this is a reduction of over 70% in the levels of 2022, so 2023 had already seen a very relevant reduction in the size of the CapEx that we used, and now in 2024, we saw one more adjustment to a level that we believe that is much more of a normalized level for this business to work. We are focusing on more interesting projects with interesting returns, focusing on our legal liabilities and industry opportunities, but without making any very large and relevant investment.
We have no need for that over the next six quarters and next years. We don't foresee that for a larger allocation of CapEx. As for the fixed expenses, we move on with the same discipline here naturally in the fourth quarter. As everyone knows, we saw a very devaluation of the Brazilian Real currency, and this creates an impact in the Brazilian Real results. Here you see the results in Brazilian Reals. So if we were to see a graph, just to make an exercise to understand the effects, this yellow curve would be at the level of 82% if we did not add all the currency fluctuation. So we started showing this in the first quarter of 2023.
So without the currency effect, we would be at 82%. This is not an agenda that is over. This agenda will continue. We are focused on it every year. We did that for the 2025 budget. We mapped out new opportunities, and we have been following on a continuous agenda for keeping the company the most efficient as possible. A combination of those three things made, over 2024, the reversion in the trend of the leverage acceleration. As everyone can see in the last graph on the right-hand side at the bottom, over 2024, we reversed this trend and reached this solid position of net cash. So we can calmly look ahead to understand how we want to go from now on.
But this is. We are at another level of discipline and another level of solidity, and with different rules on all of the elements that you see on this slide, with much more or with a stronger governance for all the elements I mentioned. On this slide now, you see the results in terms of net cash generation. Along the year, this is the seventh quarter where we have a positive generation of net cash. The full release is of BRL 570 million. In the fourth quarter, there is a seasonal effect given the summer in Brazil, which is stronger. There is a receivables account that affects this number a little bit, but this is normal for the seasonality of the business. But we see here an overall release of BRL 570 million.
Since the reversal, which started in the second quarter of 2023, we have already generated over BRL 1 billion, which is a very significant amount and very similar to the cash consumption that had been taking place before. Moving on, we see now the business cycle. Here is a consolidated vision for 2024, counting a little bit of the story of 2024, with several achievements and several advancements, which are important and are relevant for the management of the business.
From the right to left, we have a stable sell-out related in relation to 2023. Obviously, there are combinations of different results in different channels that led to this, but we see stability in our sell-out. When we look at our sell-in, we have a percentage that grew 11%, but this is because in 2023, we had been deleveraging the finished goods inventory. So there was a deleveraging in the inventory, and in 2024, we reached a certain normal level. So there is some fluctuation in between quarters because of the seasonal inventories, etc., for Brazil. Yet, we managed to sell the number of pairs to have a sell-out that was very close to the sell-in.
In terms of production, it had a slight increase of 7% in 2024 compared to 2023. We had to hold back a little bit our productivity to wait for the deleveraging of our inventory levels, and also because of the finished goods inventory, which was high. So the finished goods inventory and the inventory levels have been decreased and reaching a level that we understand as being normal. As for the raw material on the left-hand side, it took us over a year to bring the raw material levels to a normalized level.
It was very high since 2023, and at the end of 2023, we're closer to a normalized level, and throughout 2024, we saw this normalization, and what we expect from this graph is that it kept up with this fluctuation, with these little curves up and down in a certain operational range without any kind of speculation of commodities and pre-purchase of raw material. We purchased raw material 30% more in 2024, much more compared because of the low base foundation, low inventory level of raw material in 2023, to allow the deleverage of the raw material inventory levels. We understand that 2024 was a very important year for all of those elements of the business cycle.
We understand that we managed to normalize the inventory levels to a reasonable level for both the raw material inventory and the finished goods inventory at a level where we are comfortable, which we were comfortable with. Here you can see the level of pairs sold, and there is an adjustment between the sell-in and sell-out. It's normal to have a variation depending on the moment in the season. We're going to have the sell-in a little bit higher than the sell-out, so the channel can prepare for the peak sales season, and then after that, the inverse movement to allow the deleveraging of this inventory of our clients.
B ut when we look at the whole, the sell-in and sell-out numbers were very close to each other, and that's what we should pursue from now on. We should see small fluctuations in terms of those concerning indicators. As for the next slide, Liel has already mentioned a bit this before. We managed to give you more details, especially because of the relevance of the adjustment we have made in the fourth quarter of 2024 in terms of inventory.
Here you see the levels of our inventory for each one of the collections for finished goods in Brazil. There are a few messages which are important. The first is that in a more recent past, in 2018 or 2020, there was a normal cycle, which was very similar to expected in a business that has yearly collections. So at the end of a year, you expect to have a certain inventory of these current year's inventory and a small remainder of the previous collections.
We used to have not only a normalized level, but especially a composition of this inventory that was reasonable, concentrating much more in items of the current inventory, in the current collection, and less items from the past collections. As you can see clearly, 2021-2022, we lost the proportion compared. We more than tripled the overall size of the inventory. These were bets that the company did in new categories and Beyond the Core. We accumulated, the company accumulated very relevant inventory levels in these gray levels that you can see.
Since 2023, the company has been making a huge effort to monetize those inventories, especially because they were out of the usual level. We have been making a strong effort. Considering that in 2024, we're trying to also sell our products in the supply chain. So this was also something that was a barrier to monetize these inventories. So we can see that after 2023, the total level has been decreasing substantially. And the same happened in 2024.
We made a strong effort to monetize those items from past collections, which was our obligation to do. There was cash retained in there. So we made all the efforts. We ran campaigns, discounts, the Black Friday, a series of actions with a reasonable degree of success. We managed to monetize a good part. We sold a good number of pairs from those collections, from those past collections. But at the end of 2024, after all of the efforts, we made an assessment of what was left and in our inventories.
And what we agreed upon is that the level was a level yet too high for what we used to have in the past, with a composition too different from what should be the usual inventory composition, yet having too many items from past collections in the overall inventory. It's important to mention that the green is the current collection that at the end of the year had a comparable size to other graphs in 2024 of our current collection at that time. When we correct by the inflation, we have very similar levels for this green part of the graph. From the continuation of our inventory of our current collection, we understand that it is absolutely normalized.
The problem we detected is that even after all the efforts, we still had a large number of items from past collections, which motivated us to make this write-off at the end of 2024. In the next slide, we can show this in terms of percentage. It's very easy to realize that the records were reasonably behaved, like 80% and 20%. Or 80% and 10% from past collections and the previous year collection against the current year collection. When you look at the end of 2024, we saw that the last, the darker blue bar, this was very distant from the records, the historical records. So this motivated us to make this write-off adjustment, and which brought us to what we understand to be a normalized inventory position.
We can show you on the right-hand side, after the write-offs, what is the profile of the inventory right now in terms of its composition between the Beyond the Core and the core, reflecting the current strategy of the business, where the focus is in our core business, the flip-flop. A clear, relevant part of that was assembled in 2022 and 2024, was concentrated disproportionately in Beyond the Core products. We managed through the write-offs in the inventory to affect, of course, all these products beyond the core that sold less in recent sales compositions, bringing the inventory to a much more reasonable inventory level, which is about 90% versus 10% in core versus Beyond the Core products in the inventory.
It's important to remember that beyond the core, it is a part of our process where we have changes of collection and annual yearly collections that are launched. Invariably, we are always going to have some level of write-off. And we did not zero past collections within our current inventory. This orange graph shows clearly that we brought this composition close to the historic levels. So it doesn't mean that the levels of write-offs don't exist anymore. It's just that if they happen, they will happen more similar to later past and not compared to recent past when we have had more stronger write-offs.
Now, just to clarify and to give total visibility about the breakdown of flip-flops, which were of about 60 million in the year 2024, in the full 2024, and how much it was of beyond the core, which was about 136 million. And also, how much was in terms of made write-offs in terms of raw material? This is a significant adjustment that we understand that it brings our inventory levels finally to a level that we feel comfortable of proceeding with. And of course, we understand we still have actions to continue to be made, but with a more, let's say, well-behaved inventory level.
Moving on to the last slide, I think it's important to reinforce and emphasize just a few structural initiatives that have been made inside the company over all the past quarters, but which are important as corrections for the causes for this inventory accumulation that had happened. The first of all is the important reduction of our portfolio. Our number of portfolio items now is over 50% smaller than it used to be. This is an important root cause of the accumulation of portfolio.
Having too many more products means that we are probably going to have many more deviations in what we saw, so these attack important root cause in terms of the policy review. We understand that diagnosis that we made two big bets and too large production of products and innovations that proved not to be successful formulas, so now we have policies for test to learn, reducing the risk of making large bets in the future without having clarity of the consequences for the future.
T he same for the discontinuity and discontinuation of collections. We have now a discipline of rules that were implemented for products that were going to be discontinued in the next collection. We have a limitation of by when and how much raw material you can keep buying, how much we can produce only for inventory or against orders that have been made. There is a series of process, order process rules that will prevent us from having large problems with inventory accumulation in the future. The same for the promotion strategies.
If anything is remaining in terms of accidents, in terms of inventory, now we have clear market rules that we are going to reach, applying controlled discount and controlled moments. We have a much more defined policy of what we are going to do for eventual problems in the inventory that we might have in the future, but we expect now to be much smaller and normalized from now on. Obviously, we have an S&OP process much more that makes a much bigger connection between production, logistics, and the sales team, which should bring much more discipline in the process of managing inventory. We are reviewing that in practice.
Moving on, we present to you here the sequence of volume sales sold in Brazil. We grew in sell-in compared to the quarter in the year. We had an increase of 11%, so it was a year of recovery, partial recovery of the scale that we have already had in the past, but with a revenue 9% higher than we had compared to the previous year, and here on this slide, you see the implication of that in the gross margin and EBITDA margin. As we had been showing in the previous year, the reported and the adjusted write-off margins shows us the margin that we understand that is adjusted by the write-off that better reflects the moment of the company.
We had a very healthy level gross margin at 48% in a year trajectory and in a level superior to what we had observed in 2022, 2023. So it's a record result, at least in the recent years. And without the full benefits of the scale that we used to have in 2021, and we haven't gained it back yet. So we have a very healthy margin. Yet, this is a fruit of all the efficiency in productivity and also the effect of the resumption of the scale that we are gaining.
So in the future, we believe there is still some space to keep growing our scale gain. So we have some room to recover compared to the volumes we have already sold in the past. So this is a margin that makes us very optimistic about our performance in the future. We still have many several projects to be implemented about gains in efficiency and performance. From the EBITDA perspective, the same. We have been in a growing trajectory, and this margin not only grew in the year, but also grew in terms of other compared to other four quarters in the recent past.
So we are fully focused on keep gaining productivity, efficiency, and scale so we can have increasingly better results. Moving on, this slide we showed to you the international results. The international shows a trade-off between net sales that grew 11% in the quarter versus a smaller volume of 10%. When we break this down into geographies, we see that EMEA sold 10% more and North America 29% more volume sold. But it's important to remember that in this quarter, because of the characteristic of seasonality, we have a larger relevance of the markets that we serve through distributors, which is the rest of the world excluding EMEA and North America.
So this number of 23% of decrease in the volume is a composition of regions where, especially in Asia, where we saw a relevant growth of double-digit volume, because in the previous year, in the fourth quarter, many people will remember we were deleveraging of our inventory levels in Asia, and we had our sold volumes compressed. And so we saw a relevant jump in the volume sold, but we also saw a relevant compression in the volume sold, especially in Latin America, where we made adjustments to our pricing and margins.
In certain markets, we had certain incoherence of prices in certain markets and certain lack of focus and more clear focus among the markets. So this is what we resolved in 2024, and these are the numbers of this effect of these adjustments. We made important corrections in 2024 because we understood they didn't have the profitability we found acceptable. We made important adjustments to the prices, losing volume, but carrying on now a volume level that we understand to be much more healthy.
We don't want to sell much more volume. We want a volume that is profitable and reflects our priority focus for these distributors' markets. We believe that these numbers reflect very well the perception, the change in the strategy that the company wanted to implement, and that has been proven to be going the direction that we wanted to go. On the next slide, we show margins in the international market, which are, although better than compared to a year before when we saw the peak of our compression of the scale and loss of efficiency, but we now see EBITDA margins, which are still negative and which obviously bothers us and makes us uncomfortable. But we continue with all the elements.
So throughout 2025, we're going to regain scale and gain new ways of efficiency so we can bring this operation to balance as soon as possible. So it's a margin that adjusted by just a write-off is at 45%. It's an important improvement, but it suffers yet an effect of the loss in scale both in the gross margin as well as in the EBITDA margin. This is what continues to be the important focus for us to work on along 2025. Moving on, we have Rothy's results.
Rothy's has been pretty much increasing consistently its results. We left results in the beginning of 2023 of minus $30, minus $29 million dollars, and we have been increasing sequentially. These graphs show the last 12 quarters. In each quarter, we went from minus $30 to a surplus of $20 million. So it's a revision of about $50 million dollars in the results, which we believe to be an important display of our recovery, not only because of the moment, because it brings the company back to profitability, but also because of the way that this has been done.
A factor of the structural of having more SG&A discipline and more productivity, more factory productivity, and also of an expansion and gain in scale in the net sales. We grew our net sales 20% in the year, and revenue overall, in revenue overall, we grew 16% in the year. There is also a large discipline in the expenditure of marketing. In 2023, 2024, we managed to have to be disciplined and bring to these more interesting levels. I think here we close, and now I would like to open for Q&A.
Now we will start our Q&A session. I'd like to remind you that to ask a question, you must click on the icon Q&A at the bottom of your screen and write your question to get into the queue. Upon announcement, you are going to receive a request to activate your microphone, which you should do in order to ask your question orally. We please request that the questions are made all at once if you have more than one question. Let's go to our first question. Our first question is from Joseph Giordano with JP Morgan. In a few moments, Joseph, you are going to receive the request to open up your microphone and ask your question.
[Foreign Language]
Can you hear us?
Thank you for taking my question. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to explore four points which are relatively quick. First of all, is when we look at this deleveraging of inventory and write-off. When you look at this, all of these millions of pairs, I'd like to understand it to explore with you a little bit what was this process, this process of special prices to try to sell those older inventory items. Because when you look, a large part of this inventory doesn't allow us to understand exactly how it happened. Secondly, when we look forward, I'd like to understand how this affects the Beyond the Core strategy.
For instance, in Brazil, the volume growth shouldn't be very significant. So I want to understand what is the core or the beyond the core in terms of strategy. And looking forward, financially speaking, we saw this volatility of the exchange rate and how this could affect the business in the next six months. And you were having a very strong net cash generation. When you look at the CapEx, CapEx is going to be somehow limited due to the recent expansion. I'd like to understand what we can understand in terms of this excess of CapEx, what kind of a CapEx is this from now on?
Thank you, Joseph, for your question. I think I will start with the first two questions. Then André can take the last two points. The way that we wanted to liquidate the inventory, we had the visibility of the inventory. We started to have a liquidation throughout the year. As André mentioned, we directed to the markets where we had a bigger margin, we had larger channels where we could yield higher margins, culminating in the Black Friday, because we know that at the end of the year, we know this is the biggest moment of liquidation for the year.
We had a big campaign of liquidating these inventories in Brazil because outside Black Friday is not as relevant as it is here. Black Friday there is in the winter. Here, the Black Friday is in the Northern Hemisphere. It is in the winter. With this combination of efforts, we managed to sell a large part of the inventory we had, what was left, and that's what we did a write-off of. They were collections so old and products that the market has already sold that these products were not sellable even with very aggressive discounts, so it would make no sense to bring those to the operations of 2025, so we adopted a strategy of 18 months. 2023, we started.
I n 2024, we spent the entire year carrying out this liquidation strategy focused on profitability to make sure that we sold through the channels and markets where we had the largest profitability for those items, and last, we had the final write-off. This was the strategy that we had for the liquidation of the inventory levels that culminated in the amount reported. As for the beyond the core, the strategy for the beyond the core continues to be part of our strategy, but our large and big focus is our core products.
We identified and we know that there is a large room to grow in the core business, flip-flops around the world where we sell a very, very small level compared to the brand awareness and compared to the history of distribution we have in the world. So the first large focus we have is to gain this scale that we have already seen selling flip-flops both abroad and in Brazil. We have already sold much more than the volume that we sold in 2024 in Brazil, and we are trying to reach back this volume sold in the past. I would say that this is the first strategy, the core products. This is what we will continue in 2025.
The Beyond the Core is complementary to that, and we will carry on the strategy that we had before, that we are in moments of consumption which are related to the product that we are selling. So which are open shoes to be worn in informal and summer situations. So we have sandals we have already had, and we will go back to have a pilot of slides, which are those like which are not flip-flops, which have those upper band. So this strategy continues, but it's a strategy that is complementary to the main volume strategy, which is related to our core business, core products, where we still see a lot of room to grow both in Brazil and abroad.
Well, Joseph, thank you for your question. Answering to the other two points, I think the first one about the exchange rate fluctuation, we understand that the business in a regular situation, the company would be neutral as for the exchange rate. We have some important raw materials that we buy that are in dollar, but also we have a part of our revenue in dollar. So in a more recurring situation, we should be neutral to that. But in the recent past, it has not been neutral due to a few reasons. The main one, and maybe the most important one, is this contraction in the volume that we saw in the international markets.
So this brings this equation out of balance, and we are kind of short in dollar in terms of this recent period. And naturally, along 2025, for the projections we have, we believe that the resumption of the volumes in the international markets should help us going back very close to breaking even or that makes us feel we are in a neutral state. Again, we are not giving you any guidances, but we understand that a normalized situation status would have us with a balanced account.
The exchange rate already, Brazilian Real has already gained value in the beginning of 2025, but it's worth mentioning that when we look at the prices, the average entry prices of raw material, main raw material that we buy in dollars, when we look at them in dollars, the entry price is now very similar to the average prices in our inventory. So for now, of course, we are talking about the exchange rate and commodities, which are commodities which are absolutely impossible to predict their behavior, right? And we don't try to do it.
But what I can say is that by looking at the current situation, the entry prices are very similar to the inventory prices we have. So looking at that, give you an opinion to the future, we don't see any pressure and any relief in terms of prices for the raw materials in the future regarding the currency exchange fluctuation. As for the cash, we made it this important write-off that you saw and, excuse me, the leverage movement. And now we have a good problem: how we should see this cash to be allocated in the future.
What we have been doing at the end of 2024 and already in the beginning of 2025 is to make all the prepayments of debts that we had contracted in the past that didn't incur into any penalty in terms of reducing our debt. So we made a large prepayment that we announced to the market in January. It was announced to the market. We made a prepayment last year. So we have been somehow disassembling the gross debt we had using our cash. This doesn't affect the net debt, but it decreases the leverage. Another part of the story is that we don't see big needs for allocating capital for the following quarters. There is nothing much relevant. The CapEx is at a level that we understand to be very close to the normal level.
So what prevented us from going to the options that you mentioned, such as dividends, was that we were without reservation for profits because of all the write-offs and because all of the correct adjustments we made. This consumed our profit, and there was a legal hold that doesn't allow us to do it. With that scenario, we were forced to have a little bit more of cash and less leverage. What we think that should happen in the future is that along the year, following on the plans and having profits, I think this is the natural pathing to have more aligned and more relevant profits. We should be able to have any of the options you mentioned: dividends or buyback.
Buyback, of course, always depending on the share price. But I think that another thing is that we don't have any decision about other mechanisms. The only legal mechanism that would be available would be eventual reduction in capital, but there is no decision along this line currently. So I'm telling you what is on the table right now in terms of legal possibilities that we could be exploring and studying and discussing.
But right now, there is no decision about none of them. But of course, we don't have any intention of accumulating cash inside the company. And as soon as we have the liberation of the legal restrictions we have, yes, we are going to move in the path of distributing profits. So we think there is a healthy path ahead of us to consider the options of buyback and paying dividends in the future, which you mentioned.
Okay, thank you very much for taking my question.
Our next question is from XP Inc, Danniela. In a few seconds, you are going to receive a request to open up your microphone.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a few from my side. The first one is a follow-up on the inventory, but from a different angle. If we look at, in fact, you adjusted a lot to the graph that you showed, Natal. It's quite interesting. The graph shows that very well, but the level where you are right now, it's still above historical records. Of course, you have a little bit of the growth in the revenue. The newer pre-pandemic level growth of revenue of double digits, and now you are at around 7%.
So I want to understand if this growth of 7% is something more normalized currently because of the mix of products or because of the raw material. I just want to understand if this change in the level can be seen for the future. And my second question is looking at the international markets. You bring a qualitative pre-order picture. I'd like to know if you can give some more information about how this is performing, how you see this recovery of growth for the year 2025, and if you can update us on the strategy for the U.S.A. You mentioned that the margin in the U.S. is still negative, even though you had volume growth.
And what do you think right now, and what you're executing right now in terms of the strategy for the U.S.? And if I could ask one more point, in Rothy's, it called our attention. It was a positive surprise to see the improvement in the results of Rothy's. Maybe you could update us on your strategy for this asset. Of course, it contributes to the result, but also might become the asset. Interesting to make a disinvestment in the future if that is the case. If you decide to, can you give us some visibility on your ideas for Rothy's for the future?
Thank you. Hi, Dani. Thank you for your question. I will start with the first one related to the inventory. In the graph that you saw, which had several colors, this was pre-write-off. And the size of that inventory, I think your observation is correct, that it's above historical levels. It was because of the past collections that even after all the efforts, they're still in our inventory. When you look at only the green part of the graph, this is very much aligned with the historical levels.
And the write-off was applied in the lower layers, bringing them to levels more comparable to our historic records. So only for comparison, when you look at our full inventory, whole inventory in 2021, in the fourth quarter, we had BRL 1 billion in inventory. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we had BRL 1.4 billion in inventory. And now we are in the level of BRL 700 million of inventory. So it's not true that our remaining inventory is higher than the records. It's actually much lower than the company was having in the recent past. That graph is not reflecting that. Exactly to show, the graph was there exactly to show the focus of the adjustment. And after the adjustment, the inventory is completely normalized. Okay? So I think that's about it. Now, Liel can take the other points.
Well, thank you, Dani. As for the international markets, as André showed, we have a very clear strategy. The first is to recover the value of our brand through market investment and all the activities we did in 2024 and regain the scale we already had in Europe. We lost in the years 2022 and 2023 a significant volume of sales, and starting 2024, we start now to reverse this trend. In 2025, as you mentioned, we already have the pre-order. It represents 40% of the volume of the year, and it's already a good indicator.
What we have in terms of pre-order is a volume superior than the 2023 pre-order volume, which indicates that in 2025, we should grow our volume in Europe differently from what happened over the past three years where we were losing and we lost double digits every year in terms of volume. So in 2025, we imagine the growth of Europe, the resumption of the volume growth in Europe, and consequently, the margin will grow and we tend to, from there on, regain the scale that we have once had in Europe. As for the U.S.A, the strategy in the U.S.A absolutely does not change.
It's one of the largest markets of flip-flops in the world, or open shoe market in the world. And Havaianas has a very deep level, has a very high brand awareness level in the U.S. relatively. It's the second most well-known brand in the U.S.. But we have not yet converted this brand awareness into volume sold for different reasons. The U.S.A is a very difficult market. The trade there is very localized. It's very difficult to sell to these large retail chains. And if you do not have the scale, you cannot be listed.
If you are not listed, you do not have a scale in sales. Our strategy for the U.S. is absolutely a priority market for us because of its size and because we have an asset there. Our brand awareness there is high. Now we have to find ways, mechanisms to convert this brand awareness into volume sold. We are working on that. We have already talked about this previously. We were working looking for alternatives for the business model in the U.S. because if the big barrier is to find distribution, especially in the main networks, we have to find a distribution model that allows us to reach these large chains.
We are talking about a series of potential partners, such as. Since the brand is very well known, there is a lot of interest on the part of the partners to join us, to help us in the distribution, and we are speaking to several partners, and we hope to find a solution, and by doing that, grow the U.S. through a better distribution and at the same time reduce significantly our costs, so through a partnership, we wouldn't bear all of this SG&A that we have to carry individually performing the distribution, so this is the sum up of the strategy for the U.S. We believe that very soon or at a certain moment in 2025, we're going to be able to announce if we really found this partner that made this growth in the U.S. possible, and last, as for Rothy's, absolutely is great news.
Rothy's is a company that is growing double digits in its revenue. Now it has a positive EBITDA. It has a disciplined management that allows that those three things continue to grow, growing the revenue, the EBITDA margin, and keep preserving their cash. The company right now is building cash instead of burning it. So we are going to maintain the business model of Rothy's, and we have no decision about what to do about Rothy's.
We have clearly to discuss and keep discussing within a full M&A strategy and portfolio strategy of Alpargatas International. So this is not a conversation that is specifically about Rothy's. It is about when is the right moment for Alpargatas to make a decision about its portfolio of brands and M&A. The moment is not now. As everyone knows, we still have a lot of efforts to be made in what is the core of our products in the markets, which are the core of our business.
Thank you, Liel and André, for your answers. Our next question is from Gustavo Fratini, Bank of America. Please, Gustavo, you can open up your microphones and ask your question.
Thank you. Good morning, Liel and André. I have two quick questions from our side. The level of disclosure you gave in this quarter was great. You gave us visibility, a good visibility about the business. But one thing that called our attention is that 70% plus 11% of the inventory that is still left of the Beyond the Core and the old collection. We understand this is okay, more according to the record levels, but we want to understand what, in terms of write-offs, what could be coming in terms of write-offs related to those products that you still have.
Even though you gave a lot of visibility of the inventories, which are in your balance sheet, if you have any visibility of the inventories, especially in the Beyond the Core products, which are in your distributors, in terms of inventories that is without out of your direct control, inventories of distributors or partners.
Thank you for the questions. I think that starting with the second question, which is easier to answer, since we maintain a discipline of what is inventory in the chain, which is up to three months, 100 days of inventory in our chain, and up to seven months of inventory in our international distributors. This gives us a certainty that there is no inventory that is sitting in the chain, whether abroad, whether in Brazil, including our distributors in Brazil, that could be a problem for the sales of our new collection in the future. Our clients, as André showed, since the end of 2023, and especially in the year of 2024, our sell-ins and sell-outs are very much aligned, so they are buying as they sell without accumulating inventory from no matter whether it is from older or younger collections. They are aligned.
The inventory levels are aligned to what we expect in the chain. So the answer is no. We do not believe that there is no kind of inventory in our clients that will become a barrier in old inventory that will be a barrier for the sales of the new collections in the future and for the continuity of the selling levels that we have been seeing for 2025. As for the inventory, Beyond the Core and old collections that we still keep, as André mentioned, this inventory, looking at the past, this is what we have always carried on in our historical records. In addition to what we are selling, this is some leftover from the previous year, and that's 10% from older collections, older than last year. This leftover is something that can still be sold.
There are clients buying them, and we will keep selling them along 2025. So there are no products, as I said, that have any problem of quality or have any problem of competitiveness because they want to be purchased. There is a desire for these products. So these products were a success like two or three years ago, and we still have inventory because we had a very high productivity level like two or three years ago, but we will keep selling them throughout 2025. So we don't expect that this 10% of old collections and also an overlap of Beyond the Core might become a problem for the sales of our products in 2025. As André described, we do not operate in a business model that we have zero write-offs.
There is always a write-off because there is always a product we produce it, and it didn't have the demand we had expected, or maybe we produce it, but since we produce it based on numbers, it sold more in a specific size for women, but didn't sell for men in a smaller size. There is always this little leftover of the inventory that we have to eliminate, and the same happens to the raw materials. Some of the raw materials, you cannot buy exactly the amount you are going to produce. So there is always a small leftover of something.
But we believe that this is part of the business model which is acceptable for our operations. So we do not believe that based on the inventory we have nowadays, both for finished goods and raw material, we are going to see any write-off event in 2025 that is going to be meaningful to the point of impacting the operational results in 2025, very differently from what we saw in 2023 and in 2024 for finished goods and raw material.
Very clear, Liel, your answer. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from João Soares, Citibank. João, can you please open up your microphone and ask your question?
[Foreign Language]
Liel, I'd like to understand this marketing allocation, this higher marketing allocation that you have made. I'd like to understand what is the expectation of the return of this. We are looking at sellout, that sellout is flat right now. So do you aim to gain market share in specific segments? You mentioned a lot about the opportunities that are still existing in the core business. So I'd like to understand how we can imagine this marketing investment.
The second point about the international markets, you mentioned that the U.S.A is a priority market in Europe as well. What do you think, what do you aim as the ideal volume level? What is the scale that you expect for those operations as a normal level? And a last very quick question about pricing, the revenue per pair. Was there any kind of effect because the price went up a lot recently?
Thank you for your questions. I'll start with the first two. As for marketing, we already see some positive results. As I mentioned, we gained market share in the modern channel. Nielsen looks at the two modern, which means cash and carry and grocery, and the traditional channels, like small stores. When you look at the market share, our market share in the traditional channels is 85%. We don't have expectation. We have there, we have expectation of gaining market share. The absolute leadership we have there, which is the fruit of many years of working through retailers and wholesalers, and Havaianas dominates completely this channel.
There, our strategy is much more commercial to ensure that we have visibility and we have the adequate point of sale, that the assortment of data that a small retail has is correct. This is more about commercial efficiency there, and we are focused on it. Where we are really investing in marketing, and marketing has, in effect, is the modern channel, where our market share is very much smaller historically than in the traditional business. We are talking about a market share of about 60%, and we have to grow our market share in these modern channels for several reasons.
First, because this channel is the one that is growing in Brazil. Consumers are migrating to this channel. Second, is where we can find room to grow. From May last year to January, in our last market share, we grew two market share points in the modern channels. And this is a sequence of growth because, Nielsen, we shouldn't be looking at the fluctuation. We should look at the trend. So from May to January, we grew 2%. So this is already an effect of our portfolio and marketing investment. Another number is our growth in the men's category of products, where we have a smaller market share, and we are investing to build the brand image for this segment of consumers.
And as I said, we grew the volume of the men's products in about 20% compared to the previous year, which is already the fruit of these efforts. So the market investments are already showing results, but as we know, the marketing, our long-term investment, what is important is the consistency. We want to keep a level of investment in marketing, which is adequate, so we can offer support to our brand in Brazil and abroad, where we focus in five markets in Europe and four markets in Asia. And this is pretty much the priority of our brand building abroad, in addition to the U.S..
What you can see in terms of marketing investments from now on, it should keep itself where it is in the international, [Foreign Language] , where we are going to reduce marketing investments, especially in the U.S., where we made a big bet in 2024 with more significant volumes that did not yield the results we wanted. And we are, at this moment, reviewing that marketing investments for the U.S. So we reduce investments. But in Europe, in Brazil, and in markets in Asia, we intend to keep the marketing investments in the levels where we operated in 2024. So I hope I have answered fully your question. As for the volume in the international, obviously, we cannot give you a number, but we can give you an intention.
Our intention, both in Europe as well as in the United States and in Asia, is first to focus on priority markets, so there are 15 markets around the world where the brand has good brand awareness. We already have some presence in the distribution in those places, and we believe we have an adequate portfolio to compete in those markets. In those markets, we already had a volume significantly higher than we have right now. We're talking about almost 50% higher. We're talking about almost 50% of volume that we have lost over the past year, so we believe that the first step is to recover this scale that we once had in Europe, in the U.S., and in the priority markets in Asia. We cannot give you a number, of course.
We cannot create this expectation, but we expect that as the first step in the next one or two years, we intend to recover this scale that we lost. Because it doesn't mean we have to bring in new consumers. The consumers already know the brand. He or she has already used our product, has already purchased our product. It's a matter of reconnecting to those consumers, having the product available and at the right price point, and remind them of Havaianas so they can go back and purchase from us.
João, to take your last question about net sales per pair, there are a few important effects. One, I will highlight three at least. Some of them I went through in the presentation. The first one is that we saw a mix of important growth in the fourth quarter in Europe compared to a year before, in parallel to an important reduction in the distribution markets, so this effect in terms of geography mix brings a price that was a little bit higher because of Europe.
In the overall mix among all geographies, we had more of Brazil than in the international markets, where we saw an effect that contributed for the net sales per pair, and the third important effect is the effect of the exchange rate itself. The exchange rate in the fourth quarter saw that spike, so the other strong currencies had a strong elevation of value compared to the Brazilian Real, and all the combination of factors took to the effects that you saw.
Thank you very much, Liel and André, for taking my question.
The Q&A session is over. Now I would like to give the word back to Liel to make his final consideration.
I would like to thank the presence of all of you to thank you for your questions. I'd like to say that the year of 2024 was a transition year with certain things that have already progressed, certain things in which we saw some progress, but we still have a long way to go. With certain things that unfortunately are things that come from the past that still affected us in 2024, we expect that 2025 is marked by the continuity of the strategy, consistency of the strategy.
It is marked by the continuity of results that we saw in 2024, the progress we made in 2024, addressing our main opportunity or area of growth, which is the international market, regaining the scale in Europe, changing the business model to grow in the U.S., and focusing in the priority markets in Asia and in a few other markets. So I thank you all, and we remain available to answer any further questions or concerns that you might have.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all. Have a great day. This was João.
This video conference for the results of the fourth quarter 2024 of Alpargatas is now closed. The Investor Relations Department is available to take any questions or concerns you might still have. Thank you all, participants, and have a great day. Thank you all very much.