Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Ladies and gentlemen, please. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, thank you for waiting. Welcome to Via Varejo's conference call to discuss the results of the second quarter of 2018. This event is also being broadcast via webcast. It may be accessed at www.viavarejo.com.br/investorrelations, where you will find the respective presentation as well. The slide selection will be managed by you. A replay facility for this call will be available on the website. We inform you that the company's press release about its results is also available on its investor relations website. This event is being recorded. All participants will be in listen-only mode during the company's presentation. After Via Varejo's remarks are completed, there will be a question-and-answer session when further instructions will be given.
Should any participant need assistance during the call, please press star zero to reach the operator. Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that forward-looking statements that might be made during this call in relation to Via Varejo's business outlook, operating and financial projections and targets, are beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information currently available. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events. Therefore, they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors may affect the future performance of Via Varejo and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now, we would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Flávio Dias, CEO of the company.
Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for participating in this call. I'm with Paulo Nagato, our COO, Felipe Negrão, our CFO and Investor Relations Officer, Izabel Branco, our Human Resources and Sustainability Officer. In this quarter, we gave another significant step to transform the company with the implementation of our new store system called Via.ai. Via.ai is an important tool in the development of our functionality. This is a platform that consolidates and potentializes all the initiatives developed so far, such as our new compensation model, the site and marketplace catalog offer Via Única or Single Path, and also the integration with our website and with our new app, which is already in soft launch since July 20th.
We are transforming our salespeople into sales consultants, further enriching the experience on the part of our consumers with an increase in participation together with a higher return for the company. Another important step was carried out in the second quarter, the conclusion of the development and implementation of system integration between and among the companies. We have already started the depletion of inventories in the old system in a matter of weeks. Still within the third quarter, we will be operating the company based on one single system, which will allow us to have more efficiency, better control, above all, much more favorable conditions for the strong advancement of multi-channel operations. The second important step of Via.ai will be the possibility of having credit operations with the online channel.
Now it's only available for the SKUs present in the brick-and-mortar stores and expecting to insert part of the population in the online market, Via.ai and our website, with the use of credit operations or the credit pay book. We intend to launch the pilot project by the end of this year. In this quarter, we also made steps toward the improvement of our level of services and the reduction of the delivery costs, reaching 30.7% participation in online sales in the main categories, adding 1,000 postal offices or postal agencies for pickup points. We reached 18 units of hub stores that deliver the last mile and that deliver a reduction of 80% in the time for delivery on average, mostly due to the use of a cloud shipping platform for the delivery.
Continuing with our service level theme, I would like to say that we continue to have a strong evolution shown by the highest levels of NPS that we have ever had in our e-commerce, with an average of 72 points in this quarter vis-à-vis 58 in the last quarter, higher than the international benchmarks, also because of the evident improvement in the three banners. On the expansion of our operations, we opened 11 new stores in this quarter, 10 in the smart format and one kiosk. Besides, due to the performance of this kiosk in April, we will accelerate the expansion of this model still within 2018. For our full commerce platform, we added to our logistic infrastructure, to our stores, the Retira Rápido or click and collect. As I said before, now in July, we started the soft launch of our new app.
It is lighter, it is faster, already with the Via Única that will transform our whole communication with our customers. Our new data strategy that is improved by means of Via Única start to show positive indicators such as the results obtained with use of the predictive model that suggests the product that have the highest probability of being purchased by each client. We included products and prices, inventory, means of payment in the last five years, we will implement this with over 120 points internally and externally. The next best offer will be embarked in the VMI system. Recently, we concluded this logic of best offer for search engines, we doubled conversion rate for the clients that were impacted, this shows how powerful this tool will be.
The expectation that we have is that this tool will reach half of the qualified base of over 660 million clients that we have over the second half of 2018. I would like to mention that June was the first month in which we fully implemented the recommendation of the new mix that resulted from the analysis that we carried out with data scientists over our historical base. This suggests the optimization allocation of funds combining channel, product category, and geography. We still need some fine-tuning, but we already know that it has a very good return on investment. Also the digital transformation of Via with the decision of unifying our commercial logistics and areas that now report directly to the COO of the company.
Thus, the executive board is made up by me as CEO, Paulo Nagato as COO, Felipe Negrão as CFO and IRO, and by Izabel Branco as human resources and sustainability officer. Besides the CDO position that we will be announcing very shortly. We are sure that this new structure will bring about more agility for decision making and for all the teams making Via Varejo a benchmark company in the omni-channel activities and with a very good client experience and being the ideal partner both for sellers and for partners and suppliers. I would like to talk about our engagement survey with an evolution of 15 percentage points vis-à-vis the survey of 2017. We reached 80%. The survey had the participation of about 40,000 people, almost 91% of our employee base.
It shows that more and more we are an engaged team in order to continue in this journey of transformation. Now, I would like to give the floor to Felipe Negrão to talk about the results of the quarter.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for your presence. Let's start talking about our results of the second quarter of 2018 and the outlook for our business. On slide four. In the second quarter of 2018, we delivered growth in our consolidated net revenue of 5.1%, reaching BRL 6.7 billion. In brick-and-mortar stores, we had a growth of our net revenue of 6.5%, and online, we delivered growth of 9.4% in our invoice GMV. In the second quarter of 2018, we had the 2.0 model-- the mobile 2.0 and a new compensation model.
In the second half, we will conclude the VMI, our new sales system with CRM and the catalog of the online product. In the second quarter, we also saw a significant increase in traffic. This is very important for mobile because in the third quarter, the new app and the CRM will be fundamental tools in order to leverage our sales. On slide five. Invoice GMV 3P growing 27.5%. Evolution of the GMV, 3.4%. The click and collect continues to show an important evolution, reaching 30.7% of the online sales in the main categories. Click and collect is very strategic for Via Varejo. Once it makes it possible for us to have a better client service with a lower logistics cost and the possibility of upsell and cross-sell, both our products and financial services as well, very important for our profitability.
As Flávio mentioned, we have 2,000 collect points, pickup points, 1,000 stores and 1,000 postal agencies. On slide six, the World Cup had an important impact on our product mix. Our product sold in the second quarter had a very big increase in the participation of televisions, which have a substantially lower commercial margin. As a result, gross margin dropped by 31.2%, from 31.2% to 28.9%. We had efficiency gains with SG&A in many lines, 26% going to 23.2% of our net revenue. Legal and provision for loan losses had an important impact, and the better assignment of credit and better collection resulted into a very important reduction in general expenses. The project that we launched with our legal side started to bear fruit with civil and labor claims being reduced and closing of more of these claims as well, closing and settlement.
We still have many projects in order to increase this for the company without hindering our client service and without hindering the delivery of important projects for the future of the company. As a consequence of our effort, we had the sixth consecutive quarter of EBITDA margin growth . Our adjusted EBITDA margin 5.1% going to 6.1%. On slide number 7, the net financial results before the restatement were some 4.1% to 2% of the net sales, and we had an important evolution in our net income, and the loss that was BRL 85 million in the 2Q 2017 became a net income of BRL 22 million in 2018, the highest ever net earnings since 2014 in this quarter. In slide number 8, the company keeps a very good and sound financial position with net cash of BRL 2 billion.
We had a positive cash generation in the period, although we are operating strategically with higher inventories and with a high level of CapEx going from BRL 32.8 million in the 2Q 2017 to BRL 157 million in the 2Q 2018. Now I would like to open for questions. Now we would like to open for questions. Please ask all your questions at once. In order to ask a question, please press star one. Mr. Tiago Cruz from Itaú BBA would like to ask a question. Good afternoon. My first question has to do with the income tax. We expected a worse situation vis-à-vis last year. About these Cnova losses, do you already see any benefits being generated because of these credits? And regarding your loan losses, you talked about the year-on-year figure, Felipe.
Are you going to maintain this at this level, or is there anything in this quarter that could be seen as a one-off situation? These are my two questions. Good afternoon, Tiago. Your first question was about the point of sale? He's asking him to repeat. The accumulated losses of the Cnova operations. The translators are not hearing the questions or the answers, in fact. We had a better online operation than the first quarter. We are working with some initiatives in order to help the operation as a whole. Regarding the allowance for loan losses, there is nothing one-off in our allowance for loan losses. What we are doing is the change in the credit policy that we had in the past and also in our collection activities. Our collection activities are much better now.
In online, we have a new credit policy which is stricter, and that should.
We should give us a better situation in terms of allowance for loan losses. Quarter-on-quarter, we have been improving this consistently. We can work with this improvement, and it should improve from now on.
Thank you for the answers. Mr. Richard Castagnaro from Bradesco also has a question.
Good afternoon, everyone. I have a question about the app. Clearly, it's too early to talk about the soft launch of Casas Bahia, but I would like to know more about your expectations regarding the app launching in terms of sales in this quarter, the coming quarter. Are you also launching Extra and Pontofrio app right after Casas Bahia's or are you going to wait a little bit? My second question, I would like to know about the competitive environment. In the first quarter, you said that it was a little bit harsh, especially because of the 1P, and I just would like to understand your opinion about the second quarter and now turning into the second half of the year as well.
Well, Richard, thank you very much for your question. About the app, we do have a great expectation.
We are working on this project over this year. We are sure that we have on the hands of our clients a product that is of a great quality. It's a lighter product. It's faster. It has functions because this is a native app. It allows us to have a customized access. We can communicate to our clients, and we can drive all that data intelligence that we have built with Via Única. We believe that in addition of being an important sales tool, a new sales channel, we believe it is going to play a new role. It's going to go beyond that. It will have a positive impact to the client's journey in the store and will increase the conversion in the store.
The client that views in the app will be able to have a better interact with the store environment, will have information about products, will have access by geo-localization to opportunities of sales based on that brick-and-mortar store. This is going to be an important tool for us so that we can integrate all that journey. We do not disclose how much we are expecting in terms of driving sales considering that, but we do have a great expectation. We will be investing a lot in the launching campaign so that we can increase the number of downloads and obviously to provide incentives so that those people that actually download the app will have reasons to keep the app installed.
In addition to investment and advertisement, we understand that we have a sales force extremely trained to be ambassadors of the sale of this app and the installation of this app for our store audience. We are working with incentives for that as well. This is a 360-degree campaign. It will involve all the company so that this app, in fact, does have a great importance to us starting now. We are just doing the fine-tuning now. We're just working on the final details, but all tests have been running very well. It's going fine. We understand that we'll be stronger in Casas Bahia now. After that, obviously, we'll develop out the other apps.
Right now, we'll be focusing on Casas Bahia, knowing that a lot of what we have been doing for Casas Bahia we'll be able to take to the other banners, we'll not be starting from scratch again. We will have some customizations to do. We are on track, but right now, in the beginning, we'll prioritize Casas Bahia at full speed. About your second question, I think the competitive environment is still there. We did have two important events in this quarter, which were Mother's Day and the World Cup. Naturally, a few actions where you see a lot of promotion activity. Obviously, it was not different. We did not have the same special factors, the same special happenings that we talked about in the first quarter. We cannot say that we did have those two issues that you mentioned.
Yes, because of the seasonal events and also because of the high demand, we understand that this was a harsh and competitive environment. We were able to keep following our strategy to keep sustainable growth. We understand that this is a scenario that is going to be constant from now on. We do not expect a significant change for this year.
Great, Flávio. If you allow me a quick follow-up, with Felipe now. Can you give us a little bit more color about these BRL 62 million in other expenses? Exactly what is involved there? What is under that line for the quarter?
Good afternoon. What we have in this quarter is the following , a difference vis-a-vis last year, but we have the following. Some issuances here in the company. This is the first topic. We had some oscillations. The second important topic is that for some stores, we are not expecting a positive profitability. We have a restructuring cost involved, and that will be forward. This is already provisioned to close those stores. We have already carried out a planning to close some of these stores. That's why we have provisioned it. These are my two main topics to explain that.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Mr. Robert Ford from Bank of America has a question.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question is if you can tell us a little bit about the electronic commerce, 1P seems to be down, and I want to understand how you think about having a better offer at 1P. Second, now that you are going to Novo Mercado, how will you determine the representation of the board of directors, please?
Hello. Well, let me talk about the electronic commerce. As you mentioned, there is a lower growth in 1P. That has an important relationship with the truckers' strike and also the environment of the World Cup in the second quarter. We did have an increase in TV sales, but we saw lower appetite for phones. Therefore, this impacted our figures. The strike did have an important impact in the electronic commerce, although that was mitigated by the Retira Rápido, and our strategy is to look for a growth in our marketplace that is in line with Via Varejo's strategy of having a broad assortment to become a shopping destination and not only being strong in the core categories, which are traditionally in our banners.
Do you have a strategy of leaving some categories?
No, that does not represent that strategy. Actually, we say that we are more equipped now, as Flávio said. We now have tools such as app, media intelligence tools that allows us to accelerate our marketing in an efficient fashion. Our strategy is to grow in 1P and 3P. What about the representation? When we go to Novo Mercado, that won't change. Now we will need to have two independent board members. We already have that, Renato Carvalho and Alberto Butte as independent members. Nothing changes with Novo Mercado. Felipe, is that proportional, that participation, if you have nine board members, and if Pão de Açúcar has 43% of shares. They will have four board members? Are you going to change that number, the representatives from Pão de Açúcar? No. We're not changing anything in the board.
It's going to be the same board. What about in the next votes? Will you have proportional votes? Yes. It will be the same. Nothing will change. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Gustavo Oliveira from UBS also has a question. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. I have two questions. One is still about this innovation process that you are rolling out now, and a lot of the things are just starting in June and up to the end of September. My first question is very specific about VMIs. Are you already including there the software that you were going to change the software for the storefront? And at what stage of the process are you at? And do you already have a way to measure an impact? I know you're just starting with the app, but some of these initiatives might improve the conversion in your flow and in your traffic.
Do you already have a way to measure that? I would like to know about some figures and if you believe that you are going to have better sales in the third quarter, and then I will have a follow-up question. Gustavo, this is Paulo. Thank you very much for your question. About Via+, we are just concluding the rollout of this new platform in 100% of our stores now in July. This platform should provide us a productivity gain because it will simplify the purchasing journey of the client. This is a simpler and faster process that usually allows us to have a productivity gain, and also the availability of our team to serve our clients.
It brings technology that will help us customize the service to our clients, optimize our clients' purchasing journey in the different channels, and take that information and use it to do more business. This is a tool that suggests to our team products for cross-selling, upselling, added services, and which also should increase our volume of sales. We do have a gain of time, productivity, and quality of sale. That technology is connected, as Flávio said, in the NBO, in Via Única, and in the customization of offers to our clients. The window of products to our clients already is showing to our team with attributes of clients' purchasing prevention, and it will optimize all our models of incentive to the team in order to have the best choices for the clients with the best profitability.
It will simplify the process and will allow the salesperson to work in a simpler way, and they will also have the best recommendations. We have a great expectation of gains and optimization of the business in the brick-and-mortar store. It will allow us to take advantage of the traffic in the brick-and-mortar stores to understand the shop carts that are abandoned in the brick-and-mortar stores and use that base of clients and something that we didn't use to have access to. It will end now, right? Yes, now in July. This platform is a web platform. We are right now already experimenting Via+ mobile. We have some stores, which are 13 stores, using that mobile version.
It's not totally concluded yet, but we hope to be expected to conclude it in this third quarter so that we also have that solution in a higher number of stores, and once again, simplifying the purchasing journey of our clients.
After the pilots, do you have an idea how this is going to improve sales? Do you have a comparison here? I can't give you figures here, but it will reduce in a few times the time to finalize the purchasing process. That final process is greatly simplified, and also it's easy to have new professionals at Via engaging in the company. In the past, we needed 30 days for a person to learn how to operate in our platform, and now we have seen new salespersons operating in our platform in the first day.
It's a much simpler platform, we are measuring not only the time gains, but also efficiency gains in terms of products and services offers.
My second question is about working capital. You mentioned in the press release that you decided to increase your inventory level financed by vendors as a way to protect against FX effects. That happened before the problem that we had at the end of May and June, or you were already anticipating stronger sales and that was affected by the Truckers' Strike. I just want to understand what is the average purchasing there for you, because I don't know how much of that inventory was at a prior price. Do you already have a greater inventory and you did not have the sale because of the Truckers' Strike, or did you increase your inventory levels after that strike? Gustavo, this is Lipi.
We have higher inventory levels because of three main reasons. One of them is because of exactly what you said, because of that effect. We already had an estimate of depreciation, we wanted to maintain that high inventory levels for another quarter. We have long-term there in terms of inventories, we are considering here purchases that are before that depreciation. Second, it was the company's decision as well. We do have an expectation of vendors lowering production. The company has decided also to have that greater inventory. The third point that is not on the hands of the company, that sales were a little bit lower than what we expected. That has affected inventory levels more than what we had expected internally. These are the three main topics here. What's important, you already said in your question
The vendor finance on inventory, we have a partnership with these vendors. We do have a good cash balance. We do have that inventory with no cash impact. We do have working capital that is positive. Gustavo. Yes, go ahead, please. I was just going to add about VMI, another detail that I think it's relevant. In addition to the assortment of marketplace, we are also making available to the stores the marketplace, that will increase the possibility of doing businesses in the store. It creates a long tail view for our banners, we will also potentialize greater volume business. That's great also for our stores and the platform. Yes. Thank you very much. Now going back to Felipe's answer.
With a higher inventory, do you already see a sales recovery now in July for this third quarter, or you have to discount a little bit more? I just want to understand the commercial dynamics here.
Gustavo, this higher inventory allows us to be prepared for the third quarter, we are going to go into the next one very well. In a moment where the FX also pressures prices, we start going into the future in a very good position. As I mentioned before, because of the World Cup, we had lower phone sales. This is a product that sells a lot. Usually, it has a high churn. Now, we are ready, we do not believe we are going to have problems with FX and neither because of possible vendors negotiations. Mr. Guilherme Assis from Brasil Plural has a question.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for answering my question. I want to talk about a topic that has been mentioned already, but it is regarding that inventory level. Just picking up from where you left. Can we expect, starting on the third quarter, a margin back to the levels that we had up to the third quarter of 30%? I think it's clear the impact of the mix of the World Cup and this gross margin of the second quarter. Now just continuing Paulo's answer with a well-positioned inventory for smartphones, et cetera, can we see that margin recovering? If that happens, are you able to maintain that operations driving that have neutralized the lower gross margin? Can we expect a better impact in the EBITDA margin? That is my question. I also have a second one.
I would like to go back to one of your comments, a comment from Negrão regarding stores closing. Can you tell us about how many stores you will be closing and when? When do you expect to close them? Thank you very much.
This is Paulo. I would like to answer the first part of your question. Regarding the margin, we do expect an improvement in our margin due to the change of mix. That is to say, the higher participation of telephony in our sales for the first one. This is an important factor. The second one is the fact that we have been working with the incentive model for our team, and this should bring about an additional contribution for this period. We have been investing in technology to develop the team and to optimize our results and tap into all the new technologies that we are placing at their disposal. Thirdly, because we continue to invest in technology and improvement in our pricing process, and we expect that this combination will bring about an improvement in our margin for the third quarter as well.
Thank you very much. This is Felipe. Regarding our leverage, we had important gains already in two areas. That is in our allowance for loan losses and on our legal part. The plans that we have for the second half are as described, and our expectation is to have a positive result coming out of that. It depends on the sales in the third quarter. Another point is that we are attacking, so to say, other lines of efficiency without hindering our client services and without hindering projects that are important for the future of the company. We are looking at many lines of our SG&A besides the allowance for loan losses and our legal activity.
We are looking at others, we are trying to capture some in the short run, some take a little bit more time, we are working a lot on that.
Just a follow-up.
In fact, there is no recurrent problem in the allowance for loan losses. It was a very important improvement, it comes from your effort in terms of your credit score activities and others. When we look at the delinquency chart that you have, in the second quarter, we had a slight increase vis-à-vis last year, the NPL. From 15, you are reducing your forecast. Do you think there is a risk of going back to the previous levels of provision if delinquency continues in the same trend? Do you see that delinquency is already much lower? If you compare the NPL vis-à-vis what was published last year, we saw a reduction, it was not very big. When we consider the new IFRS, we compare the provision of 2017 with 2018, there was a reduction, excessive reduction.
That's because in the new model, this is what we consider an NPL, where the quality of credit that we have today is very much different from what we had in the past. We had to improve our quality of credit assignment activities. This is seen in the NPL, you end up having these gains more quickly as we have a more restrictive credit policy, we reduced our approval rate. We expect this figure to remain at a better level. This is an important point, as it took about one and a half year in order to see the impact of the NPL in terms of approval criteria. It was more stable over the year. The NPL was more stable over the year. With this new criteria that we adopted, it starts to have a different timeline for the impact.
The main thing is the quality of our credit assignment activity. We also input the interest rate in our models. We had a lower funding in this model than the one that we have in the other model. The second point that you mentioned, the closing of stores. I would like to say that we are making a big endeavor. We don't want to close stores. We want to open additional stores, and we are going to make our best endeavors in order to make all our stores profitable. Right now, I wouldn't like to talk about any figure regarding that. It will not be a significant number of stores. It will be a low number of stores. I would like to go into that right now.
It helped a lot. Thank you very much.
Mr. Joseph Giordano from JPMorgan would like to ask a question.
Good afternoon, everyone. Hello, Flávio. Hello, Felipe, Luis, everyone. I have a question to try to understand a topic. I want to go back to the operating leverage. If we were to compare the quarters like for like, considering e-commerce has not grown a lot, would it be reasonable to say that we will have an expansion of gross margin? I know that multi-channel here was favorable for the company. This is my first question. My second question has to do with financial expenses that have increased a little bit because of the monetary adjustment. The drop in the financial expenses, especially regarding the discount of receivables, also dropped less than what we expected. On the side of receivables discounted, what was the volume discounted in this period? Was it higher than last year?
If the cost of that discounted receivable has changed over the period, because here this drop was not as significant as we thought, because when you bring everything together, the income, also the payment book, and interest.
Hello, Giordano. Let me address your second question, and then we'll ask you to repeat your first question. Talking about your second question. When you talk about working capital, we have the financial results before the restatements, we do have a reduction, especially because of the interest rates. Also, you can calculate it. We cannot disclose the discounted volume. You know that the discount rate is related to CDI. The average term of receivables hasn't changed much. You can have a reverse math there. About your first question, can you repeat it, please? We were not able to understand it. If you would be removing the effect of the unfavorable effect in the period
Would we have a margin effect or would we have an increased margin? When we look at the revenue breakdown, we would have a favorable mix here, which was the fact of brick-and-mortar store growing more than e-commerce. I would like to understand if we can think that TV would allow us to have an expansion of gross margin or not.
We have to do the math here to answer your question. We can check that, and we should simulate it, and we'll send you that information. We don't have the figure by heart. The main indicators that I see regarding margin, services to share, we did not have any significant changes that could actually impact that. No significant changes except for credit operations. As I said already, in May, we have reduced the approval rates.
That did have a lower share, a lower stake than when compared to last year. That does have a small impact on the gross margin, a lower share of the credit operations, but that is the only thing that would be impacting the margin. Anything other than that, I would have to do the math. I just would like to understand something else and thinking about the short term. How is this hangover, that is to say, after the World Cup, I would like to understand what is the behavior of sales now in July, and more than that, what the company sees in terms of discounts that are more difficult to apply in the second half of the year. We already see a normalized mix.
In terms of consumption profile, we already are back to pre-World Cup period, we are optimistic about all these new technologies that we are rolling out, that should expedite marketing use, conversion in the stores and the website because of the app, because of VMI. Regardless that post-World Cup hangover, we are betting on the productivity gain that we are already tapping into because of all these investments.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. Ms. Maria Paula from DDD Investments has a question. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for answering my question. My question has to do with the last question you answered. Can you give us more information on the monthly performance, if we can understand the effects of the strike? In the first quarter, you had a double-digit growth.
I want to know if April had the same trend, the beginning of May also, we had a truckers strike, what was like when consumers went back to shopping after the strike.
Maria Paula, we do not break down and disclose figures on a monthly basis, about the strike, in addition to the impact itself of having less clients in the stores, it was between May and June. We don't have a significant change in the behavior in that period. At the end of one month and the beginning of another, we did have a reduction in consumption. It was normalized. After that, we had the World Cup effect with the profile of purchasing impacting the financial results. Thank you very much. To ask a question, please press star one. To ask a question, please press star one.
We right now end the Q&A session. I would like to turn the floor back to the company for their final remarks.
Well, everyone, once again, I would like to thank you very much for being here with us. Also I thank my team that is here. Thank you all for the dedication and the competence that you have shown so far in delivering results, and also in the whole process of changing Via Varejo. It's very clear for all of us that we are just in the beginning. Therefore, we have a long and challenging journey ahead. We are already very encouraged by the steps we have taken. It's very clear also that we have to be a lighter and more agile company, a more collaborative company as well, and to truly be centered in the client.
For that, we have to go forward in our data strategy and the predominance of our decision processes determined by this data, and whenever possible, in an automated fashion. We are already seeing the difference it makes, especially in marketing and logistics, and also in some parts of the operations. We want to continue expediting our process in the omni-channel. That should have a great impact into the customer experience with us. To be an inclusion icon for part of a population by the concession granting also a scalable digital model. This another mission that really makes us full of proud. Despite of the market adversities and the huge challenges that we have ahead, I truly trust my team.
We have seen by the engaging numbers that we have shared, that they do believe as well, and they do have everything that it takes to make it happen. Once again, thank you very much for your attention, and have a nice afternoon.
This conference call, Via Varejo, has ended. The IR department is available to address any other questions you might have. Thank you very much for your participation and have a nice day.