Good afternoon. Now we're back live to answer your questions. Thank you so much for your interest in our company.
Before we begin, I would like to give you a little energy here. Today on the 12th of August, we are entering the state of Amazonas with distribution centers and five stores that we started now in Manaus.
We reached such an important state reinforcing our commitment to our omni-channel approach. We're going to quickly look at a clip of what went on now in Manaus. Just 30 seconds. I think you got a bit of the vibe, and I can talk about the omni-channel approach all day long.
What you just saw is the actual omni-channel approach live. The strength of our brand takes consumers online to the store.
The stores are like last mile hubs for delivery and relationship platforms, a point for credit granting, banQi. It's an important step in our expansion in the north of the country, following what we've done with a lot of success in Pará in 2021.
We continue to be very assertive and very consistent performing our expansion planning. Now that our energy is way up there, and these images are here from the morning around nine when we opened up, where we had a queue going all around the stores.
Now I want to go in and pass this on to Gabriel so we can begin our Q&A.
Hey, everyone. Good afternoon.
Thank you, Roberto.
Our first question is from Joseph Giordano from J.P. Morgan. Joseph, please.
Hi there. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Roberto, Vigilia, Calabró, Alysson, Sérgio.
Thank you for taking my question.
My question is kind of in line with the productivity of the new store. You just announced your entrance in the state of Amazonas, and we saw important store productivity that was very surprising in this quarter.
It was a very difficult quarter, especially when we take a look at the segment for lower income, which is probably what a bit more of the core customers. I wanted to explore two points with you.
One, what you attribute this market share gain in the physical world, and I think that's the main first point. The second point is how you've been seeing this trend throughout the second semester of the year, especially when it comes to noticing the government income support and how that would help with the economy a bit more.
Finally, I want to help with a discussion on a bit more of the opportunities for store expansion and how you're looking at the second semester when it comes to expansion.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Joseph.
T hank you for that question.
Actually, I think now for quite a while in the past three years of transformation, we've been talking about the differentials the company has and the power of cashless that we have in our hands.
Now, we're starting to reinforce this, especially in a moment like this one where we're at. We always believe that the relationship with our consumers is a really omni-channel approach, and there's not an online or physical. Consumers can access us however they want, wherever they want, and whenever. We're prepared for this.
Now what we've seen in the Q2 is, the physical store kinda gaining a lot more priority. The priority with our online sellers also making priorities, because we have important assets at the stores, like the buy now, pay later book.
At moments where the income of the consumer becomes a little more restricted, then we have an important tool to adjust their desirable product exactly in an installment that fits in their pocket in a very precise manner with losses that are really controlled, as you've seen during the video. André Calabró can get into this a little more to explore any of these questions that might be outstanding. We're really taking an important leap at the physical stores.
We gain market share, and what we're seeing now is Compre & Confie, which is the measurement we always use ever since the beginning. We've also noticed a gain in market share in 1P in the core categories of Via.
I want to mention that our comparable basis has no acquisitions back then, so it's just us against ourselves. Even despite experiencing a drop in the online environment from the Compre & Confie numbers, we also see market share gains even with this drop. I think it's important because the market's more challenging, and this is a truth. We're handling this very well with the tools we have at our disposal here at Via. Now, about the sequence of stores, we just opened 5 stores now.
It's important to mention that these images of a lot of people trying to come into the store and queues going all around the store that exist up until now at the store. This is not because of the massification or massified disclosure and publicity and advertising before. Since it's a completely different market, we didn't want to have like massive communication.
We wanted to go in slowly. Going in slowly is the image you just saw in the video. We have another four or five stores expected for Manaus, and I think a big part will be this year still, and then we're going to be able to communicate more aggressively if necessary. We just made the decision to start working on the pre-registration in Manaus.
Now we have a lot of consumers that are coming in for the first time with pre-approved credit, so part of this differential that we have. Our expansion plan is still active. We should finish this year with about 70 stores, between 70 and 75 stores, till the end of the year. We're still active with this, especially in the north and northeast of the country where we've really designed our expansion.
Yes, the government income support should start now and lead to positive effects in retail as a whole and for our business. We have the assets to be able to capture most of these consumers that are going to be more willing to consume. I think this is going to be impacting us in a more accelerated way in the next cycles of receipt.
I think this may impact a lot of the Q4. What we saw in the first wave of the Corona voucher was that in the beginning it was mostly used to pay debts and supermarket. This is how we saw the use of the Corona voucher at the moment. And then we moved on to the segment where we operate, which is super horizontal with the marketplace. Of course this should generate impact.
We think that this Q3, it still has some challenges. In the Q4, due to all of the seasonality embedded and this distribution going on, we think it's going to be really strong. Perfect.
Thank you very much, Roberto.
Now our next question, Roberto, is from Gustavo Piras Oliveira from Goldman Sachs.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon on my side here. We have two questions.
The first one would be about this topic with the physical stores, and I think the recovery in the sales performance was very significant. I want to do some follow-up here on Joseph's question. Do you think there was a bit of a shift back from the online world back to the physical world? Is this a trend you're continuing to notice in these months in July and now in the first half of August?
The second question is also calling a bit of our attention, which is the increase in the penetration of Envvias in the marketplace and also, the fulfillment. What has caused this acceleration that's so significant?
What's the potential for penetration in these services even when it comes to monetization and with everything you guys are offering? These are the main questions. Thanks. Perfect, Gustavo. Thanks for that question.
I'm going to start off here and then Sérgio will continue with Envvias. I think that this migration is. Brazil is still very physical. Consumers like physical stores. The proof of this is what you guys just saw. This is what we see every day at our stores. Consumers are hybrid. We don't believe that Brazilian consumers are going to ramp up in a drastic or radical manner to online.
We consider they're going to continue to be pretty hybrid. We're trying to figure out how we can work with them in the best way so that customers can be serviced as they prefer to be related to.
We have the necessary assets to meet these customers in a omni-channel approach with all of our channels, with a major differential of having the online seller.
It's a hybrid online approach where consumers are assisted and you can see that it's still very strong with all the stores open. The online seller is still quite strong.
This also brings in a lot of strength to the marketplace because more and more the seller is getting used to selling an assortment that's completely different than what he was used to selling before, and he starts offering solutions that are really complete to consumers. Yes, there was a shift. We see online seller sales having some kind of a slowdown and physical sales had growth. By the numbers we saw, we understand we gained market share in both.
We followed strongly with our plan in the marketplace and in a very strong way we've been looking to the long tail, which really levers Envvias, which is the topic Sérgio will get into in a bit. Now we're seeing a bit of what could become the normality in Brazil. It was really accelerated online because of the pandemic. For us it was great.
The company really became online during the pandemic. We performed all of the online transformation. Now we're working with customers in an omni-channel approach really. Sérgio, do you want to come in when it comes to Envvias? Great, Roberto. Good afternoon, Gustavo, and welcome. Thank you for your interest in Envvias.
First of all, I'm going to go back to the topic about the physical store to reinforce this a bit 'cause it connects with Joseph's question also. I want to remind you that from the 32 stores we opened this year, most of them were in new markets also. We have a brand awareness that's very significant due to the history of our brand.
A big expectation, which is also connected to our positive performance at the new stores. I want to remind you that this leverages, it's, significantly our online activity. We've measured this and we've seen some peaks that are even bigger than 200%. When we set up the physical store in that environment, in that region, besides all of the logistical benefits to the service, from the online customer to the physical store.
About GMVs, we're very happy about this, and we're going to be launching the switch of services in the last month of 2020, January 2021, where we start up timidly. We're going to start building the elements of technology to support scale up in the service.
We started off with adding the collection process, drop off, the use of the physical stores as a drop-off point for sellers. Now this year, we acquired CNT, and we embedded and brought their technology in, which was LogTech that we acquired in January. Now we're able to accelerate all of our fulfillment plans. We're really in line with our growth plans and expectations.
We see this potential for a very few years that the fulfillment will have more than 30% of all deliveries in the marketplace. There's a vast space that's also been confirmed for this offer of services. This is an offer of services that I consider to be very profitable in the fulfillment on its own.
Considering the profitability that it brings in, it also causes a bit of a reduction in the cost in the last mile that I also consider to be very significant, and it benefits our P&L. We're very happy because it's a solution that creates value for the seller. It creates value for the consumer because it improves the level of service and quicker delivery, and it also gives us the benefit of profitability. We're really happy. We've been moving along well.
Colleagues that came from the acquired companies that also bring in an important technology background have been reinforcing this, and they help us provide more security to the scalability for the next period and nearby future.
Thank you.
That's super clear.
Now, Roberto and team, our next question is from João Soares from Citi.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question.
I think that I want to talk about the 3P dynamics. So there's a lot of moving parts. You have an increase in the number of orders, the number of sellers. At the end of the day, we're really seeing this reduction in the average ticket as you guys have been migrating to the long tail.
I think it's important to understand this journey as you've become a little more established in this whole other level of the average ticket. Where should we see this kind of turnaround in this trend? Looking at your economics, they've improved a lot.
The take rates are going up quarter-over-quarter. I want to understand what's the competitive landscape and how competitive you guys have been with the commissions you guys are charging from the sellers.
About non-payment and default, you guys have been able to improve the quality of your portfolio, which is something we didn't see generally in the retail companies. I think it would be interesting if you could explore this a little more. Thanks. Perfect, João. Thank you for that question.
I'm just going to quickly cover this, and I'll pass it on to Alysson and then André Calabró. I think that what we're seeing now, that's happening with the marketplace at Via is absolutely within what was expected. Really increasing the volumes of orders here, really gaining a lot of frequency and recurrence with the consumer.
This is of course an important process to accelerate our platform, 1P and sales of credit, services, logistics, and it significantly reduces our customer acquisition cost. Yes, we've been very competitive. We led the increase in the price charts. The other platforms came subsequently. We've been very competitive. We haven't noticed much of an issue with our competitiveness. When it comes to GMV, I'd say that it's not our priority immediately.
It's a consequence of everything we're doing here. We should see that from next year onwards, there should be like an acceleration in the GMV because of all the volumes we're producing. I'll pass the floor to Alysson, and he can add on to this, a lot. Thanks. Hey, good afternoon. It's difficult to answer after Roberta because she always says everything.
In other words, what we're experiencing here is really what we call like a J curve. We migrated our focus, and now we're moving on to like some of the long tail categories, the rearrangement. Let me make it clear. We are in no way having a take rate or price policy that would impact GMV performance, and that's not the cause. We're highly competitive in the take rate.
If you compare our platform versus the other platforms and what is actually the all-in collections, we're super competitive. Now what happened with possible sellers operating differently is because of the adjustments that they have normally in their management system. When it comes to the assortment, we're still firm.
The number of sellers is growing. In no moment did we have this drop in GMV because of the seller's performance, but because of the optimization of our platform and a bigger focus and all of the long tail tools. The J-curve really means that we are migrating all of this to the long tail. We're learning which is operating better and the GMV, as Roberto mentioned, should be recovered soon after.
This is really in line, just if you remember our previous call when we declared our strategy for the marketplace. This is in line with everything we've been saying to the market. Our marketplace is already sustainable. When we started the fulfillment operation, we said it would be quick growth because the assets are ready already. What we did is we added the CNT technology.
We have a lot of algorithms behind all of this planning process. The assets are ready. The DC already exists. Our collection level is pretty strong through ASAPLog that we acquired back then in 2020. This is a level of growth that's very different than what we see normally in a platform that starts from scratch. Ours is not starting from scratch.
As Sergio mentioned, this brings in a lot of benefits to the consumers for greater profitability at the. It brings in benefits to the seller, and it also provides major benefits for cost reduction because more and more boxes are being handled and transported in our logistical network and our distribution in stores. I'm going to pass the floor on to Calabro, but also you can address the second question.
Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question.
In the last quarter, we had already warned the market about our short-term indicators that were performing at a really satisfactory level, and that this would then have positive impact in our over ninety indicators and also in our provisions. Our PDD and our index of provisions has also been reduced. Why did this happen? Two reasons here.
First, in the Q4 of 2021, we had a series of improvements and adjustments in our strategies for credit. All of these were focused on really evaluating the growth of production and drop in our default rates. We anticipated ourselves and the effect of this improvement in the algorithms and in our strategy, really bringing these indicators that not only reflect this now, but up ahead we're quite comfortable also that these indicators will be very controlled.
We also included an important page with macroeconomic indicators in the presentation to bring in a little bit of our vision. Of course, without getting into our strategy too much, but to show you a bit of how we've been seeing what's going on and in line with our strategies, how these indicators will also help us.
We brought in, as we all know, a drop in the unemployment rate, and we also use information from IBGE, the Brazilian statistics agency. We can notice that as we correlate unemployment per age range and we correlate this with our portfolio, we can see that besides the fact that there is some pre-pandemic indicators actually that are even better than the pre-pandemic periods when we correlate this with our portfolio.
We start seeing that our portfolio is also really concentrated on the lower unemployment index. Another important effect that's really connected to our strategy also is when we look at default rates and non-payment and the debt on average for Brazilians, we can see that the highest default rates are in the cards and not in the installment payments.
We disclose retail and cards, and we also demonstrate that our default is even lower than retail. What's most important is that our average debt is growing and ours is actually dropping. This is a fruit of the investments and improvements that we performed in our strategy to finally reach this moment.
Once again, we're really comfortable with these indicators. In the next quarters, we'll continue with this trend. As we mentioned, it's a little different than what we've noticed in the market because we use a lot of technology. 99% of our decisions are based on algorithms. We have a lot of historical information from the consumers. These consumers also have this relationship with the brand that's very strong.
This of course really values our credit line and credit facilities, and sometimes it's the only credit facility they have available. That's why they really value it. Thank you very much. I hope to have answered. You did answer that.
Thank you, Alysson and Roberto.
Our next question now is from Ruben Couto from Santander. Ruben, please.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. I have a follow-up here about the default with CDC Digital. How has that contributed? It's very different, the profile. I think it would be great to hear a bit more from you as well since there's been significant share.
Another point also about CIB, our margin for the second semester.
There's an important parcel that's related to the improvement of the SG&A ever since the turnaround in the beginning of this year, where we had a reduction in the operation, but now the second semester we are noticing even greater acceleration with some more customer flow in the stores. Is there a need to recover this or can we imagine an ongoing reduction when it comes to SG&A?
Thank you very much. If you want, I'll start here, André Calabro, and then Orivaldo Padilha can get the second one.
Thanks for that question. The digital CDC as we demonstrated is almost 7% in sales already.
We can see that we've always mentioned that the online expansion needs credit, and we are using our credit strategy to really favor those customers that don't have another way to perform purchases. On 3P, we're going to also have it growing consistently. About default, it's really close to the rates we already have in the physical stores.
The main difference is though when we compare the digital CDC and physical CDC is that normally, we demonstrate this, but the products that are acquired through the digital CDC are closer to the retail than the products that we sell in the store.
The average term is a little bit smaller and the value of the ticket is a little bit lower.
This of course helped the default to be a little more stable and keep up with levels that are similar to what we have currently. With the digital CDC we also reach another level of the population.
The profile of the consumer that buys online is a little different than the profile of the consumer that buys at our stores. This is also an important benefit for us because this helps us to penetrate more and more. If we were to compare with social levels, this helps us penetrate our services among people that have higher purchase power.
The digital tool is a differential for us.
Thank you very much. Hey, Robinho.
Add on to the second part. Thank you for the question.
When it comes to SG&A, certainly we started off in the Q2 last year, and this is a reflection of some factors. Maybe the most important is the productivity gain that Via takes a look at based on the three years of strong investment that we've had. All of this investment in technology is adding a lot of productivity and is in various different areas in the company.
As sales scale up in the Q4, for example, and scale up next year as well, we have a reduction of the SG&A rates and even to scale up even more. This is the type of expense that shouldn't come back. We don't need to have major restructuring to gain scale on the sales.
We've had a productivity that's a lot greater than what we had maybe 3, 2 or 1 years ago, and this is being reflected in our SG&A. Yes, we can ramp up our sales in a more accelerated way as the market accelerates more.
We can keep the level of expenses that we currently have. What most impacts us is as you sell a lot more in the physical stores, you have the variable costs that are implicit in the physical store and these of course go up, but this is a direct effect of the sales. Okay. Very clear, guys. Thank you. Our next question is from Vitor Pini from Safra. Vitor Pini? Thank you, Robinho. Good afternoon, Roberto and team.
I wanted to hear a bit about your expectations and how you're looking at the cash dynamics for the second semester now. The Q2 we noticed had a pretty good performance in the working capital and also the balance between labor issues and tax credits are also pretty positive. What's your expectation for the rest of the year?
Thanks. Well, thank you for that question. I think the company had excellent work when it comes to cash generation, and we've been looking at this a lot. It's really part of our core business.
I'm going to pass the phone to Orivaldo so he can provide us some more details on how we're doing in the Q2 with the labor claims and other obligations and how this should perform in the second semester. Thanks. Good afternoon.
Can you hear me all right? Yes. We started off with this process, with like a professionalization in productivity and inventory management, stock management ever since the Q2 of last year with a lot of attention on the coverage period.
This is a reflection of this movement and we're expecting this movement to be ongoing. Really finding the ideal level of stock is the science that we have behind the release of the working capital.
We believe that we're investing in technology in this. We have robots working to manage our stock coverage and distribution. It's really ongoing work. We continue in the third and Q4 and next year.
When it comes to expenses and monetization, we've already started. Well, it's going to be the Q4 since we've been talking about this topic in a very special way. I think it's pretty under control by the company in the last quarter.
Now we'll have a lot less instances. We have stopped being an easy target for lawyers. We've been gaining a lot of lost money in the labor justice system and labor laws. We've improved our defense structure in the last quarter as well to try to accelerate the completion of older and more expensive lawsuits. The age of our stock also reduced a bunch and we've invested as well.
We've been keeping up this guidance that we provided back then, but we're really the base of this guidance.
For the next quarters and years, this is tending to reach more of a normality until it disappears in about a year. Monetization has really helped us to bring in a lot of positive impacts on the operation.
The company is learning more how to work to not duplicate lawsuits that lead to more credits than debits. We've been able to have more than half a billion BRL in monetization per quarter. We have almost 200 special tax regime distribution centers around Brazil. Manaus, we just opened one as well, so we can't take products from one state to another if I were going to pay taxes twice.
All of this generates a growing gain in the monetization process for ICMS. In this quarter, we had almost BRL 300 million in monetization, and I have a stock of about BRL 3 billion.
This would be about 10 quarters of offsetting this existing stock. It's an acceleration of the entire process. We're expecting that this year this will go over BRL 1.8 billion in the monetization process. For the next 2 or 3 years, about BRL 2 billion rise. This will help also to overcome the challenges of labor expenses and also an excess amount that we can invest in the business as a whole. Excellent.
Thank you so much.
Our next question is from Danniela Eiger from XP. Thank you, guys, for the afternoon.
Thanks for taking my question. I have 3 actually. The first one is a mini follow-up here on the previous question about cash generation, but I wanted to explore a bit about these levers you talked about, you know, when it comes to stock.
That this was more like an adjustment and a cleanup. The level, there's some different conditions you're providing, you're improving. Can you give us a little more color on this? I think this would, of course, lead to a dynamic for the future. I know it would be great to hear about this.
My second question is more connected to the stock dynamics that I think may be something that Roberto talked about a bit, which is the prospects for the second semester. People are very optimistic or cautiously optimistic, is the best word, right, for the end of the year, especially with World Cup, Black Friday, and all of this and the launch of 5G. There are many different dynamics that would favor this semester.
I wanted to know how you're doing about this and what's your vision on this. I know there are many moving parts, but I want to understand what your base narrative is, and then you can maybe match this with what the stock strategy would be for this moment. Then my third and last question, I promise, is about the breakeven of the marketplace, which is maybe a bit of editing of work.
You mentioned features. I want to understand if you're already seeing this as a level that's important of the drivers to have this evolution in the next quarters. What would be the main drivers so that this can continue to expand? I think these are the three questions. Thank you, guys.
The first question is about working capital here, stock and terms, and we started this process. It's already cleaned up, but during the pandemic, we worked with that, safety stock or security stock because of the abnormality of this global supply chain.
Ever since the Q3 of last year, we've been normalizing this and reducing inventory levels in the last quarters and a lot with technology to be able to have the right product and the right timing, and I think Roberto and Sérgio mentioned that, this omnichannel approach and now our stores have space for stocking up. Of course, there's a lot of intelligence behind all of this, right? What product to add in which stores. This brings in a lot of productivity.
First of all, I deliver quicker, then I spend less with the freight and transportation, and I don't concentrate the operations at my DC to centralize this, and I have opportunity to earn more fulfillment.
This is a flow that's really positive, not only when you take a look at the customer issues, but also when you look at the productivity of the investment stock. It's something we're going to see happen a lot in the second and Q3 of greater balancing out of the working capital. In the Q4, I'm going to open up a lot of cash because it's a period where we have strongest sales, and so we'll have very robust cash position. Retail has its own movement a lot.
In the Q1, we're going to reach a situation more normal, and we have this kind of balancing out of the year. We'll see stock growing a lot due to the sales. But at the end of the year, we'll see the level or maybe the maximum peak of the cash and stock, will probably reach a maximum level in mid-November and then January already start pretty well with a good balanced position in the first and Q2 but then, we generate cash in the Q4. It's a normal trend and from that in that way to growing level.
We'll see less days invested in stock because of more technology gains and all of the lessons learned with these new tools being used.
Patrícia, I just got a message that you should be a little closer to you and, we can't see you very well. Okay. I'm back in the right position. Hey, Danny. Thanks for that question. I think Rogério has already talked about the stock, but we ramped up the stock during the pandemic. We were really precise with this. We communicated to the market that we would start a reduction of the stock because the supply had been normalized.
We were also being very precise in this process. This did not impact our margins in any way, so with the quality of the stock we had here. When it comes to the second semester, especially the Q4, you used a good word, right? A careful optimist, right? Carefully optimistic. Yeah, that's it.
We're carefully optimistic, and we believe that certainly there is a good ramp up to take place. We have the World Cup, Black Friday, Christmas, and we also have the launch of 5G that's happening now and should ramp up more towards the end of the year with the expansion of coverage. We are extremely well prepared for all of these, seasonality scenarios.
Our preparation with the industry is practically complete. We're really well positioned with this, and our campaign is really nice. We've been working strongly for this period, and we are going to have all of the assets to work with all of our important sales teams. Really excited to accelerate sales in the stores, online seller as well as e-commerce and 3P.
We've been interacting a lot with the sellers so we can reach this phase in the year with a lot of special promotions. We're really optimistic for the Q4. I think the Q3 is still challenging, very similar to the Q2. Now we need to see how things start moving along as the government income support starts circulating. I think back in the beginning of the presentation when we talked about how this government support will impact this.
If we use the first trend of the Corona voucher during the pandemic, it impacted more with this debt payment, less of the direct consumption. In this segment, we've been measuring this minute over minute. What we've seen is that at the moment, it's also going to end up impacting our consumption.
I don't know if in the Q2 or if this will be more towards the Q3. So the last part of the question, I'll pass on to Alysson about the marketplace. Hi, Danny. To answer your question, I think it's important to reinforce the role of the marketplace. Every organization changed its focus to the volume of GMV and the core categories of the long tail can be more present in day-to-day of our customers.
This is something we've already achieved, not only in the volume of orders that grew 30%, but also the volume of items per order, which means that the purchases are being more recurrent with more items in the cart. This is even more evident in the marketplace. The second role of the marketplace is within our ecosystem, we want to generate volume for the other businesses.
The marketplace also generates an important volume for logistics and adds a cost efficiency and of course, more speed. Also from this year onwards, which is something, a pretty good surprise in the market, which is an important sales channel for the online CDC. We've been ramping up our penetration in CDC in the 3P categories, which is good for everyone really.
The third role of the marketplace is what you mentioned, it's the breakeven. It's really searching for this breakeven scenario. But over time, as you grow a lot, you sometimes have a bit of a difficulty to operate this with perfection and optimization. We did this in the past, now we're adjusting this, so it's just operationalization. I'm going to repeat a bit of what you mentioned, right?
We're being carefully optimistic with the achievement of the break even in the marketplace. We're always going to be searching for this, all the Via units are always going after this. With the example of the fulfillment acquired now generating other operations in this big structure. We've been operating with the break even also in our logistics.
We're going to be searching for this always. I think it's also important to give you some information about how the break even also happened due to the increase in the take rate, where we were the first ones to communicate to the market about this in December and January. We also adjusted the payment flow for the sellers because of the financial costs we're experiencing now. We've also performed an adjustment that contributes to greater profitability in the operation.
Third, what we mentioned, which is the day-to-day operation and how we can redo marketing and how we can redo all of the freight and transportation structures, et cetera.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys. Our next question is from Andrew, and he'll ask the question in English, but then we'll answer in Portuguese.
Thank you. On the marketing spend, it was an encouraging result this quarter. Just wondering if you could provide more detail on the areas you saw the best. Also on newer categories on the marketplace. You mentioned that there was some investment there. Do you see more need to promote it?
I'm going to start off here, and I think Alysson can help me also. Well, thank you, Andrew, for the question, first of all, and thanks for being here today on our call. As I mentioned, we were gaining a lot of productivity at Via based on all of the investments that we've been working on in the platform. This is also valid for our investments in marketing so that we can be more assertive. Algorithms are really getting more precise as we use our base of pre-customers who have yet to be able to offer this in a cheaper way.
More and more, we've depended less on paid media to be able to attract consumers. The scale-up that we've been working on this really helps and enriches our capacity even more.
Now we're talking about the revenue with advertisements that we've had, and we're going to start collecting the fruits as well. Andrew, thanks for that question. I think that the company here has been experiencing a transformational process, especially in how we're going to do marketing. Historically, we've been working a lot more in the core categories where we have a lot of media and highlighting, of course, a small volume of SKUs.
Those categories that most sell, which are the top of mind items or hot items when you consume what people normally consider the destination category. As we increase this power for the marketplace, and I think this is also a very complex shift. It's really micromanagement, and this, it requires some learning process.
What we've done here is really surprise ourselves with the speed of all of this. As I mentioned in turning English response, we've been optimizing our marketing as well. We never had results that were so positive when it comes to the ROI, especially when we work with micro categories. We're super excited with this, and this means that we have a restrained demand when we talk about the brands at Via.
A good example is we have more than 7 categories that are growing at three digits year-over-year. This is the fruit of the evolution of SEOs, marketing evolution of how we communicate with our customer from point to point. It's important to highlight also about 24% of what we sell today in the marketplace is through the online sellers.
Our stores and our sellers and all of their communication, also experience. We have in their hands over 40 million customers in the marketplace, which also helps leverage the way we sell with costs that are even more competitive.
The results are the break-even we noted. We have actually 22,000 sales reps working on social selling all over Brazil. It's important to mention also that we started our campaign of everything life asks for is Via. Tudo que a vida pede Via. That's when we started disclosing this breadth of this process here. We're really just starting to see everything we can reap with greater breadth in our coverage, and this campaign will continue for quite a while still.
Thank you, Andrew.
Thank you, Andrew. Our next question is from Bob. Robert Ford.
Hi, Bob.
Hey, Bob.
Hi, Gabriel.
Hi, Gabriel. Thanks. Our next question is from Gabriel Disselli from BTG Pactual. Good afternoon. Congrats on the results. Just on our side here, we have two important points. One is about the buy now, pay later, as you mentioned. Also a bit about this and to try to understand what's your mindset on refinancing for the rest of the year.
We talked about productivity, and this has been very important result, surprisingly positive. What's the main idea when it comes to how you're going to be offering credit and in the CDC and also in the risk factors involved? The second question is also about a perspective on an potential improvement in the levels for the net revenue.
I would like to understand, if we can see this, going back to historical levels or if it's still going to be a little higher, and if there's anything changing in the consumer behavior. Well, starting off with the last one here. Just about, the impact with the physical stores, and I think that this going to be accommodated because we're going to start seeing this in a more linear manner with the penetration of each of these channels. So I think this is something that could be accommodated.
When it comes to the buy now, pay later, Calabro will talk about this a little more. We have been communicating, and disclosing in a very precise way that we should have, a portfolio of about BRL 6 billion by the end of the year. So that's where we're headed.
Of course, we're very careful based on all of the algorithms and data that we have here, and we're very confident. Calabro, if you'd like to complement, that would be great.
Yeah. That's it, Roberto.
Thanks, Gabriel.
We should end the year with about BRL 6 billion in our portfolio, which includes a maintenance and a small increase in penetration. When we look at the physical stores, we've been growing a little more in our participation because we see a lot more room without increasing default, without increasing risks. The same thing happens in the digital CDC. Of course, there are different movements. In the CDC, we're at a lower level than the physical stores. The physical stores are already a more stable operation.
Both segments and both channels, whether it's the physical store or online, we've been growing a bit of our share, reaching BRL 6 billion in our portfolio. This is, of course, far from an increase in the opening of the risks. We're far from that. We're really happy with the default rates we currently have and profitability we currently have and how the buy now, pay later has been really significantly impacting our sales. Of course,
we could no doubt ramp up a lot more in a more accelerated way with the online credit. We're very careful start growing point by point because we are feeding our engines and our algorithms, and then we take on another step. We want to grow in a very successful and precise manner.
When we look at the future, we see that there's a huge potential, no doubt. When you see online, there's no reason why in the future would maybe not have a level of penetration that's pretty similar to what we have at the physical stores. I think that was pretty much it. About the risk factor. I could talk about that. I think that we're going to keep this pretty stable. Of course, this will depend a lot on the suppliers for this type of funding. Of course, initially we have a lot of this for small and medium suppliers that need a lot of capital. We use this kind of facility as Calabro mentioned. CDC should reach about BRL 6 billion in portfolio.
It's an increase of almost BRL 1 and a half billion. Sorry, I won't have much of a difficulty to have it grow with this type of drawdown risk through the funding. Thanks, Gabriel. Our next question is from Igor from Genial.
Thanks for that, Roberto, Edson, Gabriel.
We saw that there's a reduction after the payment of the fifth debenture in June, which is a reduction of 40 basis points and in the cost of fundraising. What we're looking at here is excluding the receivables from credit cards to be able to have the leverage and net to EBITDA calculation.
Yours is just a little higher than your other peers, and I want to understand if you guys have any dynamic up ahead to continue to work on the reduction of the average of fundraising costs and how you're looking at the leverage costs and your leverage scenario.
Well, thanks, Igor. That's great. But this debenture that was just paid now in June had been raised in the pandemic. So of course, there's higher costs. But we've been very successful in the reduction of our spread. So of course, the base rate, it has gone up a lot in the past year. We think that there is a curve for the next cycle. But we've also noticed a reduction in the spread, and we've been negotiating a lot.
This reduction of about 200 basis points between what we paid and what we raised now in the CRI when we completed it in the beginning of August at a spread that's about half of what the debenture we paid for was. It's an ongoing movement. We should have some debt in the first and second semester of 2023. We also raised some additional funding in the pandemic.
We also feel that we'll be able to really drop the spread as well in these credit facilities. That's pretty much it. We left banks in this three-year horizon. We had a lot of market operations, and that helped us to reduce the spread.
The rest is the base rate that we expect will have some kind of a reversal in the next quarter. Perfect. Thank you, Rogério. Thank you, Igor. Roberto Fulcherberguer and team, we have no other questions, and so we can end with a closing remark. Well, I just wanted to thank you guys all for being here at our call, and I wanted to say that we are really following intense discipline and consistency in the execution of everything we intended to do here in the company.
We declared this in a very transparent way of where we're headed, and we've been very disciplined as we execute all of this. Of course, we're very careful because in the moment we're experiencing. Preparing the company if there is a more complex sales scenario. We're really preparing all of the expense center to be even more productive.
As soon as sales ramp up a little more, and as soon as the Selic drops a little more, then the results and the earnings will be a lot more profitability due to the productivity we were able to gain in the company.
This is the sustainable long-term company we're building here at Grupo Casas Bahia.
Thank you all so much for being here. I hope you have a great afternoon.