Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for waiting. Welcome to the Earnings Call for the Third Quarter of 2025 of Grupo Casas Bahia. If you need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on our platform. To access, please select the Interpretation button through the globe icon at the bottom part of your screen and choose your language of preference: Portuguese or English. For those listening to the earnings call in English, we have the Mute Original Audio option by selecting this. We would also like to let you know that this earnings call is going to be provided on our IR website and the company at ri.grupocasasbahia.com.br, where you have the full material for our earnings release. You can also download our presentation on the chat icon in English. During the company's presentation, all participants will have their mics off. Soon after, we will begin the Q&A session.
We'd like to let you know that information present in this presentation and possible statements that could be made during the earnings call related to business perspectives, forecasts, and operational and financial goals represent assumptions and beliefs of the company's management, as well as information that is currently available. Future statements are not a guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as they refer to future events that could not occur through different circumstances. Investors must comprehend the general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors that can affect future performance in the company and lead to results that differ materially from those in such future statements. Today, we also have the presence of our earning executives at the company, Renato Franklin, Elcio, our CFO and IRO, and Gabriel Succar, the Investor Relations Director. Now, I will pass the floor on to Mr. Renato Franklin.
Hi guys, good afternoon. Welcome to our call, and we're going to talk about the Third Quarter of 2025. Before we begin with the numbers, I want to quickly have a broader message shared about the company's journey so far. The third quarter really reinforces this in a very clear way, something that's essential. We've been evolving in a consistent manner for the past eight quarters in a structured and predictable way. Our deliveries, from an operational perspective, go through all company channels. We're delivering growth in all channels, an improvement in margins, and an advance in productivity. At the same time, we've been optimizing costs, reducing the company's SG&A. From a financial and capital structure perspective, we've been executing everything we've planned ever since August 2023. We're improving our operational cash generation, we're rationalizing our expenses, and we've had concrete advances in our capital structure.
Every quarter that goes by, we've been bringing perceivable deliverables in the short term and our operational numbers in the company. At the same time, we also bring in structured levers that will bring in contributions in the midterm, in the short term from the next quarter on, but will also impact the mid and long term of the company. I want to highlight three of these this quarter. The first one is we provided disclosure during the earnings release, but this fact actually occurred in the beginning of the third quarter, which is when we speak about the conversion of BRL 1.6 billion of Series 2. This all starts to bring benefits to the company throughout this period, reducing the spreads and bringing in new capital sources and helping us reduce financial expenses slowly but surely.
The second, which is coming from this conversion, is the issuance of another FIDC now for funding suppliers and substituting some forfeit facilities with a smaller spread, which will help us also reduce the funding and working capital in the company. The third that's very transformational, which is the alliance with Mercado Livre. We mentioned that that had a major repercussion and the fact that we're here for 11 days of operation, and the earnings will definitely be a lot better than what we expected. We started off very well, and I'm not only talking about the GMV.
I think that's an additional part that helps us with the operational leverage and reduces a bit of pressure, so we can have more assertive pricing with more vigor, prioritizing margins and the channels with the best margins, because you start working with another channel that has additional demand, a new public, and a different assortment. It also brings operational efficiency gains with the synergies that this alliance allows us to capture and the lessons learned that can be applied also to our internal channel for 1P, 3P, and there really is this ecosystem of tools and information that allows us to be even more efficient from this side.
I think all of these movements help and strengthen the company not only for the next quarter, but also our competitive advantages as the leader and the biggest provider of home utilities, appliances, and are really using our logistical structure and reinforce our own private label. What we've seen in the first 11 days is that growth has been helping also in our own channel on this side because of the brand awareness. I think that once we talked about this, I want to add on to this. Maybe this is one of the most important points, right? I want to mention the transparency aspect. We are completely aware of the macroeconomic scenario we're experiencing and the capital structure that the company has at the moment.
Of course, obviously, the main channel of the company, which is the physical stores, is the channel that the base of the pyramid uses to buy. This is the most impacted channel from the macroeconomic environment. Why am I saying this? This product is more sensitive to income, inflation, and credit. When we have an improvement in the macro scenario, once we fix things up and we have everything working well, that will allow us to really capture this improvement in the macro environment and this demand, contributing to operational leverage with more elasticity in our product and our core product, which is a Buy Now Pay Later that brings this opportunity also to reach a return rate that is sustainable in the long term.
About the capital structure, we know we have a lot to evolve with, but it is worth mentioning that all deliverables that were made so far really make it evident how we have the capacity to execute and really work on the turnaround of the company. The plan is working. Things are taking place till now. We know about the levers we must deliver to continue to improve our capital structure. That is why we are super confident. Every quarter, with each of these levers, we increase our trust and our confidence that we will even have some positive coincidences. We will be able to improve the company. Most probably, when we are ready to enter into this new growth cycle, it is really going to be when we are going to start seeing macro get better.
That will allow us to have a very positive cycle in this company, bringing operational leverage and efficiency, the net income and profitability. This is a bit of the journey that we've been experiencing the last two and a half years and that we hope to experience in the next quarters. Now we're going to get into the numbers a bit and show you what makes us confident about all of this. Can we move on? Here you see the top line of the company. As I mentioned, the company grew in all channels. You can remember, we're not in the growth phase. We're in a phase of profitability, of efficiency. We have a lot of discipline and credit granting that can promote growth.
Even so, with the strength of the brand, as you organize the company's stocks and engage the team, the team becomes more confident and more excited, and the awareness of the brand grows. We have share in all channels. Same structures grew 7.8%. The online GMV has been growing 9%. Our 3P, that's the core in home appliances, is not the additional 3P. Here you can see our discipline of buying items that really have a good turnover, and we can work with the assortments that customers want. This is the DNA of a specialist player. If I want to be an omnichannel specialist, customers that come in, if they want to find any model of televisions, they have to have that. Most part will be 1P. Of course, we really need to service the whole scope of assortment.
That is something we can add on to with 3P. Customers can find the televisions they are looking for in attractive conditions, and they can still use the credit tools where the buy now pay later has really advanced and made it possible to have this growth. With this, we have been able to improve our take rate and market share as well in core categories. I want to highlight the white line and other categories as well with incremental gains, even with the market moving sideways. We can move on now. As we talk about that structuring step, which is transformational for the company, the Casas Bahia and Mercado Livre alliance, we disclosed this recently at the end of October, and we saw that we were going to start operating on the 3rd of November.
We were able to start a pilot three days before, and this was an important case. It really demonstrates our technological platform prepared to have this team with the strong execution. We're still learning. We have major potential. Yes, we're doing a little better than what we expected. This makes us excited. When we come in and see the level of the opportunity, and especially the complementarity of the public, I have positive reinforcements here, and maybe that's the most strategic challenge to guarantee we don't have cannibalization, is this complementary public. We're able to deliver additional growth in the Mercado Livre platform, and we brought in more growth. Because of the awareness reinforcement and public complementarity, this is going to help us. This is a curve that this additional channel can bring to the company.
No doubt, we already have a material contribution in the fourth quarter, and we're going to continue quarter over quarter, adding on and bringing in improvements to the company. From a strategic perspective, this is very relevant with synergies and opportunities that we have, but reinforcing a bit of what our rationale was, right? In Casas Bahia, we lead the market with physical stores, which is a bit less than half of home appliances, technology, and furniture in Brazil. In our own e-commerce, we've been growing, but we still have a smaller share, about 17% market share. In this generous e-commerce, where you have a lot more of an impulse purchase, there's always different items with conditions that suppliers provide one day with some volume or some depth, then you can have a more impulse-guided purchase.
This is a market that's super relevant, over BRL 30 billion here. Yes, we do have an expectation to bring in a material volume of sales with incremental margins. This has been, we've had a lot of rationality. We're not going to perform irrational investments. Another thing that really brought us here is about the competitive environment. That's always a topic we need to discuss a bit more. The competitive environment, you can see there are some big players that are rational and very aware of the macroeconomic environment. We can see this demand as well that explains a bit of this from Mercado Livre as well. With this assortment, it's really broad and a lot of depth. We've seen each item representing 1% or 2%. It's really interesting to see that we are selling over 1,000 SKUs per day.
This allows us to have some different initiatives to improve our stock management. This is an additional channel that gives us a lot more flexibility in management. On that side, we also have different opportunities, of course, items that maybe were not so rational, such as a big tower of sound systems. We always thought of even cases where logistics provide more capacity for deliveries. We are going to lever this and also allow for this in Mercado Livre. Now we can talk about the core product and a bit of the buy now, pay later in our approach. We are going to keep this rigor in the credit granting. This number shows we could be selling more. I see there is a demand that exists. If we wanted to have BRL 100 million more as production per month, it would be reasonably okay.
I do not think that would impact too much. We prefer to keep this conservative approach to avoid any issues. We have been keeping our delinquency really controlled. NPL is also controlled. The net losses are controlled. Production is a little more than last year with about 5% more, with BRL 2.5 billion now in the third quarter. Now we have the fourth quarter with better seasonality, where we can also have productions a little stronger and gradually grow our portfolio. We are going to wait to have a better macro environment so that we can then accelerate this business that brings such strong contributions to the company. We can move on to talk about delinquency and the credit market in Brazil and how we have this approach. We brought in this slide last quarter, and you can see the updates.
When you see the blue line, our delinquency is measured by the rate with the or the lowest sale. We went from 9% in the first quarter of 2024 to 8.4% in the Third Quarter of 2025. You can see the market indicators. This is a source from the central bank. If you look at the red line, it is the overdraft credit. That is almost 300 basis points. If you look at the cards on installments, it goes from 10% to 3.2%. You can really see our rigor in credit granting. You can see the efficiency of our credit engine and technology database and all the differentials that really have this business and a lot of resilience with a lot of discipline and excellent returns, which is why we are really betting on this lever to optimize and improve returns in the company in the midterm.
We can go over a slide, please. Here, we're going to talk about the financial highlights. I'm going to pass this on to Elcio to provide more details, please.
Thank you, Renato. Good afternoon, everyone. Just to give you about 10 minutes of reflection, I think the quarter really reinforces the company's capacity to keep its focus, consistency, and discipline on the transformation plan. When we see the execution of the plan two and a half years after, we're still working with the same initiatives and the same consistency. Even in a scenario that we've seen today, we were able to deliver an important combination that is not that simple, right, with the increase of profitability, as we were mentioning, and the increase of margins at 0.8 percentage points alongside the growth of our revenue. Normally, these are not items that are walking hand in hand.
There's always some sort of trade-off. We've been growing the revenue by 7.3%. That's why the maintenance of the delinquency rates and indicators that Renato just mentioned, the second pillar with a positive cash flow, but of course, still recognizing that it's not sufficient yet, considering the weight and challenge with the capital structure, but more of the operational aspect and the healthiness of the business, working with topics that are like labor, monetization of tax issues that we've been advancing with in a very consistent manner. Here we have high seasonality, and we're really well prepared for this, high-quality stocks that are really healthy as well. We have quality, depth, and a reduction of those stocks that were a little older and that have excellent security and flexibility also for us to perform the fourth quarter.
We're very cautious about this and considering the macro scenario, right? We've been taking care of all of this plan and working on the seasonality in the best way possible. As we've mentioned, the capital structure, as I mentioned, we performed the second series, as Renato mentioned, with an impact that took place in August. The impact of the financial expense is still partial. That just reinforces that we have a path to follow in our capital structure as we continue with other initiatives. Another important theme that Renato mentioned is our FIDC for overdraft for 4. We had the BRL 525 million, but the minimum weight offering was BRL 138 million. I think there was really good reception from the market. We were able to close at BRL 555 million. This evolution, along with the advances in the capital structure, have allowed us to reduce spreads.
This had an important impact. It is going to happen slowly but surely, especially in 2026, because now we get into the fourth quarter with high seasonality. Despite the spreads being a little smaller marginally, we have a higher volume that is advancing now due to seasonality. Structurally, we should see an improvement throughout 2026. I think we can move on to the next slide now. Here, we can always see the advances of the transformation plan in large numbers. Revenue grew about 7.3% in regards to last year. The physical store had a growth of 7.8% in the same store sales, reinforcing our strategy initially of strengthening our channel, which is the most profitable in the company. The gross profit, we had BRL 2.1 billion and a margin of 30%. Here, we had an increase nominally of almost 2%.
There was also a reduction of 1.6 percentage points in the margin compared to the previous year. That is an explanation of the categories and channels. We have more significance in the growth that we have noticed. This is actually an important topic. We even had some concerns about our online growth with those categories you mentioned, and we decided to focus on core. It has been growing, but there is a margin that is slightly smaller. The weight of the online channel with greater penetration in the cell phone category with margins that are lower than the average of the company brought in pressure for a gross margin reduction. We recover this efficiency in our operational expenses that dropped nominally by 3.2% compared to last year, even with the adjustment of the revenue 7.3% and an inflation of 5.2% in the period.
When we grow the top line, we have a gross margin that's healthy. We are able to have the dilution in our discipline for costs and expenses. We're able to have the reduction operational leverage that is translated here to 8.5%. I think that's a point of the plan that's been going on for a few quarters. We can continue to see the leverage for the next quarters. The growth of the top line with commercial execution and operational execution is very healthy, managing the categories and channels and prioritizing profitability at the end of the day. As Renato mentioned, we're going to be focused on the expansion of online with Mercado Livre, etc., but also a close focus on the profitability with the goal of expanding our top line alongside profitability for the company. Now we'll head to the next slide.
This is where we can see the consolidation of the nine months in the year. It is important to also look at the other indicators. In the revenue, you can have a very similar message here. Growth of revenue, 7.8%. The EBITDA was an expansion of 30%, about 4 percentage points of advances in the margins, very substantial. We always mention the EBIT, which went from 1.3% to 4.1% in the first nine months. That is a growth that is very significant, 242%. On the other side, you also have the capital structure with an increase in financial expenses leading to greater losses in the period. I think that is a bit of our journey and what we have been presenting with our challenges and advances and a bit of the trajectory and the same story. We can move on to the next one.
We generated BRL 488 million in the quarter, BRL 1.6 billion in the last 12 months. We see this trajectory that's growing. That is where we really have our EBITDA margin and free cash flow. Of course, considering our capital structure weight, we still need to continue to move along with the operational evolution of the margins and operational cash generation in our capital structure. We are finishing the quarter with BRL 3 billion in liquidity. We are going to head to the fourth quarter in seasonality. That is very positive for our cash flow. We can move on to the next slide. We are going to get into the main messages. We have more seasonality. Last year, we had the Live Black.
We have a lot of marketing to measure what customers are searching for and allocate discounts according to what customers are searching for. With that, you become more efficient. This year, we're working on more integrated initiatives with physical stores, a lot of lives directly from the store, calling customers to the store, spread around all of Brazil, along with the Black Central online channel that works in the Marginal Tietê unit. An important highlight is the company's stock. When you see the company's stock, obviously, at the end of September, it is not much greater than last year. When you look at the stock in stores, we have 27% more than last year. It is a store that is very well supplied. We are not working on one quarter. We made the best decisions for the business to have better.
This allowed us to be more organized and also have a level that will help us take advantage of the efficiency here in our physical store and our brand strength. That allows us to have strong sales. You can see this makes us very excited, not only with sales, but margins and profitability, which is our main commitment. We can move on to the next slide now. We are very competitive. We have a lot to sell. I want to invite you all to also look into the offerings we have even before Black Friday. November 11 was also very important for us. We are going to be launching some new offerings. This is why we have been able to have very strong days and growth day after day, preparing for Black Friday that used to be only two or three days.
Now it's the full month. Moving on, we can see the main messages of the company. First, we can see the consistency, eight quarters that are improving the GMV and optimization of the expenses, as Elcio mentioned, improving the penetration of our services that are profitable, such as the Buy Now Pay Later, our retail media as well growing, take rate with 3P, and the insurance services and cards that also contribute to profitability. This also reflects on this improvement. We're on this ramp-up and transition with levers that also optimize the capital structure. We're going to optimize this capital structure, which helps us to reap benefits in the next quarters. Of course, we're aware we have to continue to address our capital structure. We're confident and we're excited with what we've done so far and with the plan we have up ahead.
Moving on, we can talk about our future a bit. What do we expect from now on? We have fourth quarters. We're going to have strong seasonality. We're going to continue to gain market share. Here we can see our main focus, which is gradual growth of the physical stores. As I mentioned, the macro environment is more challenging. Families' debt levels are also getting in the way a bit. It is limited growth in line with what we've been delivering here. No doubt, we're preparing to capture this in a stronger manner. Now, on the second point, digital is more profitable. Here, I want to highlight that we have penetration of the Buy Now Pay Later, new levers. Mercado Livre also helps reduce pressure from some less profitable channels.
The third item, which is related to this, when they ask you, how does your e-commerce grow like this? We started talking about AI for pricing. We implemented 100% of this in the online channel in the second quarter. We are reaping difference in the third quarter. This also impacted a bit of the second quarter. This is going to help us a lot to have results in the fourth quarter. The pricing system is a lot more dynamic, more rational. It allows us to improve our margins and also makes us a lot more competitive without exaggerating on the competitiveness. We are going to start rolling out to physical stores as well, our brick and mortars that are going to help us gain share as well with pricing that is more efficient.
Our main focus is the strategic expansion of the buy now, pay later. We are expanding this year, but we have a lot of rigor in credit granting and a lot of discipline. We are preparing so that as soon as possible, we can advance our buy now, pay later into other channels and segments. There is a lot to be done here. I think keeping up this cost base with a bit of efficiency, of course, mitigating the inflation.
The last line is what we've been talking about and bringing as constant improvements for the working capital and capital structure that will allow us to solve the operational aspects, reaching the point we want to reach, but also considering that we need to have very robust EBITDA to be able to have a profitable company and an interest rate of double digits that we're going to have in Brazil after the improvements, but also having a company with low leverage without debt that will allow us to surf through positive results in any macro environment here in Brazil. When we have more positive environments, we have more growth. When there's a challenging environment with a structure that's light and deleveraged, we can also capture spreads using our products to fund consumers and suppliers.
I want to pass this on to Gabriel so that we can open up for Q&A. Gabriel,
good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Renato. We're going to start calling Daniela from XP. Danny, you may proceed, please.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question here. Congrats on the results and for the evolution ever since you began the transformation plan in the company. We have two questions here on my side. One is a follow-up, and I know you guys have already talked about the partnership with Mercado Livre a bit, but I wanted to discuss this a bit more because it's very transformational in this movement. I want to understand a bit of why now.
I don't know about the intensity of the competition as well and if this has made it a little more expensive to bring in non-qualified flow that you mentioned even in the release, but maybe the non-qualified have become a little more difficult with more intense competition. I also want to understand a bit more about the economics. At the end of the day, you guys have been, as Renato mentioned, you have a new public. In any ways, we're trying to understand how we should think about this in the comparison with 1P, not only the gross margins because there's other components below the gross margin that you probably don't have to cover, like performance marketing, for example.
I know that in the news and even at the entrance, you mentioned that things are doing well, but we had an event that maybe has a different intent with the 11/11 right here in Brazil. Just to understand how you saw this in Mercado Livre, but also in the overall market and everything you guys can bring, that would be great. A second one that's pretty quick, I think I extended myself a bit too much here on this point, and maybe my peers are going to bring in other points. About store openings, you mentioned that the macro environment's challenging. There are short-term challenges, but we noticed you guys had recovery ever since the end of 2022. Of course, you guys opened two stores. I want to understand your mindset from this expansion perspective. Thank you.
Thanks, Danny.
Thanks for the questions. First, we're going to talk about the Mercado Livre here, our alliance, and why now, right? Because, ever since the beginning, when we saw the company's strategy of being a specialist player and that we were going to remove 50% of their categories, everyone had two aspects. One was two warnings. You're going to lose recurrence because you're removing high recurrence items. And you could give up on the one win things on and that you're focusing on being a specialist player. Then we brought in the market theses as a specialist with profoundness and a good journey, competitive advantages, and how we can survive. But we've been performing with this thesis in a consistent manner that gives us really a lot of conviction that we have the right thesis.
We had a second question, which is, okay, you're going to perform, but eventually the marketplace will start selling your category. What will this be like, right? We were saying, we think it's going to take a while because items that most grow as e-commerce penetration, which are very low, are small. They're small items. Logistics are different. You need credit. There are a lot of levers that protect us from this big item, right? The fact is, after two and a half years from that presentation, which was in August 2023, we noticed not only Mercado Livre growing a lot, but strong growth in our categories during the last year. Of course, it grew with smaller items, portable devices, and even small pieces of furniture. That was a market that became very big, and we weren't participating.
The Casas Bahia group has a strong point, which is the physical store. We are growing online. That improved with pricing to gain competitiveness and guarantee growth. You lack investments to be able to grow more and more and reach the same levels as the physical stores. This channel, we were not participating in it. There is a profitability issue that we were not going to participate in if that did not bring in marginal gains. I think you had both aspects, which is one, we saw the market that has already become relevant, and we also have this other opportunity that generates value from a margin perspective, right? Entering into the other part of your question here, and by 1P, you can see a more strategic investment, and we are always improving consumer journeys. This is something we are not going to give up on.
It is not even priced in this contribution margin. You have the add cost, and you have a lot of things that impact this, right? You have commissioning and investments with this partnership, which is long-term, and it addressed two things: better margins, because here you have a gross margin. What was really important was using and taking advantage of this so that Mercado Livre can even use this for other sellers in 1P because I have idle capacity that was released when I removed other categories. To optimize this cost, either I grow very quickly and I have no capital structure for this, or I bring in other players so that they can use the structure. In the last two years, we brought in almost 100 external customers. They are smaller customers. They occupy one region. None of them have national reach.
Now we'll have a player that has national capacity that's going to reduce logistical costs and contribute a lot. Especially when I avoid, they have to invest in this infrastructure themselves, right? That is where you have this interdependence, right? It is good for both of them. You have a relationship that's a lot greater than this long-term contract that we have, right? We need it to be sustainable in the long term. This is important for both companies. Other opportunities, synergies, etc., made the business really more interesting, and that gave us the necessary confidence to be able to have the contract. I think that's pretty much it. You have the economics of the deal, which I mentioned a bit, which we're not going to break down the commissioning details.
What I can say is that we've been able to have the idea is actually have two percentage points more in the contribution margin in our sales through Mercado Livre than on the average of our channels. Because when you look at our channels, we have a more profitable segment and other segments that are less profitable. Obviously, not everything we did in Mercado Livre will be growth. Considering my capital structure and our discipline, I'm going to prefer to reduce in a bit channels. I have more demand at increased prices, and then I lose sales in some places. On average, I'm growing the company at healthy levels, improving margins gradually, which is the main objective for the online channel. From on 11/11, this was very good. It was better for our site than in there.
What happens is we have a lot to learn still, right? It is a tool. When you plug that in, you are already selling that. We plugged in other items with more assortment. We had changes as well. Basically, we must perform still in some periods where we can equalize this and have the necessary delivery terms. The routes are different. We have been very conservative in this journey, although we have moved into a number that is quite material. It is a very small share within what they sell. Marketplaces, overall, we are very strong. They have less concentration of Black Friday. When you see the sales in one day upon the sales of the month of the year in a marketplace, it is less concentrated than a specialist player than as ours. Our categories have less recurring purchases, right? The seasonal dates have more strength.
11/11, even for organic media partnerships, helped us, and we are able to perform well in our own channels. We are not opening up stores, but we tested something. Let me just explain what this opening was. We have stores that are big, and you have store inconvenience, but there is idle capacity. We were able to look at this and we saw that with the same cost, we can open up a full-to-few unit in the same property, right? My stock does not change. That is a POS that never really normalized the sales in Casas Bahia. It also brought in additional sales. We see it is like a hub. You have one store next to the other. There are opportunities that we tested here.
Besides the megastore in Marginal, being together with our headquarters that we opened, store openings are not in our radar. Even things that are very profitable. There may be some changes here and there, but this is maybe a shift in one spot or the other, very one-off occasions. We're only going to start opening up stores when the company gets back to your profitability and we have a positive cash flow. Okay, Doug, our next question. I'm going to ask Pedro from Bradesco to come along now.
Okay, guys, thanks for taking my question. Good afternoon, Renato, and Elcio and Gabriel. We have two questions here.
The first one is from, I wanted to think about ever since you guys took over your roles, when you consider the evolution in your relationship with your suppliers, we had moments that were more restrictive in the beginning of 2023 with Americanas. Sometimes the insurance companies were establishing some kind of a credit limit, and now the company is already demonstrating a healthier level of growth. I wanted to understand about the main suppliers and how this evolved and where we're at. Actually, if after the announcement of the partnerships with Mercado Livre, you guys have seen any more evolution in the sets, right? That is the first question. The second question is kind of including a bit of the capital structure and the cash flow here and some questions we have on our set.
The first is about for the first time, you guys broke down the FIDCs that are gaining more relevance in the capital structure section. I want to understand more about the potential of this. What's the funding structure that can maybe consider this with the buy now, pay later, and how much can this structure achieve, and how can we think about this mix-up ahead, a bit of the costs and differences we have? I'm sure my last question here, I promise, just an update about credit monetization versus the labor burden and how we're doing so far.
Okay, Pedro, good afternoon, and thanks for the question. Just about the relationship with suppliers, as you mentioned, we reached a point where our relationship has always been quite strong. There's a high reliance, and there are some additional stakeholders, which are the credit insurance companies.
The reaction of these stakeholders sometimes is not immediate. They look at the LTM, and things kind of happen as the quarters update, right? We have after Americanas and some strong points in the transformation, pythons on stock that kind of scare the market. We did have a reduction in credit limits that restrained the company from an acquisition perspective, and that made it difficult for us to capture operational leverage. As we evolved, we were able to have great communication, and that brought in an improvement in the sentiment with suppliers. That was something we were able to capture occasionally with an incremental increase in the limits, BRL 150 million on the other month. You come down on an elevator and go up on stairs.
As we advanced and were able to have the Series 2 conversion, that was an important milestone. Then we were able to bring in greater contribution with the goal of having an increase for next year. We were able to have an increase in the insurance companies and also get back to open risk with almost all of our suppliers actually working with a bit of the open risk. Why isn't this reflected in the reduction of the forfeit lines in the company? This is because we looked at this together with seasonality in the second semester, and we were preparing the company for all the seasonality. There was growth. If you look at this from a consolidated perspective, it was quite relevant, and we had to prepare for it.
To be able to improve the company's exposure and reduce the volume of forfeit, we had to continue to advance and have better limits of suppliers, expand our payment terms. That is where we can recover this. There are some suppliers where we could have a term, but sometimes we have to pay in a shorter period than if I had a commercial agreement. That restrains working capital and kind of affects the forfeit risk. With Meli, if you are already, and they sell another 10% or 15% for sellers with my scale, it is natural that we would gain a lot of share. That increases, and our negotiation became a lot stronger because we have visibility on how it is going to be. With this strength, we can even gain a bit more of a fact-based negotiation looking at the market prices.
Some people have a smaller shine as well. How can we balance out the business to have a healthy market environment? It is something that helps us. I think we are going to see an expansion also. We have been negotiating with suppliers that are going to grow, those that support us also more. We see this positively, this relationship versus partnerships, right? This is all incremental. I do not see any major changes from this level from one quarter to another. I think it is going to be gradual, just as we worked on the operational transformation of the company. Now about the FIDCs, I will ask Elcio to complete this. When you consider these two facilities, you have the Crediário, the Buy Now Pay Later FIDC, which should move on to structures that are similar to the FIDC.
It does not necessarily need to be the FIDC. If I migrate to a fragmented credit, you have less of a credit risk for the creditor than a corporate credit for Casas Bahia. The spread is smaller, the cost of capital is lower, and our gains become greater. It is natural that we consider these structures that are maybe more similar to the FIDCs. We have the receivables there, and you have fundability, etc. What took a while was the preparation in the company. Now we are ready, and we have been expanding gradually as well. Now you have conversations with new creditors that we brought in with cheaper credit facilities, and we are going to substitute this gradually. It is a step-by-step process. Some take a while to reach stability, and they would give us the comfort if we have a worse situation.
That also kind of blocks us in the spread, and then it's going to drop gradually. It's going to take a little longer. Everything is structured. We have a plan to work on this management and to capture the funding efficiency. The other line is the forfeit FIDC as this starts supporting the company. In the future, this is going to maybe take a little longer because maybe the market got a little worse. The macro environment, once it gets better, we'll be able to use this to anticipate this for suppliers and maybe gain more profitability. Maybe this takes a while. You have like a year of work to be able to optimize this gradually and start capturing. Oh, do you have the FIDC? Yes. But it's very little compared to the total amount.
Now it's more of a liability than a financial revenue. It's going to become an asset up ahead, but you have other levers to deliver first to be able to migrate this line there. I'll pass the floor on to Elcio so you can talk about the monetization and labor issues as well.
I think the first FIDC topic, if we get back to our transformation plan, we had a restriction in the funding to grow. This was always strategic, and this was the instrument that was the most important instrument. We have to segregate this in a separate vehicle because the FIDC that we've been working on has this component of a corporate risk. We've been working on this, as Renato mentioned, to have a complete mitigation of these corporate risks and have this engine adjusted with all of the components.
Now it's ready and prepared to support the funding in the Buy Now Pay Later through the Crediário. We also have these lines for the FIDC and the Buy Now Pay Later. We have no restrictions. Our initial objective of not having funding restrictions is already a reality for quite a while. If you want to grow BRL 1 billion tomorrow, it won't be due to lack of funding. It is a strategic matter to be able to grow gradually due to the macro scenario. We reached a point that we wanted to get to. Obviously, as you have more of an offering, we get into a spread compression process, and you search for the most economic alternatives to grow your Buy Now Pay Later, right? There are maturity processes until you bring in this track record into the FIDCs.
Slowly, but surely, this becomes more predictable as well. You have this process over time, either through FIDC or in the way that's most economic for the company. The FIDC, in its concept and nature, is normally within this segregated structure, right? Considering this marginal growth that we've had in the last quarters, this has been really captured within these structures. This is a reality that we should keep on with. Maybe in the future, you want to, once the market understands this, considering this profitability, and who knows, I can sell that leaving from an adequate pricing. That's a second step, and you're going to have to build this eventually. We'll have the conditions to get there, right? Forfeit, as you mentioned, we opened part of this in a more fragmented manner with a better footprint.
Sometimes we're more limited to some cases. With this, you have better access as well, considering the compression of the spreads, right? This is the trend, I believe. We're going to provide total transparency and clarity considering this vehicle that is so important for everyone. The second topic here, we've been keeping up a pace that is maybe now a little lower with the tax monetization. We have sales to third parties, etc., which was a topic. We had a shutdown that we believe was a little more temporary. We're going to be consuming part of these in a more internal way here, considering the efficiency of our stocks and how we can use the logistical routes. I think that's where we have the monetization with third parties. It's a little more predictable at this moment. This is a bit of the component.
They're there. Things are working well, and I can consume it myself. Once I'm able to perform these operations, I can accelerate again. I think maybe it's going to be a more temporary issue. Labor has been improving sequentially. Once again, this is due to different management and the strategy we've been working on. We've been successful, and I think this remains over time. Of course, it could be a little bit higher, a little bit lower. What's most important is that in the last few years, ever since 2019, this has been accumulating. The recent processes in the last two or three years. We're very confident that we don't have any big issues from now on, and we're going to have more normality in regards to our labor costs.
Perfect. Thank you, very complete. Thank you, Renato.
Thank you, Elcio. Thank you, Pedro.
I'm going to call our next question from Eric. Eric, you may proceed.
Thanks for taking our questions. We're going to have two here. First, when we talk about the competitive environment, but especially for the physical stores with another quarter in the same store sales, that has been evolving sequentially. We want to understand a bit more how you guys have been gaining share and if there's like a specific region where you even have a stronger dynamic or maybe a weaker dynamic just to get a little more color on the environment and opportunities up ahead. The other is about the capital structure you mentioned in the presentation with new opportunities for improving the capital structure, understanding a bit of what these potential opportunities would be, and even the timing so that other things can also become material.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Eric. On the first one, the competitive environment in stores, we really see a reduction in the customer flows in the physical stores. This flow is a little bit smaller, and we see rationality in prices, but we also see a very aggressive approach to payment terms. When we see the Buy Now Pay Later and how we are very rigorous in credit concessions, it continues to have a payment form that is very similar to what it was if you went back six months or a year with ratings and qualities of credit requirements that are a little higher because we understand the macro environment is worse. What we see is even more aggressive special sales. It increases a bit of the price. What we felt with other players, and elasticity does not pay the bills, right?
When you reduce costs, you lose. You destroy value, and we chose to not have more aggressive conditions. Of course, it's very selective, and we have to be very careful, right? We see that doesn't bring elasticity, right? Why has it been bringing gains? I think it's more about the depth and the correct items. We have really good engagement. We have integration that's very strong between planning and pricing and supply and also the store operation and commercial, along with the Buy Now Pay Later and logistics working on this. When we can see the dynamic per region, it's different, but the share is similar. We're even able to gain share in all the regions, although the south maybe has a smaller market, and there is even an impact back there, right?
We suffer a little less than the average. We also gain share in all regions. In some regions, they grow a little bit more. In the northeast, midwest, etc. If you look at this month in São Paulo, we had pretty good growth. All of Brazil has been operating really well. Rio de Janeiro also has been gaining share. I think in Rio, we suffered a little bit more. We are able to recover now. There is this specific dynamic in each region, but it is really category-based. The issue here is prioritizing where we have margins, right? If we have categories in certain products where profitability is more aggressive, that is where we had to, we gained a bit of share now in the fourth quarter, but in this category. That does not affect our margin as much.
The impact of the margin, I'm not going to be pushing the margin downwards. We've been very selective. Once again, we don't have a commitment to growth here. We have a commitment to improving margins. Due to the strength of this brand, we've been able to grow. When we consider the capital structure, what we've seen is we still have assets to be monetized. At each transaction and improvement, we have an improvement in the conditions to monetize assets. There are assets we've been negotiating for over a year. All of them, it's not things we wouldn't be able to monetize, but there are some things that were like BRL 140 million, then became BRL 170 million or BRL 200 million. We started assessing with greater depth. There are things that haven't evolved as much, and we're waiting.
When you add up these things that we mentioned a few times here, you have more than BRL 1 billion to be able to monetize. All of this is going to depend on the macro perspectives. When people start seeing interests are dropping, you have the sales lease back as well. The yield gets better. These are things that really bring in some of these more strategic levers that we have been demonstrating. Basically, every quarter, we bring in strategic levers that generate contributions. We have strategic levers we cannot disclose or by disclosure on, but that can bring in an additional increment in the capital structure. It is a bunch of different things that generate positive increments. Thank you, Eric. Gabriel, you are on mute. Sorry, you are on mute, Gabriel. Great. Now that worked.
Next question, Gabriela, please.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon.
Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to get into a bit more on the partnership with Mercado Livre and explore a little more about the funding dynamic. I imagine that the funding would be due to Mercado Livre. I wanted to understand your perspective on this and how you're imagining the evolution of the Buy Now Pay Later with this new partnership and the impacts in the margins. Thank you very much.
Two things. One, our Buy Now Pay Later is growing in digital, but that's proportional to the GMV. We've been very rigorous. I believe that the journey, even we had some investments to improve this journey a lot. When macro gets better, we'll be able to accelerate penetration a bit in our core channel. We're also growing in our 3P, and that's very important. In Mercado Livre, we still don't have this option.
Within this alliance, there is an intention to study along with them and consider the complementarity. My personal belief and the Mercado Pago is similar to Casas Bahia. We have an investment that approves the credit card with interest. We have the Buy Now, Pay Later that is more at the base of the pyramid. I think the market has the same potential. We have also considered the core is Mercado Pago that is going to continue to be the option there. I do believe there is an opportunity. Today, Buy Now, Pay Later grows in our channels. Yes, we do have pilots to explore, but nothing material yet that we can provide disclosure to yet. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Gabi. Now our next question is from Wellington at Bank of America. Wellington, you may proceed. I believe Wellington has no audio.
Some technical issue here.
Can you all hear me now? Okay. Good afternoon, Renato, Sue, and Gabriela. Thanks for taking our questions. I have a few here on my side. I think you guys talked about the fourth quarter and how November has been as well. I wanted to understand the month of October and that dynamic. When we look at the big platforms that are more generous, there is a month with promotional activities that are pretty exceptional. We had a focus on the main stores. I wanted to understand the online dynamic. Besides this, I want to understand a bit more of this. Considering this dynamic situation with the insurance companies and local suppliers, how would that impact your relationship with the Chinese suppliers?
Do you guys think you guys can have better conditions with these types of consumers up ahead, considering you would have better bargaining power? Finally, thinking about next year, how are you considering this dynamic with the income tax exemption bill that was approved? What do you guys think is the dynamic? Just to understand how this would be affecting you and how we can imagine this take place from next year onwards when it comes to timing, etc. These are my questions.
Okay, thank you, Wellington. Thank you for the questions. These are great questions, actually. Later, we'll give you more color on this and explain our macro environment. When we talk about October, what we saw in October is a very similar dynamic to the third quarter.
Physical stores suffer a little bit more because you have this restraining due to Black Friday in the physical stores. Customers concentrate a lot waiting and seeing. We had the pre-Black, but yes, there is a restraining amount. There is growth, and we continue to gain share. Online performs still in a very similar way than the third quarter. Some categories, right? Online is doing well. Promo is also working. Whatever generates traffic, multiple research items with greater value, they look on our channels directly, and that helps us sell even more on our online. Of course, the Chinese are very aggressive. They have been working on a more predictable journey of recurring credit increase. You have a structured plan with a joint business plan for the long term. There is a target of where he wants to get to in 2028.
That increases competitiveness among suppliers. That makes suppliers that have been around for a bit longer also get into action. What we've seen for 2026 is despite the tailwinds, and I'm going to mention these points that you considered positive, we also see a lot of aggressiveness around the suppliers and plans that are really bold for next year. There is a lot of growth. We do not think there is pizza for everyone. Everyone wants to increase their slice there. What we consider is with growth in some categories. Then we get into the third question. For screens, TVs, etc., the World Cup bringing an increment. With a lot of conditions and offerings to be able to have that moment, that is going to impact the second quarter, as you consider April to June with the pre-World Cup.
If Brazil advances, we'll have better improvements. If Brazil doesn't, then things kind of get back to normality. This year, I'll root even more. I think there are other factors, just as income tax exemption, which tends to bring a little more strength. You also have the electoral year where you invest more cash in the pyramid base. That helps to maybe have some important. Our base scenario does not consider growth. When we speak with a few players in industry and some analysts, they estimate that we're going to have growth because of these factors that are pre-electoral. I think the debt rate is still pretty high. We must be conservative to not count on these increments.
Our plan is to continue to gain a bit of share, continue to deliver growth that is incremental at every quarter, but coming from share and not from the market. Just in televisions, we have growth in the second quarter. Part of this cash actually goes to bets and others. That is what we can select from here. We could be conservative, but that is our preference to not have any last-minute surprises.
Thank you. That was very clear.
Thanks, Wellington. Our next question comes from Yago. Please, Yago, you may proceed.
Good afternoon, guys, and thanks for the space. Also, I wanted to follow up here on your discourse at the presentation of the call, which was the spread issue in regards to the anticipation, receivables, and forfeit. You talked about the spread and volume issue. First of all, congratulations.
I think you could see that there's an inflection. That is in the second quarter, although small. We've seen this movement quite positive. You mentioned the volume in the fourth quarter being a little bit greater. I would say the fourth quarter, since it's a strong cash generator, this volume, the spread would be a normalization. I just want to understand if that's exactly what you mentioned. The other issue about the 3P, while your main competitor has had challenges, the strategy they're using now. You mentioned that there's an avenue for growth up ahead, especially due to this new Meli partnership and even considering this competitive base that's really strong. I was really surprised with the take rate. I wanted to understand this.
I know that maybe you don't have a silver ball, but what else contributed to these 80 basis points in the quarter over quarter? I could say that this take rate maybe reached an inflection point. From this partnership, this tends to be maybe smaller. Nominally, you're going to have, when we consider relative terms, did this reach an inflection point or not? That's it. Hey, Nathu. I think you understood this correctly. The third quarter, I'm going to be preparing for Black Friday. You consider the end of the third quarter going into the fourth, considering the best seasonality, but that happens at the end. Until this moment, you have a crescent throughout the third and fourth quarters, and you have positive cash generation. There are some topics with the FIDC and some other negotiations.
When you consider this fourth quarter, you can see this. As you reduce the seasonality, that is when you see our expectations to have this reduction in these lines. In 3P, what happens is we have been growing a lot. Here, there are some important structuring levers that we had initially. When we got in, we were recognized on Google Summit for some AI cases. We do not do AI for marketing, but that led to a lot of results. We had to enrich our catalog, and that was very relevant. We improved our searches. With this sales conversion, we were able to advance with more attractiveness for the sellers, bringing in the fulfillment. Along with the renegotiations commercially and a bit more of ads that have also been helping this retail media.
There's also media services besides the contribution of the Buy Now Pay Later. Here you see a lot of space. Actually, we've been doing some research with our customers. There are some niches of products we do not offer yet. The company had penetration that was lower, considering the awareness in upper classes. We gained a lot of brand awareness, which has allowed us to have complimentary assortment. There is also another assessment that some things are going to migrate to 1P. Just as this, we have a lot of discipline to understand the ROI in each product in each category. Some products might decide to migrate to 3P because profitability is better. This combination to service customers is really the total online channel, right? Between 1P and 3P, it is a capital allocation decision, right?
Where I need my logistics, I throw that into the back, right? That is a bit of the dynamic. Mercado Livre is complimentary. These are products that I buy and sell there. In 3P, the seller that sells there is also selling on Mercado Livre, and they are kind of my competitor. I am going to get into 1P, and I am going to sell as 1P. I believe there is going to be some cannibalization of the complimentary public. It is difficult to measure. You do not have that much recurrence. What we are going to be able to do is tag the CPF and say, "Okay, the CPF accessed my site." Then I can understand. It is a real complex analysis. Our main driver is to keep this growing. We see the average ticket, the assortment is different, and some items.
You're going to reach a point where you're going to have this difference, but there's a lot to advance in e-commerce as a whole. In the marketplace channels, before we start discussing cannibalization here, which is a lot more about a margin decision and profitability, it's going to prioritize our advances and where we're going to be more competitive according to the investments and incentives I have. Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Congratulations on the results. We're going to call last question from Alicia Linamiyaka, Morgan Stanley. Aleh, you may proceed. Good afternoon, guys, and thanks for taking my questions here. If we could get back to our partnership on the Mercado Livre, the guys explored things that were very important here.
If you could think about the next steps on this partnership and the logistics in Casas Bahia, as I understand, you guys can work with heavy-duty items that can really be executed and delivered. If you see opportunities to offer this within the Mercado Livre platform. Another point on profitability, you also mentioned, Renato, a lot about the focus on continuing with this profitability. If we think about this EBITDA margin, we've seen significant evolution in the last quarters and years. Now looking at this more towards the future, where do you see the greatest gains on margins, gross margins, and operational leverage here? If you could also reinforce the main actual levers in each of these points, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Alicia.
The guests, we want to explore this and our logistics as well in the same way as we are also assessing this, where their logistics are maybe cheaper than ours and that we can use. Even if we zero in DC, we have the optimization of our stock, and that helps improve our working capital. One of the levers that is going to contribute to our capital structure is also gaining efficiency in our stock days with a channel like this where I can keep products centralized, and that helps me dilute. For some items, that makes sense to have this, and we can have this competitive cost there. We have alignment for both companies to use the best solution that is cheapest for us and consequently more efficient for customers. Cheaper for customers so that we can be more efficient.
About profitability, EBITDA is one of the levers up ahead, and the main factor is the operational leverage. We see our productivity gains, and there are gains. The average gross margin is. This is. When you look at World Cups, you have a bigger demand for televisions and cell phones. Depending on this, the gross margin pushes us downwards, right? The contribution margin is at that level. The mix really affects this. For refrigerators, it is different, right? If it just burns, you have to buy, and that's it. The category that most grows is the white line. It is not much of a renewal due to aesthetics. It is more of a need. For mobile, you load that more, and it is more resilient, let's say. It really depends more. That is where it also helps us with the gross margin.
Having an improvement in the macro environment tends to have another growth in furniture, and that helps our gross and EBITDA margins. What we imagine in the short term are incremental levers, operational leverage, a little more services, a little more efficiency on productivity, and that's going to help us. That's when you see the leap we've been taking. It's gradual quarter over quarter, and we don't expect to have any other level. It's going to bring in a bigger leap. That's pretty much it. Now we're going to start reaching a maturity level where seasonality is going to impact that. We're going to compare with a quarter in the previous year saying, "Okay, we're able to bring this." We're looking at the plans. We're able to bring a margin increment. These are incremental levers that go through these three dimensions. Okay? Okay, perfect.
Thank you. That's very clear. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you. Now that we have no other questions, I'll pass the floor to you for your final remarks so we can end. Thank you, Gabriel.
Guys, just about the closing here, I have three key messages I want to share. This consistent evolution, eight quarters consecutively. We had this plan in the beginning of 2023. We presented this to the market, and we've been delivering everything in line with the plan, anticipating some milestones to offset this worsening in the macroeconomic scenario that was not expected in this scenario. We adjusted this plan. We're delivering this. We also are aware of the macroeconomic scenario. No one's being bullish here. We're advancing, but we're aware that there's a lot more to deliver from an operational and also a capital structure perspective.
This requires a lot of conservative approach and discipline to our decision-making in the company. The third point, which the market questions a lot about, is we are very structured from an operational perspective, but we have the capital structure, right? We have levers and a very clear plan to improve our capital structure. This is all part of the plan. Everything is in the scenario. We are forcing this without counting on the non-recurring factors, income tax reductions, etc. We are not counting on these to not have any negative surprises. That makes it feasible to have a strategic lever and some other things that contribute to the capital structure, right? Just to summarize, we have a clear plan. We have execution that is proven, and we have a team and planning that is really well-defined and prepared to continue to deliver.
We're going to have excellent Black Friday. We want to invite you all to access the sites and look at the promos. This has brought in very aggressive deals, and we have trade-ins of cell phones in all stores as well. You can see stores that are spread out in other stores around Brazil. You won't repent. Thank you all for your trust and for your participation, and we'll continue to be present here. Thank you very much. The earnings call for the Third Quarter of 2025 at Grupo Casas Bahia has officially ended. Thank you so much for participating, and have a great afternoon.