Good morning, everyone. My name is Márcio Penna . I am the Investor Relations Director at Méliuz. It is a pleasure to be here once again to present our results for the third quarter of 2026. Without a doubt, this has been a challenging quarter as a result of the Bahia judicial reorganization, a very important partner in our portfolio, in addition to the economic scenario that reaches our segment. Importantly, we delivered some important results, such as Beyond E-commerce, that by itself accounts for more than the Méliuz as a whole at the IPO time. We are going to go over all those elements during the presentation, but I would like to inform that this webcast is being recorded and there is simultaneous interpretation into English.
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I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Gabriel Loures, to begin the presentation. Good morning.
Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here once again to share the results of the third quarter of 2026. As Márcio said, it has been very challenging, but it reinforces that our fundamentals are intact. In a quarter when the e-commerce dropped, we are going to discuss the impact. Our user base only grew and is ever more engaged. This all reinforces the fundamentals. I am going to go through all the items, then we are going to open for questions. For today's agenda, we are going to focus on the financial results, then we are going to talk about the fundamentals and the acceleration levers that we have. Operational aspects, launches, and evolutions, and at the end, I am going to go over the treasury strategy and how we evolved in the last quarter.
Let us talk about the results of the third quarter. Well, we maintained the growth in the LTM at 10% year-on-year, LTM of third quarter 2025 and 2026. In spite of the general drop in revenue, in comparison to the third quarter of 2025, we dropped to BRL 96.1 million from BRL 123.7 million that I mentioned. On the right, we can see the breakdown, and we can see how the drop in the revenue happened in the e-commerce year-on-year and what was the main reason. Beyond E-commerce adjusted for comparable periods. We explained a little bit of this in the release. It continued growing year-on-year, and services had a growth of 10%, and other companies maintained at a stable level at 7%. Quarter on quarter, we can see that this is explained by the drop of e-commerce.
LTM, we grew by 10% in the last 12 months, and in the view of the year, we had a growth of 3%, both impacted by the Beyond E-commerce. It is important to explain what were the factors that impacted the result. As I said, the drop of e-commerce of 35% was the main factor. The net revenue of Shopping Brazil, in a consolidated way, dropped 28%, so we moved to 77%. There are some factors that would explain this drop of the revenue in this period. The first is the Casas Bahia judicial reorganization, an important partner. If we look at the third quarter of 2025, and if we had continued, maybe if I had maintained the partner this year, the equivalent would be a revenue of BRL 50 million based on this partnership.
Of course, this was a very important result that impacted the result and caused this drop in the comparable period. I am not talking about the impact of PCLD, and we are going to give more information about it. Another one was the impact of GMV. With the exit of Casas Bahia, we changed the mix of our partners, and the positive is that the GMV remains stable. I will make my comments about it, but that proves the capacity to retain clients. There has been a change in the mix of GMV, and as a consequence, an average take which was lower.
I will provide more details, but this was the second major factor when we are receiving less for each real, and that impacted the revenue in the period for the e-commerce. There was another impact that we had already explained in other presentations of results. That was the impact of accounting reclassification of expenses of Beyond E-commerce that they used to be revenue, and there is an off factor of BRL 4 million related to the first half of the year that were classified as revenue. We can see in 2025, there was a growth of growth of revenue in that period. It is a one-off that caused an impact and increased this comparison base.
The fourth factor is the deceleration of the retail in Brazil. Fourth, we have been a drop in the last months, and the impact on the non-durable consuming goods, which is very relevant to the e-commerce. This all impact our capacity to generate results to clients because the clients are not as heated, and the market as a whole is less heated. An important factor is that it is not the first time that we had this problem with an important partner. We had Americanas some time ago, which at that time was the most important partner of Méliuz.
Of course, there is an impact on the financial result, but the most important thing is that we can maintain the retention of the client, the volume of sales, and this effect we are going to be diluted along the time as we increase engagement of the bases, bring in more verticals, and continue growing. I would like to talk about the mix and all the details and how this impacted the result. If we look at the third quarter 2025 and 2026, we see that the take rate dropped from 7.2% to 6.3%. This was the effect of the mix that I mentioned, and the consequence was the impact on the commission that we generate with the e-commerce partners, and as a consequence, on our revenue. When we look at GMV, the impact was almost null.
We look at the third quarter of 2025, GMV was BRL 1.3 billion. Then the third quarter, we had a GMV with a drop of only 3%. That net rate does not explain the drop in revenue, but take rate would explain the drop. When we look at the last 12 months, GMV is growing 10%, and the take rate continues stable at 7.2%. In the quarter, it was very relevant to 6.3%. Something important to mention is that we show the resilience of our business model. We maintain the GMV, and we even grew the net take rate, which is the percentage of the GMV that was generated that would generate margins to us, which is the revenue of the commission, less the cashback that we deliver to our clients, our users.
In other words, we maintain the profitability of our business even at a moment when the commission rate or the take rate that we receive from the partners dropped. This is another factor that shows that we have solid fundamentals in our business. We can maintain the GMV at stable levels, and of course, there is an impact on the revenue, but we can maintain the net take, and we can make our base profitable in a very similar along the period when we compare the quarters on quarters. Another factor that helped us see this is our capacity to customize the cashback to users. Historically, we worked with similar cashbacks to all users, and evermore, we have been ensuring that the cashback of each user would be different.
For 100% of our users, we offer a different cashback depending on profile, the retention, behavior. This helps us to maintain that volume of GMV and profitability even with a scenario of a dropping take rate. I will provide more detail later. There is initiative to optimize and become more efficient. We are always growing the base of buyers. This is the most important highlight for the quarter, which is that even in a scenario when we lost a very relevant partner, even in a scenario where there is a deceleration in market and there are one-off elements, we still have more buyers. We grow the base of buyers in the e-commerce by 10%, and we increase our speed of growth. The number of coming in for the first time to use Méliuz grew by 20% year-on-year.
In other words, we are bringing a cohort which is greater than we had in the third quarter of 2025, in spite of all the problems that I mentioned. I would like to mention the resilience of our business, the retention of our users, and our capacity to do what we always say. We get a user and help the user find the best offers. The effect that we had, such as Casas Bahia, would generate a short-term impact, but we can maintain the clients that were retained, and they start buying other partners and using our e-commerce. Still using this page, it is important to say that the number of buyers of the e-commerce, in spite of growing, they are more engaged in other products within Méliuz. Our cross-sell is ever bigger, and that reflects our capacity to grow Beyond E-commerce.
70% of the e-commerce used this quarter alone are the product of the ecosystem Beyond E-commerce, financial services. That shows our capacity to make that user that has just joining in with the e-commerce buying new product, and the opposite. A client that were here to use Beyond E-commerce services are now using e-commerce services. That shows our capacity to make cross-sell and also to deliver to our base a broad portfolio of services, regardless of the channel or the product they want to purchase. What we want to deliver is the best experience, whether in the online or offline worlds. In an ample world, we can also see that the fundamentals grows with the fundamentals of the shopping in the long term.
There was a drop of 28% in the third quarter, but year to date, we can see that we are growing, and the LTM view, we are growing 17%. The impact in the short term on our revenue of the e-commerce does not reflect in the long-term growth of the last 12 months that moves from BRL 311 million to BRL 372 million in the past 12 months. The engine couldn't be different. As I mentioned, oftentimes is the Beyond E-commerce. When I see the net revenue of e-commerce, we can see that it reached BRL 85.1 million. We are almost doubling the business, which is a bit bigger than the Méliuz pre-IPO. Pre-IPO, we had reached BRL 81.5 million, and now we announced that Beyond E-commerce reached BRL 85.1 million in revenue. It's bigger than when we had the IPO.
That shows our capacity to reinvent, integrate new products, diversify business lines, and use our strengths. We have a very engaged user base that ever buys more and uses more of our products. The consequence of this net revenue of Beyond E-commerce increased the share of shopping as a whole. We have this number of 9 percentage points growth. It's ever more relevant to the revenue of Méliuz as a whole. When I look at the absolute growth of this net revenue, 74%, more than BRL 14 million were added to this business of Beyond E-commerce. That helps us to reach this revenue of BRL 365 million. It's a vector of growth, which is higher. This is the business line that grows percentageally more, but it also adds more revenue to our business.
This is very relevant to show the importance of this engine, growth engine that is within our ecosystems, with more opportunities and expanding ever more. We can see this very clearly on the next page when I look at the evolution of Beyond E-commerce, when there's an impact on the third quarter of that was the impact of the reclassification of revenue, and we only consider comparable basis, the revenue that was actually generated in that period. We reported 24% growth, and it's even more evident when we look at the LTM view. How is it performing quarter on quarter?
In the third quarter, it moved from 44 million , 45 million to [audio distortion]. In other words, it's a very good growth that allows us to build this curve, and we add users, we add cross-sell in the base, we make users to use more product, and as a consequence, lever the revenue of Méliuz as a whole. I'll provide more details about products and the levers on which we're working, but I'm going to continue talking about the financial results so that we can wrap up this first part of the presentation. When we look at the reported results, we reached a reported EBITDA of BRL 85.3 million, which is the highest ever, and the net income of BRL 113 million, also in the third quarter of 2026, which is 8x bigger than what we had reported in 2025.
In addition to the operating results, I'm going to give you a breakdown. There was a very important impact of our reserves of Bitcoin in the third quarter of 2026, reinforcing the strength of our strategy of treasury, using our assets and our cash, having Bitcoin as a value reserve. This allows us to have stronger results when the retail in Brazil is weaker. Now, moving on to the operating results, excluding the typical effects, which are two. The first is the valuation of Bitcoin of nearly BRL 80 million, and the PCLD that we had in Casas Bahia. In the explanatory notes, we can see that we had an allowance for doubtful account of BRL 14 million and a reversal of BRL 3.4 million that were provisioned. Since we did not receive the revenue, this cashback was canceled, it's not being considered as a cost.
The impact that was atypical of this doubtful account was BRL 10 million, which is the net, and this is related to how the cost would be for the revenue. So, adjusted EBITDA amounted to BRL 17 million after all those elements. When we look at this in the quarterly vision, there was a drop of 38% versus the historical quarter that we had in 2025 with BRL 27.2 million of EBITDA, and EBITDA margin dropping to 17.7%. It's important to mention the average medium term. We can see that we're growing the company with a margin from 17.8% to 19.5%, and in the last 12 months, the margin is 21%, maintaining the level of BRL 100 million. We did not forget about profitability, even when there was a drop in the revenue that impacted the EBITDA and the base to generate the EBITDA during this quarter.
At the end, our cost structure was reduced together with the drop of our revenue. As you can see, the cashback reduced, the personal cost also reduced. In practice, we have been trying to maintain the fixed costs over revenue all the time, and we have been very successful. Moving on to net income, it's important to break down the adjusted net income because there's an atypical factor to consider. In addition to the valuation of Bitcoin and the Casas Bahia effect, there is a new effect that we did not see, which is the deferred income tax Alter merger that we incorporated in the third quarter, and that brought a deferred income tax to Méliuz.
Since Méliuz has an expectation of future income, this is a positive impact in terms of accounting because this deferred income tax will be used by the tax we will have to pay for the company. So, this happened with the merger. It is an on-off effect, and even with all those on-off effects, we generated an adjusted net income of BRL 19.6 million. Even in a quarter where the app dropped, we managed to increase our net income, even adjusted and even disregarding the typical effect. That shows the strategy of our treasury approach and how we can transform cash, all this into cash. So, the efficiency of the treasury model allowed us to reach this adjusted net income of BRL 19.6 million and with 70% in the LTM view. We are reaching BRL 64.4 million in the LTM view.
As I said before, this net income is translated into cash. So, from the BRL 19.6 million in net income, we had BRL 24.2 million of net income adjusted for non-cash effects, and considering variations of accounts payable and receivable and all the current capital, we had this result of BRL 6.4 million. We can use this cash for our treasury strategy. I am going to make more comments about the treasury strategy. This cash was used for the share buyback program, which is underway, the second one, and it is active. Now, closing the financial numbers, financial results, but now I would like to go over the second part when we are going to provide more details about the operation, and we would like to reinforce the fundamentals because the quarter was a bit weaker, but generally, I keep on being very confident about our confidence.
Why are we going to become the biggest loyalty programs in Brazil? Because I am going to explain the elements. First is our capacity to acquire users, and our capacity to acquire users at a low price. It seems to be the same slide that I have been showing for the last two years, but they are different. They have different framing, they have different details. We are one of the seven most downloaded top free apps in Brazil. Consistently, we have been keeping this ranking. If you look at the financial results, you can see that the marketing expense vary from BRL 1.2 million to BRL 2 million a year. We are very efficient in acquiring users, and this is not the month that we had when we were very efficient.
We keep on being the best channel to acquire users when we look at the shopping, and this is the basis of our value fundamentals. Why can we do that? Because we do not pay for them to come into our app. We use channels of referrals, so one user would bring in another user, and we also have a capacity to create material in an organic way and spread to millions, hundreds of people in Brazil. We also have the capacity to bring in users with GEO, SEO, and organic search, all the tools that we have to bring in users, and we can bring them at very low cost. This allows us to be one of the most downloaded apps in Brazil. In addition to that, I always say that we are one of the players with the largest retention in Brazil.
We do not provide details about the official numbers. I just provide a report from Sensor Tower. Anybody can check it, anybody can record or can join in. I would like to show their capacity to retain users and make them engaged, because it is incomparable. I would say that it is like the other big events in Brazil, and Méliuz is always among the 2%-3% of all the apps that are on the phones in Brazil. Everybody will identify our app immediately. This shows that we have a capacity to bring in users and maintain the users. These are external numbers, these are the figures, and it is very important to share because this can be a comparison basis when we compare Méliuz with other apps. According to Sensor Tower, Méliuz has 7.7 million users a month.
We have a daily active user of 1.4 million users, which is 2.8x the runner-up, and we have 15.7 million downloads, which is almost 5x than the second runner-up. We are the loyalty programs with more users which are active per month. We are the loyalty program in Brazil where users access more often, so it is the most retention in terms of DAU. We have a loyalty program that grows the fastest because we have more users downloading our app. When I put all the characteristics together, that reinforces our capacity to generate value to our partners because those users are here for a reason, and the reason is the following: have more pleasure in their purchasing journey. How can they get more benefits? How can they find products? How can they pay better? How can deliver and receive?
How can they find the best way to pay? How can they find the products online or offline? How can they participate by playing a game, answering a survey, or subscribing to a program? Our strength, and has always been Méliuz' strength since it was first founded, was to acquire and retain users. We still have this strength. This strength is even more permanent. That happened when we had Americanas, and this continues to happen with Casas Bahia. Our users continue engaging and continue purchasing. That would lead to value generation, and this is something we can sustain. Having said that, our purposes for the year continue the same. I have been repeating this in all the calls, but it is important to show our consistency in our strategy. We want to grow the top line, focus on shopping.
We want to grow the revenue per user. I have just said that we are the loyalty program which has more engagement, so the big challenge is how we can make the users engaged so that we can generate more revenue, so we can increase the ARPU and maintain the healthy levels. Even with some drops, we have maintained the net take rate at stable level, and this is going to be the result of the company along the road. All this sustained by AI that will allow us to grow the Bitcoin per share, and I am going to go over the major priority, but in the short term, what have we been doing in terms of product with those impacts and continue growing?
The first lever on which we're working this quarter, along the year, but especially this quarter, is our capacity to monetize and grow e-commerce, in spite of the short-term impact. We have a major impact to optimize revenue and the volume of sales with partners. One of the major initiatives that we have for the year is that individualized or personalized cashback per user. As I mentioned, we have to maintain the net take rate stable, even with a drop in the commission, and this comes from this initiative. If you go to the app, you're going to see the percentage of cashbacks are slightly different. It's a dynamic pricing way of doing things according to the user, which is not by segment or by block of user. Each user would have its price, its cashback, and enough incentive for the user to buy.
In the long term, we'll make sure that the user will continue using the services. Another lever of efficiency is the tools that we have been using based on AI to improve our tracking rates. We keep this very close, all those numbers, so how we are going to generate sales into cash. Using our capacity, which is how can we track that the sales are going to be recognized. We are working with AI agents 24/7 and correcting all the bugs in an autonomous way, and this is going to continue helping our results. Of course, we're not focusing only on efficiency, and then we go to points two and three, new ways of customers to buy and partners to sell, and improve products and the offers that we have to our partners.
I'm talking about partners of e-commerce, partners of Beyond E-commerce, and all the partners in the shopping verticals. We're focusing on products, new offers, shopping journeys, new ways for users to buy. I'm going to make more comments about it. Creating new business models with the e-commerce partners, also in the physical partners inside the Beyond E-commerce. How can we generate value with the thousands of users that we have? We have been working to launch new products and create new business models with those partners in the physical world as well. Third, diversify revenue streams, new verticals. This year alone, we launched three verticals in the Beyond E-commerce. New products that diversify this vertical, and we have been working on with new partners of financial services.
I'm going to talk about the initiatives that we have using as a co-piloting initiative, and there's also a partnership to be considered for next year. Nothing would have been possible if we were not able to deliver more with less. Our team did not increase, so our payroll did not increase year-on-year. In practice, we have been able to accelerate in exponential way using AI. The first metric that I usually like to show is the PR per dev. They said this number quadrupled from December now. We're talking about nine months since the 1st of December. This number increased fourfold, so each of engineer produce 4x more than they used to produce back then. This is one way of bringing new avenues for growth.
The consequence of all this is that in our cycle time, when a PR becomes a product, and having a real person using it, dropped by 54%. I am only talking about the new products, new products that are being developed, the products that are going to be scaled so that we are going to reach our base of more than 55 million people. We are not only talking about all the pilots that we have been running autonomously. Small initiatives within our app without the engineering work. We have been able to launch quicker products, and we have been working to launch products with more assertiveness, because we can test before we spend a lot of effort. Some examples here. I made it a point to bring four products that were launched in October, and I am talking about a roadmap of the year.
We are talking about four products that were launched in October. This is the purchase experience. We show products, we show how the cross is done on our app, how we can promote the offers of our partners. We have the vertical of Pix installments that has the purpose of improving the shopping journey. How can we help them pay installments, and how can they make a purchase that they would otherwise, new ways of making payments? That is very synergetic with our actual business and our speed, which is related to helping our users to buy. Now I am going to help them to pay, so I am very enthusiastic with this product. As well as product feed. Black Friday is just there, and this is when people try to find good buys, good offers.
The product feed helps a lot to find what is the right partner, what is the best store, and what is the best offer. Also, a way to help them to buy. How can we make that client to find the product they want? This is going to be used in the Black Friday period. We are launching many products. We are also going to launch the shopping assistant that will help clients to find the best products, the best offers, and what to buy. We have been working to put together the offline and the online world. In previous pages, I said that 61% of everything, of all the clients that purchased in the e-commerce, made also an action that generated value in the other verticals, be them Beyond E-commerce or financial services.
Putting together those worlds is one of our purposes, because at the end, it does not matter which channel we are talking about. What matters is that the client should find the best condition, the best product, the best benefit for the purchase. We have been working in order to put those numbers together, and not to say, "Oh, this is a vertical just for you to send an invoice. We have this vertical only for you to buy online." I want to buy something, I want to have an experience. How can I buy that regardless of the channel, regardless where I am at? We are working very hard on that, and soon we are going to have some novelties. Black has come. Black Friday has come. The fourth quarter is the most important period of the year.
It has already started, and it is going to start even before than the previous year. You have probably seen the impact of the double dates along the year. Each double date was more important than the other ones. 11/11 should almost be a Black Friday, as important as Black Friday, because our clients are used to purchasing on this date. They understood the importance of double dates for Brazil. We are very enthusiastic with what we have been doing with the user base, more engaged, generating more results to the company. We believe the partners are very interested, and we believe the Black Friday event will be very important for this year.
I would like to change gears and talk about our treasury strategy. Of course, I have to mention our valuation, which is the number that I always bring as an update. Our enterprise value is 108.7 based on yesterday's data, and the EV/EBITDA is 1.1x for a business which is growing, is debt-free. We can see some peers, we have no in comparison basis. All the numbers are converted directly into cash, as I showed in some other sentences. When we compared with international or Brazilian peers, we can see that our numbers is much low compared to the average that we see with the peers. This is an area that evolved.
In the past, before we started the share buyback program, this EV/EBITDA was 0.59x, it is 1.1x . But our view continues that the shares are undervalued, and this is why we launched the second share buyback program. For a recap, beginning with the first share buyback program that was launched some months ago, 100% of the proceeds of the resources were generated with the operations of the business. Only with the operation cash, we bought 10% of the free float of the company, something of 8.1%, 8.5% of the total capital of the company. This was an amount of BRL 41.5 million that were used for the buyback program.
With this program, we reduced the free float in our balance, we reduced the capital, and now we canceled 9.1 million shares, generating a Bitcoin Yield of 8.5% in this period. At annualized base, it will come to 11%. This metric is not only the measure of how Bitcoins will be used and how each shareholder had an increase in their share. All the shareholders increased their share in the same proportion between the third quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. We are not only growing the business, growing the revenue, growing EBITDA, growing cash generation, and we are also growing the number of Bitcoin that is held by each shareholder, but also growing the share of each shareholder for the 8.5% as a result, as you can see on the screen.
When we end the second quarter of 2026, we launched the second share buyback program with some novelties, which was an integrated capital allocation between the cash allocation and our Bitcoin treasury. The purpose we have here is to evaluate our assets, which was the best way to generate a Bitcoin Yield. How can we increase the share of our shareholders? Is it by buying Bitcoin or buying back shares? That would depend on the market price of our share and if we believe that the valuation is right. The purpose is the same. The purpose is to generate more Bitcoin per share and more value to our shareholder, regardless of how the transaction is carried out.
Now I explain how we have been doing in this third quarter. We get the cash generated by the operation. It was fully used for the buyback. We sold 78 BTC. That would amount to BRL 29.4 million in the third quarter of 2026, and we repurchased BRL 44.7 million in the second program, recorded as marketable securities. If you want to check, you can go to the balance sheet. At the same time, we not only sold the Bitcoins, we maintained our exposure to the 78 Bitcoins when we bought them at preset price at about BRL 70 million. This is going to happen in the middle of next year.
We maintain the exposure on Bitcoin even with the sale in the short term. We maintain our confidence in the view of long term that it's going to be a value reserve for the short term. We made a movement to allow this repurchase of shares. This is what I'm going to show on the next page and how this is reflected on our financial numbers and our Bitcoin indicator. The first graph on the top, it's the Bitcoin per 1,000 shares per quarter. We see a growth in the first quarter. We see a growth of 2.8 in the second quarter. If you see the absolute numbers after the buyback program, we see a drop of 5.8% if you only consider the sale.
If you consider the exposure that we maintain with Bitcoin, we are going to end after the execution with 8.1% of Bitcoin Yield versus the second quarter of 2026. Since the start of the buyback program, in the fourth quarter, we generated 3.2%, 5.6% to the second quarter of 2026, we amounted to 8.5%, and now with the short-term effect, we stood at 2.2%. When we look at the pro forma view, considering all the executions, we reached 17.4% of Bitcoin Yield. Reinforce, we continue believing the Bitcoin as the major value reserve for the company. The strategy does not change in any way. Our strategy is to continue with the four blocks that we mentioned, improving our pro, using AI, and everything that I mentioned, and everything is directing to the same purpose. Nothing changes.
We are going to continue with those objective, and we have been working since our share is underappreciated. We are using this moment in order to improve the Bitcoin Yield and also the share of all shareholders, not only the Bitcoin per share, but also to improve the cash generation that will be used to buy more Bitcoins per share. Before opening the Q&A session, I always bring this slide on purpose, the same slide that I will show you, because our confidence remains the same. We are going to be the best loyalty program in Brazil, and our users are ever more engaged and ever more retained.
We are going to generate more ROI to our partners, and we are going to create capacities of values as a marketing and loyalty channels, both for the physical and the online world, and for any verticals that we're going to launch. As well as other products in the Beyond E-commerce. For investors, we're going to generate cash, we're going to generate Bitcoin Yield regardless of the Bitcoin cycle. This is the vision that we have. We reaffirm our commitment.
I would like to end inviting everyone. We're going to have a focus chat on the Bitcoin strategy at X at 12:30 in Brazil. Márcio and I are going to take part, Diego, and we also have two other guests. I would like everyone to join us. I would like to turn the floor to Márcio so that we can start answering the questions.
Great, Gabriel. Our first question comes from Eduardo Resende with UBS. Eduardo, your line is open. Go ahead.
Good morning, Gabriel, Márcio. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you well.
Okay, perfect. I have two questions on my side. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I would like to provide you with some colors on Casas Bahia. You mentioned the initiatives that the company has been developing in order to grow. You have Beyond E-commerce performing quite well. Casas Bahia used to be a relevant partner. I would like to understand how you see the next quarters. What's the growth trend? We know that the fourth quarter has the seasonality, which is a bit more favorable because of Black Friday, but if on an annual basis, the fourth quarter should be a bit weaker because of Casas Bahia. That would be my first question.
The second question is related to financial services. The contract will be as long as the middle of next year. What the company has been doing in this financial area, and what are the operating challenges that we have to be overcome? That would be interesting to hear from you. This is what I have on my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Eduardo. Márcio, would you like to answer the first question, and I'll answer the second one?
Yes, I can. In relation to expectations, in relation to e-commerce results for the fourth quarter of 2026, it's a bit difficult to talk about the real impact for the next quarters because the company does not provide official guidance. Qualitatively, we lost a partner, which is very important because of the judicial reorganization filing, and this will continue impacting the results in the next quarters. Just as what happened with Americanas in 2023, our users remained using Méliuz, but choosing other partners. We believe that the same is likely to happen in the case of Casas Bahia.
Our users will remain using Méliuz because they like Méliuz, and they know the benefits that they receive from Méliuz. They are loyal to Méliuz, so they will continue using our platform, and they will choose other partners. It's natural that the impact will be stronger now. This is likely to be absorbed because this is what we saw with Americanas. The major impact was in the first quarter, but then across the other quarters, the impact was much lower.
However, we are aware that we need to look at these levers that are going to provide support to our short and medium growth, as Gabriel mentioned. Without going into actual numbers, we believe that there may be an impact, especially in the short term, but we are working to reverse this with new partners and also with some growth levers that we presented during the call.
Only to add, this is it. Basically, our business continues having more buyers, more users, growing faster. There is an impact on the take rate related to the mix, which is irrelevant in the financial result. Our user base continues growing, and we have gone through something similar with Americanas, but the numbers have doubled or tripled since then. We believe that our platform will continue growing, and we are working hard to expand the business verticals. Beyond E-commerce is a lever that we did not use to have when Americanas had a similar problem back then, and that will help us sustain with other levers.
We are very confident with the results that we are generating and with the growth of this base, and also the volume of purchases of our users that are going to reflect on the growth of the business as a whole. Speaking of financial results, the partnership with BV will go as far as the middle of next year, so we will continue delivering financial services, cards. You can see that the revenue related to financial services continue at the same levels, but we are getting ready for the next step after the exit of BV. In the last quarter, we launched the first pilot, which is the pilot of Pix installments, which is something to help our clients to pay what they purchase.
This is going to be offered to the users that we have, and we have been working on this together with some partners so that we can scale this up. At this time, it is in the pilot phase. We do not have a lot of numbers to disclose for you, but what I can say in a qualitative way is that we are considering different avenues, and we are prioritizing those avenues so that we can get ready for the financial services with Méliuz.
That is clear, Gabriel, Márcio. Thank you.
Thank you, Eduardo. Our second question comes from Ricardo Buchpiguel from BTG. Your line is open. Go ahead, sir. We can hear you now.
Yeah, can you hear me now?
Yes, we can.
I have a question, because I want to understand your expectation to e-commerce revenue for 2027. I know you do not provide a formal guidance, but there are some moving parts here, and I would like, even if it is from qualitative viewpoint, it would be help. We have those impacts that will dissipate along the time of Via Varejo , but we are facing a more difficult moment in the macro ways. Maybe a recession. I would like to understand if this level of top line that we see in the third quarter could be a bottom, or are there risks from the macro view in terms of de-acceleration?
Of course, we are not going to disclose numbers, but what I can say that we have been working on this. First, talking about e-commerce, which was your question, we have been working with different partners, new partners that have joined the platform, creating business models with those partners. Today, for example, we have a significant percentage of revenue from e-commerce, the line of revenue focused on sales commission. How can I generate more of sales volume to our partners, different categories? But we have been working with other buckets, other ways of generating value to those partners, thinking of the client retention, acquisition of clients, and also how to promote services and products.
We have been creating new tools, new business verticals, and we have been expanding our partner bases. We lost the partnership with Casas Bahia, but we started working with Mercado Livre, which is the largest marketplace in Brazil, and we are growing this partnership. Those effects happen. These are retail short-term effects. Of course, in a challenging e-commerce, the impact will be felt, but we believe that we will be able to sustain the impact because we have not only a complete basis of partners, I can truly say that 95% of the GMV of the e-commerce retail in Brazil passes through our platform. We are very well distributed in all players that generate sales on the e-commerce, and we are creating new business models.
Of course, we have the capacity to create our bases more than the rest of the market, as we have been done consistently along the 10 years. This is for e-commerce, and as I said, we are placing bets. We really believe in the other business verticals of Beyond E-commerce that would set off some effects that we see in the Brazilian e-commerce. Different from what happened when we had the problem with Americanas, we have now other business items that can help us sustain in a more balanced way.
That is clear. Just a follow-up on this point. Yes, it is clear what you said in relation to the top line, but could you mention the levers that can be used in terms of cost in a more challenging event? Is there space to be more conservative?
Okay, perfect. First, as I mentioned during the meeting, 40% of revenue, there is some variation, give or take, but we always show this number, is the cashback cost. If we are more efficient in the allocation of cashback to our partners and to our users, naturally, we are going to be able to sustain it at similar margins or even improve the margins. This is something that has to be done in a smart way without hurting the biggest asset, which is the retention of clients, the retention of users. But in general, we have to be smarter when we deliver a benefit to the client.
Naturally, this is the most important business line and the cost line that can be optimized at different ways. We also have the combined redemption when users can switch the cashback with other vendors, other services. We are going to be flexible with the cashbacks by offering other options. They can switch the cashback with the benefit by a store or by product or service. We have been working on this vertical, because that would help us to optimize the cashback costs, and we also have fixed costs and marketing expenses.
We have been using marketing expenses at important levels, but we always look at positive LTV. What can we do in order to make sure that in the short run, this margin can be ensured? If we see that the LTV dropped of a client, we can reduce to something acceptable. When we look at the fixed costs, we can always be more efficient. We can work with suppliers. We have been using AI to produce more things. We have the stable levels in the fixed costs, and this helps us ensure more profitability in our business.
Thank you. Another question from Alexandre Namioka with Morgan Stanley. Alexandre, your line is open.
Good morning. Thank you for answering the questions. Going back to e-commerce, we saw the increase of buyers by 10%. GMV dropped 3%. I understand there is the impact of Casas Bahia, but if you could make some comments of how the performance of each of the cohorts has been doing by any buyers or the cohorts of buyers along the time, it would be interesting to understand that. Another point, thinking about the medium and long terms, we have seen a growth of new purchasing channels, social commerce, and also other platforms of e-commerce in this segment. Not necessarily in Brazil, but we have seen a lot of discussion about AI agents impacting the purchasing journey.
Considering the context, how do you see the e-commerce segment of Méliuz in this purchasing journey, in a context where you have purchasing channels which are additional?
Excellent question, Alexandre. Thank you very much. I'm going to start with the first one, which is related to the number of new buyers and the health of the cohorts. As you mentioned, the number of buyers grew by 10% in the period, and new buyers grew by 20%, and the level continues to be very healthy. When we acquire a client, we have to make sure that they're going to generate a return at a predefined time. You see that our marketing expenses are very stable in spite of the fact that we increased the cohort by 20%. The cohorts are very healthy, and as we have been doing, we grow in a healthy way. The impact that you mentioned is that the new buyers generate impact in the short term.
The people who have just known Méliuz buy more year on year. This is a behavior that we have seen since 2011. Naturally, considering that most of their sales are done by clients that were retained back then, a new cohort impact, but in a lesser way. Since our retention is very strong, a large part of our revenue is not attached to our market investment and in the growth in the short term. In 2023, we were restructuring the company. We were having the turnaround. We did not invest, and our revenue continued growing because our revenue is generated by the clients that have been retained, and new buyers accelerate the numbers of growth for the medium term. We are always going to be investing in this.
Your second question was about?
The new channels.
Oh, yeah. Perfect. Obviously, we have been accompanying, making sure that we are working, that we are inside the purchasing journey of the client. Our great strength is that clients are used to use Méliuz to purchase, and we have partners with all the players and also players that sell offline. On the one hand, I have the better conditions for the client to buy, and we have the best ways, the best opportunities, the best offers. We are launching our new purchasing agent to ensure that we are going to be in this journey when they start using AI. We have the AI agent journey. People mention Magalu, WhatsApp, and the shopping journey.
All major e-commerce have been having shopping assistant within their platform, and we are going to take part in those journey in any way, because our core is to ensure that the clients will find the best opportunities. In the United States, you have the dichotomy of Amazon, that Amazon does not want to take part in that journey, different from Shopify, that is opening for purchasing agents to use the catalog and generate sales. We are going to work both ways. We are going to ensure that our journey is offer the best way for the client to purchase, and at the same time, we are going to use the all AI models, all agents, and all the tools that help us sell.
It is very important to be part of this shopping journey in ensuring that Méliuz is going to be used in order to provide advantages. I just remembered something, and I think it is a very important point. Strength is that we access where no other platform would access in the physical world. We help the client to buy online, but I also help them to buy in a physical world. It is a big strength because different from any platform, and we will have not only this possibility, but we offer the possibility of buying online, offline, in the local bakery. We put together online and offline, and this is our biggest lever to be in this new moment of shopping line so that we can be the biggest driver.
It is clear when you talk about the role of Méliuz, more focused on AI agents. But if you could make some comments on the social commerce, because there are some platforms which have been investing a lot in this channel. Depending on the social commerce segment, it is a more promotional. For example, live commerce in the Southeast Asia, we see it as a channel which is a bit more levered with discount coupons. How do you see the role of Méliuz, and how see the value proposition considering this new channel, specifically social channel?
We have been working with all players of social commerce, TikTok Shop as well. We have been working with them in order to integrate and help them generate sales. This is something that these things do not compete. We have always had a social commerce in Brazil. Influencers help boost sales, and this has always been one of the biggest levers in the Brazilian commerce with social commerce. Not necessarily as livers, but influencer recommending products and generating purchasing habits. This is a trend that is likely to continue, and our role is to be in this journey.
As I mentioned during the presentation, I always say this, that would involve billions of views so we can make the people in the social media to find the best way to purchase via Méliuz. Méliuz, we take part with them, use them to generate sales and value to our clients. Méliuz has a great capacity to create content and influence the purchasing journey, and this is going to be fundamental. It is already fundamental, but it is going to be ever more fundamental as social commerce gains in relevance within or outside our platform, within our channels or app, but also in social media and also in other channels.
Perfect, Gabriel. That is very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
We also have other questions, but I will answer them. I will answer them later, and I will turn the floor to Gabriel Loures.
The conversation has been great, and would like to point out that we have a commitment with the strategy that we have adopted, and we are confident on the strategies that we have adopted. Ever more engaged user base, business model which is ever more different, and working on opportunities, especially in the Beyond E-commerce, which is growing, and there is a lot of opportunities to grow, and we are going to make this vertical to grow ever quicker. We are very confident with the results, and we expect to see you later on. I am sure Black Friday is going to be excellent.