Good morning. Welcome to C&A's Earnings Conference Call to announce the results of quarter 4, 2024. Today we have with us Mr. Paulo Correa, CEO, and Laurence Beltrão Gomes, CFO and IR Director. This presentation and the earnings release are already available on our Results Center on our IR website. We also inform that this conference call is being recorded and simultaneously translated into English. To listen to the English version, just click on Interpretation. The replay will also be available on our IR website. After the company's remarks, we will open the floor for questions. To ask a question using your microphone, just click on the button "Raise Hand" to join the queue.
Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements that may be made during this conference call relative to the company's business prospects, projections, operating, and financial targets are based on beliefs and premises of the company's management, as well as information currently available to C&A. These forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks and uncertainties since they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions, and other operational factors may affect the future results of C&A and may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now, I would like to hand the call to Mr. Paulo to start his presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here once again for our earnings call. We are very proud to share with you another quarter of consistent results with robust growth and improvement in all our financial and operational metrics, highlighting the historic year in which C&A started again to shine. Before we begin, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our associates, clients, and suppliers. The commitment and partnership of each and every one of you is absolutely fundamental to our success, and none of this would have been possible without your support.
This first slide puts together some of the main highlights and C&A's performance in quarter 4 and the full year 2024. Once again, we delivered consistent double-digit growth in Apparel, reaching 14.4% in our same-s tore sales for quarter 4, even on a strong comparison basis of 18.5% from the previous year. This resulted in a 35% growth in two years.
This attests to C&A's clear and continuous gain in market share in recent years. In the full year 2024, our same-store sales was 16.4%. We also made progress in sales per square meter, which grew by 14.2% versus quarter 4, 2023. Our gross margin in Apparel evolved once again and reached a record-breaking number for a fourth quarter, reaching 56.6%. We continue with our usual financial discipline and diligence in expense management, focusing on the initiatives of the Energia C&A strategy, which ultimately contribute to our performance and build new competencies for the company.
As a result, our post-IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA margin reached 23.3%, and the adjusted net income reached BRL 250 million, another record-breaking number for a fourth quarter. We ended the year recording a historic milestone. Our pre-IFRS 16 EBITDA reached the BRL 1 billion mark, and this year we also had a very diligent allocation of our capital investing in Energia C&A strategy, which resulted in a total CapEx of BRL 360 million, 67% higher than last year. As a result of our operational efficiency and solid execution, we closed the year with a cash position of BRL 1.6 billion, and our leverage fell to 0.5x the net debt/EBITDA ratio in the end of 2024.
Our evolution is also perceived by our customers, and we can see this in both the expansion of our active customer base, which grew by 7.6% versus the end of 2023, and a very significant evolution, nearly a seven-point increase in our NPS for the year. These are clear indicators of the high satisfaction of our customers. Laurence is going to give you more details about these figures, but I think it's worth highlighting what are the reasons why we performed so well.
2025 marked the first year after implementation of the Energia C&A strategy, which has been carried out in a very pragmatic, disciplined, and transformational way. Our objective of rescuing the strength and brilliance of the C&A brand is based on a clear evolution in our assortment, improvement of the shopping journey, and strengthening of the relationship with our customer base. Operational agility and integrated customer-focused action have allowed C&A to respond quickly to market dynamics. This allows us to anticipate and capitalize on trends and adjust our planning efficiently and accordingly.
This dynamism results in a greater perception of the quality and value of our collections by our customers, and this helps boost store traffic and sales conversion of the traffic that we see in our stores. Another important pillar is our Commercial Intelligence Hub. This hub is responsible for integrating data and analysis with artificial intelligence, serving as a guide for much more assertive decisions in all dimensions of our business.
This integration connects the test-and-learn methodology, continuous product management, dynamic pricing, and push-and-pull distribution, and this all has resulted in operational efficiency gains with greater traffic conversion and an increased average ticket. As we've said before, this customer buying journey is becoming increasingly integrated, combining online and offline experiences.
For this reason, integrating these two environments has become essential in order to strengthen the connection with our consumers and at the same time improve the shopping experience in the omnichannel journey. Now, in the brick-and-mortar environment, C&A made a lot of progress with its program Dispersion, or Dispersão in Portuguese, and we conducted multiple flagship renovations, reinforcing the commitment to customer experience and innovation with a clear impact on customer perception. In the digital arena, we made progress in all fronts, improving both the website and the apps for customers and for store staff.
New features were incorporated into the systems, along with training for sales teams, ensuring greater efficiency in operations and customer service. Our consistent performance is the result of our discipline, management, and governance geared towards achieving concrete results. Pragmatism in our capital allocation has been a determining factor in this process, with investments targeted at initiatives that can bring greater returns and more relevance to the business. This helps ensure the rational use of our resources and the strengthening of our competitive position in the market.
All of these factors combined have been decisive in achieving our growth targets for our sales per square meter, which we have been discussing since we first presented the Energia strategy in our C&A Day last year. It is clear that the Energia C&A strategy has been our main focus. The initiatives in which the company is investing have already shown several positive impacts on our results.
For example, if we start with the brand and relationship pillar, in quarter 4, we launched our new brand positioning, "We Will Find You at C&A," "A gente se encontra na C&A," and intensified our investments in marketing and media presence. We will continue moving in this direction, and as an example, we have just announced our official sponsorship for Lady Gaga's concert, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro in May, and very few companies are participating in this initiative. Our levers are gaining traction, and they gained traction in 2024 and brought us greater brand relevance with greater strength, brilliance, visibility, and particularly greater appeal.
We also launched our new CRM promotion engine, which represents a step forward in the automation and intelligence of our offers, ensuring greater accuracy and greater impact through our campaigns. Another important point is the digitalization of our brand.
We developed new analytical tools for recommendation and segmentation using AI, which strengthen our ability to identify consumer profiles and personalize our strategy in a more granular way, making our contact with customers much more assertive. In the product pillar, we continue to make progress in strengthening the main categories of the company. For example, we already have more than 100 stores with new experiences in denim. We also continue to invest in our other divisions, such as knitwear, intimates, and kids, or ACE, our sports brand, which are already having a significant impact on our sales per square meter.
At the same time, the integration of the beauty category into C&A's customer shopping journey is also a reality. With the expansion in this front, we have already inaugurated more than 50 kiosks, expanding product offer and assortment. And as a result, our revenue in the category increased by 74% versus quarter 4, 2023. Our sourcing strategy has also been driven by a structured program of initiatives aimed at optimizing quality and fit with more sustainable raw materials and improved production speed.
With this set of initiatives covering different processes from collection design to store delivery, C&A has been able to improve each stage of the process, ensuring greater operational efficiency and alignment with our excellence standards. We have also evolved with the integration of new systems within the supplier network, allowing for a more dynamic flow of information and more accurate control across the network. Dynamic assortment now has four categories being tested with very promising results. We have started industrializing our analytical tool for defining the assortment according to the characteristics of each store.
In the omni journey pillar, we have been constantly evolving our customers' purchasing journey. We now have new features, new functionalities, and greater integration in this journey with developments in stock search and recommendations that are increasingly personalized. Our app has also shown strong growth in the monthly active user base, which was up 93% versus last year. As a reflection of all these positive moves, we saw a 58% increase in searches during Black Friday, which shows the attractiveness of this new digital journey. Also, in our brick-and-mortar stores, we continue to make progress with our renovations and improvement.
We ended the year with seven flagship stores reopened and more than 200 stores already positively impacted by some type of improvement in assortment presentation in different product categories. We have also gained a lot of traction with Project Dispersion. We made progress in our productivity in terms of sales per square meter in the 75 participating stores, the stores that took part in the first three waves of the project. These stores showed double-digit growth on average, above C&A's average growth, and all this just in our first year of execution of our Energia C&A strategy.
As a consequence of this transformation, I would like to highlight the consistent growth in Apparel as shown on this slide. The year 2024, which marked the first year of execution of our Energia C&A strategy, we had consistent results in all quarters, and this is the clearest proof of the resumption of the brilliance of this brand, which everybody loves, which is C&A. Our CAGR on a two, three, and five-year basis is another evidence that we are on the right track, and we are outperforming the rest of the market.
Before I give the floor to Laurence, I'd also like to highlight the recognition we received throughout the year. We won more than 25 awards, reflecting not only our growth, but also the strengthening of our reputation in the market. We were included in the IDIVERSA and ICO2 portfolios of B3, and we are now among one of the 20 Best Companies to Work according to the GPTW ranking in Brazil. We also received the Eco AmCham Award , celebrating the sustainable innovation in our business, and we were chosen as one of the brands most loved by Brazilians by Ecg lobal for Business, and we were also one of the brands in the Marcas Mais ranking of Estadão.
Also, in our surveys, we are monitoring brand preference, and we are up three points. These awards reaffirm our commitment to excellence, innovation, and customer satisfaction, which resulted in the incredible seven-point increase in our NPS. Now, I'd like to hand the conference over to Laurence, our CFO, and he will continue the presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending. Paulo has already touched on the main messages, so now I'm going to give you a little more detail here. This quarter, once again, we recorded consistent growth in our sales versus the same period last year. In Apparel, the same-store sales increased by 14.4%, even on an already very robust basis of 18.5% from last year. This performance reflects the balance between price and volume, driven by the good acceptance of our end-of-year collections and high summer collections and the greater demand for products with more apparent fashion attributes.
Also, our Commercial Intelligence Hub played a key role in this result, promoting greater analytical capacity and assertiveness in our collections through test- and-l earn and the integration of our artificial intelligence tools. Now, in line with our strategy of focusing on fashion products, we demobilized 70 smartphone kiosks this quarter, ending the year with 113 units still operating. As a result, our same-store sales amounted to an increase of 12.3% in quarter 4, 2024. Now, on the next chart, we see our gross margin for Apparel. As you heard from Paulo, our gross margin for Apparel reached 56.6%, a discreet increase of 0.1 percentage point.
However, this was a record number for the period since our IPO in 2019. This evolution is also the result of the assertiveness of our collections added to our excellent commercial planning and the use of dynamic pricing, which drives full-price sales. A competitive commercial proposition, coupled with the advancement of our push- and- pull SKU distribution and continuous collaboration between our teams, are also drivers to this good performance. The gross margin for electronics and beauty increased by 9.2 percentage points to 34.1%, and this was driven by a greater share of beauty products, which obviously have higher margins compared with Fashiontronics.
As a result of this consistent evolution in the gross margin of Apparel and the mixed effect between electronics and beauty, our merchandise gross margin reached 54.7%, up 1.5 percentage point. On the next page, we have our operating expenses. The company is maintaining its discipline and financial management with diligence in the allocation of its resources, focusing on the levers of the Energia C&A strategy. We are investing more in marketing.
We are increasing our presence in the media, intensifying our communication activities, social media partnerships with influencers, and media campaigns. We also continue to strengthen our organizational structure by attracting external talents and continuously developing our teams. We also had an increase in the volume of items processed and the expansion of our push- and- pull, which now accounts for 50% of the product mix. In the pre-IFRS 16 view, our operating expenses remain stable, showing our very diligent control of expenses in the year, where we had a dilution of 0.9 percentage point.
Now, considering the IFRS 16, our operating expenses increased by 1.2 percentage points as a percentage of our net revenue, but for the full year, numbers were steady. On the next chart, we have some comments on C&A Pay, our credit tool aimed at strengthening our relationship with our customers.
We ended last quarter with a portfolio of BRL 1 billion, 8.5% higher than the same period in the previous year. C&A Pay's share in retail sales was 24.3%, a slight reduction of 0.7 percentage point compared to the same period last year. This variation reflects a greater selectivity in the granting of credit as a result of some preventive adjustments that we made in our approval ranges in light of the current economic indicators that make up the company's credit model. Also, we delivered improvements in our default indicators.
Net losses dropped by 12.6% versus quarter 4, 2023, and the NPL 90 fell 3.4 percentage points sequentially and 2.4 percentage points versus the same period last year. As a result, C&A Pay reached a significant milestone in 2024, ending the year with an operating margin of 6.4%. On the next slide, we have more details on our default indicators.
The net loss in our portfolio for the period was at 5.1%, an improvement of 4.9 percentage points compared to quarter 4, 2023, compared to the previous quarters. The NPL 90, which considers the balance of overdue loans between 90 and 360 days, stood at 16.3%, an improvement of 3.4 percentage points sequentially and 2.4 percentage points compared to the previous year. The formation of our NPL, which takes into account overdue balances over 90 on the 360 portfolio, also improved by 2.6 percentage points in the sequential comparison with quarter 3, 2024, and a 2.3% improvement compared with the same period in the previous year.
Now, on the next chart, we have some comments on our indicators. The over 90 was 104% in the 720 portfolio and 110% in our 360 portfolio. Here, it is worth mentioning that the level of provisioning on the 360 and 720-day portfolio results in a coverage of 98%, so 2.4 percentage points up compared with quarter 3, 2024. On the next chart, we showed the evolution of our adjusted EBITDA. We recorded a growth of 12.7% compared to quarter 4, 2023, with an expansion of 0.3 percentage points in our EBITDA margin.
This is a reflection of our operational performance, the good acceptance of our fashion products, good management of our gross margin, and the strict control over the allocation, prioritizing, structuring. The adjusted net profit, we also had a record here, the highest since our IPO. We reached BRL 250 million in the period, a 76% increase versus quarter 4, 2023. At the end of December, we announced the payment of interest over own capital in the amount of BRL 105 million.
The payments will be made in 2025 on a date to be set at the next General Assembly meeting in April. Here, we have some comments on the CapEx for the year. We invested BRL 188 million in quarter 4 2024, in the full year, BRL 347 million, a 67% increase versus 2023. We resumed our investments in store renovations, and a significant portion of these investments were targeted at technology, focusing mainly on the development and integration of our Commercial Intelligence Hub initiatives.
So, 2024 was an important year consolidating the recovery of our investment capacity within an internal context of a lot of clarity and confidence, which was brought about by Energia C&A. And finally, here, I would like to highlight another important milestone in 2024, which was the reduction of the company's total indebtedness. So, we went from a leverage of 5.7x in 2021 to 0.5x in the net debt- to- equity ratio in net debt- to- EBITDA ratio in 2024. This strong deleveraging was made possible by the operational performance and very efficient management of our working capital.
We ended the year with a cash position of BRL 1.6 billion , which is enough for all our obligations in 2025, including the payment to Bradescard, and the complete execution of our strategic initiatives. We believe that our current level of debt is very healthy and ensures the financial soundness that we need to continue moving forward, implementing the Energia C&A strategy. This is the end of my part. And now, I invite you all for a discussion in our Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now open the floor for questions. To ask a question, click on the button "Raise Hand." Please wait while we poll for questions. The first question is from Rodrigo Gastim, Itaú BBA. You can ask your question now.
Good morning, Paulo, Laurence. I have two questions. My first question is about the evolution of your sales dynamics in the quarter and now in the start of 2025. Not looking for figures, but for details on the dynamics. There's a large discussion in retail about the economic slowdown that we saw in different segments in December. Our proprietary data also showed the same thing. January was slightly better, but still a weak month. Several companies that are now publishing their results talked about January, which was slightly better, but still lagging behind. So, what was the behavior of this dynamics in quarter 4 between the different months? Did you feel this slowdown?
What was the start of the year like? And also, along the same lines, another topic we have been talking a lot about here is in your same-store sales, the 14.5% of your same-store sales, how much comes from price and how much comes from volume connecting with the dynamics that you were talking about, about the Energia C&A project and the capture of the average ticket? So, this is my first question. And the second question, within the context of Energia C&A, how much have you already captured? So, at which stage is this project and how much do you still have to capture in the future? And can you give us some idea of how you're measuring this? Thank you.
Rodrigo, thank you for your questions. Let me start with your question about the sales dynamics in the quarter and the start of the year. I think that generalizing can be complex because every month and every period has particularities that will have an influence. The temperature, for example, is one of these factors. For example, in January, there was a lot of rainfall. So, sometimes it was hard to physically get to the shopping mall. São Paulo , this has an impact, for example. Several consecutive days of heavy rain will have an impact. And in February, the weather is very sunny, so you have a good performance of your high summer collection, for example.
That's why we always have to watch. We have to watch the entire picture, not just a snapshot, because the snapshot will not give you a full understanding of what's taking place. Overall, I think the key word here, which is what we have been working with, is consistency.
Consistency in our sales has been an important feature of our company. And both in quarter 4 and the start of quarter 1 this year, we continue to attentively watch and manage our business based on the levels of consistency. So, as I said, February, there were two dynamics in February. There's the Carnival Festival that is later this year, and there was also the higher temperatures that we're seeing in February. So, we are looking at this quarter. When you look at the comparison basis, you have one day fewer than last year because last year we had February 29th. So, we have one day that we lose in terms of sales when we compare, and the Carnival will be in March.
So, this will put more pressure on the March results because we'll have our stores closed during the Carnival days, for example. Overall, we are seeing very consistent dynamics in our sales. Of course, that we're monitoring all this closely, the information that comes from the market and what other companies are experiencing. I think we are being able to go through the motions very efficiently because we are working on our foundations. Energia C&A works with the most important foundations of our business, which is fashion retail. We have to better work with our products. We have to better work with the way that we build our customer journey.
We have to improve the relationship. We have to get closer to them, investing in our brand dynamics. This all has been providing us with a very good and continuous competitive evolution. Regardless of the winds, of the headwinds or tailwinds or the macro dynamics, if we have any headwinds, it is in the balance of C&A dynamics and the macro dynamics that we find our good results. So, we will continue with the same level of consistency and confidence looking forward. Now, in respect to the balance between price, and I'd say it's 50-50. We truly believe that this mix has to be there, that we need to be able to pass on the costs when they increase.
But we're also improving our collections, evolving our collections. And this also has an impact when we look at the average price. And most importantly, we need to grow our volume because this means more consumers, more items in the market, and gaining space in the wardrobes of our consumers. So, we have been balancing these two factors really well over time.
You also asked about Energia, so what is the level of capture of the benefits? This was supposed to be a three-year exercise, so we started last year, and at the kickoff of such a large transformation program, many of the initiatives are conceived during the kickoff. We test, we trial, we run pilots, so the first year is not the year where we have the highest capture. The second and third are the years where we expect the highest capture, so we have been able to already execute several rollouts. The speed also translated in the dynamics of implementing Energia, so we tested a new model for the denim area, and we already have this new model in 100 stores, so the speed was very high.
However, we still have a lot of opportunities to continuously offer this more increasingly interesting and better experience to our customers. It's very hard to talk about numbers now, but I'd say about 25%. 25% would be a reasonable number to measure the level of capture of the first year. So, we still have a long way to go.
Excellent. Very clear. Thank you.
Next question is from João Soares of Citi. You can ask your question now.
Hello, Paulo, Laurence. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on your results and on the consistency of your evolution. About the outlook and the comment that you made during your presentation, I think Laurence mentioned this about credit granting. I know that you have the Energia C&A strategy, which is driving everything. So, it is not just one single thing, but a combination of things. But I want to talk about the dynamics in credit granting for C&A Pay.
In quarter 4, we talked a lot about this, and we had the feeling that these dynamics had not yet deteriorated in order to require adjustments in your credit granting algorithm. So, how do you see this looking forward? Do you think it can come to a point where this will restrict your growth dynamics for C&A Pay? Because this has an important relationship.
There's an important relationship with the credit granting dynamics. And my second point is about your expenses. In your earnings release, you talked about higher investments, which is natural. For the C&A Pay, the G&A increased as a percentage of your sales in the full year. So, should we see this as a normalized level, or do you see space for additional investments?
Thank you, João. Let me start by talking about the dynamics of our growth, and then Laurence can talk about not just the credit granting model of C&A Pay, but also the operating expenses. I remember that when C&A started to grow, we were asked a lot about how much the credit granting model, to what extent it was responsible for the company's growth. I think in the past two quarters, we showed, on the other hand, that growth will never come from credit alone, even if you have a bad credit product with no value perception. So, even if you have a credit product, if you don't have a good value perception of the other products you offer, you'll not grow.
So, this is about the fashion products, the quality of our products, the cost-benefit of our products. This is an equation, and this is the equation we're focusing on and putting a lot of our energy on. And we believe this is what will drive sustainable and consistent growth for the company. Credit is important, indeed. Credit is a very important element, but credit is becoming an important element in our relationship with our customers. I always give the example that when you buy C&A and you pay in five installments, we have five opportunities to build relationship, to encourage you to tell new stories, and to keep the light on in the relationship with our customers.
So, C&A Pay is also important in this sense. However, we are not buying sales. Credit is supposed to enable the experience that we offer. We are not selling just for the sake of selling, just to give credit. Because credit, when you do this, it's nearly like a bomb because it will take months until you see the effect if you speed up your credit granting. So, these adjustments that we're making in our model, which are very diligent, we saw the result of this as the macro conditions changed. As the macro conditions changed, we adjusted the scope of our model, and this will lead to a slightly lower penetration level.
This is one of the elements. And another element is that our growth is higher in stores with a public with a higher purchasing power. This type of public, they don't have that high of a need for credit. So, that's why I say that there are other elements. Now, Laurence is going to better explore this.
João, thank you for your question. I would just like to add to what Paulo said. It's important to note that this change or this apparent slowdown in C&A Pay's penetration is due first to preventive adjustments that we made in our credit models. So, our models are now reading variables. They are fed with variables and prices from the economic data, and this leads to preventive adjustments. So, it's very important to clarify that in all our numbers are improving. Today, we don't have any signs whatsoever of deterioration or worsening of our credit indicators or operating credit indicators. It's important to highlight that our credit models are reading data from the market.
So, there are adjustments made preventively, and of course, this will have an impact on the credit approval rate, which of course ends up being lower. It's also important to explain that the level of 24%-25% of sales share is very healthy. We are happy with these numbers, of course, that we expect that in 2026, depending on the macroeconomic conditions, we could get closer to 30%-35%. But for 2025, we see this level as a healthy, appropriate level. And finally, I don't mean to be repetitive because Paulo already talked about this, but the focus of C&A Pay, so our credit product, C&A Pay, is a relationship instrument.
It is an enabler of dialogue and communication, and it allows us to learn more about the behavior of our customers. So, this is how we have been using this tool. This is how we have been taking advantage of our credit product to also evolve in our commercial proposition. So, I think it's important to always stress this. Now, in respect to the operating expenses, Paulo talked about the first year of Energia C&A.
We had a lot of clarity on the first initiatives that we wanted to implement in the first year of the project. So, we worked on the planning, design, the formation of the teams, and we concentrated a great part of the resources, allocation of the resources on quarter 4, and marketing was one example of this movement. A movement that started with design and the hiring of external partners and experts for specific areas in our projects where we needed help. Of course, these investments were concentrated mostly in quarter 4 last year. But this is a one-off situation.
In quarter 4, we also had an increased volume of payments and processing of items in our logistics operation due to the increased sales rhythm and also the preparation for quarter 1 this year. Because we also had a different work of preparing for 2025, because we wanted to be even more ready and have a good assortment, volume, and commercial proposition for quarter 1, 2025. Yes, for quarter 1, 2025. So, to ensure a more robust start of the year so that we could make the most of the sales in quarter 1, 2025, with all the lessons learned in quarter 1 last year, where we had a very good sales performance.
Now, for 2025, our commitment or our ambition is to further improve our operating leverage, even with or despite the strengthening of our structures and the continuity of all these strategic initiatives that will now go into their year two of the Energia C&A strategy. So, this is what we have in mind. We want to maintain the diligence and optimization of our structures with a lot of priority setting and selectiveness in the allocation of our resources and strengthening of the company structure. Seasonality.
Should we expect a seasonality that is slightly different from last year, but your objective is to focus on operating leverage? Yes. quarter 4, 2024 was a one-off situation because it concentrated multiple initiatives from Energia C&A. A lot of initiatives. Now, in year two. Year two is 2025. I believe that this should go back to normal levels in 2025.
Great. Thank you.
Next question is from Danniela Eiger, XP.
Hello. Thank you for answering my question. Congratulations on your results. Congratulations on the consistency. I have three questions, but two of them are follow-up questions. First one is about your growth. Paulo, you talked about the consistent evolution of your sales per square meter. Considering Project Dispersion, I think some of these issues have been addressed or improved, so you have better performance now. How do you see the potential for your sales per square meter? Would it be possible to, of the ones that have already been adjusted, what is the gap compared with the non-adjusted stores?
That we can understand how to think looking forward in your store productivity. The second one is about profitability, focusing on your gross margin. I think you have some tailwinds favoring the expansion of your category mix with beauty now replacing Fashiontronics. Can you please give more color on the evolution for Apparel? We are starting a very challenging year for consumer goods and also for raw materials. So, can you share with us what are the levers or how you're thinking of the evolution of the gross margin for Apparel this year? And finally, thinking of your deep leveraging, you are now at a very comfortable level, particularly if we consider the situation of the country.
But it also creates room for using your cash for investments, both internal or external. So, can you please share with us what you're planning for your capital allocation? We even conducted a proprietary survey to evaluate the potential of opening of new stores in shopping malls and the quality of these shopping malls. And you still had a lot of opportunities in the best-tier shopping malls, according to our survey. So, both for expansion and also distribution of dividends, how are you going to use your cash?
Hello, Dani. Thank you for your questions. First, you talked about our growth. What is the dynamics of the sales per square meter and how far it can go? As I was saying, growth to me is about deserving. We have to deserve the preference and the buying decision of our customers at all times. The more you evolve, the more you grow in this sense, but the decision is up to them, the customers visiting our stores. The evolution of our product proposition, the evolution of the customer experience that we offer, and our ability to better communicate with our consumers are all determining factors in the evolution of this perception.
Energia is a construction of our core competencies so that these dynamics can become stronger and stronger, and their perception can become better and better, their perception of what we are offering at every visit, every time they go to our stores or they visit our website. These are the foundations behind the story. Now, if we do an x-ray of our business, we have a lot of opportunities. We have many opportunities to improve and to evolve with a customer perception of our brand.
When we talk about the sales per square meter gap that we had when we started this discussion in May last year, when we started talking about Energia C&A, that's exactly what we said, that there was a possibility to grow between 35%-40% our sales per square meter in the current portfolio of stores that we had at the time.
We grew 14% this year, so we understand that we are on the right track towards the ambition that we have, but our ambition is even greater because we have opportunity to grow significantly in our sales per square meter in 2025 and 2026. Your second question about the profitability, I think this is about the mix and also Apparel per se, so in your question, you separated this really well because basically we have the mix.
The mix will clearly continue to be a lever for us as we continue to strengthen Apparel and beauty and continue to reduce or demobilize our Fashiontronics category, so we will continue to see this looking forward, and there will be an impact on 2025, a very positive impact indeed.
Now, in respect to the Apparel margin, you also said very well that we have a lot of tailwinds this year, and one of them is the exchange rate. So, the exchange rate has an important role here because part of the imported raw materials will be part of the total purchase volume. The imported items will be directly affected, and some of the domestic products, as the exchange rates consolidate at other levels, many of the raw materials that are manufactured here will also have an impact on the exchange rate, an impact of the exchange rate.
Laurence can give you more details about this, but the FX protection, we have made some movements in this sense, and for the first half, we have a very reasonable level of protection. For the second half, depending on the macroeconomic conditions and the evolution of the market, but we are totally aware that we will face this impact this year. This is the entire market, not just us. We want to maintain our competitive positioning in terms of pricing, and of course, that the cost inflation will start to create some uncertainty. In sum, what we are projecting for the gross margin this year and the numbers we're working with is we are expecting a marginal gain or steady numbers.
We don't want to walk backwards, of course, but I don't think we're going to have great advancements this year. We still have a lot of levers to evolve related with our gross margin, but we need to be aware and recognize that the tailwinds of the macro environment can work against us.
So, that's why we are designing the work that we're going to do this year, expecting a steady level of our margin. And about capital allocation, yes, about the capital allocation, we have cash to invest. We have a program of investments this year superior to what we had in 2024. But part of this program, we are now reaching an agreement with our board that we will evaluate throughout the year whether it is worth accelerating or not. And the macro will have a role here because if the cost of capital increases too much, some projects will not bring the level of return that they should. And I think for some of them, this is even clearer.
Regardless of the macro conditions, some are worth investing in, not just the Energia C&A initiatives where we have very important dimensions, but also investments on our structure and technological foundations and the renovation of our stores. This has an immediate impact. All the improvements in stores that we made last year had a result more than two-digit above the previous average. So, the impact of a renovation is clear. So, we should intensify our renovation program this year. This is what we're planning. But the greatest impact of the decisions that we make this year will be in the appetite for new openings.
Because the level of return of new openings in the short term is more dubious, is more uncertain because of the level of the interest rate. So, we will be very diligent when assessing the possibility of new openings, and we will only make a move if the returns are right. So, we are being more cautious in terms of new openings, and we will reevaluate throughout the year whether we should intensify these actions or not with the same pragmatism that we have always been using to assess any investment that we make.
Excellent. Very clear. Thank you. And congratulations on your results.
I kindly inform that we are over time, so we kindly ask that you limit your questions to one straightforward question. The next question is from Mr. Ruben Couto of Santander.
Good morning, Paulo and Laurence. Just out of curiosity, because all of my questions have been answered, C&A has been consistently gaining share in the past years, and in quarter four and quarter three last year, we know that C&A Pay makes this share gain even more significant with the momentum that C&A Pay had. So, when measuring your shopping carts and in your surveys, from which competitors are you gaining this share? And I think Dani mentioned the Kantar study showing that C&A is advancing. There are some insights there in terms of how and who C&A has been taking this share from.
Good morning, Ruben. Good morning. Thank you for your question. I think the most important is that we are constantly tracking the preference and behavior of our consumers in terms of shopping and how they are evaluating us or NPS. We break this down into details to understand where we are seeing the greatest advancements. So, what I can share with you is that in terms of the evolution of our customer satisfaction, we have products as the number one driver of this increase in satisfaction. And the second is the journey itself, the journey in our stores.
So, these are the two most important elements that have been bringing us the positive feedback and return from our consumers. Now, when we look at the brand surveys, we look at brand preference, we look at consideration, and we are seeing more and more increases in these indicators, clear increases. Now, in terms of how we're comparing with our competitors or who we're taking this share from, I'd rather not go into details.
I think this is our internal information, and we will work on this information or with this information to evolve our strategies, but I don't think this is relevant. I think this is internal information, and it's not. It wouldn't be appropriate to share. Now, another piece of detail that is important to share with you is that we are growing in all our stores and all the different types of stores and the different segmentations in terms of states and regions, but particularly in the purchasing power of our customers.
In our high-concept stores, the stores where we have a public with a higher purchasing power, the growth that we have in our high-concept stores is very clear, is crystal clear. So, we're seeing this in these particular collections. Thank you.
The next question is from Andrew Ruben, Morgan Stanley. Mr. Ruben, you can ask your question.
Hi. Thanks for the question. Most of mine have been answered as well. Maybe just one on the site and app growth. You saw the acceleration this quarter. Curious for any commentary, specifically how the omnichannel and digital strategy evolve, what you'd attribute that acceleration to. Thanks very much.
Andrew, thank you for your question. It's about the factors that we were talking about when we talked about Energia. We are improving the experience of our customers on our website and on our app. We reformulated and made a lot of changes to the site and to the app. We redesigned our management model and the way we were working and presenting the categories to the customers, the way we were stimulating the customers. So, we were able to see a very clear response from our customers in this sense.
The flow, the traffic in our stores is improving. The monthly active user indicator grew significantly, and of course, this is translating into higher traffic, higher recurrence, and better growth results. More than 45%, more than 45% increase versus last year for the site and the app in quarter four. The NPS for omni is increasing, so this means customer satisfaction is improving, which provides us with even better consistency in our results.
This question and answer session is now closed. Now, I'd like to hand the conference to Mr. Correa for his final remarks.
First of all, I'd like to thank you all for attending our call. We are very proud of the first year of our Energia C&A strategy. These results are a direct consequence of this very disciplined and confident transformation with a lot of execution and delivery of results.
Most importantly, we're focusing on our customers. This has been a historical year for C&A, and I must thank and recognize the entire C&A team because this result is yours. We will continue with our purpose of positively impacting people so that they can be what they wish to be through fashion. I'd like to send you my heart and thank you all for your support. I hope we have a great year, and we will find you at C&A. For unanswered questions, you can contact the IR team of C&A. This conference call is now over. Thank you all for participating, and have a great afternoon.