Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CVC Corp's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2024. The presentation will be led by the company's CEO, Fábio Godinho, and CFO, Felipe Gomes, who will be available at the end to answer your questions. I'd like to point out that the simultaneous interpretation tool is available on the platform. To access it, simply click on the interpretation button at the bottom of the screen and choose your preferred language. This conference is being recorded and will be available on the company's IR website, as well as the presentation shared today. We'd like to inform you that all participants will only be listening to the conference during the company's presentation. After that, we will open for questions when further instructions will be provided.
Before proceeding, we'd like to take this opportunity to emphasize that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the CVC Corp's management and current information available to the company. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties, given that they relate to future events. Therefore, they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors, analysts, and journalists should bear in mind that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the industry, and other factors can cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. We will begin the presentation by handing the floor over to Mr. Fábio Godinho. Please, Mr. Godinho, go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CVC Corp's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2024. I'm Fábio Godinho, the company's CEO.
I'd like to start this call by expressing my deepest sympathy to all families affected by the floods, the great tragedy that happened in Rio Grande do Sul, and also to our 56 franchisees who heroically run the 84 stores we have in that state, and obviously to all passengers who have been affected some way by those floodings. At the peak of this event we had, in terms of passengers impacted at destination, 1,157 people, and all of them were contacted individually by our CCO team, which is our operations control center, and this is the only tourism company that has all the support in place. Right now, there are 63 passengers still in the destination but who have decided to stay in Gramado as a resort where they have been relocated and will return over the weekend.
So that's CVC, living up to its purpose, which is what has led this company to be a leader in Brazil, a leader in Argentina in tourism, and that is just one thing, to provide assistance to our passengers. We have been doing that with utmost excellence for 52 years. We're celebrating our anniversary now in May, and we will keep on doing that for another 52 years. This is why we exist. This is our purpose, to assist our passengers. This weekend, CVC organized, together with Jamef, one of Brazil's largest ground transportation companies, and also with Brazil's three major airlines, LATAM, GOL, and Azul, a solidarity campaign to help families in Rio Grande do Sul. All the CVC stores in Brazil will be points to collect clothes and bedding to be sent to Rio Grande do Sul.
We have, until the 19th of this month, all stores, with no exception, in all states, stores in the capital cities, in the countryside, in shopping malls, out on the street, all of our points of sales are available to receive this type of donation that will be sent to Porto Alegre to meet the needs of the families in that state who have been impacted. So we send our solidarity to all those families on behalf of the companies of CVC Corp. This solidarity action has, to date, collected 5.5 tons of clothes, towels, and bedding for the families affected in the southern part of Brazil. We expect to collect approximately 10 times more of that quantity, so we should collect around 50 tons of clothes, towels, and bedding to help those who have been impacted. So an action the size of CVC.
Moving on to our results, it's important to point out that for this quarter, our focus was mostly on maintaining, just as in the two previous quarters, this is the third quarter of our management, focusing on profitability and on the company's cash management. So let's focus on top-line and gross bookings for two reasons. First, because the B2C growth base in the first quarter of the previous year had grown by almost 50%, but with low margins, low EBITDA, and high cash burn. We worked on this to preserve profitability and cash management at an already very high level of bookings from the previous year, and in the B2B unit.
This was virtually the last quarter in which we'll have the biggest difference from the loss of sale to mileage program members, which accounted for almost BRL 40 million in revenue per month within B2B, which was very relevant. So we have these negative impacts. So let's move on to the highlights. What really matters is the net revenue that comes from CVC's take rate, which is what really pays our expenses and generates EBITDA. So for Brazil, we saw an increase of 16.3% in net revenue year-over-year, very much due to this 28% increase in the take rate margin, which for the third consecutive quarter is already stable at this historical level. And as we have always mentioned, which would remain in this range, which should not be a rise to 9.6 as it happened in the third quarter of 2023 and then fell.
Now maintaining itself, it was 9.4, now it's 9.5, always in this range, just as we have been communicating to the market for some quarters. Store openings, we opened 36 stores in the first quarter of 2024, and it's important to say that this is aligned with our store opening target for the year. If you divide our target by four, we will have fewer stores in the first quarter because there is an acceleration quarter- by -quarter, and that's why 36 is already part of our plan. You will see a greater acceleration with regards to store openings from the second quarter onwards, which is what is already underway. Out of this total number of 36 store openings, only 13 stores are in the capital cities and 23 in the countryside.
As you know, one of the focuses of our strategy is to increase our presence in the cities in the interior together with the digital strategy, and this is already starting in the first quarter of this year. It's also important to note that, unlike the last two quarters of last year when we closed loss-making stores, franchisees were in financial difficulties, we closed all those stores. From now on, the expectation is that we will see a normalized pace of store closures. We opened 36 and closed six stores, which is aligned with CVC's historical average in the pre-pandemic period, very different from what we have been closing in recent quarters because we were really moving towards closing the store base and starting 2024 with a clean slate, and that's what happened.
We're back to a normal level, and the issue of store closures has also been normalized. Third point, EBITDA in the range of BRL 80 million-BRL 90 million in a row, as in the third quarter, as in the fourth quarter of last year, and now in the first quarter of this year. BRL 86 million just the EBITDA, an increase of almost BRL 60 million Brazilian reals compared to the first quarter of 2023. And a lot of that coming from Brazil because the EBITDA for the first quarter of 2023 was all achieved in Argentina, while 80% of the EBITDA for the first quarter of 2024 was produced in Brazil. The two companies had a positive EBITDA, but 80% of this result came from Brazil, which had a negative EBITDA in the first quarter of 2023, and as we understand that, this becomes very relevant.
Another important point, and just as mentioned at our last call and in other meetings with investors, starting this year, EBITDA trends should be better. Results have to be more normalized without known recurring adjustment. You can see that now we have practically minimal adjustments. At the end of last year, in the third and fourth quarter, as we were working around the base of stories that we're going to close and the company balance sheets, there were a lot of known recurring adjustments, but that was due to the first two semesters of our new management. So there were a lot of operational adjustments and adjustments within the balance sheet, and just as we can see in this first quarter, it's a recurrence of more normalized results and without relevant known recurring adjustments.
More than 27% of the adjusted EBITDA margin, in other words, almost half of the increase versus year-over-year, we continue to maintain this pace of reduction of 20%, a bit more than 20% within G&A expenses year-over-year, maintaining the level as it had already happened in the third and fourth quarter of 2023 and now first quarter of 2024. Third consecutive quarter of cash profit. So before the third quarter of last year, that had been negative for 14 consecutive quarters, and now we are closing with almost BRL 440 million final cash balance, a very robust figure to end this quarter. It's also important to highlight all the efforts made by the industry and also by CVC Corp to finally succeed in having the PERSE program, which is the emergency program for the recovery of the event sector, approved.
We advocated for that program as it helps to maintain the tourism event segment. It also helps to maintain jobs in this industry, and that's very important for CVC, and it has been a great victory for us in recent weeks. Now let's talk a little bit about the four main points of the quarter, and without going on too long, a little bit about the team changes we had, a little bit about our sales convention, which took place in Gramado in March of this year, many news, an update on the strategy that we always talk about, and the operating financial results that Felipe Gomes will present in detail later.
As far as the team is concerned, it's business as usual, except for Felipe's move, as you all already know, he had been a board member of the company since the middle of last year when we joined the company, and he was a board member for the whole of the second half of the year. He's already well known to the family, and he's also been known to me for many years. He was CFO of BHG, which was one of the first tourism agencies to companies, rather, to be listed on the Bovespa, which later went private, was owned by GP, and was a major reference in the corporate hotel sector and also leisure in Brazil.
So Felipe was the CFO of BHG, both the public and the private GP, and we also have Karin Rocha moving up to this level of the executive committee as Director of Corporate Governance and Compliance. It's also important to give you an update on our sales convention, franchisee convention, that aimed at rescuing CVC's original DNA, so this love that all franchisees have for the company, that all the stakeholders, in general, have for the company, and we did this very successfully. It was a very emotional convention in Gramado in March of this year. It was the biggest convention CVC has ever held with almost 2,000 participants and 85 sponsors. It was the first convention 100% funded by third parties, and CVC ended up not spending any money on this convention.
Most importantly, it was to see this demonstration of trust by our franchisee base, by our base of store managers, leaders within the stores. In 36 hours of convention, we had 328 documents, contracts of intent to open a store signed. This demonstrates the level of confidence that our franchisee base and store leaders have in what has been done by this new management. It also shows all the recognition and closeness that it brings us with the resort hotels, hotels, the meet-and-greet companies, airlines, destinations, and everything else. It was a convention that rekindled all of CVC's historic ties with all commercial partners. Talking a bit about strategy, we are now posting some updates on non-flight products and flight products. As you all know, we plan to always present exclusive products, both on flight products but also on non-flight products, products that you'll only find at CVC.
An entire product line that we launched in the first quarter of this year is CVC Me Leva or take me. CVC Me Leva are a group of non-flight packages, some of which already include the road itinerary, others that are just transferred hotels plus tours to various destinations in Brazil, which you can combine with any flight package. So you do not depend on the flight package, "Oh, I have a flight I want to issue with my mileage," or "that I want," or "that I want to buy directly on the airline website." You can tie that with any of the CVC Me Leva.
So there are 80 itineraries prepared by our ambassadors, and they work together with our master franchisees who have in-depth knowledge of regionality of Brazil, and CVC has unparalleled knowledge of each region of Brazil, each demand, origin, destination, and we capitalize on this in all these new products within CVC Me Leva. CVC Me Leva. These products have a very favorable working capital for the company. They are non-flight packages, so the take rate is very interesting for us, and they are exclusive products. All of this has been already launched in the system.
All of this is already for sale from packages as non-flight packages, and I can give you examples, packages to Rock in Rio, to the city of Nazaré, to Formula One, packages for the northern part of the country, southern part of the country, itineraries, exclusive non-flight packages at CVC, ready package for our clients and our franchisees to sell with one click on Atlas. Second, we are now starting to separate our hotel partners. So we've been developing clusters of partners. We want to concentrate volume, and as we've always said, CVC is a company guided by volume concentration and fewer partners. So from now on, we are calling them preferred partners, and these preferred partners guarantee price competitiveness for CVC, guaranteed availability, quality certified by the ambassadors at destinations, and presence in all the exclusive flight products. So this has already been launched.
So within this base of selling hotels only, we already have this distinction between who is a preferred hotel, who is a preferred partner, and who is not, and that represents a series of benefits for the franchisee and also for our partners, and of course, also for CVC Corp. So there are some proprietary CVC news that we are already launching in the first quarter regarding non-flight packages. With regards to flight products, always a topic of general interest and mine in particular because this is something that I manage in depth and not just me but members, the family, Gustavo Paulus is directly involved every day talking to CEOs of airline companies, even more so now with this issue in the south of Brazil with this coordinated action of solidarity together with all airline companies, but this issue is a priority within CVC.
National market, we have already increased the number of seats contracted by more than 50% for the future until the middle of next year. We're talking about block and charter growth year on year, more than 40 origins in Brazil, including charter and block. We're now increasing the share of block charter versus charter. We used to have a much higher share of charter than block charter within the exclusive product area, and over time, this is changing. In the future, we want a much greater share of block charters than charters, but there will still we'll still see charters, but the block charters will account for more than 50% in the future.
Today, there are more than 100,000 seats available first in the system as part of exclusive products, and we have exclusive product contracts with the four airlines operating in Brazil and seats available until June 2025. Just as our franchisee from Rio says, there's no better promotion than working in advance. So in order to sell risk, you need to have time in advance, a risk with profitability, so you don't have to burn take rates on empty seats at short notice. So we are doing more and more we're working more and more open seats in advance. International, we're going back to this series of blocks, but for certain destinations, the most important destinations, we're talking about Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and destinations in the Caribbean and a little bit in Florida. It's worth for such destinations to have a block. So we are increasing this number.
We are experiencing the biggest season in Argentina in CVC's histories with both blocks and charters, greatly increasing the number of destinations, greatly increasing the number of origins with direct contracts with 12 airline companies and others under negotiation. So we've seen this in depth. Let me talk a little bit about our growth strategy. I've already mentioned that in the highlights. Here is a photo of the standard store and the light store with this new CapEx with reduced CapEx. We're talking about less than half of the most inexpensive store that was available to our franchisee network a year ago. So we cut CapEx by more than 50%, keeping the same look, just changing a few finishing details, and diversifying the supplier base, not just one supplier in São Paulo, but actually decentralizing the supplier portfolio.
This brutally reduced the cost of the store projects, and in net, we grew by 30 stores from one quarter to the next. The number of stores is within our budget. We achieved our store opening target for the first quarter, so it's aligned, as well as the number of closures. So this is the number we expected within our annual plan. And we are also launching these new models, which will not only produce results this year, but we also have growth impact in 2025, 2026, and 2027 because the models have a much lower CapEx and the unique capital structure. This modular store, for example, you can rent. So if the franchisee has zero CapEx, will pay between BRL 2,500-BRL 3,000 per month, and will start operating the store with zero CapEx.
It can be a loan-for-use model or a rental model and can be placed anywhere on a plot of land, parking lot, or even inside a wholesale store such as Assaí. This last picture, we open our first modular store inside Assaí. We have dozens of stores ready to be open, and we are checking that not only with Assaí but also with other wholesale and retail chains and drug stores in Brazil. And we should announce a series of expansion contracts with major players over the course of this year. So these different models and also the new traditional models in growing the number of stores. And as for our business, this is what I had to share with you for this first quarter.
There's a lot more to come for the second quarter onwards, but it was a very important quarter focused on profitability, cash management, maintaining the take rate in the 9.5% range, the growth in Brazil's net revenue, a big increase in Brazil's EBITDA, some decrease in Argentina's EBITDA as expected due to that country scenario, but still with a positive EBITDA. We should have positive EBITDA going forward, but already in this quarter, we see that, and a very large important increase in EBITDA from Brazil with a total CVC Corp margin of 27%. Now I'd like to turn it over to Felipe Gomes, our new CFO, who you have already met. He will address the company's financial and operating results, and we will come back for the Q&A session.
Well, thank you, Godinho.
Thank you for your kind words, and first of all, thank you for the opportunity to be part of the CVC team. I'm very satisfied, very happy. So let me share first quarter results. It's a great pleasure to be here to present to the company's numbers, the financial operating numbers, especially in the quarter when we saw strong improvement in the company's take rate, continuation of the reduction in expenses, and improvement in profitability. Some of the highlights that Godinho has already presented. But let's go a little bit in depth. Slide 12, here we have some graphs showing net revenue, take rate, and per unit.
First graph on the left, we can see the strong increase in the take rate from 7.4% in the first quarter of 2023 to 9.5% in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 2.1 percentage points and BRL 21.9 million in net revenue, coming from BRL 295.5 million- BRL 317.4 million in the first quarter of 2024 in the consolidated terms, which reinforces our focus on the profitability of the business. When we examine business units, we see strong growth in B2C, going from 11.4% take rate to 13% take rate, and an increase of BRL 27.8 million in net revenue or 19.1% in B2C, which reflects the management of exclusive products pricing, our focus on profitability, and improvements in conditions and negotiations with strategic partners, as Godinho just mentioned.
Besides that, in B2B, we also see a strong increase in take rate from 4.8% - 6.5%, an increase in net revenue of BRL 8.3 million, reaching BRL 84 million in net revenue in the first quarter of 2024 in B2B, also an increase of 11%, a very significant increase, reflecting changes in our strategic positioning in which we have been better balancing the volume and profitability of commercial agreements with travel agencies. This had a very big impact on the company very quickly. In the fourth graph of slide 14, we talk about Argentina. So first quarter of 2024 vis-à-vis 2023, Argentina showed a significant drop in bookings, which reflected not a drop in net revenue, but as much a smaller drop than in bookings since the take rate had an increase in the first quarter going 2023 from 6.5% - 8.6% in 2024.
As we described in the release, this drop in bookings is mainly due to an anticipation of consumption, which had a very strong fourth quarter in Argentina, and also due to a tax issue that was no longer charged as part of the booking value, but at the end of the day, had no real impact on the business. Next slide, we highlight consolidated financial performance. So on the graph on the top left, the variation in general and administrative expenses and also percentage of net revenue. We see a very significant drop of 20.6% in the company's G&A from BRL 216.6 million -BRL 171.9 million or BRL 44.7 million less in G&A. As a result, the percentage of net revenue from 73% - 54%, a significant and continuous drop vis-à-vis last few quarters, as mentioned earlier.
On the right-hand side, we have a variation in cash net profit and net income, which is positive in the third consecutive quarter. If we compare it to the first quarter of 2023, we have a very large variation going from -BRL 99.3 million to an actual profit of BRL 7.3 million. In the graphs on the bottom, we see a comparison of adjusted EBITDA. And as Godinho said at the very beginning, the adjusted EBITDA for this quarter is already much better than the previous quarters. The company made a great effort to improve this result in the last quarters of last year, and our expectation now is to continue along these lines and to have few adjustments from now on. Adjustments this month are only around BRL 3.2 million.
So the company reached BRL 86.2 million of EBITDA in the first quarter of 2024 against BRL 27.3 million in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 216% or plus 59 Brazilian reals more in EBITDA with a margin of 27.2%. When we break this number down between Brazil and Argentina, Brazil's EBITDA in Q1 2023 was negative by approximately 500,000 BRL, and now Q1 2024, we have reached BRL 67.3 million of EBITDA in Brazil. And in the last table on the right, we have Argentina. In the first quarter of last year, Argentina had an EBITDA of BRL 27.7 million. In this first quarter of 2024, EBITDA of BRL 18.9 million, a drop of BRL 8.8 million or 32%, which is aligned with the explanations given about Argentina. Now moving on to the capital structure slide, slide 14.
On the right-hand side, you can see we have reduced CVC Corp's net debt by two main reasons. One is the reprofiling of the debentures as approved at the debentures holders general meeting that took place on April 6, 2023, with the consequent amortization of BRL 124 million and improvement of approximately 80% in CVC's operating cash flow based mainly on our operating efficiency. When we check the table on the left, we end the final cash position for the first quarter of 2024 at BRL 440.2 million compared to the first quarter of 2023 of BRL 426.2 million or BRL 13.9 million more in the company's cash position at the end of this quarter.
We also saw significant improvements in operating cash consumption of approximately BRL 217.4 million, mainly due to the improvement of BRL 98.7 million as a result of the increase in net revenue and reduction in expenses, just as mentioned before in previous sections, and an improvement of BRL 136.8 million, mainly due to the improvement in working capital dynamics in Brazil, reflecting the increase in the share of exclusive products and sales in advance. Finally, we have a table on the bottom right, which is the debenture amortization schedule. Today, we have cash of BRL 440 million and the payment flow for the next few years. We can see that there is a much greater concentration on the long term than on the short term. I'll end my presentation here, and as mentioned by Godinho, we are available for your questions. Thank you.
We will now open for the Q&A session. If you have a question, please click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen, and please send us your questions. Our first question comes from Victor Rogatis with Itaú BBA. We will open your microphone so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for checking my question. I understand that the booking the first quarter had an impact on the challenging comparison to B2C and also non-comparable basis at B2B given the stopping selling to mileage owners. So considering the consolidated view and also Argentina, so second question, you see an improvement in your working capital and a significant decrease in G&A expenses. So what we see in this first quarter of 2024, can we expect to have the same level and same approach?
Good morning, Victor. This is Godinho.
Thank you for your question. Thank you for joining us this morning. Let's talk about top line, so growth or decrease of gross bookings. So when we went over the first quarter, as you all know, the three business units are different: B2B, B2C, and also our companies in Argentina. When we go over B2C in the first quarter, 1.7% of growth considering confirmed bookings. But once we go over a piece of information that is not in the release about the B2C, an important piece of information is that we increased 6.5% in the number of passengers because we had a decrease in the average ticket. So despite this flat number in domestic business, we saw an increase in international business, although that's not really significant considering the overall business.
The number of passengers to whom we sold year-over-year, considering the first quarter, presented an increase of 6.5%. So we believe that we will see an increase in this number this year. So we believe we will keep this number of passengers or perhaps a bit more and so also see a top line growth, but without really increasing the average ticket considering the packages and also the airline companies in 2024. We believe that we have already achieved an inflection point at the end of last year. So we should see stability or even a small drop, which is what has happened in the first quarter. With regards to B2B, we have already mentioned at this call we suffered the impact just as in the third and fourth quarter of last year because of the mileage program members.
So what is going to take place in the second quarter? Only half of this quarter will suffer the impact of that. We believe that we will see some stability of sales in the second and then third and fourth quarter. We expect more growth. We are examining here the numbers for April, and we see that both in B2C, we see an increase of sales vis-à-vis the first quarter and as well as in the B2B. When we exclude the impact of mileage program members, we have 90% of our B2B RA and Trend 15B, and the other one is BRL 1 billion, so RA without counting the impact of mileage program owners. We hope to see a second-digit growth, double-digit growth, so positive impact this year. In Argentina, there was a drop of 50% regarding confirmed bookings.
But we have the impact of FX and also taxes. At the end of the day, you can see that the take rate was approximately -20% and the net revenue. So that is the impact. So in Argentina, when you go over passengers, you see less than 50% to -10%. So there was a drop in number of passengers by 10%. And that has been gradually well, second quarter, we won't see a strong recovery, but what we think Argentina is that we are increasing our market share. So obviously, there was a drop in the entire industry because of the economic scenario and everything that's going on so that they can also tame inflation. So there was this general drop in the first quarter, -10% of passengers sold.
I believe that in the second quarter, we will see significant improvement because we saw that drop for the entire industry. But just to talk to you about increase in the market share, these are official numbers coming from IATA members and also issuing of international airline tickets, which is where we have really many business. We have a bit less than 15% market share, and our major competitor has approximately 4% according to the current numbers coming from BSP. So we need also to consider that sales take place in US dollars, but we are increasing our market share in Argentina. So out of the bad news in Argentina and what is going on in the country, but the increased market share is really positive news.
So we expect to see recovery in this third quarter and most strongly in the fourth quarter, so to really see relevant growth with regards to number of passengers. But despite the gloomy scenario, we don't expect to see a negative EBITDA in the second quarter for Argentina, but we expect to see recovery in the third and fourth quarters. Felipe, would you like to add anything?
Hello, Victor. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your question. And going over your two questions about working capital and receivables, yes, we believe to see an improvement from now on. So numbers for this first quarter already present an improvement vis-à-vis 2023 year-over-year. So when we talk about anticipation of receivables, credit cards, which is a model that is broadly used by the companies, especially regarding the rate that we get before.
So year over year, we see BRL 200 million. So this is the BRL 1 billion of balance, now closer to BRL 800 million. And our expectation is to see an improvement with regard to that number, particularly for the future. You know that the first quarter has always, always suffered the impact of working capital because of bookings consumed. So for the first quarters, we expect to see an improvement, also decrease in the need of working capital with sales that will come and also, sorry, the receivables. And I believe we had a very good quarter compared to the first quarter of 2023 in which we needed BRL 200 million less of working capital. We had our exclusive product, also the mix of products, also the payment terms, and fixed the PIX transaction mode in Brazil has also helped.
That has been very positive to the company and will be in the future. So we expect to see this improving.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Victor, for your question.
Our next question comes from Vitor Fuziharo with Santander. Mr. Fuziharo, we will open your microphone so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Godinho and Felipe. Thank you for taking my question. First, about the take rate. First of all, congratulations for showing us improvements on the metrics. But I believe there is also a mixed effect that is also helping. But what about future gains? And my second question is, can you give us an update regarding credit marketplace?
Hello, Vitor. Thank you for your question.
With regards to take rate, just as we have been discussing from the very beginning, this is the third quarter in which we see a take rate around 9.5. It was 9.6, 9.4, and 9.5. And across the board, we saw an increase in take rate year-over-year in all business units and also strongly in Argentina. That comes from pricing, price adjustments, pricing, and our contracts with our major suppliers. So today, we are working very closely with our suppliers. So I'd say that I don't see much room to talk about increased take rate, perhaps the margin. But for sure, we want to truly increase in our price competitiveness, increase top line, and increase market share. There is an internal initiative that will start to bear fruits in the second half of the year and in future years.
As you know, there are many transformational projects that actually modernize our business model, but they will not produce significant results this year, mostly after 2025, which is our new performance room. So the approach is completely different: management systems, IT, and also the level of decision for price adjustments and also competitiveness strategy regarding price or margin. So that was done once a week, but now this will be done in real time 20 times a day. So we have a room together with new processes, new systems connected, and that will allow us to be very agile and also to carry out in-depth management comparable to what happens at airline companies. We did that when we worked in the airline industry and the hotel industry. And this is why it works so well. We see a tremendous opportunity for catching up with the reality.
You cannot just adjust prices once a week. Airline companies, they do that 20 times a day. So this project will go live on July 1st, 2024. But the goal is to improve our competitiveness considering that we have achieved a good take rate rather than increasing margins.
Hello, Victor. Felipe here. So let me talk to you about credit marketplace. Just to clarify, this is a very relevant issue and a very broad issue that is handled by the company within means of payment. So the credit marketplace is one of the issues. And the company has evolved a great deal, so working on payment terms. So we have credit card, PicPay, Mercado Pago. Also, they can use their compensation or also PIX, also direct funding with Banco do Brasil and many other options. And we also have our own credit marketplace.
So today, we have Plugged In CVC, in which CVC is the funding agency for the customer, and two other organizations. We are working and talking to some others, and we expect to evolve on that. But more than the marketplace itself, I think that the idea is to increase means of payment. And right now, we are really working hard on that. At the end of the day, there are many initiatives, but obviously, PIX and credit cards account for most of the business and even our credit marketplace, but CVC being the funding, financing agency. So we are evolving. We are looking for new partners. I have talked to many banks over the last couple of weeks, but internally, it's also important that we have all new main payments increasing. Yes, this is part of our BSC sales, our strategy, and also support to sales such as finance.
So to increase our penetration using other means of funding and stop disputing that with the credit card cap. So today, when we talk about financing, for example, holiday packages, that is just as important as our agreements with hotels or non-flight packages and also flight packages. It's part of our main strategies, Victor.
Thank you very much for your answers.
Thank you, Vitor, for your question.
Our next question comes from João Soares from Citibank. We will open your microphone so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Fábio, can we please discuss more broadly the B2C business? Question is, can the company expedite this growth, or are there any restrictions considering working capital?
We know that it would require a high level of working capital because we see relevant growth in Brazil, also in Brazil of some competitors that operate in the Brazilian market. And the CVC brand is a very strong brand. We know that you have the capacity and the ability to maintain leaders in the industry. So can you make any adjustments in your working capital or to increase exclusive packages that require less working capital? So how do you improve B2C considering your current working capital? Second, Felipe, congratulations for this new position. I'd like to talk about expenses. So how can you improve efficiency? So low-hanging fruits regarding efficiency in expenses.
Well, João, thank you very much for your question. With regards to B2C growth, right now, we are examining, and this is what we did in the first quarter of 2024.
Even now, we are almost in the second half of the second quarter, right? We are making adjustments in some commercial conditions so that we can work with a more favorable working capital. For example, discount if PIX is used for payment. As we add more exclusive products, we see this improvement. One of the comments we made, we mentioned that we had an increase of more than 50% in flight programs and at a very competitive price. We will see this general growth. What we wanted in this quarter is to reach the same level of sales as in 2023. There was a 47% increase, which is not realistic considering the market. We had to burn cash and negative profitability, as you saw. That's what happened last year. Negative profitability, and we burned 250 million BRL in cash.
So we cannot do the same thing again. So what we did, even at this high level of sales, we still have very strong factors. For example, it's increased by 50% from one year to another, but with a very good take rate, very positive EBITDA, 27% margin. Obviously, it's far from what we want to achieve. We want to catch up the average that we had. But this is good considering retailers in Brazil, so also with less cash consumption, 5-6 times less compared to the first quarter of 2023. And as for growth, we will see growth. Obviously, we have more exclusive products, more improved agreements with airline companies, not to mention opening of new stores because right now, we see this expansion of stores already with closing stores. So we opened 36 stores in this quarter.
For the second quarter, we expect to at least double that number. Also, with regard to stores closed, it's really adequate to CVC history. 6-7 stores close every quarter. That's what we expect from now on. This will also improve our sales in the B2C, both in the second quarter and the second half of the year. Historically, in the tourism industry, 40% of the net revenue EBITDA is achieved in the first half of the year.
Hello, João. This is Felipe. Thank you very much for your question. With regard to expenses, of course, that is very important to me since I joined in this position. The company underwent reorganizations, and you can see that expenses are going down. But right now, I'd say that we are now fine-tuning. It's a fine adjustment with regard to expenses. Of course, there's more we can do.
So there are many ongoing activities and some that will be implemented now after I took over as CFO, but not as big activities or actions just as we saw in the past two quarters. But for example, as for expenses, we are ready to increase our revenue without having to increase expenses. So most of this percentage improvement, when you see expenses against net revenue, that will improve with the number of stores open and everything else of our strategy that Godinho has already discussed. So we expect to see a drop till the end of 2024, so 40-something. So we will see increase in revenue without having to increase expenses.
Thank you very much. So if I may, just one more thing I'd like to hear from you. It's about anticipation. Obviously, whatever you have to pay in advance for a supplier.
So what can you talk to us about that? So what are you talking about?
Receivables. Yes, sorry, he says. Well, the company really checks that in advance, but just the necessary. So we are working with margins already considering how much we need in advance in order to run the business. The good news is that the current negotiations and the future negotiations with our suppliers, so to speak, of these products, they are being better, better rates. And also, considering our growth plan, sustainability, we do not need to really anticipate our receivables. So this is really best funding of our business. I don't know if that was your question.
Yes, yes. Thank you very much.
Thank you, João, for your question.
Our next question comes from Wellington Carvalho, Bank of America. We will open your microphone so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Hello.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. First, about the cost of debt. How can you reduce the cost of debt? We know that some of the rates really do not reflect the current situation of the company. And also, what about expansion to the inner part of the country where you would see less competition? So what can you tell us about that? Thank you very much.
Hello, Wellington. Okay. Let me talk about cost of debt. That is extremely relevant for the company, particularly for me. And as you know, today, the company has just one debt because it's actually not really a debt but sales. But when you go over the countries, then yes, the rate is high.
What we are doing is that considering the changes in the company, considering these very three robust results over the last three last quarters, we are talking to the stakeholders, actually to the debenture holders, and we are discussing together what can be done in the short and mid-term because that debt or the rate of that debt does not make sense today considering the current reality that the company is experiencing after these three quarters. Obviously, we need to discuss the rating. Of course, we saw a drop in the company's rating. Should the company's rating be B+? We have been talking to rating agencies. We understand that that should be improved considering all the changes. There are some other dialogues that are taking place, and everybody has been very open in also understanding our new reality.
Also, considering the short and mid-term, we expect to see improvement of our rating. So we expect to see that improving. So we are talking to debenture holders, actually, three things: robust results and the company's rating. And I'll have Godinho answer you about the expansion to the inner part of Brazil.
Excellent question, Wellington. This is part of one of our five pillars regarding our strategies just I mentioned before. First, to rescue the brand DNA, then exclusive products, also other options of funding. So the credit marketplace, we are the only ones offering that. So now, the buyer can also then get money that they had saved for their retirement and use it. So we have these strong pillars, and we want to create a blue ocean so that we can really have our own process regardless of competition.
Stores in the inner part of Brazil is part of that. Out of the 36 stores opened in the first quarter, 13 in capital cities and 23 in the inner part of Brazil. We expect to see next year's 65% of our stores outside capital cities. When you think about major capital cities, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, well, not every single capital city behaves the same way as São Paulo. Goiânia, Cuiabá, the behavior is very different compared to our customers in São Paulo, the capital city of São Paulo. Some capital cities, they behave just as a city in the inner part of Brazil. Sales depends on the relationship. It depends on the CVCs in the trust, not the trust in our franchisees. Just to remember, our franchisees, they live in that region.
They are present at the stores. The customers know the franchisees, and they have a very good knowledge about that specific community. That's why they need some other funding options. All these pillars are very important for CVC, especially when you talk about going to the inner part of Brazil. Let me go back to phygital. Phygital allows us to carry out this strategy with relevant growth because before phygital, before the pandemic, we were present in 500 municipalities, so less than 10% of Brazilian municipalities because we depended on having walk-in customers who would have to go to the store. If you had a store inside the mall or on the street in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, but now that we can work using the phygital approach, then 40% of leads at stores are not walk-ins but are being accessed online.
With that, we also see an increase in the number of municipalities where we can have our stores. We can be present in cities with even 15,000 inhabitants because the CapEx of that store now is very low, more than 50% decrease, and also OpEx. One of the stores that we opened, and there are many, many other examples, but in Carlópolis in Paraná, November 23rd of last year, the cost of rent is BRL 800. The break-even with even less of revenue because the cost for having that is much lower. That's why when you think about payback, you can have the similar level because CapEx is lower and OpEx is also lower.
So we are ready to execute this approach, and we are doing that very successfully, not only having the traditional stores, what we call a light store, so in which you can also serve customers, walk-ins, and those accessing the store online, as well as new points of sales such as that modular store that we have just opened in March 2024 inside the wholesale store, Assaí. And it's important to say that the capital structure for the franchisee is very different. So our growth depends on having store managers opening new franchising stores. But sometimes they have a capital constraint. So when you open such a modular store, and you can do that not on loan, but also you can rent, so BRL 3,000, and you are already operating the store without having to invest on your CapEx. And that is certainly very positive.
So we are very, very happy with that, not only the new models of point of sales but also expansion to small and mid-size cities in the inner part of Brazil.
Thank you.
Thank you, Wellington, for your question.
Well, with that, we close our Q&A session. Now, I'd like to turn it over to the executive team for their final remarks.
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. We certainly had a record number of participants, and I believe that little by little, we will see that number increasing considering our new strategy, this back-to-the-basic movement, and delivering positive results. So thank you very much, and see you next quarter. Thank you very much.
With that, we close CVC's corporate earnings call. We thank you all, and have a great day. Bye.