Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your patience. Welcome to the video conference for the release of the 4th quarter 2023 and 2024 results of Grendene S.A. I want to remind you, those who require simultaneous translation, that we offer this function on the platform. To access, simply click on the Interpretation button through the globe icon at the bottom of the screen and choose your preferred language, either Portuguese or English. Anyone watching the video conference in English, you can mute the original audio in Portuguese by pressing the Mute Original Audio button. The video conference is being filmed and will be made available on the company's RI website, ri.grendene.com.br, where you can also find our press release for the 4th quarter of 2023. You can download the presentation from the chat icon, which is also available in English.
During the company's presentation, all participants will have their microphones turned off. After that, we are going to start the Q&A session. To ask a question, go to the bottom of your screen and click at the Q&A icon, then input your question. When your name is announced, a prompt to activate your microphone appears on the screen, and you must then activate your microphone to ask questions. We recommend that you ask all the questions at once. We emphasize that the information in this presentation, as well as any statements made during the video conference concerning the business prospects, projections, and operating and financial targets of Grendene S.A., are based on the company's management's beliefs and assumptions, as well as information currently available.
Future considerations are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and because they refer to the future events, and therefore they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should be aware that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors may affect the future performance of Grendene S.A., and may result in substantially different results than that stated in such forward-looking statements. Today we have the following company executives with us: Rudimar Dall'Onder, Chief Executive Officer; Gelson Luis Rostirolla, Chief Operating Officer; and Alceu Demartini de Albuquerque, CFO and Investor Relations Officer. As well as all the company's key managers. I will now give the floor to Mr. Alceu Demartini de Albuquerque. Please, Mr. Alceu, you can go ahead. Good morning.
Thank you, everyone, for your presence in our video conference to spread the results of the 4th quarter of 2023 and the year 2023.
We start talking about how our quarter was. The 4th quarter was a quarter, a challenging one, just like the previous quarters. Conditions, macroeconomic ones, with the high interest rates and high debt, restrictive conditions of credit, they continued causing an impact negatively on the consumer of the families. But even though we have this very challenging scenario, we have registered a very positive quarter. A quarter where our net revenue was stable. The volume presented a slight fall. But on the other hand, we presented a strong growth of our recurring EBIT and recurring net profits, and a strong recovery of our margins. This performance, this positive performance, was guided by the internal market that grew in the quarter. I'm going to talk about it later. It grew both in revenue and volume.
But within the internal market, domestic market, talking about the Division One brands, that are all the brands except Melissa, they presented a 6.2% growth in gross revenue, 2.1% in volume, while the gross revenue per pair grew 4.3% related to an increasing revenue bigger than in volume. The revenue coming from online sales from the brands of Division One, they grew 42%, while the participation of the online shares on total sales of Division One in Brazil, they grew 0.6% in the quarter. And how was the performance of Division One? The brands, the segments that have determined this growth were the female one, the male one, and kids segments. Within the female lines, we observed an expansion of the three brands: Grendha, Zaxy, and Azaleia. And it's a growth that we have observed since the beginning of the year in the lines of the female lines.
When we look at the male segments, we observed a growth in the three brands also: Rider, Cartago, and Mormaii. This growth is a result of an adaptation of our product portfolio for more accessible products. We also observed a growth in the kids line that started to have good sales and reposition volume after the Children's Day. Ipanema, on the other hand, presented an inferior result through the 4th quarter of 2022, caused by the comparison basis with the when Ipanema had a strong performance in quarter 2022, and it was a little bit inferior than the quarter of 2022 because it was concentrated in the Sempre Nova collection, because it had an important highlight in the 4th quarter of 2022. And this performance that was a little bit inferior to Melissa was influenced by the movement of liquidation of inventory.
We have observed that from our competitors, within the channels we presented growth, the self-service channel and the magazine channels were the most important ones. The retail channels, or indirect channels, are the channels that demand products with more added value, and they presented a slightly negative performance. On the graph on the left-hand side, we continue with a positive sellout of the brands of Division One that we observed in the previous quarters. It remained in this 4th quarter. We also noticed the dynamic between selling and sellout becoming normal within the Division One brands. In a similar movement, we observed the same at Melissa. Melissa started the year with a slower performance. It had a weak 1st quarter. From the 3rd quarter onwards, we noticed a recovery movement from the performance of Melissa, both selling and sellout.
This movement was confirmed in the 4th quarter. This movement of recovery that started in the 3rd quarter, it was influenced by some spring/summer collection 2024 that started to arrive in stores and had an excellent review by the consumer, the end consumer. The accumulated sellout of the Melissa clubs in the 4th quarter grew 12.9% when compared to the 4th quarter of 2022. The sell-in started to present a growth differently than what we observed in the 1st quarter. The sell-in grew 5.4%. The gross revenue of Melissa in the 4th quarter grew 9.8%. Volume grew 5.4%. The gross revenue per pair grew 4.2%. The sales of Melissa in the online channel grew 27% in the 4th quarter. They started to represent 2.6% extra related to the total sales of the market, coming from 9.6% to 12.2% this quarter.
During a very complicated period for the franchise sector, we opened many new stores. Totally, in December of 2022, 414 stores, 414 clubs, Melissa clubs. Melissa, as I mentioned before, their clients accepted really well this new spring/summer collection that is already in the domestic market stores. It's not in the foreign market yet. It will be available in the next summer, the 2024 summer. And we reached more than 200 active users on the Melissa App. It was launched in April 2023, and it has been growing quarter after quarter. The sales via the app, Melissa app, they represent over 33% of the total online sales of Melissa. And the importance of this channel and the sales in the app is that this app is one of the most positive indicators when it's compared to the website, conversion rates, average ticket.
So it's a channel that comes with a lot of quality and profitability, and has been growing quarter after quarter. The exports, the external market, had a little bit of a slowdown, a negative performance, just like the Brazilian footwear sector in general. And this negative performance is a reflection of the slowdown of the global economy. It was because of high inflation and high interest rates that end up impacting on consumer habits of the population, especially in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere, where the developed countries' populations are not used to living with high inflation. So this has caused an impact in their consumer habits in these countries. We also have an impact. Latin America has a very relevant impact. 50%-60% of our exports, they sell to Latin America countries. And in Latin America, we have many countries living in political and economic crises.
The recovery of this crisis has been really slow, which has caused an impact on the purchasing power of all the consumers. Climate impacts, such as El Niño, also caused impacts on the sales in the 4th quarter because of the rainfall season, which is. Competitors from the Chinese market, because after the pandemic, like with the reduction of freight costs, the Chinese products are here, are coming here in a very competitive way in these countries. I mean, in the United States, we still can see a very complicated scenario, a challenging one. The retail sector has been suffering, where retailers continue with high inventory levels. Consumers are searching for products of less value, of minor prices. Retailers are presenting restrictions to work with new brands and new suppliers.
So when we can enter these new markets, new brands, with the modality of dropshipping, once the products start performing well, they open the doors of a few stores to display your products in presentially. Selling in Europe was not so good because of the weak sellout in 2023, which will cause an impact. Rainfall season, above average, also caused an impact on the sellout in Europe. And in Africa, we have seen political tensions and energy power problems, the devaluation of the Angolan currency. And also in the North of Africa, we have seen a few difficulties to send dollars. And also, the Middle East, between Israel and Hamas, has caused an impact also as a whole in the region. Having said that, as a result of the quarter as a whole, the volume reached 42.5 million pairs.
It's a decrease of 2.4% when compared to the 4th quarter of 2022. This decrease is concentrated, as I mentioned before, in the external market. That decreased 19.7%. In the domestic market, it grew 12.2%. Gross revenue, BRL 924 million, a decrease of 25% in the external market, is a 28% decrease. While in the domestic market, we see a growth of 7.3%. Gross profit grows 3.6%, reaching BRL 362.6 million. Gross margin grows 1.8%, coming from 45.9%-47%. This growth of margins is concentrated in the raw material factor, a reflex of reduction movements of reduction prices in the main raw materials observed in 2022. They have caused a little delay in our COGS. The recurring EBITDA grows 19.2%, reaching BRL 157.5 million. We also have a growth in the recurring net profit of 3.4%. This margin goes to 22.7%.
Recurring net profit grows 22.7%, reaching BRL 256.5 million, while the margin grows 33.7%. Having a composition of our gross revenue, as I mentioned before, it drops 1.5% in the last quarter, being that the internal market is adding gross revenue in this quarter, whereas the external market removes the gross revenue. The volume has brought BRL 16.5 million price and mix. We can see here that we are more concentrated on the price effect. We have a growth in revenue of BRL 35.5 million. The volume for the external market removes almost BRL 44 million in revenue. Price, they remove around BRL 11 million in revenue. Exchange that we have, that was 55.1%, or devaluation, it removes almost, I would say, BRL 10 million in the revenue in the quarter.
If we open the COGS numbers, we see that our gross margin grows 1.8% in the quarter, as I mentioned before. This growth of this gross margin is concentrated on the raw material component, that it's going to consume less than the net revenue when compared to the same period in 2022. The last quarter, the raw material would represent 27%. And now in the 4th trimester, we have 23%. In the components that we have, 1.1% that it's higher than the net revenue, starting from 18.4%-19.5%. And that is due to the collective bargaining that we've had in 2024. And this is due to a lower volume of pairs that have been shipped, because we ended up diluting, having a smaller space to have in the costs, and also due to more complexity in our products.
When we talk about complexity, we're talking about minute per pair. So the pair minute grew like 12% when compared to 2022. We have a small growth in other costs. So we have 1.2%. When we move to the right, and we're talking about net sales and COGS per pair, it grows 2.1%, reaching BRL 17.89 per pair, whereas the pair cost, we have 1.4% less. And this growth of COGS per pair, it's concentrated on a raw material indicator. The other components that we call labor and OGF, they grow due to the reasons that I mentioned previously. You can see in this slide the recurring operational expenses. The first one, they have grown 1% in the quarter. They started from BRL 200 million to BRL 205 million, from BRL 203 million to BRL 205 million. Commercial expenses grow like 3.1% in the quarter.
But I would like to call your attention here that you can see on the net sales, better saying, expenses with personnel, that it's impacting this growth within the rubric of commercial expenses. We can see the impact of structure and managing franchise that we've had now since last year. We did that in order to replace the franchise master when we did not renew the contract. Within this line of expenses with personnel in commercial, we have the cost of a structure, I would say, 100 people to do this managing of all the franchisees that used to be done by the master franchise. If we consider how much we are saving for not paying that and comparing with what we are investing today in this structure to manage our franchise, we have a positive result of around BRL 2 million in the quarter.
Admin expenses have been kept stable in BRL 7.2 million. We have a small growth in personnel development, if we talk about the admin, of 2.7%. But this is a lower growth if we compare to the inflation in the same period. You can see in this slide the impact and the variations in the recurring EBIT that started from BRL 132 million to BRL 157.5 million in the 4th quarter, a growth of 19.2%. And the components that added to this recurring EBIT in Q4 were basically variation of net revenue, variation of COGS, and also commissions. We have BRL 12.8 million of non-recurring items within these BRL 12.8 million. We have asset equivalents of around BRL 13.9 million. We've had some reversals in the PDD that we have in the recurring expenses and some process credits.
Speaking of the financial results now, net financial revenue, we've had BRL 35 million higher when compared to Q4 in 2022, even if we had an average balance that has been invested of BRL 550 million lower. And this BRL 35 million growth is concentrated along that line of other financial assets, like SPEs. And basically, here, it was a participative debenture in the Vale do Rio Doce that brought a negative result because in Q4 in 2022. But throughout this period in which we brought these operations, we had a very positive result. On the right, you can see the portfolio allocation that we call a portfolio for ET, that we have alternative assets when compared to the traditional investments. So we have federal public bonds or bank bonds.
When we closed the year, we had BRL 485.5 million that have been invested on that portfolio, being that 94% of this was allocated in real estate developments and around 6% in Fintech . Okay, what's the profitability and the rentability that we started in 2019? The portfolio as a whole had 100% of profit, that it's about 165% in CDI. For real estate, we had 65.2% equivalent to 165.6% in CDI. Private credit grew almost 83%, which is equivalent to 205.5% in CDI. Variable income has had 194.3%, that is equivalent to 582.8% in CDI. As I mentioned before, we don't have other positions of variable profit. The only position that we kept last year was Vale do Rio Doce, in which we closed the operations. It was around the end of the year when the stock in Vale do Rio Doce was in ex-dividend.
The next slide, we have our e-commerce. E-commerce has been growing quarter after quarter. This is the fifth quarter in a row that our e-commerce has brought a very positive EBITDA. We reached a given scale in which we can, I would say, dilute our costs and make these operations profitable. GMV has grown 42.1% if you compare to the Q4 last year, whereas in the whole year, we saw a growth in GMV of 38.2%. Gross margin has grown 6.5% in the 4th quarter, whereas in the year, we had 13.4%. We've been observing a steady growth in the margin throughout the year because as from April and May, we started doing this great job of revising commercial policies, of revising discount policies, and policies regarding selling products at the full price or with discount. We started revisiting and rediscussing our expenses, both operational and commercial.
We've had many adjustments that ended up reflecting on the commercial bridge with a better gross margin. Then we had in the structure that reflected a recurrent EBITDA that grew 788% if we compare Q4 in 2022. The recurring EBIT has grown more than 600%. General penetration of e-commerce in the total sales in the internal market reached 4.5% if we compare to 3.4% on Q4 2022. When we see this indicator throughout the year, penetration of e-commerce has already been representing 3.9% of our revenue in the internal market, whereas in 2022, that percentage was only 2.9%. If we look at Melissa specifically, online sales have been representing 12.2% of Melissa alone in the internal market. That was in the Q4 in 2022 that represented 9.6%.
In the whole year, online sales in Melissa represent 12.8% in the internal market if we compare to 9.2% in 2022. Moving now to Grendene Global Brands. In the end of 2023, we reached two years of operations. And what did we do in these two years? We focused on people and brand. We have a team of over 50 professionals that know about the culture with a very low turnover. We've invested more than $20 million in marketing, and we increased the relevance of our brands on local consumers. We've observed a growth of online sales in more than 9x. We've hired influential figures and digital influencers in the local cultures. Well, we can see Rosy Zhao in China and Shakira as the global Ipanema representative that makes our brand known. We reintroduced Ipanema and Cartago in the U.S.
Even with these initial hurdles, like having new clients, especially B2B in the U.S., we enhanced in 70% the number of active clients in the U.S. We are back with our brands on Amazon, which is our second-largest client in the U.S. We've opened 17 new exclusive Melissa stores in China, and we've completed a distribution center in China with 100% of local team. We have offices in Miami, in China, and in Brazil. And what were the results? Net sales revenue went from 31.4%. It's almost 60% in volume. Online sales in the U.S. and in China, I'm talking about consolidated China and U.S. in all channels, okay? Tmall, Melissa, Amazon, we grew 237% alone. Melissa alone grew more than 2.4%. And the wholesale U.S. and brick-and-mortar store are suffering because they are 6% below and 13% above in retail. This is the channel that pays the bills.
We're facing some difficulties in order to grow along that channel due to the macroeconomic situations that I mentioned before. So retail with inventory and retailers, they don't want to have new brands to have relationships. But still, we've done a great job. We've done a job that is superior to what we expected if we were on our own. In the Melissa physical stores, we haven't found the perfect ideal model to have profit with some stores. We closed a few. We closed the one in Los Angeles. We closed Galeria Melissa. With those structures and resources, we are going to reallocate to other initiatives regarding the brand. Now, the year-on-year, in a nutshell, so volume, we had 5.8% withdrawn. We reached almost 150 million pairs. Internal market, the withdrawal was 6.1% or 5.8%. Net revenue has withdrawn 5.2%. We reached BRL 3 billion.
A withdrawal of 25% in external market and a growth of 3.2% external market, better say. Gross profit, even though the revenue and the volume is lower, we grew 7.5% to almost BRL 1.1 million. Gross margin grew 4.4%. We reached 44.5%. Recurring EBIT grew 34.5% in a year, reached BRL 383 million. And recurring EBIT grew 4.4%, reaching 15.7%. Our recurring net profit reached BRL 661 million. It was a 7.8% growth compared to 2022. And our net reached 27.2%, a growth of 2.8%. So you can see that it was a stable year regarding revenue and volume and a strong growth in results with these margins.
So just to highlight that the margins, if they grow, even with a lower volume that we all know that volume is a great driver for margin at Grendene, and even having this recoil of exports, if we can say that, we have higher margins. Coming back now regarding results in the year, BRL 557 million. We're going to have this because of the fiscal incentives. And to have the legal basis for calculation, we have BRL 282.9 million. As we reached 20% of social capital, we don't need to put more resources to legal reserves. So we have BRL 288.29 million to invest. In the year, we've distributed BRL 137 million. So we still have to balance BRL 145.8 million that are going to be distributed to the stockholders that have stocks of Grendene of May 2nd, 2024. So this action is ex-dividends on May 3rd.
Payment will take place on May 15th. This is how we are going to pay: BRL 50.8 million as dividends and BRL 95 million as JCP. That net, with the 15% of income tax, would be BRL 80.7 million. That sums up 15% net that's going to be paid on May 15th. To finish, we can see the accumulated dividends and interest on equity. We pay BRL 5.8 billion since we opened capital. If we correct this value according to the IPCA, this would be BRL 8.5 billion. Corrected by the CDI, it's BRL 11.2 billion. This is what I had to say for now. So now I open for Q&A.
We are going to start the Q&A session reminding you that to ask questions, you should click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and write your questions. If announced, there will come a prompt to activate your microphone, and then you should enable your microphone. We kindly ask you to ask all your questions at once. Our first question is from Renan Sartor , Bradesco BBI analyst. I'm going to open your audio to ask your question, Hernán. You can proceed, please. Good morning, Alceu. Thanks for listening. I would like to ask about Melissa. Melissa has been consolidating its recovery with the strong sellout in the quarter. Can you elaborate a little bit more? Can you talk more about the factor for this recovery? It's the summer collection, but maybe there is also a macro factor.
How is the performance in this quarter in the beginning of the year? And related to expansion, should we expect these current levels to continue, or do you think other factors will contribute to the expansion in 2024? Thank you. Thank you for the question. I'm going to start with the second one. We must see a growth in margins in 2024, but not a very significant growth as it was in 2023 because I would say that the biggest part of capturing the benefit coming from raw materials, we have used that. So raw materials decreased prices in 2022, and that will take 2-3 quarters to reach our COGS. So if we observe the behavior of the raw material throughout 2023, it remained stable with few variations down and up. And in the short and long and average term, we are not foreseeing oscillations in raw materials.
We think it is going to vary slightly throughout the year. So the PVC compounds also are still 3% above the average cost of replacement of the input. So probably there is a marginal gain here added for the raw material component, but we expect stability from now onwards. Related to the other components, as we foresee higher volumes in 2024, it is always a driver of margin by volume. And therefore, there is an opportunity for capturing more margins. We expect the growth of margins in 2024, but not with the same intensity, with the same volume of 2023. And related to Melissa, there are many factors that added. They end up bringing a positive result, the one we saw in the fourth quarter. And we continue seeing the same in the third quarter of 2024, the first quarter in sell-in and sell-out.
The first one was the excellent arrival of the summer collection. Everybody liked it. As soon as it arrived in the stores, it started selling really well. That generates a cycle that new products arrive from new collections. New collections tend to sell full price and have more interest rates. That will generate more profit and increase the working capital of the franchise. So they will be able to place more order. This cycle, it will go on and on, increasing our profit, our margin. Also, internalizing the franchise management is something that we did to come closer to the franchisees. Even though we cannot measure that, it has been causing a positive impact, given the feedbacks we have received. Conditions, macro conditions, that seem to be. We have signals that they are improving.
Interest rates reduction and reduction in levels of debt and credit conditions improving are signs that they can put consumption up. Part of this consumption can be directed to our products. They will increase consumption levels, these drivers. And we expect we have seen a positive performance in this fourth quarter in the domestic market. And we are expecting a positive performance in the foreign market of Melissa because of this new collection, because this new collection is arriving in the foreign market for summer 2024. And we expect positive results because of that. Thank you, Alceu. Let's go to our next question. It's from Yvan Kreiser, an investor. He asks, "I would like to understand how is the partnership plan of 3G Radar to exploit the foreign market?" Yvan, thanks for your question. The partnership has been very positive.
Just a little background: we started the operation in 2022 and 2023 now. We completed two years of this partnership. We have been focusing a lot on the strengthening of our brands in the U.S. and Canada markets, China and Hong Kong. We have a very close relationship with the GGB team. Weekly, not only myself but also the sales teams of GGB and Grendene, they talk to each other to adapt a portfolio and to capture trends. It's been a partnership that's really positive. We have major expectations, as we used to have when we closed the partnership, when we started the partnership, huge expectations for GGB. I saw a question in the chat. We expect the break-even of the operation for 2026. Just answering the question, it's written in the chat. Our next question is from Eduardo Marcelino, an investor.
Does the company study possibilities of coming out of some markets that are presenting low levels of sales just for operational costs?" Thank you for your question, Eduardo. No, we haven't evaluated that yet because all our product lines, they add results to Grendene. We don't have any lines that are slowing down. Next question, Emilio Fernandez. He thanks and congratulates you for the presentation and great results and asks the following about the Law 14,789 taxes of COFINS and CSLL about the investments for the next year, for 2024. What will be the procedures of Grendene for this laws and regulations? Thank you, Emilio. The Law 14,789, published on the 29th of December, starts to get taxes from PIS COFINS and gross revenue.
The counterpart of this new taxes, it will give you credit of 27% on depreciation and amortization you have in the stores that receive this benefit. So what is Grendene doing about it since January? We have been collecting taxes. We are going to start with a legal action to question the validity of this law. Given that many lawyers that we spoke to, they defend the fact that this law violates the federal pact, the concept that the federal entity is removing from the taxpayers benefits that were given by the state. So we are collecting these taxes. We have been doing that since January. We are going to file a lawsuit. The 27% on credit over depreciation of the operation in Ceará, we have done that since January to benefit us within this provision of the law. Thank you for your answer.
And now it's the end of the Q&A session. I would like to give the floor to Mr. Alceu Albuquerque to the final conclusions. I would like to thank you all of you again for your presence in our video conference. And our IR team is available to clear any questions. Thank you and have a great day. The video conference related to the fourth quarter of 2023 and 2023 of Grendene S.A. is now closed. The Investor Relations Department is available to answering any questions you may have. Thank you to all participants, and have a nice day.