Good morning to all, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to another conference call for the earnings of Lojas Quero-Quero. Today we will talk about the earnings of Q4 and full year 2021. My name is Fábio Gomes da Silva Burns, Investor Relations Manager. We have with us Mr. Peter Furukawa, Chairman of Lojas Quero-Quero, Jean Paulo de Mello, CFO and Investor Relations. This webcast is being transmitted exclusively via internet. You can access at ri.quero-quero.com.br. For the Q&A session, questions may be asked through the webcast platform. It is being recorded and will be available on our website. Before continuing, we'd like to clarify that any declarations that may be made during this webcast concerning business perspectives of the company, projections and operational financial goals are based on beliefs and assumptions of the company's board, as well as information currently available to the company.
Considerations about the future are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. They refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors may understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operational factors may affect the future results of the company and may lead to results that may differ materially from those expressed in such considerations about the future. To begin the presentation, let's go to Slide 2 Today our agenda will cover the general earnings, second, our pillars, and third, the earnings for Q4 and full year 2021. Finally, we will have the Q&A session. Now, please let's go to Slide 3, and I would like to pass the floor to the Chairman of Lojas Quero-Quero, Mr. Peter Furukawa. Peter, you have the floor.
Good morning. It's a great pleasure to talk to you again. I will summarize the year and Jean will talk about Q4. In terms of the full year, we continued to grow with the same stores. It's important to continue growing and not lose the market that we conquered. We have the same comparison. We continue with a growth of 15.1%. We have to grow with the same stores with more than the market and add new stores. Since 2015, the market grew 66% and we're growing 140%. In terms of EBITDA, we had a growth of 11.6% in the full year. Apart from the growth of 31% last year, we have to remember that we have BRL 10 million in results that we used in the phygital project.
These 11.6% get to 17% when we add the phygital, which is the investment for the phygital. In terms of profit before SOP and IFRS 16, we have here in line, it is in line with the consensus, considering the investments in phygital. Next chart. Our pillars of the year are the same for you. I believe it's something that you know, it's always the same. We continue this year with the same pillars. Our pillars, we continue to gain market. We grew 23.8% in 2021, 15.1% in same store sales. We made transformations later on, I will show 50 stores were converted, and we opened 70 stores as I had already mentioned. We continue with focus on credit and collections.
We closed the year with past due in Q3 2021 of 9.8% in line with our expectations. We went back to the numbers of 2019 because during the pandemic we had less delinquency because we put restrictions on credit. Financial services grew a little more second semester. We had more restrictions on credit. Doing more with less leverage. Our group grew 18%, 46%, 46.2% versus 2019. Operational expenses, 22%. Reminding you that this year of 2021 we had two new distribution centers. We moved from Sapiranga to a new one, and we opened a new distribution center in Corbélia, and also investments in the phygital. In the short term, in six months or a year we had to deleverage because of these extra costs with investments.
Our profit BRL 68 million and net profit, adjusted net profit BRL 86.3 million in 2021. We implement our digital sales in 63 stores, phygital sales at the end of October and almost 150 stores at the end of the year. In December, we closed the year with 199 stores with phygital, with more than 17,000 SKUs. This is a bet that we made in the beginning. We are optimistic in a conservative way with this. We'll talk more about this. High-performance culture. We prepared 205 managers. We have 373 employees being prepared to be managers. We hired 15 from 5,500 candidates, and we selected 15 and they are very good people. We're investing in them.
We chose them from 5,500 candidates. We had more than 1,000 promotions during this period. This year we were classified among the top eight companies with up to 8,000 employees as a great place to work. This was always our focus. We don't have focus on these programs, but we invest in our employees. Next chart, please. Here, the evolution of the stores. We closed the year with 465 stores, 294 in Paraná, 2 in Mato Grosso, 4 in São Paulo. 70 new stores opened, and we have the objective of growing, and we want to gain market share.
We have 47.3% of these stores in cities with less than 25,000 inhabitants, 18.3% in cities between 25,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, 15% in cities between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, 14% in cities with between 100,000 and 300,000 inhabitants, and 4.7% in cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants. Here we have a map of the stores we opened, 4 in the state of São Paulo. Reminding this year, next year, our total focus will be on Santa Catarina and the state of Paraná. We're beginning in 2022, 2023 to open stores in the southwest of the state of São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul. Here we show the 70 stores that we opened. We have some stores in São Paulo and Mato Grosso.
In these five states, we still have another 900 cities where we can open stores. There is a lot of space to grow. Here, transformations, store transformations. We transformed 55 stores. We have phases I, II, and III, and phase II to XIII. We still have 57 stores in the traditional small format, but we cannot expand them until we find an adequate location. 283 are in phase I. Reminding you, phase I, we have construction material. In phase II, we increase the size, we invest more finishing. In phase III, apart from a large store, we segregate the salespeople to be specialized in construction materials, others to sell only paint, and others selling home appliances and furniture.
We have 120 stores with less than five years, which shows that we will have maturity. We will reach maturity in the next few years. Next chart. Here in terms of market, we moved from Verdecard to Quero-Quero Pag, and we have 155,000 digital accounts, more than BRL 1 million in deposits in these accounts. Basically, it's new for Pix, payments with QR code, virtual card, free transfers, access to Quero-Quero insurance. Also loans, they can take out loans. Our salespeople offer to do a download and explain how the card works. Our portfolio is growing. We went total portfolio BRL 740 million. Here we show the delay. This is the average of the year.
9.8% delinquency over 90. After here, this level of delinquency is historically low, and we have a conservative position. We began to do collections earlier than we did, and we've had good results. We should go back to the level of 2019, as we mentioned. Here, we are after operational cash. Our annual growth in revenue has been 23%. Every year the growth of 2.9%. We made investments. Now we're in 2021. We invested in the two new distribution centers, and these investments were important for our growth. Here are our phygital stores. The pictures don't give you a good idea. We have 17,000 new SKUs. Those who visited, this is the phygital store inside the distribution center.
We have the infinite store, where the salesperson shows this store on the monitor, and they walk between the aisles selling products and showing products. Our focus was not for people to buy from their homes. We would like our clients to continue going to the store to talk to the salespeople, and now they have available these 17,000 new products. In the past, they had to travel to buy these things, and now in the store, the salespeople can show this digital store on the screen. They can answer questions. For example, if the client wants to see the product closer, we have someone in the distribution center who goes there and shows the product and answers questions directly from the distribution center without emails or WhatsApp. A very good value proposal.
We're beginning now, and I believe there is a lot to do. It brings us a lot of benefits. F or example, if we don't deliver on time, the clients don't have to pay. Now we have these 17,000 new SKUs. We began with 63 stores. We expanded to 199 in December, and we were going to expand them until April. On February 1, we have all the stores with phygital sales. When we talk about products that are not in the store, this represents 17% of the sales now sold through this phygital platform. Here, our high-performance culture. We continue investing in our trainees, training managers, and we need to grow the results too. People are growing, and we're proud of these training courses we give.
We have won awards, and we work to develop the employees inside our company. We had our 11th edition of the training program. We selected 15 new trainees among 5,500 candidates. Now, Jean will talk about the results of the quarter and then we will continue.
Good morning. Once again, I'd like to thank you all for your presence. After Peter's introduction, we will go into details about the results of Q4 and the results of the full year of 2021. We always mentioned in the presentations, and you were able to see that we had a growth, a very good result in 2020, and an acceleration. We had an acceleration in retail sales, so we expected strong growth during the first semester of this year, and we would also be compared with very strong quarters. We're there. We wanted to maintain and also gain market. We delivered these results that were very similar to what we expected. In retail, we have activities in retail. We also have financial services and credit cards.
In retail, we closed Q4 with same store sales a little negative b ecause in the same period of the previous year, we had grown very strongly, you can see in same store sales that we're selling at levels of those before the pandemic, the market grew. We won market during these two last years. We closed the year with almost BRL 2 billion in revenue, especially in retail, a growth of 23.8% in the year. If we look at the last five years of Quero-Quero, it's a growth that even accelerated over the last two years, constant growth, which comes from our first pillar to gain market through same store sales. You can see since 2017 we had high values and 6% in 2019 and last year. We're growing in same store sales, and we expanded this with the opening of new stores and also the transformation of stores.
You can see that in reality, we closed the year with 58.4% more in sales than we had in 2019 before the pandemic. Growth, especially in retail and construction material. Apart from this, in financial services, we began to see an acceleration, and that's why we delivered 30% growth in Q4. We'd like to remind you that we were more conservative during the beginning of the pandemic in terms of credit, and in the subsequent quarters we saw an environment that was favorable for retail, but also represented less delinquency and less search for credit. We had acceleration of the growth in financial services. We closed the year with a growth of 27.9%, BRL 500 million in revenue. You can see that last year we had less growth, 8.9%, and now gradually there is more search for credit.
At the end, credit cards, the revenue from credit cards last year, they were practically constant with the years averaging. Q4, there was an acceleration of 10%, and we closed the year with a growth of 8.2%. We also had a recovery in credit cards both inside and outside the stores. That's true. Quero-Quero grew 24% in revenue during the year. In the quarter, we grew 10% in Q4 2021, 42.5% growth versus Q4 2019. At the end of the year, we delivered BRL 5 billion in revenue and more than 50% growth versus 2019. We continue to grow, especially with construction material. Net revenue this year follows the growth of gross revenue without great variations. After getting to this growth of 24% revenue during the year, now we will go to the next slide, and we will see gross profit.
You can see that in Q4 we have a gross profit with a small growth in relation to 2020, a growth of 30% versus the same quarter in 2019. We closed the year with a growth of 18.5% in gross profit and more than 46% in comparison with 2019. I'd like to highlight when we look at the year, our margin closed at 30.6%, so a little less than what we delivered. The margin in financial services was a little higher, 61.3%. Here we see without the effects during the pandemic. By category, the margins are aligned with 2019. In the consolidated margin, we have a margin below 2019, 38% versus 40%, because the revenue in retail grew more.
We see a strong growth, but the greater mix we have in the last few years puts pressure on the consolidated margin of the company. Specifically, this represents. We can see the comparison. In retail, we had a favorable situation. We were able to get higher margins in retail, and the same happened with financial services. We had a cost of interest that was low. We had low interest rates to borrow money and delinquency historically low. Now, we close the year of 2021 with margins aligned with what we saw before the pandemic in 2019. Now we can go to the next slide to discuss the company's EBITDA. As Peter mentioned, we had a great leverage in Q4 2021 versus the same quarter the previous year.
We expected this because of the better margins at the end of 2021 and also with the investments we have made. Peter mentioned the investments in the two new distribution centers we didn't have in 2020 and also the phygital sales that accelerated. We invested in the company, and initially, we have a deleveraging effect, but this will help us to grow in the long term and to go into new markets. We closed the year with BRL 182 million in adjusted EBITDA. We can see here. Here we can see that we have a growth of 46% versus 2019. Adjusted EBITDA, when we look at EBITDA, we closed with an EBITDA of BRL 246 million, a growth of 14.7% versus 2020 with BRL 215 million.
This constant growth continued strong in 2021 and with a positive trend as a result of the gains in market. Going on to the next slide, we will see the net profit and the net margin of the company we were able to deliver here. We have to look at this net adjusted profit, excluding the implementation of stock options and purchase of shares and IFRS 16, especially with higher interest rates, we have a greater impact. We will see that in Q4 2021. When we close the year, this takes us to BRL 68 million in net profit and an adjusted net profit of BRL 86 million. Thus we see the growth, reminding you that last year we had a growth of 130%.
You can see that we have a strong growth in the two last years and a very good profitability, and we have invested part of this in the business. Going on to the next topic, let's talk about the variables that led to this result. We can discuss the portfolio. This is the net portfolio, the receivables without interest and with interest. Here we show the behavior of the net portfolio. Those who have been following us with the results can see that in the beginning of the pandemic, we were more conservative in offering credit. You can see this, the total portfolio, but from then on, we have been growing. That is why the net portfolio with interest had a growth of 16% in Q4 versus the previous quarter and 26% more than in 2019.
We have BRL 633 million in our portfolio with interest. This growth is happening, maintaining the delinquency, which is controlled between the end of last year and the beginning of this year, 2021. We had very low levels of delinquency. You can see here that in the other graph, the delays, and gradually we had a small increase in delinquency, which takes us close to the levels of 2019. At the end of the year, we had 9.8% delay in the portfolio, in the receivables, and this is lower than the average that we delivered in 2019. We see a growth, a recovery in the demand for credit and also an increase in delinquency. We hope this during this year to go back to the levels of 2019.
Next slide, we see that this recovery in the credit cards has to do with the usage of the credit cards outside our stores. We had a growth of 19% in the usage of the card, and we arrived at BRL 2 billion, a growth of 19% in relation to the previous year, which had a growth of 5%. We see the usage of our credit card inside and outside the store growing and growing a little more with the penetration, growth in the penetration of the card. 49% of our sales in the year were done in the stores with our card, 38% in cash, and only 13% with credit cards that are not ours. We have 350,000 active credit cards.
These variables, this use of the credit card, the growth of active credit cards has brought the growth of the revenue of the company. Next slide, we will see something important, which is cash management. We see we had an increase in capital in Q3 2020, so we made an investment in the company, BRL 250 million according to the plan after the IPO. We maintained the net debt control. We closed the year of 2021, BRL 73 million of net debt. This gives us 0.4 times it's controlled. We closed the year with this gross debt that we will see here, BRL 158 million in long term during the previous year. We also made an issuance worth BRL 300 million.
You can see that the cash in FIDC increased due to this issuance. Also we can see in the material facts we had yesterday, we issued debentures, BRL 150 million to make our debt longer. In the end, we'll go on to the next CapEx. The maintenance of this net debt, you can see we continue investing. In Q4, we grew 40% in investments versus last year, BRL 23.9 million. In the year, we got to an investment of BRL 85 million, an acceleration in relation to previous years. This acceleration is due to investments in distribution centers. We made investments in 2020, so we had last year the distribution center in Corbélia and Sapiranga, and also the investment in phygital sales transformation in stores, inauguration of 17 new stores.
In a nutshell, we had a year with strong growth in the beginning and also more growth at the end of the year. Same store sales similar to other years. When we look at the years, it's aligned with our growth plan, a strong growth in the year with good results and reinvestments of the results in the business aiming at growth, growing in the long term. With this, I'd like to close the detailed explanations of the company's results, and I will pass the floor now to Flavio to begin the Q&A session.
Thank you, Jean. We will now begin the Q&A session. The first question comes from Helena Villares, Itaú BBA, and will be answered by Peter. Can you divide this drop in performance per category?
Good morning, Helena. It's a pleasure to talk to you again. A very interesting question. I was even thinking about this. Few people were asking this question in the last meetings that we had. Construction material, we grew. In total, we had -1 point in same-store sales in the consolidated. I won't give you the detailed numbers. Construction material was positive. Even looking, even with this information that it is negative, we grew, and we look at same-store sales, we grew, and in total sales, we grew more, even more. Home appliances and furniture dropped. We dropped less than the market, but we suffered in home appliances and furniture, which sent the growth to -2. In construction material, we're growing.
Thank you, Peter. Second question, also from Helena Villares. It'll be answered by Jean. The question is, we're seeing the revenue from financial services higher than before the pandemic and controlled delinquency, and what are the perspectives for 2022 for financial services?
Good morning, Helena. Concerning financial services, I believe we always had a conservative posture concerning credits and collections. The performance of the portfolio shows this. We improved in the last few years, including delinquency. During the pandemic, we were more conservative in giving credits, and we saw also the market demanding less credits during the pandemic. In our vision, since the small cities had less of an impact during the pandemic and agriculture did well, so we saw consumers with more disposable income, and this also led to very low delinquency during 2020, 2021.
What we begin to see during the last quarter is a gradual increase in the demand for credit, but we see we still have a demand for credit that is inferior to that of 2019. We hope this will gradually grow, and we also see the increase in the portfolio because when we have become more conservative in giving credits, but we were able to control delinquency and growing the portfolio because we had in the last few years some clients who didn't need credit, and now they are demanding for more credit now. This is the trend for 2022. In other words, a growth in the credit portfolio and a small growth in delinquency as we have demonstrated, and we hope if things continue the way they are, delinquency levels in 2022 similar to what we saw in 2019.
Thank you, Jean. The next question, the next questions are from Bob Ford, Bank of America, and they will be answered by Peter. Good morning, Peter, Jean, Flavio. Can you discuss the trends for sales by category and the evolution of the phygital offer as the markets accelerate? How is competition?
Good morning, Bob. Good to talk to you again. Well, this quarter, 2022, just reminding you, the stock market, I have to be careful about what I say about what is happening today. The SEC has talked to me. In February and March, we have a different composition. We're on the same level of growth as Q3, Q4 last year, close to 0% in same-store sales. We had -2.2%, but the composition, January we had less growth in construction material, but good sales in home appliances because the weather was very hot.
We sold a lot of air conditioning ventilators, so home appliances sold very well. In February, construction material grew and home appliances dropped, and in March, we have more growth in home appliances and furniture. In March. The Q3 and Q4 last year, we had a more consistent performance with construction material and home appliances and furniture negative. Now we see a balance between the categories. Construction material with some problems, home appliances and furniture growing, and sometimes the opposite. In total, we're on the same level, 0 - 2 + 2 for the quarter. It's not a guidance, it's only. I'm only telling you what is happening. Let me see. Is there more? Phygital. Bob, we implemented phygital in 63 stores in October, 150 in December, and we were going to implement the rest until April 1, but we decided to anticipate this for February 1.
The stores were very motivated, and the team was fantastic. They put this in the air. Our team is very good. I'm very proud of my team and that implements this. We began to offer as February first. The first wave and the second wave had the same level. If you compare, they were very similar. The third wave, sales were similar. The first month was very similar in the rest. After the third wave, we had a week with lower performance, and now once again, it's stronger. I tried to understand what happened there, but no one can really give us a precise definition. The team is working very hard on this initiative. We could be more optimistic, pessimistic, but within the scenario, this is realistic.
In terms of growth, we hope to reach a higher level of sales until the end of the year. We want this to be significant for Quero-Quero. We added 17,000 SKUs. Some of these 17,000 we will not sell, but 7,000 we're selling of these SKUs. We are controlling the investments in inventory. I personally am very optimistic, motivated. It's a good alternative for people in smaller towns to buy these products without traveling to large cities, and we will continue with this growth. When we began more construction, we'll let the levels. Everything is slow. We do, then we evaluate. It's never fast. It's little by little, and a child is not born in one month. We learn gradually with word of mouth things, with word of mouth. Finally, we will get to the growth we want. We're very motivated. That's what I can tell you, Bob.
Thank you, Peter. The next questions are from Jean Paulo, Bradesco BBI. Jean will answer. How about the EBITDA margin for 2022 with new stores, leverage of phygital new distribution centers at the cost and risk, credit risk, and the investments for 2022? I imagine you don't have to invest in distribution centers anymore.
Good morning, Jean. I believe that when we think of 2022, when we look at EBITDA margin, at the beginning of the year, we will have more pressure versus the previous year because we had strong results in the beginning of 2021. During this year, we inaugurated the third distribution center in the other during the first semester of this year. Phygital too began during the second semester, and we continue investing in phygital sales when we implement it. There is pressure in terms of expenses, which doesn't allow us to continue leveraging results and EBITDA margin in the beginning of the year. It'll be similar to what we saw in Q3, Q4 when we had these strong investments and thus compressing the EBITDA margin in 2022.
We won't have new distribution centers in 2022. What you will see in CapEx is one similar to 2021. We had this growth in investment, and now we should continue at this level, especially in 2022.
Thank you, Jean. The next question, also from Bob Ford, Bank of America, will be answered by Peter. What are you thinking about price elasticity? How about credit and prices?
Beginning with credit, we pass the cost of capital to our rates. Now we have a higher cost of capital, and we intend to maintain things this way until the end of the year. In terms of credit, we have less flexibility with credit. We have now offered longer plans, credit plans. We were always conservative, we continue to be conservative. In terms of credit, it's more difficult to do collections. People have less money now, so you have to make a greater effort to have the performance you had in comparison with 2020, 2019. A greater effort in collections. In terms of price elasticity, what we learned, lowering the price does not help you to sell more. We've tested this. It's not worthwhile lowering prices for consumers. What is happening, unfortunately, is that there is inflation.
I thought we would have the opposite. No, we're having inflation, and some companies are still increasing the prices. This makes things difficult. This year is a difficult year. We, we've been through difficult years in the past, some very difficult, and we grew results. Not as much as we would like, but the results grew. Now, right now, I can see a great effort on the part of the team in the office, in the stores, in the distribution centers, everyone making a great effort. We have a group of leaders that want to always win and reach the results. It's difficult for this team to see that sometimes we won't be able to reach the results we want, but they're working very hard in the last few months. We're making a great effort with difficulties, but we're making progress.
We're swimming against the current, but we're making progress. The team has made a great effort. I don't believe we should lower prices because we know that we tried this, we tested this in many years, and this never gave us positive results. We have to maintain our price strategy aligned with the market, and we should continue to grow in market share. What keeps us optimistic and seeing that we can grow even in a bad market is that we have a very small market share, 6%-7% in the cities where we are present. There's a lot of space to continue growing, and I see our employees fighting hard to continue with this growth, even swimming against the current.
Thank you, Peter. The next questions are from Carlos Herrera, and Jean will answer. How do you see 2022 with higher prices? Are the sales volumes dropping? Is the sales volume dropping?
Hi, Carlos, thank you for participating. It's very aligned with what Peter said. We had inflation in the prices, and we believe that this year will also be a year with inflation. We hope it will be a normal inflation lower than in the last two years. This is what we see today for 2022. In terms of volume, looking at Q4, we had a positive growth in construction material. If we think of home appliances and furniture, the performance was negative in same-store sales. This affects the sales volume. In relation to inflation, we continue to see prices rising. Industry is raising prices. We hope to have less inflation this year in comparison with the last few years.
Thank you, Jean. The last question is from Lucas Costa and will be answered by Peter. Good morning, Peter, Jean, Fabio. Could you comment, is there a possibility of reviewing the expansion plan if the situation is worse than expected, number of stores?
Thank you, Lucas. Very important question. I said we were going to open 70 stores. My vision and the vision of the council is that we should continue with our five pillars to build this company as we have done in the five years after the IPO, looking five, 10 years forward with many opportunities to continue growing. This is a difficult year. We wanted to open 70 stores. 55 have been defined. There could be a delay sometimes. For the time being, we want to open 17 new stores. We are not irresponsible. If we have a disaster, we may open less stores.
Right now, we haven't seen this. It's important to highlight we're in a difficult year. We've had difficult years many times but we always believe in investing and growing. We continue with the same posture. We are swimming against the current, we know. I have mentioned this. We had good conditions and now we're in a different race with more difficulties, but everyone is having these difficulties. If we are swimming against the current, everyone is swimming against the current. We have to swim more and not go. We see a lot of competitors that are falling back. We don't want to do that. That's why we continue with our investments.
Once again, my vision and the vision of the council is to continue with our five pillars, gaining market share, excellence in credit and collections, leveraging our fixed costs with a culture of performance and growing and investing in the digital platform. We continue to do that. Within this vision, we don't want to decrease the number of new stores. Once again, we're not irresponsible. Maybe in the next three to six months, we may change this vision. For the time being, this is what we have.
Thank you, Peter. Now we'd like to close the Q&A session. Thank you for the questions. I'd like to pass the floor to Peter and Jean Paulo for their final comments.
I thought I had already made my final comments, but so thank you for your interest in participating in our conference call. We have a difficult year ahead of us. We've had difficult years in the past. Some may think this is bullshit, but we have a very good team. I'm concerned with the overcommitment of our employees. In these difficult years, these people are making such a great effort that I have to tell them, "Easy, take it easy." The year is more difficult. We have to look and see how we're doing in relation to the market. We can't give up. We have to continue and things are difficult, but we're better than the competition. It's important for our employees to understand this, to continue with their efforts with this exceptional quality of employees we have.
I'm very proud of being part of this team at Quero-Quero and we have a dream for the next few years and we will continue going in this direction. Thank you.
Yes, I'd like to thank you all for your presence. The investor relations team is available. We have the information available on the website and we're available to talk to investors and analysts. Thank you. See you in the next meeting.