Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the earnings release for the third quarter. I am Paula Lopes. I am IRM. I have Peter Furukawa and also Jean Pablo de Mello, CFO. Now let's move to our next slide, so we are going to talk about our pillars, expansion and projects, and then our financials, and then we are going to have a questions and answers session. Now, going to slide number four. I give the floor to Mr. Furukawa.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you, talking to you again. I'm going to talk about the fourth quarter. Some of you must have seen our numbers already, and I'm going to explain them to break down, to give you more details, and then Jean is going to talk to give you more details.
Our growth in same-store sales was 11% in the third quarter, and still with a benefit of the catastrophe that affected Rio Grande do Sul. But now all regions are more similar in terms of performance. Retail sales grew 14%, totaling BRL 587 million. We have opened six new stores in Q3 2024, totaling 568 stores. So this is our market gain. In terms of credit and collection, we are conservative. We had 11.9, and in the second quarter, we had 11.2 at the end of Q3, an improvement of 0.6 percentage points. We didn't have any collection during the floods. And in July, it was back to normal. And we hoped to end the quarter with 11.5, more or less. And in the end, we had 11.2, which is even better than we expected in terms of delay. And our portfolio grew 15% in a period.
In terms of credit and collection, this is what we have. Doing more with less, our adjusted EBITDA totaled BRL 31 million in Q3 2024, up 21% as compared to Q3 2023. The gross profit grew higher than expenses. Our EBITDA in the last 12 months. In terms of digital sales, we encompass everything that we sell through our digital platforms and some products that are not in a store mix, but they are sold in stores through our systems. And then they see the products we sell and then distribution centers send to stores. Here in this modality, this represents 26% of our sales through this phygital. In terms of high performance, seven store managers were trained, plus 61 managers in training at the end of Q3.
We have 345 employees in our training program that are managers being prepared to work in future years. This has been a very good quarter. We are capturing the opportunities that we need to. Now, this is our expansion. We ended up with 568 stores. We opened six new stores in the quarter. Year to date, we opened 17 stores. We intend to open another four stores, totaling 21 for the year. Always try to get the low-hanging fruits, the best opportunities, and we are very selective. In Mato Grosso do Sul, we opened Itaporã and Três Lagoas. In Três Lagoas, we opened two stores. It's a city with 113,000 inhabitants. In Paraná, we opened stores too.
Everything that we opened, we are having very good results because we are being much more selective, just getting the low-hanging fruits in the regions that we know better. Now, this is all I had to say. Now you're going to hear Jean Pablo de Mello, our CFO, to give you the financial details.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure once again to be here with you. These are the results of the third quarter for Quero-Quero. I'm going to go to slide eight, talking about the revenue, revenue breakdown by business here. As Peter said before, so here at the bottom, you can see our CAGR was 14%, especially driven since last quarter by the recovery of the retail industry, so we've had a growth of 14% in gross revenue of retail, same-store sales growing also 14%, and you can see the upward trend in retail.
Those who are with us and were with us last year and last quarter last year, we were still suffering from a slight drop in volumes in the beginning of the year and the negative effect of deflation in the prices of our products, but now it's more stable. First, volume stabilized and reduction in the negative same-store sales, and then now we have a positive same-store sales that accelerated in recent quarters even more than we expected with what happened in Rio Grande do Sul, so we ended up the quarter with 14% growth in retail, 16% growth in financial sales, and 16% growth in the credit card, very much in line with our three business activities, and they're all similar. Now, on slide number nine, we have gross revenue and gross margin, and so revenue grew as well as the gross profit.
So here we saw gain in margin in retail. As you can see here, we grew 11% in the consolidated gross profit of the company. In retail, on the right-hand side in the middle, we had 22.9% of margin over gross revenue as compared to 21.5% in Q3 last year, 21.6% in Q3 2022. So this margin is really higher than the last two years for this quarter. And in terms of financial services, our margin was 47.1%, which is very much in line with what we did for the 12 months last year. So last year, we had 54.2%, but this margin was really a one-time. So revenue has grown. We had 11% gross profit. And here on the next slide, you can see that operating expenses are still under control as we've been reporting, despite the 4.4% increase in the number of stores and inflation too.
So total revenues of the company grew 9%. If we look at year-to-date numbers, the growth was 6.3%. So this growth in revenue combined with a growth in gross profit with retail margins even better than the year before. And expenses that are following this trend of control, despite the effects of inflation and expansion, lead to an operational leverage. And so, as you can see here on slide 11, this is what makes us deliver strong growth in EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. So we close with accounting EBITDA of BRL 58 million, a growth of 27.8%. We have BRL 160.9 million, a 33.6% growth. And so we have an EBITDA of 31.2%, also growing. And for the nine months, we had 54.8%, 57.6% growth.
So here, once again, you can see that with the recovery of the retail industry and better margins that we have had along this year leads to this operational leverage and a growth in EBITDA. So you can see the whole history since 2019. And you can see in Q3 2024, it was better, both compared to last year and also to 2022. And year-to-date numbers were also better than the two years before. So, in fact, this trend of EBITDA growth is something that we have been demonstrating since late last year after the better performance in retail sales. And this is likely to continue and hope from now on this is going to continue. So now, on slide number 12, you can see that the adjusted net profit of the company is very close to zero.
So the effect of more sales margin, better margins, and better operational performance is delivering a better result in Q3 2024 than the last two years if we compare the same quarter. So we close the third quarter of 2024 with BRL 3 million in terms of adjusted net profit as a bottom line. Now, going to the next slide, you can see that this is an effect of several variables. So I mentioned the retail industry. So here, a little bit, the evolution of our credit portfolio. So the credit portfolio has been growing, continues to grow with a healthy growth, 7%, 15% total portfolio. And 11.2% is the delinquency or default rates. So now the numbers are below what we had in the third quarter of 2023 and also lower what we had in the third quarter of 2022.
We've been keeping since 2022 levels that were very much in line in terms of default rates. And so here you can see that our portfolio is growing in a healthy way with the liquidity under control. And this demonstrates a better performance of our company as a whole. And the evolution of the portfolio, as you can see on slide 14, it's driven by more use of credit cards, both inside and outside our stores. So in Q3 2024, the use of cards and volumes, the TPV, we had grown 15%, and now it grew 20%, reaching BRL 806 million total. So this is the use of the card keeping the growth of the portfolio under control. And this is reflected in our results. Now, I would like to go to show you how we are investing. So here you can see our CapEx.
So, as said before, we have already opened 17 stores this year. And we keep our idea of 20, 30 stores each year. We have BRL 15 million invested in the third quarter of 2024, totally BRL 41.1 million in the first nine months of this year. And this investment is a result of more cash generation considering the higher operational EBITDA of the company. And in this manner, on the next slide, you can see that the debt is also under control. We closed the quarter with BRL 294 million of net adjusted net debt, 1.1 x EBITDA of the last 12 months. So cash generation in the third quarter, which is a trend, but it's usually a trend of the third quarter. And historically, as you can see here in 2022, 2023, we have an even stronger generation in Q4. So there is a very similar performance along this year too.
So this is BRL 570 million public debt, BRL 391 million long-term, and BRL 179 million in the short term. So we have BRL 276 million cash. And another important fact that we mustn't fail to mention, which we talked about in previous quarters, we had already said that we were expecting to start using our PIS and COFINS credits along the second quarter, the credits related to the repetitive theme number 1125. So we started as of September to use these credits. And in the future quarters and years, we are expecting to use those credits that total at the end of the quarter, BRL 146.1 million, and to turn credits into cash through compensation. So now I end the details of the results of the quarter, and I turn the conference back to Paula to then coordinate the questions and answers session.
Thank you, Jean. Now we are going to start our Q&A session.
The first question comes from Vinicius from Itaú BBA for Peter.
Congratulations on the result. So price positioning and the health of smaller players after a few years of high interest rates. Peter.
Good morning, Pretto. How are you? It's good to talk to you. Well, the competition of recent months, actually the last two years. You can see prices, which are basically low prices, all of them suffering greatly. There is no price war. Each person fights with what we can. The market has some flexibility. We seek the opportunities, and each one seeks the best opportunities to survive. But we have no margin pressure because of a price war or anything. So we are keeping at the same levels as we have had in recent years. In some places, there are some closings. In other places, we have a problem of succession.
We go there, we buy the POS, as you know. Sometimes we don't even buy the POS. We buy the inventory, and we implement a cash and carry. This is the best return because this was already a point of sale, and so there have been some cases like that, but we are not seeing much of a difference here. Now, as to the market, we are seeing a recovery in the construction materials industry, and the numbers of Stone and Rede and Cielo are showing an improvement in terms of construction materials, and they are doing very well this quarter. This is it, Pretto.
Thank you, Peter. The question also from Vinicius Pretto from Itaú BBA, and Jean is going to answer.
There is a gradual improvement in sales.
Can you talk about same-store sales in the regions that were not affected by the flood so that we have an idea of a normalized growth pattern?
Well, I think that the easiest is to understand, as I showed before, the quarterly behavior of same-store sales. In the year before, same-store sales ranged from -6%, closing the year at -4%. It's important to understand that there were two effects. A small effect, but present especially early last year with a slight drop in volume, and the rest of the effect was deflation. In the first quarter, when we had a 3% drop in same-store sales, we have a very stable volume and a deflation effect complementing the face value drop in same-store sales. And so, as we've been seeing along last months, this, excluding the additional demand from floods. This volume is slightly positive.
It's not transformational, but we are seeing this trend, as Peter said before in the previous question, and at the same time, considering the second and third quarters this year, there's an effect of deflation, which is practically null in terms of having an inflationary effect in the average ticket, so this all starts on the upside, even though it's a little bit positive, and this is the trend, and that's why this improvement trend, and we had an acceleration, so apart from these effects, yes, we are having a positive scenario of same-store sales, which is better than we had in the years before, so we do have opportunities of having more operational lever to generate EBITDA and cash, but this positive trend is appearing in most recent results, as you can see here.
Thank you, Jean, well, the third question is from Rodrigo to Peter.
In the cities that are more dependent on agribusiness, can you see an impact on revenue?
Good morning, Rodrigo. So I would like to complement what Peter has said. So I would say the following. There is a recovery in the market as a whole. So we have 26 regions, and some are doing better, others not so much, depending on the teams and maturity of teams in those regions. But I would not be surprised if we had same-store sales at a level that is closer similar to what we have today. And I would be surprised if this was much different.
Now, as to Rodrigo's question, I think that our best expansion so far was in Mato Grosso do Sul. We expanded there. We went very well in the beginning, since the beginning of last year. However, there was a drought in that region.
So the last year in that region was slightly more different, unlike other regions where we had a recovery comparing to the drought in the last two years. Now, the main thing is pricing. What I hear from agribusiness is that soybean is more or less to do with prices, and there is a built-up inventory in some cooperatives. And this is not having any greater impact, neither positive nor negative, except for Mato Grosso do Sul that is being a little bit punished. And when I say punished, it's still doing well, but it's growing less than it was growing before. I hope I have answered your question, but I don't see agribusiness having any major impact right now in our business.
Thank you, Peter.
The next question comes from Gustavo Fratini from Bank of America and will be answered by Jean.
Any improvement in the demand for construction materials this quarter, and any better demand coming from B2B? Or do you think that the improvement is going to come from B2C?
We need to complement a little bit what Peter said. I would say yes, the volume is getting positive both for electrical appliances and especially construction materials. Yes, we do. That was your question. Yes, we do depend on an improvement, a recovery of the macro scenario. It doesn't mean that the macro scenario is super positive for us, but we consider our margins considering what we had in the last two years. Not expecting that construction materials continue this trend, this positive trend of recovery of volumes.
As Peter said, I think that taking out the effect of demand and additional demand of floods, we expect that same-store sales will remain positive from now on and that we can demonstrate the growth potential of the company just as the maturity of new stores and a good performance of the new stores, as Peter said before.
Thank you, Jean. In this manner, we end the Q&A session. Thank you very much for your questions and those that we have not answered. We are going to answer by email afterwards. Now I would like to give the floor back to Jean and Peter for their closing remarks. Once again, I would like to thank you very much for your presence. Our investor relations team is available.
We have had a quarter that reinforces the recovery of the company's growth in terms of revenue, EBITDA growth with debt and default rates under control, so we hope to see this trend in the future. Thank you once again. Now I'll give the floor to Peter,
so thank you very much for your interest in Quero-Quero. Our case is a case of expansion and consolidation. This is what we have been doing. At the end of 2022, I said that we were changing things drastically. At the end of 2023, I said that we were really improving and then things are really getting better. Even now, including a little bit of recent months, we can see good recovery, and I think that we are evolving in the direction that we wanted right from the beginning. We are very happy with that.
We still have a lot to win, obviously, but we are on the right track and we are growing again. So we are very happy with that. We are willing to answer your questions. We have some time and we are available to answer your questions. So greetings to you and I'll see you around. Thank you.