Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks for waiting. Welcome to the conference call of LPS Brasil to discuss the earnings regarding the first quarter 2021. Today with us are Mr. Marcos Lopes, CEO, Francisco Lopes Neto, VP, Robson Paim, CFO, Matheus Fabrício, IR Officer, and Cyro Naufel, Institutional Officer. We would like to inform you that this speech is being recorded, and all participants are going to be in listen-only mode during the presentation of LPS Brasil. We will then start the Q&A session when further instructions will be provided. Should any of you need assistance during the conference call, please reach the operator by pressing star zero. This event is also being simultaneously webcast on the company's website, ri.lopes.com.br. In there, you will also find the presentation available, and you will be able to control the slides. The event replay will be available soon after its closing.
We would like to remind you that webcast participants may pose their questions on the website to LPS to be answered after the end of the conference call. Before moving on, we would like to let you know that any statements made during this conference call relative to LPS business outlooks, projections, operating and financial goals are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance.
They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions since they refer to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors may affect the company's future results and lead to results that will materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements. First, Mr. Marcos Lopes will present the operating results of the company. Then Mr. Francisco Lopes will present the results of CrediPronto, and then Matheus Fabrício will talk about the financial results. We will finally open for the Q&A session then. Now we are going to turn the call to Mr. Marcos Lopes. Please, Mr. Lopes, you may start.
Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to thank you for attending another conference call of the earnings of LPS Brasil, in which we are going to present the results regarding the first quarter 2021. I will start highlighting that in the first quarter 2020, we continued to see a good momentum for the real estate market and the company that showed a combination of recovery in the primary market by means of its own operations, a record of transactions in franchise operations, and excellent performance also in real estate credit operations with CrediPronto.
Allied to a scenario of low interest rates and new models of financing, as well as the differentials in its services, the joint venture of Lopes and Itaú also presented a record volume and strong growth in its portfolio balance. Likewise, we can say that the results of the period were solid in all business fronts of the company. I would also like to highlight that the company's digital transformation continues as a top priority, and we are showing excellent results that positively impact our revenues. As a consequence, in the increase in the volume of business, we continue to consolidate Lopes platform as one of the most efficient or the most efficient in the real estate market.
Along the first quarter 2021, with our Lopes Labs teams, we recorded new relevant evolutions in the indicators of audience and lead generation, especially organic leads coming from our website, reinforcing again the relevance of Lopes brand in the real estate market. After those initial considerations, we are going to start with slide number five, highlighting what we had for the first quarter of 2021. On slide five, initially, we highlight our own operations that had launches of BRL 1.2 billion in the quarter in terms of sales, of which BRL 765 million represented Lopes stake in these ventures. It's important to say that we continue the expectation of our pipeline for the year that we released in our guidance in the amount of BRL 7.3 billion. Out of this total, we believe that a third should be launched still in the first half of the year.
The total transactions closed by the company reached BRL 2.1 billion in the quarter, a growth of 99% compared to the first quarter 2020. Growth took place in our own operations with a volume of 69% above the same period last year, and franchises, which growth was 127% year-on-year. CrediPronto, in turn, continued to show excellent results with record operating mortgage volume of BRL 1.4 billion, + 182% year-on-year. And once again, with levels of growth that were above the market, consolidating its growth in market share in the segment. The company's EBITDA reached BRL 18.5 million, up 212% year-on-year. Net revenue grew by 68%, also year-on-year, reaching BRL 49.9 million.
As I already mentioned, we kept our efforts and commitment with the company's digital transformation process by means of our Lopes Labs, reaching the important target of 32,000 leads originated on Lopes Portal, which is 494% above the first quarter 2020. The conversion of visitors into leads in the portal reached 1.67%, growth of 96% compared to the same period in the previous year. We'll now go to slide number seven. On this slide, we talk about the launches of the first quarter 2021. To your left, we can see that the total volume launched by the company in the first quarter 2021 was BRL 1.2 billion, with a drop of 17% compared to the first quarter 2020. Of the total launch, 61% was concentrated in the state of São Paulo, 20% in Fortaleza, and 19% in the remainder states.
Within São Paulo, the capital of the state represented 76% of launches, the metropolitan region 21%, and São Paulo inland 3%. To your right, we can see that despite the drop in the total volume launched, Lopes' share in this kind of transactions was in line with the first quarter 2020, reaching BRL 765 million or 62% of the total. An increase of 10 percentage points if we compare both periods year-on-year. Moving on with the presentation, I would like to turn to slide number eight. Here, we can see the results of the transactions closed. To your left, we have the company's consolidated result. That is our own operations together with our franchises. In an annual comparison, we had growth of 99% with a total of BRL 2.1 billion in the period.
Franchises that mostly work on the secondary market had an operation of record in the first quarter 2020 with total transactions of BRL 1.2 billion, increase of 127% year-on-year and 4% compared to the previous operation targets that were released. In own operations that basically work in the primary market, the total was BRL 859 million, growth of 69% compared to the first quarter 2020, and 15% above the previous operation results that were released. Now, we are going to go to slide number nine, where we show the result of transactions closed by region and our geographic footprint. We closed the quarter in 10 states and in the Federal District with 108 stores altogether.
In that, 18 are own stores and 90 are franchises with a number of 14% above that of the previous quarter, which proves the strengthening of our network and more efficiency and aggressiveness in our expansion process. The state of São Paulo represented 60% of the total transactions closed in own operations in the first quarter 2021, continuing to be the market with the greatest representativeness in the company. The south region 20%, Fortaleza, Espírito Santo 20%, and Rio de Janeiro with 2% respectively. In franchises, also the state of São Paulo led transactions with 46% in the quarter. Rio de Janeiro was the second most relevant market with 32% of the total transactions, and the other regions 22%. Now we are going to go to slide number 10, where we show the results of sales speed over supply and sales speed over launches.
We are going to start with the São Paulo capital to your left, and you can see that speed over supply increased in the first quarter of 2020, reaching 9.5% in the period. Speed over launches, in turn, was basically stable, with a retraction of 0.4 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2020. If you take a look at your right, we can see the consolidated numbers. Basically, speed over supply had a growth of 3.6 percentage points, so acceleration in the demand for properties also outside the state of São Paulo, closing the quarter at 8%. The speed over launches had a reduction of 8.8 percentage points year-on-year, reaching 8.8%, clearly impacted by the closing of sales booths in the month of March. Still on the slide, you can see the breakdown of transactions between recent launch products and products with more than six months.
In the city of São Paulo, the launch up to six months accounted for 40% of the total transacted in the quarter. Altogether in Brazil, the situation was similar with 39%. Moving on, we are going to go to slide number 11. Here you can see the evolution of our company in important indicators related to our Lopes Labs and the digital transportation that I talked about along the quarter. To your left, you can see that the number of visits to the portal and Lopes blogs grew 192% year-on-year, and 32% compared to the previous quarter, with more than 2.5 million visits. On the chart below, you can see the evolution of 96% in the conversions of visits into leads when we compare to the first quarter of 2020, with a level of 1.67% conversion reached.
As a consequence of a higher number of visits and a better conversion rate, we can see along the quarter that there was an important evolution in the volume of leads originated by Lopes Portal, with more than 32,000 leads in the quarter. This number poses growth of 494% when we compare the same period last year, and 76% when you compare to the fourth quarter of 2020. This evolution, it's important to say, shows our capacity to use our data intelligence to generate more business tri-match. That is, meeting buyers, brokers, and sellers. This is what we want, is to put together the three targets to generate more businesses. It's important that we want to transform Lopes in an increasingly digital company, and the constant evolution of our indicators help us to choose the better path to follow.
The strengthening of Lopes Labs is paramount for us to continue to spread this vision throughout the company, create value, scale, and efficiency in the whole Lopes ecosystem, always focusing on increasing revenues and company profitability. Well, these were my remarks about the operational results of Lopes. Now I'm going to turn to Francisco, that will talk about CrediPronto, and then Matheus will present the company's financial results. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity once more of being able to be here with you. Very proud to give you the results of CrediPronto. It was a very positive result. As we have talked about in the preview of our results, we were expecting to have more than BRL 1.4 billion this quarter. And we did. We went up to BRL 1.430 billion.
It's important to say that in the year of 2020, the originated volume was about BRL 3 billion, and now BRL 1.430 billion is almost 50% of the mortgage volume that we had in the total of the year of 2020. So we are very proud about this number. Well, most of the business has enabled us to improve our portfolio. As you can see on slide 13 to your right, our portfolio is growing consistently. And we have the prepay of mortgage, so duration. Although you're talking about a financing of 30 years, an average term of 327 months, the duration is much lower than that. So replacing these contracts is very important for the portfolio to continue to grow. And this has been another successful driver for CrediPronto.
We have 4,300 new contracts in this quarter, 430 settled contracts, which gives us a replacement of more than 10 new contracts for each contract that is settled. So that's why the portfolio is growing consistently, as you can see on the chart. If you take a look at slide number 14, we have our profit indicators. Basically, we can see the months of March of 2021 with BRL 6.5 million. However, what is accounted for the purposes of the first quarter are the months of December, January, and February. So these are the numbers that you see in this quarter, but we are already seeing positive results in the profit of March 2021. For the considerations of CrediPronto, I think the initial remark is the increase of mortgage volumes, compared to the market.
It's important to say that the market grew 116%, and CrediPronto grew by more than 180%. We are very pleased with our results and the potential of this business line. Without any further ado, I'm going to turn to Matheus, our Investor Relations Officer, to present the financial results. Thank you very much, and I wish you all a very good day.
Thanks, Francisco. Good afternoon, everyone. We are going to start the analysis of our financial results on slide 16, where we show gross revenue reconciliation for the company in first Q 2021. We had transactions closed at BRL 859 million, and net commission 1.97%. It's important to say that the net commission fee in São Paulo was 2.04%. But because of the fees of other regions, especially with lower end, we got to a 1.97%.
When we make the multiples of total transactions, you're going to see that we have a total amount of BRL 70 million. To these revenues, we have to add the other segments, our ROIC franchises and CrediPronto, especially profit sharing and commission on new mortgage. With that, we have BRL 36.8 million in gross revenue, BRL 54.4 million. You have also to talk about the deferred of CrediPronto without a tax effect. On the next slide, we have net revenue and cost expenses in the period. Net revenue reached BRL 49.9 million in first Q 2021, or 68% higher the same period last year. The bar chart shows the contribution of each segment to our net revenue. CrediPronto is 54%, four percentage points above the first Q 2020. Franchise, 8%, 2% above the same period last year. And finally, brokerage with 38%, 6% below the first quarter 2020.
To your right, we see the company's costs and expenses before IFRS. We see an increase in 32.1% in cost and expenses in the quarter, which is basically explained by the increase of commission fees when the mortgage is originated because of more competitiveness among banks. Also personnel with a provision of variable compensation because of a higher profitability of the company in the period. Also, telecommunications and advertising increased basically because of our digital efforts that have already been approached by Marcos. Going to slide number 18, we have comparison between EBITDA and the net margin attributed to controlling shareholders. Here we have on the first chart, 18.5 in EBITDA with margin of 37%, 212% growth in the first quarter 2020. In net income and net margin attributed to controlling shareholders with BRL 10.1 million, 923% above that of first Q 2020 with a margin of 20%.
The considerable improve that we see in this indicator has to do with CrediPronto and franchise, as we are going to see on the next slide number 19. On this slide, we see our results per segment in the quarter without IFRS effect. We see franchise and CrediPronto with a positive contribution about BRL 19 million in EBITDA. The EBITDA margin in franchise was 56.4%, and in CrediPronto 61.5%. Basically, we had a negative contribution in the margin of our transactions, but after depreciation amortization, we get to a net profit of 13.6 with 26.7%, and after the net income attributable to controlling shareholders at 10.1%. Going to slide number 20, we have the impacts of IFRS in our results. The main being depreciation and amortization, non-cashing effect of call and put options, and also some deferred income tax amortization of intangible assets.
It's important to see our numbers without the cash impact for you to better understand the company. On slide 21, we have the cash flow generated and cash equivalents. Here we have, to your left, the cash flow generated by operating activities that is positive in six quarters in a row, positively impacted by CrediPronto profit-sharing and our own operations and franchises.
As for activities and investments, we had cash consumption of about BRL 2.3 million, again for digital operations. In financing activities, we had BRL 9.9 million. Basically, the cash position at the end of the period was BRL 137.2 million. Additionally, the company has an accounts receivable of BRL 22.1 million and therefore we have the final results in cash availabilities in the period. Well, these were my considerations of the company's financial results. Once again, we thank you very much for your attendance, and we are going to open for your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now start the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star one. To withdraw your question from the list, press star two. Please wait while we collect the questions. We have two questions on our side. Is that right? Yeah, we have questions from the webcast. Can I read the questions? Certainly. Well, the first question comes from [inaudible] BBA.
First is the pipeline of launches for the second quarter 2021. Do you see a risk of concentration in these projects, taking into consideration what developers are announcing? Could you give us a bit of color in terms of total transactions expected? Also, could you talk about the behavior of results considering the increase of the average fee of the portfolio and also the impact of the increase in interest rates? Are you expecting any spread this quarter?
Okay, I'll answer that. This is Cyro. Thanks, Andrea, for the question. Well, in fact, the company is quite comfortable with the pipeline that we have for the second quarter. Obviously, it's important to say that at the end of a launch, we depend on the approvals of regulatory agencies, registration at notaries, and then the final decision is always on the developer side. But the pipeline that we are showing is very well-monitored. There are lots of things that are already out in the streets, already in pre-sale, and we are very comfortable with future results. Why is that? Because we have the pipeline coming at the right time.
We have solid demand. We have, in the city of São Paulo, a very comfortable position. Not only in the city of São Paulo with a higher pipeline, but also in other places in Brazil, Santa Maria, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. All that helps us with the pipeline to have a national presence. São Paulo represents the largest group, but we are very comfortable to put our products out in the streets, especially because of the good momentum that the real estate market is enjoying. Francisco, would you like to say something about CrediPronto in terms of spread? Francisco, are you there? I think that Francisco's line has dropped. This is mine.
I'm sorry. I was on mute. I'm sorry, everyone. I was talking, but I was on mute. Matheus, this is a very good question, and this is an opportunity that we have to talk about that. The recomposition that we believe that is going to happen with the spread. When we see the curve inversion, first it went down, and now it is going up, we think this is natural because funding, with SBPE resources, is impacted by Selic.
You have 70% of Selic plus transfer price. We will naturally have also an impact. There is in compression. We have seen similar moments in history like this, and we see a recomposition for the future because there is this higher costs. Then little by little, this is transferred to the buyer. There is an interim moment that you can see some compression, but we believe that that is what it is.
It is an interim moment, and what has been very positive is this amount of origination that has been very positive. We believe, the mortgage volume in a way offsets any compression that we can have from spread. Another important information is to talk about SBPE resources per se. Last year, the net balance in the savings was count was more than BRL 175 billion. The first month, you know that there are more withdrawals than deposits because of seasonality, but the months of April is already positive. There is more deposits than withdrawals. The total portfolio and the balance of the savings system is about BRL 800 billion, which compared to 2019, we see a favorable credit environment. We think that any mortgage values would offset increases in spread.
I would like to add to this answer, saying that the demand for mortgage continues high. We do expect Selic, the interest rate, to go up, but that will decrease prepays. If we have a decrease with less prepays, you are talking also about a larger portfolio, which is a very important data for us to have in mind.
We have a question from Elvis Credendio from BTG Pactual.
Good morning, Marcos, Francisco. This is Mateus Della. I have two questions on my end. The first about franchise. If you could please give us a bit more color about how real estate brokers that come to Lopes have improved their businesses, and how you see new brokers wanting to be a franchisee of Lopes because of the advantages that you bring to these players. Also, I would like to understand about your digital movements.
Why you are having an increasing lead generation, what you are working on now, and what the next steps are going to be. In digital, I would really like to explore the leads. You are talking about lead conversion, that is, people getting in contact with brokers. Do you have any numbers on how much converts leads turn into business? Thank you very much.
Well, Matheus, can you start and then I complete?
Yeah, sure. Okay, Mateus, thanks for the question. I am going to talk about franchise, and then Marcos is going to talk about digital leads. Well, first, thanks for your question. It is very important to say, sometimes we do not talk much about that in calls. If you get the year of 2020, which was a very tough year in terms of uncertainty and the pandemic and everything.
When real estate brokers closed down and sales boosts, we decided to reduce the franchise expansion team, which was the right thing to do because of safety and also because people could not travel. Because results continued to be consistent, even with the pandemic, as of the second half of last year, we saw an increase in interest for Lopes franchisee. The brands was more spread in the market, even based on the digital initiatives, good results for the existing brokers. We saw the demand. We put together again our team in the first quarter this year. As you can see in the results presented, we see a considerable increase in the number of stores. The trend for 2021 is to keep growing in number of franchisees. We know that the real estate market is very scattered.
You have 40,000 real estate brokers in the market, so there is much room to consolidate. We want to have the best partners. Our main focus is not just the number of stores. We want good partners that will make a difference in our bottom line results. Just before Marcos go on, I think what we see in terms of the franchises that come to Lopes is this interest in our digital operations.
As you mentioned, the leads, all the properties on our platform. We have sharing of properties that really accelerate response from customers to brokers. They talk to one Lopes broker. They don't have to talk to all franchisee. They talk to a Lopes broker. Lopes brokers take a look at the inventory of all franchisees, and with that, the experience of the consumer is better, and we can evolve our businesses above the market average. We are very optimistic in terms of expansion. Now Marcos can talk about digital per se.
Well, as you know, our growth with the portal is a consequence of an initiative that started some years ago. Soon after our follow-on, we started to focus on this Lopes Labs initiative to really have a digital transformation in the company. The main input that the company has, which is an entry barrier to other players, is its amount of data. It's a playground for data analysts to work with. We have a database of 9 million buyers, and then we have an inventory of properties with 250,000 units in our base and 12,000 brokers.
You have three universe, three buckets, and our challenge is to increase the tri-match amongst these players using data intelligence to really catalyze the process and meet our mission of having people or helping people find their home. The initiatives that we had before helped us create algorithms to make our process even more efficient. The audience that we had on our portal and the increase of visits that we had. In 2020, we had about 870,000, and then we went up to 2.5 million. Today, we are celebrating 1 million a month on our portal.
That was the fruit of the technical work that we had to improve and enhance our portal, enhance interface with Google, and also the growth of leads that come not only from market investments, but also the efficiency of really presenting Lopes in Google, in the digital media, so that we can have much greater visibility. Lopes shows on the first pages of Google on most searches for real estate. So that's the technical work that is being developed by Lopes Labs with a very broad catalog of initiatives that is just growing along time. We have been investing a lot in terms of money in the process, but also inputs and intelligence that is not easy to replicate, which is our database. Based on that intelligence, we have been able to have better conversion of this audience into leads.
Because if you go and search for a property on Lopes website, three rooms, any district in São Paulo, you'll have five, six alternatives in the bottom line, which is fruit of an algorithm that is learning with similar properties to your search, and that increase conversion. This is one example. We also have the potential buy calculator, which is unique in the real estate market. With three, four questions, you already have answers that even surprise people in terms of their capacity of purchase, together with the financing ability and calculations will enable them to buy from the launch market or the secondary market.
All that reinforces conversion from audience into leads. Then from leads into sales, we are also improving this indicator. We are working on all these metrics to present to the market. What we have been doing is really to have the right client with the right broker with the right type of property, and therefore, we are having conversions way above what we had in the past.
Thanks, Marcos, Matheus. Very clear answers.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you have a question, just press star one. We are now closing the Q&A session. We are going to turn the call back to the company CEO, Mr. Marcos Lopes, for his final remarks.
Well, thank you all very much. I think that we had very good results in the first quarter 2021. We are meeting the operational guidance that we had for the first quarter, confirming our expectations to meet the guidance established in our pipeline, considering that it's possible to perhaps meet one third of this challenge still in the first half of the year. We are very optimistic about the future of the company with initiatives such as the digital transformation, Lopes Labs, and knowing that the initial results that we are presenting are already quite relevant, but just the beginning of a new pathway to follow, full of success and achievements. Thank you very much, and have a good day.
LPS Brasil's conference call is now closed. We thank you very much for your attendance and wish you a good afternoon.