Good morning, everyone. We're going to begin the 4Q 2022 video conference in year of 2022 of Lojas Renner. We have with us Fabio Faccio, CEO, and Daniel Santos, CFO. Before I hand over to them, I have some announcements. This is being recorded and simultaneously translated. The presentation will be shown only in Portuguese. If you are listening in English, the presentation will be available in the chat, on the platform and our IR website. Any questions from journalists can be asked to our press relations at 551131659586.
Before we continue, I'd like to clarify that any statements made during this call, relating to the business outlook and operating and financial goals are our beliefs and assumptions and are based on information currently available and may or may not occur. About the Q&A session, the questions will be made by audio. You can click on Q&A and be in line or in writing in the Q&A button. At the end, I'll explain once again. Now to begin, I'd like to hand over to our speakers.
Thank you, Carla. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our conference call for the year of 2022 and the fourth quarter. First of all, about revenues. In 2022, we presented growth 37% compared to 2019 and 21% year-over-year.
That has been 7 percentage points higher according to the apparel index and a continuous gain in market share. When we look at 2022, we can see that we have a very specific evolution across the quarters. In the first half-year, as of February, we had an increase in mobility, going back to social activities and increasing the sales speed in the following months. We had a second quarter of robust growth, which is much higher than the market average. In the second half of the year, we saw colder temperatures than expected, the election, the World Cup in a more challenging macroeconomic environment, lower purchasing power given the high inflation and delinquency rates not only impacted their flow, the traffic in the points of sale. That was very clear in the fourth quarter.
Even though the month of December was in line with our expectations because we had good performance in Christmas, the 4Q 2022 was similar to the same quarter year-over-year. The performance in the fourth quarter that was very strong, where we grew approximately three times the market. Without a doubt, that shows a tougher economic reality, such as our stores in more mainstream places were the ones that made us grow less in the fourth quarter. We have made one-off adjustments according to the market and in merchandising. Respecting the positioning and a unique value proposition that is more suitable for our customers. Now in 1Q 2023, we've seen the results of those initiatives, and sales are in line with what is expected. We're still gaining market share. About digital GMV.
Our growth continues with relevant growth of 24.5% in 2021 and 33.2% compared to 2019. Our omni strategy was effective, enabling customers to pick the most convenient channel for purchasing, and the share achieved 13.5% in 2022. Our omni-channel base is still growing, achieving 11% and accounts for 30% of our revenues. The marketplace is still evolving with 860 sellers, considering Camicado and Renner, which accounts for 8.5% of the digital GMV. Across 2022, with the consolidated content strategy, Renner has more followers in social media and at the top of Instagram and TikTok. In the quarter, continuing on our growth path and improvement in profitability of the channel. Digital channel grew 6%.
In the year to date, we have 5.8 percentage points with the share of digital sales. We're gaining efficiency in online sales. We achieved 76% in D+2 in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil. We have many activations with influencers and other initiatives. In the gross margin, we're on a path of growing the gross margin. We had a 1.1 percentage point increase compared to 2021, making us even closer to the levels pre-pandemic. Like to highlight, coming down to 5.1 percentage points in gross margin compared to 2021. Better inventory and more efficiency in commercial management enabled us to have historically low levels in markdowns in 2022 compared to previous years.
At Renner TV, for the fourth quarter margin, we had efficiencies in prices for consumers, but the lower share on the assortment and the new collection, the beginning of the season, given the temperatures, lower temperatures affected the margin for the quarter. We ended the year with inventory levels a bit higher than expected, but still better than 2021. Operating expenses, we're still on a path of gaining efficiency and maintaining a reduction of 1.3 percentage points compared to 2021. When we see the chart on the left where you can see the evolution in the four blocks and the same logic that we had for the closing of 2021, you can see that you have gain in scale and efficiency of the operation, even though we have a more challenging macroeconomic scenario. There's the new distribution center in Cabreúva.
In digital, you have the spread system with a drop of 19% compared to 2021 and CAC with lower share in that sense. In the ecosystem, we have an effect of the investments made in 2021 and the carryover. On the right, I'd like to highlight the performance of 2022. We grow 61%, which much higher than our expectations. We had an increase of 5.2 percentage points in the margin compared to 2021, and we continue with the advances in gross margin and expenses. They've also benefited by the lower levels of PPR that I'll mention further into the presentation and higher recovery of tax credits. Approximately 2/3 of recurring increases and the other not so significant to the operation of retail compared to 2021. Here are the results of Realize, our financial product.
They were pressured in Q4 and were lower than our expectations. Compared to the performance in December of the retail industry affected the portfolio, so it's half of what we expected. That in addition to the customers that are eligible for approval or that were, meaning they were not blocked, that dropped 5% compared to 2019. Still, with an external environment with increase in delinquency, even though we are in that scenario, we still had generated revenue. The losses were affected by a difficult macroeconomic context and resulting in higher provisioning of losses as well as recovery of credit. It's worth noting the net loss that was positively impacted by the result of the sales of part of our portfolio that was already written off in the amount of BRL 20 million.
As it's an older portfolio that had already been written off, it doesn't show any impact to the portfolio. On the Realize path, these are some important aspects so we understand the current situation that Realize is going through and the evolution of the work that we've been doing during the whole year. The first aspect that I'd like to mention is the migration of Meu Cartão, which was a necessary movement, and it was done responsibly. The first point is competitiveness. A co-branded product is more flexible and appealing to a customer. That's why we decided to launch the co-branded card, our card would play a star role with our customers. We began this transition after other market players did so. The profitability and sustainability of the portfolio.
The co-branded card offers more options to generate revenues, more share in services, and lifetime value is 20 times higher than the PL. On the left of the slide, in those two blocks, you can see that 70% of the customer base of Meu Cartão card is because of the migration of the private label, and the 70% accounted for 80% of the limit available of expenses of the customer base or card base. When we move them, we have their entire payment and purchasing history. The customer base remained stable from 2019 through 2022. We replenished some that were lost to the pandemic. By expanding Meu Cartão, and the changes in the scenario in Brazil, in addition to credit leading to high delinquency rates in Brazil, that also affected Realize. There's some important information on this other chart here.
First of all, on the top of the slide, we see the risk profile that we have from 2021 and beginning of 2022. We did not have an expansion based on a worsening risk profile. Here on this chart that as of Q2, it was clear for Renner and the entire industry that the credit restrictions, reducing the exposure of origination to a higher risk group, and gradually lowering the number of approvals when we compared that to the previous year. We've gradually balanced out this in the product mix in private label and Meu Cartão. The riskier profiles are first part of the private label. We start off with a private label customer, we understand their purchasing history, and then we move them on to Meu Cartão.
In addition to the initiatives, we took more action in collection, adjusting the commissions to partners, reviewed discount policies, installments, negotiations, as well as the written off portfolio that we mentioned before. When we look at the delinquency levels, we have two things important here. First of all, on the left, we can see that we have high levels, high but stable levels, as you can see on the left. We have a sequential drop of the 60-day overdue. For the 90 are also a consequence of origination and lower expenditures in the portfolio. Based on what I mentioned in the previous, that the portfolio grew less than the forecast, and because we have this stabilization. The change in our portfolio has already presented results.
In over 60 and over 90, you can see a significant sequential improvement in delinquency. Even though the results are lower than expected in Q4, the actions and risk management taken in 2022 gives us a better performance in 2023. In the first quarter is still pressured with the delinquency levels, and you'll see that a little, but we're confident in the recovery as of the second half of 2023. We'll continue to work to improve that in bringing in more assertiveness to Realize. We're integrating it to our fashion ecosystem and provide this benefit for our customers. Today we have 18 million customers active and 6 million at Realize. We still have an opportunity to increase that, and when we consider our customers from retail. Now about total company EBITDA.
For 2022, it was 43% higher year-over-year, given the better operating performance. The performance is under our expectation in increasing that for compared to 2019, especially when we consider Realize that we mentioned beforehand.
For the total quarter, this is 18%. With the gross margin, you can see here our OpEx with better rates of recovery. We had better distribution this year, leading to a forecast under the regression of the fourth quarter. In 2021, the company distributed the PPR non-currently, non-concurrently. This is the net profit, which was a record for 2022. Due to the better performance in retail with BRL 1.3 billion, 52% were distributed in compensations. What's important is the ROIC increased in reinforcing the company's commitment to returning capital. This gives us some comfort to continue investing in the value proposition. We have a cash flow position with BRL 3.5 billion and BRL 3.1 billion. With this new restructuring or reorganization, we recovered the shares and amortized more in increasing opportunities.
We continue anticipating, the dividends for 2023.
Now I'd like to pass the floor to Fabio and the other presenters here. Thank you.
Thank you, Carla. Just to reinforce here, Daniel, make it clear that we continue working on developing our lifestyle system. We've done a lot before, we still have a lot to do now. We are going to reap the fruits from 2021 and 2022, we still have to pave the road to where we want to go. We have now a better company, a better structured company, more tools, more possibilities, the trend is to be even better. We are better. We were better at the end of 2022 than in 2021, certainly, we will do even better in 2023. Our active base has around 19 million clients.
With the omni-channel clients in focus, providing our better margins, this is going to be better for us as well. In addition to the digital advances, as Daniel said, we had important evolutions in digitizing our stores as well with the omni proposition and digital channels, mainly integration with all the stores. We increased participation of these new modalities for payment in the brick-and-mortar stores from the employees' devices or client devices, mainly highlighting our self-service cashiers or self-service stations. We are the only ones in Brazil working with RFID, reading the SKUs of the product, the same system can also activate the alarms in addition to cashing out the items. There's nothing like it in Brazil.
We have already 437 self-service stations in Renner stores. We want to reach at least 90 more stores this year. As I said, RFID will be important, and we're the only apparel company in Brazil working fully with RFID codes in our points of sale. Still on the E-expansion and investments, we inaugurated 20 stores in 2022 with all of our brands, and 30 of these were in new locations. It's an important expansion, adding new markets to our portfolio, bringing in more sales outside of the brick-and-mortar stores and also in boosting sales in our digital channels. We've also increased our digital assortment. We have 250% more assortment with support from our marketplaces and Camicado.
Our online service level, as Daniel Santos said, up to two days or up to 48%, 70%-80% in the metropolitan areas of São Paulo and Rio, we expect to reach the same rate around Brazil very soon. Still on logistics, we had a large investment in our Cabreúva DC. According to our schedule, we have already run all the tests at the end of 2022, now we have started operations at beginning of 2023. With our soft entry, we have Camicado operating from there, we are going to slowly increase the volumes, which is currently at 10%, we're going to gradually ramp up in the next few months.
This new DC is one of our greatest investments. This will allow us to gain efficiency, speed, synergy among the businesses. This is one of the main elements to recover profitability as well. It's the first totally omni DC in Brazil, operating with fully integrated stock and totally available both for digital and brick-and-mortar stores, operating at 100% SKU-based. 100% SKU operations from this DC. In terms of the logistics network, it is a great location for us, providing great synergy to all of our businesses, leveraging Renner's scale for all of the channels and companies. This brings in a great deal of efficiency. This is in line with our strategy to expand, invest, become more attractive for our clients with our products and services.
We've also launched our new soft launch program, and we also have our digital platform. The combination of these two initiatives will reinforce the relationship with our customers, bring more ease and benefits for them, and foster the omni-channel clients and the Realize services and cross-branded services from between Camicado, Ashua, Renner, et cetera. With that, the services revenue has also gained more relevance and should also increase continuously. Thus reducing the dependence on credit. We have our strategic priorities here, also seen on this slide. These are the priorities to deaccelerate our growth and focused on being more references in lifestyle, responsible fashion. Also, we want to improve the agility, the development, and speed of our collections production until this becomes available to our customers.
With that, we want to mitigate the risk of fashion to be more assertive with our products, increase our margins and sales, improve our efficiency, improve our assortment at lower risks. We also do this, turning our chain more agile and more efficient, and this becomes a virtuous cycle for our customers. Our results get better and our partnership get better. We also have another important investment in our logistic platform. In addition to our new DC, which is ramping up, as I said, we also have transformational exercises from the operations in our logistic chain, looking at the synergy between the brands to leverage gains of us and Elo operating 100% on SKUs. All of this provides better margin and gains and efficiency, which is also in line with the expansion of the omni experience.
We're going to accelerate the conversion of clients from the mono channel to the omni-channel and in our brick-and-mortar stores as well. This brings gains, frequency with better margins. We continue gaining scale on digital, with more profitability. Not only improving the services usability and predictability, with better assortment for our clients. From the point of view of the value adaptation, there's an organic flow reducing the dependence of a paid flow, reducing the cost of client acquisition, both from the initiatives for speed, assertiveness, and content and loyalty generation. We are still advancing the recovery of attractiveness and profitability with our financial operations, using up the ecosystem with better integration of ROIC, as I mentioned previously. This creates benefits not only for the financial services, for the different interfaces as well.
Well, in the last few years, we have been facing some external challenges. The market has become more challenging. We continue to evolve. Year-over-year, we continue evolving. Now we are at this point where we tend to be reaping more fruits than investments. We continue to invest. We will probably invest a nominal value similar to what was invested in the previous year. With greater revenue and better results from these previous investments. Today, we have BRL 2.5 billion in cash, which provides great comfort to continue accelerating and continue evolving and investing. We see that this is a more challenging environment for many companies. We are at ease with our results to continue advancing with solidity and consistency. Even in this challenging time, clients are looking for reliable brands.
I think this is also, once again, like we saw this at the beginning of the pandemic, we now see some of the economic effects from these last few years. The trend is to strengthen our market gain as well. Renner has always been at the top during these challenging times. Once again, this is our trend to continue gaining market share, both from the confidence in the brand and due to all of these different initiatives in the last few years and with some of the examples provided here. We continue working to offer an appropriate value equation to our clients, as Daniel said, within our strategy, where value prop, how we can be more assertive to adjust our prices.
We've also seen a very positive trend throughout the year and in the next few months with lower inflation effects on our cost and product, and probably throughout the year, this might even bring this positive trend to us, which should provide a gross margin in evolution. Realize, although this is a very challenging environment as well, we see positive signs from all of these different actions as Daniel showed, and this should also reflect in an improvement, especially in the second half of the year. We continue to evolve in the digital channel, but with profitability to improve price cost, to improve efficiency in digital and our omni efficiency as well. We have several opportunities for 2023 to see these constant improvements for our efficiency in SG&A and revenue.
Lastly, we are prepared and ready to enchant our clients even further with continued evolution as well. Now we go into our Q&A. Before, let me ask Carla to tell you something.
Well, before we begin the Q&A session, I'd like to invite you all to our Investor Day. It will take place on May fourth. We're going to give you more details and information as we advance here. The idea is that we have our call and then have the Investor Day to talk about growth and the projects that we've been focusing on a lot. We'll provide further information when the time comes. Now, we're open for Q&A.
You can click on the Q&A button, or you can also click on the button Raise Hand. You can put them in writing, and if possible, you can ask all the questions at once. For the first is from Vinicius Britto from Bank of America.
How are you doing? Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking our question, and congratulations on your results.
Could you give us more information about the tax credit recovery in the fourth quarter? How can we think of that looking forward? You've been doing great work on that. What else can we expect in opportunities moving forward if they're relevant, and how relevant they are? Second question is, we see a lower share of your own cards in this quarter. You also mentioned less origination than expected because that's a reflection of these customers that have been blocked. Do you see your own card in sales in 2023? Have you seen any movement of the blocked customers to other payment methods, or is it directly impacting your sales?
Thank you, Vinicius. Well, first of all, about the tax credits.
This year, we had two tax credits, and you can see that in the explanatory notes that happened this year. Their tax credit recovery is be it through case law or court decision. Some are one-off. To be honest, it's really hard to predict what's going to happen for the upcoming year. We imagine it being more normal. We believe that that would be normalized in 2023, in line with the historical average that we've had in the past. About the lower share of Meu Cartão. Well, with more restrictive policies, that affects the share. As you saw on the chart that I showed, the entire market is feeling more pressure. Everybody's talking about stricter criteria in providing credit. Realize follows the same logic.
What you've saw on the chart is that we have a possibility of working on that mix of Meu Cartão and private label. In the past three or four years, mainly, we have more origination in private label, and that should continue in the upcoming months, and that will help us to recover the share of Meu Cartão. The restriction, in a way, exists for many people. It exists in the market. When you have the private label card, it becomes an interesting option for customers, considering the advantages that it has. We see this as something that's like a one-off, and we should see slight recovery in upcoming quarters.
Perfect. Very clear. I have a follow-up on that. You mentioned improvement of the new batches, and that's very clear in the chart.
When you see current scenarios, do you think we're closer to a moment of going back to providing more credit, or are you still being cautious?
I'd say a moment of caution, because when we see economic indicators. The curve of worsening delinquency is better, but it's still there. We're monitoring that. We do believe that as of the second quarter, that curve will show a dropping trend, then we can reassess and decide the strategy that we're going to use. Right now, we remain cautious. We're monitoring, as I mentioned, we're favoring origination through private label. Across the first and second quarter, if we see an evolution of the indicator and of the industry, we can go back to origination, maybe with a different strategy.
Perfect. Very clear. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Vinicius. Next question is from Danny from XP. Danny, go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have a couple. First of all is a better explanation about the first quarter dynamics. Daniel Santos mentioned that it's in line with the forecast. Can you give us more visibility about what that means and also connect that to the adjustments in price architecture? Not only in your case, but in general, there was a strong transfer of price given the raw material prices. Now with the macro scenario, that's an important challenge to see consumption happening. What can we expect in terms of these adjustments or maybe even drop prices to foster volume? Give us some visibility about what you're doing in the first quarter and the impact of sales. Second, to Fabio Faccio's point about the ecosystem and reaping the results that we should see in 2023.
On the chart you showed us, you see 2024 and 2025. Maybe 2023 is the beginning of that movement of capturing efficiencies. Also, I'd like to hear about the main levers that you see in gains in gross margin and EBITDA. If you could comment, I know it's harder to be accurate on this. We've had many discussions in the tax discussion about potential changes and adjustments that would impact the retail industry in a relevant manner. I'd like to know which discussion is on your radar as a potential risk.
Thank you for your question. About the performance, not only for the quarter and the year, I'm going to talk about the macro scenario. We've been seeing and they're different scenarios, right?
Daniel well explained in the beginning of the call that in 2022 was a very volatile year. Sometimes you look in the short term, and then you have a different expectation of the normalized idea. In the beginning, we thought, well, is this a trend because we had a very good quarter? No, that's an outlier because there were some non-recurring that were positive. About winter and recovery of traffic in the stores, and that helped us in the second quarter. On the other hand, in the fourth quarter, we also had some non-recurring impacts. An extension of that in the beginning of the spring and summer, and then the World Cup took away that traffic, and that's not recurring. Some people are thinking, well, what's it like moving forward?
I would say that the second quarter was not a reference, nor was the fourth quarter. They're non-recurring. Our expectation for the year is positive. It's about growth in sales with a reduction on expenses over revenue and gaining margin and profitability. That's the expectation for the year. During the year, we expect better gains. The first quarter is better than the fourth quarter, and so on and so forth. We have a positive outlook for the year. I wouldn't I don't just wanna talk about the short term because it's really early to talk about that. When you asked about the price adjustments that Daniel mentioned in his talk, and it's part of our strategy, this is not a change in strategy.
We feel that the customers' purchasing power is suffering from pressure, especially low and middle income, they feel more pressure. We see clusters in stores, like Daniel mentioned, that have a target B and C plus, mainly, they usually suffer more. We don't feel that problem in the stores where people have a higher purchasing power. We've have joint efforts with our suppliers, so we can have a more appealing price or more quality at the same price level. To improve the equation of value for our customers and at the same time, solutions and products that these customers are demanding according to that specific store and value proposition. What we've currently been seeing in prospecting and looking at the market is that the pressure is lessening.
In the past years, we had raw materials going up, freight, international freight going up, and now it's the opposite. Freights are dropping. Raw material prices are going down as well. The industry with higher production capacity compared to the demand that we see in retail in general. That's a positive outlook in our opinion. We've been providing better equations of value for our customers within our value proposition. Especially now in the upcoming months, we should see lower pressure and having margin growth and consequently increasing sales. If price is increasingly more important to our customers, when we get better prices with the same product or even a better product, we can have not only gains in margin, but also in sales during the year. Would you like to comment?
I'd like to add to your answer.
There's also a question from Andrew. I think we can also answer that. As Fabio mentioned, we're talking about working fashion, right? Consumers are tight on cash. The interesting thing about fashion is that you can execute fashion in a way where you can bring in trends and specific things that are unique, but also be careful with the price. There's also visual merchandising. What does that mean? When you realize what you put in the store window or somewhere else, the product that you're offering and the execution in the point of sale, we try to respect those specific customer moments, and that's the type of changes that we're making. It's not so much about lowering margin because then the price would be lower. It's actually executing fashion as a product.
One of the principles that we use is the market pyramid and price pyramid and execution in stores. That's actually what we're doing. About the ecosystem and the tax credits, I'd like to say that without a doubt, as of 2023, we're going to reap the results, but actually we're gonna reap more results in 24 and 25, like our distribution center. We're going to have all of fashion in the beginning of the third quarter in there. We know that that distribution center, as Fabio mentioned, is a big lever for a lot of things like productivity and efficiency in our logistics chain. When we have supply, part of it is from the brick-and-mortar stores and part of it is digital. We want to protect the fourth quarter because it's the strongest one.
That's we may have a weaker base or comparison, we want to be sure that things will be smooth in the fourth quarter. That's one lever. The other lever is that we'll increase our efficiency gains in the digital operation. In our expansion plan, for instance, that we've always been reiterating that we have an expansion plan in new places, we want to gain scale in those places in an incremental manner. As we've explained before, the expansion plan needs to have scalability, and the way the volume is going to grow is much stronger than it would grow in a city where we already have a number of stores. Those three elements.
Like we will collect some or reap some of the results now, but in 2024 and 2025, we're gonna scale up those benefits, be it through the distribution center or the investments that we're making in digital. In the marketplace, for instance, that's been gaining more share. It will continue to become important and it's a driver of profitability for us.
For fiscal and tax, we can say that there's a lot going on, not one specific thing. We've been following all these different changes in the market, and our trust, our confidence is that whatever happens is going to affect all of the players. Everybody's going to work in the same way, gaining more efficiency to get through it. Depending on what happens, we might have to make some changes, but there's no specific concern for us. In apparel, we might see some different distribution and in tax burdens, and there might be something that affects the price scenario. We're careful, we are aware, we are looking at everything that is happening so that we can plan some kind of a necessary adjustment. Just to add, there's nothing that really concerns us from previous judgments.
Just to answer some of these questions, we are not seeing any impact to our operations from any of the judicial decisions.
Thank you. Next question is from Luiz Guanais, from BTG.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. Good morning, Fabio, Daniel, and Carla. I have two questions here. My first question, going back to this discussion of the margins in 2023, if you could maybe explain the acceleration of credit concession and what you see in terms of the price adjustments and what and any initiative that you might want to use to leverage the top line. Second question is if we could talk about the performances between shopping center doors and the stores from the street.
About the margin, right now, I think there's some inflation in the industry that's been very relevant in the last few years, not only in apparel. This certainly pressures the markdowns. We do see some inflation, but I believe that gradually this will tend to reduce until it's. This is what is playing in our favor because we can see more products. We want to have more appropriate prices for the clients, and we also want to provide better margins, of course. Right now, we see the same scenarios in the last few months with a tendency to have a little bit more strength, not because of price increase, but because of the resources that we tend to be able to provide better products at good prices to our customers.
I think this should have a positive impact as well. This has a positive impact throughout the year. About what Daniel mentioned, the biggest difference for us is the public profile, right? Regardless if it's going to be a shopping mall store or a store on the street, this is basically for our audience. We see that they suffer a little bit more when they are more concentrated in B and C classes and less in A, regardless if the store is out in the on the street or in a mall. These shopping malls have a different curve. Now we have to talk a little bit about this and what we say might cause some confusion. This is focused on new markets, especially.
These new markets in some cities are stores on the streets. They're popular stores. The truth is that in some cities, those streets are, quote, unquote, "the mall of the city," but we also have intermediate stores. I would also say that we have another opportunity that we don't mention a lot, but the portfolio of stores, adding new stores within our best clusters, and this is still a good potential for us with online additional online sales. We also see some one-off opportunities. We've been doing this, closing this or that store and converting the sales from this store to another store in that same area. There is no trend of performance in terms of region or if a store is in the mall or on the street, but first, social classes.
Thank you for your answers.
We have a question from Santander, from Ruben Couto.
Hi, everyone. You mentioned a share gain for 2022. Can you share with us how much you estimate the company's share was for this year? I wanted to understand your view of the consolidation in the industry and now I think it's happening even with large or small competitors closing down stores. I wanna understand what opportunities you see in this current scenario or with the different channels, and even with this discussion that you just mentioned, Fabio, the exposure to different types of public profiles, of the audience profile that you didn't foresee or didn't imagine. When we look at the market, depending on what we on where we look, we always have gains. Sometimes we have periods that are a little stronger than...
We had a 7-point gain. Is the growth is above the average of the market according to official IBGE data. What we understand is that we should continue gaining market share with even with new competitors. As you mentioned, there are several of them that are just stepping out or exiting, and we saw this a little bit more enhanced during the beginning of the pandemic, and now we see a second wave of competitors closing down. During the pandemic, there was more restriction affecting our flow. Now, as companies have reorganized and what we've seen a second wave of companies, not only small companies, but also medium and large struggling. The competition has reorganized in this market.
Some have reduced a lot their collections, their assortment, and others have just closed the doors and left the market. I think we are still on a good trend and with good expectations to grow in this market due to what we have already invested, the new tools and this new organization of the market and confidence in the brand as we've always had. The opportunity that we have to continue growing in the market is very important, and this second wave that we see in the market is going to reorganize the market. Let me see if I understand correctly. Due to the context of this consolidation for other reasons does not change your strategy. Is that correct? No. We are not going to change our position. We continue with our investment priorities.
What we have done is one-off adjustments, providing more value to our customers within our proposition, where we can have a better value equation for our customers. These are our efforts to provide the same product at the best price or even better product at the same price. Our expansion plan for Youcom and the omni revenue leaves us in a very good position for consolidation. We are gaining share. We can continue growing share. You mentioned that the industry is weak, but I think we are very well established, and this allows us to gain share and gain more relevance in the market.
That's clear. Thank you.
Our next question is from João Soares from Citi.
Thank you, guys. I have two very quick questions. First, just revisiting the medium-term expectation for the company.
We had an expectation of 15% top line growth. I wanna understand if this is still part of the company's plans and the view of margin recomposition. How long do you expect to wait until you can recover your EBIT of margin? I understand that there were one-offs. The third quarter was a bit more challenging, but the pre-RFS EBIT result was a little bit below the expectation. I wonder, just then, if this impacts your medium-term expectations. Secondly, about the investments. You mentioned that this year's investment should be similar to the investment levels in 2022. I wanna understand a little bit more about this CapEx.
Well, about division of growth, we were talking about that for the year that would go back to that vision that we had in the past, 13%, 15%. I'd say that our growth moving forward for upcoming years is still around the same number. In 2023, we also have a challenge of the economy recovery. I still think that 2023 is gonna be more about price. We have price carryover from 2022 is still strong. What's going to make a difference is our ability to recover scale and thesis and volume. On one hand, we have the, all the work that we've already done in terms of the value proposition, our expansion in new places. That's what make us a little under or over that long-term vision.
In terms of the recovery, it's pretty much what I already answered to Danny. The results of our investments. In 2023, we already see some recovery, and then in 2024 and 2025, that picking up momentum. We believe that we'll see sequential recovery of the EBITDA margin in the upcoming years, bringing us closer to that base of comparison that we had from the past. In investment, to invest approximately BRL 1 billion in 2023 this, or this year. We're gonna open approximately 40 stores. We're gonna have a bit more investment in performance with the pandemic. Excuse me, with remodeling the stores, actually. We're going to invest more in 2023 in that to ensure that our stores look beautiful and modern and offer a great journey for our customers. We'll still have investments in digital.
Those are the three areas where we will invest 90% of the funds.
Very clear. Thank you, Daniel.
Next question is from Vinicius Strano from UBS. Go ahead, Vinicius.
Thank you, everyone. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. We see some news from your competitor in the cross-border side trying to produce an outsourced plants here in the country. I'd like to know your strategy to mitigate competitive risks coming from that expansion. The second question about the ramp-up costs of the distribution center in Cabreuva. Can you give us an idea about how much that contributed in the growth of your G&A? What do you expect, or how do you expect that will evolve moving forward, the costs of the rollout of the distribution center? Thank you.
I can talk about the competition.
First of all, competition is always healthy. It drives the industry, it adds more value for consumers. In 2022, we collected BRL 3 billion in taxes. In Brazil, we operate with approximately 25,000. We understand that their international platform, and it's more difficult to tax imported items. The difficulty in taxing that is unloyal competition, right? They're paying less taxes. That's an important thing that we have to bear in mind. Operating in Brazil and operating in the same conditions that everybody else does, that's great. We see that as a very positive thing. If that happens, we'd be on the same page, it would be equal, and the price differential that's huge today will no longer exist, without a doubt. About the distribution center, I'd say that in 2022, we had approximately BRL 70 million-BRL 80 million.
That was an additional cost in 2022 to ramp up the distribution center. We still have 20-30 to grow in 2023, and the costs would be able to recover that. The potential benefits that will come from that, meaning the benefits related to storage efficiency and handling and all the others related to, we're gonna operate more, we'll have more efficient replenishment, markdown levels would be even lower. We believe with the new DC model operation, we'll be able to operate our inventories in a more efficient manner, and that benefits will be felt in as of 2024.
Perfect. Thank you.
Next question, Thiago from Itaú.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. My question is about the co-branded portfolio.
We've heard about a very conservative stance in the past six months regarding that portfolio, given the impact that we had to the portfolio. Still, we see a growth of almost 10% in that portfolio sequentially, which is one of the biggest ones compared to all the companies that we cover and all banks that we cover, except for Nubank. I'd like to create a bridge actually between the more conservative discourse and what I see in the figures. The figures still suggest that Realize is expanding, and I can't see this in the very short term, any signs of changing that. Thank you.
Marcos, what's interesting to mention is that, first of all, if you compare a portfolio from before and what we have now, the late payments that were 18 are now 28. Part of that portfolio is overdue.
We have to see that vision. The second thing is there's also part of that portfolio that's the migration. When we compare that to 2019, you can see that the customer base is still the same. It didn't expand. 5.8 active millions, 1.8. And when you see the 5.8, the ones that are approved, we have actually less than 2019. Yes, the numbers do show a growth of 10%, but when we also look at the customers and the limits available, that number is not that high. Moving forward, what we see is that, and we can see that in the figures, is that we're being cautious in granting credit, obviously, because of the macroeconomic environment. We've been...
We believe that the best way to know our customers is through their purchasing history, and then we can move them to co-branded. We believe that in 2023, we'll see an expansion. We see that end to end, but it's based on the expectation that across 2023, we'll see a recovery, especially in the second half, enabling us to grow our customer base again somehow. Like the 18 million retail active customer base, we can still bring a part of that into the card. A drop in delinquency rates so that we can move customers from private label to co-branded.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Marcos. We still have some people in line for questions and other questions that we received in the chat. Given the time, we won't be able to cover all of them.
Now I'll open to the last question by audio. If you didn't hear the answers in the previous questions, please contact us and we'll answer them for you. Last question is from Joseph Giordano from JPMorgan. How are you doing, Joseph?
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Hi, Daniel, Fabio, and Carla. Actually, I have 2. The first one is about the strategy of the brands that we don't really talk much about. There's Camicado, Youcom, that's doing very well. We don't really talk about it. The other brands like Ashua, that has a huge market potential. The first question is about Camicado. How should we think about that brand moving forward? When you see a drop in revenues as big as it was in the 4th quarter, that's kind of scary. I'd like to hear your diagnosis on that. Gross margin is back. The revenue is kind of weak.
Second question is from Youcom. Very healthy brand, healthy gross margin for a while now. Today, I'd like to understand how do you see the potential to expand that brand and even potential revenues looking forward to four or five years. To the last question about Realize. When we talk about the provision, IFRS provision, it shows less adherence than it had in the past.
I believe that that statistical provision policy was based on the private label history. I'd like to know if there's a conversation going on to change that. In terms of the IFRS, to have more adherence of Meu Cartão in the portfolio. Thank you.
Thank you, Joseph. To summarize Camicado. Like you well said, we had significant growth, that shows that there was a moment in the past where we had too many sales. In the comparable base, you have a unhealthy growth compared to the previous year. We did adjust that to our products, to our strategy. In comparative terms, there's a loss in sales, but healthier sales. We've been gaining efficiency in Camicado. We should still have room for margin improvements, and that's mainly based on the improvement of our assortment with products and strategy that's similar to Renner, where we're increasing the share of our own products. That has a better equation for our customers and for us. Part of that comparison is affected because even in unhealthy sales, it was especially in digital channel, we're getting that right.
We're growing. We have room to grow, but we'll grow with efficiency. We'll grow with profitability and good margins, not only in digital, but also in brick-and-mortar. In Camicado, we have more opportunities than the other brands in portfolio management efficiency. There are significant changes that we can make that will really increase Camicado efficiency. We're gonna have profitability gains in the operation, but not necessarily in this specific moment, right, in the top line. It's an operation that's been improving a lot and will bring in increasingly more efficiency as well as bottom line growth and top line growth. E-commerce. E-commerce is just taking off. We have a lot of opportunities not only to continue to grow, but also increase assortment and expansion. E-com has huge potential. You mentioned four or five years.
I imagine that in four or five years from now, we could maybe triple the E-commerce top line with very significant profitability and getting close to Renner, maybe even. Very significant expectations for E-commerce as well.
As for Realize and for the criteria of the forecasts, something we have already addressed during other calls. First of all, there's a history of recovery here. We follow this criteria, and this is obviously going to be updated from time to time. We have not changed this criteria. What's interesting here is that we have a different way of looking at this portfolio. When we look at the total portfolio, we had a historically high coverage of the provision portfolio. Now we are stabilizing the 90, and we're going to see a downwards trend because we have new collections, and this coverage is going to start increasing, and the total portfolio coverage is going to start going down.
What I can say is that we have no planned changes because we follow statistical criteria, which is audited and checked, and we are at ease. We don't think that the current coverage levels will be enough for the loss expectation in the future. Okay?
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, Joseph.
Just a quick correction. Now we'll go into the last question. Question from Goldman Sachs.
Hi, good morning, Carla, Fabio, and Daniel. Thank you for this opportunity. I actually have a couple follow-ups. It's become very clear that the sales in the fourth quarter have suffered, but I wanted to understand the behavior per category. If you could tell us which categories are high and low performers, just to better understand if sales could also be suffering any impact from the advances of Shein in Brazil. Your own cards, can you understand how much is private label, how much is not, and if you have a target for 2023?
Okay, Felipe. We still don't have a big difference in categories as we mentioned.
The biggest difference is in the profile of the audiences, where we've seen these clear differences, not per category or region or size of the store, or if it's a mall store or a street store, but basically due to the audience, the public, the people who shop there. If we look at this, we don't usually look at the product level, but we can see more or less or the basis, which is around 80, 75, 25. Which is basically the same for available digital portfolio. Honestly, we are a bit indifferent here between these. We don't have a specific target for this or that product. What we do know is that, as we said, one product may be more versatile, so it could provide more revenue. Of course, if we can evolve with Meu Cartão, the trend is to look at this.
We have the CCR basis because it's important. 'Cause some clients, customers want private label. They want those benefits from that card, and we also have the risk profile. These two products will coexist, and the strategy is to use these two product to offer better options to the customer or what makes sense for those risk profiles and what doesn't. Some want Meu Cartão, some want some other benefits. I think this is the answer to your question about our own, our own brand card. The private brand card or Renner card is an entry way. You start getting to know the customer.
Of course, you get to know how the customer uses the card, you know a little bit more about the clients. Possibly migrating this customer to the other card that provide better profitability. You have to establish the relationship with the client. As you get to know the customers better, we can expand into the co-branded cards.
Okay, great. Very clear. Thank you.
All right. With that, we close our Q&A session. Would you like to say any closing remarks?
Well, just thank everyone for joining. I'd like to see you all during our Investor Day in May. Thank you, everyone. We expect to see you all during our Investor Day in May. We are very confident that we're going to gradually recover our efficiency and EBIT throughout the year. Thank you.
Have a good weekend.