Good morning. Welcome to the video conference of M. Dias Branco. Reference to the results of the second quarter of 2022. We have with us Gustavo Lopes Theodozio, Vice President of Investments and Controllership, and Fabio Cefaly, Director of New Business and Investor Relations. Be informed that this event will be recorded, and during the presentation all of the participation, you only hear the teleconference. After that, we'll start the question and answer section, only for analysts and investors. Transmission will also be done simultaneously on YouTube at the address www.youtube.com/rimdias. We like to share that any declarations that may be made during this conference are relative to the perspective of business for M. Dias Branco, their projections, and they constitute the beliefs and premises of the management of the company, as well as the information currently available.
These involve risks and uncertainties and premises as they refer to future events which may or may not happen. Investors should understand that economic conditions in the industry and other factors, operational factors, may affect the future performance of M. Dias Branco and bring to results that differ materially from those expressed as the opinions of the management. I would like to pass it over to Gustavo, who will begin the presentation. Go ahead, Gustavo.
Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Welcome to our quarterly teleconference. We'll go to the highlights, but before that, I would like to start by thanking our team for the efforts and the commitment and for the deliveries that they have made during these last few quarters. It has been a lot of hard work.
However, with the efforts of everyone, the company has been able to navigate masterfully in this troubled sea that we are in right now, currently. However, Fabio, go ahead, go to the second slide. I wanna start with the highlights, and then I'm gonna pass that over to Fabio, who will go into more detail. At the end of the meeting, we'll come back for the Q&A session. Okay, we're here at page three. We start with the highlights. The first of which is net revenue in the second quarter of 2022 of BRL 2.5 billion. A record, a quarterly record for the company, for any quarter. Our SG&A expenses are below 20% of our net revenue.
An important message to the market in the sense that the company has been able to maintain its expenses under control, lower than the history of M. Dias Branco. In this quarter, we also had BRL 357 million, double in the same period of last year in EBITDA, the double of the EBITDA that we had in the second quarter of 2021. Our EBITDA margin hit 14.3%, almost six percentage points higher than in the same period last year. It's important to point out that we acquired the acquisition of Jasmine. We're very awaiting the final approval of the CADE, of the regulators to proceed with that, and we're very optimistic that this final okay should happen by the end of August.
We made an important strategic alliance with the generation of clean, wind-driven energy, certified energy. This alliance will represent 50% of our energy needs. It will be from wind energy sources, clean sources. This partnership will go to improve the reduction of the cost of energy in which we spend about BRL 4 million a year, and it's an investment on the order of three years. It was a very important for us, for M. Dias Branco. The third aspect that we're going to go more detail is the relaunch of the program Simplifique, where we'll together with several consultants to simplify our processes, revising of all the company's different areas, and which will go together with our system.
We have a system which is quite old, the operating system, which needs a modernization for quite a while. Now we decided to go ahead and do that migration from our current ERP to the new ERP, the Simplifique ERP. In this quarter, we were highlighted in the ESG question, both in the Exame magazine. We're recognized as one of the best ESG companies. We had joined the group of ATF, which is in 2022 led by Banco Safra, where companies only can join who have a presence of women on their board of directors and in their directorship and in their committees, public health companies in this condition.
It shows our alignment with our commitments, which were published in the last quarters, where we defined that we would have 40% of women in our leadership position by 2023. Together with other commitments connected with ESG questions. We wanna remember also at the end of this presentation. Remembering also our strategy, the first growth pillar is to grow our current businesses, protecting our area in which we have a higher participation, which in the north and northeast, which we call our defense area. To grow in the attack area, which corresponds to the south, southwest, southeast, and center west. Not only to grow, but also to do better with the correct portfolio. What's underway right now, we'll also present this, the results of each one of these two areas.
The second pillar is the internationalization of the company. We're going through the process of exportation. We're already exporting to more than 40 countries. It's an area that has grown a lot, and at some point in time, we should move forward in that pillar through either M&A or through greenfield operations. The third pillar, which is the entrance into other categories, has been happening already. Recently, we launched the potato chips, Piraquê potato chips, and also through the acquisition, as you've seen, there was recent acquisitions in the last eight months.
We're talking about important brands such as Fit Food, Frontera, Smart, the line of spices and seasonings, and Jasmine Alimentos, which is a company focused on the market in the category of integral food, health food, whole grain food which will join our network and will give us an important scale. Being able to transform this company into the biggest company as we did with the Piraquê brand. This is also supported by a program of productivity and efficiency, which began in 2019 and has multiplied and which went through a restructuring and is now doing the internal revision of all the processes of the company with the intention of simplifying them and the change of the ERP, giving more robustness, more strength, and security in our day-to-day operations.
Remembering that, as I mentioned on the previous slide, the Piraquê brand is being a picture of how the operations of Piraquê are doing. When we look at the revenue, it grew by 44% quarter-on-quarter. We already have a penetration in Brazilian homes of 25%. A growth in a defense area of 87%, remembering that Piraquê is a brand which is very well known, however, it's also and very large in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It's basically a Rio brand. After the acquisition by M. Dias Branco in 2018, it's been a job of deconcentrating the sales in Rio and growing them in other states and regions.
Remembering that, it's now all over Brazil, starting with the adjacent states, Minas, Paraná, Espírito Santo, Rio, and scaling up for the south, southeast, center west, north, and northeast of the country. The dense area, we remember, is the north, northeast, an area where we had very little presence of the Piraquê brand, and which is now a brand which has a strong presence, a very relevant presence in all of these sales points of sale in the northeast. Which gives us the growth of 87%. It's also a brand which has been a focus in the exportation area. Lots of value-added margins that are well above the average margins of the company. It has been a focus of exportation, especially in the Southern Cone.
We're talking about Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina, where there's a lot of relevance in the market of these three countries. We continue to invest in the brand, both in advertising campaigns as well as in other regions beyond Rio, but also through investments in launches such as the Duplo Malt. This line is always a bestseller of the Piraquê brand. It should grow this family of products, of cookies being launched this year in the second half of this year.
It's also important to mention that this brand is from 2018, has grown in sales 4 times its capacity in sales, which shows the capacity of us to scale up companies that are acquired using all of our distribution network, our large number of DCs and all of the synergies with our 15 factories in productive areas, and also our very expressive sales force and trade marketing teams. Beyond the Piraquê brand, we've also want to point out Latinex brand, which is a recent acquisition. We acquired Latinex in October. It will be closed the beginning of November. Since then, it's grown 95% through our distribution network, through our commercial team.
We continue very optimistic and hopeful about what can be done with these five brands that we see here of Latinex: Fit Food, Smart, Frontera, Tyrrells, and Taste&Co. We mentioned that its revenue has grown in the number of points of sale by 234%. We're now entering into important supermarket chains, showing the strength of M. Dias Branco, such as Carrefour, Grupo BIG, Atacadão. We understand that this will also be done as soon as we can, the closing of the Jasmine deal, which we expect, which we plan to do with our distribution capacity, Brazil-wide distribution capacity.
I'm going to pass it over now to Fabio Cefaly, who will give you the results, and then go into more details of the results from this half, and then we'll go back, and then we'll open for Q&A. Fabio, please.
Gustavo, thank you all. Enter into the details of the results, and then we'll pass over to the section of questions and answers. Let's start with the revenue and market share numbers. Starting here with the revenue, which we've had. We had BRL 2.5 billion in net revenue in the quarter. With sequential growth in volume and a gradual increase in prices, which is what we have foreseen in these graphs.
27% growth year-on-year from BRL 1.9 billion to BRL 2.5 billion in this quarter. The accumulated this year growth of 27% year-on-year over the year, representing BRL 4.4 billion in the first half. The volume had a fall off year-on-year of 7%, and then the cumulative sales, a small fall of 2%, while the average price went up 36% between second quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022. It was a gradual increase over these quarters. In the cumulative increase, we've had a growth of 29% in the average price. Looking at the details in this vision of revenue, first, with the vision quarter-on-quarter from second quarter of 2022 versus second quarter 2021.
Here on the right-hand side, we see double-digit growth in the average price in all of our categories: cookies, spaghettis, macaronis, flour, and margarine and fats. 4.6% in cookies, and an increase of 12.2% in the others category, specialty items. While our revenue had growth of high double digits in every category. Here it's important to mention a few highlights, the good highlights in our cookies area, which represents half of our sales and where we have the highest prices and the highest margins. Highest prices and highest margins. The other highlight is the others category, which includes the series of other categories: snacks, cakes, small cakes, and most recently, the acquisition of Latinex.
It's important to point out the strong increase in average price, 57% year-on-year, and the strong growth of revenue in that area of 77%, which is totally in line with what Gustavo mentioned in our strategy section. We are looking at opportunities in the other categories. Most recently, we made the acquisition of Latinex, which is already consolidated in our numbers. The consolidation of Jasmine, which we had the expectation of closing that deal by the end of this month. In the quarter-on-quarter vision, in a high-cost scenario, we were able to increase our prices in 18.7% from the first quarter to the second quarter, an increase of double-digit increases in our three principal categories, biscuits, macaroni, and pastas, and flour. The recovery of volumes in the same three...
In margarines and butters and growth in revenue in all these categories. Highlighted all, especially in the cookies section, which grew almost 40% quarter-on-quarter. In the accumulated numbers, we have a growth of double digits in every category, and revenue also with strong double-digit growth. It's important the contribution of innovation. We always focus on the cookies category, which is where we have the most launches. From the first to second quarter, we had an increase of 20% in revenue, which was the result of the launched products in the last 24 months, with also year-on-year growth slower than in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, which also have seasonality as these launches are more concentrated in the second half of the year. Average price continues to grow gradually.
In the second quarter, the BRL per kilo of our products went up from BRL 6 to BRL 6. Some of that comes from readjustments, but another important part also comes from innovation and mix. Here we bring a few examples. For instance, the most recent, the Chocowafer of the Amori brand which went up by BRL 1, 28% above the price per kilo of the average price in M. Dias Branco of 6. We had a growth both in the accumulated year numbers as well as in the quarter-on-quarter. In the two attack areas, in the defense areas, which is the North-Northeast and in the attack regions, which is the South-Southeast and Center-West. We had important investments in marketing to strengthen our launches for the construction of brands. In
The highlights in this quarter were in the Richester brand with a large experimental space in Fortaleza and a series of initiatives in the Vitarella brand, which is our principal brand in our consolidated results of MGS and also in the cookies area. We also returned to our participation in important food fairs in the APAS. Our stand was in second place in the mega stand sector with important growth and all of the efforts of the company, especially of the marketing and commercial marketing teams, which dedicated a great deal in the construction of this event. Naturaltech, which is an important fair of natural food. FIPAN, which is an important food and confection fair.
This is an important part of our business is the flour and flour products, which is important for this industry and also our participation in fairs outside of Brazil. For example, the PLMA World of Private Label in Amsterdam. E-commerce, which is a new channel for M. Dias Branco, which we have initiated online sales in 2020, is a channel which has shown a lot of growth. We've had year-on-year growth of 64%, making new alliances and investing also in the official stores which has. I'm gonna go into a section of market share, beginning with the categories of spaghettis and pastas and domestic wheat.
We had a growth in share volume quarter-on-quarter, which shows that we have a positive evolution of our share since the third quarter of 2021. We are recovering a share, gradual share recovery, but consistent. In wheat flour, we closed the quarter with a participation in the Brazilian market by volume of 9.2%, almost double what we had in the second quarter of 2021. This represents a series of initiatives where principally the increase of the volume sold in the Atacadão region, which is a new market for M. Dias Branco in this category. In the category of cookies, we had a retraction, a share retraction from the first to the second quarter. Here it's important to point out two points that help explain this retraction.
One, in relation to the adjustment of prices, it's important that we may have some effect on volumes, but we observe in this quarter is that in general, the entire market raised prices. When it raised prices, did adjustments, looking at the scenario of high costs, MGS did a little more, and this contributed to a retraction of market share. We also created an adjustment in the size of our packages for certain items, especially cookies. Here we have two examples of Cream Cracker and Maria Maizena. In the 400-gram package was reduced to 350, and this process, this transition happened during the second quarter. It's normal also to have the company to have an impact, an unfavorable impact on volume at a moment when this transition goes into effect.
Which is what we show here in these two graphs here using as an example Maria Maizena. Here we show the curves with the unit sales. The sales by units of the larger packages has diminished over the quarter, while units of the smaller units increased. This added an unfavorable situation, temporary unfavorable situation for the volumes, which also has an impact on market share. Exportations maintain a good rhythm of net revenue. We closed the quarter with BRL 40 million, 24% above the previous quarter and almost the same level we had in the second quarter of 2021. Here's our look at our costs and expenses.
We had a strong recovery of our gross margins in this quarter due to the increase in price. Not only the pass-through of prices, the adjustments done in the packages, the mixes, the results. Here we have a group of levers which permitted the gradual increase of prices, of our margins, and also the costs of commodities, which for M. Dias Branco were below those practiced by the market. The combination of these two elements raised our gross margins from 26%, 27% - 34%, which is above the 27.8% that we saw last year. It went from 27%- 30.8%. Here, just to make an example of what we showed on the previous slide in relation to our costs below those practiced by the market, we're talking about commodities.
It was the fruit of the management of purchases, stocks, and the hedge policies. Remembering that this policy, this hedge policy, was relaunched in June 2020 after approved by the board. These two graphs show, here on the left is the wheat and on the right is palm oil. The red line shows our pre-market prices, and the blue line is the average cost in our M. Dias Branco stock. Wheat flour grew over these months. This is the month from January to June of 2022. Our costs also went up, but much less due to the management practices. We've been able to control our costs and work with a favorable gap compared to the costs of the market.
The same thing is true of palm oil, which trigo was 22% below the market and palm oil 12% below market prices, our costs. Our administrative expenses, as Gustavo mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the result of all of the projects that were done since 2019, we were able to reduce structurally the level of SG&A for M. Dias Branco, and we closed the second quarter with 22.5%. The EBITDA doubled in relation to closing this period with 37% and a margin of 14%, which is close to our historical level, and accumulated over the year an expansion, nominal, growth of 10.2% above the 6.2% of last year.
The company net profit accompanied the tendency of the EBITDA, and we closed the quarter with BRL 233 million, more than in second quarter of 2021, and a margin of 9.4% with nominal growth in margin in the accumulated over the year. Going next to the generation of cash and investments. Starting here with our cash on hand, with a cash consumption of BRL 70 million, which is explained by a variable which are our stocks. Looking for competitive costs in relation to the market and improved service levels, we increased our coverage level of stock in the second quarter, which had a nominal increase of 560 compared to the first quarter of 2022 with the second quarter of 2022.
We had an increase of raw material, finished products and other areas. Others we have, for instance, packaging, imported material, et cetera. If it hadn't been the increase in the level of stocks, we would have several hundred million more in cash. You did this as a strategy of going into the third quarter with competitive costs. Our investments both in the quarterly vision as well as in the annual view have grown by 25% with highlighting of the Simplifique program, which was explained by Gustavo at the beginning of the call, with the highlights in the digital transformation area. The leverage in this quarter was 1.3x EBITDA, net debt divided by EBITDA, below the 1.4x in the first quarter and above the leverage of the second quarter of 2021.
This increase in leverage year-on-year is explained by two factors. One is that in the first quarter of 2022, we had the payment of the extraordinary interest on investment distribution and an important increase in the level of stocks in the second quarter. We maintain for the fourth consecutive year our AAA rating with stable perspectives, issued and reaffirmed by Fitch, the highest rating of Fitch. Now going to the last channel, which is the ESG chapter. Here, in line with the strategy, ESG strategy, which was recently enunciated, and we also have assumed several public commitments. We're informing by publishing and explaining these indicators, looking at the three pillars of our strategy, which is caring for the planet, believing in people, and strengthening our alliances.
We have here all the indicators. The consumption of water, residue generated, lost, consumer loss in the process, and low-waste of products. Women in leadership, which is an important factor mentioned by Gustavo. We will go into the WCF issued by Banco Safra and the alliances. Other important initiatives happened in this quarter, such as the campaign for the LGBT community, donations from that collective financing, and the environment week, which was important for the involvement of our employees. We'd now like to go into the question and answer section. We wanted to share with you our agenda of IR until the end of the year. We have the call today, and later on we'll have the modeling. We'll be in Rio tomorrow. Conference is in São Paulo and New York.
In November, we will meet again for the third quarter call and other conferences that take up until the end of the year. The objective was to go more, a little more into the details and results, and then we can go to the question and answer session. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session for investors and analysts. If you would like to ask a question, please press the Raise Hand button. Levantar mão. If your question was answered, you can leave the line touching the same button. Please wait one moment while we collect the questions. Our first question comes from Rodrigo Almeida of Santander. Rodrigo, your mic is now open.
Thank you, Gustavo, Fabio, and all the M. Dias Branco team. I wanted to ask you about a few points.
The first was talk about the pass through of prices and the competitive environment, especially in the cookies area. I notice here that the pass through of prices that you had during the third quarter, how can we look at prices going forward? A little bit more about the sector, how the competitive environment is, how the consumer is behaving in these pass-throughs of prices, especially with those hikes which talk to the volumes. I think from the few that came out in the media, you have satisfactory volumes going into August in the correct levels. Beyond that, also understand a little bit of the effect of the downsizing of the packaging, which Fabio mentioned here. How do you think this will go going forward?
Second point, which I wanted to explain a little bit, is the question of mix and the Piraquê question. You put some very interesting information about the Piraquê growth by itself, growing at the rate of 44% versus the growth of 49% in cookies overall. You could give a little more color on that. Two things. First, the effect that Piraquê has on the average prices overall, and also understanding from you how Piraquê has today an effect on consolidated margins compared to the rest of the company. These are interesting points. Finally, the third point, which I wanted to talk to you about, is to talk about your cash generation, which you said was impacted by the stock formation, that you have a higher average price for wheat and other raw materials.
I wanted to understand a little bit more about your point about volume and others. I see that you have improved your stocks and your volumes. If you could explain a little bit more about that strategy. Also talk a little bit about the exchange rate hedges that you've done, if this has had any impact on the second quarter. How should we look at the exchange rates going forward? How does it affect you going forward? That's it. That's all my questions.
This is Gustavo. Thank you for your questions. Let me start. Fabio, help me here. Starting with prices, what we perceive is that this semester, I said this half, but actually this last quarter, more specifically, we've been able to conclude all of the process of downsizing of packaging, which we had commented.
I said M. Dias Branco is a company who in terms of cookies is much bigger than our competitors. We have 15 factories. Most others have 2 or 3. It took a little bit longer to conclude the entire downsizing project, product downsizing project. This was concluded now. There's been a capture, an important capture which came from this process of downsizing. It's also the pricing. Together with the downsizing, we see that all of our competitors moved forward also in the question of pricing, and this made it easier to grow the market to grow as a whole. The pricing was much easier than last year with the competitors going forward at the same rate as we did in price increases.
Talking about cookies, when you change the packaging size, the supermarkets expect to wind up with a to use up their old packages to begin to offer space on their shelves with the new size, which is an attempt to not create confusion in the mind of the consumer, so they will buy the same price the same product with two different size packages. This delay, you lose a little bit of volume on this switch over. That explains a little bit our thesis of the market share for the biscuit, for cookies. The second phase is, as the phase-out of the downsizing, as we've seen, it's a specific action of an important competitor in two categories.
We're talking about Cream Cracker and the Maizena crackers, which are items which have lower profitability but have high volume. We decided to not get into this price war with them. We understood that it's an unsustainable temporary situation, that it should go back to levels, previous price levels with this promotion of our competitor. Talking a little bit about mix, it has a relevant effect. The margin of Piraquê is 400 basis points higher than the group's. This means that Piraquê is helping to improve the profitability of the company and pushing the profitability up. As a question of stocks. Our stocks are high due to the policy of storage as well as the hedge positions we've taken. We started to do a hedge not only for exchange rates but also for the principal commodities.
We're looking at wheat, flour and palm oil. The strategy has worked well. Our stocks that we used for this quarter have very attractive average prices compared to the previous prices prior to the Ukraine-Russian war. In this aspect, it has worked very well. As Fabio mentioned here, our costs of stock for the quarter versus the cost of the market. We've been able to maintain our costs lower, substantially lower than the market value of these items. Another point that we have discussed greatly is the inefficiency and productivity and level of service.
One of the things which we see, which I have focused on is, and the question of service is one of the ways to improve this, the visibility of our products on the shelf in the supermarkets is to guarantee a minimum stock out level. For this to happen, we have to have a level, a high level of stock, of finished stocks. It's a trade-off. To be the best, you improve your services, you improve your revenue. But the investment in stocks and working capital is a little higher, especially in inventories of finished products. This explains the increase in stocks is the fact that recently we hired a new director of operations, came from Solar Coca-Cola. Very much with this idea of the execution of growth in that area.
Expanding and growing in the atacarejo. For that we need to have a level of service which is adequate. This increase in finished products is the fruit of our intention to expand with a high level of service, taking maximum advantage of the available shelf space in the supermarkets for our products. Looking at the exchange rate hedges, it has worked well. We have implemented a policy since 2020. I would say that the internal process is very mature, with the committee working well, meeting once a month with the participation of the banks. We would also like to say that we have a situation that's very, very adequate up until the end of the year. Basically, with 70% of all of the exchange necessary already hedged at a good level of per cost.
We're talking between 5 and 4.80, our dollar exchange rate on our stock of currency. With our provisions, we are looking at the capacity to do these changes through buybacks, et cetera, when the market changes, should the market change. However, this has worked well, this policy of commodity hedges and exchange rate hedges. Any additional points? Just to make one quick comment in relation to Piraquê, it's how much it represents in the increases of average prices. To give you an idea, we have invested greatly in the brand, not only in Rio, but also nationally. It's grown quickly in the state of São Paulo, in the northeastern region.
We observed that sales in all of these regions have maintained that profile since the moment when we acquired Piraquê, which is a brand of products, of high value-added products, a portfolio, very, very strong portfolio, and with all of that is being maintained. To give you an answer, a more objective answer to your question, Piraquê represents a little bit more than 10% of our total sales of MGS with a price that is double the MGS average price.
As I present here in the first slide, the average price is BRL 6, and our Piraquê has an average price of BRL 12. The more we make Piraquê grow, with its price level double that of M. Dias Branco, with the margins that Gustavo mentioned, which is structurally superior to the other brands of M. Dias Branco products, this has a direct contribution to the profitability of the company.
Perfect. Thank you for the answers. Have a good week.
Good day, good week. The next question.
Our next question comes from Pedro Fonseca from XP. Pedro, go ahead.
Thank you, Fabio, Gustavo, Luciano, and to all the team. Congratulations on your results. I wanted to make a follow-up on the question of volume.
With this question of margins and competitors who are anxious to raise prices, how do you see the question of the recovery of volumes? If you can give us a little more granularity in this quarter, also region by region for our attack regions and our defense regions, and also the question of the recovery of market share in these points which they've had a growth in market share in this quarter, in this third quarter, as well as compared to the rest of the year.
Hi, Pedro. Thank you for your question. Our volumes, as you see in the presentation, have grown in both areas, both in the defense area and in the attack regions.
With all of the pass-throughs of prices which have been done, reflecting higher costs, we had lots of doubts about the elasticity, how these volumes would behave in the face of the new price levels. What we've seen is that we still have a very strong demand in the categories in which we operate. Cookies, the downsizing has helped the cookies market a little bit to maintain this accessibility for the consumer who lost a little bit of his income due to the impacts of inflation on the economy. So it's been a positive surprise for us. We've been happily surprised. The option of M. Dias Branco since the beginning of the pandemic, which generated all this confusion with commodities and afterwards with the Ukraine war, we have sought to monetize the company.
What we're talking about between 15% and 20%, this is our target, and we're working for that. The volumes continue strong, and we see that in both regions. Usually, when you have these special government aid programs, it's destined mostly to these, the poorest and most neediest part of the population, which is concentrated in the North, Northeast. Usually when this happened, we have an increase, natural increase for MDS, since we have a market share of almost 50% where we operate, much higher than in the South, Southeast. The fact is that these volumes also did very well in other regions. I would say that a large part of this is due to the market as a whole.
I would say that we didn't come out first, but we launched our prices at the same time as our competitors, the same levels of prices and very few changes. I think there are 10, 12 players, and they start between one another that didn't come in, didn't join in a specific proportion. In general, as a rule, the principal players are navigating in the same price levels as us, which has also helped. We're very much competing as equals with our competitors in terms of price.
Very well. Thank you. Again, congratulations for the results.
Our next question is from Lucas Ferreira from JP Morgan. Lucas, go ahead. Your microphone is now free.
Thank you. Congratulations for your strong growth. Two questions. First, related to the costs. Apparently, your costs are falling, palm oil, wheat.
I wanted to see if you have already been able to monetize these price drops. Have you been able to purchase more cheaply, or if you think this will only happen in the next harvest, that you'll be able to buy volumes at better prices? My other question is, with prices going down at the store level, what do you think is gonna happen with these prices? They already imply a fall off in prices and costs for you. Or do you think by that graph of the market, that the market is doing a catch-up, and do you think that there'll be a stabilization or even a growth in your prices during the next half of the year? When we talk about prices, we're talking about the question of costs.
How do you see your margins of your competitors in the industry? Do you have a hedge structure which is mature? If this fall in costs and exchange rates, it doesn't bring in some way some type of difficulty for you since to continue your price increases, seeing that there's even a higher probability of a price war. Gustavo, just one quick follow-up about the graphs that you showed. In the third quarter, is there any carry forward, if you can give us any more information about these changes, downsizing, price increases? What you've already implemented this quarter, how much impact this will have on the average price in the third quarter?
Hi, Lucas. Thank you for your question. Okay. Costs. What we're seeing is a stretching out of prices which has not yet been completely absorbed.
This tendency we're talking about suppliers, physical suppliers all around the world, and basically a large part of our analysts know that wheat comes from Argentina and Brazil. These are harvests that begin in October, more or less. We haven't yet hit the final price. The price has fallen, but the other costs have gone up greatly. In these predictions, the costs are heading downward. We understand that we can, yes, have a positive effect still in 2022 of that movement. Talking about the next quarters, we don't talk too much about guidance, but we can expect an increase in costs because we still have the stocks which have recently joined with price increases prior with prices higher than this that happened before this reduction in prices.
The Ukraine war has been able to export its first ships in accordance with Russia. We're looking at the highway, the grain highway and the opening of grain in the Ukrainian ports with the permission of Russia. The fundamentals have not changed. We're still in a situation. We're still trying to be optimistic in relation to the question of food and grain prices in the conflict zone. It will arrive at us, our level, at the final purchaser level, but it hasn't arrived yet in an objective way. We'll still have increases in this quarter, in the short term, and we'll also have new pricing levels. The pricing is already happening. Happened since last month. A good part of this protocol. It has 30 days to go into effect.
It will go into effect now in August, and apparently it has come in without any problem and the volumes continue strong. It's a scenario that was very positive in a sense of recovering of margins, generated from some increase in costs of some commodity. This is due to the fact that we do not yet see the reflection of this new package of increases coming from the federal government and the Congress. We continue very optimistic, but we know that there's still a lot of money which is gonna wind up coming in. Up until the current moment, we are still looking at margins compressed, a certain amount of margin compression with this fall in prices. However, in our vision, it will also be determined by these price increases.
There are stil l increases that were done in the previous quarter. We see these benefit programs, which has already been done in the downsizing and the simplification process.
Very well. Thank you, Gustavo.
Thank you, Lucas.
Our next question is from Gustavo Troyano from Itaú. Gustavo, your mic is free.
Good morning, Gustavo. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm gonna take advantage of one of the comments that the previous call mentioned, thinking about the volatility of commodities. Wanted to look at the pass-through of prices, if you think that the same intensity that you've done over the quarter or what's your input of your perception in terms of the relativity of the price of MGS in relation to the industry.
The industry already passed through these prices, but I wanna talk about the size of this pass-through, especially in the pastas and cookies, which have a gap in prices of the M. Dias products for the rest of the industry. Beyond that point, if we can look a little bit at the vision of the company in relation to the levels of profitability, thinking of the trade-off of market share and profitability. Consequently, if the level of market share of the company, in relation to the business plan, if it makes sense to work more on the recovery of market share in cookies and looking at the granularity of that idea. The last question here is this mix of channels. We see that cash and carries and distributors have gained share in sales of the company. Both retail and atacado have fallen a little bit.
I wanted to ask you about your attack and defense zones and your mix of channels. Is there anything in relation to the attack zone or if this also happens in the defense zone as well?
Gustavo, thank you for your question. Market share, first of all, we understand continues to be a comfortable market share for M. Dias Branco in terms of the market. This fall, especially in the cookie area, does not concern us. We're gaining from the downsizing. It means that we compete on a kilo price. When you reduce the size of the package, you're selling the same package of packages, but less kilos. As an important effect on the market share and volume.
Once again, there was a specific action of a competitor, specifically, which gave a heavy promotion on two high volume categories, and we opted to not follow him. It was a one-time thing, and we believe in a recovery of the market share of the cookie area at much closer to market prices. Looking at the data for cookies and pastas. When we look at cookies in the quarter, we grew by 15% in price. I would say one, two, three, four and roughly 10 competitors, only 3 did not reprice in the same level as us. Below 10 in the level of around 8%. The others have all come together with the same price increases as M. Dias Branco.
When we look at pasta, we raised prices less than our competitors. In the second and third quarters, we're looking at the competitive companies are raising their prices by about 10% more than us. When we look at the market, the volumes in the market, this pricing, which we've done, was not specific for us, and it doesn't concern us too much in terms of market share and volume because as I'm showing you here, the market is coming together. Unless there's some other player with a specific issue. In terms of market share, it's that. Nothing else that concerns us at this moment.
Gustavo, in relation to the mix of channels, quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, the revenue has grown in all channels and in every region.
The question that you put of the cash and carry, which wound up gaining space in the mix, is much more due to a recovery of the volumes of this channel. This works together with Gustavo's answer. In our prices and our price readjustments, both in pastas as well as in cookies, is in line with the market differently than what we saw in 2020, in the middle of 2021, when the increases of MGS were much above the market and some competitors had not done increases. On categories with volumes that are very high, which are those categories, important categories such as the cash and carry, you have a retraction in volume. At this moment, what we see is a recovery in this channel.
In the two areas, the two commercial areas of both in the defense and attack regions. In their distributors, there was growth in the volumes of the distributors quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Which talks to our strategy of gaining capillarity in distribution in the attack area. What we've done in the last quarters, partnerships with several distributors in these regions. This has brought very good results, both in volume as well as in margins.
Okay, very good. Very clear. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Thiago Duarte of BTG. Thiago, your mic is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Fabio, Gustavo. Just to follow up from Gustavo's last answer, which is my last question.
When you compare the prices of MGS with the competitors in this quarter, just to be clear that we're talking about the same comparable basis. When I look at the increase in prices quarter-on-quarter of 8% MGS and the 15% that you mentioned, was the effective repass to the price list a difference which is close to related to mix, price changes and size packaging changes. The same is true of pasta. When I look at the 16.7% sequential price increases compared to 9% that you mentioned, I wanted to make sure that we're talking about the same basis. The second question might help us to summarize the discussion about market share and price.
I'm not sure if you're able to speak a little bit with us. We have the data that you report about market share volume. If you can give us the same, a little more granularity about the share value in these two categories, especially in the cookies and pasta markets. In a certain way, this would give us an additional clarification about that. Those are my two questions.
Just to clarify these numbers. These are the sellout numbers. They're not the other numbers we have to compare with other players. There's a difference between these numbers. One is sell-in and the other one is sellout. The question of market share, the tendency is very similar to what we showed in market share volume. However, the falloff in cookies is a percentage of this value.
The adjustments of the price list, which happened during the second quarter, if you can talk about this third quarter, which Gustavo already mentioned, and how, well, you can explain by other factors such as the downsizing of packaging, mix, et cetera. Okay, if we look, we're not gonna open in detail because we prefer to maintain this information just internal. However, what I can say is that the change in the price list happened at the beginning of the quarter, and that is why it has been implemented during the quarter. It's a change which happened at the beginning of the quarter. Without a doubt, it's an important factor, and the other factors also contributed.
Growth, accelerated growth, such as Piraquê, as you mentioned in the first question, which was from Rodrigo, which represents more than 10% of the company with an average price which is double the average price of MGS. They have BRL 12 and we have BRL 6. It's the brand that has grown the fastest, more than the other brands of MGS. It's also an important factor. The reduction of packaging size is something that happened gradually over the quarter, as we showed in those two graphs of cream crackers in Maria, and Maria Maizena, especially in the category of biscuits, of cookies. Here I have to add favorably to the third quarter. The discounts are basically stable when we look year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. The last factor is the growth of the net category others.
We have the contribution of Latinex and the contribution of Jasmine. It winds up being a group. However, the price readjustments are important and differently than what the clients saw at the beginning of 2020 and 2021. I see that the market is heading in the same direction.
Very well. One last question, if I may. On the question of costs and the composition of stocks, which was already discussed in at length. When we look at this variation of stocks on your balance, of inventories on your balance sheet, in comparison to your opening of prices, average prices of the principal raw materials in your stock, gives the impression that the volume of stocked material has grown quite a bit in the second quarter in relation to the first quarter.
However, I want to understand as far as the average level, historical level, looking at a longer period, if today at the end of the second quarter, if as in terms of volume of stocks or inventories have a higher inventory than it historically has carried, because we get the impression that you have had smaller inventories in the first quarter and during 2021 until the first quarter of 2021, and now you have come back to a volume of a level of inventory closer to the historical levels. I wanted to know if that's correct, my reading of the situation.
Fabio can help me here to add. Let's divide this question. We had increase in finished goods. We had increase in inventories of raw material, which had the strategy that we mentioned.
The raw material is a strategy of costs below market costs, both with the physical stocks as well as with the hedged stocks. In the case of raw material, we see that the increase of inventory is greatly due to the increase in costs. It's more expensive. The finished goods are more expensive compared to the previous periods. It's due to the higher prices. When we look at the stock of finished products, this is volume. This is really volume. The growth has had important growth quarter-over-quarter because we understand that we did not have stock levels, inventory levels that were adequate for this work of growth of level of service and the availability, and making a greater availability on the shelf to the consumers.
It's been a big investment we've made on various fronts, planning, integration, systems, fleet, distribution centers, but also level of a finished stock, finished goods. These are the two main differences. One, much more connected to the increase in the cost of our inventories, which grows in value, and the other is volume itself.
Okay, that was very clear. Thank you very much.
If I could just add one thing to what Gustavo said. The principal objective here was to start the third quarter with objective pricing, costs that are competitive. When I look at the inventory in the prices, considering the inventory that I have here in-house, my inventory in our clients in the cookies and pasta categories is below our historical levels. As Gustavo mentioned in his answer, we see a scenario of demand which is favorable.
I look here and I see a stock at a level below the historical level for the clients, and I wind up stocking things a little bit more to take advantage of several purchase moments in commodities and transform them and become more competitive in the third quarter.
Okay, perfect. That's great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Isabella Simonato from Bank of America. Isabella, your microphone is now open.
Thank you, Gustavo, Fabio. I have two questions. The first is still a little bit along the lines of costs, price cost. Look at the composition of inventories implies an increase in cost year-on-year looking at the second half.
Want to understand the price in this case is when you announce these increases in the third quarter, if we still need more price increases to recapture your margins during the second half of the year. Also a little bit the level of competition. You said that the competitors run with inventories below average. We're at an inflection point, perhaps due to the commodities market. How do you imagine this return in the cycle in terms of pricing of the industry?
The competitors historically are a little more volatile in their strategy. If you could pass a price volume of around close to the cycle, not only wheat is going down as well as oil or other products.
Understand a little bit of this question, looking at the medium term, you said that your objective is to come to a margin of 15%-20%. What's the principal driver of this? Is it the cost? Cost is leveling out at a lower level? Or is there any other initiative on your part? You've done several initiatives for cost controls and expenses. I want to understand what's the root for this margin expansion that you foresee, which could even double your margins, looking at the historical numbers that we're looking at today as an average. Thank you, Isabella. Gustavo. Here. Okay. The increase in costs, the increase in prices, we don't have any prediction of new increases. As I mentioned previously, we made increase in July, in June, between 6% and 8%. These went into effect in August.
New sales are already being realized at these new prices. The volumes continue strong. As we're seeing on the shelf several specific categories which are moving forward. What specific? Because we have some difficulty in margarine. There's a big fight in the North Northeast with the margarine companies who operate in the margarine sector. It's been a little bit more difficult to price our margarine and also a little bit in the wheat flour area, the industrial flour. Other than that, the principal categories of pastas and cookies, once again, the price has reacted well. We understand that we should consolidate even more the price that I mentioned with the arrival of this additional government aid, which was recently once it is released at the consumer level.
Looking forward, we don't see any more prediction of new price increases going forward. Now, the world changes. Nobody expected this pandemic. Nobody expected this war in Ukraine. We've had to dance with the music. If everything continues now as we see it today, this should be our last increase of the year. That's what we can say. Looking at the driver of what we've done. We're not looking at expecting only a price and a fall off in prices and cost. It's not these reduced costs which are gonna increase our margin. We continue rooting for that to happen so that the cycle will go down to lower historical levels, pre-pandemic and pre-war levels. However, we have several other levers that are important in the creation of margin.
New products, expansion of the Piraquê brands in a new added with entire added value, and the question of company management with higher margins than the averages of MGS, such as Latinex, for example, which we acquired, and Jasmine, the question of the qualification of sales, being in the right channels with the right brands, which we're able to sell at better prices, and we get a perception of quality which is higher for the consumer, and obviously with the control of expenses. However, expenses has a limit. Sooner or later, you wind up reaching a point where there's nothing else you can do. You wind up destroying value or affecting the company. It's important to maintain this trajectory in this 15%-20% level.
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you.
The question and answer session is now closed.
I would like to pass the microphone to Sir Gustavo for the final thoughts. Gustavo, please go ahead.
I wanted to thank you all for your participation. The company continues at your service, at your disposal for any other questions or doubts that you might have. The IR team is complete here and count on us for any eventual future questions that may come up. A big hug, and we'll see you in the next conference. Thank you all very much.
The M. Dias Branco teleconference is now closed. We thank you for your participation, and have an excellent afternoon. Thank you.