Good morning. Welcome to the earnings call, M. Dias Branco, related to the earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025. Today, we have Mr. Gustavo Lopes Theodozio, the VP of Investments and Controllership, and Fábio Cefaly, the Director for New Business and Investor Relations. We'd like to let you know this earnings call is being recorded, and during the presentation, all participants will have their mics off during the earnings call. Soon after, we'll begin our Q&A session for analysts and investors. The simultaneous translation is available by selecting the interpretation button. For those listening in English, the option of muting original audio can also be activated at the bottom part of your platform. The transmission is also taking place simultaneously on YouTube at www.youtube.com/RIMDias.
We'd like to let you know also that possible statements that could be made during the earnings call related to business perspectives at M. Dias Branco, projections and operational and financial targets, represent beliefs and assumptions of the company's management. Are based on information that's currently available. These involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events, and therefore rely on circumstances that could or not occur. Investors must understand that economic general conditions in the industry and other operational factors can affect the future performance of M. Dias Branco and lead to results that differ materially from those in future statements. We would like to pass the phone to Mr. Gustavo as he begins the presentation. Please, Mr. Gustavo, you may proceed.
Hi, good morning, thank you everyone.
It's a pleasure to have you with us once again, for one more earnings call. We ended the year 2025 with relevant advances that are structural and that reinforce the company's resilience and the strength of our brands and the company's financial discipline. Even in a challenging environment from a consumer and income perspective. Starting out with the consolidated results, we have reached a net revenue of BRL 10.4 billion, growing 8% in regards to the previous year, which is basically sustained by the recovery of our volumes that grew 3% in the year. In the fourth quarter, our revenue grew 9.3%, reflecting the consistency of our growth throughout all the quarters of 2025. This performance reflects the profound transformation of our commercial area with the deployment of 4 clear initiatives for growth.
I'm gonna get into this a little more up ahead. With more execution discipline, absolutely focused on sellout consumer and POS. The Perfect Store format you already know of has gained scale and recovered and that already reflects on the gradual market share gains in the main categories we're operating in. In regards to profitability and cash positions, despite the relevant pressure of costs during the year, we were able to reach a net income of BRL 200 million. A operational cash generation, that's an all-time high of BRL 1.4 million, an increase of 138% compared to 2024. This result reflects important gains when it comes to working capital gains, operational efficiency, and greater financial discipline. With this, we reached the end of the year with BRL 1.9 billion in cash.
Cash position is net BRL 550 million, and our leverage is negative 0.5 times the EBITDA. 95% of our debt at long term, keeping our rating as brAAA with stable perspectives as defined by Fitch for the eighth consecutive year. From an operational perspective, we sold 1.8 billion tons in 2025, with an important highlight for the 4th quarter of 2025, with a growth of 10% in volume. Showing you all that the recovery is consistent and the use of the utilization level went up, 64% was an important highlight for cookies, snacks, and food service with important roles in this evolution. Looking at our stock value, it valued at 26%, and that also reinforced our policy for competition to shareholders with monthly dividends.
We distributed total of BRL 439 million last year, leading to a dividend yield of 6.5% in the year. We also continued to advance consistently in our ESG agenda, with an evolution in water efficiency, reusing rainwater, zero landfill policy, strengthening leadership and important recognition and acknowledgement with trophies and awards of transparency and the GPTW seal as well for the third year consecutively. 2025 was a year of recovery and of growth, strengthening our bases and strong cash generation, strengthening our financial performance. We start off in 2026 with a more efficient company that's closer to consumers, with brands that are even stronger and a financial position that is extremely solid.
We wanna thank everyone for their trust and the effort of all of our employees, and we continue to be committed to the creation of value that is sustainable in the long term. Now, I'll pass this on to Cefaly, so you can get into the specific presentation of the quarter and full year, and I'll come back later on for the Q&A session. Fábio?
Good morning, everyone. Gustavo, thank you for the introduction and the overview. I'm gonna follow along with the presentation of our earnings for the year and for the quarter. I wanna start off with a summary, a general summary. Some of these numbers were already mentioned by Gustavo in the opening speech, but just so we can see this in a more visual and consolidated manner here.
We had a growth and a revenue in the full year, but also in the specific quarter, closing at 8% growth compared to last year, 9% in the quarter. This drop compared to the third quarter is normal, considering the seasonality that's historical between the third and fourth quarter. This is something that happens every year. We had growth in volumes, also in the annual view and also in the quarterly view. The EBITDA had a bit of a slowdown compared to last year in the full year and in the quarter, and this is mainly due to the impact of the costs.
When you compare quarter-over-quarter, the fourth quarter 2025 versus 2024, it's really important to remember that there was a payback of profit sharing that created a bigger comparison basis. In the profit, this comparison basis factor also compromised a bit of the net income view when we look at the fourth quarter of 2025 versus 2024. On the other hand, the net income in the year of 2025 was 2% higher than 2024. When it comes to our cash position, we grew as a quarterly view, but also in the annual view, ending the year with a cash generation of BRL 1.4 billion. Advancing here, we will start with a view of how those cookies and pasta markets behaved.
It's important to highlight that these numbers on slide 5 are not MDS numbers. These are markets, numbers from the market. The first information is that both markets grew in value in 2025 versus 2024. The cookies market grew 3%, and the pasta market grew 2%. There was an increase in the average price in both markets: pasta, 2% positive, and cookies, 7% positive. When it comes to units sold, the volumes, the pasta market had a growth of units and of volumes, were stable year-over-year. In the cookies market, we saw a setback of 3% in units sold, but also in volume sold.
Our interpretation of this information is that due to the fact that the market had an increase in price of 7%, which was higher than the inflationary index, this led to a retraction in volumes and units sold, which didn't happen in the pasta market. I also want to highlight our plan, where we bring a bit of what was communicated during the second quarter call, in the last column, generally here, what we are pursuing, some concrete initiatives, and then on the right side, the concrete results or earnings of things that already happened. The plan is based on five main pillars.
You have a commercial plan that must be clear, searching for growth and profitability simultaneously, as well as a series of different initiatives, with the evolution of commercial capacity, as we had a significant change in our team as well and in our structure. We're gonna get into a little more details, and also an ongoing process of searching for productivity and efficiency when it comes to expenses, costs, and manufacturing productivity, and an ongoing search for agile culture that is already part of our DNA. We've been working a lot on the sell-out side.
This is something we've been talking about a lot with you and searching for ways to have sell-out and the sell-out really being a consequence of the sell-out, improving and our presence in the POSs, and also a commercial plan that intends to really focus on the quarter. This provides more visibility and more space, so that we can have other types of negotiations with our customers. Evolution in the market routes and go-to-market routes, and this is something that we started working on stronger from 2024 onwards, accelerating productivity programs and improving management indicators. All of this is what we communicated to you in the second quarter, and these are some examples of things that already happened. We created 4 different growth initiatives. We strengthened our presence at POSs through the Perfect Store program.
This is currently present in more stores. We were able to recover our results in key markets, such as the state of São Paulo, where we've been improving profitability and revenue. We recovered market share from the second semester of 2025 onwards, when the two main categories, cookies and pastas, and we've had our revenue results been really consistent. We had growth in revenue in all of the different quarters in 2025 compared to 2024. The commercial team is organized with these four different growth initiatives. Each of these has a leader that is 100% dedicated. The main products include cookies, pastas, and margarines. Food service here is basically a B2B channel that we have of flours, meal, and industrial flours, healthy products and snacks. We have the Jasmine, Fit Food, Frontera, and Piraquê.
This is a growth source that's very important because these are markets that are growing at double digits. Our expectation is that this market growth should continue over the next years. Then international, which would be considering all of our exports to more than 40 countries, and Las Acacias, which was a company we acquired in Uruguay in 2022. Throughout the presentation, we'll get into more details about the results of these 4 initiatives for growth and the main facts and details of what happened in the last 12 months. First of all, as I mentioned in the beginning, we had growth in our revenue in all of the different quarters, 3% in the beginning of the year.
Second quarter already started to demonstrate a level of growth that was more accentuated, double-digit growth in the third quarter. We ended the fourth quarter with 9% growth in our revenue. Starting off with some growth initiatives with the main products. The beginning of the year was a little more challenging. We had stability in our revenue in the first quarter. After the second quarter, we already started to have a growth that was a bit more consistent, growing 3% in the second quarter and double-digit growth in the third and fourth quarters. We recovered our growth in São Paulo with an improvement in profitability when it comes to relative terms, but also nominal terms.
We recovered our market share for cookies in the southern region, and we kept this consistent growth of our Piraquê brand, which is among our three main brands at M. Dias, and that places our cookies at a more premium price level. These are cookies with more added value, and we had relevant advances in the states of Bahia and Pernambuco. Replicating the excellent results we were able to achieve throughout the year, especially in the state of Ceará. The Piraquê brand came from Rio, but it was acquired by M. Dias back in 2018. We also increased our market share when it comes to cookies, and that includes the items with more added value in the cookies and personal cracker categories.
Our brands, as a result of all of the investments in marketing that have been done in the past years, are among the main consumer brands in Brazil, gaining positions in when it comes to presence in the Brazilian household. The Vitarella brand is the tenth when it comes to positions, considering consumer brands of even other categories as well, and the first when it comes to the cookies and pastas category. Piraquê went up six positions, and Richester went up five positions last year. We had a program that was really significant and important to bring our teams closer to consumers and our presence at the POSs. We had over 800 employees participating, called those, like, the POS heroes. These are the stores where we have our products exhibited.
This idea was to show employees what's going on at the POS, creating a close connection with consumers and customers. This program was a full success to give our team more energy and really help create this feeling of cohesion and closeness to consumers. Moving on to the brand investments here. This is just one example of an investment with Vitarella brand, Velloso, and some special dates and celebrations in the Northeast. Some initiatives as well of limited editions of products. This is an example of Amori, the Richester brand. We created this limited edition called Mistério, and in this case, we create an experience for consumers to discover what was the flavor in each of these packs, these mystery packs. This was a success and was present on TV, media, with influencers, et cetera.
When it comes to pastas, we performed a reality show called The War on Pasta or Pasta War, let's say, in battle. This is focused 100% on Adria, one of the pasta leaders in Brazil. It was a full success, with over 5 million views on YouTube. The Piraquê brand, which has been getting relevant investments in marketing, and it's a brand that is super important when it comes to the cookie and cracker category, and it represented a share volume gain that was very relevant, going from 5.4%-5.7%. This is market share, considering the volume, nationally. Our presence in big trade fairs like APAS, with our team receiving awards and prizes that were very relevant in this trade fair.
When it comes to launches, one example was a personal cracker from Piraquê, reinforcing the brand's presence in different subcategories of cookies and crackers. Piraquê is in salty snacks, cookies that are filled, covered, coated, sesame crackers, et cetera, and even other goiabinha, other flavors that are very popular. Moving on into other growth initiatives, which is food service, including meal flours, and fat, industrial fat, which also represented a lot of consistency during 2025. We had growth in our revenue in all of the different quarters in the year: 17% in the first quarter, 3% in the second quarter, 15% in the third quarter, and 7% in the fourth quarter. These are new categories, and the growth, these, initiative has a new leadership team.
The execution is supported by different programs that really bring our customers closer to our teams and our industrial units. This program really embraced about 98 customers. We had over 200 training sessions, over 700 technical services, participating in trade fairs, and distribution that is a lot more supported by the indirect channel, which is super important for this segment. Moving on, this gives us a lot more geographic presence and footprint to our items. We created the M. Dias Branco Professional brand, which is present in all different items of this initiative that's built up front. We also created a platform, a digital platform, with over 225,000 users with a virtual assistant, over 43 videos with recipes and tips, and over 3 million views.
The idea of demonstrating all of this and showing all this is that we really added this growth initiative at a whole new level. When it comes to bringing customers closer, technology and go-to-market. Daniel is also the leader in this initiative here, working on strengthening the execution commercially, participating in trade fairs, creating the Portas Abertas program, and embracing all of these other initiatives. New products, the gold medal for a confectionary, adjustments in Puro Sabor, a special gold medal, the Boulanger, there's a lot of opportunities for growth in the flours category and also the margin and fat categories, creating products for some other specific uses as these that appear here on the slide.
In the growth front for products that are healthy products, as I mentioned in the beginning, it's really important for the next year at M. Dias Branco, due to the growth of these markets and the average price and the margins that are structurally higher. We have a new team that is really engaged with a new relationship with customers, and this has all demonstrated very consistent results with growth of double digits in all quarters in the year. 11%, 11% again, 13%, wrapping up the first quarter with 14% growth in revenue versus last year. We relaunched the Frontera brand, which was really important for snacks.
A focus on tortillas, a new commercial distribution model, generating more speed to customer service in the market, and a broad portfolio, including granola, gluten-free bread, cookies with the Jasmine brand, and some chocolates also with a Fit Food brand as well. This is our new package for the Frontera brand. This is a product that originally was imported. We installed this production line in one of our factories, and we're producing in Brazil, which has been allowing us to operate with a level of competitiveness that's a lot greater, and it's contributed a lot to accelerating the growth of this brand.
When it comes to the products that are more geared to healthiness and natural ingredients, at this moment, we're launching this new item by Jasmine, which is a premium granola with 38 grams of protein for every 100 grams of product. These two items are part of a portfolio that already exists of other Jasmine items as well that are focused on protein, such as this one here on the left side, and the Fit Food snacks as well, such as this, Veggie Chips, which is, it's ovened and not fried.
M. Dias Branco is really focused on these trends and has a really big portfolio of products and brands as well. When it comes to the international growth front, where we consider the exports and our unit in Uruguay, also Las Acacias, in a consolidated manner, when it comes to revenue, we had a slight slowdown in 2025 versus 2024, which is completely related to the rates that replaced the tariffs set by the U.S. in 2025, which kind of compromised our sales to this market. We were able to, in some way, offset the situation by exporting more to other countries and accelerating our strategy in Uruguay. One of these examples was the introduction by the end of 2025, the cookies with the Las Acacias brand.
These are cookies that are produced in one of our production units in Brazil. We've been able to capture synergies that are very significant in this first acquisition that was international. Now, today, we're the number one in cookies in Uruguay, of course, adding up to the Las Acacias brand, but also other M. Dias brands that were already present in this market. M. Dias is number two in pastas in Uruguay. Here on this photo, you can see Cesar. He's our leader in our initiative international front. He's always traveling around the world, all year long, prospecting new customers and selling more to the current customers.
When you look at all of this together, and you see the revenue starting off this year, we grew our volumes by 3%, the average price went up 5%, and our net revenue in total, which added up to about BRL 10.4 billion, had a growth of 8%. There was growth also in the three biggest groups of products. The main products, cookies, pasta and margarine, and refining of vegetable oil, which is basically food service, and in the adjacent areas of growth of double digits. The same situation is also seen in the evolution of the net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter of 2025.
Versus the third quarter, that's normal to have a bit of a setback in revenue, 2% volume, 1% average price. Considering the seasonality, it is a bit more unfavorable in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter. The market share, no doubt, is one of the highlights for this result when we consider the full year. We've seen, from the second semester on, in 2025, we started this journey to recover market share. The cookies market share went from 29% to 30%, 31.8%, and we ended 2025 at a level that was higher than 2024. The pasta category had the same trend, going from 25.4% to 27.5%. There's still something here that needs to happen to reach what we had in the end of 2024.
The flour category ended with 12.2% market share above the closing in 2024. I think all of the initiatives that were presented here in different business fronts are already starting to demonstrate concrete results when it comes to the growth of volume and revenue, but also when it comes to the sell-out, because it becomes one of the main measures when you consider the market share, as it's one of the main sell-out measures. Wrapping up here on the revenue part and heading to costs and expenses. These are the curves in the market. Considering the dollar, the wheat in dollars and palm oil, just to highlight that these numbers are not from M. Dias, these are numbers from the market.
These are the main factors that impact our variable costs. When we look at the full year, this BRL lost value about 4%. Lost, palm oil went up 9% in $, and wheat dropped 6% in $. In the overall scenario, there was a bit of cost pressure in the full year of 2025 versus 2024. At the end of the year 2025 versus the end of the year 2024, we had a drop in costs in the market. Part of this is already present in our results, in our earnings, for the fourth quarter, but one part still didn't achieve this because of our stock positions, our hedge positions for commodities and for currency.
When we look at our gross margins for the year, it was 32.2% in the year, 34.4% last year. There was an increase in variable costs due to these factors I mentioned in the slide above, and the fixed costs went up a bit. This, since it is a relationship with the adjustments in payroll, which is quite normal, and the average price went up from BRL 5.5 per kilo to BRL 5.8. In the comparison of the quarter and the year-over-year, the gross margin was 33.5% to 31.6%. It's just important to remind you that in 2024, in the fourth quarter, we had a return on the profit sharing provision, and this generated a positive impact that increased results in that quarter.
When you perform the adjustments, the margins would be close to 30%. When you look at this adjusted margin, it would be an evolution of 30.2% to 31.6%, considering that there was a profit sharing provision in the fourth quarter of 2025. When we, a topic that analysts and investors really talked about a lot in the last quarter, we understood it would be important to provide a little more visibility and evolution of the gross margin. Here you have more of a sequence view of the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2025. The gross margin was went from 32.4 to 31.6.
Here you have one percentage point that is favorable considering the reduction in costs of the raw materials in the market and the gain in value of the real. As I mentioned before, this represents capturing 1 part of what's already gone on in the market. There's some stuff still going on, considering the hedge positions and physical stocks we have for some of the commodities. A little less subventions to investments, since our main subvention is related to wheat consumption, and since wheat prices dropped in the market and MDS, this creates a unfavorable impact from the third to the fourth quarter due to the seasonality that was unfavorable in these sales.
Considering a smaller demand in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter, our production level is also consequently lower, that leads to a lower dilution of the fixed costs, which impacted our gross margin at 1 percentage point. We have some other combined factors that also represented about 0.1 percentage points. Another important highlight from 2025 was the increase of our capacity utilization, 50.1% to 60.4%, which is related to the growth of 3% in volumes. Gradually, we're gonna be increasing our utilization rate, diluting more of the fixed costs, that will generally improve our margins.
The expenses that are administrative and sales, which is the SG&A, starting off here with the year, we in nominal terms, we went from BRL 2.1 billion to BRL 2.3 billion, and in relative terms, that's basically stable. I wanna remind you all that in 2024, there was the payback of the profit sharing, the PLR. With this adjustment, we would have a growth of the SG&A in the annual vision, which is actually lower than the inflation in that period. In the quarterly view, we had BRL 480 million, this year, BRL 619 million. We considered a little more detail here in the titles here of the slide.
The summary is that there was the payback in profit sharing provisions were really relevant, especially for administrative expenses. With this adjustment, we would have administrative expenses year-over-year growing basically at inflation, right? When we look at expenses with sales, yes, there was a growth, but it was a growth that was completely related to the 10% growth in volume. Since we have logistics and including expenses with sales and the recovery, also marketing investments to generate sell-out and to reinforce and build our brand. The year's EBITDA was BRL 1.1 billion, versus BRL 1.198 billion last year. Margin from 12.4% to 10.6%.
The view, the quarterly view with the same adjustment in the gross margin would be an EBITDA of BRL 277 million-BRL 279 million. This payback in the profit sharing provision that took place in the fourth quarter last year, kind of created a comparison that's a little different in this result analysis. The net income grew BRL 646 million, BRL 660 million. In the year, in the quarter, actually, from BRL 177 million to BRL 158 million, and this quarterly comparison is impacted by the same reasons for paybacks and profit sharing, as we already mentioned, for EBITDA and gross margins. Going back to cash generation, debt and investments.
We generated cash and about BRL 1.4 billion, which was the result of the EBITDA of BRL 1.1 billion, and the release in working capital of BRL 10.40 million. The release, the main highlight, would be the suppliers line. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 65 days. It's a journey that started off between 2019 and 2020, when our suppliers line was below 20 days. This is a process that's going on in a very gradual manner, in a diligent manner, and this is allowing us to have this increase in cash generation. We ended the year with a Triple A assessment by Fitch for the 8th consecutive year, and a net cash position of BRL 555 million.
Over 90% of our debt is long-term, especially in the year of 2029. M. Dias Branco ended the year once again with a very solid balance sheet position. We invested BRL 291 million in the year, close to the investments that were made in 2024, with an important highlight for logistical planning and information technology. As Gustavo mentioned, our stock gained value 26% in the year. Our dividend yield was 6.5% in 2025, with the total payment. Here is a cash dividend yield that was effectively paid, was BRL 439 million in dividends paid in 2025.
Our strategy really searches for the growth of this business in Brazil and accelerating the growth of other categories, especially snacks and healthy snacks and international as exports and the Las Acacias brand. Some of our initiatives for ESG in different MGS units in Natal, Salvador, Jaboatão, Bento Gonçalves, and Ceará as well. The sustainability indicators that are really well explained here at the earnings release. Before we get into the Q&A session, our special thanks to investors and market analysts. We were recognized for the second consecutive year as the best investor relations program for food and beverage, and in Latin America, and in mid-cap. The Transparency Trophy for the eighth consecutive year. As Gustavo mentioned, also in the beginning, the APAS Show Award.
With this, we are wrapping up our presentation, and now we can get into the Q&A session.
We're going to begin with our Q&A session. We're going to begin our Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you would like to submit a question, please select the Raise Hand button. If the question is already answered, you can leave the queue by selecting the button on lower hand. Our first question comes from Mr. Pedro Fonseca at XP. Mr. Pedro, your mic is already open.
Good morning, Gustavo. Good morning, Fábio. Thank you for the opportunity to share this session. The first point is, if you guys could talk about what you've seen in the consumer environment in the beginning of the year? We've seen some categories suffering a bit more. I think this high interest issue also impacting. It'd be interesting if we could understand your reading on this and your mindset for the beginning of the year in 2026. Also, if you could share a breakdown between regions, this would be very important. The second point is on cost. As Fábio mentioned, a bit in this favorable cost scenario, whether this is for the dollar, for commodity. I wanna understand how the company's been thinking about the hedge strategy and stock creation, and how this should influence the company's margin in 2026.
This movement with the costs we're seeing today, and if this would change how the company would be operating and how they're creating their stock and hedge. The third point, that's really one-off. Fábio talked about the subvention issue. This is a little bit below what we had and the history we had as well. Fábio explained this, but I wanted to know if there's something that was more like a one-off situation and if we should see this kind of offset in the next quarter. These are my points. Thank you very much.
Hi, Pedro. Good morning, and thank you for your questions. This is Fábio. I'm going to start off with the topic on the subvention. There was nothing that was structurally different.
The subvention for investments was based on wheat consumption for the production of flour and cookies and pasta. When we have a drop in wheat, it's normal to see a reduction in these subventions. In relative terms, this kind of creates an unfavorable impact in the gross margin. The opposite is also applicable, right? The drop in the wheat prices in the market impacts the subvention before actually than our costs, right? This transitions in the results with the increase of production. This is actually a sign that the price drop in the wheat we've seen in the market is already at MGS. Looking at the stock and subventions, and then finally, it trends, it appears in our gross margin, reducing costs, right?
There's nothing that's very atypical or structurally different. It's just the result of the drop in the wheat prices. There's another factor also, which is the fourth quarter, there's a lower production level due to a lower level of demand, coming from seasonality factors. Nothing is structurally different, right? From a consumer environment perspective,
sorry. Hi, this is Gustavo. Let me just take advantage of this topic here on costs and just get into the second question, which is related to the hedge as well. When we look at our costs of acquisition and we compare this with the market, over the periods, what we've seen is a cost of acquisition and an average internal price that is better than the market. Which leads us to believe that our policy for hedge, through stocks, is functioning well.
We have already seen, we're voicing the 18 months forward. We have a monthly committee. We have trading companies and banks participating, our positions are really efficient. When we look at the costs, we just need to be careful because kind of what Fábio mentioned at the end, due to all of the strategy, sometimes this better cost of acquisition takes a little while to transition and pass through the PNL due to volume and stocking. What we're seeing in the fourth quarter is basically this: we broke down a bit of the costs here to demonstrate that we already have 1% gains in the cost of raw materials.
Since the volume of the fourth quarter is still lower, this gain in cost is still gonna happen throughout 2026, and we've already seen this in January, right? This is a matter of timing, right? From the stock, going into the results and everything. We don't see any reason to think about changing our hedge policy or stock up, considering the cost of acquisition that we've been able to have at MGS versus market costs, right? You can, you can move on, Fábio .
Okay, thank you, Gustavo. Pedro, just to get into the consumer environment topic, I think, just to remind you of some points. Our categories like cookies, pasta, flours, margins, and fat, are categories that are resilient.
Some of these items are actually part of the cesta básica, we see very little variation quarter-over-quarter. Of course, adjusting this first seasonality, right? What we've seen in 2025, I mentioned in the beginning for pasta, is there was an adjustment in the pricing in the market that was a little bit below inflation. That also kind of interacts with the price of the wheat and increase in value of the Real throughout the year. The market was pretty stable when it comes to volume, it grew a little bit in units sold. Which is in a normal scenario, if you look at the history of this category.
In the cookies category, considering that the market as a whole increased prices by 7%, we've seen an impact that's unfavorable in the total volume, which dropped 3%, right? It's difficult to set a trend for 2026, starting off from January, right? Sorry, starting off from the month of January, because this is a month that is always a bit weaker when it comes to volumes and due to holidays. I think our expectation for 2026, is that we should continue to see resilient categories with some factors, actually, that could be positive even, such as an increase in the exemption level for income tax. We see a big part of the population, especially in the Northeast regions, that are going to be benefited directly by this change in the rules of the income tax charges.
We believe that a lot of the resources that are gonna be implemented and released for income should be used for consumption, right? I think we need to be careful with the pricing processes, since in the last years, food inflation ended up being a little bit above general inflation. On the other hand, these are resilient categories that have some factors that could be positive even throughout 2026.
Just to add on here, I think a bit of what Fábio mentioned, we had the exemption of the income tax for people making up to 5,000. Just to give you an idea, 85% of the families in the Northeast make less than the 5,000, so they're gonna be benefited, which is our main market. That's one thing.
There's another factor, which is the election, the World Cup, it also helps snacks a lot. When you look at 26, these issues in the market, along with internal issues, a better execution, changes in the team, et cetera, and evolution of the marketing campaigns, when you look at 26, the company is really optimistic in regards to volumes.
That's super clear. Thank you, Fábio, for the answers.
Our next question comes from Mr. Thiago Duarte at BTG. Please, Mr. Thiago, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Good morning, Fábio, Gustavo. It's a pleasure to speak with you all. I wanted to get back to the cost and expenses topic, but not so much about the commodities and phasing out of the hedges and carryover cost policies.
This seems to be very clear, it's more about other lines when it comes to costs and expenses, right? What we start seeing from the second semester of last year is that this design, or this positioning, right, that's more assertive at the POS and in marketing as well, as it attempts to recover volumes and space in the gondolas, are also starting to bring effects in costs, right? In marketing costs, cost of service, even other lines of costs, such as gas for manufacturing, labor, et cetera. I wanted to understand if my interpretation or my reading of this is correct in some way.
If these increases in some of these lines represent an increase, in fact, that is in alignment with this policy, this commercial policy that is different and that you guys have started from last year onwards. We see exchanges of in volumes, but also in cost and expenses. A second question, which is not exactly separate from this, would be depending on the effectiveness of these bigger efforts in the recovery of capacity and volume gains, how feasible more long term would you consider this to be for the company to get back to gross margins above 35 or closer to 40%? Actually, even before the acquisition of Piraquê back then. I wanted to hear a little bit from you guys about this as well. Thank you.
Hi there, Thiago. Good morning.
Thanks for your question. I'll start off here, you can add on. 1, I know your point was not commodities, when you look ahead, what we see is a little bit of stability, right? Wheat seems to have stabilized. There's a trend of an increase that's more up ahead, currency has helped a bit. Palm oil, that's a little different, I'd say we are experiencing a moment of stability that really facilitates consumption issues as well. When we look at these two categories, especially for pasta, the discussion is really price-oriented, right? The elasticity of these two categories. You increase prices, it drops 4. Since we haven't seen this need, we tend to believe...
When we look at the cost of transformation and the SG&A, especially the S, we've been investing more for marketing and in regards to last year and the quarter, this is really related to the timings. In the fourth quarter of last year, you remember we had the changes in the commercial team in October. We had a period without a VP and marketing VP. Naturally, a lot of the investments were suspended back then. This year, I'd say that from June, we took on with greater intensity. When you look at the year, at least for now, we're not gonna run away from that index we've been talking about of close to 2%, when we're talking about marketing here, right?
When you look at this more up ahead, the trend is that this would increase, and this needs to be funded by cost of transformation better and a G&A that's also better. This is what we've agreed upon with the board and all of the commercial team. This is gonna have to be done gradually, though. I increase my investments in marketing, and I gain efficiency in production, either through volume or through a series of changes we've been working on in industry, and at the right moment, we'll be communicating. There's changes in the type of machine, the capacity of production, there's changes in machines that are gonna help us with a different matrix of that's more economical, and we're gonna be able to fund greater marketing expenses with better costs in our industrialization and transformation.
This is a bit of our mindset, thinking of this up ahead.
Thiago, just to add on to this with the numbers here, I'd imagine you're probably referring to margins we have up until 2018, 2019, and that was a moment where our capacity utilization was about 75%. In 2025, it was about 60%, 2024, 58%, right? This entire journey Gustavo mentioned, is anchored by this new commercial team and all of these initiatives, growth initiatives. As this presents results and volumes, we're gonna start seeing gradually an improvement in capacity utilization and a gradual improvement in the gross margins as well, just considering the bigger dilution of the fixed costs.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Thiago.
Our next question comes from Mr. Lucas Ferreira at JP Morgan. Please, Mr. Lucas, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Well, some follow-ups here. If you could give us some more information on the salary adjustments, and at least for me, this was a surprise in a quarter. There's a retroactive factor. If you could explain this a little bit. Has this led to relevant impact in the fixed cost? A follow-up here on the prior question, Thiago. I'm not sure if I understood this correctly, but as part of the plan is funding marketing investments that are gonna lever volume and efficiencies in costs. We're considering a horizon of a short term that could impact the margin evolution for the company. Is this still gonna be far from reaching that horizon in the short term?
Then when it comes to volume, I can see from the Nielsen numbers that categories are not growing that much. Actually, nothing practically, right? Maybe you'll have a variation that's a little better or worse, but these are very mature categories. You already have a market share you've recovered. If you could talk about where the opportunities for share growth are, especially in markets that are more mature, if you guys think there would be space and where you're gonna see this kind of growth since the company already reconquered share and industry is not growing.
If you could talk about this growth and if, in your opinion, this is in some way considering GLP drugs, as you've already heard, people from retail, some of the main retailers in Brazil are starting to see movement in the categories, proteins growing a little more. Since you got into this topic, I think it would be great to get your view on this as well.
Thank you, Lucas, and thank you for the question. I'm going to start off with the last part. We saw some retailers already talking about how price dropped 10% due to the GLP-1 drugs. I think this is a topic we've been closely watching, and this has been a topic for the board. Of course, we don't wanna overestimate this.
In our view, this is something that's growing, but there's still very little penetration. There are some challenges that we still have to have more clarity about sustaining this treatment. A lot of studies are showing that after 7 months, the treatment's interrupted. We don't know what the impact will be, the collateral effects. There's a lot of other uncertainties still. About the future, right? We're not gonna be waiting for this to happen, right? To then take on the necessary measures, right? First, in a pragmatic manner, is there some current effect we've noticed in 2025 and in 2026 that's relevant for the company? No. No relevant effects. What is the company doing?
Well, the company has been developing itself even before the discussion, the GLP-1s, with this healthy lifestyle trend, right? This is not something that's happening only with the pens, right? We see the company starting off with the gluten then sodium, sugar, and now with GLP, and the loss of muscle, a lot of people are geared towards protein. Then in 22, we acquired Jasmine, which is also a company that looks at these healthy diet conditions. Internally, when we look at our pipeline for R&D development, the company is really geared towards the development of categories and products that address this new demand from consumers. We have an innovation committee every 2 months.
The next committee will be now in March, and it's just gonna be about products that can address a bit of the demands that although they're small in the Brazilian market, it could be greater among users of the GLP-1 drugs and pens. The company's really keeping an eye open and looking at all of the studies, but the effect, they're still very small, I'd say. When we start talking about efficiency, actually, we're looking at funding marketing in a more efficient manner, and this is exactly because we don't wanna have any penalties in our margins. We really wanna get back to the levels before. Of course, it's difficult to foresee the timing for this, but volumes, already advancing.
We've had fourth quarter of constant recovery in volumes. When we look at pasta and cookies, I agree with you, Lucas. These are categories that grow a little less, but when we look at this internally, we see the category I mentioned, the snacks and healthy snacks. It's growing a lot, like double digits and our healthy food area has also been growing at double digits and of course, with better margins. The company's been trying to offset these lower margins in the overall category of cookies and pasta with the entrance of these new categories as part of the strategic plan back then. I think this is an important point. Now, we also had a bit of a deficiency operationally. We had important changes.
We understand there's a lot of operational opportunities in some regions we have no presence in. That's about 1, 2, 3% market share. With a good team and the correct investments, et cetera, the mobile system for sales reps, et cetera. This shift in the mindset, the negotiation, sell-out, Perfect Store, et cetera. Regardless of the growth in the category, M. Dias, it tends to recover this market it already had in the past. All of these changes were made in order to achieve this, so that the volumes can grow more than market levels. This has been our mindset, if you look at our budget for this year, regardless of what the market is, our budget is geared towards higher growth in the market, right? With market sharing.
We've seen good opportunities in the market with this new team that arrived, and has already done things in a very different manner.
Well, this is Fábio, and to wrap up here with Gustavo's speech. The first point you mentioned on labor, here, we basically had a bigger concentration in 2025, in the second semester. That kind of weighed a bit more in the fourth quarter and called your attention a bit, but that's pretty much it. There was nothing very structural.
Okay, guys. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Gustavo Troyano at Itaú BBA. Please, Mr. Gustavo, you may proceed.
Good morning, guys, thanks for the questions. We have 2 points here that I think would be good to discuss with you all. First, I want to get back to the raw material costs. We talked about the hedge strategy a lot and deflation expectations up ahead. I wanted to hear from you guys about the mix and costs, right? Between palm oil and wheat, which was information we had access to. With the peak of palm oil and the reduction of wheat, the growth of snack, and maybe this mix dynamic will help us model this cost per tons up ahead. It would be great to get a feel if we saw any modifications with oil getting more relevant in the cost mix, and all the prices are going up.
There should be some of a volume gain as well. The second question would be getting back to the fixed cost point here. You also mentioned in the presentation a bit, we had a peak in fixed costs per ton in 2025 against 2024, we had. This is a discussion we had a lot, which is one of the pillars of expanding profitability up ahead, right? We saw an improvement in capacity utilization. Volumes grew, as Gustavo mentioned, but we still haven't seen a reduction in the, a dilution of this fixed cost, maybe at the magnitude we had suggested, right?
I wanted to understand, how we could model this up ahead, and if this could be explained by the variation in prices that Fábio just mentioned, and what would the granularity be and what we can do from now on? That would be great. Thank you.
Hi, Gustavo. Good morning. This is Fábio here, and I'm gonna start off with the cost of raw materials and mix issue. You're right, there was a bit of a shift in mix. The palm oil impacted a bit more of the total cost of MBS. This is related to the good food service performance, right? Food service has wheat, flour mill, margins, and fat. These last two categories really had good performance.
Growth of volume, that was really strong. Considering that palm oil had a peak in 2025 versus 2024, this generated a mix effect that was slightly unfavorable in our costs. On the other hand, it brought in more revenue. When you look at our margin analysis, you have this mismatch, and when you look at the numbers,
Sorry, Fabio, just to provide a little more color here on what Fabio is mentioning. With the creation of the food service area, we started reviewing go-to-market, but also the portfolio. Our main sale of margarine here is for the Puro Sabor brand. We had a bucket of 5 kilos of 70% fat, where most competitors were operating with 60%.
Basically, we had a price that was bigger than competitors, even with a better product and better fat, when you consider margins or Frying, it doesn't become water, so the more fat, the better. We were able to adjust this, and we were able to review our portfolio and the formulas. This simple change in our main SKU, even by reducing the volume of fat in the SKUs, we improved sales a lot, adjusting the product to our competitors, and that generated sales about 20% in the B2B margin, which is the bigger margins, right? Not those small, little pockets, the big ones that we send to bars, restaurants, and hotels. Yes, there was a bit of this effect.
While when you look at other categories, for like B2C consumption, volume's ramping up, right. You had a growth in volume, and this issue was like, "Oh, maybe we didn't sell it that much." I'd say the. So this is a very optimistic perspective. When you look at the year, it wasn't that relevant, right. That's it, Gustavo. Thanks. I think we wrapped it up here.
Thanks, guys. It's clear.
Our next question is from Isabella Simonato at Bank of America, please.
In working capital, you talked about the days of suppliers. You had an important peak there. In this year, if you could give us a little more details about how this is taking place, which competitors, and if there's some exchange with this extension in the terms. I think that'll be interesting.
Thank you for this question. We also had an important change in the supply area, this is an area that became very relevant in the company. We started working with renegotiations with suppliers. We created our strategy of strategic sourcing, actually, through the creation of new companies as well. We have energy and power farms with Omega. There's a lot of things coming up with our suppliers. This is not only related to negotiations of purchase and sale, right? First we had negotiated a lot of the DNA issues, now this team is actually already negotiating and coming into discussions with the agencies, communication agencies only.
This phase of 2025, which was the reflex of your question, was a moment where supply really shifted to negotiations of commodities. Since it was always an area that is more sensitive, this year they started really focusing on this issue with the payment terms, which were always really high. Basically cash and with the suppliers, right? Where did this gain come from? Basically from this round of negotiations of commodities, we hadn't seen that ever since the beginning of. These were the categories that are most focused on by the team in this year, 2025.
Well, this renegotiation of commodity and the extension of these terms, can we consider in some way, such as a cheaper commodities like wheat, et cetera, and a reflex of the currency situation, would impact your profitability, maybe? I don't know.
Well, that was done slowly, actually, finding other ways of funding for our suppliers, et cetera. No, it's not related to value, for instance, it's an internal target that they had. This year, this is always very sensitive, including volume, right? We need to be very careful, right? We also don't. We're gonna have better terms with worse pricing, right? This was a topic that we left for later, actually, because we wanted to be sure that part of these gains of the terms along with suppliers were not coming as price, right? It was, it's really a negotiation between the price environment and currency situation as well.
Our next question is from Mr. Ricardo Boiati from Banco Safra. Please, Mr. Ricardo, you may proceed.
Hi, good morning, good afternoon, Gustavo, Fábio, and other participants. My question here is about the commercial dynamics, I think this is really interesting for the company with this recovery trend in the share and in the main categories. When we look at price, the average price was kind of moving in the opposite direction as the market did, right? My question here is if there was, like, a mixed effect that should be considered here or part of the company's strategy also to focus on share out and market share gains, and how this could be maybe translated into a greater price aggressive approach than competitors. Correlated to this, how are you imagining the competitive environment as you enter into 2026? Do you notice any changes in the market?
Even taking advantage of this cost and commodity and currency scenario, right, with, like, a favorable wind, let's say, helping our cost base, right? If the market's starting to take on a posture that is a little more aggressive, maybe when it comes to prices, then maybe continuity and market share gains could become a little more challenging when you look at the year 2026, right? That's from my side here. Thanks, guys.
Hi, Ricardo. Good afternoon. This is Fábio, and I'm gonna start off with an answer here. In sequence here, we can see the results of prices, and there was no aggressive movements on our side. This is, of course, considering the relative price at Nielsen, of course, there was no change from the third to the fourth quarter.
The focus here is really in execution and market share recovery, especially in these two main categories, right? When it comes to the mix, yes, I think you have a valid point. We've seen over the last quarters that the food service business with flour, meal, margarine and fat, of course there's an average price that's a little bit below, and this generates a bit of a mix effect. When you look at the commercial dynamic and pricing dynamic for each of these businesses, cookie is one business and fats is another. There's no aggressive approach in the pricing, really.
Okay.
Just to add on, also about the competitive environment, and if the market, since you're already starting to see some signs, maybe if the market take advantage of this cost dynamic with more favorable raw materials, maybe being a little more aggressive in pricing in the beginning of 2026, or is this not expected? Well, actually, I'm gonna use even the IPCA information, which is also disclosed by the categories. What we see is a rationality environment, right? The categories that are maybe more connected to like wheat and... Of course, wheat had a drop in prices in the last month, represented a slight setback in pricing, especially flour. All of this is in line with normality in the cookies category.
Besides wheat, you have other inputs like palm oil and cocoa. We even saw a slight increase in the month of January, and also in the IPCA-15, that was disclosed. That's market numbers, right? What we see is an environment of a lot of rationality from a pricing perspective.
Okay, thank you. Very clear.
Our next question comes from Mr. Henrique Brustolin from Bradesco BBI. Please, mister?
Hi, good morning, Gustavo and Fábio Cefaly. I wanted to ask you guys to qualify a bit of the market share performance throughout 2025.
We saw that drop that was significant in the second quarter, and if you could explain a little bit more about what was behind that and what kind of pulled this recovery later on, and how this interacts with this relative price recession and gross margins as well. The impression we get is that part of the recovery that came in was that mismatch of relative prices compared to competition. This seems to have some consequence in the gross margin, right? If this interpretation makes sense, and looking up to 2026, what are the factors you're seeing that give you conviction about this process, right? This ongoing recovery in the market share?
Well, just to remind you here, the market share always has a delay.
What we present as the market share for the third quarter, for example, has a direct relationship with the sell-in of the second quarter, right? This result on the market share in the second quarter is more related to the sell-in of the first quarter. In the second quarter, we already start seeing a bit of recovery in our numbers, basically because of execution matters, as Gustavo mentioned in the other questions, right? That was reflected in the market share from the third quarter on, and that's what we saw in the fourth quarter, right? There was no change in prices from our side.
Actually, connecting this a bit to the prior question from Ricardo, this market share gain is basically coming from a better execution level, presence in the POS, better balancing of marketing investments, and... This is all a result, a direct result, of an improvement process in our execution. All of this that happened in 2025, is what creates the conditions and gives us the conviction that we're on the right path, so we can continue this growth in volumes and of course, in the market share gains.
That's great, Fábio. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Laura Hirata at Santander.
Thank you, guys, and for this space. I wanted to explore 2 points.
First is a follow-up here. We noticed in the last 3 quarters that you have a reduction in stock days, especially when it comes to raw materials. You guys have been carrying over less days, specifically in this line. I wanted to understand what the rationale is, right, behind this change, and how this can interact with the hedge strategy you guys have, right? Considering that it's carrying over the physical stock, and that was all part of this. That was something that M. Dias Branco had as a difference, right? Another point is about the channel mix.
I wanted to understand how this volume performance took place, and we wanted to understand more about what this origin, and as you're moving a lot in flour and B2B, et cetera, I wanted to understand this dynamic a little better.
Hi, this is Fábio. From a perspective of stock, I think there was no change in policies. This reduction we've seen in the stock base is directly related to a price of commodities in the market and also the value of the real. We also had some receipts of wheat that went from one quarter to another that impacted volumes a little bit. Exactly during the closing of the quarter, right? That's completely scenario-based and not structural, right?
What we can see as structural is really, the drop of the price of the commodities, no major changes in policy. In regards to the distribution channels, when you look at our business, our main business, which are the cookies and pastas, there are changes really in the channel mix, in the last quarters. Of course, when we look at the different growth fronts, we could have some kind of a different mix, because maybe the food service moved more than the others, right? These are different businesses, and they could lead to some kind of a difference in the mix in which of the channels, nothing very structurally different in, on our side. Or on the market side.
Okay, that's very clear, Fábio. Thank you.
The Q&A session has officially ended. We would now like to pass the floor back to Mr. Gustavo for his final remarks.
I wanna thank you all for your presence, and I wanna say that our IR team and Fábio, me, Rodrigo, Breno, Lucas, we're all available, and we'll be with you all in the next call. Have a nice day and a great weekend as well.
The earnings call is officially ended. We wanna thank you all for your participation. Have a great day.