Good morning, everyone. Thank you for waiting. Welcome to Magalu 's conference call regarding its quarterly results. For those of you who need simultaneous translation, please click on the interpretation button, the globe icon at the bottom of your screen, and choose your preferred language: English or Portuguese. We inform that this event is being recorded and will be available on the company's IR website at ir.magazineluiza.com.br, where you can also find the earnings release and presentation in both Portuguese and English. The link to the presentation in English is also available in the chat. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and later, we will hold a Q&A session. To ask questions, click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and enter your name, company, and the language you speak.
When you're announced, a prompt to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must enable your mic to proceed with your question. Questions received in writing will be answered later by the investor relations team. Now, I would like to turn the floor over to Frederico Trajano, CEO of the company. Please, Fred, the floor is yours.
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Good day, everyone. Thank you very much for attending our conference call referring to fourth quarter 2024 and full year 2024. I am here once again with all of the executive committee of the company. Myself and all of the officers will be available to answer your questions after my presentation. I will be speaking as well as Roberto Belissimo, our CFO, and then the Q&A. Before we specifically talk about the earnings, I would like to put things into context. As part of our strategic cycle, in 2025, I will complete 10 years as CEO of the company, and we are completing and concluding our second strategic cycle. The first strategic cycle was digitalization from 2016 to 2020.
I took the company with BRL 10 billion GMV, BRL 2 billion online, and our first mission, my mission, and all of the exco was to digitalize the company in a world that was becoming more and more digital, particularly e-commerce, especially e-commerce of discretionary goods. That was our challenge of the company. We had this cycle from 2016 to 2020 that was very successful. The litmus test was that in 2020, in the pandemic year with 1,300 brick-and-mortar stores closed, in that year, in 2020, we were able to grow 50%. We lost 50% of our business, and still, we were able to grow, showing that the company was digital and had completed its digitalization process. If we fast forward to date, those 2 billion online became BRL 46 billion.
That was of GMV, that was a very significant growth, and it was a cycle that left a legacy for the company. We are a digital company. When the Magalu digitalization cycle was completed, it was very much inspired by the U.S. experience in our trips to Silicon Valley and by U.S. digital companies, and we found in China the inspiration to build an ecosystem. Initially, the first cycle was to digitalize the business. The second was to diversify our revenue streams and profit sources so that we would make our results less cyclical. We had digitalized Magalu, but even in the online business, a good part of the result came from the gross profit of purchasing and selling electronics and home appliances. We were highly dependent on 1P retail. It was multi-channel, but still, we relied a lot on 1P retail of one specific category.
In the second cycle, we were inspired by Chinese companies. Alibaba was one, and we did strong work. We had a number of acquisitions. We diversified results. We added Netshoes, KaBuM! to the portfolio. We bought five logistics companies that became Magalog. We acquired one big fintech and other smaller payment processors that became Magalu Pay. We had a number of movements. We launched Magalu Ads, Magalu Cloud. In other words, we had a number of movements to be able to post results even in negative high interest rate cycles, something we never managed in the past. It took over 2016, and that was a time in 2015. We had had a hike in interest rates, and we had a negative result because interest rates were 7% hiking to 14% in 2015. It was a hiking cycle of interest rates.
You can see in companies that operate in this sector, when there are high interest rates, a number of companies file for Chapter 11 or go to court reorganizations. This is what happens. We have been in this business for 65 years. We have lived through many economic cyclicalities. I had a challenge with my team in this cycle of creating and consolidating the ecosystem, which was to make the results less cyclical. We had a litmus test in the digitalization cycle, which was to grow our revenue even with the closed brick-and-mortar stores, and this proved itself. In the second cycle, we have to be profitable even with high interest rates, and this is exactly what we posted in the last quarter of 2024. On the next slide, you can see that the Magalu ecosystem proved itself.
We posted a significant increase in EBITDA margin, and we had the fifth consecutive quarter of net income in a context of high interest rates. In the beginning of 2024, we had shown, actually, we had shown recovery of results in Q4 2023, and we continued to post a positive net income. When we started 2024, our expectations were the focus. The newsletter said that we would end the year with 9%-9.5% interest rates, the SELIC risk. The SELIC was not 9%. It was 13%. The interest rates tend to continue at this level. Still, in 2024, the company had positive results. We grew our EBITDA by 40%, 39% to be more precise. We had our EBITDA standing at BRL 3 billion, which was a little higher than the consensus for our results in the beginning of the year.
We were able to reduce financial expenses in a year with increasing SELIC rates. We had an adjusted net income of BRL 277 million. The accounting net income was even higher, but adjusted net income excluding non-recurring events, BRL 277 million. Again, rebuilding a result that was negative in 2023. It was a significant leap, unquestionable improvement, very consistent work of all of the departments of the company, all of our subsidiaries, all companies, Magalu Pay, Luiza Cred, KaBuM!, Netshoes, Magalu Ads that is already contributing to the results, 3P, which improved a lot, its profitability, 1P, that was able to recover all the DIFAL that we lost in 2023, which was a huge work. We lost 5 points in the margin, 7 points in 1P of Netshoes. We lost 9 points of margin. That was spectacular work of the company. We were totally focused to resume our profitability level.
We always like to be profitable. We had come from two difficult years, 2022, 2023, with negative results, and it was absolutely crucial to prove the success of our cycle and also to motivate our team to recover our results. I would like to highlight the generation of operational cash, BRL 3 billion EBITDA converted into BRL 3.1 billion of operating cash generation. Roberto Belissimo is going to talk more about this. I would like to highlight two things. First, working capital. We had a very competent and efficient working capital management by Fabrício, and this was also competent management by our subsidiaries, Netshoes, KaBuM!, all of them with working capital control, inventory control. I would like to highlight our work to monetize tax credits, which was one of the highlights of the year.
This is complex work that involves legal and operational departments of the company, as well as finance. That was very good work of reducing and monetizing our tax credits, which were in our balance sheet. This was very good work, focused work, showing consistent results and a consistent operation. Even with all of these achievements, we gained practically 2 points in EBITDA margin, 5.8% to 7.8%. I think it is very hard to see a retail again, 2 percentage points in EBITDA margin year on year. Even with all this effort to adjust the margins and the profitability, still, the company grew. Still, the company grew from BRL 63 billion to BRL 65 billion, GMV of BRL 65 billion, BRL 46 billion in e-commerce. We were one of the most relevant players in Brazilian e-commerce.
Here we would like to mention a highlight, the almost BRL 20 billion sales from brick-and-mortar stores, almost 12% same store sales. We did close some stores in the end of 2023, but same store sales growth in the year was 12%. In Q4, 8%. I would like to highlight the competent work by our operational team led by Fabrício Garcia, who will be joining us in the Q&A. We're living a very good moment. We had a difficult moment for the brick-and-mortar stores, the physical stores in 2021. That was the hangover of the pandemic. We reported -18% same store sales, so -18% in Q3 2021. Never had we reported this negative number.
The market was questioning our strategy for physical stores, saying that brick-and-mortar stores were a thing of the past, that they were going to end, that they were an anchor for a future strategic problem for the company. Today, brick-and-mortar stores have shown to be, have proven to be not only profitable, but a fundamental channel in terms of online results. I'll speak more about this, but this was very good work. We maintained our investments, and we kept our field team motivated, an intact team, continued to invest in technology to improve store processes, particularly store pickup and ship from store processes, as well as level of service, mobile cash out, fast cash out. We made a number of investments, changed the POS of the store. We maintained the investment in the physical stores even when the market was skeptical regarding them.
We're reaping the fruits now. We'll continue to do so, looking forward. Not just that, and this is the big news, not just for Magalu's format, but also we started a process, which I believe in the last year of the cycle is very symbolic, which is the opening of physical stores of the companies of the group. We had the KaBuM! store opening last year. This is a store that we opened next to our mega store on Tietê Marginal. It attracts thousands of shoppers a year. It has been bringing great results for KaBuM!. I know we replicated that just two weeks ago, opening the first Netshoes stores in 20 years. We opened the store at the same location. We ended up occupying the whole building, and this is a Netshoes outlet. It has proven to be an amazing success with huge checkout lines.
We had to open a new parking lot, and this is proving the success of the previous cycle, which was based on multi-channel capabilities. We are 1P winners in Brazil because we have the option of store pickup and ship return, ship from store. This is a differential of Magalu that we want to replicate for other brands of the group. Very soon, we're going to have an iconic location, Conjunto Nacional, the old store of Cultura, bookstore. We are going to have a space for the Magalu ecosystem with all of the brands, not just Netshoes and KaBuM!, but also including Época Cosméticos, Estante Virtual. In other words, we are very excited with this experience, and we are convinced that it's going to be successful given the success of these two stores that we opened.
This is a point of no return, and we'll increase the number of physical stores of these brands of the group because multi-channel has always been and will continue to be Magalu's differential and one strategic differential. No one knows how to operate brick-and-mortar stores like Magalu. In the brick-and-mortar stores environment, we have a competition which is much less fierce than what we see in the online world. I'd like to mention the online world. About the online world, I'd like to make some important highlights. We continue to lead in tickets above BRL 1,000, and we are doing significant work to broaden our leadership. We launched the Magalu Fulfillment in 2023, and we doubled its share. I'll speak more about fulfillment in a minute. We doubled its size last year.
One of the differentials here is that it gives the possibility of seller stocking products with a higher cubic volume. No other operation can do that. We can do fulfillment of furniture, of stoves, refrigerators, and so on and so forth. We have focused on gaining fulfillment market share and grow this business looking forward. Fulfillment is going to be an important part. I'd like to highlight some points regarding fulfillment. We started in 2023. We launched it slightly after the other market options. Our idea regarding fulfillment was, like I said before, to replicate the multi-channel capability in fulfillment. Our fulfillment is multi-channel. Sellers stock their products exactly in the same DCs of our 1P. Consumers may choose to have the same possibilities of shipping when they buy from a fulfillment seller because they can, for example, have store pickup.
We had an increase from 12% to 24% of 3P orders, more than 4,000 sellers. The level of service is 95%. We have nine DCs, and it is very hard to get authorization in each state to be able to operate and have this operation and make it work from the fiscal standpoint. We were able to increase from four to nine DCs last year. I guess that the benefit of fulfillment is, in addition to increasing conversion by twofold, and I'll speak more about this momentarily, it also helps us in a focal point. Every year, we have the theme of the year. Last year, the theme for Magalu was increasing level of service. We spoke about Magalu Delights, Magalu Enchants. We had come from cycles where the year theme was operational simplification. In other words, integrating the acquired companies to our business.
That was very successful. We had one year, which was profitability. We were also very successful. Last year, we wanted to increase our NPS to a global benchmark level. We increased the corporate NPS of the company from 67 to 77. That's a level way higher than local operations. A good part of this growth of 10 points in NPS came from 3P. We did very strong work. Of course, fulfillment contributed a lot to that. In 3P, NPS increased from 55 to 71, practically 15 percentage points increase in the full year. This helped the company improve the current NPS level. The NPS of the stores is 83. The more fulfillment increases its share in the total business of the company, the more this number will improve and will get to a corporate NPS above 80, which is very hard.
We did work, which was not limited to fulfillment. We did a lot of work to facilitate cancellations by consumers, making it possible for them to cancel the purchase and return the product. They do not have to return the product through the postal system. We were able to disconnect sellers with a low reputation, offered new forms of payment. We improved the level of service, logistics, and the time to process refunds. When we choose a theme for the year, we focus very much on that. The result of this focus and of our team happens. I am sure that this will happen today, this year. I will speak more about the theme of the year in a minute. Another highlight that I would like to talk about was the strategic partnership between Magalu and Alibaba that we talked about last year.
It's a huge complexity and complex because it's a huge company and the number of systems we have to work with. To AliExpress, it is also complex. They have the same platform around the world, pretty much. To make adaptations locally specific for Brazil would involve a huge number of people. We were able to do that in record time and launch it. Magalu is selling our products on their channel very successfully. We also have Chinese sellers through the choice line, AliExpress's choice line, on our platform, expanding the diversification of our categories. We see a lot of partnerships in things like logistics looking forward. We are very satisfied to be able to put that on air and the evolution that we're seeing as well in this business.
I'd like to note, and I'll turn the floor in a minute to Roberto, but for me, another two important points that greatly contributed to our profitability and that have the potential to continue contributing looking forward. We don't think we've reached the maximum of our margin. We have the potential to increase it even further with our BRL 46 billion GMV online. One is Magalu Ads. We had an extremely productive year with a lot of deliveries from Magalu Ads teams. Now, with the leadership of Celia Goldstein that we brought in at the beginning of last year, she leads a very high-level team in the commercial side and the product teams.
We also had in platform and product significant improvements in the algorithm performance, usability of the UX, the beginning of the self-service model for large customers so they do not have to speak to someone in the group to run their ads. We enhanced the display product, doubled the ads revenue compared to last year, increased by 15%. The number of key account advertisers and the number of visits is very high, but there is still huge potential. It already contributes to that increase on EBITDA margin that we announced with the year's results. I think the trend is, as a lot of these deliveries were in the second half of last year, this would still be expressive in coming years, especially this year now.
I'd also like to point, and Beto will talk about this in more detail, but I must mention the increase in the results of all of the operations under Magalu Pay's umbrella. It was Magalu Payment, but now it's Magalu Pay. We can't call it Magalu Bank anymore due to central bank's rules, but we had extraordinary results, exceptional for Luiza Cred, with an ROE much higher than the market average. Beto will talk about this on the fourth quarter, even with capitalization ROE being very high in the quarter. The delinquency levels are at an all-time low. We received permission from the central bank to operate the financial institution that we're waiting for approval.
We received it last month, the financial institution of Magalu Pay that will operate products that are not under Luiza Cred, such as CDC, especially direct-to-consumer credit, at stores and the online operation as well that we announced last year. We had a very positive year for the acquiring of Magalu Pay, our payment processing company. You saw the difference. It was a very positive year in terms of results. Magalu Consortium, Consortium Magalu as well. It was a very good year, and they all contributed greatly to that increase in two percentage points on our EBITDA of last year. One year of delinquency completely under control. There's no reason why we shouldn't accelerate more credit. With the authorization of the central bank and the tax efficiency and the stake in CDC to the financial company, we can expand credit as well through credit cards or CDC.
Delinquency levels have been very low for many quarters. That confirms again that it is time for us to accelerate credit, and it will be one of the growth drivers looking forward. Always being very cautious, right? We always have that attention to this type of operation. Next slide, and I'll turn the floor to Roberto to detail the financial results, and I'll talk a little bit about our perspectives for 2025 afterwards, and then open for questions.
Thank you, Fred. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending our earnings conference call. I'll start by reinforcing the main highlights of the quarter. Reinforcing the total sales of BRL 18.4 billion in the quarter, a growth of 3%.
Highlight being the brick-and-mortar stores with same-store sales of 8%, again reaching a gross margin above 30%, pretty much stable compared to the same quarter of last year, but a margin that is considerably high. We reached EBITDA in the quarter of nearly BRL 850 million with a margin of 7.8%. Adjusted net income recurring of BRL 139 million. Again, the accounting net income, including non-recurring results, was BRL 295 million in the quarter. In the EBITDA level, we did not have non-recurring expenses of any relevance. Most of that difference in the recurring between the recurring net income and the accounting net income is in the line of income tax credits and social contribution tax in the subsidiaries and the companies that we acquired. In this quarter, we also had cash generation of BRL 2.1 billion, very strong cash generation, ending the year with a total cash position of nearly BRL 8 billion.
When we talk about the year overall, we sold BRL 65 billion, again, a growth of around 4% with a special highlight to brick-and-mortar store with same-store sales of 12%. Gross margin, even higher at 30.6% in the year. Overall, we expanded gross margin by 1.4 percentage points, which greatly contributed to this EBITDA of BRL 3 billion, 7.8% margin, and net income of BRL 277 million, adjusted net income for the year, considering here the dilution of expenses, the improvement of Luiza Cred's results, and the reduction of financial expenses as well. Again, when we talk about the accounting net income, we got close to BRL 450 million, including tax gains, especially in income taxes, social contributions, again, and cash generation for the year, more than BRL 3 billion, ending the year at BRL 8 billion in cash position plus receivables at the end of the year.
Moving on, just to bring you more details about this quarter, our gross margin was virtually stable, varying 0.2 percentage points. In the fourth quarter of last year, we already had a very significant increase in gross margin. The base was already more comparable. We had already concluded the pass-through of default and increased margins as a whole. I highlight here the dilution of operating expenses, SG&A contributing with 0.3 percentage points. Again, we had noted this in the last quarter. In this quarter, again, we deliver operating expenses pretty much stable compared to the previous year, growing about 1%, even considering a bigger growth in sales and inflation. That is a result of the whole company's work in managing operating expenses. The highlight here is Luiza Cred contributing with 0.6 percentage points. In previous years, Luiza Cred closed or pulled our EBITDA margin down.
This year, it was outstanding, especially this quarter, contributing to the EBITDA margin, explaining or responding for most of this increase from 7.2% to 7.8% in EBITDA margin. When we look at the year overall, the improvement was in all lines. The increase of 2 percentage points includes gross margin, dilution of operating expenses, equity in Luiza Cred, and everything else. It was very consistent and complete results. On the next slide, we talk a little bit more about working capital. This, again, highlighting the evolution of working capital in this last quarter, contributing BRL 1 billion to cash generation. Cash generation in the quarter was BRL 2 billion, BRL 1 billion in working capital, but there was also another one coming mostly from EBITDA and other improvements in the recovery of taxes, for example.
When we look at the 12 months, we also see the evolution of working capital in about BRL 400 million, also contributing to the generation of operating cash. When we talk about financial expenses, here we show consistent dilution of financial expenses in all quarters, even in the last quarter with a CDI increasing. Again, we were still able to dilute financial expenses, getting to a level of 3.6% on net revenue, sorry. We always say that one of the indicators that we pursue, it's not a part of the guidance, but it is one of our targets. It's financial expenses over EBITDA. In the last quarter, we had reached about 50%, and this quarter, we reduced it even further. That's why we're close to a level of 45% already.
This is a result of the reduction of indebtedness levels, generation of operating cash, improvement in means of payment, especially the increase in payments with PICs, payments with interest rates and CDC. When we look at the year overall, the reduction was of more than BRL 500 million from BRL 2 billion to BRL 1.5 billion in operating financial expenses. The improvement in the overall results was BRL 1 billion in EBITDA and BRL 500 million in financial expenses. In the evolution of results, as Fred mentioned, that's very significant in retail. Moving on to the next slide. When we talk about cash generation in the quarter, in the quarter, we increased our cash position in BRL 1.3 billion.
Since the generation of operating cash was BRL 2.1 billion, minus investment in the payment of leases and interest rates, we also rebought the ventures in the secondary market, paid interest rates, and still increased greatly the cash position at the end of the year. On the next slide, we'll talk a little bit more about how we see cash generation overall for the year. Again, we start from a cash of BRL 3.1 billion operational cash flow. As Fred mentioned, the conversion of EBITDA into cash generation was extremely high. Again, between these two, we already include the costs of the receivables discount.
That's financial expense in the P&L, but in the cash flow of operations, it is under operational cash flow because it's related to accounts receivable, and the discount was of around BRL 900 million last year, and we offset all of those costs with the improvement of working capital that we showed, the monetization of taxes and other assets that were on the longer term. That's one of our targets that we've been able to achieve, converting EBITDA into cash generation. After this cash generation, we also have investments of BRL 700 million. We have the capital allocation at Luiza Cred and other subsidiaries of BRL 600 million, leasing of BRL 800 million as well. After all of these events, we had a free cash generation of BRL 1 billion.
If we excluded that allocation of capital at Luiza Cred, that was somehow a non-recurring event, we would have a free cash flow of BRL 1.5 billion in the year 2024. After this cash generation, we have interest expenses on the loans of BRL 600 million, with a lot of cash flow available for the payment of debt as well. Last year, we had an increase in private capital of BRL 1.25 billion and paid BRL 2.8 billion, reducing the balance of the debt by almost BRL 3 billion, which is very significant. Overall, in the year, our total cash position went from BRL 9 billion to BRL 8 billion, a reduction of virtually BRL 1 billion, but also reducing BRL 3 billion in total debt. We greatly improved our net cash position. That is what we show on the next slide.
Before we talk about net cash, just to highlight that this cash flow on the operations of BRL 3.1 billion was the best in our history, exactly the same as we had in 2020. That was the height of the pandemic, but at that time, a lot of that cash flow was generated by the increase in sales and the variation in working capital that were returned when the sales slowed down. This cash generation now is more sustainable because, again, it comes from the profitability of the operations themselves. When we look again at cash, we expended BRL 1.6 billion in a position of BRL 3.3 billion. In the next slide, we show exactly what this cash position is: BRL 7.9 billion of cash plus receivables already net, present value, minus a total debt of BRL 4.6 billion, amounting to BRL 3.3 billion net cash.
On the right, we show the reduction on net debt, as well as the debt extension that we worked on at the end of last year, BRL 2 billion that would mature in 2025-2026, were extended to 2027 and 2028. Our debt now is well distributed over the next four years. Finally, talking about Luiza Cred, a major highlight in Luiza Cred results this quarter, delinquency dropped significantly, NPL above 90 days and below 90 days at historically low levels. Provisions went down 20%. With the capital increase, we also reduced the cost of funding in about 30%. With that, net income at Luiza Cred that was already evolving got to a level that is record at BRL 245 million in the quarter, close to BRL 3 million in the year.
That's an evolution of virtually BRL 400 million in the year, reversing the state that we had in 2023. All that growing again, increasing the credit portfolio higher than BRL 20 billion, and also increasing the provisioning and the coverage, getting to close to 160%. Again, ROE above 30% in the quarter, so very capitalized and prepared to accelerate growth in the coming quarters and years. Thank you, and I'll turn the floor back to Fred for his conclusion.
Thank you, Beto. I'll conclude here before opening for the questions and answers session, giving you an overview of the scenario this year and looking forward.
As we've been communicating to the market very consistently, our focus in recent years has been almost exclusively on the improvement of profitability, although we have also worked in other topics such as simplifying the operations, integrating the acquired companies, and the service level for our customers, especially in the last year. That is an agenda with great focus on the increase of profitability of the company. I think this year, that is the last year of that ecosystem cycle. We will continue to look at the increase of profitability. I do not think we've got to the maximum level of margins and monetization of our GMV. We will continue focusing on it, but this year, we also start to look at sales. The challenge that we have specifically for 2025 is that it is still a year where costs, especially financial expenses, tend to continue to increase due to interest rates.
The interest rates tend to increase. The consensus today is that it's going to be 15. I think this is a reasonable consensus. It's difficult for the interest rates not to continue moving up. The demand remains strong. If we look at today, we're at a situation that's almost full employment. Employment rates are very low. Almost all of the benefits and salaries are at a high indexation level. We have the replenishment of the inflation and an actual gain in a lot of the salaries and benefits. There's no reason to be very pessimistic in terms of consumption and demand. What I say is that it's not difficult to sell. What's difficult is to sell and turn a profit. I think that that's the challenge of any CEO of retail companies, especially retail companies must turn profits.
We do not have a foreign headquarters to send us cash when there is cash burn. In our case, we need to turn a profit irrespective of the scenario. In this scenario, the way for us to get balance again of profitability and growth is by looking at a very important index for the digital world, which is the conversion index. Just as we had Monetizza Magalu to monetize focusing on profitability, simplifying the operations, and Magalu Enchants, that was the focus of last year to improve NPS, this year, the index that will gather most of the focus of our operational team involving pretty much all of the company's areas will be the conversion rate. We have hundreds of millions of visits at Magalu, almost 500 million visits per year in the entire Magalu ecosystem, not to mention the visits to stores that are great as well.
We want to make the most of those visits. The way to be responsible and start to look at growth again without letting go of profitability is by increasing conversion, not necessarily by increasing expenses in marketing. Here, we are going to focus on this. Focus on conversion is much broader than it looks. Here, we are working on generating high-quality visits. This means building some complex attribution algorithms, complex algorithms which involve a lot of work, strong work, and also usability using filters, search machine, UX in general, improving the product page, more information on the product page, indexation. Now we have to start indexing, not just for the search machines, but also indexing to the LLMs and the chats. We are doing a lot of work in that regard.
Another important point is the offerings, variety, assortment of products, and having the right product. There's no use having 80 million offers with very high prices or with very bad delivery times. We have to have variety and the right product and payment methods. We spoke about credit, digital CDC, but we have two cards, cards plus BICS, making means of payment easier to facilitate checkout. We are doing a lot of work. On top of that, we do all the basics, best price, shipping, best delivery time, but doing all that in a sophisticated way without giving up on the profit. That's the big challenge for this year. I'm sure there are teams who will do what they need. We choose a theme and we'll be able to deliver it. The challenge of this agenda is that this is a very technological agenda.
It is not a short-term challenge. Looking forward, in companies of any segment, more and more manual processes, more and more human decisions will be automated. These decisions will be made automatically by software systems, algorithms, and by artificial intelligence models. With AI, I think that this is going to be even more. More and more companies will be undergoing a strong automation process. That is why we have just announced a big change in our structure, the merge of two vice presidencies of the company. One which was responsible for the technology part of the company, and the other one responsible for the digital channels of the company. They merged into one vice presidency. André Fatala, who was our CTO and was responsible for technology, will take over the digital business department as well.
We are merging the two vice presidencies because we believe that these two teams have to be 100% integrated. We will not evolve in the conversion agenda if we do not evolve the automation of our processes. In deploying AI models, sophisticated algorithms for pricing, sophisticated algorithms to define shipping delivery times, incrementability models, attribution models. We needed to bring these two teams closer together, working in a more integrated fashion to reinforce the team. Fatala's big challenge, we brought in two very seasoned leaders, people of high quality. Ricardo Garrido, who is taking part in our first earnings call. He has a vast experience in the market in nine years at Amazon and for almost five years running the marketplace of Amazon. Marielle Paiva, taking over as a Growth Executive Officer. We had not focused on visits, and I spoke a lot about this at length.
We have somebody I have you wait to help us. We had hired more people last year for the digital business team. Kael is running commercial, Raul, who's running cross-border and platforms, and Celia for ads. We have a very strong team, and I am totally convinced that we have a high-capacity team that is able to deliver, a proven team so that we can continue to evolve and to overcome the challenges that any company operating in Brazil will have. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are going to open the floor for questions. Again, all of our officers are here and available to answer your questions. Okay, let's start the Q&A.
We will now begin the Q&A session. In order to ask a question, click on the Q&A icon on the bottom of your screen.
Type in your name, company, and language of your question to get in line. When announced, a prompt to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and you should enable your microphone to ask a question. Our first question comes from Gustavo Senday with XP Investimentos. Gustavo, go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First question, if you could detail the equation of growth and profitability this year. You have a number of initiatives, the Magalu Convert, the new financial license. How are you thinking about growth into different channels? That would be quite helpful. In terms of profitability and gross margin, what do you see gross margin on merchandise can improve, or whether the improvement in the future will come from the mix of services, gaining more share and less improvement coming from margin on merchandise?
My second question is about suppliers. I think that there was big progress this quarter. Is this a one-time initiative? Is this more structural change? We see new players talking about new entrants in the market with more aggressive terms. I would like to understand if this improvement was a one-time off or whether it is something more structural. Thank you.
Hello, Gustavo. Thank you for the question. I will start answering, then Fabrício will speak about the margin on merchandise, and Beto will address the part on the suppliers. Okay? This is the last year of the ecosystem cycle. As I mentioned in my presentation, we have a number of initiatives that we developed throughout the recent years, and that we hope to get to reap the fruits of those.
One of them is that all of the companies under Magalu, including Luiza Cred, are continuing to improve their profitability level. We launched digital CDC at the end of last year, so it's gaining share of online purchases. Our penetration of credit online is way below the physical stores. This tends to improve and tends to help monetize the online results. We have some margins to capture, both in terms of credit for online purchases, as well as to increase the sale of insurance, online insurance, online consortiums. There are a number of initiatives under the umbrella of Magalu, so that we can continue to increase the margins through these financial operations. We should accelerate credit, given that the ROE is high, and there's no reason why the company would not step on the gas for credit, which tends to improve profitability.
Also Magalu Ads. I spoke about this. I think it is an important monetization agenda. We did the work on the fundamentals last year, and now it's the time to reap the fruits. We have a senior team there, a commercial team. The product has improved a lot. It's getting a lot of compliments by the advertisers. We still have inventory to sell, quite a lot. It is not just Magalu. We have Netshoes, KaBuM!, and monetization of Lu, our digital influencer. She has just run some campaigns during Carnival for Uber. She's done a campaign for WhatsApp, for Amstel. We are monetizing even our digital influencer, Lu. We still have a long way to go for ads. We're going to have ads for brick-and-mortar stores. I guess that all of these are important points to grow margins and also to increase sales at the brick-and-mortar stores.
Again, now we'll open stores for companies of the group and Netshoes. We'll have that location where the Cultura bookstore used to be. We continue to operate very efficiently. We continue to have a huge market potential. Our share in physical stores is very low compared to online. Our online share is higher than the physical stores' share. We can still grow our share a lot, and we continue to be excited with the possibilities related to brick-and-mortar stores. Overall, we have a more difficult comparison because we had a good year, particularly the comparison in terms of margin, but we still have a lot to benefit. Regarding the gross margin, Fabrício?
This is Fabrício. Thank you for the question. Regarding the margin, we had a progress of the margins in the last two years. As Fred mentioned, we had a challenge of increasing the margin.
After passing through default, maintaining our margin higher than in 2021-2022. We did it. Actually, we did it really well. The margin on merchandise this year should remain stable. There is no price increase movement in the rater, which is also good for us, i.e., focusing on selling. I think that we have opportunities in addition to ads, some opportunities regarding services, because services are growing more than sales in brick-and-mortar stores. We have a good opportunity for services online, 1P and 3P, which are performing better than in previous years. That is what I can say about the margin.
Hello, Gustavo. I will speak about suppliers because you asked about this. Actually, there was no relevant change in the terms, purchasing conditions. There are some suppliers with longer terms. There are new entrants and so on and so forth.
On average, our average purchasing time remained practically flat if we adjust for the fact that in the fourth quarter, we purchased more than in Q4 2023. In the end of 2023, we had a dynamic of reducing the inventories, so we purchased less. At the time, we mentioned that we also made some prepayments for some suppliers in the end of 2023, which reduced the suppliers' balance in the end of 2023. Now, in the end of 2024, we sold more, and we also purchased a little more. We kind of reinforced the inventories in the end of the year because we had a fantastic sale on January 3 this year. It was very early, so we ended up getting a little more merchandise in the end of Q4. It was something more specific, no structural change.
I think that in the suppliers' line, I don't know, we have an average term of purchases, which is healthy for inventory turnover. The more we improve inventory turnover, which we believe we will be doing a lot this year, the greater the opportunity to improve this financing of suppliers and inventories to generate more cash. We are very optimistic about a working capital with an expectation of generating more cash this year coming from this relationship, the supplier inventory relationship, and also with the monetization of taxes. As you could see, that accelerated in the end of last year, and this tends to continue along 2025. We should continue to monetize taxes organically in the operation and even more than what we had last year. We are very optimistic about working capital. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Senday, for your question.
Our next question, Lucca, UBS Bank. Please, Lucca, you may go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first about Luiza Cred. Luiza Cred's results had been improving over the past few quarters, but now on the fourth quarter, the improvement was quite expressive. We'd like to understand how we can think about the evolution of these results in 2025. My second question about e-commerce, you addressed it slightly, but we'd like to understand your mindset about the trade-off between growth and profitability, especially on e-commerce for 2025. Thank you.
Luca, thank you for your question. Luiza Cred, I'll talk about it better. I don't know if you're going to want to add something, but yes, I think we've been improving gradually.
The results there, quarter on quarter, we've gotten to these results on a return on equity of around 30% at the end of the year. That's fantastic results. I believe this is the ground for this year, the base. I think we already have sufficient elements to accelerate credit again, to resume accelerating growth of that line. I think we have very good perspectives for the year. The results come and the coverage of provisions have actually increased in the fourth quarter compared to 2023, 140-160, as Beto mentioned. That's very sound numbers. The indicators are very comforting. I think it's the time now for us to think about accelerating this agenda. I think that's what would be the right thing to do right now. We'll discuss that with the board of directors at Luiza Cred.
I believe the numbers make it clear that this is a safe and correct strategy for the year. Looking at it that way, we're at a good moment here with the results that have been very well controlled in the quarter. That's a concern of the market a year ago, a year and a half ago, right? It has been, just as brick-and-mortar stores are a concern, this has been one of the highlights. As for e-commerce, as you mentioned about conversion, I think we've already answered that. This recovery, this resumption comes from an agenda of efficiency and a very strong focus on making the most of our visits to make the visits better and take more advantage of them, make them take more of them. It's a change in focus. That's very cautious as well.
Financial expenses continued pressured with the increase in interest rates. We need to work that in such a way as we grow, turning a profit, not growing to the detriment of profits. I will not accept that agenda. Our work here, the entire team's work, is to focus on these conversion agendas. We talked a lot about the initiatives on visits, usability, checkout, the quality, working on the quality of the offers with Fatala's team, Garrido's teams, Marielle, a lot of different departments here in the company will be very focused on improving those aspects. It is a complex agenda. It is not simple. It depends a lot on technology. I believe we have everything we need to evolve in a sustainable, gradual, constant way, being very careful, very cautious. This is the last year of the ecosystem cycle.
This ecosystem cycle, its main focus is to turn a profit even with adverse conditions. That remains the company's focus.
That's very clear. Thank you for the answers.
Our next question, Felipe, Citibank. Please, Felipe, go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I'd like to explore a little bit more about the changes in the business structure that you already gave in details, but I'd like to understand a little bit more of how it changes in terms of growth initiatives and capital allocation between online and brick-and-mortar stores. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. I'm going to start talking about the allocation of capital. Nothing changes. It's more what I explained about the integration of the technology departments with the digital business department. We remain focused, noting that we have an omni-channel operation.
If I expand physical stores and I favor the online because physical stores are a distribution center for online sales, it's a pickup point, a drop-off. Lately, our CapEx has been almost exclusively focused on technology. In terms of allocation, capital allocation, nothing is going to change. In terms of the organizational side and what we're thinking about, I'll let André Fatala describe a little bit of what he's thinking about. He's just taking over, and there's a lot still to define. I think he can give you highlights of what he's thinking about this structure.
Thank you, Fred. Felipe, thank you for your question. I'm explaining a little bit about the focus that we have to bring and approximating a strategy for the business structure, especially in the marketplace.
As we can see in our marketplace, and Fred mentioned it quite well, the growth front comes from evolutions that we need to make in terms of conversion. When we look at conversion, usability is extremely important, consumer usability. Here, all of the work that needs to be done to facilitate and remove friction between what the consumer wants and the best offer we have in the platform is greatly based on a lot of evolutions in the technology front. Another point that is important to highlight is that growth will also come from how much we can empower and facilitate the management of sellers' sales within our platform.
All of the retail categories where we don't have the sales assistance for that seller, all of the tools and services that we need to build to facilitate this operation in the long tail and the retail so that this growth is very important for this growth. Everything from the tools that will be available on the seller portal, such as including services in the logistics front, the evolution of fulfillments that we're already contributing with 25% of orders, it's a great growth. We see, giving you some numbers as examples, when we look, for example, in the Southeast, we already have the 3P GMV higher than 1P. It's 51% in 3P GMV in the Southeast and other regions that we still need to seek this greater penetration. When we look at this, the reasons, one of them is closely related to delivery times.
In the 3P front, it's highly focused on fulfillment for us to improve that. Looking at São Paulo as an example, we are already able to promise full delivery at 75% of them up to next day in this LDU. Taking this type of experience to other regions are very strong drivers of growth, of conversion for our 3P sales. As Fred mentioned, all of that requires very strong work for us to optimize and seek more efficiency in all types of processes through technology. The final point is from now on, we're going to start working even more. Magalu has a lot of initiatives using artificial intelligence in our operation in the day-to-day. We already have part of the pricing and dynamic delivery times and the supply side.
There's a lot of things already on AI, and we started already with generative AI for consumer experience, summarizing reviews, improving translation of what comes from AliExpress's catalog to adapt to Brazilian Portuguese to make consumer searches easier. There are a lot of other aspects that are still possible to improve and evolve through artificial intelligence. We have been working, as was already mentioned to the market, in the development of a new channel. We have been talking a lot about having this focus and already making the most of this technology, creating an AI commerce. A lot of our focus here and work for the future. Another front we are also working on strongly with AI is how we can optimize the logistics network for Magalu and reduce the delivery times more and more.
Felipe, to summarize, what changes at the end of the day is to have this close great approximation of these business teams with the technology teams to start to work as if they were multidisciplinary teams focused on the major objectives that we have. Based on that, we shall seek this growth front and all of the opportunities that we see without deteriorating what has already been built in the past few years in terms of profitability. Thank you.
[Foreign language] Thank you Felipe, for the question. Next question from Kelvin with Itaú. Kelvin, go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions, actually. First, could you give us an update on the initial stages of the partnership with AliExpress? And what is your expectation in advancing this partnership to become the logistics partner of AliExpress?
Secondly, exploring growth, as you mentioned, 2025 should be a challenging year in terms of consumption, surging interest rates. When we look at Itaú proprietary data, we see some indicators pointing to weaker consumption in the first months of the year. What is the main like in this first quarter, and particularly in brick-and-mortar stores? These are my two questions. Thank you very much.
Morning, Kelvin. Thank you for the questions. Let me briefly address both questions. As regards to AliExpress, as I said earlier, we have been evolving quite well in our conversations with them, both in and out. Again, this is a very complex operation in terms of integration of systems and customization and adaptation of the systems to integrate the partnership. We are in a positive trend in terms of inbound, outbound.
We do not disclose the numbers of the partnership, but what I can tell you is that we are quite satisfied with what we have been seeing. We are talking about broadening this partnership to other channels. The most evident one would be logistics. Both parties are willing to evolve in that area. When that is formalized and closed, we will communicate that to the market. We are excited. I think that this has been a good start. It is a partnership that has a big potential to evolve. As regards to the very short term, I do not see an issue regarding demand. Like I said in the beginning, we have an economy which is indexed. We have collective bargaining agreements that will adjust salaries to inflation rates. We do not have an income issue in Brazil. The result of Luiza Cred proves that.
We have low delinquency because low-income workers who are the clients of Luiza Cred have enough income to pay for their expenses. I do not see a demand issue. Our problem is interest rates. The problem is not selling, but rather selling with a profit. This is the big challenge of the company looking forward. The only way to be able to sell in a profitable way is by increasing conversion. This has been the focus for the year. That depends on systemic changes. I can increase conversion by giving discounts on the products and operating with a lower gross margin. That is not the goal. I can increase sales, accelerating marketing expenses. We are not necessarily increasing conversion. We are reducing our EBITDA margin. We have to increase conversion, and we have to be profitable, being smart.
The only way to do it is by increasing conversion, as we have mentioned at length. Again, I want to stress, I do not see a demand problem. I do not think that the economy of Brazil will decelerate as people are forecasting. I would like to remind you that last year's GDP surprised everyone, 3.4%. It will decelerate this year, but a lot less than what people think because the economy is indexed with real gains. For salaries in the private initiative, our collective bargaining agreement in commerce was above inflation. Also, considering social benefit programs, the economy is highly indexed, so it should not bring us a lot of losses. Since unemployment is low, I do not envision a demand issue. Now, how to make this demand translate into result? That is the challenge with increasing interest rates, prepayment of receivables is more expensive, capital cost is higher.
There is also the dollar exchange rate. There are some other points that are more related to cost rather than to demand. That is why it is important for us to continue with our agenda to monetize and make the company profitable.
Super clear. Thank you very much.
Kelvin, thank you for the questions. Next question from Irma with Goldman Sachs. Irma, go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two quick questions. Kind of related, but perhaps you could elaborate on the reduction of revenue from services. There might be some temporary effects, but if you could explain the dynamic of Q4 regarding that, and perhaps tell us how we should think about that line item. I know it accounts for very little in terms of revenue, but the profitability was higher.
Since this was a line item that posted a drop, I would like to understand because it hits a little bit the gross margin. My second question is about fulfillment. There has been a lot of progress in terms of penetration in 3P in the yearly comparison, but the level is still at 25%. Of course, I do not want to discredit the steps so far, but I just want to understand where would you like to get, where does it make sense to get, and any challenges that you have been facing with your sellers in the marketplace in terms of convincing them to bring them to fulfillment? There are a lot of offerings in the market from other marketplaces, also trying to bring sellers in.
Fred, as you mentioned, now with hiking interest rates, perhaps the sellers do not have enough working capital to have inventories in several fulfillments at the same time. I'd like you to explore that. How should we be thinking about that? Thank you.
Good morning, Irma. Thank you very much for the question. I'll start with the last part, and then Beto will speak about revenue from services. I guess I did the correct analysis regarding fulfillment, but fulfillment is an absolute success. We do not have more because it is related to Magalu. It is zero difficulty in convincing sellers to bring their products to us. I'd like to remind you, we launched in 2023 with zero.
The primary competitive offering from a player that has a big fulfillment operation, which is Mercado Livre, ML, they started their fulfillment about six years ago, and in two years, we increased from zero to 24. We did this at the limit of our capacity to deliver. If you look at their curve, our curve is above what they had in the second year of operation. It is very complex to expand fulfillment internally because we need to have authorization from all states of the federation. We need specific authorization to be able to operate so that it will be worthwhile for the sellers to operate. We are doing this with strong work from all of the departments. We launched our fulfillment with the possibility of having the fulfillment of big products.
Sellers and manufacturers, sometimes manufacturers or sellers on the platform, do not have a place to hold those bulky products. I think that we are evolving a lot. It took a little bit longer because we wanted to launch fulfillment at the same DCs, 1 P, so that it would be a creative, that it would help us operationally, not just opening a DC for fulfillment. That would be easier. We do have some for fulfillment, but the focus is almost exclusively on operations with 1 P, given the benefit of multi-channel capabilities. It is just a matter of moving forward. I think that in a timeline, we are progressing very positively. We will continue to improve, and in time, we will get to the level of the benchmark of the market, which is now 50%, but after five years. I think that we are evolving quite well.
Perfect.
It's very clear. Thank you.
Now I'll turn the floor to Beto to answer your first question.
Good morning, Irma. How are you doing? Thank you for the question. Let me speak a little bit about gross margin. Actually, gross margin on goods increased a little bit. Total margin decreased a little bit, but very small variations, slight variations. This variation, the consolidated gross margin, is related to your question. Revenue from services reduced a little in Q4 2024 compared to Q4 2023. In the full year, it grew, but in Q4 specifically, it dropped slightly. Your question is actually good. It gives me an opportunity to clarify that this reduction is not related to any change in the strategy or in trend. This was a one-time specific event. Basically, two things explain it. One, revenue from banking correspondence that reduced.
That's revenue when we build services to Luiza Cred, and these services are related to our own sales force and to services that we provide at the stores for Luiza Cred products. We had a very high efficiency in the operation of the stores this year. This ended up passing on to Luiza Cred and helps the operating expenses line item of Luiza Cred. That's basically the reduction in revenue from banking correspondence and also reduction in logistics of Magalog, which was also very slight, very specific. The most important revenues of the marketplace, of the fintech, of fulfillment, ads, and cloud grew, continued to grow, and continue to have an accelerated growth tendency or trend for the next years. These will be influencing an expansion of our gross margin moving forward.
Perfect.
This dynamic was just specific to Q4 regarding the banking correspondence, or did this start in Q4 and should continue in the coming quarters?
This dynamic of banking correspondence, Irma, was intensifying along the year as we increased productivity of our stores throughout the year. This tends to continue. It will continue, but it has a small impact on gross margin and on the total earnings of the company because it reduces revenue from services, but it's actually related to the fact that we reduced operating expenses of Magalu. One offsets the other in our SG&A, and we showed this. There was a dilution of costs. In addition, it reduces the cost of Luiza Cred as well. This productivity gain ends up benefiting the result as a whole because there's a reduction of cost at Luiza Cred. This will continue, but marginally smaller.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you very much.
The net result is positive. Yes. Thank you.
Next question, Gustavo Fattini, Bank of America. Gustavo, you may go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. I'd like to talk a little bit about your crediário that's outside of LuizaC red, the booklet. We've been seeing on financial expenses that increased significantly in the fourth quarter, close to 20% year on year. On the other hand, in the next page, there is a break in the delinquency side, and it seems that delinquency increased twice as much. Maybe it's not related to that alone, but we'd like to understand what caused this increase in delinquency of past years and how you see the evolution for the quality of this credit now for the beginning of 2025 and the rest of the year.
Thank you, Gustavo. I continue. There's an echo.
Okay, so first, during last year, we evolved the portfolio of crediário, and we've been evolving this consistently for two years. This portfolio has a very controlled delinquency rate, very low. It's a very profitable portfolio, as Fred mentioned. This portfolio is a direct consumer credit. It's already very profitable. Once we migrate to the new financial company that we just got the license and should start with the transition in the coming months, this portfolio tends to be more profitable. First, because of the tax efficiency, because we no longer pay ICMS, PIS, and COFINS that have very high rates on retail to work with the tax rates of a financial institute, especially in particular IOF at 3%, PIS, COFINS at 4.65%. As a financial institution, the tax burden is a lot lower than what we have on retail.
It tends to be even more profitable as a portfolio. Without mentioning the improvement of capital structure and funding and as a financial institution, the trend for this portfolio is to continue to accelerate moving forward. Except for the fact that delays or past dues increased more than the portfolio in this last quarter, it is a calculation, mathematics aspect related to the curve of the portfolio's acceleration. Since we accelerated this portfolio one, two years ago, and the trend of recent growth was slightly lower, the participation of CDC in the physical stores reached a more stable level. The delays always take a little longer to get to us, the past due payments. Since the denominator did not grow as much and the numerator grew, that generates that type of effect.
I think the good news here is that we are very well provisioned for this portfolio that we show here, BRL 1.5 billion with close to BRL 300 million of expired or past due installments. We have BRL 500 million in provisions. The indicators of concession or granting for new vintages are very low. They are very profitable, as we already talked about, both in Luiza Cred with the cards and CDC for physical stores and for online sales that we started are escalating, and this is already escalating at a profit as well. I think that was it. Thank you, Gustavo.
Very clear. Thank you, Beto.
Next question, Ruben Couto, Santander. Ruben, you may go ahead. I think he must have had an audio issue. The next question, Andrew Ruben from Morgan Stanley. Andrew, please go ahead.
Hi, thanks very much for the question.
Just curious how you're thinking about the outlook for the physical store footprint. I know there's been some closures in recent years. If you could just remind us if you think there's any more room for the store base to be optimized or, on the other hand, what you would need to see to get back to select store growth. Thank you.
Good morning, Andrew. Thank you for your question. As for the stores, as I said, I think we are now very focused on these experiences that we're having with the formats of the physical brick-and-mortar stores of the companies or the group stores. I talked about the Netshoes store and the Conjunto Nacional that will have all of the stores at a single space. I talk about the KaBuM! physical store as well.
We're exploring the possibility of having this physical expansion through brick-and-mortar stores of the companies that we have acquired, the companies in our ecosystem, Netshoes, KaBuM!, Época has great potential as well. The possibility of this expansion could happen both in existing points, absorbing the spaces that are idle or areas that we will convert so that we can have a store in store at the Magalu stores or exclusive points, large stores such as the Livraria Cultura store and exclusive for the brand category. We still need more data, but as I said, the very short-term data is very comforting and encouraging in the sense that they confirm that this is a good way to go to open brick-and-mortar stores for these companies that are part of the group.
When we accelerate it, we will accelerate it more in the sense of opening store in store for those brands, specific stores as well. Magalu has some regions where we do not have stores, for example, in the state of Amazonas and some states in the north of Brazil. There is one or two places in the states that we already have, but I see potential to open brick-and-mortar stores, store in store or standalone stores in this format, such as we will have in São Paulo at Conjunto Nacional looking forward. There is little data, little information to tell you more than this.
That is very clear. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Next and last question from Ruben Couto with Santander.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can.
Good morning. Thank you for the question.
I believe that all of my questions have been answered, but I have some follow-up questions. First, regarding fulfillment, Fred, in this evolution of 25% to get to 50% eventually in a couple of years, how are you thinking about monetizing this movement now in the first two to three years when you got to 25%? Did you need to invest a lot in subsidies for the sellers to incentivize them to migrate to your fulfillment? How should we think about this looking forward? Will this be margin neutral or not? In the cross-border of products, we followed some news about a strike of the Brazilian IRS, which apparently is hurting the clearance of some goods. When you have this partnership with AliExpress, have you felt any impact in this first quarter of 2025 or nothing significant? I am sorry for the technical problems we had earlier.
No problem, Ruben. Thank you for the questions. Let me start with the second question. We are not feeling any issues. I'd like to remind you that our cross-border is fully PRC, so of course the proceedings are fast forwarded by the Internal Revenue Service of Brazil. No operational stress. I actually didn't even know about that. I think that our operation is well-oiled and, like I said, with a big potential for evolving. As regards fulfillment, that's also a good question. We have been growing in areas that were idle. We didn't need subsidies because those were areas of the DC where we had idle space to be occupied. I'd like to remind you that we have a multi-channel fulfillment operation, the same ONP operation. With the reduction of inventories, we had freed some areas for sellers' inventory.
Indeed, in some situations, we didn't charge the sellers, but this is a subsidy that was not expensive for the company because I was occupying spaces that were free and costing me. By selling more products from these sellers, increasing revenues and increasing selling commissions, we ended up being accretive. I believe that there's still some room to occupy some DC. Some of them are rather full, such as the DCs in the Northeast, in Extrema, some DCs in the South. We still have some room for room to be occupied. Eventually, we might have to expand to DCs, but we'll do it carefully. When it makes sense, we'll have a monetization strategy. For now, it has not been necessary. One important thing about fulfillment, as Fatala mentioned, we have some technology points. We had 60 integrators. These are software companies integrating the sellers' systems to our systems.
We got a lot of feedback regarding the need to improve the integration system. We're doing quite well since we are just a two-year operation, but we have a lot of room for improvement in terms of providing more control to the sellers, providing them with more visibility. We are still progressing in that area, i.e., improving the technological platform to facilitate the onboarding or integration of these sellers with our platform and with their integrators as well. There is still some challenge in that regard, but the teams are integrated so that we can execute the technology agenda faster. That is how we're moving, looking forward. This continues to be an important, promising agenda for us. Our focus will be to have more control over the delivery process as a whole via fulfillment or via Magalu Integras, Magalu Delivery.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the questions, Ruben. We are now closing the Q&A session. I would like to turn the floor over to Frederico Trajano, CEO of the company, for his final statements. Fred, go ahead.
I would just like to thank everyone for attending our conference call, and I would like to congratulate the whole Magalu team for the 2024 earnings. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Magalu's earnings conference call is ended. The investor relations team is available to answer any further questions you might have. Thank you very much for attending. Have a great day.