Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Magasin Disiza's conference call referring to the results of the 4th quarter of 2019. Now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Federico Tragena, CEO of Magazimie Luisa. Mr.
Tragena, you may proceed. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for participating in our call about the last quarter of 2019 and also the full year of 2019. I'm here with the whole executive committee, as usual, in order to present the results and the major highlights for the year. Once again, reinforcing the strategic cycle of Magasin Luisa.
We digitalized Magalu, and we want to digitalize it Peru Brazil, starting with the Brazilian retail. This is a year of a lot of evolution in this context. And I will be making a presentation with the highlights of our strategic pillars and all the strategic level initiatives that we have in 2019. And then I will give the floor to Roberto Bellissimo to talk about specifically about the financial results of the last quarter of 2019. So let's turn to Slide 2.
The incredible amount of initiatives that we had in 2019, 1 year in one slide in order to present everything that we have done and that we have achieved this year, starting in January, rollouting the shipment to store. In February, we had the pilot of the cross docking for the marketplace, and we will be talking about it later on. Magalu as a service, specifically Magalu Intregas in the cross docking model. And we made a relevant acquisition. We bought a boutique consultancy company, a billion.
And today, we have a team of dozens of people working in sophisticated algorithms for different things such as anti fraud and both for Netshoes and Magalu. And this is the team that has been growing the most here in the company, such as the labs team at the marketplace. In April, we started the books category. We acquired a mini software company or a mini software company or a development agency focused on apps and totally integrated to our Superag Labs team. And this helped us to develop the numbers of teams.
We lost Magamais, our virtual operator of telephony, and we are going to talk later on. Then in May, we reached 100 stores with Log B. And we started a couple of years ago, less than 2 years ago and already with a very big weight in our to deliver our products of lower ticket. And this expansion has been exponential and a very good result. In June, we had the acquisition of Netshoes, and we're going to talk about that.
And Manso is here if you wish to ask questions about Netshoes. As we inaugurated the 2 stores in the laboratory that we mentioned, the catharticul, one of the partnerships besides Marisa that we signed last year. And 1 month after we announced the acquisition of Netshoes, we had the world of Super Apps and the world of Netshoes and with the catalog of all the products authorized by the brands in the Magalua and the Super World of App. And going along the lines of the Super Bowl pillar, then we reached 1,000 stores, and this is a very important milestone. Then in August September, in Para, a major event, a B2B event with Makalu and another product with Makalu as a service with the management of small retailers and bringing them on board in our system And very interesting management of small and medium retailers, the pile of Retiro Loza or store pickup in October, with 20 stores of Netshoes roll out and rolling out.
And by the end of the year, all the stores of Makaalu should be offering the store pickup service, and we can go into details. Then we launched Magalu Soluso, it's a system for the installation of products such as air conditioning, NTVs, etcetera, and supplementing the offer of our more traditional categories besides the services that generate profitability to the company. In November, we had the follow on with BRL 4,500,000,000 being raised, together with a very strong cash generation in the last quarter, led us to have an extremely sound balance sheet situation in order to continue our strategic development and automation of the Loveda DC and the black complex in the last quarter of the year with a very good level of services and practically all the deliveries in up to 5 days in the Greater Sao Paulo and other cities in Brazil, a very major investment. And we will continue to do this. The 2 DCs of Net 2 are fully automated already, and we intend to roll this out, increasing the capacity of shipment and increasing efficiency.
And in December, we opened the 1st kiosks of our partnership with Marisa. It was a year full of achievements, full of highlights and very much in line with our strategic drivers. And as you can see on the next page, which is the exponential growth in 3P, super app and mass, as you can see, new categories, faster as deliveries with concrete deliveries in practically all the fronts, but adult is it. Now going to Slide number 4, the major focus of Magalu in 2019 was growth. I recommend you to read the message from the executive committee because we had more time to position our strategy and explain our focus.
But undoubtedly, we want to digitalize Brazil, starting with the Brazilian retail and then gaining scale at with another dimension, a Chinese dimension, a Chinese growth rate. And talking about the Chinese level and in the platform, the digital platform. We explained this very well during our message from the Executive Committee with a multicategory digital system and also managing the value chain of others beside our own. So this is not a plan without the scale. The most important component to be a dominant digital player is to have the effect of the scale.
And for a long time, we have worked to be the best, and now we are working to be the biggest in most of the categories in which we operate. So we radicalized our growth. We do not mean that we grew little in the previous years. But this year, in the last two quarters mainly, we saw a fantastic growth with a very high comparison base, much higher than the one that we had in the past. So in terms of total sales, we grew 51%.
This is a rate that is more achievable for companies that are less than half the size of Lagasse Nudize. And with a very high growth of the growth of marketplace since the Q1, 216 visavis the previous year. And I'd like to talk about Marketplace because it reached 43 years to reach 1,000,000,000 physical stores. And in the 3rd year here, we have already sold 3,000,000,000 in marketplace. So this is a fantastic figure, and it is the next financial growth.
It is real. But even in our physical stores, and I would like to highlight these physical stores because the target to grow or the growth that we had visavis the previous quarter was extraordinary, 26% growth in our physical stores, 13% double digit growth with a very big market, a very heated up market. And we grew 26 percent in total, 13% same store sales. And by itself, it's already a fantastic figure. But the delta from 13% to 26%, that means that the stores that we have been opening the last few years have been extremely important for our bottom line.
We have been very fortunate in the opening of new stores reaching a very good scale and the maturation of sales that is extremely good and a very fast one from the viewpoint of NTB, these were extraordinary figures. And this figure was reached with a very small trade off of profitability vis a vis the remainder of the market. So we had a trade off in profitability that we will be getting into details in this quarter. Margin percentage was a little bit lower. We absorbed net shoes.
And with a breakeven and we invested more in service level, more people, more deliveries, more people in our call center, our NPS. But most of it was to improve the level of service for our clients. And if you look at the market, companies that grow much less than we grow have been going from very high margins to losses or a very high cash burn. And this was not our case. We didn't have any cash burn.
And in the last quarter, we had BRL 1,500,000,000 cash generation, not to mention the proceeds of the follow on. So higher than the market growth with a much lower trade off. And this is our big secret. We want to continue to achieve this growth, and Beto will be talking about that. But I consider that this is highly acceptable, that is to say what we have been doing in terms of investment, both CapEx and OpEx in order to reach the level of growth.
And we reached about 25,000,000, 46 percent visavislastyear. At the end of the year, 1100 stores, 15,000 sellers in the base, over BRL 6,000,000 in offers. And there will be a relevant contribution from the company that we announced, the Ecento Dutoire, which means virtual bookshelf, which will be adding an additional 18,000,000 and small booksellers that will be participating. We will have over 20,000 sellers. On the next slide, we talk about new categories, starting with the focus of Magalu, we reached the leadership.
We have been we are very close to the leadership in most of our traditional operations. We have a sound and profitable operation and now with significant scale. And now we are going to focus a lot as of this year on the potential of these acquisitions that we have already announced and these new categories led with the growth of e commerce from now on. This is not going to come from the electronics because it will not come from appliances and electronics. We already have a level that is similar to other countries.
It's continued to grow, but most of the growth comes from new categories. Fashion and beauty are 2 categories where we have a very strong base with the acquisitions that we made with Netshoes and Zaccini. And we are talking about $50,000,000,000 in opportunity in order to reach the participation of e commerce in these categories, the same as abroad and bring this to our domestic market so that the company may help Brazil to penetrate to increase penetration of e commerce overall. I have already talked about categories. And now let's talk about net Eddy centrifugal, net shoes.
We have a focus on the integration of the logistics chain. Only 20 of us are 1100 are in the Hichida Loza or store pickup. With a small participation in the sales of Netshoes. And we believe that when we integrate logistics, we are going to increase conversion of the products and mainly reduce the Netshoes operating cost. Our goal to Netshoes for the company to operate with profitability.
And in order to do that, we must conclude the integration of back office, but mainly logistics. And from the viewpoints of back office, we have to use Magalu's scale, dollars 27,000,000,000 level and share the scale with Netshoes. This is not something trivial. There are many investments to be made and a lot of work to be done by both teams, Chuyt and Magalu, and we will be focusing on that. And we believe that this is going to be very positive for top line and bottom line.
But this will be a year of investment, a lot of endeavors in terms of Gmb120,000,000 in 2019. And we have to make our integration endeavors and the catalog of dozens of millions of books, etcetera. Now let's turn to the Super App. We continue to be very successful in the super app. 56% of mobile sales are to of Magalu e commerce comes from mobile sales.
We were the 1st company, a large company to vest with this magnitude, and we have MAU, a very high MAU installed base of BRL 26,000,000 in December 2019. And we reviewed the total downloads last year, but we prefer to talk about the MAU and the installed base of the app. So we are going to keep these two concepts for you in order to avoid any confusion in the market. And also with Netshoes and Tatini and the instante de Vittoral and having a one stop shop, every time the client wants to shop, go into the app. And we launched in February, Magalupe.
And we will be talking about this in detail, and we are rolling this out to stores as we feel secure, confident to gain scale. And the concept of Madalupe, as we said during the Investor Day, is very much focused on integration with Banco DO Brasil. So we are the 1st digital account with integration with a large bank and native and API. There are many digital accounts in the market, but this one has the highest level of integration with a large bank. We want to do this with other banks.
We do not want to be a bank. And it is an embedded lab. This is not an additional app. You do not have to download an additional app. In order to activate your account, you only need a name and the token for the BRL 20,000,000 in our installed base.
So you have a much lower acquisition cost for the onboarding process. And another integration is with the stores of Magalu, both the physical and online stores. So you can make a deposit, a cash in, you can pay your purchase in the physical store by the mobile with the mobile vendors through the app. And the design is better in order to scale the level of investment, a reasonable level of investment. But as it already starts integrated with the Super App and with Banco DO Brasil and with Magalu, the level of investment that we need is much lower than doing this all by yourself.
So it's already within the context of a platform ever since its inception. And you can see this in our annual letter. Since the delivery, We already have 66% of our order delivered in up to 48 hours, 50% promised in up to 48 hours. We are raising the bar of logistics in Brazil. 40% of the orders are in store pickup.
This is very popular, and I am sure that this will help us a lot as we roll this out. And we have 200 plus 200 stores which ship from store. This is one of the objectives for this year to roll this out as well. In terms of logistics, we won Well, today, we only have 3.50 sellers of the 10,000. In the context of Maraluru and Tregga's cross docking.
And we are going to roll this out for most of the sellers. We already have 75% of them in the modality of Magalu Intregas, but we want to go to the 2nd phase with the model of Magalu Intregas using cross docking. And this is one of the major focuses for this year, That is to say, to roll this out, to roll out the service, such as another service of Magalupa Gamentis. We have already wrote this out for we depended on a partner in the fact that was told in order to do this prepayment of receivables. And now we do this ourselves.
In Magalupa Damentus, We have an additional monetization of our GMV, therefore, and with an interesting margin. And the cost for the seller is lower if he has this prepayment. And another important benefit in the context of guaranteeing the control of the payment flow is the way that we have to control the level of service from the sellers and authorize this prepayment. And Magalupada Mientus has many advantages for Magalupada Mientus has many advantages for Magalupada and for the sellers. And in order to end my presentation and give the full to that, I would like to say that we had Chinese growth 68%.
And ultimately, it's one of the highest NPLs in Brazil and in the world. We are the only one having the RA1000. And our competitors separate 1 thing from 3P. And we put them together because we have a commitment to 3P, a formal commitment that's formal as with our 1P and our service with the call center. 90% of the calls are solved in the first call and less than 2 minutes wait time, and we continue to be the most formal of all platforms.
We are not a digital informal sales place. We want to comply with all the rules in Brazil, and we intend to help all the regulations. We want to help the government. And this is not very much discussed in the market, but this discussion will continue because there is so much tax evasion in Brazil that marketplace is going to help the government and all the sellers will have to pay their taxes. We're not going to accept anybody that does not.
So this is an inexorable path. So if you have to pay taxes, you have to pay them. So you have to issue the invoice and collect all the taxes. If you sell, you must issue the invoice in the 70%. This was not the rule in Brazil, but there were so many developments in the tax system of Brazil that it's getting better.
And in order to finalize, we have our ecosystem here showing on the slide how all these pieces are connected among themselves. Our focus is not one of them. Our focus is the connection between and among all them with the digital model. The beauty of the model is to make these companies perform a function for the system, and it has to be excellent globally and locally. All the acquisitions that we make have a role.
They have they make sense in terms of our ecosystem. They have to perform a function for the whole ecosystem. So this is what we have put here on this slide. And following this plan, and only a handful of companies in the whole world have been able to do this, and we are the 1st company in Brazil that to reach this status. Now I would like to give the floor to Roberto.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being with us in this call. I will bring to you a few figures. On Page 13, we have a few highlights, a huge growth. Our total sales were BRL 9,000,000,000, a growth 51%, highest growth since our IPO.
Now talking about gross profit in the quarter, our gross margin increased 0.5 percentage point, basically thanks because of Netshoes contributions and new categories. Netshoes works with a gross margin that is much higher than Magalu had before Netshoes. And also thanks to Marketplace, which in the quarter has already moved over BRL 1,000,000 and that contributes to our growth process. About operating expenses, we highlight expenses with sales have increased and in line with what we are have been mentioning for a while, investments in service levels and customer acquisition and also thanks to next year's figures consolidation. But we should also say that as a percentage of total sales of GMV, expenses were stable in a very low level, around 16% only.
About the EBITDA. We reached almost BRL 400,000,000 in EBITDA, a margin of 6.2 percent growing vis a vis last year, but with a lower margin. But then we have brought down the financial expenses. We have a net profit of BRL 185,000,000, basically stable vis a vis last year with a margin of almost 3%. And operating cash generation was one of the main highlights in the quarter.
We reached just in this quarter BRL 1,700,000,000. The ROIC was around 24%. Once again, we were able to reach high growth, high return and high cash generation. And our net cash position is up BRL 6,300,000,000 and total cash net cash position BRL 7,100,000,000, a very sound position. On the next page, we have the results for the year, but the trend is exactly the same.
I just should highlight is that we reached a global EBITDA of BRL 1,300,000,000 and a net income of BRL 550,000,000. The net profit that was published with the IFRS and all nonrecurring effects of the year was BRL 922,000,000. And cash flow of the year, as a whole, BRL 1,500,000,000 and ROIC over 25% in the year. And then we check our users evolution for the app. That's a very higher active customer base.
We gained 8,000,000 customers active ones in the year, including the customers that we gained with Netshoes. Significant figures, I should say. So on Page 16, we have the number of stores, a total number. We opened over 150 stores organically this year, basically half of them in the last quarter, which has contributed to total sales in physical stores and including here the 5 shelves of Marisa that are already increasing the number this year. We should have over 30 kiosks in Marita stores.
So the expansion is there and we've asset as a whole over BRL 500,000,000 in line to what we have been planning, over 40% in total investments as well. After that, we show a quarterly progress of sales reaching BRL 27,000,000,000 in the marketplace, which reached BRL 3,000,000,000 in the 1st year, gaining market share. The furniture and home appliances and electronics market has increased 6% to 7% a year and the e commerce, 16%. So we have grown several times in the market. Then we have our gross profit performance.
In the year, we maintained the margin stable. Operating expenses, I already mentioned. The expenses that increased were the ones related to sales. And naturally, that has to do with the e commerce marketplace, net shoes and all logistics investments. There are also acquisitions and SG and A are stable though.
And in the quarter, they have been diluted. Now on equity income line, we have already seen an improvement in the result of Luisa Cred. The profit is growing again even with the accelerated growth of client base and multi cards and the portfolio, let's say, Louisa Credit had a very positive result, higher than the prior year with a low delinquency rate. Then we have our EBITDA performance. EBITDA has increased 13% in the quarter, reaching BRL 1,300,000,000.
And the variations, when we compare that to last year, we went from 7.6% to 6.2% basically because of investments and expenses to improve our strategy. And with the effect of the IFRS, our EBITDA margin already is at 7.8%. Now our financial results. In this quarter, there was a dilution of 0.3 percentage points already reflecting. The follow on funds, the cash generation in the quarter and also the drop in the CDI rate, this is a trend and to drop the financial expenses for working capital.
Once again, we're able to generate over BRL 500,000,000 in cash starting from the working capital. We have the inventory turnover at 175 days more or less. And then average term for purchasing, that gave us around 20 days free in terms of our working capital cycle, including Netshoes as well. And also, it had an improvement in its performance. And with all that, we have increased our cash net cash position in over BRL 4,000,000,000 going from BRL 2,200,000,000 to BRL 6,300,000,000 almost.
That increase in our net cash has to do with the funds coming from the follow on. And that means the operating cash generation of the company, which is in the next slide is of BRL 1,500,000,000 was enough to cover for all investments over BRL 500,000,000 investments, the acquisition of Netshoes, the payment of Netshoes, debt, dividends and everything else. So even if we had not done the follow on, we would have a net cash position over BRL 2,000,000,000 in the year where we had a high level of investments. And fortunately, now we have an even better capital structure than we have our net income performance, which was very consistent all over the year, reaching BRL 550,000,000 in the year as a whole. A lower margin, but they figure that it's nominally very similar, thanks to an accelerated growth we were able to reach.
Now talking about Luisa credit on the next page. We have increased our card base once again in 1,000,000 cards. 90% of them are active, reaching 5,200,000 customers in Luisa Card. And as you know, these are our loyal customers. They are very important for our strategy.
They have a higher ticket, higher frequency of purchases. And the revenue in the quarter was highlighted. It has increased 30%, reaching BRL 8,000,000,000 in the year as a whole. Luisa Credit also has sold BRL 27,000,000,000, most of that out of Magalum, fostering the activation of our cards. Our portfolio reached BRL 8,500,000,000, one of the largest credit card portfolios in Brazil.
And on the next slide, we have some indicators for Luz Accred. Luz Accred, the overdue payments in the last quarter, we see an improvement. It goes from 8.8% to 8.2%. And in the shorter overdue rate, we reached an all time low, 2.4%. So even for new customers, Luisa Credit has had a better performance in terms of delinquency.
Therefore, our net income is growing again with a good trend. And to conclude on Slide 24, we stress that in the last 2 years, we have invested a lot and we have like 2 percentage points of EBITDA margin to favor growth service level to our clients as well. And this has generated a lot of value to the company for both the company, shareholders and customers, and we'll keep on following this trend. We have here 4 major investment areas in which we'll be focusing accelerating investments. I should highlight the integration with NextShoes.
And this year, it will be much closer to Magalon in terms of logistics, back office and everything else. So it's very important for our strategy. We'll continue investing a lot in Luisa card and digital accounts and the digital account that we are rolling out now. And logistics efficiency will be delivering faster and faster. We'll be opening new DCs going into new regions and increasing the frequency of supply stores that also allow us to have faster delivery to end users and also significant investments in the app.
So We are expanding the size of labs. That's also one of the reasons why we raised more funds so that we could finance several initiatives for Magaluitas service. And so now we turn to the right side of the slide. The logistics integration, which will allow benefits for Netshoes, quicker deliveries. Also, an increased purchase frequency of our loyal customers for digital accounts and for Luisa cards, also reduced the delivery time.
And also, we will be fostering our ecosystem with Magalupagamentos and all initiatives related to Magalupagamentos. I think now we end our presentation, and we'll be available to take your questions. Our first question is from Thiago Macruz, Itau BBA. Good morning, everyone. This is Emerson actually.
Very well. I have two questions. The first one is you want to understand the origin of the strong growth of same store sales in fiscal stores. Can you share with us if the driver was more recurrent or new customers or maybe a higher conversion of your omnichannel customer going to the store? And second question, I would like to understand more about the gross margin.
I know it was strong. This was because of a better alignment with suppliers? Or you have a mix effect because of matches? Good morning, and thank you for your questions, Emerson. Yes, in fact, we did have an amazing quarter in physical stores, new stores.
We already mentioned the total growth, 13% same store sales. We didn't talk much about it in December, but we did have an that Black Friday. This was the Black Friday is on Black Friday. This was an action that was special. We had a live program and multi show.
We had shows and we had all categories in Magaluz. So very similar to what they have in China. They do have a pre black show. So that was a huge impact for e commerce. There was growth.
But there was an amazing impact for brick and mortar stores as well. It was an extraordinary all time high black. Everything went very well in terms of the systems in the store. We have our checkout by the mobile sales mobile checkout that decreases the line or the length of the line during the day. So in December, usually, we have a hangover coming from the Black Friday.
But the last 10 days of December, a little bit before Christmas and after Christmas, we also had a strong promotional action, which helped us in a wonderful quarter. So we grew in all categories. Obviously, you can't go into the details. We gained a lot of share in the brick and mortar stores in this quarter. So basically, in all categories, we had a highest share in the year end these last 2 months, November December, especially.
Yes, I think we had a very good quarter, assertive in terms of promotions. We hit our highest share in history in the physical stores, over 3 percentage points in share in the quarter. We have grown 2 digits in all categories, 2 digits high 2 digits. So this was a very good quarter, yes. Like Fred said, November was great and December was excellent and despite having a very strong Black Friday.
Gross margin, Good morning. About the gross margin, yes, the increase that you see in the consolidated is very much related to Netshoes that works with gross margin of around 40%. If we remove Netshoes, gross margin is stable, a little bit lower than what we had last year. And the figure and marketplace has contributed a lot, over BRL 1,000,000 sales in the quarter. So if we do not consider marketplace, then we will have what we said here.
This is a quarter where we have Black Friday and it has always had and everything. So everything was very much within what was planned and executed, both related to items, marketplace growth and the consolidation of new categories. And one important thing is that when we talk about the margin, investment in margin, it's really investment. And even with 50% discount, cash back of 30%, that's very easy to do. So we have seen an aggressive competition in terms of pricing.
And Magalu never liked this game. We rather be aggressive in other types of investments. You have quick delivery, on time delivery to grow in the app. So we rather have investments that are more sustainable in the long term. So that investment in margin is much more in level of service for customers than in subsidizing prices.
I see some situations today where sellers are selling products. And when they say the price in the marketplace, they get scared because they think they're not going to get any money because it is 50% of the amount that he would price. So that type of subsidy, we are not drilling. It's not our practice. We look for growth, a rational growth.
But so we do have growth, but it is expenses in our EBITDA. Of course, that if we need it, we'll do it. We our focus is to have scale. We might do it in the future, of course, but whenever we can, we want to do these investments in a sustainable fashion and not selling below the cost price or below the amount that the seller has to sell? That doesn't make any sense.
That's great, everyone. Thank you. Our next question is from Irma Skouros from Goldman Sachs. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question.
And I have 2 of them. First, I would like to understand and to know more information about an update on Natchez. If you can tell us the growth that you see there, what is the market trend? I know you had some movements on the suppliers and Nike in Brazil was acquired by Centauro. And if you can comment on how the integration is going regarding Nike's products and Masgaloo's app.
And my second question is about fulfillment in Mazga Lou's network. You mentioned that you already have some sellers in the cross docking. If you can give us a little bit more color, how do you see that for the next 12 or 24 months in order to ramp it up, both in cross docking and also as a fulfillment. I would like to know if you have that structure to bring in the seller under Magalox structure to have the inventory and the DCs? Thank you.
Good morning, Irma, and thank you very much for your questions. I will start the answer, and then I'll turn the floor to Marcel Anadu to add to my answer. Well, first, as we could see, Netshoes is doing very well. We were able to balance out the operations even before the integration that was going to happen this year. So we are very close to the breakeven EBITDA.
This is a fantastic figure. We were able to do that with the team that we have there, a little bit of funds and a lot of work. And you also have seen the sales growth and the behavior of e commerce in the 3rd Q4. We did not disclose much details in the 3rd quarter, but the figures are very similar, both for Magalu and Giena. January started strong.
Marcio will give you more color on it because in fact this is the planning after the acquisition. So I mentioned in the last call that we have a period of time to plan for purchases. Now we are working at normalized inventory levels. And before I turn to Mario, next year's focus, and Magalu is going to go into several product categories, Espanti Vertual, we acquired Espanti Vertual, Apoqua Cosmetricus and here Nat Shoes has a sporting goods, but also it has a huge category, very important one, which is zatini. It's a fashion category, dollars 140,000,000,000 market.
It's still the largest market. It's still Zalchini's market. It has a lot to grow. But I think all of positions are in the ecosystem's concept, so those are the global. We are not going to be a category killer in all the verticals we go into.
Our focus in the ecosystem, the whole, not the part in itself. So within this whole, some specific movement of any competitor in different category is not that relevant. If you look at Nike and Magalu, it's 2% of our GMV. So it is important for nitrous, but it's 2% for Magalu. So it doesn't have that huge of an impact.
But I will go into the details because for Nachos, that's important. And then Edu can tell you more about the integration. Okay. Thank you, Irma, for your question. I can tell you that when we were in Mexico and Argentina, we from Netshoes studied this model.
That's where you have other partners managing Nike's inventory. But on the other hand, Nike will continue controlling segmentation and distribution. So the strategy for all Latin America is going to be held by Nike. And you know we are online and Nike, of course, is relevant customer. So we now believe that in order for Nike to remain competitive and remain as a leader here in the market And the consumer is not suffering any changes, going through any changes, very important that the rules are clear, and we are working on that with Nike right now.
There are no signs that anything is going to change for Netshoes. On the contrary, right now, we are dividing forces. We are dividing that with Santaro. With Nike, we'll be able to grow more. And that shows already working on that with the other brand, and we'll be working on the model that Fayed mentioned of globalization and working on the strategic drivers for Amargalou.
That's what we are working on right now. Some data have been provided to you in this call. Inventory levels are normalized. We are able to improve that inventory management, generating cash in the last quarter, strong Black Friday, very good campaign for NextUs. And now we are working with doing an integration in the system so that we can improve logistics and at the same time, so that Magalu quickly can also sell fashion apparel and sporting goods and app as well.
All brands are in it. You asked about Nike. We are talking to them. So very soon, we'll have news for you. Now I'll turn to Eduardo, and he will give you more details on the integration.
Hello. This is Eduardo speaking. In the past, integration concentrating on what was possible to be done in terms of businesses without any type of development. So we were able to have margin gains in still in last year in terms of negotiation power with some partners so that we could have the lack of blacks. We have sponsorships and a weapon sponsorship for Facebook airing.
So also we have the creation of the Mondosaur world that help the category growth as Ajo. Now in terms of logistics, we are already using Magalot's logistics network to cater to net shoes last year. And also we have 20 stores in Sao Paulo that receive nice shoes products and you can have any store pickup. And also both of us be delivering for nice shoes and also in store pickup have shown us the impact of that and how important it is to roll it out. Now in 2020, we'll be doing it.
So now turning to this year, to 2020, the priority the main priority is to use the logistics network for Magasin Luisa and Natchez. We will have conversion gain, therefore, lower prices and higher sales. And in addition to that, we have the business integration. We have 33 areas that have been mapped for potential management integration. In 20 1 of them, we have already delivered it.
Even though the system is not integrated yet, management is integrated and we have detailed plans to execute it all throughout this year. So what we expect over the year is to have joint efforts and also to allow that good environment for net to grow so that in the last half of last year, we already had the growth higher than the average of online market. This year, we want to grow even more, but without losing sight that we want that financial balance. And we believe that we were able to get it. It.
Next question is from Eugenio Caballero, JPMorgan. Good morning, Fred and Beto. I have two questions, if you allow me. The first is about Magalupagamentos. Can you tell us how the rollout of this initiative is?
If you will have any challenges, any friction points, if it is in line with your initial expectations? And second question is about the expansion plan for physical stores now in 2020. Do you have a figure in mind to in terms of store openings? And also you can give us a breakdown the type of stores, traditional stores, if you have and Mareses and also the geographic distribution of these openings. Anything that you can tell us about openings in 2020, that would be great.
Thank you. Good morning, Eugenia, and thank you. About Magalupa Gamentos, we started the rollout in January and should end it in March. So everything is moving smoothly as we have predicted with no major differences in terms of the expected results, the results that we have shared with you. And starting in April, basically all sellers will be in the new platform.
With all the results that we were expecting to have in terms of prepayment volume or prepayment rate and results. Magalupagamentus is a new company that we have created in the subaquarium area. And that already has a significant volume because our marketplace is growing a lot and it has significant volumes. So we are very happy about the rollout of this new service for sellers. And over the year, we'll be sharing the results with you.
By the end of March, we should conclude that rollout. Now stressing what Beto said. I celebrate not only that. Well, considering this is a very affordable rate for sellers, it's a no brainer. So we have no problems rolling out that.
We'll reach that volume, and that's not going to be a problem. But I think that now everyone wants to play as banks. But when you're working with somebody else's money, that's a huge responsibility. And I think we are working on it. And one of our concerns really was to reconcile everything to have no flow problems, the sellers getting exactly what they had to receive.
So all that reconciliation in the balance sheet and the managerial controls, everything is very well oiled. This product is starting in a very sound fashion. We took a little while to launch it. And when we launched it, it was already very stable. Therefore, I think well at night because in fact, when you are working with 1,000,000 in terms of prepayment, you have to be very careful not to make any mistake in the process.
So this is another positive thing about this integrated sellers. Now we can't give you guidance about the stores, but the trend is that what we are doing in the past few years will be following the same flow. We should add the kiosks at Marita by the middle of the year, 300 of them, and we should be opening stores, right? Yes. I think we're going to go into the federal district, right?
Yes. Magaluru was in Rio for the New Year's Eve. So this is very emblematic, right? So that's it. I understood it very well.
Thank you. The Q and A session is closed. And now we would like to give the floor back to Mr. Federico Tragena for the closing remarks. Mr.
Tragena? Well, we only have 3 questions today. Analysts are very, very busy with the IPOs in the market. Well, that's very good for Brazil, all these offerings. Well, I would like to thank our team, over 30,000 associates and the net people and the apiaries.
I would like to thank everybody for contributing to this result delivered in 2019. And we would like to thank our clients, our shareholders, our Board members, our partners, our suppliers, our vendors. And we are very optimistic regarding the macro scenario of Brazil. But in the very short run, we have a few challenges. We had a lot of rainfall in January, in February as well.
And this is not quantifiable yet, but this impacted the dollar rate. And this makes our process a little bit more difficult. But in spite of all these situations, we still see the macro situation as very positive. And our focus continues to be gains of scale, not only GMV, but also growth in the KPIs and the frequency in shopping. And the focus now is even broader than the GMV because we have the annual purchasing frequency or shopping frequency and also the categories that have a good potential for growth.
And the trend is for us to continue to invest wisely, including margin in order to reach the growth levels that we want and the important as strategic KPIs so that we may really become a digital platform with the network effect. And we believe this will happen still within this year. And the lower margin vis a vis last year was not the previous year was not a surprise, but the trend will continue to happen in 2020. So it's important to stress this at the end of this call. So thank you all very much, and have a very good afternoon.
Magasin deliros conference call has come to an end. We thank you very much for participating and wish you all a very good day. Thank you.