Welcome to Grupo Multilaser's earnings release conference call. It's a pleasure to have all of you here with us to talk a little bit about the earnings of 2021 and the fourth quarter. I'm Ricardo Garcia, IR director, and we're here with Alexandre Ostrowiecki, our CEO, and Eder Grande, our CFO. Before we begin, we have a brief disclaimer relating to some numbers that will be presented. We would like to highlight that the forward-looking statements that may be made during this conference call relating to Grupo Multilaser's business prospects, projections, and operational financial targets are based on the management's beliefs and assumptions, as well as on currently available information. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events and hence depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors may affect the future performance of Grupo Multilaser and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. With that, I will soon turn over to Alexandre, and at the end of the presentation, we will be open to take your questions. During the presentation, you can submit your questions in writing, and at the end, if you prefer, you may also join and ask your questions live. Thank you for your presence. Ale, you're up.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our earnings release conference call. I'll go briefly through the numbers and then we'll move on to your questions. The key aspect of our company at the closing of the year and the quarter is the revenue increase.
We delivered a robust percentage of 70% revenue growth on top of a similar growth rate in the previous year, so there were two very important leaps for the company. From our families, 17 of our 18 families presented growth, and the only one that decreased was flash drives for obvious reasons. It's an obsolete technology. Its flash drive and card storage has decreased, but all others have grown. The other news is the representation of the mobile family. Here we put tablets and PCs, but there's also mobile phones. Its share has grown, and we'll see why in a minute. It's very important for our company. 58% of sales are for retail, so Grupo Multilaser is increasingly more and more diverse. Just under 60% for retail and 44% is for other corporate businesses, government, corporation, internet providers, et cetera.
That shows some of the diversity and risk dilution of the company. Of these 58%, you can see that 44% are small and medium retailers. We're trying to pivot to this version to have the presence in small businesses where we can have a better margin than our competition. Now, the main figures that you probably saw already in the report, in the earnings release, but it's almost R$5 billion in revenue. EBITDA above R$800 million. Net profit of more than BRL 700 million.
So Grupo Multilaser is on the list of the top companies in terms of profit generation in the year. There has been a reclassification in terms of revenue. There was a criteria change where the tax credits were not being accounted as revenue deduction, but it became a deduction. So that went down to BRL 4.8 billion exclusively due to this reclassification of tax credits to decrease revenue.
The total figure is exactly as expected, and both of them that was mentioned. The year delivered revenue, EBITDA, and profit in a very satisfactory level. In terms of channel, there was a big revolution at Multilaser, as you can see here. That is the government side. We went from 4%- 21% of the company's revenue. This is a main question mark in the mind of all investors of how much this is a one-off event and how much it's perennial. We've been talking about this since the IPO. The fact that the government increased almost 800% dilutes the other categories a little bit because they continue to grow in line with the company. For providers, 70%, corporate, 68%, small retailers, 39%, large retailers, 36%, e-commerce, 28%.
The government really cast a shadow on all these other areas because it represents almost half of the additional revenue of the year. We believe this is a perennial trend because it's related to the structure of education in Brazil. In the past, education was 100% analog. With the pandemics, the government went on a race to digitalize and place devices on the hands of students, which generated a high volume of bids and businesses for the industry. Since we're a low-cost provider and manufacturer with a good cost effectiveness, we were able to take a significant piece of this pie, and we delivered more than BRL 1 billion only in government. This is unforeseen in the company's history. For 2022, we're very optimistic to deliver above that number. We already have bids and businesses defined to be able to deliver.
Once students are used to using tablets and PCs, notebooks, they will not come to a point in that within two years, we'll cut everything out and they won't use the products anymore. It seems to be perennial for the public power to provide this material. So we're very optimistic with this new line of business. The margin of this area tends to be slightly higher than retail's margin, so that also affects that side. The government was very strong on the first three quarters. On the fourth quarter, it was a little less, but now we also have a lot of new businesses. The government tends to go against the cycle during Black Friday and Christmas. They don't buy as much. They tend to buy more in the first half of the year, as we'll see this year as well.
In terms of business, you'll see that the same effect that the government had on the sales channels also repeats itself in the division per product line. You see that mobile devices grew 122%, basically mobile phones, tablets, PCs, going from 34% of the company's total up to 44%, which diluted some of the other categories, which also grew, but at a slower pace. Mobile devices here is not retail. Retail actually grew less than the company's average. This is government that came in with a new cannon in terms of business line. Kids and sports increased 70%, highly satisfactory, both the baby business, toys. Sports also increased greatly, and of course, pets. That's included in this, is completely new. We had nothing. We launched our Mimo brand last year, then we bought Expet, the factory of dog beds.
They're growing, it's going well, and that helped compose this number. Home electric products, that includes audio and video, monitors, screens, speakers, automotive, increased 63%, led by screens. The big hero here is screens that we launched 2 years ago. Last year, we came in with Toshiba. Toshiba is a brand that is widely accepted, and that's what was the lead of the 63% of home products. Everything else was around 20%, 25%, but the screens was a lot higher. Office and IT is a more mature business. We already have a large share of flash drives, mouse, keyboards, accessories in general. Grew 30%, which is quite robust, but does not compare with the rest of the companies. It is still quite healthy. Now, breaking down per segment a little bit, you can see the growth here on mobile.
Basically, tablets, PCs, and smartphones in this category, 122% that I mentioned, and a very strong growth in the fourth quarter of this year and the past year with a sales record higher than the third quarter. This high number here is more focused on retail. On T3, we had more government, but on the fourth quarter, there's more retail, Black Friday, Christmas sales, as we will see next. Office and IT supplies, the 30% that I mentioned, we did well. Year-on-year, we increased, and quarter-on-quarter as well. We grew more organically. Home electric products, a huge leap from BRL 600 million to almost BRL 1 billion in this category, but it was a little bit flatter year-on-year. It was already good in the end of the previous year, and it increased about 10% half of the year compared to the previous half.
It was not such a leap on the fourth quarter. It was more linear. Finally, this segment is quite varied. It's kids, sports, baby, and pets. 70% growth, nearly, led by the entry of Expet. Our kids business did very well with the departure of some competitors. Some multinational companies were very weak in terms of toys this year. They're losing market share. You can see that the fourth quarter was a lot greater than the previous fourth quarter. It's a big difference, but lower than the third quarter, and this is normal. Because the third quarter is the supply for Children's Day in October, so toys are very important. We sell in July and August to supply the stores for Children's Day. That's the strongest one. Then you resupply in September, and then you have Christmas.
That is good, but it's not quite as good as the third quarter. The strong supply is exactly for Children's Day in October. This is the main pain point of this presentation. That's the gross margin. There was a decrease. Part of this drop is due to the reclassification, but not all of it. We have to be very cautious here on this slide. To explain reclassification to you. Historically, the R&D credit, we have the tax on industrialized goods, IPI, and we have the credit for R&D, and this was taking off the gross margin of cost. You would sell for 100, cost was 60, and you would remove the R&D tax credit. That was the standard of the industry, but this changed for everyone. The other players also changed the criteria and started accounting this on financial revenue. I'm sorry. It's other revenues.
I'm sorry. It's in other revenues that it's accounted now. So what used to be a cost reducer is entirely sent to other revenues. But this is the same for all players. It's a market criteria. This already occurred last year, to be fair, it should be applied every year, but this rate is a lot lower. It started in 2020. This effect does not exist in 2019. In 2020, the effect is 1.5%, and in 2021, it's of around 3.5%. Right, Eder?
Yes.
The ballast criterion would be 32.4% in 2019, 36% in 2020, so 1.5% more in our margin, and this should be 31.5% for 2021. What we lost here is 4 points of gross margin, remaining in line with the year 2019. That's the fair way of looking at this.
And hindered strongly by the fourth quarter, we had a bad fourth quarter in terms of margin. You see that until the third quarter it was going well, in line with the projections. That's the scenario. What happened in the fourth quarter? I think in the past calls you'll remember that we've been always telling you, "Look, guys, this margin are like miracles. These are not our actual numbers. The market does not sustain our margin at this level. This is the lack of supply because of the pandemic, so we're operating at a higher rate of margin, but this will come back." When the fourth quarter came in, we're saying, "Oh, the market's starting to go sour. It's getting more difficult. People don't have as much money. The supply is widely available. The margin will be tighter." We had two ways.
We could either give land on the top line or the bottom line. On the top line, our revenue would be well below 20% or 25% below our sales target. We would lose shelf space, we would lose some opportunities, but would preserve the company's margins. And what we chose to do was to preserve the top line, even if it hurts our margin a little bit, because shelf space is very important in our area. If you have the shelf there at Kalunga or at Carrefour, it's very important to defend the shelf space. And trying to run clearance of our inventory, Black Friday, and get cleared of this inventory that was an additional acquisition during the pandemic since May of 2020- September of 2021. It was 12- 14 months of a boom in sales in our area. In May 2020, the sales exploded.
Inventory always sold out. Then in September 2021, it was the turning point in the turn of the fourth quarter. We started that retailers were overstocked, industry was overstocked. We had to run sales to clear the inventory, and we decided to keep the wheel turning. The company is still profitable. It's going to be a little bit slower, but we will return to our historical level. It's not what happened in the pandemic, but it's also not what happened in the fourth quarter, where we didn't have the strong government sales at that point, and selling a lot of the inventory with a lot of budget to turn over.
But now in the first quarter of 2022, we already see a better scenario. It's not excellent, but it's certainly better than the fourth quarter. In terms of EBITDA, the situation for the year is smoother. You see that the EBITDA was quite good. That reclassification that I explained about the gross margin comes back here, so it contributes to the EBITDA. We closed at 17%, growing strongly in absolute figures compared to the previous year. Slightly less. You can see that historically, our EBITDA peak was 14%, 15%.
I think it's a happy or healthy peak, realistic for Multilaser, and we're slightly above that. We had a couple of years that were a little tighter at around 13%, which is exactly what we had on the fourth quarter, 12%. I believe our fair EBITDA, I'm not making projections, but in the long term, a fair EBITDA for Multilaser is about 14%-15%, more solid considering a long period of time. We're slightly below that on the fourth quarter because of those aspects that I explained to you.
Net profit was also very good. It increased in percentage terms. Of course, there's an effect of the IPO as well. Here we had net debt, and here we have net cash. So the net profit is positively impacted. But irrespective of the net cash, it was a good profit rate. The fourth quarter of 2020 was excellent. The inventory was selling as it came. Retail would pay anything for the product, so it was excellent for margins. Third quarter was also excellent, and now we're kind of giving back. I understand, like we're giving back and adjusting the excess of inventory that didn't generate as much margin in the previous quarters. We sped up and put them out. So that was the objective of the quarter.
I believe that as long as we see a recovery over time, it's all within the plan. It was a little disappointing for me. I thought we could be a little bit higher, but not much higher than that. It wouldn't be realistic considering the scenario from early October. What's important now is to see this recovering quarter-on-quarter, and we're confident that this first quarter will already be better than the fourth quarter of last year for us to converge into a long-term index for Multilaser. These are the figures. We can get into details with your questions later.
Let me just highlight some important events of the quarter. Things that can be game changers for the company. I'll go from the bottom up to keep the best for last. We had a CapEx plan at the time of the IPO, promised at around 10%-15% of the funding, actually, sorry, 5%-10%, BRL 150 million-BRL 200 million. We are expanding the factories.
There's two additional warehouses in Extrema, two warehouses rented in Manaus with machinery and production. We have the speaker production line that will begin in Manaus next quarter. Expansion of television in Manaus as well, and soon, mobility, and I'll talk about it in Manaus. In Extrema, we're taking the Expet production line to Extrema to unify it at our factory and eliminate a site. There's a site, an Expet location in Mooca in Sao Paulo, but we want to have, as a business view, as few locations as possible. It's just two, one in Extrema, one in Manaus. That brings a lot of simplicity and savings. We're going to close now between April and May, take the last machines to Extrema, and also enjoy the tax incentives of Extrema that will improve the margin of the pet business. The pet business today has no tax incentive.
We are also producing fans now. Production started this quarter. In two quarters, we will start producing blenders and other home appliances, portable appliances. We believe this is important because it will reduce cost. It reduces the shipping costs. We do not have to import it from China anymore. There is a saving in import taxes and IPI monetization. We want to expand the local production of portable appliances that are products with a high added value in volume. Another important point is that we are doing a very serious work, the largest one in the company's history, in terms of branding. We have a brand, a specialized firm working with us, redesigning the brand identity, the brand logo, the name as well, to have a new position for Multilaser as a brand that is better positioned, achieving notoriety.
Marketing campaigns, brand campaigns, we are working a lot of this area, and this will intensify in the second half of this year. Third, and second to last in terms of relevance, we signed a partnership with DJI, the global leader in drones. They have 80% of the drone market in the world. They are absolute leaders in technology, product, brand, will have the exclusive distribution in Brazil of the order of BRL 200 million. It depends on how the market receives it, but that is their market number. It is BRL 100 million- BRL 200 million of their official drone market. The idea is to import the drones. We already have orders arriving at our plant, and we will start importing and distributing the DJI drones. Then we are going to have our own DTC channel.
We will have it available on retail, and we are studying in the future to manufacture the drones and have savings and a cost advantage. It is a very promising market, as you know, both as a hobby, entertainment, professional shooting, sports, agriculture, niche corporate activities, and maybe in the future for transports as well. We believe that drones have a very important role to play in short distance transportation for light volumes. Of course, military as well, but you will see in Ukraine what is happening with drones, but we will not get into that, okay, people? We have no plans to do that, of course. Finally, the last hot, fresh news that we announced last week is the acquisition of Watts. It is a specialized company in electric vehicles that will add to our Atrio line, our brand of electric vehicles that was already achieving success.
We had bicycles, electric bicycles, and electric scooters. We really believe in this technology. There is an environmental side, micro mobility, traffic reduction, cost reduction. Everybody knows that gas is costing a fortune, and it hurts the consumer's pocket, so Watts will be very strong on that. The main thing is that Watts was already one and a half, two years in front of us in terms of developing an electric motorcycle. If we wanted to do it in-house, we would only start until we could get it authorized with the Department of Traffic, it would be 2024. So acquiring Watts brings this project closer. Electric vehicles, the electric motorcycle, that is a huge interest. We have the model already approved. We have orders placed for electric motorcycles that will be sold throughout Brazil, and it can be a game changer in terms of revenue for Multilaser.
It's just exactly who we are. Importing electric motorcycles, then at a second point, we'll start manufacturing. We are already importing motorcycles and preparing the Manaus factory to produce electric motorcycles, the Watts electric motorcycles. It's 125cc, complete motorcycle, goes to 100 km/h . It's a complete motorcycle that's going to cost maybe 20% more or 30% more than a combustion engine motorcycle. But we believe there's a payback within 10 months, only in terms of fuel. There's a huge market of players that are interested. We believe that in corporate, there's a lot of people talking about fleets for delivery. Motorcycle rental companies, retail sales, dealerships.
There's the whole industry opening to Multilaser. That's what makes me very excited in terms of new business, it's Watts. Their business model is different from ours. Multilaser is focused on retail and will remain on retail, but Watts works with their own chain of dealerships, and they also have franchises. The idea is to have these motorcycles available throughout the country to sell through the dealerships. Here is the contact info of everyone here at the call with Eder and Ricardo. I will open now for questions from all of you if you want to know more about our company.
Alexandre, the first question comes from Danniela from XP, and she'll join to ask the question, if you can open the microphone for her, please.
Hello. Thank you. Thank you, Ricardo, Ale. Thank you, Eder. Good afternoon. I have two questions. The first, I believe you already mentioned about the potential of these new lines that you formed some partnerships for distribution and so on, and I'd like to understand how much this may come to represent in 2022. I understand it's still the beginning of all these new initiatives and maybe a little bit more about this new addressable market that you're bringing with all of them.
Also, a point that I noticed that you talked about, Ale, about the government and the bids being something that seem to be perennial. I believe in the release, you also comment that there's something already contracted for 2022. If you can also tell us about the value and the amount that is already contracted in terms of government bids for 2022 would be interesting. My second question would be on the M&A side.
You are actually very active, and you mentioned you would be seeking opportunities. I remember the last call or the one before, you also mentioned about the possibility of looking at opportunities in white goods, and I'd like to understand if in the current scenario this makes sense, if the opportunity is still there. Maybe the market is more challenging, but I don't know if that also makes room for better negotiation. Understanding a little bit more about these two topics.
Excellent, Danni. Okay, so in terms of DJI, historically, we're talking about BRL 100 million- BRL 200 million. I can't give you guidance, but the idea is to try to maintain their market share and expand it. That would be a reference. Watts, the transaction value was moderate. It was BRL 10 million. It's a company with a small revenue.
It's a startup, but with a project to grow, and the main ticket here is working capital. Their problem was to invest heavily and bring products and a factory and everything. We paid a moderate check for all those projects for a company that's already running, although with low revenue values, but we want to scale up relatively fast. We're actually frightened with the demand. The demand for electric motorcycles is huge. Everybody wants it. It's a product with a high added value. In terms of M&As, we had said we wanted to make acquisitions. Since the IPO, we made two acquisitions. At the end of last year, we bought Obabox. That's a company focused on online sales. It's going well so far. It's not meeting the target yet. In January, it made 70% of the target. February, 70%.
Now March, it's 100% of the target, which was twice as much as the February target. It's ramping up, and it's going to be great for us for DTC. DTC last year grew 30%, but this is not quite impressive, right? The DTC was where we grew more, but the base for 2020 was DTC. With the pandemic, our DTC went up 600%. It went from BRL 5- 30 million overnight in March of 2020 because the market closed. There was no one to sell to, and we put it all on the internet, and there was a huge base in the second quarter of 2020. When you look at 2021, it only grew 30%. Yeah, but because there was this astronomical peak in Q2. The growth is robust. At the end of the year, with Obabox from zero sales, we turned key in December.
There was nothing. This year, I believe the DTC will be surprising because it brings much greater margins. We have our Multilaser business growing combined with Obabox. I'm very optimistic. The first two months, we really didn't meet the target, but it's a startup, a turnkey, and now this month it is meeting the target. I think it's going to be very good. The second acquisition after Obabox is Vax. What we're doing now, we're talking with many others. There's always two or three companies want to sell themselves to us every week. It's crazy how many entrepreneurs want to sell their business in the current scenario. On one hand, it's good because it tends to bring the price down. On the other hand, you see, we want to trade lower than our screen value to generate value to our shareholders.
Since the price is what it is, we don't have a lot of purchasing power in a sense. We tend to want to depress the prices, and we're doing smaller businesses. There's two relatively large deals that we are in advanced conversations for acquisition. There's another one that's almost ready to go. Hopefully, we'll sign next week and announce it next week. That's also a game-changing business, which is to manufacture and distribute a champion brand that wants to leave the country. They'll give it to us to produce and sell a product line that is consolidated in Brazil, which will also add a lot to the revenue and to the bottom line as well. Luckily, until next week, we shall be able to announce. It's up to them. It's a foreign company. They have to sign. We'll have great news next week.
Excellent.
You had another question. You had something else, right?
No, I think it was about the bids, maybe government bids.
Oh. About the business being perennial. We have a pipeline, right, Danniela? This year, our current pipe is already larger than the revenue of last year business that I already contracted. It's at hand. Unless there's a big turnaround or something outside of our control, a force majeure event, our expectation is to exceed last year in deliveries.
Excellent. Just to confirm my understanding, despite the macro scenario being more challenging, it's reasonable to believe you'll be able to continue to grow this year considering all the new avenues of growth and the continuity of those you already have, and with the margin dynamic improving on the fourth quarter level, right?
Yes, we would like to continue delivering growth above two digits. We've been talking about low double digits, not going back on revenue, and margin being something better than the fourth quarter, but worse than the top that we had at the boom of the pandemic.
Excellent. Thank you.
I can read the questions and answer. What do you think? There is another one that's open in the end, but you can start reading then. Thank you.
The questions don't appear to everyone, right?
No, only for us.
Okay. So I'll read. From Felipe, from Itaú BBA. "Good afternoon. In the quarter, considering a worse macro, we saw an impact on the gross margin coming from a change in the company's commercial strategy. Could you give us more detail about the strategy? Should we expect it to continue? For how long?"
Well, Felipe, I don't think it's a change in strategy. It's a tactical movement in the moment when retail consumers are buying a lot, like Black Friday and Christmas, and we did a tactical move of trying to use this opportunity to burn a lot of the product, slow movers and inventory, offending the margin slightly, but reducing the volume of inventory. It's not that we changed our strategy or approach. But the market went sour, and we tried to go there and bring the prices down. It's the lion story. The lion's going to eat someone. We can put our racing shoes and run, so we're not eaten. Let the competition be stuck there.
Alexandre, there's two aspects as well, right?
The fourth quarter is a quarter that has an unfavorable product mix, a lot of computer products. And the integration of Obabox also penalized it a little bit. A lot of merchandise coming back, disturbing the margin. There's other aspects contributing to this drop. And the fourth quarter of 2020 is not a base for comparison. It's something that was never seen before in 20 years. Retailers were accepting to pay more. We had the product in our hand to invoice the retailer. They'd been waiting for three months, and we could adjust prices at the last minute, and they would go for it. So the margin of the fourth quarter usually tends to be more compressed.
Let's look at Melissa here. At the end of the fourth quarter, the retail was overstocked. They bought. You can imagine that retail went for four quarters, from May 2020 to September 2021, buying whatever came their way. There was no product available. The factories were empty. The supply chain from China was crazy. So the retailer was to place the order, everybody's order, as much as you could.
We could send everything we had to the retailers, and they would take it. Consumers had money. They wanted to equip their homes. They were not spending money going out to restaurants, et cetera. They had money. It was not the perfect storm. It was the perfect paradise in terms of business. Then we came to the fourth quarter, and the market shifted. People started to go out more. They did not have such an appetite to buy, and retail was still buying. The retailers were overstocked. Black Friday was horrible. Christmas, nothing happened. So throughout the quarter, everybody had to dance to that music, running campaigns, sales. Today, the inventory level is high, but it is lower than what we had in the fourth quarter. The size of the addressable market for drones and e-bikes, motorcycles, and the relative positioning of your offer, Boni.
I do not have the addressable market detail here now. Drones, we can say that DJI always held 80% of the market with an average of revenue in BRL 150 million. So we can infer that the drone market today would be of around BRL 200 million a year, and DJI holding about BRL 150 million as the leaders. They are the price leaders, premium price leaders, brand leaders, et cetera. E-bikes and motorcycles, I do not have the details here.
I can look it up and send it to you. Motorcycles as well, it is a huge market. We talked about it during due diligence and I do not have the number by heart. The position of our offer in case of Watts, it is mid to high. It is not an entry-level product. Multilaser has our brand Atrio, which is entry-level, mid, low, and Watts is mid high. Competition is very incipient.
There is a company called Volt that launched a similar model, and they are struggling to deliver. We can see the news from the market with their difficulties because they ran pre-sales, took money from consumers, and now they are starting to deliver, but they are suffering with the supply chain. Advertising and promotional spending and channel strategy for this year. We invested very little historically in marketing and promotion. About 1.5% per year. It went up to 2% per year. But this year, when we want to have a boom of investments and go for the market, we are talking about 3%. So it is not like we are splurging money on marketing. But 3% is a fair percentage that we believe will bring great returns in terms of brand recognition, pricing power, and 3% involves all the marketing cycle. It is not only advertising.
Promoters, points of sales, incentive campaigns, promotional material, advertising, yes, but it does not include any digital performance marketing. It is a different budget. It is a different account. Charles Cailloux, the project for Watts. I believe we already answered. New acquisitions, Charles also asked. I believe we mentioned it in our answer to Danniela. Bruno Souza is an investor. How this relevant decrease in exchange rate will affect the company, considering the inventory being high and a higher exchange rate? The exchange rate going down is negative for our paid inventory. We have a lot of paid inventory. Historically, we were going against the currents trying to hedge the stock, afraid of a max devaluation. That was always the risk that hurt us most, and we have been paying a lot as the dollar price went down.
We have a lot that was paid when the real to the dollar exchange rate was BRL 5. So it's not that far from the amount. I think it's BRL 470 something today. BRL 475 for the dollar. So it's R$ 0.30 , maybe 7% at this exact moment. 6% or 7%. So it's still not a serious problem. We have a lot of open sites that will make good use of the lower exchange rate, but the exchange rate going down does affect our inventory and as we transfer that to prices. When we don't have to transfer that cost to prices, it goes on normally. So it depends on inventory coverage. If the product is selling well, we leave it as it is, and it's going to have the normal average, normal margin.
If the product doesn't sell, it's important to make this clear, our policy is to look at the replenishment cost. We don't sit on inventory waiting for the exchange rate to go down. If it goes down to 3.5, for example, and we need to sell the product, we're going to use the 3.5 price managerially to be able to sell. We like to feel the wheels turning. That's our policy. Antonio Hermida, sell side, highlighting the clarity and openness, honesty of the CEO in the presentation. I'll repeat it. I would like to highlight my admiration for the clarity and honesty of the CEO during the presentation. Always, guys, I'm never going to peel the pill. You may like the news, you may not like the news, but it's always real life. If there's something going wrong, I'll tell you.
Question one, reduction of the IPI will have a significant impact in the future results. IPI being the tax on industrialized goods. Good question. On imported products, the IPI reduction is very good for us. It reduces the load. We become more competitive. The price product is more attractive, closer to the counterfeit products or smuggled products. For Multilaser, for accessories, speakers, portable devices. In electronics, the IPI tax, the first question is it really going down? Because the government brought the rate 25% down, but after a while, the Manaus Association complained to the president, and the president decided to take it back, and they should go back to the full IPI rate. The government says they want to reduce 33% of IPI tax, but it's not clear if it's in products that are made in the free zone in Manaus or not.
I question first the assumption. I do not know if there will be a reduction. If there is, at the time being, it doesn't have a lot of economic impact because you have a less IPI tax, and it was the credit, the IPI credit remains the same. So it maintained the previous IPI credit, so it makes the imported products a little bit closer. A mobile phone importer won't pay 15%, it will pay 11% of IPI. But it's still a significant difference that doesn't allow them to come to the market competing on the same level as the local industry. The industry that's paying 15% and crediting 10.8%, it doesn't really make a difference for the economics of it. Two, the concern is about the directors feeling compelled to buy everything for any price after the IPO.
I ask if we can be at ease in terms of maintenance of cash resources and the growth of Multilaser, only acquiring businesses that are effectively profitable to maintain the current ROI. We have the same concern exactly. Over the last one year, we made two acquisitions. One of BRL 10 million. For Multilaser's size, it is very light. And Obabox, that was a check around the same value. We wrote two BRL 10 million checks so far, and we are in no rush to start writing checks for BRL 400 million just for the sake of it. If we write a check for BRL 400 million, it is because it is very good for the company's value in the long term.
2021's result was already mentioned as a point outside of the curve, but what is the perspective in number of years for the company to achieve the same results as 2021?" This is a good question. I do not know how long it is going to be, but I imagine we have to make significantly more than we did in 2021 to have the same profit levels. Unless there is something completely out of our control, a positive aspect, I believe that the 2021 profit was completely above the historical average. We would have to increase revenues for quite some time. "Does Multilaser intend to enter the photovoltaic energy generation market?" Yes, we are looking into that. We are very interested in the battery side. We have a global partner who is already our partner and is very strong in long-duration batteries.
We are looking at this movement to photovoltaic cells, players coming in, Aldo Solar, Intelbras, five or six big players moving forward. And battery power generation is going to be an important complement. We will be able to store power at home, give it back to the power grid. So we are really looking into this in the detail. Question about the current inventory levels and what we are planning to do about the future. Inventory is high today, but it is less than the fourth quarter. We see three inventory KPIs. Inventory, in-house inventory turnover, total inventory turnover, what is in-house plus imports, and the third one is invested capital, the company's entire inventory except for what is in accounts payable. We like to maintain that as low as possible.
Luiz Azevedo, "Good afternoon. I would like to understand the effect of exchange rate on the company's margins for 2022, considering the valuation of the real. Is it reasonable to imagine that the gross margin of the government sales will be compressed with a positive counterpart in financial results?" Well, Luiz, I think it is the other way around. Government are deals that are closed and locked in Brazilian reais, and most of it will be delivered by July, August. So if the exchange rate goes up and the contract is running, it improves our margin a little bit. It could be more of a positive surprise. On retail, as we bring new imports at a lower exchange rate, they become more competitive and more attractive to consumers. And consumers really do need to see a reduction in the price on the point of sale.
The consumers have suffered a lot of increases in cost, shipping, US dollars. If we can provide more aggressive prices at the point of sale, it will drive consumption. People have that memory, "Oh, I paid BRL 500 for a pair of speakers. I don't want to pay BRL 700." If we go back to that price, it would be good. We'll also take a punch in our inventory. We have hundreds of millions of reais in paid inventory. I don't know the exchange rate, but it's probably around 5.2, 5.10, 5.20. Over the last three months, we are already renewing a lot of this inventory. We'll take a hit in the inventory. We'll make money in the long term. With the government, it's better. It's more on a good side.
Lucas Chaves, UBS. Continuing about the segments, how do you see the sales channel focused on small and medium retailers in 2022? We see a loss of share in terms of e-commerce, lower increase in revenue. Is it the same dynamics that you expect for 2022?" Small retailers are doing well. They've become sellers. They're changing, adding services to the store. It's interesting. We would think that small retailers would disappear, and the big ones would swallow them. Brazil is large, and the regions, especially in the countryside, it's hard to access logistics, deliveries. Small retailers who have inventory, deliver locally, and know the consumers have been doing well. They're moving towards becoming sellers on marketplaces. They buy from us, they sell at their store. They buy on Mercado Livre, on Americanas Marketplace. This grew, you saw. Small retailers grew more than large retailers for us.
When you talk about a loss of share on e-commerce, in our case, yes, I'm not happy with the e-commerce. The number could have grown more. There's two factors there. First, you need to expunge the insane peak of sales of March 2020 when we compare things. It went from 5 million- 30 million overnight. When we opened retail and everybody already had products available, e-commerce started to become more moderate. The second point is, we don't want e-commerce to grow that much. A product that is available on retail for BRL 100, in theory, I could sell to the consumer for BRL 70, but then I would be stepping on the toes of all of our retailer network, and we want to respect the channel. What we're doing this year is a movement to have more exclusive items. We split our portfolio.
We have this product for retail, this one for e-commerce. Obabox is running this movement. I believe that for 2022, and I hope to show you in the next quarters, a huge growth on e-commerce. You'll see that it will take off because we have our team, we have Obabox, and we have the exclusive items. Then I can sell at ease. Imagine that an electric rice cooker is BRL 600 . If I sell for retailers for BRL 350 , I could sell to the consumers for BRL 400, but I don't do that to preserve the retail channel. So, okay, let's make a pot that's BRL 600 , and another one that we'll sell for 180 BRL with a better margin that we'll sell exclusive in all our channels. With having exclusive portfolios, e-commerce tends to improve greatly. Another one from Eva.
So complementing, we understand that part of the decision to sacrifice the margin to maintain the pace of sales came because of the high level of inventory and the dollar going down. It would be too risky to reduce sales and inventory turnover. But on the other hand, supply chain problems also are unfavorable to having a very low inventory. What is the level of inventory you plan to maintain in the future? You are being very generous. On the fourth quarter, we did not have any information saying that the dollar would go down. I would love to tell you that we are visionaries, and we are going to sell our inventory because the US dollar is going down. We did it because we have this philosophy of keeping the wheels turning.
As a business, I prefer to maintain the top line turning and delivering, and you dilute it on the fixed costs of the company, and you keep that momentum of the shelf presence, and you do not let your competitor come in. If I go in with a promotion, and I take a shelf, and I lose the shelf, it is a lot more expensive to come back later. So the decision was in that sense. Let us attack it with the slow-moving products. Let us preserve our shelf space. It worked in that sense. We had a good revenue, met our targets, increased the top line. We are at a good pace in terms of top line in the first quarter, above the target so far. So that is related to the good decision in the previous fourth quarter of not losing our space.
Profit is a good consequence of work that was being well done in the top. If I do not price correctly to be able to preserve margin percentage, it ends up being worse. The ideal inventory level, 3.5, four months in-house. That would be the realistic level. Supply today, and we are being able to buy. The Ukraine effect is very low so far in our operation. There are some rare materials, but so far, we are still being able to buy products even with Ukraine's situation. Is there any risk of retail being overstocked or the first half of 2022 being weak in terms of Multilaser sales? The risk does exist, but I think it is low. The first quarter is getting towards the end, and we are quite happy with the top line of the first quarter. Bottom line, I expect to be better than the fourth quarter.
I do not know how much. But I hope we will be happy at the end of the first quarter of 2022. Retailer is stocked, but it is no longer super stocked. It is not overstocked. We have a channel. Multilaser has a software called Radar Trade. I do not know any other industry having this level of software. But we take the inventory for all of the retail that we compile every week and have it on the software. So the campaigns and the sales, they were effective. For example, there was a Nokia mobile phone that we are selling at BRL 1,900 , BRL 1,899 . It was not turning. It was too similar to Samsung, Motorola. It was not selling. So we put this cellphone out for BRL 1,299, and sales exploded. It is BRL 600 of price difference per piece.
You have to put a lot of money into retail to cover that hole, but the wheels kept turning, and the product is in a good line now in terms of turnover. Michelle Piva, Alexandre, congratulations for the 2021 results. Thank you. I think overall there's nothing we can say against it, despite the gross margin of the fourth quarter being disappointing. The year was good. Two questions. Lockdown in China, the Shenzhen region affected the chain? No, it was locked down for one week, and it was a low impact. How does the company see the external supply for 2022? We believe it's going to be better than 2021, but not quite normalized. Chips, for example, is something that is very complicated. Processors. We have three or four large processing companies in the world, and they're still working with a location basis.
Just to give you an idea, this week, I was talking to the leading manufacturer of cellphone chips. Everybody knows them. He said that they are developing a product that is a Multilaser mid or high mobile phone. They said, "We're closed for 50,000 chips." I didn't even have product specifications. We didn't know the memory it was going to have, the screen. But we closed on the chips to guarantee allocation because if we don't do that ahead of time, when you go to buy it, you can't find it. Some specific components are still difficult. But most of the products, electronics, portable appliances, boards, no. Michelle, about the bids with the governments, what's the history and the risk of delays and default? Delays, you mean delays of payment, right? Delays on delivery, there may be.
It's a supply chain, so you can consider one month more or less. It's normal. In terms of business, they're reasonably closed. It's very big in São Paulo, State of Ceará, very strong, Minas Gerais. It's well-distributed. Default, in theory, the risk is very low because the money of those bids is already set aside for education. It comes from the National Educational Fund, and they must invest that value in education and in the bids. If they don't do that, they're prosecuted for illustrative practices. It's not like a city hall here or there not paying a debt. So delays would be more in terms of bureaucracy. What we see, right, Eder? The delays are red tape.
Particularities of red tape, and if it's delayed, it's 30, 45 days, nothing too absurd.
Oscar is asking a great question. Dividends. When? About 30% of net profit? Dividends will be soon. We're looking into it, and the percentage will be close to 15%. That has been informed as well. The board is going to send the proposal to the general meeting. 40% of the distributable profit. Part of our profit cannot be distributed. So BRL 54 million would be distributable. But what we're submitting to the meeting, that would be approximately BRL 0.12 per share, with a margin of 10%. So it's about 15% with the shift of net profit. How much of the distributable? 40%, 45.5% of the distributable profit.
Okay, so I think we don't have any further questions. We've answered all the questions here. We would like to thank you all for your presence, everyone who heard us, submitted questions. Thank you for your interest in the company and the trust of our investors. I'll turn over to Eder and Alexandre for their final remarks.
Eder, anything?
Only thank you for your trusts, and we're here working strongly to deliver a very positive 2022 above expectations.
Thank you, everyone, for your attention.