Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for waiting. Welcome everyone to Multiplan's first quarter of 2020 earnings conference call. Today with us, we have Mr. José Isaac Peres, CEO, Mr. Armando d'Almeida Neto, Investor Relations Officer and CFO, Mr. Marcello Barnes, Development Vice President, and Mr. Hans Christian Melchers, Executive Officer. We would like to inform you that the presentation that will be made is available for download at ir.multiplan.com.br. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the company presentation. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A session when further instructions will be given. Should you need assistance during the call, please press star zero two to reach the operator.
Before proceeding, we would like to mention that forward-looking statements that might be made during this call in relation to the company's business perspectives, operating and financial projections and targets, are beliefs and assumptions of Multiplan's management, as well as information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they relate to future events and therefore they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic condition, the industry conditions, and other operating factors may affect the future results of the company and may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. This conference will last 60 minutes. After this period, the investor relations team will be available should you have any additional doubts.
Now, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. José Isaac Peres, CEO, who will start the presentation. Mr. Peres, good morning. Once again, thank you for the opportunity, and you may begin.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to start my presentation with two remarks that have just occurred to me. The first one is that you should never row against the tide, and in these circumstances, you should not. I know that the market is very volatile, especially in a quarter in which the company presents its best historic results in these 46 years of activity, as we will be seeing. Having said that, I am going to read some remarks to you.
In this first quarter, we have already seen the return of the operations and the recovery of sales and of revenues. In fact, we were able to see the force of habit prevailing over any other entertainment options for the shopping centers. The speed of recovery that we had and our strength and the results and the operating results make it very clear that shopping centers continue to play an important role in society. The pandemic accelerated digitization, but human beings want to be together in spite of the digital world. The financial performance reached a record driven by consistency measures and our development strategy in the real estate activity. Our net income in the quarter was BRL 569 million . In the first nine months of the year, we had BRL 817 million .
If we include the sale of the office tower, Multiplan's net income would be around BRL 300 million in the year, therefore in line with what occurred last year. I would like to mention that in the first nine months of this year, during four months, we were practically closed with revenues of around 10%. In October, tenant sales are already higher than 80% comparing to 2019. Nevertheless, this percentage has already exceeded 90% in some shopping centers, such as Brasília, Canoas in Rio Grande do Sul, and Campo Grande in Rio de Janeiro. We still have two good months ahead of us, November and December. Considering the recovery that occurred in October and the lifting of a major part of the restrictions, our expectation for November and December is that sales should be close to the sales that we had last year.
I would like to remind you now the following. In January, February, and up to March 15th, we were growing very steeply vis-à-vis the previous year. The shopping centers had to be closed, and we were the first company to take this initiative. As some authorities said this closing of all the shopping centers should be around 15 days, and they lasted for about four months. You can see that, let's say, if we had all these months this year with the shopping centers open, regardless of the activities of the real estate activities, our net income would have been much higher. I would like you to understand everything that we are saying here. I always say that in a not too distant past, the company had as its flagship the real estate activities, and over time, we started to invest more and more in shopping centers.
This was a very rightful decision, and we will continue to do so. Shopping centers will be our flagship. Now, with the reduction of the inflation rate and also the interest rate, investment in real estate becomes extremely attractive. Due to this reason, we have placed a team 100% dedicated to this sector. This will be an independent department in the company or possibly a new company. Currently, we own 1 million square meters with projects already approved for the selling areas in different regions of Brazil. We do not need any additional capital because these properties are already paid in full. Our PSV under this aspect, that is to say, real estate and is around BRL 8 billion-BRL 10 billion. These are lands that are close to the shopping centers that were acquired over our trajectory, along our trajectory.
The historical value is BRL 0.5 billion. It's a very low value, and this allows us to launch products at very attractive prices. At the beginning of next year, we will be launching the Golden Lake project in Porto Alegre. The pre-launch will be in January, and this will be the first phase of a project that could go beyond BRL 3 billion in PSV. It will be carried out in stages over eight years, such as was the case with the Golden Green in Barra da Tijuca, in Rio de Janeiro. This is a magnificent project. This is a private district, in fact, with unprecedented characteristics and facing the Guaíba River and very close to our BarraShoppingSul Mall. All in all, we will have 18 residential towers and one office tower.
This October, we have already started the urbanization work with an area of 163,000 sq m. That is to say, a new neighborhood, a new district with outstanding characteristics and unprecedented, that this will be a landmark with the concept of a closed condominium with a golf course and facing the Guaíba River. The other one was facing the sea, and here we have a spectacular lake with an artificial beach. I believe anybody would dream of living in a place such as that one. So we have already acquired over two years ago, and we are having very competitive prices. We continue to focus on all the real estate diversity: residential, office, medical centers, hotels, hospitals. These projects will be generating additional traffic for the shopping centers. They will benefit from the characteristics of our multiuse hub.
We also have expansions planned for our shopping centers, almost 200,000 sq m of gross leasable area. Next year, we will be starting the expansion of the ParkShoppingBarigüi in Curitiba and Barra World Shopping & Park in Belo Horizonte. In October 2021, we will be inaugurating the Jacarepaguá [4th Shopping], the 20th shopping center built by our company. We were the first company in the world to build, 30 years ago, a medical center within the BarraShopping. We are talking about 42 clinics that carry out 250,000 consultations and exams every single month. I would like to mention, above all, our focus that has always been on health, facilitating the life of our consumers. In the Congress of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the recommendation by the association was that shopping centers should have medical centers.
You can see that we already saw the synergies between health and entertainment. That was the focus of shopping centers 30 years ago. We also have a medical center in Ribeirão Preto. We are building one in Curitiba. Curiously, the biggest demand that we see today are for the medical centers. So you can see that the shopping centers have the capacity to adapt to the new ways and the new habits. I always say that the shopping centers continue to be an oasis in the middle of large cities. For instance, what would happen in the cities if all the shopping malls should close? It would be a tragedy because the streets do not offer the necessary safety and they are not healthy in the sense of people being able to walk carelessly.
With the pandemic, with the destruction of about 50% of the standalone stores, what happened was that we had this social isolation, so to say, here in Brazil. This was not the best choice from our viewpoint. A vertical isolation would have been much better because it would have avoided mass unemployment. Of course, we wouldn't have the activities of, with mortality rates lower than 60 years of age. So what I mean is that this was not needed. Unfortunately, pandemic was politicized not only in Brazil but in the whole world. I would like to mention the following. We had the initiative of asking an international company to carry out PCR tests on 60 surfaces of our shopping centers in São Paulo. The objective was to check the absence or presence of coronavirus in shopping centers in the state of São Paulo.
This is an international lab. They collected 60 samples on 60 different surfaces, such as we do with a regular PCR. That is to say, the same thing that you do with a PCR in your nose. We did that on 60 surfaces between August and October this year. The results showed that there was no trace of coronavirus detected on none of the surfaces tested. The result of all the samples was negative. I would like to draw attention to the fact that we anticipated ourselves. We hired the infectologist in order to guide us, and we established a standard that regardless of all the official standards, that were very good, but we implemented with the help of all these infectologists and testing all the air conditioning systems and temperature of all clients.
Now people are coming back to shopping centers, and they feel safer. Not safer in the sense of the safety that we have always given them, but I am talking about safe health-wise. We hired the infectologist since the beginning of the pandemic, and this showed that shopping centers are the safest and most hygienic public locations in the country. As a consequence of the pandemic, we are being approached by many retailers that only operated with standalone stores. Now they want to count on the benefits that are offered by shopping centers. Because we offer physical and sanitary safety, client traffic, parking capacity, reduced cost, and facility of integration of e-commerce with the whole logistic chain. Among retailers, e-commerce ones were the ones that really approached us the most.
This is very interesting because they wanted to have access to areas and spaces in our shopping centers. In spite of all the restrictions that are still in place, we already see sales exceeding 80% of the amount that we had last year in all the regions, exceptionally to São Paulo, where the reduced opening hours was extended for a longer time. We are keeping our support measures to the retailers who helped us to sustain our occupancy rate. Today at 95.3%. What I mean by that is that when this started, I thought we would be losing 20% of our retailers, and we only lost a handful because we had 92 and now it is 95.3%. It was 98%, and now it is 95.3%.
Just to finalize my remarks, I would like to add that in the last eight years, the digital tools came to add more sales also to the physical shopping malls. We have a program in place in order to support all our tenants, and we will soon be offering a new tool in this regard. Those who do not know how to make a shopping mall, they believe that all digital is everything. But those who know how to make shopping centers started almost 50 years ago, and we built the Shopping Ibirapuera, and this was the first one that we had the joy to build. Digital is great, but your presence is irreplaceable. People, above all, in this isolation, because this isolation, social isolation, has been the most painful thing that we have ever seen in our lifetime.
The rates of depression and mental problems have increased steeply. People stopped going to hospitals because of fear of contagion, so this was very bad for health overall. I thank our people, those who have given all their dedication to the company. There was a major decrease in the salaries of our people, this was their collaboration. Now it has become something very rewarding because our shopping centers have no risk from the health viewpoint. The result of all this concerted effort was our going back to this level of sales that we did not expect given the situation. In this time, we had BRL 800 million that came from the sale of the office tower, this is the reason why we were able also to present such good results.
Now we are going to bring more results by means of this new company. We do not need additional capital because we have everything we need and that very good historical crisis. This will be generating a major net income to the company over the next 10 years. We are still thinking about the details and how we are going to put this in place, et cetera. I would like to thank all our employees, our tenants, for all the sacrifices that they made when the shoppings were closed. From the tenants, we received only half of the condominium expenses. We waived the other 50% and others because we are the creators, but the soul of the shopping centers are the tenants.
I would like to thank our tenants that were very courageous, in spite of all the adversity, they went back and they reopened their stores, and they are always with us. I thank everybody who participates in our companies, also our investors who have been with us in these difficult times. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is Armando. We are still in isolation and restriction mode, but even then, we had a strong operating recovery in the third quarter with less operation time equivalent to 51.7% of the third quarter of 2019. We had better results for hourly rent, 55.5%, when compared to the prior year. Same growth is observed in October, getting closer to pre-COVID levels. Analyzing the comments from analysts, we see that this increase in the third quarter is clear when we analyze our receivables due on the following month, which go from BRL 42.8 million in June to BRL 83.7 million in September 2020. Sales and people traffic recovery allowed a lower occupancy cost in a third quarter since the IPO in 2007. It was 11.8%, comparable only to the historical lower cost in fourth quarters, which happens thanks to Christmas seasons.
And more important, that turns our properties more attractive to tenants in the short term as well. For those that are analyzing and concerned about vacancy, we see a great immediate attractiveness there. Another extremely positive aspect was the strong rent revenue recovery, followed also by a significant drop in net delinquency, from 16.3% in the second quarter to 7.2% now in this third quarter. Commercial activities resumed with 90 new store rentals, a turnover of 1.1% of the gross leasable area. Our efforts to adjust the company and our properties to the pandemic effects are still bringing good results. One of them is a reduction in property expenses, 6.8% of the tower expenses and also shopping mall expenses. It was reduced in despite of the higher vacancy. As Dr. Peres mentioned, a lower headquarters expenses in 48.5% vis-a-vis the same quarter in 2019.
Diamond Tower sale, which is part of our Multiplan strategy, that is part of our activity, that allowed a strong financial deleverage, bringing down our net debt over EBITDA ratio to 1.33x . In this quarter, we issued BRL 400 million in new debentures, prepaid that in the amount of BRL 388.4 million. Basically, debts that were indexed to TR, the reference rate, and we renegotiated the cost of a loan, also indexed in TR. Such actions allowed us savings of BRL 23.6 million at net present value. Net financial expenses, here, that is the growth expenses less than what we received in investments, those expenses were down 46.4%. Having said all that, the growth debt average cost was down 40 basis points to 3.13% a year, a little faster than Selic rate, which dropped 25 basis points. In this quarter, we also bought back 1,955,700 shares.
I am trying to give you more transparency and more information about details, also about the selling of our tower. We reached a cash generation record measured by the EBITDA or by the FFO, as well as a new net income record. I usually say to our investors and analysts that we already discount from the FFO, the non-cash effect once again, so that we can have greater transparency and so that our FFO is a good indication of cash generation. Using technology, we continue investing in projects that may bring Multiplan and its tenants greater access to different markets as well as it will allow consumers to have even more convenience. Recently, we launched a beta version for sale via WhatsApp and participated in a new round of capital increase for Delivery Center, and our share today is 26.5%.
Our Multi Super app has now eight times more active users than the same period of 2019. It is still low. We are going to grow there, and we will expand its marketplace functionality to a total of 16 of our malls until this year's Black Friday. That is going to be within two weeks. To conclude, I hope we have been able to show you that instead of wasting time and complaining about what happened, we dedicated ourselves, we worked hard to overcome this huge challenge. Now we can celebrate the quick and strong operating and financial recovery we had in this third quarter. Thank you very much. Now I turn the floor to the Q&A session.
Very well. We will now start the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star nine on your phone. Star nine so that we can receive your question.
First question from Alex Ferraz, Itaú BBA. Alex?
Good morning, Mr. Peres, Armando. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one has to do with the turnover. This has been a positive surprise. The appetite for new spaces, and we already expected this turnover, but the demand for new areas is surprising. Even more so if you consider this challenging scenario. So what do you believe is driving this appetite? You mentioned of the retailers that only have standalone stores, and they want to take advantage of the advantages offered by malls. Also, you made it very clear this correlation between the sales performance and the restrictions regarding the opening hours. Last week we saw, I think it was on Valor's publication, mentioning tenants that wanted to reduce the opening hours.
Do you believe there will be a discrepancy, or do you believe that the news published by this publication has nothing to do with the profile of your tenants?
This is Isaac Peres. It's very difficult to acquire a good shopping center. We do have this appetite. You're talking about new tenants. The new tenants. Okay, now I understand your question. This is happening very frequently. These are retailers that survived in standalone stores, and they now want to go to the shopping centers because they know that it is much safer and it is much stronger in terms of attraction. Of course, there are momentary difficulties such as the one that we are having now. There is something called creative destruction. Whenever you open a new space, there is a new one opening up.
Our shopping centers have a very high occupancy rate, around 98%, but some areas are being replaced easily. This is a very positive thing. As we said before, in spite of all the difficulties that we were facing, we are delivering sales figures that are very similar to what we had last year, in spite of all the restrictions that continue to be in place. Regarding the opening hours that you were mentioning, this happened in São Paulo, because in São Paulo, the restriction was bigger. In a period of eight hours, let's say, for retailers, they thought it would be better to have eight hours open in a critical situation than having two different shifts. Financially speaking, that would be more advantageous. Most of our shopping centers today have these two shifts now. In São Paulo, we again have two shifts.
In some shopping centers in the interior of São Paulo, they still do not have two shifts. Porto Alegre, for instance, does not have two shifts. This is the situation.
Thank you very much.
Fanny from Santander.
Good morning, everybody. Mr. Peres, Armando. I have two questions along the lines of the previous question, which has to do with vacancies. Some people are concerned with the increase in vacancies. Probably the retailers that were not having a good performance, they did not wait for Christmas and they decided to leave before Christmas. How do you evaluate the health of your tenants in your shop?
This reminds me of a song that this year is not going to be the same as last year, because differently from the previous years, people usually rush to open the store before Christmas and they want to have everything ready to go.
What happened was that we saw this movement before. It was earlier because of so many months closed. We are having this earlier this year. It's really the opposite. We see the new rentals with a better quality because they want to be ready for Christmas, and they want to save to surf this wave. We see new brands and new segments that are participating in the shopping centers, and they want to stay in the medium and the long run. They are taking advantage of this opportunity because today we charge much less the promotion on 30% condominium between 70% and 80% of what we used to charge. They want to take advantage of this very attractive situation. They want to tap into this opportunity.
The retailers that only had standalone stores and restaurants that were only outside shopping centers and they want to be present in our malls now. We believe that all in all, it's going to be very attractive. We believe that the vacancies that we still have will be very much sought after as of next month. Of course, it's very difficult to foresee what is going to happen. This year, we believe that it's going to be exactly the opposite that happened in the previous years. We will see this recovery at this end of the year, beginning of next year, and we believe that vacancies are going to go down and not up. For me, there is something that is undeniable. People who were isolated during all this time, and many people remain at their home in social distancing.
All this created a pent-up demand, so much so that our recovery is very fast. People are tired of staying home all the time, and the shopping centers are places of convenience, and they are meeting points, and people cannot just live with whomever lives with them in the same home. We are gregarious. What I mentioned during my presentation, the force of habit, and even when the shopping centers were closed, people came and they knocked at our door and said, "Well, I just want to see the shopping center." At the beginning, when we only had supermarkets and drugstores operating, people wanted to come. They wanted to come as entertainment because our cities today, they are very inhospitable. People are afraid all the time, and they do not want to walk in the streets. They are afraid.
Our consumers or most of our shopping centers come by car, their own cars, or they use Uber. They do not come walking anymore. What is happening, I really did not expect, but this shows what I call the strength of habit. People have nowhere to go. In Rio, you have either the beach or the shopping malls because the theaters are still closed and the cinemas are closed or nobody goes, and you cannot hold any events. When everything comes back at full steam, I believe that we will have a lot to gain from that. We are recovering 80% of our sales with restricted opening hours in October. I didn't answer your second question. You were asking about the tenants. Just to complete, Fanny, I think a good indicator that translates quite well is delinquency. It's up.
This is a very positive information because you see that we are selling more, and we are being more efficient in collection. We made a study about that. You can see that sales had a very strong recovery. Okay?
Thank you.
Very well. Now we have Marcelo Motta from JP Morgan. Marcelo, good morning.
Good morning. I would like to know if Peres or Armando could comment on this multi-use project initiatives. As they mentioned that Multiplan created a different company to operate that. I would like to understand it further, if they have more details. Are they going to have separate results, a different management, additional costs? I would like to better understand the initiatives. Also, when we think about growth after the Golden Lake, which are the projects that they are considering, residential, commercial projects, and also more information on the multi-use app, as I said.
Marcelo, good morning.
Obviously, we have. I mean, it's not on my hands right now, the list, but we do have a list of all the cities where we have projects, and it will all depend on other issues. But we have here in Rio Grande do Sul, in Jundiaí, also in Curitiba, Campo Grande, in Rio de Janeiro, in Canoas, São Caetano as well. The area in São Caetano is 73 sq m, BarraShoppingSul. The area that we consider for that project, the Golden Lake, we have 294.
130 sq m. If we add that all up, we have around 177,205. We have Anália Franco in São Paulo. Also here, another area in Rio, an area that we acquired from Walmart. We have another area in Maceió. Ribeirão Preto as well. That is where we were pioneers. We have a huge area there, around 200,000 sq m to develop real estate activity. These are great locations because the land that we acquired at the time, at 1 BRL per square metre, it was a farm. It was a sugarcane plantation. We purchased part of that land, and that turned into a shopping mall, which grew. Today, the last piece of land that we acquired there, for the one that we paid 1 BRL per square metre or whatever currency we had at the time.
Not long ago, it was at 3,000 BRL per square metre. You see how much that appreciated thanks to the shopping mall. This piece of land is in the surroundings of this mall. We did not have anything in that area. Also in Belo Horizonte, we went to the former BR-040, a road. I think it is BR-040, the name of this road now. This is a road that connects Belo Horizonte to Rio de Janeiro. A whole new neighborhood started surrounding that mall in this area. Here in Rio de Janeiro, BarraShopping, as I said, when we came here, it had 40,000 inhabitants. Now it has 500,000. I believe that because of all these reasons, part of these areas have been separated for the mall expansion.
But obviously, we still have 977,000 sq m that will give us more or less a building area of 1 million, one time that area. We are being very conservative here. We have approved projects with other types of occupancy rates that are better. We have here a buried treasure. It has not been found yet. Now we are going to show you what we are going to do in [inaudible] . I think you are going to be very pleased about it. I do not know if I addressed your question. Just adding to this. He asked about the structure. Well, this is it. The internal structure. We are going to work on an internal management. Everything is going to be separated, but everything is under Multiplan. I also could create a new company, also 100% under Multiplan. But we are not going to list the company.
Maybe in the future, we might be able to have a strategic partner if that works for us. If that partner adds to us know-how and capital, that could be a good idea. But the company has 57 years of real estate know-how. In the first 12 years, at least, and I already brought that to the team, and I am an expert on that. I have been working in this real estate area for 57 years. I was in Porto Alegre yesterday coordinating a launching that we will hold there. I think that with the interest rates that we have now and the financing possibilities that we have, the real estate business is highly attractive because not everyone wants to invest only in the stock market. Well, today, the interest income of 2% or 2.2%, that is a very low interest rate for investors.
People do not want to invest everything in securities, in the stock market. People want to invest, and we believe that real estate is a safe investment and will be safe, we think, because the prices for real estate properties are going up. There was a pent-up demand with all of this period, this recession period that we went through, and very high interest rates in the past, and at a low interest rate and also low inflation rate. I believe now we have a favorable condition to develop real estate projects.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcelo.
Very well. Our next question is from Daniel Gasparete from Credit Suisse. Daniel, good morning.
Good morning, and thank you. I would like to pick up on one of the answers about creative destruction and understand his vision of the change in terms of mix. What is necessary?
How do you see the mall change? What could change in terms of the mix combination? We did have an amazing performance so far, much better than what we expected in terms of sales recovery. What do you foresee for the future so that we can go back to 100%? Is there anything lacking, or are you planning anything for 2021? Do you think this recovery process will take a little bit longer?
Thank you. Good morning, Daniel. Well, about the creative destruction, I think it's everything. I think this is our beacon. We focus on consumers, trying to understand what consumers need and want over the decades, not only years. Then we changed the shopping malls. We adjusted and adapted ourselves so that we did not survive. We grew. We strongly grew.
Imagine what is a shopping mall 40 years ago and a shopping mall today. These are very different concepts, architectural projects that are different, and all of that has changed. Consequently, we always are looking and focusing on consumers. Today, we have a lot of options. If you consider an entertainment option. In the past, it was only the movie theater, and today, when you talk about leisure and entertainment in the malls, it's something different. Same thing, restaurants. Okay, in the past, we had the food courts, and today, we have that more expanded. As we said, we have to replicate a street with restaurants. So we have the food courts, but we also have restaurants. Restaurants that were very few now are many. There are many options because it's very convenient to consumers and parking the car to be in an air-conditioning environment.
If you allow me a comment, MorumbiShopping, for instance. We created the Gourmet Shopping. That was 30 years ago, bringing together 17 of the best restaurants in São Paulo. Today, the Gourmet Shopping has 27 of them. That is, eating is something that you have to do three times a day, right? You are not going to shop three times a day, but you are going to eat three times a day. So that's it. Also, the shopping malls attract people because of the urban diversity, because of people themselves. The great show in the malls are not the stores or the restaurants, are people themselves. This is a great stage where people like to see each other and be seen. So the essence of the human beings is a gregarious one.
Man has learned a lot, and I think we still have those tribal feelings though. This is an amazing tool that is going to give us information. We produce information, the technology, I mean. But evidently, this is not able to motivate a person to spontaneous shopping. It is more of a rationale purchase. Since all purchases are emotional, and I am not the one who is saying that, there is a thesis here of a famous economist, and this was a Nobel Prize, I think five years ago. He has shown that all purchasing decisions are emotional. I always worked with that possibility, with the emotional purchasing. Today we have ice skating places in the malls, restaurants. We have toys areas, outdoors, indoors. This is a community area. That is where society gathers. The force of habit is so great.
You have seen even with the malls closed, people wanted to go in, having only three stores open for essential services. It is very gratifying to see that we built that in Brazil. For instance, the medical centers. When we had this idea of medical centers and we started one. The idea was to bring people to the shopping malls. That was a broad network. In the BarraShopping, we have 42 clinics with over 250,000 doctor's appointments. The idea is that people would go to the doctors, and it would be a better experience because it is something that you suffer when you go to the doctor, but it is a pleasure going to the mall. Since pain and pleasure are the different sides of a same coin, that could be brought together.
What happened with the pandemic is that the medical center did not work because the mall was closed, but they were autonomous. They could work regardless the mall's operation. They did not work, not even the tests. Why? Because people go to the doctor. Yes, they go to the doctor, but first they go to the shopping mall, then they go to the doctor. We did have that typical event that this is Barra da Tijuca and Leblon. These are very different areas. The same thing now in Leblon, the same thing that we had in BarraShopping, we had in Leblon. People in Leblon said that they prefer to go to BarraShopping than going to Leblon because of this, because it is a matter of pleasure. It is fun.
Pediatrics in the shopping malls, that works better because there are toys and an amusement park. To go to the mall is a pleasure experience. This is the greatest human antidepressant. If you are sad, go to the mall. If you would look, all the mixes have been changed and will be changing. Apparel, that is one of the main segments in the malls. That has changed. I will conclude so that I can answer the second part of your question.
What Dr. Peres tells us every day, we cannot forget, and we have to focus on that our business is to have people feeling good and feeling good by going to the malls. That adaptation happens every day. It is constant.
Every day we are talking about a shopping mall improvement, some type of renewal, something that we can do that can bring more convenience, that can make people happier, and a mix that is naturally changing and will continue to change. That adaptation capacity is the one that allows the malls to be an important tool, especially when we talk about malls and major consumption centers as we have. Yes, some of our malls are just surrounded by buildings. Yes, it is difficult not only to make any type of forecast, and we do not make any projections. But when we see that we have the best of the season yet to come, and we are already close to 80% of sales, we are happy about it. We are excited about it.
Maybe if you asked us in April or May, we did not have that expectation of a strong recovery, but I believe the better is yet to come. Usually, we do have Black Friday and Christmas historically is the best date for sales in Brazil. Well, I have only one concern on Christmas. We might not have enough products and inventory since the economy stopped, the production is stopped, and I don't think they are going to be able to cater to this demand. There is an inflation here, I think, which is one time off. It is not going to last for a long time. But if we are able to have enough offer of products with the good prices that we had, I think this is going to be a great event.
I think Christmas is going to be very good, and it could be exceptional if we do have enough products, enough goods. But we are excited about it.
Yes. Thank you very much, Peres.
Good morning. Thank you.
Rena from [Sisse Investment].
Good morning. Thank you for the question. I would like to ask a question about digital and how are you going to integrate. In the past, one of the main difficulties on the part of tenants. Inventory management. What about the integration of tenants, and what is the biggest difficulty that you see in this regard from the digital group?
Good afternoon. Thank you for your question. The onboarding of our tenants is the biggest difficulty. Maybe one year ago, you went to a tenant and he could say, "Well, I really don't want that." This is why we are testing new technology that may facilitate the process of onboarding, of migrating, and placing the products available. We have about 54,000 products today. No, 44. He corrects himself. 44,000 available in Multi, and this is growing. This is one of a major focus in digital penetration. That is to say, having more stores integrated into the app. Once you upload the products and you integrate inventory, and there are a thousand ways you can do this with an Excel spreadsheet. You can replicate this in SKUs and marketplaces, and this is of use. By means of this integration, that is easily replicable.
Then you can generate more value to the tenants as well. Those who do not know anything about shopping centers very often ask this kind of question because people do not live in a digital world. People live in the world of flowers, of people, and the biggest attraction in a shopping mall are the people. A wonderful shopping center offering everything with all the technology possible. Well, let's go back. What I mean by that is that our world is a world of people. Of course, digital is very important, but as a plus, as a tool.
Most of the tenants today already have their own e-commerce. They already sell digitally. But they want more because they know that the present sales are bigger and they will always be bigger than e-commerce. What we see today is almost people looking for some commodities. Let's say a book. A book is also a commodity. Let's say people want a pair of sneakers. What happens is that life is not so simple. Human beings are not so simple.
Vanity in human beings is much bigger than just a simple product. Our feelings have not changed. You have to see people. For instance, we're going to leave today and we have to have lunch. So either we go to BarraShopping or VillageMall. Nobody goes anywhere else. We would never be isolated completely because you thrive on the energy of people. This is very important and there is also a subjective aspect. People like to go to shopping centers to see and be seen. We have our area of digital innovation and marketing. We look at that as a potential road as you onboard new products and you make the integration on a daily basis. You can be sure that we are totally dedicated to this. So it's not enough to be in the shopping or at the shopping.
You must have a very good penetration.
Thank you.
Yes, this is an additional service that adds a lot of value to tenants. This continues to be dominant.
Thank you for the question, Renato. Gustavo Cambauva from BTG Pactual.
Good morning, everyone. I would like to understand, looking at the evolution of your sales and your rents, and the rents are very similar to the level of sales. Given the deleveraging of tenants, I thought maybe you would be offering more discounts because of drop in sales, but apparently this is not happening. I would like to understand, how do you see this from now on? Do you believe that rents will be similar to sales or if the recovery process. Well, let's say the recovery process takes longer. Will you have to resort to bigger discounts?
I would like to understand to which extent this occupancy rate is healthy. Talking about the level, the occupancy rate that you reported in the third quarter. Is this healthy? Gustavo. Well, this was a surprise to us because given the fact that people are in their homes and many people are still at home because of a campaign that's on TV and by the press and that by far exceeds the reality of COVID. The biggest hurdle was to convince people to go back to the shopping centers, guaranteeing that shopping centers are safe. Abrasce, the association and our own association met. We got together and we established a protocol much before the municipal requirement. That is to say, to give our customers the necessary protection, and we are very strict in this regard.
People started to go back to shopping centers, but there are still 30% of people that stay home, and that's great. They are afraid of going to shopping centers, but they are going to lose this fear. With a study that we carried out, and this study was done by an independent company, an internationally respected company. In five shopping centers of Multiplan in São Paulo, they took 60 samples in each one of those shopping centers, and there was no trace of coronavirus. This is the safest public place in the world. Shopping centers are the safest public place. Now we are going to publish the results of this survey, and we are going to bring to reality what has become a fiction. This is my view. I don't think there will be any big changes.
Because the learning curve of coronavirus has already occurred. Most of the people who get coronavirus, they are treated at home, that is to say, as if they had a common flu, and only very rarely they are hospitalized nowadays. The mortality rate below 60 years is equivalent to a common flu. But the problem is that the press brings a lot of confusion to people's minds. Because you cannot live among four walls all the rest of your life, because this would be death. It is totally impossible to remain at home for the rest of your life. Otherwise, everybody's going to die. What happened was that if you are home and there's nothing to do, people drink, and people eat all the time. Of course, alcohol consumption went up steeply because people out of boredom, they may become alcoholics with this confinement.
I am 80 years of age, so I did not stay home, I confess. I went to the office with some of our other officers every single day. If it were not for this attitude, we would not have achieved the results that we are delivering.
I would like to add something. I think, Gustavo, I was not very clear in my question. I do not know exactly what was the gist of your question. As you have sound sales, and this is what we are seeing, a very strong recovery. You gradually recover the rent and the occupancy. I do not know whether I really understood your question. One of the reasons, or I would say the main reason for the cost of occupancy having gone down, it was because it was able to reduce the condominium and the promotion fund. This was the main reason.
We were able to charge a rent that was similar to the sales and by means of the efficiency generated in the condominium. The shopping center became even cheaper, so to say. As a consequence, once again, you see delinquency rates going down, and this is evidence of the sustainability of that. I really do not know whether I understood your question. It was very difficult to understand. The sound was not good, but I think this is the correct answer. Was this your question?
Looking at the occupancy cost, it dropped vis-a-vis the historical average and the drop of sales that was relatively big at least in this quarter. My concern here has to do with tenants being healthy financially in this context. With this magnitude of the drop, tenants' profitability went down steeply. In a scenario more similar with October, with a drop of about 20% of sales, what would be the adequate occupancy cost? Should it go down even further, or could it start recovering?
Gustavo, during the critical period, we charged only 50% of condominium expenses and of course, we had a loss. We only charged 50%. Zero promotion funds, zero rent. We maintained that. We started to collect rent according to their sales. Now, for instance, in October, I believe that we will be able to charge 85% of what we used to charge, because sales are getting close to 85%. Let us say we had to pay rent or finance the rent that we did not pay. We were the company that reduced the most expenses in shopping centers and the company that charged less than all the others from our tenants.
I believe that now in November, December, we are going to recover this partially. All crises generate opportunities, and the opportunity that we saw in this crisis was that it is possible to operate a shopping center with more technology and less people. This is what we are doing. Because of that, we are reducing the occupancy cost, which has to do with the rent plus condominium, plus the promotion fund. There is another one that we are not able to reduce. We are making an effort, and we are, for instance, placing solar energy in some shopping centers, slashing the cost of energy by 50%. Some years have always had the opportunity of using solar energy in some of our shopping centers. In the VillageMall, for instance, we reduced by 50% the cost of energy.
In the future, we expect to be suppliers of energy at a very low cost, maybe reducing the cost to 20%. This is something additional that we want to give our tenants. If we have this expense of BRL 100 million, for instance, we can cover all the needs of energy by using solar energy alone. As the tenants sell more and more, this is an operating leverage because the rent becomes cheaper and cheaper, so you continue to recover rent. The key is the performance of sales and the shopping becoming stronger and stronger. You have to look at the strategy of each one of the malls and the mix and the measures that are being put in place to drive sales.
Thank you very much. That's great. Thank you.
Next question is from Nicole, from Bank of America. Nicole, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for the call. I have two questions. I would like to go back to the condominium costs. With the malls now reopening and with extended hours of operations, you are paying for additional costs, right? How do you see that from now on, the condominium costs, I mean? Because now we have greater hours of operations. Are we going to see permanent discounts from now on? For the second question, I would like to go back to the mix. You have a new mall that's going to be opened next year. When you think about the mix, has anything changed before the pandemic and now for this mix that you will have in this new mall? Can you give us an update about this mall so that we can understand how it's going to work in Jacarepaguá? That's it.
Thank you.
Well, the condominium costs are a constant effort regardless of COVID. Obviously, sometimes for the tenants, this would represent 60%-70% of different costs, and we have brought that down a lot. On the other hand, the system improvement, the use of technology and so on, and also t he solar energy in which we have been investing, all of that will allow us to bring down costs in the future. But we do not see for now, and we don't have any complaints for now. The tenants are very happy.
That's what we have seen, and that can be reflected in sales. Even with restrictions, we cannot hold events. The malls are not operating 100%, and movie theaters and playhouses and other areas. But even, with these restrictions, the sales reacted well. We believe that in November and December, we are going to have results that are very close to last year's. If we were to have more products, because I believe we will see a domestic, a national problem here, I think we would even have a better performance.
Obviously, industries started manufacturing late, and it's going to be harder to replenish the inventory, but I believe that Jacarepaguá is going to be a surprising mall. We will have a large green area. We will have stores that will be facing outdoors and indoors. We will have restaurants, and we will have an official skating rink, or area for people to have fun. All of that allows us to bring to people something that makes them happy, that brings them pleasure. Therefore, we will have also better revenues and better sales. About sustainability, if you look at it, we were charging 50% with the closed malls, and then we raised it to 70%, and we had several restrictions then. Now the malls are with extended hours of operations, and then we increase that little by little.
What we have seen is that next year, we will still have a condominium cost that is nominal, that is going to be lower than last year's. Campo Grande, one of our malls there. Our mall in Campo Grande, I mean, in Rio. Campo Grande in Rio, sales have already been higher this month than when compared to last year's in the same period, even with all the restrictions. Maceió also, we have the same effect. This is also with lower costs, but they are sustainable. We dropped condominium costs without having to invest money. It's not that we lowered costs and then we had to pay for the difference. No, we were able to restructure condominium costs, and we did have a quick reaction in order to help tenants in this difficult period. About the mix that you asked, before and after.
All of this moment, this period, has shown us that the path that we were following, to have more parks, to have greener areas, all of that integrated to the malls, this is a winning path, and that's the path of the mall of the future. Now we see that even clearer. We will have outdoor areas. People will have a coffee or chocolate. They will sit outside. They will enjoy the moment. So we are sure that this is going to work, and this is thanks to what we have already been doing and researching and investing in our undertakings. We know that we are following the right path, and we believe this is the mall of the future. Your last question about GLA. 60% of GLA is already allocated in Jacarepaguá mall. We should open it in the fourth quarter of next year. Not should.
We will open it in the fourth quarter of next year.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Very well. Next question from Andre Mazini, from Citibank. Andre, please. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. First question about cash position. BRL 1.8 billion after the tower sale. I would like to understand what is your mindset for this cash. It is high, but it is good to have cash in hand in a volatile moment, but it is above the optimum cash that you want to have in the long term. If you can maybe tell me if you have new projects, acquisitions. Mr. Peres said that he has a request for acquisitions, but it is hard to buy good shopping malls. What can we expect in that? Second question about the MultiApp, an interesting partnership with WhatsApp, and I would like to know if it makes sense to bring in tenants that are not in the mall, in the MultiApp.
You would have a network effect of consumers, the more tenants or stores that you have in the platform, better for consumers. That could generate a profit for your GLA and also greater occupancy for your GLA as well.
Well, Andre, about cash, if we analyze the past three months, or actually August and September, you can clearly see what we have done. We improved the cost of debt, specifically prepaying some of debt indexed by TR. We improved the cost of funding, the cost of the gross debt of the company. Now looking forward, looking to the future, I would rather not mention and not talk about projections. If you analyze our amortization, you will see that we have BRL 450 million or BRL 449 million of debt due now in the fourth quarter, and we are prepared to pay them off.
On October 23rd, we already paid interest on equity that had been posted in September and December of 2019 in the amount of around BRL 100 million or BRL 248 million, because they have been already discounted taxes, which have been paid off in the income tax return. This gives you an idea of our cash for this fourth quarter. Okay?
Obviously, the company is deleveraged, and the opportunity that you mentioned is there. The market is liquid. We have short-term, long-term money. We have low inflation. There are a lot of companies that allow us to leverage the company if we wish to do so. I can tell you, the best investment that we can do right now is to buy shares of the company itself, because it is undervalued, I would say. Right? Can I say that, or can I not say that? I do not know. I'm not the technical person on that matter.
Yes, that's right, Dr. Peres. We look at the discount and the amount of the fair value of our properties. It's 44%. Of course, this is very high. For those that have the fair value, you can say, "Oh, but this fair value that you calculated." We sold a piece of property of BRL 810 million above the fair value of the company, that was posted in the company. This transaction shows how much the fair value for us is very conservative. Also, you can see the opportunities that lie ahead. Now, about store sales that are not in the app. Our objective here is to learn, Andre. All the data that is generated is extremely good for us. We learn from that. We are not retailers. We rent areas for retailers.
We want to see which is the better strategy, specifically in this technology market that is changing a lot. This is constant learning. That's why we are testing this version. Eventually, that scale might make sense to our app. But we will have to analyze that further, okay?
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. Jorel, Morgan Stanley.
Good afternoon. Thank you for your time. I would like to get into accounts receivable of your rent. You talked a little bit about that at the beginning of the call. We have here BRL 14 million. I remember that you were more conservative in provisioning. How should we think about the account receivable now? Have they been paid in October? Are you sure that they will be paid in October? Should we expect an increase in receivables from now on?
Jorel, thank you very much for your question. It's quite technical. I will try to answer it. Otherwise, I have so many people around me and who are competent, and maybe somebody will hop in. Accounts receivable. This will depend on the way you look at it. The accounts receivable is from rent, from parking
From real estate sold, because we have a multi-use strategy in that we finance our buyers, it would be about BRL 30 million . Accounts receivable is something very extensive. In order to answer your question, I will talk about the key money plus rent, okay? I will limit myself to that, then I am giving you two different viewpoints. Matured and about to mature. This is going to be different. Let me check. We have an account receivable of, if I am not mistaken, BRL 196 million . BRL 196 million , about. When you take the past dues, it is BRL 8,823,000 . The provision is BRL 79,470,000 . 99% is provisioned. I continue to believe that we are conservative because we have to increase our accounts receivable, and I am already touching upon the second part of your question.
We are charging more, we are increasing more in the subsequent month because you charge in September, for instance, then you collect in October. We have been reducing the net delinquency, and this was very clear from 16% to 7% this month. In my opinion, we are still being very conservative. This is not done only based on the history. This has to do with the major endeavor made by us and looking at each one of the situations. If you look at the accounts receivable in the next 30 days, it is already provisioned. For technical accounting reasons, it already has a provision ever since its inception. I continue to describe our provisioning as conservative. Now we grew our receivables, and we were able to receive more. Maybe this is the difference that you see in the calculation.
In the results of June, for instance, we received only 29%, 30%, and now 74%. You can see that it went from 42% to 83%. It doubled. This is good news. It means that we are increasing our collection. The store owners or the tenants have paid before, or they are paying according to the deadline that they have. The strategy that we use is positive. We are not giving one year of term. What we are reporting in rent for cash effect is very strong, and accounts receivable reflects this. Over 30 days past due, you can see that I made another account here, some additional math to facilitate. You have the data for the quarter, and I have the monthly data.
I have to take the accounts receivable not from the quarter, because what we charged in September is going to be paid in October. BRL 116.2 million to BRL 157.2 million . You can see a difference of BRL 41 million . When you look at the difference in the rent from June to September, it is BRL 32 million to BRL 41 million, BRL 9.2 million difference. When you take, for instance, BRL 9.2 million and you put this on the sale of June and July, you find 7.7%. What is the net delinquency? 7.2%. It is very close. This is why we believe we are being very conservative, and we continue to be very conservative in all our actions. Thank you.
I apologize for being so technical. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions, for your interest.
In the interest of time, we close the Q&A session now. We invite participants who still have questions to contact the investor relations department. Now, I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. José Isaac Peres for his closing remarks. Mr. Peres, you may take the floor.
I would like to thank very much all of you who have had the patience to participate in this call. I would like to say that we are very bullish with the perspectives for our company for the remainder of this year. We believe that our results will be even better than the ones that we have delivered so far. We cannot really quantify this for you, as you know. If you want to invest, you should buy Multiplan shares, such as we are doing. Thank you very much.