Good morning. First, I'd like to thank you for being here. We'd like to welcome you to our house, to our home. Some of you already were familiar, and some haven't come here, so we were very anxious. You see that we have several Natura and Avon experiences, so you can take advantage of getting to know our products. Before we continue with our presentation, we need some quick messages. I wanted to give them to you. We prepared for the event with your event. You said that we need to improve our communication and the ideas to try to approach several issues and questions received from you. We will get your feedback to continue building on this event. You will not be here with us all the day. You came here to get to know our executive committee.
Before I tell you the agenda, I would like to show you our disclaimer. It is also published in the CVM. I would like to stress that you will see some graphs talking about the future. These are only illustrations. They are not for projection. Be careful with that. I will show you now the agenda. The idea of the event is that we will have an opening and the business levers that João Paulo will present. Then we will have a Q&A so we can see the levers that we have, the feedback, the ones that generate cash flow, and then we will close. We will have a visit in Cajamar in the afternoon. In this agenda, we have two breaks.
One Q&A so you can discuss business and growth levers, and another Q&A to talk about the return levers and the cash flow levers. I think that this will make everything more dynamic. These were the messages that I needed to convey to you. Now, before we call João Paulo to coordinate the opening session, we will show you a video so you can get in the mood. We see the stars imagining the future. When you think in the future, do not look upwards. Look to the earth. The earth really needs your attention because the future does not come from the skies. It is done with your feet on the ground, with the trees living, and the future that we can harvest together. Natura regeneration makes you feel well with the planet.
Good morning. Good morning. Welcome, welcome, everybody, to Natura. Or better. Better yet. Welcome, welcome again to Natura. This encounter could be called a history about coming back. It has been a long time that we did not organize an encounter with our investors, our stakeholders face to face in here, in our home, in Cajamar. It is also a re-encounter of our foundations. The essence of Natura, its way of doing business, our philosophy, our business philosophy, and also our business model foundations, a business model that generates a lot of positive social and environmental and financial impact. Good returns for all the stakeholders. Throughout the years, as part of the group went through intensive transformations, we understood that we stopped giving you visibility of what Natura is and what we do. This is what we would like to do today.
Show in more detail not only the numbers, but how we work so that you can consider us again in your portfolios. Before we begin our agenda, I know that there's a question in the mind of every one of you. I would like to answer it immediately because I have no relevant news to give you. I would like to harmonize the level of knowledge of what is happening with Avon International. The decision to separate those assets has been taken and announced, disclosed. Today, we have a team dedicated to working on that so that the executive management in Latin America will not lose focus, together with legal and financial consultants of world-class level. Avon International made the decision to begin aggressively reorganizing itself to improve their cash flow. This is a non-regrettable action from our point of view.
This is why in 2025, we hope that Avon International will not consume more cash flow than in 2024, including the expenses will be based on that restructuring. I'm sure that the question is, okay, when will that happen? How will that happen? And how much will it cost? I have no new news about that. I would like to remind you of the decision-making pattern of the company in the last three years. In the middle of 2022, the Board decides to give a new orientation to the company. When Fabio took on the presidency, we defined that there should be no synergies between the assets.
Twelve months later, OneGroup leaves the group, then BCS, and Avon International could not continue due to the uncertainties associated with the problems that we had, the legal problems that we had in the United States that took us to the shelter level, which was full of uncertainty. That was concluded successfully in December 2024. In February of this year, our public, our audience, had negotiations. In March, that negotiation stopped being exclusive. Just to remind you how these issues have been treated very quickly with our group. Now I'd like to go back to our reintroductions. I think it's important to show you again some fundamental themes, some basic themes, beginning by what the Natura essence is. This is not an abstract definition. It's a small document with these three components: our reason to be, our beliefs and vision.
Our reason to be is to create and trade products and services that create well-being. We want to be able to help individuals to get to know themselves better, enhance their awareness, and develop self-esteem and to better live with themselves. It is well-being within. Based on that, we believe that individuals begin to see what they have around them, to see others so they can develop empathy, to establish relationships with their family, with the society, their country, the planet, and nature. This is what we work for. If we are not doing that, we should not exist. This is not a vision. It is a reason of being. How do we do this? How do we do our work?
It is guided by six beliefs: interdependence, nothing in the universe exists alone, continuous enhancement, the belief that all human beings are capable of developing and learning, a commitment with the truth as a way to develop quality relationships, and diversity because that enriches the whole. Human nature likes beauty, beauty in its broadest way, with no prejudice, and that the company is a live organism. Its longevity depends on its capacity to contribute to society. Lastly, our understanding that through these products and services and quality relationships and business and integral and good business behavior, we connect to a global network of people who believe and work for a better world. This is the source code of Natura. If we're doing something that does not fit in this source code, that should be stopped. If Natura is not that, then it's not Natura anymore.
Now, another fundamental reintroduction is of the company leaders because many of you do not know the executive committee of Natura. I would like to ask them to stand up as I introduce them because you will be able to interact with them throughout the morning. Agenor, he is Brazil Business leader. Ana Costa, Sustainability and Corporate Relationships. Diego, Hispana Business Leader. José Manuel, Technology, New Businesses. Josie, Supply Chain. Paula Benevides, People, Culture, Organization. Paula Andrada, Developments and Omnichannel Solutions. Silas Vilaboas, CFO, Leader of Strategy. Finally, Tati Ponce, our CMO, Innovation Leader. This is a very good team, dream team, very competent, very knowledgeable. They are doing spectacular work. All of them will be here to interact with you during the Q&A and the breaks. Some will give you some presentations. Okay. Let us talk a bit about our business.
Since I'm talking about return, I think it's relevant to remember our journey, where we come from and where we are coming back to. Our journey began in 2010 when Natura decided to stop being mono brand, mono channel, and almost mono country, and began to build a global platform of multiple companies, geographies, and brands. We began timidly with Aesop, and then we began the era of the major purchases with The Body Shop and Avon. During that period, we went through a lot of successes and a lot of not-so-good times. We decided to take a step back. Like they said in the video, to think about the future, we stop looking at the stars and we look down to earth, to our roots. Build the future with our feet on the ground. This is when we decided to go back to our essence.
We began to implement a simplification process. Aesop went out. The Body Shop also. In Latin America, we incorporated Avon, which was a separate entity under the Natura umbrella, which was the seller and the distributor of the Avon brand. It was a journey that increased a lot of our profitability, our cash flow, and supported the growth of the Natura brand. We were not able to revert the decline of Avon here in Latin America. We decided to reduce the priorities on Avon. Now we are near at the end of this journey. We are not going back precisely to the starting point. We are not the same. We, the Executives, the Board Members, the Investors, the Shareholders, now we have a lot much more experience in the company. Natura of today is stronger, much stronger than Natura in the beginning of our journey.
It is symbolic that we are having this conversation now, right before the last day of negotiations of the NPO3, the incorporating holding by Natura Cosméticos. It will be again Natura3. If we are going back or we are coming back stronger than we were, why should we consider Natura today as it is today? Who are we? We are Latin American power in personal care and beauty markets. We are leaders of that market in a region that includes some of the largest markets in the world. For example, Brazil is the third largest, Mexico is the ninth largest, and all the Hispanic markets is the fourth largest. Nobody can lead the beauty sector without having a leadership position here in Brazil. Our brands are very strong. We are leaders, and we are in very relevant markets. We also have some of the largest distribution channels.
We also build relevant positions in other channels, distribution channels. We have an innovation capacity that no one else has in Latin America. Our business model that we are going back to is very attractive, financially speaking. It is profitable and generates cash flow. We attract a lot of talents. Our human capital is one of our competitive advantages. I would like to go in deep into one of these five pillars to better understand what I am saying. We are going to explore some of these themes more throughout the morning. Let us begin with the brands, the strengths of our brands. A brand is a leader brand when it occupies a disproportionately large space in the pocket, in the mind, and in the heart of consumers. Let us see what happened to us since the beginning of the era of the major acquisitions.
I took 2016 as the year of reference because it was the last year in which we published Natura Cosméticos. We began with the share of pocket. Natura consistently gained share in the last years, both in Brazil and in Hispana, organically. In addition, we have a market share that came with Avon. We increased our market share with that of Avon. Talking about the share of mind, we're leaders in the CFT market. We're number one market in CFT market. We have leadership positions in six of the seven main categories. That shows the quality of our products, our performance, the desire of rebuy to obtain the same benefit. Talking about share of heart, our preferred brand, the strongest one, is a combination of knowledge, relevance, differentiation.
Most of the markets that we are in, the exceptions, Mexico and some categories like hair care, gives us a clue of the opportunities that we can still explore. But the strength of our brand is not measured only by transactional indicators. Our brands and Natura specifically have an intangible value that is humongous because how much is Natura worth? How much is it worth to be the most sustainable brand in the world? Among 900 brands in the world, how much is it worth it if the company that Brazilians choose as the best company that represents their country? How much is it worth being the company that has the best reputation in Brazil for 11 consecutive years? That shows that doing things with value and with integrity bears good results. Okay. Now I'm going to the next part, which has to do with channels.
I wanted to start by saying that we are leading in a channel that I think is fascinating: direct sales. The direct sales that we have today is a lot greater than back in 2016. It is also more productive. Throughout this period, we introduced a commercial model that is by segments, and it is based on lifetime value, and it has been extremely successful. It is more digital. Today, the consultants, they relate to us and to their clients through digital platforms with multiple solutions. In their relationship with Natura, what does this allow us to do? We can personalize and make offers more individual, more personalized. That way, they can be a lot more productive. In the relationship with their customers, today, they use different payment means. There are more than 1,000 accounts, and they generate and distribute content to their customers.
At an unimaginable scale, if we look at our digital assets, what we offer to them is they consume almost 60 million digital assets per year. If you multiply that by the network, it is more than 1 billion impacts per year. Those are the assets that we generate. In addition to that, they generate content as well. I'll tell you a short story. A month and a half ago, there was a stacks party of highlights for the best reps. I joined the celebration dinner. They talk about business for two years, and then there is a celebration moment, and that is when I showed up. I was sitting at this table, and to my right, I had a consultant from Paraná. She makes content that has to do with maternity. She has two small children, and she has more than 1 million followers nowadays.
Within this content that she publishes and posts on Instagram, she talks about products. People that are interested in products, she sends them private messages or direct messages, and then she adds them to WhatsApp groups. You know that WhatsApp groups have a limit of 1,000 people approximately. Today, she has 700 groups, 700,000 clients in her client base. She has a small team. She kind of created a company to be able to do this. To my left, I had a consultant from Sarah. She has a small store where she lives, and she also makes content for Instagram. She is working a lot on TikTok now. She also sends that flow to her private social media, and then she gets all of that content to reach other areas.
The frontiers between Content and Media and Commercialization, Payment means, Digital Solutions, Financial Solutions, all of that is just merging. What seemed like perhaps a commercial model that was outdated is now one of the most contemporary models. That is another way of going back. TikTok and Mercado Libre have partnered with us because they understand that this combination is very unique. In parallel to that, Latin America is the only region in the world that has such strong direct sales in the beauty segment. We also developed relevant participation in other channels, for example, through stores in retail and online formats. We went from 1% to 12% in terms of what that represents in our revenue last year. We operate nowadays more than 1,000 stores in this region. We opened a store every two working days.
I mean, you work with other retailers, and I would say that that is quite a strong indicator for retailers. And throughout all those experiences and purchase experiences that are available, we managed to identify more and more who the end consumers are. We have a little bit less than 10 million, but every year we reach 110 million active users per year. We are just identifying 10 million in the last 12 months. That is how we are more and more relevant, be it for the consultants or for our customers. That is why we are more present in more homes. We have more penetration than a few years ago. In Brazil, 60% of homes. In Hispana, even doubling the homes penetrated, 32%. There is a lot of space to grow here because the penetration of the CFT categories is of almost 100%.
We have space in Brazil to grow. I'd also say that we have a lot of space to grow in Hispana, even more than in Brazil. Once we're in that home, once we created a relationship with that customer, we have to remain relevant. If not, we will be replaced. The market is extremely competitive, and there's only one way of staying relevant with innovation. I said that our innovation is incomparable. We operate the largest Research and Development Center in the Southern Hemisphere. Here we accumulate over 100 years of knowledge, science, and technology applied to the beauty segment. We have hundreds of scientists and patents, and this is all linked to this hub that we have in the Amazon, which is where we bring most of our assets. More than that, there are things that we do here that really, I mean, are eye-opening.
This is something that really impresses me, and I'll tell you a little bit about it. We print skin in 3D printers here with all of its layers. We do genetic sequencing here of several different species. They go through AI algorithms to understand what their potential is to become a high-performing asset and how they can be better formulated and how to extract that protein in a way that is best. We have a biological chip with skin cells and also liver cells and gut cells, all of it interconnected with the circulatory system, which allows us to test the reaction of these ingredients in the human body. I can put your cells in that chip and develop products for you specifically. We have learned to transform sound waves into perfume. I think it's fascinating.
Okay, I'm an engineer, but I really think it's fascinating what this group does. All of this is linked to four manufacturing hubs in Latin America: in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina. We also have third parties working with us. Beyond innovation in products, we also innovate digitally. We have dozens of squads, agile teams creating tons of digital products and features that go to our customer platforms, consumer platforms. There's one development that took place last year that is another one that really impressed me: Maya. Maya is an agent. It's artificial intelligence, and she is trained with all of our commercial routines, tasks, products. It was introduced in Hispana, and it's being introduced to all the countries now. Imagine that a business leader is, I mean, she's used by everyone, right?
Imagine a business leader will say, "Maya, how can I improve my group's performance?" Maya will say, "I noticed that the activity in your group is quite low. Perhaps you should look for these small consultants that have huge potential to go from bronze to silver." Who are these consultants? These are the consultants. What should I offer them? To this consultant, you should offer a perfume on promotion, on sale. For this one, a payment installment plan, and so on and so forth. Besides the productivity, there is something else that fascinates me. This is just an incredible way of being, of seeing the world. This is like Jarvis from The Iron Man.
I mean, we are giving superpowers to 10 million people, people that will be able to behave and learn to operate just like Luiz Seabra did, the Founder of the company. I think that's fascinating. Also, the interactions that they're having with the Salesforce and consultants has generated a satisfaction level that is 30 points higher than we were used to seeing. It is quite impressive. Of course, all of this also is applied to end consumers. Last year, we replaced all of the e-commerce engines in the company with the Salesforce platform. It's the most modern one in the world. With that, we can create personalized offers that is increasing our productivity. This is just an incredible frontier when we combine technology and the Salesforce that we have in the region, which is quite remarkable. Lastly, innovation isn't just about commercial innovation.
You've heard me talk about the power of the well-being well Ekosystem. There's a lot of value that we can still capture and distribute in that Ekosystem. The best example that we have is of Emana Pay, the creation of our FinTech in four years. I mean, yeah, it just turned four this weekend. Today, it operates with a TPV that's higher than BRL 60 billion. At the same time, while it increases the productivity of the heart of our business, our consultants, it can offer a greater sales experience to your customers, etc. That gives a lot of productivity to the consultants, but it also transforms into a new revenue stream and profit center for us. We start working as an on-demand platform wherever they want: at home, at work, at the club.
It's small, but if we connect service and products and we reach our customers, I mean, we can reach customers that were not part of the active Natura base. 80% of the customers on Bluma were not part of that other base. And now we have more opportunities for cross-selling. We do all of that with the DNA of the company, which is to look for open innovation. We've been doing that for decades, and it would be quite silly to not use that knowledge that we have and that know-how that we have. That's how we create structured relationships with academia, startups, other companies. Today, they're all structured down there in a program called Natura Nascenti, where you see our CVC relationship with startups and universities, etc. Okay. Now let's go on to the next aspect that strengthens us: our financial results.
When we compare our business to eight years ago, we've increased in revenue. The Natura revenue grew above inflation. That's natural. We won market share, and we also have the Avon revenue. Today, we are less concentrated geographically. We depend less on only Brazil, and we also depend less on the Natura brand solely. That gives us a lot more resilience than we had back then. Profitability is also very important. Now I'm going to request something, and this is something that you'll see in the new disclosures. We're going to open up the profitability for Brazil and Hispana. I'm going to show you 2016 and 2024. The figures are not comparable, but they do kind of show that we're on the right track. Why can't they be compared?
Because the numbers in 2016, we didn't put all the central costs to Hispana. Now, in the projections that we're doing for 2024, 2025, we're already allocating that. It makes a little bit of a difference. Regardless, look how interesting. In 2016, the profitability for Brazil was a little bit below 19. In Hispana, 12.5. In 2024, Brazil was as profitable as or more than in 2025. Hispana suffers. Profitability drops. In Hispana, we have a disproportionate impact of Avon. It weighs more on the Hispana business than in Brazil. It is also true that in Hispana, we have not completed the second wave. If we look from 2024 to 2025, we can see an evolution because we begin with wave two. The wave two in Hispana will only end this year.
It'll be completed this year in Argentina and in Mexico, which represents 70% of the Hispana revenue. Cash flow also increased significantly, and the ROIC also is healthy, even though it dropped a little bit. I just want you to look at the FCFF and ROIC for 2024. They're suffering due to the transformation expenses that are taking place. There is no adjustment here. The EBITDA is adjusted, but below it is not. All of these transformation expenses that will end in 2025 are making this number lower. This shows how we will be able to improve, be it in profitability or cash flow in Hispana and also the ROIC or ROIC. The last pillar of the company we've become is our human capital. We have a unique capacity to attract and retain talent. We have more and more international people.
31% of leaders are not Brazilians. We have renewed a lot of the leadership so that we can have capabilities that are important to our strategic plan. We have people that are younger and younger, and they're very used to digital tools, and they work in a way that's totally aligned to our strategic goals in the company. Our compensation plan has to do with that also. There's one characteristic, two characteristics that I'd like to highlight. First, they are so committed. They're engaged. The engagement surveys show very high levels of engagement. It's in the top quartile in every single survey. We like what we do here. What we see in Natura is the way to just actually be able to do what you want to do professionally and personally. You fulfill yourself.
We've been able to improve our market share in the last 10 years. This group helped us become the number one perfume company in Brazil and the second in the world. We only lose to Chanel. I told you about the R&D center, and they created a FinTech, and they combined businesses in six countries. They open a store every two working days. They innovate in channels, and they create partnerships. They were invited by TikTok to be pioneers of TikTok commerce here in Brazil. That's all them. These people have grown margin, profitability, and cash flow in these last few years. Once we understand, I mean, when we understand who we are, it's natural to assume that the Natura that we're going back to will be going back to a high dividend and yield company.
If we are already that strength, do we have space to grow? The answer is yes, we have space to grow. The best thing of all, without inventing anything, without looking to the stars, just using what we have in our hands, existing assets. We can see, for example, market in the vertical axis, our market share in the horizontal, penetration in households, taking Brazil as a reference. That is very interesting. Argentina, it has a very high market share with not very high penetration. That means that the households where we have penetration, we have a humongous share. People like our products. We buy our products. As we enhance the purchasing experience, we have a lot of potential. Look at Mexico. Low market share, low penetration.
The only thing that we have to do is to repeat the recipe that we have applied in other geographies. We do not have to invent the wheel. In this penetration journey, Avon has a very interesting opportunity to play the role of bringing new households and new consultants that will be exposed progressively to Natura products so they can enrich their offering. Looking from the channel point of view, we lead the sector in the region, leading one channel that represents 25%. By broadening our purchasing experiences and our offerings and our purchase locations, we are playing in a market that is 4x greater. If I think in beauty services, the market becomes 6x greater. Here, we have a small action with Luna. If we think in that Ekosystem, we have a lot more opportunities. The most relevant of all is Emana Pay.
A lot of opportunities to grow with existing assets. It's also true that while thinking about this, many can think that we need growth assets. What will really determine how we are going to be rated is our capacity to execute and capture value. Our experience has made us very rigorous in allocating capital resources and defining return. The midterm plan elaborated together with the Board is based on optimizing the value of existing assets. We have to have a balance between risk and return that's much more attractive. Here we have a summary of these areas where we have focused on. First, defend our leadership.
Brazil direct sales, which is increasingly digitized with Emana Pay, with the digital channels, the Natura brands, but also speed up our operations that are under index that have not occupied all the spaces that they occupy in other geographies or categories. We have to grow in Hispana, focusing on Mexico. We have haircare category and to recover the downside of the Avon brand. We have opportunities of efficiency gains. Mexico, a month ago in the second wave, was already included. We still have to include Argentina because it's an important source of efficiency. The managing prices and promotions. We have a lot of opportunities to manage prices and promotions. The logistic network that is virtually integrated but should be optimized as we introduce better tools, management software for warehouses and transportation. We're investing in integrating our logistic chain from the suppliers to the consumers.
We are beginning to invest in that. It is fundamental because the market is much more dynamic than ever before. We have to make the supply chain react much quicker to the demand. This makes us optimize our working capital and also optimize our shareholders. That also increases our tax efficiency. We have to reach more to clients. We have to be present in the lives of our clients, men and women, through our brands and through our channels, our purchase experiences. Once we are present in the life of more clients, we will maintain ourselves relevant through innovations, taking that value proposition of well-being to more people. To finish, I'd like to remind you, I remember I talked about Natura's essence and foundations. For value for us, it is not only financial value. It is also economic value.
We work so that economic value, social, environmental value is superior to the financial value, which should be exceptional. Nobody is saying that financial value should not be high. Throughout the years, we created a tool to monetize our environmental externalities. We talk about integrated P&L, where human capital, environmental capital, and social capital are monetized. Our economic value, the sum of those assets, is more than 2.5x the size of our revenues. We do not do this because we are good people. We do this because, in addition to being a moral obligation, it is a business imperative. It is to make our business more competitive. We have to transform social environmental challenges into business opportunities.
When we put a Research and Innovation center in the middle of the forest and we establish a relationship with communities and we structure our logistics chain and transform those ingredients in very high cosmetic performance ingredients, we formulate a brand. We distribute that to the world, and consumers are willing to pay a premium for that. Those income generate return to that community paying for environmental services. We create a business model that is very profitable, very virtuous. The more business we do, the more we keep the forest standing up and preserved, and more people live better. The more we see the development index of consultants that learn that in addition to work and income, that indicator is affected by education, health, citizenship. We also offer education to hundreds of thousands and families of consultants of education opportunities through the Natura Institute.
We offer free telemedicine for 3 million people, also associations with discounts in pharmacies. We create citizenship participation that makes those consultants stay, more people with us, and making more money and generating more business for us. This is a totally sustainable business model. We transform social environmental challenges into business opportunities. This is why we have to maintain the bar very high because it generates business innovation and differentiation. This is why this year we revisited our vision for 2015. We stopped talking about positive impact and sustainability because sustaining the world as it is today is not a good idea. We have to restore. We have to heal and regenerate. We assumed the commitment to be the first regenerative company in the world, the first that will generate simultaneously positive human, financial, environmental, and social capital.
It is difficult, it is, but we need new solutions. This is why it is an innovation driver. From here, we will have evolutions for our products and our business models. Very well. This is just to give you a summary of who we are. I wanted to say what is Natura that we are going back to. Now we are going to go deeper in some of these themes. I would like to begin inviting my dear Tati Ponce to talk about products, brands, and innovation.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here with you. Welcome, men and women, here to our home. It is a great pleasure to begin now sharing this chapter that we called Growth Levers. João already talked about the brands that have important market share and how we have made progress.
I would like to share with you how much the personal care and beauty market in Brazil and Latin America is leveraged. This is very positive for us. When we see that from BR; 270 billion to BRL 224 billion in Latin America, we have a growth of 2.3%. We consider 2024 estimated to 2029, we see a growth rate of 7.3% with our market reaching BRL 107 billion. When we focus in Brazil, we see a greater speed growth, 6.6 from 2016 to 2024. We go to 2024 to 2029, we see a yearly growth rate of 9.1%. What are the drivers of this growth? We see constant improvement. In the last five years, 200 new makeup brands were launched in Brazil. That number is multiplied or grows a lot when we consider Latin America.
Another very important factor is the great digital influence of our consumers that is increasing every time. The beauty category and personal hygiene category is one of the favorite themes in social media. It is very interesting because people become knowledgeable of the subject. They talk a lot and with a lot of knowledge. That creates a virtuous cycle of recommendations and influence. We see increasing demand for well-being, personal care, and beauty care services. Well-being is a very popular theme, and it is related to beauty and how you feel. I have worked in other multinational companies, and oftentimes I had a challenge to explain to the global team why beauty in Brazil is so important, why beauty in Latin America is something so transformative. Sometimes it was interpreted as something that was sensual or vanity or futile.
What is the impact of beauty for Brazilians and all Latin Americans? It is a virtuous cycle. When you take care of yourself, each one in their own way and style, you generate in you more self-esteem, more confidence to go to an employment interview, in a meeting, in an encounter. That enhanced self-esteem takes you to a place of well-being. Today we see in Natura beauty, it is a way to promote feeling well and well-being. This is why the market is so active and grows so much, maybe because of the aging of the consumers. However, we also see younger and younger consumers going into this beauty market for treatment, for care, and for self-esteem. Something that is very interesting is that even without having orientations from their parents or adults, oftentimes they take important information from social media. For example, protecting against solar exposure.
That's growing a lot in younger generations, which is very good because it's an important prevention for skincare. To summarize, Brazil is the third largest beauty market in the world. Mexico, which is also a very important market in Latin America, is in the top 10. Let's talk about market share. We reached in 2024 the highest share in the last 10 years in Brazil and in Latin America. We see Natura's here with a market share of 14.1. We see the last nine years, from 2015 to 2024, we went from 11.1% and arrived to 14.1% with a very significant growth in this market that's so segmented and so clusterized of brands. When we see Latin America, we go from 6.6 to 8.9 points of market share. We reach the highest share in the last 10 years, which makes us very happy.
I'd like to also share some important points that make this brand and organization a high-impact company. It's the first brand in perfumery in Brazil. We are the second largest brand in perfumery in the world. Natura is the second largest company that most sells perfumery in the world. This should make us very, very proud. It's a Brazilian company occupying this position. We only lose to Chanel. That's a global empire that's present in all the countries across the world. We are in this position among other global companies and brands. This is a very relevant position. It is the first one in direct sales. It's the first brand in direct sales in Brazil. It's the first brand in cosmetic gifts. Why is this so important and an indicator that we believe that's very important?
Every time that a gift goes into our home, and we ask ourselves, how did that product arrive to this household? That means that we're increasing penetration. The opportunity to that consumer that had never tried a Natura product now has access to the brand, tries it, and can buy it again. The second point that's very important is that normally, and I believe that 90% of the times or more, when we give a gift, we want to give a gift that the person likes, that the person sees and says, "Oh, that person liked my gift." When we talk about service, about this, most times people say, "I want my gift to be that the person who is celebrating their birthday or something likes it and has a good impression." That has to do with my image.
We see that being the first brand in gifts means that consumers have pleasure in offering Natura and in giving a Natura gift. Another information that's very important is that we are the brand that most represents Brazil. Of all the categories researched, and here I'm not talking only about hygiene and beauty, a recent survey conducted by Mike Miners asked, "What is the brand that represents Brazil the most?" We are the first brand mentioned of all the brands here in Brazil that represents Brazil and the Brazilian nation. Natura is the first one. We also ask consumers, and this is very important for Generation Z and for new consumers that arrive in the market more concerned with the brands, the brands that have social impact. Consumers mention that Natura is the brand that most promotes positive social impact.
Last but not least, two weeks ago in Cannes Lions, you know that this is a Global Festival of Communications, Advertising, and Creativity. Creativity is very closely linked to the consumption of content and advertisement. We received the first Grand Prix in Brazil and the first Grand Prix for Natura in a category that is very, very important today, which is called Development Sustainable Goals, DSG. That was really, really cool. We also received a Silver Lion in Creative Data. I'd like to mention Creative Data because making content and being creative nowadays is difficult if you do not use data and if you do not learn through AI how we can improve the quality of our content, how we can improve their assertivity. That makes a huge difference. I am very, very happy to be able to share with you this information.
What was our goal? Our goal is to lead in a unique way and with aspirational desire. When I say that 200 new makeup brands came into Brazil in the last five years, that makes you think, right? I mean, I work with marketing. I've been working with marketing for a few years. I say what a huge challenge it is to work in this market today because you have to constantly look for unique opportunities that make the consumer prefer your brand rather than another brand that's in the market. Our main goal is to continue standing out like Natura has always done and to generate that aspirational desire for the brand. All the brands that are aspirational, they receive the loyalty of customers. How are we going to do that? Through three pillars: experience, bioinnovation, and communication in all of our products and services.
What is the Natura experience? We talk about sensorial, unforgettable experiences. Our formulas today are very unique, and they are highly—I mean, they're very safe. We also have the sensorial aspect, which has to do with how you feel when you are using the product, putting it on your skin. It's that explosion of fragrances in the shower or when you wear perfume. This sensorial experience is very important. That way, we can promote well-being well through this. That's how we are going to bring consumers closer to us in the consumer journey. We're going to offer experiences from the moment they walk into the store, talk to a consultant, or buy online. What we want them to do is to experience the sensorial aspect of this brand. Another very important pillar: bioinnovation.
We are inspired by nature, nature's intelligence, nature's strength, all of this in order to create our innovations. This combines high-performance applied awareness and applied sciences so that we can improve our consumers' lives through evidence. Our consumer, with the evolution of the entire technological chain and the access that they have to information—just one second, I need a sip of water. Consumers are more and more demanding. It is not only about having a nice smell or making your skin soft. Consumers want performance. We have been working for the last two years to increase that balance between performance and sensoriality and emotional benefits. That is what has made the difference in our innovations. We also talk about communication. Our narrative of well-being well, how do I show the consumer something that just screams Natura?
How do we also value the cosmetic superiority that we deliver? How do we balance the emotional message and also the performance message so that we can make the consumer purchase and so that we can continue creating and building our brand in the long run? How are we doing this? Through precision marketing, which was a project that we began last year, we have very interesting tools and highly dynamic tools to know who our audiences are, to understand our communities. Today, they tell us where we have to belong, what the tone has to be, where I feel well. For each audience, I have to have a specific message. Always, of course, something that has to do with our brand, but a message that speaks directly to that consumer. That message arrives in the ideal moment for that consumer.
When we talk about precision marketing, it's based on some pillars. It's the right content at the right time in the right place for the right person at an optimized cost. For you to get an idea, today, we've been working with three to five audiences. Sometimes we actually reach more audiences. We work in real time, adapting content, testing that ad, making adjustments, putting it online again to optimize our investments between 20% and 40%. I wanted to share with you a little bit about each category. What is perfumery in Natura? It is the expression of nature in each drop of perfume. This is where we connect, and this is the creative space where we like to develop our concepts. Like João said to you, we are the only perfumery brand in Brazil that has our own fragrance makers, in-house fragrance makers.
That's something that makes us stand out. It's very different when I go to—I mean, when I create something with fragrance makers that work with several clients. What we do is co-create. We have three in-house fragrance makers or perfumists, and they know our palette. They know all of our oils that we discovered through biodiversity in Latin America. We created this together with the best people in the world. Just for you to get an idea, models like this today just exist in Chanel, Hermès, and Guerlain. That gives us this uniqueness. I have a unique proposal. We also have some brands that are leading this in Latin America, like Kaiak, which is an absolute sales leader, Luna, a huge brand, and one of the top five for us, Natura Homem. These are the most important brands in perfumery.
I wanted to show you this next launch, which is the first Eau de Parfum through a new formula. This was created—it started as an essence, and all the storytelling shows the different values to our consumers. When we opened the first store on Rua Oscar Freire, all of the people that would pass by would receive a white rose because he wanted to offer something else, not just a product. He came up with the idea of giving a white flower to people, a white rose. To us, the white rose is very symbolic. It is through this story that we discovered an ingredient that is very unique, which is this rose called Rosa Alba from Bulgaria. You might say, "What were you thinking about?
What was in mind when you were thinking about it? "When it's in nature, it doesn't smell. We like to do the impossible. We say, 'Okay, this white rose doesn't smell, doesn't have a fragrance. We can't extract essential oils from it. How are we going to come up with a perfume from this white rose?' We challenged one of our perfumery partners, the fragrance house, and we discovered a beautiful story. This rose is planted in a valley, which is in this region in Kazanlak, Bulgaria, where the white roses, in order for this rose to not be attacked by plagues, they put these white roses around. This was intentional to look for a white rose that had a unique scent.
We discovered through this that these white roses that are more resilient to plagues and to climate, they consumed the water from the other white rose. Therefore, they had this amazing scent. Since we said that our pillars are experience, bioinnovation, and communication, and yes, we recognize how important it is to accelerate our innovations to the market, to adapt our time to market, this project was carried out in 40% less time than what we were used to doing it. I wanted to share this with you because this is a very important story about the story of Natura. Another very important category is personal care. Here we say that we have iconic brands such as Ekos, Tododia, Mamãe e Bebê, and Natura Lumina, which is a new brand that we've been creating for the last few years. It's for hair.
They have high penetration and purchase rate. We're talking about shampoo, soap, liquid soap, and categories that customers use every single day: moisturizer for your body. Brazil is one of the countries that has the highest penetration in body moisturizer. These brands are the ones that carry this history. Let's talk about Ekos. Ekos is the brand that is kind of like the—it carries with it all of the Natura beliefs. It's all about regeneration. Here, I want to give you two examples of products that were launched last year and this year also, where we are also pioneers. We launched the first concentrated moisturizer in the world. You're seeing it here on the screen. This product represents 81% less plastic in the environment. It was very successful. Do you know why? Because consumers make it.
They like to participate in the whole experience. They receive an empty bottle and a very, very small bottle with this concentrated moisturizer. At home, they make this mixture and create magic. This really created a lot of conversation and noise on social media. This is the first company in the world that managed to make a concentrated moisturizer. You might say, "Oh, it must be so easy. You have the largest lab in all of Latin America. You have so much know-how." This technology is super difficult because you have to come up with a bunch of different processes, mix water and oil. It is not easy. Our scientists managed to do it. This is a product that was just launched, the first unique dose or mono dose soap, free from plastic.
This also generated a lot of buzz online, a lot of men saying, "This is amazing. I can take it to the gym, use it at the gym, and that's it. It's quick and easy." A lot of people wanted to take it to different places because, I mean, sometimes you go places where there isn't soap, so you just carry it with you. We are seeing another huge hit in Ekos once again. Natura Tododia is the largest personal care brand in Brazil. This brand is greater than a lot of companies that operate nowadays in Brazil. This is a brand that has huge penetration. It brings consumers to Natura through these routine brands. It is important to expand Tododia in other categories like hair or through new audiences.
We are the first company that launched a hair regime for hair for Black women. We have different types of skin types, right? Each skin type needs special care. We had a survey with more than 2,000 Black women to understand how important it is to take care of your skin, to treat your skin, what their routine is like, what their social life is like. We launched a line with four different products so that people can constantly have their skin feeling soft. This product was launched in seven months. When we talk about hair, one of the most important beauty categories, it's extremely important for Latin America. Brazil and Latin America understand hair. They see hair as something that frames your face.
If your hair does not look good, and I have a lot of colleagues here that are watching me today, and you know this, if your hair does not look good, you might be wearing the best outfit, but you do not feel good because your hair does not look good. Hair is very important for this well-being well routine that we are seeking. We have been working with Natura Lumina as our prestigious brand with different performance assets that are ours. This category is a very important category for the future. Now, let's talk about makeup. We have high-performing makeup that includes skincare. We always want to offer that unique aspect that I mentioned before. It is not only makeup. We are also talking about making it unique, making it aspirational, making it about the experience. All of our formulas have assets from Brazilian biodiversity.
It is for all skin colors so that we can offer something to all of our consumers. We have a lot of products that show up on social media. Why? Because they become viral really quickly. My colleague will later share some examples of how this happens. Lastly, but very importantly, the face category. In Brazil and Latin America, we have a major opportunity to develop this category because it is much more developed outside Brazil. It is one of the categories with the lowest penetration compared to the other categories that we work with. This is an ocean to navigate. Brazilian and Latin America consumers are increasingly interested in this care, in healthy aging.
Natura was groundbreaking because we were the company that created the term anti-science because in the dermocosmetic truth, we wanted true women could—we wanted them in our communications because we want you to have your best skin in your time, in your face. We know that we cannot have a 100% reversion of the time science. We want you to have your best skin at your age. We have Kronos, which is a very important brand in the market, in the Brazilian market and in the Latin American market, as well as Renew. We have 140 patents. For us, it is very important. 136 clinical trials. We use 17 bioactive ingredients of ours in combination with the most known dermoactives in the market, like vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, because consumers look for that reference as well, the products that are well-known.
Here I could spend a lot of time, hours, about all the innovation that we have created. João talked about Kaiak and Sonar. We brought here the sounds of the ocean and captured through technology that we developed all these sounds during the expedition. With all that material, we went to a machine that transformed the sounds of the seas in perfume notes. Through that, our perfume makers collected that material and created this fragrance that represents the sounds and the notes of the sea. Partnerships with a purpose. Every one of us has seen how partnerships have exploded in the market, how consumers identify with that. Our partnerships have a purpose of regeneration, social impact, and cultural valorization. We are the first company to use Nespresso capsules to work with recyclable aluminum.
This was a very interesting event that benefited many families in the Amazon with the Ekos and Dengo partnership that reached 150 families with BRL 10.5 million of reach and of ROI. This month, we launch a new partnership in our June festivities, launching Tododia and Havaianas slippers. Everything that you do with purpose and consumers see that it is a genuine action of the brand, we have a great result. You can ask yourselves, "Okay, Tata, you talked about Natura, but you did not talk about Avon. How are these brands going to live together and bear value?" This is when we talk about the strength of the combined portfolio. Last year, we launched a very important project called Demand-Centric Growth. What did this project do?
It mapped the requirements to occupy each demand space of each category in which we work in. Then we identified the space of work of each brand and sub-brand, and we built a detailed plan to communicate innovation and go to market for Avon and for Avon and Natura, always protecting the strength of each brand and unleashing the growth of each one of them in new fronts. We stop and think, "Do we have space for two brands in the same category?" I have a reference that I'd like to use. If you ask that within your necessaire, you only have one brand, I'm sure that nobody will say yes. Consumers have, on average, up to seven brands of shampoos, up to four brands of toilet soaps. In makeup, that number explodes. There is the necessaire share.
When I can have Avon and Natura in that necessaire, it's okay. Consumers don't buy the same thing in all the categories. Some investors invest more in some categories. In other categories, they invest less. They have category C where they only buy one brand. It's a myth that we have to destroy. There is space, demand space, proven by a survey, not only with market data, but with final consumers that Natura and Avon can be successful. Both are present in the vanity bag. We discover what are the demand spaces, the segments where our brands are and where our competitors are. We still have a lot of space to occupy. This is a proof of this because the relationship between market share and market size. We are leaders in two of the largest markets: fragrances, skincare, body care. Those are large markets.
Hair care is an important growth lever in our strategy. You can see that hair together with fragrances and skincare are the main markets. We are the first in bathing care. When we talk about value, the bathing market is smaller than the other three markets. We are very aware of the opportunities that we have to go after. You say, "Okay, Tati, what about Avon?" Avon will continue to a new growth cycle as a new brand. As of tomorrow, we will begin to grow? No. We have faced a challenge of 10 years in which the brand is decreasing. It is not overnight that we will begin to grow. We are going to revert that result, that trend. All our efforts are aimed at that. How are we going to do that?
I would love to talk about this incredible strategy that we have created, but it is still not time for that. I would like you to give us a small flavor of that. I am sure you are going to see that brand reposition itself in the market and occupying the status that it deserves. Before that, I would like to tell you some truths of Avon because since it suffered a lot, we do not pay attention to its power. This brand was born through a consumer-centric thinking because that brand sold books. It visited its consumers door- to- door and discovered how much they were interested in beauty. From books, it became a major beauty company. It was a precursor in direct sales and was a catalyst to the entrepreneurial spirit in women and improved well-being and health of women. It created the largest magazine in the world.
It created its own laboratory 130 years ago. Before L'Oréal, Avon already had its own laboratory 130 years ago. What are the credentials of this brand that has a contemporary essence that is typical of a tech brand? First, it is the first brand to have social media with influencers in the world because consultants are influencers. Avon has 4 million influencers all across Latin America going to the households of Latin America. It grew through social commerce. What is direct sale? It is a model of social commerce. It was born as a customer-centric brand. It is a major publisher of beauty and entertainment because people enjoy reading the digital and the physical magazine. The challenge is to update this platform to start growing again. There is a context because we have to see what is actually happening.
We have a loss of relevance due to a lack of renovation of the portfolio and target audience. The potential exists because it's supported by high awareness and equity because that's the most difficult thing to build. Avon did not lose that. The foundation for that positioning exists already. What's the opportunity to relaunch the brand with new proposition, new positioning, and a broadened business model that will be able to complement Natura? Reassuming its growth with profitability and also leveraging the brand and expanding its channels in a sustainable way. In 2025, we will apply a new operational model. In 2025, 2026, we will revise the portfolio. In 2026, we will reposition the brand. In 2026, 2027, we will diversify the channels. Here we're talking about Latin America. How?
Avon is the entry door to new households and to attract and retain consultants. It also plays a role in enriching the Natura basket through three levers. It is a leveraged value system, a portfolio by offering a better brand experience, innovation, go-to-market and distribution, and also a unified brand management system. Who has the management of the Avon brand in Latin America? Those are we. We have the liberty to develop, to recreate, and reposition. We have the certainty that we will be capable of placing this brand again where it deserves to be and to enjoy the funding, care, or love that consumers have for that brand. It was a pleasure having you here. Thank you very much for your attention. Now I will show you the winning case of the Grand Prix Income. Thank you very much. Natura has lost 18.3% of its biome.
It's a forest that is rich in bioassets that are important in industries as ours. Natura is a leader in cosmetics and the most sustainable company in the world. The challenge is to engage communities in the sustainable collection of resources instead of bringing down the trees. It's very difficult to find certain nuts in the forest. First, Natura combined two different technologies: a last-generation drone and also artificial intelligence that's able to recognize each species of trees. This made it possible to map an area of the Amazon never before seen. Before, we would take 25 years to map the resources. With this new technology, we can do all that in six months. After these data are provided to the local community so they know exactly where they can collect those resources. We are committed to buy 100% of their production.
It gave a better quality of life for each family. That really made a difference in my life. When you collect fruits, it is a continuous source of income because it is a gain-gain situation. Local communities increased their income. The forest has regenerated. Natura can create more innovative products. This is an example for the world. It is a project that empowers local communities to become entrepreneurs so they can sell their fruits not only for Natura but for other industries as well.
Hello, everybody. Good morning. I hope you are taking advantage of this morning with a lot of content. Also take advantage of our space, but also of our beautiful products that are exhibited in the back. I am Paula, and I will present to you a little bit about Omni Channels.
John talked about our development of the B2B channels, but I want to put everything in context, our situation in Latin America. In the first place, when you see this pizza chart, here we have a breakdown by channel. Direct sales continue to be very important and represent one-fourth of the CFT channels in Latin America. Also, here we have to defend our leadership. When we talk about defending, we're not talking about continuing doing the same thing. We are evolving. We are making it evolve, making it more a digital model that our consultants evolve towards too, and our consumers also evolve towards that. In addition, we had the development of the B2C channels beginning through the specialized stores, e-commerce that are very relevant for us. Why did we choose to develop these two channels?
Not only because the channels present our products, especially in stores, in a better way because they're well exhibited, and we can show an experience of our variety of groups. Also, the online has been growing yearly at a two-digit rate. It also makes our channels more hybrid. One channel builds another. The crossover of the channels is very relevant, especially to become a direct sales platform and also to build an experience for the client that's the best one possible. These two channels, even though we have grown them a lot, we have more than 1,000 stores open in the region, and e-commerce is growing very powerfully. It's greatly underrepresented. We have a lot of space to occupy. We have the test chairs for direct sales, and we can double our addressable market.
Here talking about our strengths, direct sales, we are our digital ecosystem that empowers and potentiates the sales and the income of our consultants. I would like to talk about this journey because it has offered not only income growth elements, but it has also provided a lot of instruments so that the consultant can do better business for her and for her clients. Here talking about this ecosystem, we evolved a lot in attracting new consultants. Not only when we offer new leads that become consultants, or we have a registry platform that is not only quicker but also more intuitive, more user-friendly, but we also know in what phase of the journey the consultant or the lead left our platform so we can reach her afterwards better.
We have a network that helps consultants talk with other consultants in each phase of her business, generating more assertivity in her content so that they can have a more robust growth plan. The purchase experience of the consultant changed. Our app is not only a selling platform but an app that helps her to make the best choices. We measure each phase of her journey converting to e-commerce. In the market, we have artificial intelligence, so we prompt products, and we also do cross-link between brands so that the consultant can make the best offers. Here we have a ruler that says what's her score and what's the next product that you put in her bag so she can do an efficient choice so that she can grow better. It's not only about the purchasing journey for her but for her customer. You know CB Commerce.
We started a journey so that they would digitalize how they work with their consumers. We also have the consultant bringing traffic in and us paying them a commission, but we also evolved in this journey. We know that nowadays, actually, we know that more than 60% of consultants use the WhatsApp platform to do business. This is not just doing business, but it is also about creating a relationship with their customers. We need digital material to help evolve the purchasing journey through WhatsApp. More than 60% also use our interactive magazines and our digital assets to be able to create relationships one-on-one with their customers but also through WhatsApp groups. Financial services that are embedded in these digital mechanisms, not only so that consultants can be more productive but also for their customers through payment links.
Lastly, putting in the way that we do business and training in that sense, right? This is very important. Last year in Brazil, we had almost 400,000 consultants that were trained. These consultants increased their productivity twofold. We believe that we offer them a very interesting value proposal so that they can improve their relationship with their customers. We also give them the tools, the products so that they can grow in their journey. This makes the heavy user consultants be more productive. We measure these purchasing phases, and this helps them gain productivity in their journey, be it in the sell-in or the sell-out phase. Now let's go into the digital platforms for consumers. We also changed our platform throughout last year in all of the countries where we have e-commerce. We moved to the Salesforce platform.
I'd like to mention our strategy here. We wanted to offer consulting in all channels. We needed a platform that was more efficient. That way, we could make our conversations more and more personalized. If you look at your app, we have a personalized window or showcase or display case. Now we want hyper-personalization. We want it to be personalized from end- to- end. This new app has brought us a lot of new conversion numbers, between 17% and 48% depending on the country. We also had a significant increase in productivity in the website. Our website is now faster, 30% faster. This makes the consumer stay on the webpage longer because the loading time is much more efficient. There's an indicator that I know you love, which is unique active consumers. We grew more than 40% in that.
It is incredible when we talk about that because we're talking about changing a platform. We also have product pages that are more intelligent. We optimized AI to be able to tell the story of our products even though the consumer does not have a physical experience. This page has really helped with conversion rates. Now, talking about AI and personalization, our CRM that also uses the Salesforce platform is just like a factory of campaigns to personalize all conversations. We use a lot of data, and not only data of consumers that are logged on, but also consumers that have not logged on to our platform. That way, we can personalize more and more and bring more active customers to us. João mentioned BRL 9 million, and we want that number to continue growing. We want those clients to stay in our base, to remain in our base.
It is also important to have a plan for new user occasions for our potential leads, potential consumers. We entered into three countries and marketplaces. This is a partnership with Mercado Libre, and this helps complement our channels. It is also important to mention that what we desire to do was to get those potential leads to buy Natura. More than 90% of clients that buy with us in the marketplace were not on our Natura customer base. It really complements us, especially when the customer is buying other categories. They include, for example, hygiene products. This offers convenience. Half of the sales take place on the same day or the day after. This is a quick commerce. This has given us a lot of opportunities to learn and continue to evolve in this omnichannel journey.
When we talk about digital, this frontier is a frontier that begins to make channels hybrid. We have social selling. Social selling has happened not only through WhatsApp and social media but also through consultants that are becoming digital influencers. Like Tati mentioned in the beginning, they're influencers since the beginning, since they began selling. Here we're talking about selling through a digital relationship. We started a campaign with TikTok. It's a program, actually, to train consultants and influencers. When the TikTok platform would get to Brazil, we wanted to be pioneers in selling because the consultants would already be there and would have the know-how to do that, to bring in more customers, to get them to buy products. It's been very successful. We're going to take this to other countries.
This shows how the consulting model is not only resilient but also how it's been transforming over time and offering a bunch of skills to other categories, like I'll show you later. Our share of voice in social media is increasing, like you can see on the screen. We want this figure to continue growing. We want to be celebrated through our consumers and consultants. I want to tell you a success story. I love retail. I started working in Natura seven years ago, and I came in to help make all of this possible. We used to have half a dozen stores, and now we are a very strong retail store, not only in Brazil but in Latin America as well. In Chile, we have very high market share in terms of retail, and we have our own stores and franchise stores.
This is a very successful model. Our capacity to expand shows that we're very strong. We open one store every two working days. The model is quite impressive. We use sophisticated algorithms, AI, in order to be as assertive as possible in our business cases because that allows the brand to be more interesting to new franchisers, but also it helps us evolve by investing in our own stores. It's not only, I mean, the amount of doors, but also, I mean, the doors opening is very important. The opening of stores is important, but also having this hybrid model. People that go to physical stores start their journey online in the digital realm. We need this mix between physical and digital. We have click and collect. We have delivery in the same day or the day after. We have CRMs for our store consultants.
This is very interesting because there's AI being used to know what customer you talk to, what they bought, when their birthday is. This offers a return to us. This is thanks to the CRM of the store consultants. Our average ticket is very significant. Something else that's very important is that we are a brand that is very good for gifting. A lot of the revenue that we get in our stores is due to gifts. People are receiving gifts, and they can become a new customer of Natura, a potential customer, but also this helps us increase our average ticket. It shows that our transactions help us increase our ticket and also penetrate more regions. When we started working with franchises, we had a conversion of consultants that started working in these franchise stores.
We've been converting these physical points in Brazil to the Natura brand. This has helped us increase productivity by square meter. That figure is 40%. Each time a point becomes a Natura store with the right assortment, that increases productivity. It's important to mention also that we have 12 clusters to talk about assortments or mix. Today, we adapt our store experience regarding the investment, but also regarding the mix that we have. We have stores today that start with Ekos, and then other stores start with Tododia. The mix of this portfolio is also very important, and it's very well thought of so we can have greater productivity in our stores. Last but not least, our ROIC is very competitive. We have 37% of ROIC, and the franchises are getting a greater ROIC than that.
We try to see how many people convert to franchise leads. We convert 1.8% because we can't just bring everyone into this equation. Here, I wanted to mention something very important, more important than the mix and the expansion, which is customer satisfaction. Last year, our NPS was excellent, 94% in our own stores in the region. We have over 30 million customers visiting our stores every year. This has huge potential. That way, new consumers can get to know our products, and we can retain them. We've also had an increase of LTV, which is something that we want to achieve when our channels are hybrid. When clients become omnichannel, when they start buying through more than one channel, they double their LTV. The acquisition channels are very important to acquire a new consumer.
More important than that, we have to get them to move from one channel to the other depending on the convenience or need of that recommendation or that purchase. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'll be around in case you want to ask me any questions about my passions, which are channels. Now I would like to call Diego de Leone and my other colleague.
Good morning. I'm so happy to be here with you today and to have you here in our home and to be here with Diego, my colleague. Like Tati mentioned at first in terms of opportunities.
Good morning, everyone. How are you? I'm so sorry because I will be speaking in Spanish. I'm from Hispana, so I will be speaking in Spanish. If you have any questions, I mean, don't worry. I'll speak slowly.
If you have any questions, if you did not understand anything I said, just interrupt me, okay?
Yeah, sure. I was just saying that just like they told us, Tati talked about all the opportunities, and we are going to talk about the geographical opportunities. We have more opportunities and more to address regarding geographies, and that is what we are going to do. To talk about geography, I think that first of all, we have to start telling you about the second wave. João already talked about it a little bit. This is a project that we began in all of the countries, and we cannot think of this project as an integration of Avon and Natura. It is much more than that.
Through the second wave, we'll be able to offer to our consultants not only a strong portfolio that will help them reach more consumers, but also a powerful business platform with a lot of different features, like Paula just told us, with a business model that is made to increase the LTV of consultants and their productivity with all the digital tools that we need, with Natura Pay, which is our payment solution for consultants. As we bring Avon consultants to this platform that we call Natura [Chassis,] that's what we've been operating with, we adopt these consultants and we give them more power so that they can reach more customers and do more business with us. What happens when we do this whole integration? It is important to say that this is a very complex integration plan. We're integrating systems, logistics. We're changing our sales force.
We're reducing the sales force in Brazil. We reduce it to half. Direct sales is all about relationships. The consultants that would talk to their leaders, the leaders that would talk to their managers, we break these relationships and we rebuild them. That also causes some issues during the migration process. Let's see what happens with the revenue. I mean, of course, there's also the macroeconomic aspects of the countries, but let's put that aside. On this graph, you can see the line above is the Brazil line and the one below is Hispana combined. We start with the first quarter before the second wave. After that, we can see the following quarters. Hispana started before, so they have an extra quarter there. What do we see? The curves are similar.
We go through a period of transition, which is the hardest period because we're getting accustomed to this new way of working. You can see how people are getting more used to it. In the case of Hispana specifically, you can see that the curve has a greater dip. These learnings that we had with these first two countries showed us how to have a lower or not such a huge dip with Brazil. Here we have Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Peru and Colombia had a harder performance. These were the first two countries to incorporate this program. We learned, then we went to Brazil, and Chile launched it almost at the same time as Brazil. Chile had the same performance that Brazil had. This helps us think of the countries where this will be implemented now.
Let me just explain the 3.8% in Brazil before you ask me what happened. Here, there is something that has to do with the Avon innovation. It has to do with what Tati just mentioned to us: lower growth. Natura continues to grow in the first quarter in a very robust way. Diego, what causes this increase in revenue and operations when we carry out this migration? Our direct sales model has two important variables that we measure: channel and the amount of consultants and productivity, right? How much these consultants make. You can see on the graph, the columns represent the channels and the curve, the productivity. What happened? The performance was similar in Brazil and Hispana. What happened with the channel? The channel had a drop between 20%-30% drop. That was what we had planned originally.
Where did it drop? It dropped mainly and almost totally in the Avon consultants that would incorporate, and also mostly in the smaller ones, the ones that generated lower productivity. What happened on the productivity side? It increased. The increase was superior to 40%. It grew in all of the consultant segments. Those who came from Avon, from Natura, and the mixed ones. Those that came from Avon grew the most because they started to incorporate with relevance the Natura portfolio in the business. The channel grows and more than offsets the impact for this transformation. As Diego mentioned, we have a lot of lessons learned in this operation, and Brazil was able to benefit from that in the first implementations. This is why we saw a ramping of the results that was faster. Basically, what did we learn?
The first thing that we have to understand is that here we are not doing a migration simply. Actually, we are transforming the operational operations into a multi-brand platform. What was before a single-brand operation, here we have a business model that needs to manage the different products that make up this platform. These learnings have a lot to do with that. First, we have to establish that each brand and this platform continues to have its own commercial rules like a minimum order. We can use that minimum order to lever the business to drive the orders in Avon and Natura. Planning and commercial stimuli is different per brand. We have several experiences to try to establish the same commercial stimuli for the two brands, but it worked for one brand but did not work for the other.
Understanding that planning of commercial stimuli has to be different but combined, it was very important to be able to capture results quicker. What do you think? For example, we have to do a combination of all the cycles. And what categories are going to drive a certain cycle in Avon or in Natura? What's the brand that performs the best? We do that combination, but the commercial stimuli are identified and are different per brand because they have different commercial aspects. The third learning, and as important as that, is the combined management of the sales force. Since it's a multi-brand platform, and our sales force also acted, we had to see the remuneration stimuli. How could we stimulate the sales force to have a mix of products?
That required a lot of effort to be able to establish working principles for those that sales force. We also had major challenges in our integration. First was the activation of the combined portfolio. In the beginning, when we did not have management of the brand and innovation, it was not developed for combinations. Now we believe that we have to do a portfolio combining the brands, and that has a lot of power to maximize all the brands within the spaces that Tati explained, so that the spaces for Natura and Avon can live together. With house and style, we reduce our portfolio in a planned manner. For some operations that had a very significant impact, we wanted to generate impact in those operations that were very important. Hispana wave two, because we already did that in Brazil. What's missing?
What is coming now? As Paula mentioned, the countries in which we implemented wave two represent less than 33% of Hispanic America. What is missing? The two largest countries in Hispanic America: Mexico and Argentina, 37% of our entire business. Let's talk about Mexico. Mexico is coming out of the implementation process of the wave two up to the go live that was in May. The last landmark that we lived in Mexico was very important, which was breaking down our multi-level marketing in Avon. This was an important landmark because it puts to proof all our strengths, our value proposition, our capacity to retain and revalidate the loyalty of our consultants. In Mexico, we had thousands of leaders in 11 levels that managed all the consultants of the Natura brand. Honestly, we expected a significant fall in our channel due to this transformation.
We saw that in our market, but none of that became true. The result of this exiting of the multi-level really overcame all our expectations in productivity, sales. We did not lose consultants. On the other hand, we had a humongous headache in service in Mexico because we were not prepared for this level of demand that we went through with this transformation. We did the go live in the middle of May, and everything was in line, except for that headache that we are now trying to stabilize. That has to do with service. All the other aspects of the implementation were conducted as expected: structure, teams, leadership, integration. Mexico is on its way. Argentina, that has lived a significant logistic integration. We closed one of the two major distribution centers in the country. We adjusted the Avon commercial structure, and we digitized the magazine of Avon.
Remember, Natura's magazine was digitized three years ago. In two weeks, we will do the go-live in Argentina. In that way, we would close the cycle of the transformation cycle of Hispana. Here in Brazil, despite that the commercial activities have been executed, the last steps of the integration, especially of the Avon factory, integrating that factory here to Cajamar, that will end later on. Can we agree upon something that this will end then? Okay, yes, it will. After this conversation about wave two, let's talk about geographic diversification. Here we have the size of the market and our market share. We divided the graph in the middle. Where we have Brazil and Argentina, we have 50% of market share. On the other side, we have 50% of the market.
Here we can see that we have a large sphere in the market with low market share. Here we have a lot of geographic opportunities, especially because Brazil represents 57% and Hispana 43%. Here we have opportunities. This is what we want to tell you. Now we'll begin talking about Brazil. As we said, our large operation is very important both in our growth, but also as a major innovation space to understand what's happening in the market so we can do good transactions. The first opportunity is to establish regions because this is a continental country with marked differences between regions. As we understand that, when we see the region from the point of view of channels and categories, it brings humongous opportunities because we have very different penetrations between this country or across the country.
Working in a more regional manner, both in regional activations, you must have seen how we have worked regionally from the point of view of activation. This weekend, we were in Parintins. We had an exclusive product for the festival in São João in the Northeast in Campina Grande. We also have a special activation. Looking at those channels so that we can create more engagements with those consumers. Also looking from the point of view of categories, the strategic categories in each region. Tati talked about that with the marketing tools that we have. We can be more precise, activating communication in the regions through digital channels for certain consumers and strategic categories for each region. That allows us to capture these local opportunities and reduce the dispersion of results that we have per region.
This is a major growth lever that we have in Brazil. The second thing I wanted to talk about is this story, a very interesting story. It was January of 2023, and I have a routine with the team that every Tuesday we bring together the three channels to talk about the results of the weekends, assess our results, and plan the next week, the following week. The leader of the store said, "Do you know what's happening? Because we have a lot of clients that are going to the store asking about the perfume of the influencer." We had no specific campaign for any perfume brand. We began to investigate, and we discovered this video. Let me see if I can show it to you.
Since you like the products I use with my side, the product that I use the most, that was most important in my life, that I love the most, I would like to tell you because you're my friend. This is a success story. It's a success story. Therefore, they say it's not a priority for Natura; it could be. It has to be this one, the purple one, because I think that there are several kinds of this perfume. This perfume is so real because in addition to being very good, I don't know why this is not a national. It's very cheap. I paid BRL 180, and it's delicious. This is my suggestion. If you buy it, you will be able to feel this fragrance. The video lasts a lot longer, and it had more than 5,000 visualizations in TikTok. It's an organic video.
Millions, more than 5 million visualizations, views in TikTok with no sponsorship. She is Gaby Mendes. She is an important business partner. Since we discovered the video, we established a partnership with her. As of that video, that perfume looking before and after the video, the sales grew 400%. Why is this important? This is the transformation of the business. Imagine that direct sales in the past were the sales driver, was the cover of the magazine. Now, a video like this of an influencer can allow us to grow a product more than a promotion. This is a very important challenge to manage the business, considering this. This is increasingly frequent. These organic videos or videos that we build and using the marketing tools that we have, we can use to reach more consumers.
These materials are produced by our consultants because influencers like us, because we have a distribution machine and a publicity machine as well. Imagine this Gaby's video with 5 million visualizations. Many consultants capture that video and also share it with others. We are a distribution machine when they advertise our products. This has allowed us to be leaders and share our voice in social media. Now direct sales is also a machine that distributes all this content. An important talk about innovation space. In this video, and afterwards, you can see the video as well because it's a lot of fun. It's very funny as well that we didn't show here.
She would show people how to use the perfume because before that, she would use it with a moisturizer, on set of moisturizer, and then she would use the perfume, and that would increase the fixation. We could launch a fragrance moisturizer that we did six months later, and it was a sales blockbuster. Last year, we also launched an entire Christmas collection with Gaby in the magazine and our material because now she's a business partner. That generates these insights and conversion spaces. How can we operate that? We had to change our operational chain due to the volume of stimuli that are not as controlled as in the past by us.
First, we set up a working format that we say using the pro tools so that we can try certain conditions or business hypotheses and escalate them quickly according to the results. We use a lot of analytics and CRM. Today, we have a dedicated team to look at all this content in the social media, be it for our products or streamings in the market that have to do with us, so that we can participate in that movement. Looking through all these channels, when we detect our products being publicized in social media, we have a section that has the loved ones in the social media, and we have spaces in the stores where we place the products that are being shown in social media. Those products become top sales in stores quickly.
Those products are four or five products that we select through social media. Here, we distribute their content to consultants saying, "These are the products that are making more success." A lot of analytics and CRM for targeted communication so we can customize communication and also management of an open cycle. All this planning process, like the physical magazine, it's a long process that takes a lot of time. It's impossible to capture these novelties, these movements in social media every day. We began to build a model where we work with an open cycle. It's a cycle that's in the hands of the consultant. Partly, we do it digitally, customized, so we can capture quickly those movements. 20% of our revenues is not the planned revenue of the original cycle.
It is built through these different tools that we have with more agility of building new promotions through an open cycle, effectively working as a real-time business model and not one that depends on more long-term processes. All of this introduces complexities, an enormous complexity in terms of planning, distribution, and manufacturing. For that, we're investing strongly in Brazil, and we began here to implement until the end of the year. We will be done so we can capture all the opportunities next year, which is called integrated planning. It's a project that integrates all our chain from commercial planning and receives all this data input and everything that's happening in the market and up to our planning, distribution planning, manufacturing planning, and our sales.
We can integrate all our chain and improve our assertivity, reduce the freeze-time horizon so we can be more agile and improve our cash flow, our working capacity, and our stock efficiency. This is the operation that we have in Brazil, which is very nimble, working on real-time to capturing those opportunities because we have a large consulting network that communicates that, and we can be at the forefront of the market with this. We release all these conversations through social media with all those mechanics that we have built along the time. To talk about the major opportunity in Hispana, we will give him the opportunity to talk.
Thank you so much. We have really made our operations in Brazil super sophisticated, and Hispana is right behind. There is a lot to do in Hispana, but this also represents a huge opportunity for Hispana.
How's your energy going before I start talking about Hispana? Because I know that you've been sitting down for about two and a half hours, right? I want you to pay a lot of attention so that we can assess the opportunities in Hispana together. Yeah? Okay? Great. Let's talk about Hispana. What are we talking about when we talk about Hispana? It's a region where we are present in 15 countries. Two of these countries, the ones that are going into the second wave, Mexico and Argentina, together represent almost 70% of the entire CFT market in Hispana. If I add Chile, Colombia, and Peru, we're talking about almost 90%. Mexico, the largest market, which is the one that has the lowest market share, it's the most, let's say, underdeveloped in the whole region, and Argentina, the one that has the greatest market share.
Both of these markets have a penetration that is lower than 25%. There is 75% of homes where we are not present. Remember this information because I'll talk about it in a few minutes. I wanted to talk to you about these graphs that you can see on the right. They show the contrast between what our business was like in the last official release in 2016 and what we did in these last eight years. We doubled our market share. Our mix in Latin America, including Brazil, went from 27% to 45%. We almost doubled that figure as well. We tripled our amount of consultants in these eight years. Now we have 1.4 million consultants, and our business, which was only Natura back then, now is composed of 60% Natura and 40% Avon and Homemade Style. Okay.
Now I would like to show you what we consider to be the greatest growth opportunity in Hispana. Before I do that, I would like to talk about the elephant in the room. I'm sure that you were paying attention to what João Paulo said. When you saw that profitability margin for Hispana, I'm sure you jotted it down, right? 2.8%. We are going to talk about growth and growth opportunities. Let's talk about the profitability of Hispana in detail. I want us to make a deal. For now, just for now, we are going to put a pin on that, and we are going to focus on the growth opportunities for Hispana that are very relevant, and they contribute to the profitability of this region. Is that okay? Yeah? We got a deal? Great.
If there's one thing that you take away from this Hispana section, I want you to take home the following: home penetration with the Natura brand. Home penetration with the Natura brand. That is the main opportunity that we have in Hispana by far. Let's do this reasoning exercise together. First of all, Natura is the preferred brand in all of the countries in the region, with one exception: Mexico. When we say preferred brand, it's when we ask quantitatively and we do studies with the consumers. We say, "What is your preferred CFT brand?" They say, "Natura." In the case of Mexico, we're number four. The beauty categories in the region have a home penetration that is of over 90%. However, Natura has a household penetration of only 16%. The preferred brand in Hispana is only present in 16% of households.
It is not only the preferred brand; it is the brand that has the giftability attribute. It can be given as a gift, right? It is a brand. When you ask consumers, "What cosmetics brand would you like to gift to someone?" they say, "Natura." However, only 16% of households have Natura. If we look at Brazil, on the other hand, our household penetration is 54%. Three times more, almost the same as direct sales penetration. It is a very important brand in Brazil too. Why is there this difference? The main reason for this difference is that our operation in Brazil, like Agenor said a while ago, is more advanced in digital tools, commercial tools, segmentation tools, personalization tools. All of this helps us create a much more relevant household penetration than the one we have achieved in the rest of South America, in Hispana.
Let's continue reasoning together. Okay? Of that 16% of homes or households where Natura is present—okay, wait, do you understand me in Spanish? Yeah? Yeah? Everyone understands me? Great. Okay. Of that 16% of households where Natura is present, 11 percentage points come from our sales channels, be it B2C or any other channel. That is 5 points. Five percentage points is only through gifts. Eleven percentage points come from own consumption and 5 percentage points from gifts. Somebody purchased and gifted. Those households consume some Natura products, but they are not customers or clients. With 11% household penetration, we have a market share in Hispana of 6.7%. Eleven percent of households, 6.7% of market share. The share must be so high in those households, and it is.
When we look at this, the CFT of the households where we are at, of course, depending on geography and region, but it's more than 30%, 40%, or even 50%. Of everything that those households buy, they have a lot of Natura products. Is that clear? Is it clear how strong our brand is and how this conversion capacity is present? Wherever we are, we win. What is our main challenge? To get there. We have to manage to get to those households. That is why household penetration with the Natura brand is our great opportunity for growth. What's amazing about this is that we don't need this mega innovation or to go into new markets or to make acquisitions. I mean, that can all be studied.
In order to make this opportunity real, which is to go from 16% of households to at least 54% of households, which is where Brazil's at, what we have to do is reapply all the tools and strategies that we used in Brazil already in all of Hispana. This is something that we've already done. We have those tools in-house, and we also have the know-how to do it. This is something that we have to do, and it's up to us to do it. I'm sure that right now you're thinking, "Okay, great. If it's that easy, why didn't you just do it before?" I mean, you've been in Hispana for years now. Good question. I could give you a list of reasons, to be honest. But you know what? All of those reasons have to do with the same thing.
Look at these examples: different commercial models between countries and Brazil, different platforms and information systems that are different between the countries and Brazil, complex structures in our countries with Natura leadership, Avon leadership, with different goals, cultures, teams, logistics that are complex, a lot of reasons, even internal processes that do not allow us to scale, or systems that do not allow us to transfer knowledge and bring all of that know-how from Brazil to Hispana. In Hispana, we go slowly. We move slowly in Hispana because of all of this. What is all of this? Of course, we have to standardize processes. We have to standardize systems. We have to standardize commercial models. This will allow us to scale up quickly and transfer all that knowledge and know-how from Brazil to the other countries. What is all of this?
All of this is data, and it's what's happening now in our region. It has to do with the second wave or wave two. It's not just simplification, but this will be what allows us to scale all of our tools, our know-how to each of the countries in Hispana in an agile manner. That is the reason why it was so difficult for us to do it until now. That's why from here on out, we'll be able to do it quickly. Just so we understand this opportunity better, because I don't want it to be something vague, I came up with this graph that I wanted to share with you. It's quite illustrative. It takes us from our current business, which you can see on the left column, to our potential business, which is on the right-hand side.
We have to apply each one of these steps. I'll go step by step. There are three colors because we have Natura, Avon, and Homemade Style. Let's start with the first block, which is the most relevant opportunity that we have: direct sales. When I look at this column, I have three levers that will allow me to grow: channel, productivity, and the gift strategy. Gifts become much more relevant. Why? Because our focus is to get to all those households where we're not present yet. Now let's talk about channel. We measure the channel as the amount of consultants per inhabitant. If I compare Brazil and the average of Hispana, Brazil has 50% more consultants than what we have in Hispana. Why? Because of what we said: several tools, be it to begin, to retain, to finance, Emana Pay, Natura Pay, etc.
Huge, huge, huge opportunity to grow in channels in Hispana. When I look at productivity, that's the billing, right, of all those consultants. Brazil has more channels per inhabitant, and each one of these consultants buys in each order 50% more items than what they do in Hispana. Several promotional tools, personalization tools that allow us to activate this and do this in a much easier manner in Brazil. Gifts of the Natura brand. Brazil's gifting strategy is a lot more robust than the one in Hispana. Brazil focuses its strategy in a very segmented and personalized way in all cycles throughout the entire year versus Hispana that does it mainly on special dates. What does this mean then? That the gift mix in Brazil's business is 50% higher. The gift mix in the Brazil business is 50% higher than the one in Hispana.
There's a huge opportunity there if we manage to bring all that know-how and tools to Hispana. Okay, we're good till here? Yeah? I'm very worried about the Spanish. But if you're understanding, we can continue. Okay. There's one country, like we said in the beginning, that we're focusing on in terms of our strategy. It's like a main character of all of this. I'd like to double-click on that country right now: Mexico. Mexico is the largest market in Hispana with the greatest growth opportunities. If we look at it in terms of size, Mexico is half of Brazil. That's the size of the market. I look at the relationship between sales, right? Household penetration in the Mexican market is just of one digit: 9%. Like we said, 54% in Brazil. There's a huge chance to grow, 6x .
If I look at the exclusive Natura households, I just realized I didn't talk about the other levers in the previous slide. I'll go back to that. If I look at the exclusive households of Avon in Mexico, it's 13.5% of households versus 9% of Natura. Avon reaches households exclusively in a way that Natura does not. If we manage to introduce Natura products into that household, we have then a 2.5 more times to grow. I talked about direct sales, right? Cross-sale. Cross-sale, a very important part of our strategy. This has to do with working with both brands and to increase the household penetration of Natura through the combination of these brands. Remember that 11% that I mentioned of household penetration? Remember? If I think of all of Hispana, what is that figure for Avon? 10%.
There we can generate trial with the potential of doubling our household penetration. The brand repositioning, this will also go hand in hand with the growth that we're looking for. Avon will have a specific role in our portfolio. Like João Paulo said, it will be responsible for bringing in new consultants and consumers that later we will work on with using a cross-selling strategy. When we look at D2C multicanality with everything that Paulo already said, this is a channel that has a lot of opportunity. In Hispana, we have underdeveloped this segment. The D2C mix in Brazil weighs 3x more in the total than in Hispana. Of course, we always compare to Brazil because that's where the know-how is. Brazil knows how to be successful and how to help accelerate Hispana. Now I go back to the other slide.
I had to talk about the Natura brand preference in Mexico. As I said, we are the preferred brand in all countries, but in the case of Mexico, we are number four. Mexico is our greatest opportunity. You might be saying, "Of course, in Mexico, you did not reach the same results," and that is true because it is next to the U.S., because it is a much more competitive market. What is different about Mexico? What did we do differently in Mexico? Why are we not achieving the same results in Mexico as we are in the other countries? First of all, let me tell you that the opportunity is also found in-house. The three multinational players that are before us, right? We are number four.
Those are the same players that are present in all of the other countries that were also there before us a few years ago. However, we managed to become leaders in each one of those countries. Why not Mexico? To give you this answer, the answer is in-house. Let's take a step a few years back. A couple of years after we began our operations in Mexico, we made a strategic decision: go into Mexico with a multilevel model. That was, at that time, the best tool that we had to grow quickly. Now, what happened? That was a decade ago. What happened throughout the times? We have invested consistently in the model and in all our leader groups because it's through them that we developed our consultants.
Investing in the model and the leaders is not the same thing as investing in the brand, in the consumers, and in our consultants, who are the ones that, at the end of the day, materialize the arrival to the household. It was only until a couple of months ago when we disassembled this multilevel model in Mexico that now we have the capacity to reorganize or redirect all this investment to consumers, consultants, and be able to make possible or follow the same path that we've followed in other countries and achieve leadership in terms of brand preference. That should be actionable by applying the same strategies. We want to do it in Mexico quickly. This is why we introduced some relevant changes that will allow us to achieve this ambition in the shortest time possible.
On the one hand, we defined a new organization, what we are calling a new business unit. We brought talents from the entire region to Mexico to be able to strengthen this team in Mexico, and also from the market. Our General Manager from Mexico, who is very knowledgeable of the Mexican market, is Mexican, and we onboarded him in the company a couple of months ago. We are taking all our integrated planning model to Mexico as well, because since the Mexico model was so different with multilevels and processes, the gap of capability vis-à-vis all the countries of the region was the largest by far. We are bringing all this integrated planning model, including the global leader of integrated planning who is moving from Brazil to Mexico. It is a customized marketing strategy also targeted at portfolio claims and communication, which will be more effective for Mexico.
We will have much more global focus, but also local autonomy and agility that will help us work with growth and artificial intelligence with tools that exist in the company that we were not able to leverage until recently in Mexico. In a nutshell, and to end, we have been a generation of transformation in the entire region, in all the countries for the last two years. We are highly motivated with the opportunity that we have because this transformation prepared us to scale up quickly all our capabilities that otherwise we would not have been able to escalate. We are very highly motivated with what we're living. I feel with the emotion that I felt when I came to Natura for the first time 15 years ago. Hispanic America was left less than 15% of the entire business in Latin America. After 15 years, it represents 45%.
The emotion that I feel is very similar to when I began, but with a difference. At that time, we had to go through an uncharted path. We navigated through that path with success in other countries. Now it is not in uncharted waters. Now we know how to get there. That gives you the certainty that we will have success in our journey. Thank you very much. Before, effort generated income, but did not ensure the future. Now, with planning and management, it builds prosperity, truly. This transformation has a name, Emana Pay. In less than three years, we became one of the largest financial platforms in Brazil promoting inclusion for those that work. It is more than 1,600 accounts that were opened, BRL 60 billion transactions in 2024. It was the first company with a credit line directed to businesses that work with conscious consumers.
We know how much and when to offer lower risk and higher return. The impact goes beyond. Consultants that work with Emana Pay have a development index 30% greater. They help to sell, to reduce, and Natura consultants know how much they are going to make. With Emana Pay, they know how to organize themselves because they know how much money they will make. With Emana Pay, the average ticket has gone up 30%. Now you can manage your sales and your stocks with security and certainty for your business. When consultants prosper, have a more prosperous future, Natura also has a more prosperous future.
Good morning. Good morning. I am the person in the middle of you and the coffee break. That is a lot of responsibility. Now you have heard Spanish and Portuguese at the same time.
It is an enormous pride to present Emana Pay, which is the financial engine of Natura. More than a FinTech, Emana Pay is a productivity engine and also liquidity, but especially embedded in our business model. How did we begin that? Why did we begin this journey with Emana Pay? We know that we have a major opportunity in the sell-in and in the sell-out. We had a financial surplus that was not captured by Natura, not only in the business model of Natura and also in the consultants' business model. We were sure that in all our dynamic of receivables, there was an economic and financial surplus that we could capture.
Before this, and those who are in direct sales, not only of Natura, but in all the market, one of the main reasons of churn of the consultants was the lack of payments because there was a low average or the financial management that was not well managed in our network. They had a major financial deficit between what she bought and what she received from her clients. Also, they were not very elastic. The sales depended on the level of the consultants. Natura for a long time has believed that the credit cycle in Latin America and in Brazil has a negative aspect because nobody wants to know if you're a good payer. They just want to know who is not a bad payer. It is coercive because if you do not pay, you pay a lot of interest. We believed that we could do something different.
To do something different, we had to have more information. We had to be able to give consultants an instrument or a tool that could help them make a difference. Now, explaining Emana Pay quickly, it's a tripod with three business models that separately work well. The first business model of Emana Pay is what we call processing receivables of all our groups. Today, 100% of the receivables in Brazil and in Argentina of our final clients, of our channels, e-commerce, physical stores, brick and franchise, 100% of the receivables of the sell-in of consultants. Now, a great percentage of the consultants from the final client go through Emana Pay. The second vertical of our business model is a major relationship chassis. Imagine, it's an amplified relationship chassis because Natura, it's a major network since it was founded. We are a digital account. In Brazil, there are more than 320 accounts.
Ours has all the models and cash-in-cash-out mechanisms, savings, investment, security, social security in the market. However, it was totally customized for direct sales. Since it is totally customized for direct sales, we were able to set up a platform that brings together and connects increasingly sell-in to sell-out. At this point, it is essential. We gave consultants a box tool not only to have a relationship with Natura, but to have a better relationship with the final customer. Consultants that had a low financial management level now have financial educations and with tools that allow her to make the math. She is to see if she is selling with the correct margin, if she is being able to collect from the final clients because that was a problem that she used the traditional PIX, that she used the payment link to be able to sell in several quotes.
An account that allows you to sell in different payment terms has a larger average ticket. Those are instruments that did not exist. We began to equip our network with those credit tools. You see in the video, we have many consultants and activities in Brazil, almost 45% with Emana Pay. The third great vertical was credit. Natura was always a major microcredit company. When we allow for a consultant to pay her sell-in in 21 days, the name of that is credit. There was always a power tool for consultants. Knowing that, we became a financial company. We are a direct credit society that allows us to have access to funding mechanisms that are unique. Instead of us consuming our own operational working capital, the fact that we are a financial company allows us to have access to other sources of other funding sources.
With our credit dynamic, the fact that we have a short portfolio duration and a credit cycle that is low allows us to be very competitive in our dynamic. When I talked about the relationship chassis, when I said that consultant has a toolbox to be able to interact more efficiently and better with their final clients or customers, for us is our major competitive edge because we have information from the final client. Since direct sales exist, that was the highest difficulty to identify that pathway between the sell-in and the sell-out. When you have financial instruments for consultants, you are able to identify the dynamic of the final client, and you are able to identify how a consultant or what are the forecast of income flows to be able to pay her sell-in with her sell-out.
This way, we feedback all our models, not only as credit models, but also the mid-term payment term mechanisms because the mid-payment terms had low elasticity due to the level of consultants. Now, we are able to customize the payment terms with credit according to the inflow of income of the consultant. As you can see in our releases, and you see the highest or the lowest level of receivables, we have a lot of signs behind that from the point of view of credit and data that allows us to assign the correct capital to each segment and region and for each moment of life of consultants so that she can increase her productivity or to be able to withstand the progress of the competition. What does that have to do with the financial balance sheet or with the ROI?
In addition to financial education, and you saw part of that in the video, now consultants and statistically comparing her to herself with her equipped with Emana Pay, she is more productive. She is 15% more productive. Why? Because the financial management cycle of her is improved. A consultant with a healthy management of her cash flows means that Natura also has a healthy cash flow. She can collect better from her final client, have money in her pocket, and be able to pay. I can give her the correct credit tools. The credit is on us. It is the credit cards on us that is at the top of the funnel. That allows us to be totally elastic and flexible to her cash flow, more productivity and less churn. The consultants that use Emana Pay, their onboarding is planned. They come in with Natura and Avon together.
The data that we get from the market from the point of view of the consulting curatorship is more accurate, more productive. She can do better orders, 6% higher. Funding, it's a direct credit society or organization. The fact that we have credit with a short cycle allows us to go to the market and be able to get cash flow and more efficient funding, more efficient than when we use our own cash flow to fund the consultants. They're going to talk about that later when we talk about cash flow. It's a fast and efficient management according to the macroeconomic indicators. Some regions are better, others are worse. Some have gone through an adaptation to inflation. Emana Pay helps to understand where we have to invest and get more payment terms or less shorter payment terms.
Consultants that are able to capture or have or collect her cash out, I can make her pay before with discount, paying before she can have much more dynamic commercial activity. That is the magic that Emana Pay permits. Lastly, here we have the value of all this. The financial engineering also promotes tax and financing engineering that allows us to arrive to a break-even point much quicker. We can have actions that increase value, not only macro value, but also the business as a revenue stream that brings important capability as well as other opportunities. We had an Ekosystem that has assets that are consistent, and we need to operate them in order to generate value quickly. This is what I wanted to say. Thank you so much. Now I will call Helena up on stage. What do we have now?
Tell us what's coming up now.
Yeah, we're a bit behind schedule. Our people love to talk about what they do, so we're a little bit behind on the agenda. How's this going to work? We have a Q&A. We're going to put the chairs up here on stage for everyone to be able to sit down. Before that, I would just like to ask you to please don't ask questions that require very long answers. Everyone is ready to answer your questions. I know that people want to talk about profitability and cash flow. Remember that we will have a Q&A later to talk about these two specific topics. Don't ask questions about that. Let's talk about now the growth levers and the business strategy that was presented to you guys.
You will be able to ask questions about profitability and cash flow, okay? How is the Q&A going to work? It is just like in any other Investor Day that you have participated in. You just raise your hand, and we will take the microphone to you, and you can ask your questions, okay? We have 30 minutes of Q&A. If I give you more than that, everyone is going to leave at night. We will have a very quick 10-minute break. You can even go get food while the Q&A is taking place because we really have to be quick to be able to deliver everything that we want to deliver. Now I will invite our Executive Committee to come up on stage.
Thank you so much. Congratulations for your presentations. My first question is more for Tati, but maybe João Paulo can also answer, which has to do with the Avon brand. There are a lot of questions regarding what to expect from this brand. You mentioned the new operating model that makes us wonder what you're thinking about if it's going to be adjusted into the portfolio. Whatever you can tell us is good. If you can tell us what we can expect from this brand in terms of portfolio complementing, you talked about repositioning. I don't know if you can give us any spoilers. Maybe you don't want to share much, but just so we can understand how we can think about the brand from here on out. My second question, I'll just ask both now to be more efficient, for Diego. This has to do with Mexico and Argentina.
We saw the curve. You mentioned learning from Brazil, the second wave, but there are two different components. First, Mexico, you mentioned that multilevel aspect and how we can think about it for the second wave. And the house and style part, which are very relevant in these two countries. If you can also talk a little bit about what we can expect regarding this dynamic and how this can be reflected in a stronger ad justment.
Okay, I'll start with Tati. We do not want to revert Avon's tendencies. What are we going to do? What's the proposal? What are some limitations for investment behind Avon? Avon. Thank you so much for your question. We can talk a little bit about all that we've done. We've been working a lot with Avon in the last six months. We have a team that is 100% dedicated to that.
Talking about the operational model, we definitely have to make adaptations to it. We have to adapt the efforts of Avon and the needs we have for recovering the business. Talking about the operating model, we have to have a 100% dedicated squad that is making all the processes more agile. Also, we designed a series of opportunities for supply models. Since we are going to include innovation in record time, this will be very helpful. It will be useful as a pilot for Natura. When we look at what happened over the last few years, we can see that we did not have relevant innovations for a long time in a market that was developing a lot, especially in Avon's main categories.
Regarding the positioning of one brand and another brand, when we try to decide and see what opportunities are in the market, be it in white spaces or opportunities that Natura has to reposition or to advance in other territories. The same goes for Avon. There we know for sure that in this market, there are opportunities to have two brands complementing each other. To answer your question about what we're going to do with Avon, we're going to talk a lot about the emotional heritage that that brand has. We carried out some exercises this year that showed us that there's a huge leverage when we talk about the emotional territory and the legacy of Avon in people's minds. It's a brand that's very loved and respected, but it lost relevance throughout these years.
We talk about repositioning the audience, social class, and we also want to review the complete portfolio where we're going to simplify that portfolio a lot. We standardize it in Latin America, seeking efficiency and profitability. We want to have a more agile and consistent management of the brand. All of that, when we analyze and see what considerations of purchase is like, when we see what our rights to win are in each operational block, be it in our channel, the possibilities that we have in our own consultants that today are not selling Avon and vice versa, within the building blocks that we created in the business case, it shows that we can get to a healthy place. We're not going to invest more in Avon.
It's more about repositioning the brand, of course, with a planned investment, an investment that was already planned before, but investing in the right places. When you look at our consideration to purchase, it's a lot greater than a lot of brands that are in the market. The consumer that considers the brand buys it, what I have to do is attract new consumers to Avon because it's as if we've been talking to the same customers that have been with the brand for a long time. There's a lot of space to grow. Hopefully, I'll be able to share good news with you all soon.
It is a pleasure to meet you, Danniela, finally. I forgot what you asked because you asked this a while ago. Could you please repeat the question? Mexico, Argentina, and house and style, right? Okay, great.
In the case of Mexico, like I said, there's that multilevel success. We didn't lose channels. We have had a solid first quarter. We've had some pain points in terms of services, and we will stabilize that in July. The rest is aligned with our plan. There were a lot of positive surprises, like this multilevel aspect, and one was house and style because the mix that we achieved in house and style with that integration was by far—and what I mean by mix was in the channel penetration that we achieved with house and style was the highest that we've had in all of the countries. This also helps us bet on that business more. We want to find the how high is up in house and style. Now, talking about Argentina, I feel that we were growing.
We were gaining market share in Natura and Avon in Argentina. That is in 2024. We did really well with all the transformations. We did not have any hurdles with the second wave, be it because of the Avon magazine or the integration of the distribution centers, or be it because of the change in the commercial structure at Avon. Of course, there are small hurdles, but nothing different to what happened in Natura when we carried it out here. It is all going to work out, and we have the go-live in July now. In house and style in Argentina, we are going to have a segmented approach because there is a part of our portfolio that is highly profitable, where we have just-in-time inventory.
There is this other part where we're going to have a more tactical approach, and we're going to keep profitability and how it complements our direct sales business. Both operations will do well. There will be, of course, some noise in the short term, but we're very optimistic when looking at the preliminary results, and we're going to improve that curve. You'll see. Okay, next question.
Hi. I have two questions. The first one has to do about the slide that you showed and the difference of margin between Hispana and Brazil. That's something that called my attention. Thinking of the next two, three years, what are the levers that will, let's say, close that gap?
Then the second one, in terms of investment in Avon, to revert the trend that you mentioned in your presentation, you think that it's not a relevant investment that will do it, right? Those are my two questions. If I can just ask the third question about Emana. I've been asked a lot, how much is Emana worth? Can you share some figures, maybe the Emana profitability, so we can get an idea of valuations?
I'll answer the first one. Wait till the next block because we will answer that in the next block, okay? Tati, you can answer quickly, and then please pass the mic on.
We have to be very careful with the word relevant. Investments will be relevant to get Avon to where we want it to get to, but they won't remove margin from the P&L, or they won't make the P&L bleed out. This is all about funding, but also it's about healing the moment that we've been having with Avon.
Like I said a lot, we want to allocate resources, we want to learn know-how and lessons learned. That will all help us achieve what we want to achieve, but the allocation is very different than how we used to do it.
Thank you so much for your question. First of all, our results are semi-open quarterly. The central bank makes us report our results, but we also report the three pillars that I showed you. I can help you out with this equation. The profitability for FinTech is very different from CPG brand profitability.
Second, if we look at our TPV, like the BRL 60 billion in TPV, the average ticket rate is between 1.4 and 1.8, and there you can get to the revenue. More important than the revenue is that this business is not a standalone business. It is a business that is embedded to ours, and it has other levers that have been unexplored. For example, our relationship dynamic with our supply chain and also the expansion that we are going to do regionally. In order to not be so direct in my answer to your question, I can give you some tips on how to do the how to get to this figure, which is what I mentioned. Also net profitability. Basically, that is what we look at, net profitability. This is very important to understand figures. We are doing very well.
That's why we were so fast with our break-even, because there are a lot of fiscal benefits. We did two different fundings, and the market conditions are also improving. If we continue to be competitive, we can have more space for this working capital to invest in what makes sense to the operation as a whole, like for example, marketing.
Thank you so much, everyone. Congrats for the event. I wanted to ask about the financial aspect. I mean, not about the financial aspect, but I wanted to talk about human capital. If we can come up with a graph like we do with revenue, margin between 2016 and 2024, what would we say in terms of culture from 2016 to 2024? I think there were a lot of changes in the company. What could we see in terms of something tangible?
What could we change, especially after Fabio Barbosa came in? I'm going to ask Paula to answer.
That's a very important question because, I mean, in the middle of this eight-year journey, there was a moment where we couldn't really say who we were. It's very hard to talk about culture when you don't know exactly who you are, and that also impacts how you operate. The decision to go back to our roots has a precondition, which is to go back to our culture with how we move our resources and where we put our resources. Paula?
Hi, good morning. When João talks about going back to our culture, first, we have to go back to our essence, to our reason for being. We have to have that vision, and it's part of everything that we do.
When I look at everything that we're creating and we've been building, basically, we're stimulating four drivers that we've been measuring in a very objective way. We're talking about delivering integrated results, stimulating an organization more and more that has very clear accountability. We also promote with processes and with relevance to our customers. In order to be able to achieve all that innovation, we also stimulate curiosity. We do have a culture that will help us go back to the past, but will also throw us into the future. That's the framework of our management model that will give us a very clear direction as an organization. It'll give us very objective goals. We have clear goals, and we have incentives that are completely aligned to everything that we do. We have to ensure performance that's also part of our cultural model and accountability.
That is very encouraged. In that period, we have some going back to what we were. We have to also now look at the market, our customers, our competition. We have to be more agile in our execution, and we have to have accountability so that our efforts are consistent. I think that's what characterizes these last two, three years.
Question for Paula. I would like to hear a bit more about the online channel and the evolution of the company as a whole. What's the performance of the online channel made directly by the client, directly client, not through the Natura consultants? How will that online grow? Natura will participate directly through marketplace, TikTok shop, e-commerce, or will it be an effort to leave the consultant in the center? We had a stigma that was difficult to overcome.
I would like to know what your perception is both in Brazil and Hispana.
Excellent question. We are growing at double digit in the online channel, especially in direct e-commerce. We believe that the relationship of the consultant is very important in any phase of the journey. Consumers have a preference. That transition of platform and new experience, we are incentivizing clients to go in and be able to directly make possible the relationship and the revenue. We also have social commerce, which is the digital media of the consultant outside our channel. When we stimulate direct contact with consumers and also the consultants have their own personal media, that should be separated through time.
Our priorities strategy is in our proprietary e-commerce, not only because we control the experience and we have the entire portfolio, but we also have the acquisition of consumers, and it's also more profitable. The marketplace is very relevant, especially in some countries like Argentina, where marketplace represents 60% of the online revenue. We cannot exclude that because we would exclude a lot of customers in that journey. These two journeys complement themselves, and we have been able to implement them with success.
We have to finish our Q&A session due to time. Thank you very much for answering the questions. Now, let's break for a bit so that we will be able to talk about profitability, but without being hungry. Take a bite, and we'll be back in 10 minutes with the other blocks. We will have to begin, sorry.
Please take your seats. Silvia, please come to the stage. Gente, então só para relembrar. Let me remind you, we still have two blocks led by our CFO and other members of the committee. She will talk about profitability and cash flow. I'd like to call here to the stage. Silvia, please. Gente, vocês me escutam?
Okay, the microphone decided to fall off, so everybody would have time to sit down. Is somebody interested in cash flow and profitability? We can go straight to Q&A. What do you think? This is the final block of our presentation, and after that, we will have a session for Q&A. It is very good to be here with you. I'd like to thank you for your presence and talking here, reassuming our Natura Day and opportunity to hear other voices from me and Helena and others.
This strategic cycle that we're talking about releases the value of existing assets. It has a very attractive profile in terms of risk and return. That, together with the end of the transformation cycle, opens a series of opportunities. JP talked in the beginning of his presentation that today we would talk about returns. We will begin talking about profitability. In this first block, as in the previous one, I will take a step back and show you what we capture with wave two in four of the six countries. We will take a look forward to understand how these growth levers will impact each one of the P&L lines. Let's talk with the gross margin. We will begin with 2022, with the year previous to the first combination, and we'll end with 2024. Remember that Mexico and Argentina have not been combined.
Mexico was just combined, and we will capture the efficiencies later. Integration of Avon in Natura's platform brought benefits in terms of gross margin for both brands, but especially for the Avon brand, as you can see in the column of 2024. Why did it benefit more the Avon? Because Natura's platform is solid and very successful and thoroughly tested. It enabled Avon to have access to tools that allow a better balance between price, promotional discounts, and incentives. In addition to that, in this journey, we had a strong use of portfolio, especially in Avon, but also in Natura. That contributed to the better gross margin because this use of portfolio was done based on the contribution margin of each category. It was done to promote profitability. In addition, we also captured benefits from the manufacturing journey.
We gained productivity in manufacturing due to the concentration of volume, but also taking the Natura brand to manufacturing sites that were only for Avon, like in Argentina. That journey continues. It is a journey that will continue being pursued because we have space to take more products of the Natura portfolio to those production sites. In that journey, we had a better mix of brands in the country, Natura becoming part of the total basket of the region that Diego mentioned. The Avon consultants began to buy more Natura products. That contributed to the evolution of our margin. If we do not consider Mexico and Argentina, we already gained 570 basis points compared to 2022. The structural gross margin of Avon will always be lower than that of Natura.
Firstly, because it has a more affordable price positioning and has a portfolio that penetrates a different audience and has a brand with strengths and positioning that will be different from now on. That does not mean that we do not have opportunities to reduce the gap between the gross margin of both brands. There are important progresses in the portfolio, which is now smaller, better targeted at the spaces that we want to occupy that will help us to increase our sales. We will better work with obsolescence, in addition to the differentiation levers that will be combined with the portfolio. The message of this slide is that we already captured 470 basis points. We still have Argentina and Mexico to capture the synergies.
We also have the levers that we identified to reduce the structural gap between the gross margin of Avon and that of Natura. Now, talking about SG&A, we captured benefits first by optimizing the sales force. We brought the countries to respond closer to the benchmark of the region, which is Brazil. In addition, all the logistic consolidation process was we integrated CDs. We closed distribution centers, as Fernando mentioned, in Argentina. We revised the logistical network that allowed us to deliver in all the regions and have a more productive order that helped to improve the logistic performance. Here, looking at the future, we will capture in Brazil more opportunities in terms of network efficiencies that we have been designing since we have been consolidating the businesses. We also captured efficiencies by simplifying the administrative structures and by reducing 40% of our systems.
Diego said that one of the challenges of Hispana is that Hispana worked with different systems between countries that were not harmonized, and that generated management complexity that was very high. We have advanced in that journey, and we will continue to make progress to cost reductions, but also a better way of managing the systems. During this period, we also saw in the revenue curve evolutions that we had a difference. Was it because there was a reduction of planned growth of the channel because of the reduction of the platform, or due to that new management of the combined portfolio that compromised our capacity to dilute the expenditures? Now, looking to the future, you will hear me say that Mexico and Argentina have not been included in 30% of the Hispana revenues. A lot to include.
We decided to reinvest in initiatives that are fundamental to enable the strategies that we are showing here, structural initiatives that are very relevant for this journey that will enable us to capture more efficiencies throughout time. We began to invest again in marketing with better returns, using precision marketing in that journey to be able to increase brand differentiation and improve conversion. We invested again in innovation, which is essential both for Natura and especially for Avon. Now that we have the distribution centers here, our way of managing the portfolio will be much more agile and targeted at the specific needs that we have in the region. In addition, we invested structurally in reviewing the end-to-end planning that allows us to increase cash flow, to increase cash flow and profitability.
It's a very important project with the structural investment and this year with a focus in Brazil and Mexico. These are the two priority countries. In addition to that, since last year, we began to invest again in products and in financial products and services that give returns in terms of productivity for the sales force, in addition to enable the capture of data, which is very important in our strategy, which is increasingly closer to the final customer and increases the customization of the relationship. We also invested in digitization of the experience of our consultants, their journey, digital products for our network in line with social commerce and with other functionalities that help consultants to have a better digital management of the channel. We also invested in our journey to the final customer. We implemented Salesforce for the e-commerce journey.
These investments, these structural investments that we made will now be rolled out to the next Hispana country. The structural phase of the investment has been already concluded. This is a very important journey where Brazil began to capture these benefits much more. Hispana, now from Mexico, they will begin this journey. You can see here that we began with an SG&A of 49.6%, but we grew due to the strategic investment that we decided to do that will enable us to capture resources as of 2026. Here, it is important to bear in mind that we are going through a very disciplined process of project approval. We have individual business cases, and we approve the project considering the ROI. Now, with this transformation journey, these projects will compete for resources even more.
To increase investments, only those that have the best ROI and those who have a shorter payback. That is applied to everything. Also for Avon Products, where we have benchmarks that have to be delivered, otherwise we will not increase those investments. We are focused on return. That journey that we began in 2022 with Fabio leading, and that we will continue in that same journey. You must be thinking, but what is the level of investment for the future? When we see the historical levels of Natura before the beginning of the acquisition process, our intention is to go back to the CapEx and OpEx of that time, obviously correcting for the intangible impact for OpEx. This is how we are projecting things for the future.
Go back to those levels of CapEx and OpEx before the beginning of the inorganic growth of the company and a commitment with profitability. We expanded margin in the last three years, and our commitment is to sustain this expansion journey for the future. To sustain that journey, we have to continue establishing a balance between investment and return to be able to sustain that pathway. Gross margin, that was what promoted or encouraged our profitability throughout that period, like I just said. There is something very important to mention also. If we excluded these strategic investments that we decided to carry out, would we have a recurrent profitability? Yes, of 17%. This is just for you to understand the potential given the choices that we're making. Now let's do a recap of the second wave. You'll recognize this slide.
It is the same slide that we presented in August 2023 to tell people what we were doing in the second wave. The second wave has a main focus, which is profitability and cash flow, even if we had to let go of growth. Throughout this journey, Natura continued to grow and gain market share, but Avon lost relevance. Today, Avon, with all of the combined countries, has a positive contribution margin, and it also generates cash flow. The implementation of the second wave put us in this position, and it made it possible for Avon to grow. When we were talking about the slide, we commented that the profitability was about 20%, and Avon had a potential to improve its profitability. In the combined countries, we can already see that potential being captured. Besides that, a very important point is the following.
Because in the beginning, we mentioned that we learned a lot with the first countries that we integrated, right? Based on those learnings, we changed the implementation curve for some countries, so Mexico and Argentina in 2025. That was different than what we had planned. In the initial curve that we shared with you, there would already be a reduction in the transformation costs that would be more significant now in 2025, but the risk was too high. We waited for Argentina and Mexico, but we did not invest any more than we had planned. It was all aligned with the approved business case when we approved the program together with the board. Even though we redid the phasing of the countries, we do not have any—we did not go against the original business plan. Final messages.
The second wave, until now, with four of the six countries integrated, and it'll continue to be this way for Argentina and for Mexico, makes it possible to unlock value and profitability for the company. It also strengthens our way of executing. This is a very complex project. After a lot of learnings, we now know that we are going to capture a lot with Argentina and Mexico. Now, let's think of the future. If we look towards the future, what is our expectation? To continue expanding our profitability year on year. There's a difference as of 2026. With the end of the transformation cycle, the recurrent and reported margin will converge. We will have no more adjusted EBITDA. We will manage the company with the reported EBITDA. It's a lot more simple, direct, and focused on allocating our investments.
Something that's also important to mention is that only in 2026 will we complete the full capture of the wave two efficiencies or of the second wave efficiencies. There are things that we will be doing that will support all of this process. We'll also have the impact of the growth levers that we saw. This is a company that has solid plans to grow. We will be diluting or diversifying in order to contribute to profitability. Okay, now let's talk about the new disclosure. João Paulo already mentioned opening profitability between Brazil and Hispana, but it's very important for you to understand a little bit more of what you're going to see. I'm just anticipating a part of the disclosure. In the end of the presentation, you will see all of the items that will be included in the disclosure.
This is something that you all asked for in the surveys that we carried out. Thank you so much for participating, by the way. You wanted us to open up the region. You will have access to an operational DRE for Hispana and for Brazil. This is very important because we manage the company per region and per country. We have strategic levers that are very, very clear for each one of the regions. For you to be able to follow up on the execution of our strategy, you have to be able to follow up on the performance of each region. What did we do? Everything that has to do with central costs and investment that now is allocated in Brazil, mainly, we split it up between the two regions using revenue as a criteria.
This data that I'm showing you is not audited data. They may go through some changes before we officially report all of this. What did we see? We saw that there is margin in our main market, which is Brazil, which is now more solid. It was already a solid margin, but with the incorporation of Avon, it is more solid now. This is without capturing logistics efficiencies that we will have as of 2026, and also without all of those growth levers that we saw for Brazil. You can see 2016 versus 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. Whenever we show the first trimester of 2025, it is important to highlight that the quarters will not be linear and that we will have volatility between the quarters. I have always mentioned this, especially now in Q2 and Q3, that we have the combination of Argentina and Mexico.
Q1 is a reference, but it's important to keep this in mind. There will be volatility in the quarters, especially now in Q2 and Q3. Let's talk about Hispana now. Hispana, like Diego mentioned before, it's a completely different region. It's a region that was a pioneer for various countries. It became number one brand in all countries except for Mexico, and it increased market share. That doesn't mean that there are no opportunities. Hispana is very complex, and it's important for us to know this. The Avon mix and housing style is more than double than Brazil. There's an operational complexity that is very different to Brazil. Here we can see 2016, 2024, and the first quarter of 2025, which has 6.5%.
Remember that this does not have 70% of the revenue of the region that we are going to capture from here on out, thinking of the combination of the businesses. I wanted to call Diego on stage because he is going to talk about that profitability bridge.
Thank you so much. Please stay on stage with me. Okay. Now let's go to that parking lot where we had put some things, where we had put a pin on some things. I am going to talk about profitability. I am the one who took on the commitment to make this a reality. We have been talking about Hispana, and we know that there is a huge growth opportunity in top line, right? Now we see these profitability figures of 2.8%. I am sure, I mean, these are scary numbers. It is a low profitability number when I see the comparison with 2016.
I mean, at 2016, that was 100% Natura, and now this is at 2024 with 40% Avon and 60% Natura. João Paulo talked about the allocations. If I looked at this 2016, comparing it in allocations, it would be a single digit, high single digit, but still single digit nonetheless. Besides that, the first message that I want to give you is that that 2.8, it is low. It does not seem low. It is low. We have to work on it. This concerns us. There is a significant improvement when I compare it to what that figure was 18, 24 months ago, which was before the first wave of wave two. All of the countries that we consolidated businesses in wave two increased significantly in terms of profitability.
You do not see that figure from 18, 24 months ago, but this low figure is considerably higher than what we had 24 months ago. It is also the average in the middle of an implementation. When you look at Q1 of 2025, you can see where we may be standing today. Now I want to talk about why this figure, even though it has a relevant gap, or because it has a gap with Brazil, is also a profitability opportunity for us. Let us explore that. One of you asked, "Can we see a bridge, even if it is illustrative, of how we are going to navigate that profitability journey?" We created it during the break. This is an illustrative bridge. The first comparison is quite clear, right? Brazil with 22% profitability and Hispana with 6.5% profitability. This is quarter one, right?
We have three blocks, three levers in order to increase our profitability. The first one was very discussed. Wave two and 70% of Hispana. Everything that we've discussed till now is less than 30% of our business. We still have another 70%. The second lever has to do with growing our top line, that new universe of opportunities that is opening up for us after standardizing models, processes, and systems. This will allow us to evolve in our management. It'll also give us top-line growth, and this will help us diversify costs, expenses, and we'll go into a virtuous circle of investments of our brands. The third lever has to do with that cross-selling strategy, like Silvia said. Avon has a 40% weight in our mix today. That cross-selling strategy will allow us to develop both brands.
Remember, household penetration for Natura will, the growth in sales and the cross-selling strategy focusing on Natura will change the mix of our brands in the portfolio and in our sales. That will increase our profitability in a significant manner. These are the three most important levers that we have nowadays. Some are short-term and some are medium-term, and they will materialize themselves in the upcoming quarters and years. We will have some obstacles, some volatility, definitely. The path has been set. This is how we want to navigate our profitability in Hispana. We are totally committed and totally focused on this. Sorry, I can't show you figures. These graphs are just illustrative, like I said, right? This was just to answer one of the questions that you asked before. I will give you two hints.
Let's say somebody from business is talking about profitability, but I have a background in finance, right? I hope that you can feel my enthusiasm when I talk about this journey, which is the same enthusiasm that everyone from Hispana has, and we're all committed to making this a reality. Back to you.
I wanted to highlight something that you can see on the graph. Wait, wait, Diego, come back, come back. Don't run away. Here I am. Okay, you see, and Diego mentioned this before when he was talking about the growth levers, you can see that we have a huge opportunity in Hispana, no doubt about that, be it in top line or in profitability. The main lever for this journey is the penetration of the Natura brand.
This is a brand that we know how to operate, that it's extremely solid, and it has a unique portfolio. This will help us mitigate risks in this plan. We are not talking about sustainable growth due to the expansion of Avon. We have a journey with a concrete plan to deliver, but like Patxi said, it's not in the very short term. This plan for profitability and growth of Hispana is sustained by the Natura brand.
Exactly. It is the focus of our strategy. Exactly. N ow I can leave?
Yes, now you can leave the stage.
Okay. Thank you.
Paula mentioned that she loves retail. This is my favorite part. I love cash flow. Let's talk about some cash flow levers. There is a disclaimer that I have to make.
All of the figures that I'll show you are based on the public finances, the financial aspect that is public. This here excludes the holding and excludes Avon International, okay? All of the information is public. You can see a comparison of our cash flow in 2023, the evolution in 2024, and these are the main lines. We finished 2024 with a conversion of 57% of the EBITDA. This is very important when we compare it to 2023. It's an evolution that is based on working capital efficiencies. They were more than enough to compensate a greater payment of taxes. This is very solid. This is without all of the efficiencies that are coming up. I lost my slide. See, they don't want me talking about cash flow. What happened? My slides are gone. Oh, there we go. Okay.
This is another way of seeing it. This is based on the cosmetics DF. We opened the operating working capital. This number does not include all of the parts in Latin America. Why? The different entities of Avon throughout the journey were acquired by Natura Cosméticos. Before that, they were consolidated in Avon International. Here we do not have Mexico. Throughout time, part of the countries are being included. This does not really change our direction, right? This is useful for us to understand what we are seeing in terms of operating working capital. First, we finished 2024 with operating working capital of 11% of the revenue, which is better than the average that we have seen. We still have efficiency to capture here. Let's talk about accounts receivable.
Zé Manuel talked a lot about the pay dynamic and how he promotes prosperity and profitability for our relationship network. What's the important message here? As of 2024, we increased penetration of financial products and services. This increase consumed more receivables, but always against the EBITDA. The receivables management will always flow. We're only going to consume more if we're bringing in more EBITDA. Today, with pay, we have a whole toolkit to be able to manage credit. And this is one of the reasons why, I mean, we managed to increase or decrease deadline, work on approvals. We have individual scores for each consultant. So we have the information necessary so that we can be better in our accounts receivable, and we also have a good source of funding. We're very competitive. So the message here of accounts receivable is if we increase penetration.
In 2024, there's a very important point that I didn't mention. The Avon base entered after we acquired it in Brazil, and that increased our average time of receivable by six days. They didn't have access to those services. Now we have an average term of six days. We're expecting that the focus is on Argentina and Mexico, but looking towards the future, as of 2026, we don't expect a level greater than the ones we've seen today. Even with the expansion of Hispana, there are opportunities to increase efficiency here in Brazil that will mitigate certain impacts. The message is a fluid management where we have the toolbox to do it. Looking toward the future, we don't expect to see a higher penetration than we see now, even with the expansion of Hispana. Now, let's talk about providers, about suppliers.
We did work with our suppliers that were very important so we could better balance receivables with payables. We expect to sustain this journey. Remember that these numbers, please pay attention to the trends, but not the numbers because we still have to include some countries. Now, let's talk about stocks. It is a strategic lever of optimizing the operational working capital, and we have opportunities to capture value in the future. Since this theme is very important, I would like to call my colleague Josie to share with you what we have seen in this journey.
Thank you. Thank you very much. See you. Okay. Let's start. You can share my content as well. Okay. Okay. I am here on the stage. It is a pleasure to be here with you and to show our commitment and our trust with this journey that is so strategic for Natura.
I remind you that we have already operated in 2023 and 2024 with very healthy levels of stocks. We're talking about 9%-10% of the net revenues. We see important levers for the next three years with an increasingly efficient curve. These three vectors are behind all this. The first one that was mentioned by many of us is simplification and harmonization of the portfolio, focusing especially on Hispana and on Avon portfolio. I'm not talking only about finished products, but also about raw material because now we have that in-house. We have the opportunity to improve all this. The second very important vector that has been well explained by Silvia when we talk about gross margin and production in Hispana. Until 2020, a good part of the volume of Natura sold in Latin America and Hispana was produced in Brazil, here in Cajamar.
This year, 2025, we are going to have the record of more than 50% of all the revenues sold in Latin America is being produced in Latin America. We have three production hubs. One that came with Avon in Argentina, another own factory that came with the acquisition of Avon in Mexico, and the third one in Colombia. That ensures us, in addition to inventory management efficiency, the capacity to react to variations in demand, reduce time to market, and an improvement in gross margins, as Silvia mentioned. A third vector that was mentioned by all of the presenters, there was not one did not talk about integrated planning, which is one of the strategic programs that's the most important for us. It integrates the entire sales planning from suppliers, from the plans, from distribution channels up to our clients, giving sellout data for sales.
That allows us to have new processes and systemic chassis in real time with artificial intelligence. With this, in addition to eliminating the intermediary stocks and reduced times and more efficient stocks at management, I can increase my speed to react to variations in demand. We trust a lot in this plan. We have a lot of people involved in that, and we know that this is a pillar to have better competitivity in terms of cash flow.
Here we have a concrete example of one of the returns that we will capture with that investment. We decided when we invested in integrated planning, which is a very important lever. Today, we gave go live of this tool in Brazil. It is a historical landmark with tangible deliveries as of next year.
We begin to capture a bit of that benefit now, but the full benefit in Brazil and Mexico will be captured in 2026. Another point that José mentioned, which is essential in the Hispana journey, is we still have product; we still have a portfolio of products that are not harmonized. This integration of planning and harmonization will give more benefits.
Another very important thing is our integrated results, both in integrated Hispana production and also integrated planning, are very important. That is really aligned with our public com mitments.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, let's continue our journey. Taxes. That is another important lever. Today, we have a tax rate that is higher than in Brazil due to the complexity of the operations outside Latin Brazil.
Taking the tax rate of Brazil, we can work with it through subventions and subsidies to be able to optimize our process with historical subsidies. Now, by doing reverse incorporation, we are unleashing our potential that will contribute to a better management of our effective or real tax rate. First, we're going to simplify our structured capital. Second, the holding expenses will be together with the paying entity. We have exemption benefit. In addition to that, by doing reverse incorporation, we unleash the possibility of assessing other initiatives, of capturing benefits that in the past we were not able to capture. We are carrying out assessments to understand if we have conditions and also to support the management of the tax rate to enable us to capture additional benefits. It's not only reverse engineering to alleviate our taxes.
In wave two, in each one of the countries that we integrated, once we revise the society structure, it allowed us to make a better use of credits and also of accumulated losses. Wave two, with different features between countries, also contributes and will continue to contribute to this journey of making our tax rate more efficient. Another thing which is important is MAP, which as soon as we do the migration and we continue on migration, which we have part in our commercial entity and part is on MAP of our credit portfolio, when we finish that transition, that will enable us to have better benefits. With the integration, we will have a less complex company. Wave two also simplifies the way we operate. Now we have a blackout. No slide, no lights. Okay. Good.
As I was saying, the benefits of having a simpler company, including capital structure and business operations here. I am comparing the conversion of cash flow in Natura before the inorganic acquisition when it was a simpler company with a simpler business model. We began from a cash flow conversion rate that's very good, 66%. Now we will reconnect with strengths that we had in the past. We are going to talk about capital structure. Today, we have a capital structure with a very healthy leverage. After a roller coaster experience, after that, we reinforced our discipline focusing on return. Now we have net debt. That's 1.27x of our EBITDA or our net debt and EBITDA ratio. That shows that that discipline is required, and we are going to enhance it as we have done in last year.
It is a level of net debt and EBITDA that supports our growth lever that will bring growth to the company and will have a profitable return. Our amortization timeline is also very healthy. We have a first relevant due time in 2028, which does not put on us a short-term pressure that can compromise our strategies with the required investments. In addition, we have a balance between debt in BRL and debt in USD that favors our total cost. Our debt in USD, which were bonds issued in 2021, they have a very competitive cost compared to other similar instruments in the market. Here, I would like to connect this with another point, which is very important. Today, we have 60% of our debt linked to green indicators, and we want to take that to 100%.
We will not make any investment that's not connected to social environmental indicators. Our investments are connected to carbon footprint and to recyclable plastic. It's a clear commitment, as you saw with the product, the concentrated moisturizer. We also did an investment linked to bioactives, which is very relevant for IFC and IDB that show a consistency of our business model. Why should we link our—and why is it important to link our journey to the increase of bioactives? That feeds our Ekos lines, which is one of the most powerful lines of the company because it generates prosperity and income to Amazon communities that maintain the forest preserved. That's embedded in our business model, and we will continue to make progress and to advance with this commitment. In terms of instruments, we have a lot of instruments that allow us to manage that.
We also issue investment tools, part with returns and others without returns, to contribute to that regeneration journey, especially in the Amazon. Now, for the rating agencies that are here, with this level of net debt to EBITDA and with this timeline of debt payments and with this return with green value, we have a very positive return. Now, let's take a look at our shareholders at the market. Our in-home model shows a WACC minimum of 1.0-1.5, and we will maintain that in the future. That optimal capital structure linked to a journey of consistent expansion of profitability and EBITDA we had in the last few years. Additional capture of cash flow efficiencies that begins with a solid level will support our reassuming our commitment of good returns with the shareholders.
We repurchased shares, but now with reverse incorporation, we're going to unleash possibilities in terms of dividends. JP said that Natura was a high dividend and yield company. When we finish our strategic assessments of the international Avon operation, that's our commitment: high yields and high shares. Begin to return to being that company. Okay. You heard a lot of information, and this is the last slide. I will try to do a recap to help you understand the impacts of everything we've done in each one of the lines. Let's see. In top line. In top line. What did you hear me say in top line? We're going to defend our strengths: leadership in Latin America and in Brazil, and also in fragrances, body. To sustain this leadership, that means that the Natura brand will continue its journey of increasing its market share.
We also talked about omnichannels. For every five points of increasing penetration in the mix, in the non-VD channels, we speed up the growth of the region 1.7 percentage points above the market for every five points in penetration. When we talk about categories like hair care, based on our market share, for every two points of increase in market share, we increase the growth of the region in 1.3 percentage points above the market average. These are levers that can have concrete impacts. Avon, with the plan presented by Tati, in which we believe a lot in that new management of the brand in the new positioning, it makes an enormous difference to be able to have autonomy to manage the brands. That is one of the great reasons why we trust that we are capable of reverting that scenario of Avon. Of course, there are risks.
That's why we have clear benchmarks. Penetration of Natura in Hispana, the penetration is way below 54% as in Brazil. These levers can help us or help the company begin to grow again at levels that are more harmonized between all the countries in a tangible manner. Let's talk about profitability. I talked about gross margin. We have a space to reduce the gap between the gross margin of Avon and that of Natura. In addition, we will capture efficiencies of SENA with wave two in Mexico and Argentina. When we talk of Natura, Natura historically, before the acquisitions, had profitability that was high pin and low to end. That's an important reference considering the simplification process that we are going through. We have a potential of unleashing that in addition to the progress in Hispana.
Let's talk about cash flow receivable with a fluid management and stocks with clear optimization levers, be it simplifying portfolio or integrated planning from end to end or location of products within Hispana to reduce the dependence of exporting products from Brazil. Payables that we're going to sustain the level that we have with a very important work of the supply team. Taxes, we're going to unleash levers with the incorporation in addition to the wave two and the pay. All of this to help support our journey to continue expanding in terms of profitability and cash flow specifically. This is a recap so that you can understand where the opportunities are. João Paulo also mentioned in the beginning that it's interesting. I mean, the integrated result is interesting to us, and it's more than just the financial impact. It goes beyond that.
We're also interested in the economic impact with the integrated P&L journey and the tool that we have that measures our integrated result. You saw that we ended 2024 with 2.5 of positive impact. We have a public commitment that is in our annual report that until 2030, we're going to increase this impact from 1 to 4. Now it's 1 to 2.5. This commitment is a commitment that shows what our integrated model is all about and the potential that we have to transform socioenvironmental challenges into business opportunities. Just to finish, all the plans that you see include risk, but we focus on return. We're monitoring. We're paying attention to where we allocate everything. We're paying attention to all of our initiatives.
All of this linked with our capacity to execute and with the examples that we make things work, we can capture all these opportunities that were mentioned today. That is what I wanted to say about cash flow. Now Helena is going to give you the rest of the details on the disclosure.
Okay. Let's try to understand this next part. Before that, I'd like to say that this new disclosure will only show up when we have the reverse incorporation. As you know, this is being done tomorrow. You will be able to see this as of Q3 this year. Hold on to your anxiety and curiosity. We've given you some ideas of what you'll be seeing.
Before I give you this disclosure, it's important that you understand that a lot of the improvements that we have to do in our communications have to do with the fact that the current disclosure doesn't include the levers that we mentioned today. We have to always talk to you to get data from an annual report, from a release so that we can give you the information on these levers and how you can follow up on them. It was based on this that we created this new disclosure proposal. Let's see what it's all about. We discussed the different levers, right, like channels and omnicanality. Now we show the percentage of the channels. What we're going to show you is digital, retail, and direct sales. Then the nominal part. Then we'll see the number of clients identified.
Paula and José and João Paulo talked about how important it is to have this data and the number of identified clients. This is also something that we're going to start showing you in the consolidated report. Thinking of retail, we have the amount of stores and SSS. Now we're going to break it down by region. Before, we used to show this number qualitatively, but now you'll actually understand it. Now direct sales. That is our strong suit. Because of the second wave, we would give you the information on the amount of consultants. We stopped. We just started showing the trend in terms of % year on year. Now we're going back to the number of consultants, and the breakdown will be by region. Emmana Pay, which is something very important that we discussed all day today.
I mean, Agenor, Diego, Paula talked about how important this platform is. We are also going to offer more operational data to you because you even asked a very important question to Zé, and this will help you think more on this topic. We will also include TPV, active users. This is new to you. Credit penetration with the percentage of sell-in. Now we are going to directly give you this figure. The 90-day NPL. This will be consolidated because Emmana Pay is starting in Hispana. We will give you the consolidated figures. We also include brands. This will be the nominal revenue breakdown. Now we want to make life easier for everyone. We will have one for Natura, Avon, Home, and Style, and it will be a region breakdown. ESG.
This is data that we would offer quarterly back in 2016. Now we're going back to our origin. We are disclosing these figures as well. We include absolute carbon emission and the percentage of recycled plastic from post-consumption. Remember that our commitment is to show you scope one and two till 2030 and reduce scope three together with our suppliers. In terms of recycled plastic, we are committed to have 50% of recycled plastic in all of our packaging up to 2030. I have to read this because I'm so tired. I can't even memorize the numbers anymore. Sylvia, Agenor, and Diego mentioned this, so I don't have to repeat myself, but we're going to have DRE till EBIT. This is broken down by region. That's what we wanted to tell you in terms of new disclosures.
The graphs that you saw today are illustrative, okay? There are no subliminal messages here. We're showing you trends and not projections, okay? I just wanted to highlight that. I know that you're antsy for the Q&A to start, so let's start with the Q&A. I'll just call everyone back on stage. Okay? Two people had raised their hands before, and they didn't get to ask their questions. If you can please raise your hands, you can ask your questions first. Okay. Let's start with João. First question from João.
Good morning, everyone. I don't want to focus just on the quantitative and financial aspects. João, I would like to understand what are your priorities.
I mean, I was paying attention to the whole presentation, and the idea that I got is that there's going to be a focus on Natura, on the market share, and make the best of the growth opportunities in hair care in Mexico. And Avon, I'm still wondering because it seems like the innovation will be linked to the brand performance. I wanted to understand a little bit what you're thinking in terms of Avon. And Silvia, if you can explain the opportunities and techs, how can we expect gains? Please tell us a little bit more about.
You're not wrong. The priority is Natura. Diego mentioned this, and he explored it quite well. The priority is Natura, definitely. What is the role of Avon? First of all, remember the message that we mentioned in the middle of the presentation.
Avon in Latin America generates a positive contribution margin, and it also generates cash flow. If it did not exist from one day to another, we would have to cover fixed costs in a way that I do not know how we would do it. It did become a cash flow generator after the incorporation. The only country where that is not true or was not true until last quarter was Mexico. As of now, it is also true in Mexico. That is the first element that we have to take into account. Avon has the potential to bring in new households and new consultants that will then also be Natura consumers, which is our priority, Natura. Is that true? It is true. I mean, nowadays in Brazil, for example, 70% of households penetrated by Avon were penetrated by a Natura brand. Avon is kind of like a gateway.
Because it has lower prices, it's more affordable. In Hispana, that is 30% of every 10 households penetrated by Avon, and there are a lot more households penetrated by Avon than in Brazil. Why is this? Because we haven't completed the second wave. The first penetration vector or interpenetration. You're not wrong. Avon does generate cash flow. It contributes positively to margin, and it helps bring new households and new consultants because new consultants have an easier time to start. They have an easier time when they start with affordable products. We're going to teach them. We're going to teach them how to work with a more complex portfolio that includes Natura. That's not hypothetical. We did all of these studies that we had to do, and this was proven. That's the goal. Now we have to prove it, right?
We have to prove that it's true. We're not going to waste resources when we attempt to do this. We're going to do this as long as we have good returns, and then we will free up resources for that. I think we're doing well with Avon and the combination with Natura and its strategic role in the region. I mean, I think we can only go up. Even though it wasn't our intention, we saw that Natura took some of Avon's share. The worst that can happen is that that trend is maintained, but we think that we can be better than that trend with an even better return.
Hi, João. I can't really tell you what the levers are, the ones that we're assessing after the incorporation because we're still assessing and evaluating them, but we are always paying attention to opportunities just like we did with wave two or the second wave. We're unlocking value in a lot of countries. We're doing the same analyses in the case of the incorporation.
Okay. Next question, Pedro.
Thank you so much, Helena. Thank you, everyone. The first question, thinking about this growth context, this has to do with cash flow conversion. And so I think that this question is for Paula because it has to do with omnicanality, the D2C, and store proportion. This impacts the ROIC. I'd like to understand a little bit more the amount of CapEx necessary.
If that channel grows faster than the other channels, would that impact the cash flow conversion, the 50-something, 60% that you mentioned before, and the intensity of the country? A second question that I have is I know that João Paulo in the beginning mentioned the international aspect, but these high percentages, this return, are they conditioned to that asset? I mean, I know that's very delicate. I know we can't really disclose much, but I mean, we're very curious about the next steps. Any information or details that you can give us, anything that has to do with initiatives or timing, anything that we can know that you can tell us would be amazing. Thank you.
Paula?
Yeah, sure. I can start. Thank you so much for your question.
First of all, all investments have to give us return, and that's what retail is all about. We linked those stores because we want to promote an experience that is better for consumers from an architecture point of view, a portfolio point of view. These stores have a lot of return. We have stores on Oscar Freire, Shopping Bar, and Rio. They have good return, high investment. The choice of our own stores makes a lot of sense, especially when we're talking about omnicanality and acquisition of new clients, and that becomes more valuable over time, and it offers us more return. It's important to mention that we have a lot of retail formats, and these formats with different investments per square meter, they fit into the regions and into the specific locations that we have that we presented in Brazil and outside.
Our model is extremely efficient, and it shows not only the potential. I mean, we always start with the revenue in that point of sale. Since we work with retail, we can really understand what happens in micro regions, and we also establish measures for franchisees. So we can say that the returns are healthy, they're competitive, and there's no cannibalization with direct sales. The purchasing moments are very different. There is no dilution or spread or diversification, and retail is growing in our regions.
Yes. I just wanted to complement what you just said. The non-VD channels will grow more than direct sales, and they all have a very attractive ROIC, so they will contribute to profitability and to cash flow conversion.
Yeah, we can't be sad if we grow more in another format. That's important to us. If things are working well, there will be growth. Avon.
Oh, yeah, Avon. There's not much I can say right now. I've tried to suggest by looking towards the past, the rigor and the care with which this process has been performed. This separation is underway. It will occur. We don't have control over a series of variables, but this is what made us enthusiastic to project the company without Avon. Of course, we will see, and we also wanted to incorporate the holding. What happened the last few years, this process is underway. As soon as possible, all this will be disclosed, and we will tell you how this will end. Yeah. Pedrinho doesn't let me share anything more beyond that slide, okay?
Latini, okay.
Thank you very much. I think that you offered a very cool vision, especially in Mexico, the growth opportunities for Natura.
I would like to understand, why do you feel comfortable that you will be able to do a cross-sell that's very strong in those silos that are exclusive of Avon to Natura? In Mexico, we have several different aspects. They are close to the United States, some more competitive market, etc. Could you tell us a bit what's the gap between the EBITDA, the gap between Brazil and the rest of Latin America, and also between B razil and Argentina? Did you get the questions? Why are we going to be successful in Mexico?
I'll begin by the end. Argentina and Mexico represent 30%, 70% of Hispanic America, which represents 45% of all Latin America. Its impact will be relevant because almost one-third of all Latin America, I think I will not be able to say much more than that.
What gives us that conviction that we can be successful in Mexico? In Mexico, we have more than one pathway to go through. We have to build brand preference, reach new households with Natura, and transform those households into Avon and Natura users. Preference is the same pathway that we took in all the other countries with the same competitive scenario, and we were successful in all of them. That gives us the conviction that with improved tools than in the past, we will be able to achieve the same thing in Mexico. As to conversion, the experience that we had until now in the different countries where we implemented Wave Two, I'm talking about the two first countries where we did not have major strategies of combined or mixed brand proposal. The consolidation, the increased penetration of Natura was great, was humongous.
That gives us a conviction that with a toolbox with vehicles, building the brand, and after the integration, we're going to be able to go beyond, finish that pathway, and even go beyond with the process that we are conducting in Mexico.
You talked about Mexico and Natura. Natura in the direct sales world is very uncommon because historically, we invested in a balanced way between brand and channel. That's not the dynamic of direct sales in the world because it's multimedia, multi-levels. With multi-levels, the investment goes to the channel, not to building the brand. You will find very few multi-level companies whose brand is desired and loved. In Mexico, we were multimedia. That means that our investments were disproportionately for the channel than for the brand. From now on, once we eliminate that issue, we go back to building on the brand.
Okay, Felipe Rached from Goldman. We talked about cannibalization with the migration of channels, both in marketplace and retail sales, together with direct sales. I would like to understand better how does that dynamic work in your minds in terms of competition? Because one of the advantages of that brand is its capillarity. Once it migrates to the marketplace, your competitors will always be able to use the capillarity of the marketplace. How do you see that if you migrate from direct sales to the marketplace channel? If you could also mention that you said that 90% of the marketplace were not from clients that purchased. How are they able to do that? Is it through MRP?
I'll pass the floor to Paula. Before, I would say that the rules between the channels are not the same. The clients are different. The purchasing occasions are different.
Our strategic choice is to privilege our proprietary channels. That does not mean we are not going to be present in the others. Our proprietary owner, the ones, the businesses that we own have to be more profitable than the ones that we are not owners of.
The channels are very different. We have a universe of consumers that do not buy in direct sales. Even if they had that option, they do not have access to Natura depending on where they are. We have a large universe of consumers that we can conquer through retail or other channels that can become a consumer or a customer of a consultant. It is a vicious circle of complementarity between the channels.
We have different rules for different channels so that we can privilege the most profitable channels or when we want to give a more Natura experience.
The second point is that consultants were already in the marketplace. Because when we went in, we have data that we not only increase our in-house share within Mercado Libre, they also increase. We, as our own companies, it was good and also for consultants because we increased the awareness of the Natura brand in that location, in that channel. When I talked about the 90%, we operate in the 3P modality. That means that I issue the invoice within the marketplace, and that means that I have the data of those clients that purchased there. Once I have a data, I can do a link with our databases, and I can identify purchases in previous years like MRP or other types of transactions. Also, due to the profile, we see the profile of our base and of that client. They are different, but they are complementary.
Also, the portfolio difference of the winning portfolio being a direct sales or a marketplace, they are very complementary. That shows there is still a lot of space for growing without suffering real cannibalization.
I think Danny is the favorite. Danny, I am going to pass the floor to you, and that is the last question.
Thank you for the opportunity again. I have two questions. I do not know if it fits in for José or maybe Diego because you talked about logistics as an opportunity for 2026. Something that is going to be done in some countries is the logistic integration in the orders. In Brazil, that is not done. Sometimes you get two boxes. One is Natura and the other one is Avon. They come from the same place, but both of them are transported separately. That happens in other countries.
Avon and Natura are already integrated as of the first order. I do not know what the opportunities will be when things are generalized in Brazil. Also, the different orders in Mexico, that adds beauty. You have to have a minimum order of one of the brands. You can do a smaller order of another brand, and you can put them together. Can that be done in Brazil as a cross-sell lever? My second question, if you could maybe Diego and Silvia. I am really focused on Diego today. The margin of Argentina. The Argentina margin causes a lot of doubts. As of the fourth trimester, it had been a reason for anguish. Looking at the margin as a starting point, we had positive effects for that brand, and it had a declining trend due to hyperinflation.
Could you tell me how we should consider these in our projections?
As you know, talked about the orders and the combined orders, and then Silvia will talk about Argentina.
Perfect. In Brazil, we had planned more than 70%. As you've seen, the combined portfolio. We're always opening and closing our portfolio. We also have services, tax costs. What we planned in Wave Two is already in accord. Most of the district centers, they also issue Avon. In Latin America, all are combined. The last one to be combined was Mexico this month. In Argentina, next month, they are operating in the same distribution center, the same box as of next month.
As I said in the beginning, the orders are a conversion lever. I can use a lever in anyone.
Once you ask for an order of one brand, you can also have a smaller order of a different product with minimum barriers that will be set. The next day, we have the opposite. You did the Avon order. You can also order Natura. All the countries will be working like that. In Brazil, most of the regions will have combined invoices, especially here in São Paulo.
Okay, Argentina. Argentina, every time that we compare any quarter of 2025 with the respective quarter of 2024, we will have a variation. Because, as you saw last year, the impact of max devaluation had different impacts. In addition, we have movements in the countries. Every time that we compare any quarter in 2024 with the corresponding one in 2024, we will have variations. When we see within 2025, Argentina has seasonalities that are very characteristic.
For example, in Brazil, it's in Q2, and Argentina is in Q3. Sometimes we have it near Christmas. We have different seasonalities. In some countries, you spend more in one quarter and in the other country in the next quarter. We have to customize those promotions. After we stabilize the brands, we expect for a growth journey, even in the quarters where we have expenses concentrated because we can dilute them to the future. When we think in terms of the gross margin of Argentina, considering the macroeconomic scenario that will not be living a hyperinflation that we saw, and we will not have devaluation, severe devaluation, that's a healthy gross margin, which is a little bit below ours. Of course, those margins depend on macroeconomic variations. The projections for this year project a situation that's much more stable than last year.
Okay, let's stop. Otherwise, we will not have lunch, and we will not be able to have our visit. Thank you very much then for your attention. João will give the final words. Just let me give you the final messages, and then I give you the floor. Final messages. Lunch is already served. The activations are open, and we want you to take advantage of if you did not visit the company in the morning. After lunch, the ones who decided to stay for the visit who asked me to switch, we already did the changes. At 2:45 P.M., we will begin the visits here in Cajamar. You are divided by colors, the colors of your bracelets. After lunch, we will begin to gather in groups to be able to do the visits. Now I can pass the floor to you, João.
I will be very brief. I will be very brief if you can show me the pointer. I can do that for you. Come on. I can do that for you. Okay, we are coming to the end. I talked about this journey, this turbulent journey that we went through in the last years. I understand the uncertainties that it awakens: lack of confidence or trust, skepticism. We did not give enough visibility to all the details of our operations. We really understand if there are doubts in your minds. That also reflects on the price of our share. This is an important moment to reintroduce ourselves so that everything that we are can be reconsidered. We had important messages: separation of international Avon. We can project our company without the international part. The company that we will have now is humongous.
It's the leader in the beauty market in Latin America, and it has the power, the means to continue to be that within unseen innovation engine. Also, our experience has made us more rigorous in the way we allocate capital. That's very interesting because the additional value creation opportunities are in our current assets. So the risk, profit, return ratio is much more attractive. Our core business is direct sales, and it is blending with very contemporary sales models. We became a very relevant player in other channels in addition to direct sales, with very good returns and profitability that allows us to be more present in the lives of our customers and in more households in Latin America. In addition, this is a task that Avon can help us to do, to enter different new households and new consultants, and through Avon, make Natura, Natura known.
We also talked of one business that I believe is a jewel in our company, which is Emmanapay. God willing, it will be the theme of many discussions in coming years. I also talked about, you know, everybody reads the same books, everybody hires the same consultancy agents. Now we have to transform all this in action. That is our competitive edge. Our organization, our human capital is a major differentiator. For us, value is not only financial value, it is economic value. We transform social, environmental challenges into business opportunities. Natura, you know, it is worthwhile to get to know it better. It was always present, but we got a bit lost in the way in the past years.
This comeback, when we are reincorporating, holding, being Natura Cosméticos, reinforcing our cultures, our beliefs, our business model, it's just before we are going to be not two three again. It's still full or charge of symbols and symbolisms for us and for the company.
One of our success metrics is if you tell your husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, children what you saw here, what this Natura is all about. We also published a special magazine that you're going to receive. This is the best way to express our stories and our products. The last time we made one of these magazines was five years ago, and now we've done it again because we think it's an important moment to tell everyone who Natura is, what Natura is. I'll ask you someday if you told anyone about what you experienced today. Thanks to all of this symbolism, I remembered a story. It's an African story that I love. It has so much meaning. I don't really mention this story a lot, but I do think that it's important to this moment. The story or the tale of the soul song.
They say that in this tribe, when a child was about to be born, the mother would go to the forest and would stay there listening to the sounds of nature, the birds, the leaves, the water, the animals. At one point, she would start listening with her heart, and she would hear the song, the song of the soul of that child that was about to be born. She would go back and teach that melody to her husband, and both of them would get together with the tribe and teach the melody to the tribe. That song, as of that moment, would be a part of that child's life.
The tribe would sing the song when the child was born, when there were important moments of passage, rites of passage, like when the baby would start walking, go through the teenage years, go into adult life. They would play that song for the last time on that person's deathbed. It was the last thing that the person would hear, and it would just mark the end of a cycle. There was one time, one occasion that was very, very special when that song would also be sung. It was not a rite of passage. It was when that person would just make a huge mistake, maybe hurt himself, someone else, or rob or steal, something morally wrong, and the tribe would get together. They would not expel that person, kick them out, condemn them, yell at them, none of that.
They would sing that person their song to remind them who they are and to get them back on track. I would like to thank all of you for having been with us this morning, singing our song, because today we know who we are. We are back, and we are Natura. Thank you.