Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to Pague Menos and Extrafarma's Conference Call to discuss the results of quarter one, 2023. This conference call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on the company's website at ri.paguemenos.com.br, where the slide presentation will also be available for download. All participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company's presentation, after which we will open the floor for questions. At that point, further instructions will be given. We also inform that this conference call will be conducted in Portuguese by the company's management, and that we have simultaneous translation into English available by clicking on button Interpretation. For those listening to the English version, there's the option to mute original audio by clicking on Mute Original Audio.
The presentation will be in Portuguese, and the English version of the slides is available for download at ri.paguemenos.com.br. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements made during this conference call are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management and information currently available to the company. These forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties, since they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors, analysts, and journalists should understand that events relative to the macroeconomic environment, the industry, and other factors may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today, we have with us Mr. Mário Queirós, CEO, and Mr. Luiz Novais, CFO and Investor Relations Director of Pague Menos. Now, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Queirós to start his presentation. Mr. Queirós, you may proceed. Hello.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this conference call. Today, we will be announcing the results of quarter one, 2023. This was a quarter with mixed feelings. We had some news that were not so positive, but we also had news to celebrate during this quarter. We had a negative net results due to the higher capital cost and the higher interest rates. Also, we had a peak working capital demand during this quarter because all our DCs are fully supplied, both for Extrafarma and Pague Menos due to this moment that we're going through, the integration with Extrafarma.
We also had lower operational results because of all the pressure on our sales expenses, particularly due to these 61 stores that were inaugurated in Q4 2022, and also because of the collective bargain agreement that we have in our largest marketplace setup, where we have the largest number of employees. We also saw our sales level going back to normal during the quarter. We started with a very weak month of January, but we had a very strong month of March with a 20% increase in our total sales for the Pague Menos brand and 16% for the Pague Menos same-store sale. This was a quarter that should be celebrated. We also had other highlights in our digital channels. We had a 60% increase in our digital channels.
For the Pague Menos brand, we reached 12.5% share of our revenue, which is certainly a milestone. For Extrafarma, the share of our digital channels doubled this quarter. In respect to Extrafarma, the greatest highlight was the positive EBITDA that we had in the month of March. We reached break even after only 8 months from the acquisition in August 2022. Now I will hand the conference over to Mr. Novais, and he will talk more about our numbers for the quarter, then I'll be back to tell you more about our customer base, how our customer base is increasing, expanding, and improving its quality, and I'll talk more about our digital channels. Novais, over to you now.
Good morning, everyone. Let's start on page 4 of the presentation.
Mário already talked about some of the highlights, but I'll give you some more information. Here we have five highlights for Q1. The first one is the good sales performance since the ex-COVID testing store sales was 7.2% for Pague Menos and 6.5% for Extrafarma, and I'll talk more about these indicators later. We had an important acceleration in our digital channels, a 66% increase year-over-year, reaching a 12.5% share of the total sales of the company. We also had an increase, both in organic and inorganic increase in our market share, reaching 6.1% in Brazil. We also had a strong expansion in our active customer base.
These are the customers that bought with us in the past 12 months, so we reached nearly 20 million active customers in the company. Another important milestone was the operational break-even, which was reached this quarter. The ex-IFRS 16 EBITDA in March was a positive BRL 3.9 million. These were the highlights of the quarter, and I'll give you more details now. On page number 5, we have the information about our same-store sales for Pague Menos. As I said, 7.2%, excluding the COVID test effects and 4.3% if we include COVID test. The effect of COVID test was very important. In January 2022, we had an important peak-Of influenza Omicron, so the sales volume for this item specifically was very relevant.
In the comparison basis, we have this reducing factor now, but we are maintaining 7.2% same-store sales considering the other items in our portfolio. On the right side, we show the evolution during the quarter. As Mário said, we had a weak January with a negative 2.1 same-store sales, but a positive evolution over the quarter. We finished the period in March with 16% for the month of March and 7.2% for the quarter. The bottom right shows the importance discrepancy between the same-store sales in the different regions. In our store base, so our store base in the South grew 16.3% and in the North and Northeast, 5.1%. We're still seeing relevant growth rates in the South and Southeast compared to the North and Northeast.
On page number 6, we show the evolution of our new openings. We have nearly 200 new stores opened in our new expansion cycle. 80 stores were inaugurated in 2021 and 118 in 2022. The maturation curve is in line with what was planned. We have stores that after one year are reaching 70% of their potential revenues and 2-year-old stores reaching 80% of their potential revenue. City, 76% of the stores have reached their breakeven within three months, which is better than planned. The stores from the 2022 cohort, the 118 from 2022, are evolving at levels higher than planned. We're very happy with this new cohort of stores, which results in a TIR over 20%.
We have some stores with a two-year track record with good maturation curves, which proves the efficiency of our maturation cycle, of our expansion cycle. The Extrafarma sales in quarter one were impacted by the migration of our systems and supply to our stores. This including the Pague Menos stores and the new structure, the supply structure of the company with nine distribution centers. In March, this was already back to normal. This effect was over after the end of February. We see average sales of BRL 500,000 per store with 18% of same-store sales. Levels that are much better than in previous quarter with good prospects for the coming quarters. We close with the next COVID test, same-store sales of 6.5%.
We believe that we will be able to resume a more intense growth cycle for the sales of Extrafarma now after normalization of the supply process and an important inclusion in our assortment, our private label items, digital channels, among other growth elements to increase the sales of Extrafarma. On page number 8, we see our market share. As I said in the beginning, we had positive news. This is the first quarter where we see both organic and inorganic growth. Organic and inorganic together added up to 120 bps in Brazil, reaching 6.1%, 310 bps in Northeast and 660 for the Northeast. 6.1 for Brazil, 19.7% for the Northeast and 14.1 for the North.
We have important expectations in terms of growth of our market share in the coming quarters. The next page shows the two major elements that are driving our market share, same stores and new stores. Using our measuring methodology, Pague Menos grew 11.7% and the market 9.1%. We grew 120 bps over the growth of the market in same stores and 130 bps in new stores above the market levels. We're growing both in new stores and the chains due to the more intense growth in our same stores in the Southeast, which has been showing growth levels above the growth levels of other regions in Brazil. We also see an important deceleration in the growth of independent pharmacies, which is the last column of this chart.
On page number 10, evolution of the product categories. We saw an important evolution in generics and also beauty and hygiene. 26% for generics, which is double what the market is growing. We also grew 28% in hygiene and beauty, particularly in two major categories that are important for us, which is kids. We grew 41% in kids, and dermatology or skin cosmetics, 21%, which are two categories that are also driven and boosted by our digital channels. Very relevant growth. In Extrafarma, we saw an important growth in Rx, which corresponds to the largest portion of sales, 33%, 36%, and due to the expansion in our assortment in Extrafarma.
On the right side, we have the evolution of our private label, which is very positive, 6.7% growth, 6.7% share in Pague Menos, 0.3 percentage points over year-over-year, and 5% in Extrafarma, which is double the share we had year-over-year. This is an important evolution, both in terms of Pague Menos and Extrafarma. On page number 11, we have a strategic KPI, which is the growth of our share in therapeutic classes of chronic patients. Patients that have an average ticket that is higher than that of other customers. The spheres over the dotted line show the categories where we gained share. We gained a lot of share in cardiovascular, nervous system, and a hormone therapy. These are very important categories, very strategic for us.
We also have opportunities in other therapy classes that we are working on, but we're seeing a good evolution in our share for these relevant therapy classes. On page number 12, we have our gross profit and margin. We finished Q1 with 28.9 gross margin in Pague Menos and 29.1 in Extrafarma. In Extrafarma, we are 1 percentage point above the gross margin of Pague Menos. Consolidated was 29.1. We had some margin pressure on Q1 year-over-year, particularly due to the share of the COVID related items that had a gross margin that was much higher than the other items in our portfolio. Also due to the growth of the share of our digital channels that have lower gross margins than our other channels.
In quarter four, we had a seasonal effect of some product categories, and we also had a concentration of inventories in our distribution centers. Our 9 DCs, our inventory is replenished in the first quarter. There's this one-off effect that will be normalized in the rest of the year. In Extrafarma, we had a 30 basis points increase year-over-year and a reduction quarter-over-quarter. The reduction is particularly due to the increase in the share of digital channels and also partnerships and agreements. We're very optimistic about Extrafarma's margin, and it should stabilize at levels above the levels of Pague Menos because the regions are more favorable. Our selling expenses, we finished quarter one for Pague Menos at 19.5% in quarter one.
Here we also had some offenders related with quarter one last year and also quarter four last year. The two main offenders, as you heard from Mário, one of them is the volume of new stores. We have 122 new stores when we compare year-over-year and 65 new stores comparing quarter-over-quarter. This puts some pressure on our selling expenses during the period, but this should normalize, go back to normal in the rest of the year because the stores are reaching their break-even point after three months. This will decrease the proportion of the selling expenses in the next quarters. In quarter one, 2023, we also had a concentration of our investments in marketing. The marketing budget for the year is very similar to that of previous years.
We're just phasing these investments in marketing, and they were concentrated in quarter one. We were one of the sponsors of Big Brother Brasil, the TV show, and this was really helpful. It helped us bring an important volume of new customers to our customer base. I'm going to tell you more about this during my presentation, but we did have a concentration of marketing investments in quarter one. For the coming quarters, these investments will be lower, so we will go back to normal levels. The good news is that in selling expenses, we increased our average expenses per store below the inflation rate. This means we have good control of our expenses. We're working on productivity and all the expenses for our stores specifically.
On page number 14, here we have a combination of the pressure on our gross margin because of the increase in marketing investment in quarter one and the larger proportion of new stores. This puts pressure on our contribution margin. Our contribution margin was 140 basis points lower year-over-year. We understand that this is a very particular moment of the company because of the concentration of marketing investments, because of the number of new stores, and because of the important participation and the fast growth of our digital channels, but we should see a recovery in the coming quarters. In terms of G&A expenses, we finished the quarter at 2.8%, so 30 basis points lower year-over-year. This was an effect of all the synergies captured and the expenses that a company was able to reduce.
Compared with Q4 last year, we have an important effect here, which is the collective bargaining agreement, which happens in our headquarters in Fortaleza every year. This puts additional pressure on our G&A expenses. Also in Q1, we had higher investments in technology services and other costs, outsourcing costs. Compared with Q4 last year, we also have an important calendar effect because in Q1 we have fewer days. This also puts pressure on the proportion of our G&A expenses. For the consolidated numbers, we have 3.1%, so this means we are steady quarter-over-quarter. We are expecting some reductions ahead because now we're going into a more intense stage of synergy captures with Extrafarma, particularly relative to our revenues.
On page 16, for our adjusted EBITDA, Pague Menos had 6.6%, 110 basis points reduction, quarter-over-quarter because of the higher pressure on our margins and G&A expenses and also our selling expenses and reduction in our G&A expenses. We believe that in the rest of the year, after normalization of our comparison basis, excluding the effects of COVID tests and with a more intense increment in the capture of synergies and the normal phasing or reduction of our marketing expenses in the coming quarters, we will be able to go back to normal in terms of our adjusted EBITDA.
Consolidated numbers show 6% of EBITDA margin for quarter one. Extrafarma still has a margin which is much lower than that of Pague Menos. The evolution is very positive, as we can see here on the next slide, page 17. Here, one of the most important pieces of news for quarter one is that Extrafarma reached its operational break even with 2.1% IFRS 16 EBITDA. We finished in quarter one the most critical phase of our migration, which was the systems migration and the supply migration. Whether it's at 340 stores already switched their supply structure to the new structure and the organizational structure of the company is already adjusted. Now we're going to a more intense period of capturing these synergies, although the synergy capture was already above planned.
In the quarter one, we captured BRL 12.2 million in synergies. Annualized, it's close to BRL 49 million. In our schedule, we are two quarters ahead compared with our initial curve for the capture of synergies. We're very, we're going at a very fast pace. Extrafarma is now contributing positively to the company's EBITDA, and will potentially generate cash to dilute all the investments that we're making. On page 17, we have our net results. We're going from a net income in quarter one last year of BRL 24.4 million to a negative BRL 55 million. It was a BRL 80 million variation year-over-year. The main reason here is the financial expenses. We increased by BRL 87 million our financial expenses year-over-year.
We also suffered some pressures on our operational results that we already talked about, but this is a one-off effect, as I said, because of the phasing, the concentration of marketing expenses and other elements that I already explained. Now, with the normalization of our cash cycle that we're going to discuss in the next chart, the capture of the synergies with Extrafarma and all the other elements that we're working on, we believe that we will have a much better situation in the coming quarters for our adjusted result. On page 19, we have our cash cycle and indebtedness. We finished quarter one at a peak investment in stocks, as we already mentioned. We finished the integration period, particularly in terms of stocks. Why did we have an additional investment in stocks during this period?
We have a double safety stock in companies that were suffering with the supply migration. While we were waiting for the full supply migration, we've had to maintain a safety stock in these stores. We have a new stock, a new inventory in our new DC. When we turn that key, that's when we can start mobilizing the reserved stock that we had in our stores. Our expectation is that in quarter two, we will be able to reduce our average stock time in about 10 days or about BRL 250 million, reconstituting our average receive time because we finance this stock by anticipating receivables. We will go back and recompose our receivables portfolio with the mobilization of these stocks. We also had an effect on our drawdown risk.
We had a greatest share of drawdown risk in quarter one. It was 10 days in quarter four and 5 days in quarter one. Part of this was also financed with the anticipation of receivables. We had a moment of higher pressure. As I said, in quarter two, we expect to recover at least 10 days of our stock time, normalizing our cash cycle and starting a cycle of reduction of our indebtedness. We should start to gradually see a reduction in the company's debt as well. One of the measures in this sense was that we decided to reduce the guidance of new openings, which is what we show here on page 20. With the reduce from 60 to 20 new stores. In addition to the investments that we made, we...
We're expecting. We had a higher interest rates. There was also an impact on the participation of the financial results on the company's sales, which was higher than expected. That's why we decided to reduce the number of new stores for 2023 from 60 to 20. The impact on our sales and expansion cycle will be marginal, this will help us with about BRL 100 million in reduction in investments, CapEx and working capital. This, combined with the 10 days of reduction in our average stock term, average stock time, about BRL 10 million, about BRL 250 million, also the growth in our EBITDA and also the tax adjustment, we will start a deleverage cycle for the company.
On page 21, to finish my part of the presentation, as I said, the stock reduction will have a marginal impact on our expansion cycle. We shared with the sell-side analyst during our IPO a projected opening of new stores for 2022 and 2023, totaling 388 stores. Now with the updated numbers, we will have 617 new stores in the same period. We had an additional 229 stores compared to what we had announced in our IPO. Nearly 60% above plan. This means that we are going at a faster pace than planned in terms of our expansion, which will allow us to anticipate the creation of value to the company.
Considering the good performance of the new stores, we already achieved the breakeven point for Extrafarma. The expected value creation for the coming period is very optimistic. I turn it back to Queirós.
Thank you, Novais. Indeed, in addition to an above-than-expected expansion, we also have a lot to say about our customers and how they are behaving. This is our customer base. This resulted from a lot of work in CRM and a lot of work in marketing. We grew nearly 10% our active customer base, customers that made at least one purchase in the last 12 months. From 16 million - 17.5 million, and this is only for Pague Menos. If we combine with Extrafarma, we will have nearly 20 million ex-active customers.
On the right, we have our quick ratio, which is the ratio between new customers and reactivated customers over our dropouts or inactive customers. When we look at the company as a whole, after all this expansion that Novais explained, we grew nearly 27% with a quick ratio of 1.32. This means that for every 100 customers that we lose, we are adding 132 to our customer base. When we look at the same-store sale alone, we also had relevant growth, nearly 14% growth in our customer base. It's not just about growing our customer base, we're also improving the quality of these customers. On this next chart, we see this transition and the way we classify our customers.
This is not just a socioeconomic classification, but also the average ticket of these customers and which categories they buy with us. Of course, the high A customer is the premium customer within Pague Menos. We're seeing more customers going up in these categories, upgrading, than the customers that are downgrading in these categories. We're not just growing our customer base, but we're also improving the quality of the engagement and the share of wallet of these customers, leading to a much higher lifetime value. On the next chart, we see our digital channels. As I said, we had a strong growth in our digital channels, 66%, much above the average of the market and more than double the growth of Extrafarma. Here we see the share.
As I said, 12.5% for Pague Menos. In Extrafarma, we doubled this year from 2.5% - 5% the share of digital channels in Extrafarma. On the right side of this slide, we see the digital channel mix. We had strong growth in our e-commerce. E-commerce here is both desktop and app. We're getting close to 3 million downloads of our app. Also, all the investments that we made in navigability, there's a lot of elements that helped in the growth of our digital channel. Why are we investing so much in our digital channel? Because it's proven that omnichannel customers are more engaged. They have a higher ticket, 3x higher than a single channel customer.
Today, we have 7.5% of our customer base as omnichannel customers that buy in our physical stores, on the website, in our super app partners. The more omnichannel, the higher the average ticket of these customers with us and the frequency and the higher the lifetime value of these customers with us. This is what justifies all the investment that we're making in our digital channel. Now we will open the floor for questions.
Thank you. We will now open the floor for question. We will take questions from investors and analysts. If you have a question, please press raise hand on the bottom bar. If your question is answered, you can remove yourself from the waiting line by clicking on the same button again. Please wait while we poll for your questions. The first question is from Mr.
Mauricio Cepeda, Credit Suisse. Mr. Cepeda, you can ask your question now.
Good morning, Mario and Novais. Thank you for taking my question. First, thank you for clarifying the issue of your working capital. I think it was clear how you explained about the reduction in your receivables. Considering that you have a higher inventories, higher stock levels because of the safety stock during the operational transition, I have a specific question about the pre-price increase, because this is a time of the year where you can have higher stock levels to take advantage of the price difference. Maybe if you can explain more about this working capital, how much of this working capital, how were you able to use to take advantage of the pre-price increase to help with your Q2 margins? My other question has to do with the competition.
You have been gaining share organically. I want to know about the competitive profile. First, is this share coming from independent pharmacies? How do you see the competition versus independence? Also I'd like to know about your competition, the competition for your product mix. I see that for branded drugs, your numbers decrease, but increase for similars. Do you see this as a trend in the market, or do you think this was a more idiosyncratic characteristic of your company?
Thank you, Mauricio, for your question. I'll start with your second question. Then Novais will answer your first question. Yes, as you could see in our slides, we do see a change in behavior of independents. They reduced their growth rates. They had a lot of setbacks during the pandemic due to changes in customer behavior.
The customers stayed in downtown and in the large urban centers, this harmed the independent pharmacies. We saw normalization over the last few quarters. There's also the higher interest rates. If higher interest rates are bad for the large companies, they're much worse for smaller companies. I see that bad payment has been growing a lot for distributors that provide services to independent pharmacies. We have been gaining market share mainly from independents because they are actually our main competitors in our everyday work because of the classes that we serve, the expanded middle class. Now, in respect to the product mix, we have different moments here. Extrafarma used to have a gap in the supply of Rx drugs or branded drugs, when we started to improve the supply, we started to see growth in sales of branded drugs.
In Pague Menos, we have a strong growth of generics. It has to add up to 100%, if you grow a lot in one category, of course, there'll be a drop in another category. We have not yet seen a migration from more expensive products to cheaper products. This we have not seen yet.
Your question about the pre-price increase, Cepeda, thank you for the question. Quarter one was when we finished the migration of our supply process. This coincided with the pre-price increase, we could take advantage of the pre-price increase. We ended up using the same investment to have the safety stock in some of our stores during the migration of the store supply process.
The investments in stock that were made in quarter one, they would have been made anyways to take advantage of the pre-price increase. We had a convergence of two reasons for the same investment. Despite inflation being lower for drugs than last year, the investments would not have been much different, even with the 5.6% readjustment versus the 10.9% that we had last year. This justifies the investments in the pre-price increase period to justify April and May. We had a convergence of the two effects here, Cepeda. Of course, the pre-price increase effect this year will be lower than last year because the price readjustment was lower than that of last year.
We have good elements here that will boost the growth of our gross margin, particularly for Extrafarma, so that we can have a gross margin level similar to what we had last year.
Thank you.
The next question is from Mr. Victor Fuziharo.
Andrea. Victor Fuziharo from Santander. About your same-store sales in the end of quarter one, what is the sales dynamic that you're seeing in the start of quarter two, both for Pague Menos and Extrafarma? The second one is focused on profitability. I think Novais talked about what will be the evolution of your EBITDA margin, particularly for Pague Menos in the next quarters?
Thank you, Victor. I'll talk about our sales, and Novais will talk about the gross margin. The sales, as we said, the vast majority of the market suffered in January, then levels went back to normal in March.
We had record-breaking sales with a growth of 25% for the Pague Menos. Same-store sales were 16%. Extrafarma also had a very strong month of March. In April was a good month. We're very positive regarding our sales in quarte r 2. Of course, with the pre-price increase effect, our results tend to be much better than those of quarter 1. The average sales per store, as we saw in March for Extrafarma, was reaching BRL 500,000 per store. The pace that we saw in April, we're also seeing in the start of May. For Pague Menos, we are also seeing a very good growth pace if we compare. Starting in March, we are seeing very strong sales. Now, can you answer about the EBITDA, Novais?
Yes. Thank you, Victor, for your question.
In line with the previous question, we should see some pressure on our gross margin this year because of the lower price readjustment that we had last year. However, we had some elements that we can work on over the course of the year to decrease or neutralize this effect. Of course, we will also work to have better margin levels than in previous periods. Basically, what we have this year is a year with a lower number of new stores, new openings, so we will see the maturation of the 200 stores that were inaugurated in the past few years. This will already help us bring our margin up. Because it decreases the pressure on our selling expenses this year, specifically for 2023.
For the 200 new stores, these stores are pointing to a formal margin that is better than that of the current portfolio, the current cohort. That's why we're so optimistic regarding our new cohorts of stores, because they're pointing to a better formal margin due to the regions or the combination between real estate and gross margin, which is more favorable. The capture of synergies is also more accelerated now for Extrafarma, which will help us increase our EBITDA for the year. Excluding the additional marketing expenses, the marketing investments in Q1, we have an important reduction in marketing investments in the rest of the year. As I said, the budget is similar to the budget we had last year, so this will also help us improve the effects for the coming quarters.
Also the company, like any other company, we're also working to reduce our expenses, improve our productivity, and increase our sales. We have good elements that allow us to believe that in these three categories, so growth of our sales, March was a great month, April was a good month, and we will have other elements to work on, SG&A and our margin, so we will continue to increase our profitability.
Thank you.
Next question is from Gabriela Ferrante, Safra. Your microphone is open.
Good morning. You saw a higher pressure on your margin due to the higher sales on your digital channels. Are you going to have any changes in pricing of your digital channels to compensate for the situation?
That's a great question, Gabriela. Our name means pay less, Pague Menos in Portuguese, so price is an important factor.
I don't know if you're our customers already on our digital channels. Our prices are really lower on our digital channels. We invested in quality and availability of our tools, both our website and our app, and we are monitoring all the opportunities to improve our margin in some categories and also in some marketplaces. We still see a lot of potential in our digital channels, and this share will continue to grow over the next quarters. We will continue to invest in our digital channels because although the percentage margin is lower, the cash that it brings to the company is very relevant, and we see how important it is to have omnichannel customers. The customers' share of wallet is higher when they're omnichannel.
Particularly in the South and Southeast, the digital channels have been really helping us, even for brand awareness of the company, since we are not leaders in these regions like we are in the North and Northeast. We plan to continue to invest in our digital channels, and we will monitor any opportunity to improve our margins.
Thank you. Next question is from Gustavo Senday, XP.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have two quick questions. The first one is about your working capital. We're seeing an increase in your stock levels in the past few quarters, and you said we should start seeing some recovery and improvement starting in quarter three. What is the expectation for normal stocks? When should we see normal stocks? Do you see any other levers to reach the guidance that you gave for 2024?
The second question is: how can we think about your margin looking forward? You mentioned that for Extrafarma, you had the breakeven in March. Do you have any preliminary data about quarter two that you can give us?
Thank you, Gustavo, for your question. Looking at the stock days, as you heard from Novais, we should start seeing decrease in quarter two, about 9-10 days, going from 129 to 120. We should reach quarter four with even lower levels. We'll see a normalization of our stock levels over the course of the year. The second part of your question... Yes, actually, I have another follow-up question about the first one. Yes, we have the new openings.
We reduced the number of new openings for this year. Go ahead, Novais. Yes, we have the reduction in our guidance for new openings, which will bring us about a BRL 100 million reduction in our investments between CapEx and OpEx. The 10-day reduction, which is equivalent to about BRL 250 million. This will not decrease the leverage, which is at 3 x, but this will recompose our liquidity. We have about 25 days. We will not reach 25 days, but we should be close to 20 days. We have the above-than-expected speed in the capture of synergies. In Pague Menos itself. The store cohorts from 2021, 2022 have a better performance than expected, and this should also improve the EBITDA. We're also working on elements for monetization.
We have an important stock of tax credits, particularly ICMS and fiscal fees. We have with our fiscal team some fronts to accelerate the monetization of these volumes of tax credits that we have in the company. About our margins, Senday, as I said in the previous answer, since this year we have a lower number of new openings, about 20 new openings, we will have a lower pressure of pre-operational and these expenses with sales, the selling expenses compared with our mature portfolio of stores. This will help us recompose our margins. Also the phasing of our marketing expenses and the concentration of marketing expenses in quarter one, this will also decrease in the coming quarters, so this will also help us improve the margin in coming quarters. The capture of the synergies with Extrafarma.
In sum, we have good prospects in terms of improving our EBITDA in the next few quarters considering all these elements that I talked about and all the other fronts that we're working in, margin, price, pricing of our products and expenses, and all the work that we did last year to reduce the personnel in our stores and also general costs in our stores.
Thank you. The next question is from Clara Lustosa, Itaú BBA.
Thank you for taking our questions. About your competitive dynamics and market share, you talked about the context and the high capital cost. We also talked about leverage. Did you see any fragilization of your competitors? Are they also holding back on their new openings?
What could we expect or what do you expect in terms of the evolution of your market share, thinking organically and inorganically, considering the reduction in the number of stores that you will open this year? This is my first question. The other question is also about the leverage of the company. It's very clear that now you're entering a path of deleverage, capturing synergies and working on your working capital, the reduction in your guidance of new openings. My question is more about 2024. You maintain the guidance of 120 stores. Do you maintain the guidance of 120 stores for next year, or what is the target leverage that you want to work with considering this recovery of the faster pace of expansion this year?
Thank you. Excellent questions, Clara. Thank you.
Let's start with your first one. We are seeing the market or our competition also is slowing down their growth. You see that we were justifying our non-gaining of market share because we were not growing organically in the same pace that the market was growing. Now that we are growing 80 stores in 2021, 120 in 2022, of course, we feel this. It would be nice to continue to open stores, but we need to be conservative right now. We need to be diligent. We chose to focus on inorganic growth, and we communicated the market that even after the acquisition of Extrafarma, this would not affect the level of our organic growth. The market has changed. The context has changed.
We were talking about a interest rates of 4.5% when we decided to acquire Extrafarma. The market changed. Interest rates are much higher now, and we have to change with the market. We cannot just stick to what we said years ago. The market has changed, we have to adapt our strategy. We know that we have opportunities in organic growth. However, the name of the game is cash, and considering the very complicated times that we're going through, we have to prioritize the financial soundness of the company. We have to prioritize our cash. We have a full plate. We have 380 stores, Extrafarma stores, with a lot of opportunities for expansion. Our stores are fully supplied.
Let's first capture these synergies with Extrafarma, and then over time, as the situation goes back to normal in 2024, we can resume our organic growth. Regarding your second question, Clara, about the leverage for the end of next year, we also have an official guidance of 1.7x in December 2024. The elements we're working on today that we already mentioned in this call, which is to start reducing our leverage now, this will gradually be reduced to get to that level by the end of next year. If other measures are needed to get to that level, we will also take other measures needed. The guidance is 1.7 x the Net Debt/EBITDA ratio in the end of 2024. Very clear. Thank you.
This question and answer session is now closed. I would like to hand it back to Mr. Queirós for his final remarks. Mr. Queirós, you may proceed.
Well, I would just like to remind everyone that pharmaceutical retail is very resilient, something that has been proven over the years. Considering this moment that we're going through now with a very challenging macroeconomic scenario due to the very high interest rates, we need to be conservative. We need to preserve our cash. Despite the very good performance of the '21 and '22 cohorts of stores, we need to be diligent and responsible right now. Considering the investment that we made in Extrafarma, we need to reduce the speed of opening of new stores right now, because as you heard, we have a full plate.
We opened more than 200 additional stores compared to what we had announced in our IPO. We continue to be very positive about the prospects of the market and the prospects in terms of the company's growth.
Thank you for your time and interest. We'll see you in our next call. Conference call is now over. Thank you all for attending. Have a great day.