Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the earnings call of Pague Menos to announce the results of quarter three, 2025. This call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on the company's website, ri.pagmenos.com.br, where the slide presentation is also available for download. We would like to inform that all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company's presentation, right after which we will open the floor for questions, and at this time, further instructions will be given.
We would also like to inform that this call is being conducted in Portuguese by the company's management and that we have simultaneous translation into English by clicking on the button "Interpretation." For those listening in English, you can also mute the original audio if you like by clicking on "Mute original audio." The presentation will be projected in Portuguese and the English version is also available for download at ri.pagmenos.com.br. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements made during this call are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as the 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 consider that any events related to the macroeconomic environment, to the industry, and also other factors may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in said forward-looking statements. Today, we have with us Mr. Jonas Marques, CEO, and Mr. Luiz Novais, CFO and Investor Relations Officer of the company. Now, I'd like to turn the floor to Mr. Jonas Marques to start his presentation. Mr. Marques, you may proceed.
[Foreign language] Bom dia.
Good morning, and welcome to this quarterly earnings call. And I miss you because living in retail, we know that time flies in retail. Every quarter feels like one entire year. We are here, and to start, I would like to greet our 27,000 giants, the 27,000 employees that are now working in our stores, in our DCs, in our phone sales, and also their families, because without our families, we are nothing. Our families bring the best in us. Welcome all of you. I'd also like to welcome our new shareholders, our new partners. We had more than 80 meetings, and we're going to discuss with you today everything that we discussed in these meetings and the year that we've been having. Welcome to our new partners, to our new shareholders.
Also, I'd like to greet our team and also Patriciana Rodrigues, the Chairwoman of our Board, and our founder, Deumar. Deusmar is a shark because he will never let us get into our comfort zones, because the dream that he started in 1981 keeps moving us towards the company that we want in the future. For this earnings call, I know that this was greatly awaited by all of you, and I know that you're like, "Oh, here comes the CEO, full of energy." This call, the only thing that we will say yes to here is first, Pague Menos is a wonderful brand. We have lower expenses because these are the only things that we want to be lower, right? For everything else, we want more, more dedication, more hard work. Please forgive us if we are bringing too much energy to this call.
Before I go into the numbers, and I know that you're already aware of the numbers, before going to the numbers, I want to talk about what moves us, and what moves us is our people. We started doing work of awakening and unlocking of the true potential of each of us. I even shared with you in previous meetings that after leading companies in three different continents, I can say something that is cross-applicable to all continents, which is low self-esteem. There's something that's really powerful. We are simple people in extraordinary missions, and as leaders, we need to create the right environment for people to flourish, to thrive. One of our values here is meritocracy. I don't want to just talk about people, but also keeping meritocracy in mind.
I want to share with you a new member of our team that we have, a new member of our team, Azevedo. Azevedo is our Regional Operations Director for Ceará and Piauí, and why is he here? Because his same-store sales is at least 22%. Welcome, Azevedo.
Thank you, Jonas. Thank you for the opportunity to be here representing the operations team, retail operations. My name is Antônio Carlos Azevedo. I've been with the company for one year. Based on the intensity of our everyday work, it feels like I've been with the company for 10 years. I'm very happy to have joined this company. To be a part of this environment, of this team of giants that I met here. Here, it's not about vanity. It's about teamwork. It's about working towards the best for the company, working towards our purpose. This is just great. This is very positive.
I am responsible for the stores in Ceará and Piauí. Both in Ceará and Piauí, I have an exceptional team. That's been doing exceptional work. Like you heard from Jonas, has been providing great sales increase of about 22%. In the last year. In addition to the growth in our sales, we also have exponential growth in our customer base. A great increase in our customer satisfaction. So our stores are reaching at least 90% customer satisfaction. We also have hidden customers. For our hidden customers, some of our stores have reached 100% satisfaction. This is just possible because we take good care of our people. We pay special attention and work in close proximity with our people. We also train and qualify our staff so that they can conquer new spaces within the company. So this is something I've been seeing in my area.
This year, we already promoted four managers to regional managers, and also many other employees were promoted to store managers. This means that we are giving people the opportunity to grow in our company, and this makes all the difference, in my opinion. In our stores, the first attribute that will bring consumers to our stores are our products. So we have the right mix and the right quantity of the products. Our prices are competitive. Our customer service, we have been investing greatly in improving our customer service, training our team so that they can truly enchant our customers. Also, our stores are very well structured, and the work is very well executed. This is what we want for our everyday work. We keep working so that this company can become the best and the greatest in all areas, in all directions.
I am very confident in this current moment we're going through and also in the future of the company.
Congratulations, Azevedo. You nearly announced the numbers of the month, but it's too early. So let's go back to the quarter. We take care of people. In this everyday work with the capital market, investors, and all of you, you have all our respect and all our commitment towards delivering results. We are bringing to the table a topic that in some companies, it is on the cover of the magazines and newspapers, but here you see this in practice. One of the interesting things that Azevedo said, in addition to the gross sales and margins growth. It's the number of people. They created the environment for people to feel confident, to feel safe, so they can bring out the best version and be promoted. Everybody was born to succeed.
Everybody was born to succeed. I've never seen a parent telling their kid, "You're going to grow up, and you're going to be a failure. You're going to be unemployed. You'll never be able to learn anything." No. Everyone wishes the family to progress and people to progress. So let's look at our numbers. These are the highlights for quarter three. I have some examples to share with you. The first is our same store sales. We have here our growth curve reaching 17.6%. So four consecutive quarters above 17%. This result is truly consistent. How do you do this? A lot of people ask us. It's because we take care of our people. We improve our customer service. This is our answer to our CCCs, our continuous care customers. A lot of companies call them chronic customers, but chronic here, the only thing chronic here is joy.
We have chronic joy, but we call them continuous care customers. We're really focusing on them, and we are growing in drugs. You're going to see the numbers for drugs and also in other categories, but drugs are also, of course, 70% of our business. So we have examples: execution, consistent execution. So we are truly working towards treating these customers holistically and in a differentiated way. Now, moving away from growth, looking at our EBITDA. Our EBITDA reached 5.3% in the quarter, and our LTM is at 6.3%. Here we have a 36.4% increase versus last year. So our EBITDA is really strong. This is due to market share. Our market share is 6.7%. This is 40 basis points more than third quarter last year and also a record-breaking number. Let me give you more granularity about our market share. In August, our market share was 6.95%.
This is proof that we are advancing, and we are advancing fast. Now, look at our number of clients, number of active customers. We reached 22.2 million customers, which is a 5% increase in our customer base. So we grew in clients, we grew in average ticket, and we grew in the frequency of our customers. This is directly linked with the CCCs. Novais is going to give you more color about this number. It's very important to focus on this point. Last but not least, our net income reached BRL 231 million. We had an increase in LTM. We had record-breaking income, which already represents 1.9%. So we always say that, for example, in 2023, we had losses. Now in 2025, we have an excellent delivery, and we keep growing. So, as I said, menos here or less here, only our name, Pague Menos, because we want more.
We are generating consistent results. So quarter three has very high consistency. Now, Luiz Novais is going to share with you more data. I was very happy to hear BRL 831,000 average sales per store per month. 17.3% increase. Now I turn the floor to Novais.
Hello, good morning, everyone. I would like to say hello to our new shareholders. We have 32 new institutional shareholders that adhered in the follow-on that we had in October. I'd also like to say hello to all the shareholders that have been with us since our IPO, and some of them will increase their stake now after our follow-on. We're very happy. As you heard from Jonas, we're very happy to share our results for quarter three, 2024. Very positive results showing the consistency of our deliveries. Now, on page six. You see that we grew 18%.
We are in our seventh consecutive quarter of relevant double-digit growth. This was driven by prescription drugs, generics, and RX connected with our continuous care customer strategy. We increased not just the number of these customers, but also the frequency and the size of the shopping cart. This evolution was driven by all the actions that we have been executing in our stores, marketing, CRM, and store operation itself, which is at a much better standard than ever today. All these components are evolving really well. We reached a same-store sales of five times inflation rate. Now, on page seven. We see more details about the growth of our sales. Here we have different views of our revenue growth. It is a very structural growth. We don't have any region that is outstanding or very different from other regions in Brazil.
The first chart we see that in other regions of Brazil, the dispersion is very low. All of them are growing above 14%. In categories, we give highlight to prescription drugs, like we already said. Branded drugs and generic drugs, branded 23%, generics nearly 25% growth. Between the months in the quarter, they all have relevant growth between different socioeconomic classes and also the different cities. Based on all the metrics, every metric here, we have relevant growth. This is structural growth according to our strategy. Next page, we see our average monthly sales per store. This metric is very relevant to us. We reached in a quarter BRL 831,000 average sales per store per month. It is a 32.4% increase year-over-year. If we consider the inflation rate, we grew about five times inflation rate in our average monthly sales per store.
Today, we have more than 26% of our stores with revenue over BRL 1 million, with sales over BRL 1 million. Dispersion also dropped 7.4% dispersion between regions when we consider the average monthly sales per store. Next page, we have our market share. As a result of this growth in revenue, we are in our eighth consecutive quarter expanding our share. A 40 basis points increase. We're growing in all regions in Brazil, with highlight to the Northeast, where we grew 81 basis points. This considering that we had few new openings in the quarter. So even with a few new openings, we grew nearly one percentage point in market share. If we compare with Abrafarma and the general market, our performance is way above the performance of these other elements. Now, on the next page, we see the composition of our growth comparing to the competition.
So the first column shows the market growth, 9.9%. About half of this growth is captured by new stores. The other 6.8 percentage points are captured by an increment in our average price, and 1.2% are negative due to shutdowns and a reduction in volume, 0.2% compared to the same period last year. In the second column for Pague Menos, we grew nearly 17% according to IQVIA. It's well above the market average and the other competitors. This was composed by 1.2% new openings, 5.4% price, and nearly 11% in volume, 10.6% growth coming from volume, which is a marked difference when we compare with our competitors. So volume is what has been really driving and helping the company grow. We haven't seen any relevant volume increase in the other peers. So the third chains and associations growing in line with the market and independents lost a lot of space.
They're losing volume nearly three points, and they also had a lot of shutdowns, 4.3% decrease in their share due to shutdowns. Now, on the next page, we have another indicator comparing us to our peers, average sales per store growth by region. I think the chart speaks for itself. Depending on the region, we have two to three times higher growth than the other players in the region. So it is undeniable that we're having great performance in all regions of the country. On page 12, gross profit and gross margin, another excellent news for the quarter. We had an increase of 0.5% in our percentual margin year-over-year. This is an impressive combination of increased revenue and increased margin, a 50 basis point increase in our margin. So it's very unusual to see these two indicators growing at a fast pace.
The items that have driven the increase in the quarter, all the commercial conditions improved greatly and helped us improve the company's margin. In quarter three, our AVP had a negative effect compared to the other quarters. Actually, in the first half of 2024, it had a positive impact on our margin. This quarter, it had a negative impact on our margin of about 20 basis points. In our earnings release and attachment five, we included a demonstration with the AVP components if you want to know more about the details of the AVP components. The mix in this quarter had positive impacts and also negative impacts. Generics was the category that grew the most in the quarter, nearly 25%, which really helps our margin.
On the other hand, branded also grew relevantly, and this put some pressure on the margin because branded drugs have a slightly lower proportional margin than the total margin of the company. The mix among the different categories, there was a neutral effect. Now we have our SG&A expenses. We continue to dilute our expenses, and at the same time, the company continues to invest in structuring themes. For example, we are investing more in marketing, investing more in people, and we're investing more in other elements of the company. But still, we were able to dilute 40 basis points, which is a lot year-over-year. Variable expenses also see important pressure because our revenue is growing 18%. Variable expenses tend to increase. And investments in people. We are investing a lot to be able to improve customer service for continuous care customers, among other elements here. Administrative.
Also, we are reinforcing our corporate team so that we can increasingly boost the company's growth. As a consequence, on page 14, we see our EBITDA. We grew our sales relevantly, we grew our margin, and we diluted our expenses. The company's EBITDA increased by 36.4%, as you heard in the initial highlights. We go from BRL 119 million to BRL 260 million in EBITDA. In quarter three, we had record-breaking EBITDA margin, 6.3%, which is very unusual in quarter three, having a quarter three margin higher than that of quarter two, because we know that in our industry, quarter two, we have better margins due to the pre-price increase. But this year, we had in quarter three a higher margin than in quarter two, which shows that we are in a very intensive growth trajectory to grow our profitability.
On page 15, our net income, we also had a relevant increase. We went from BRL 54 million to BRL 81 million in net income, a 50% increase. If we compare the first nine months of 2024 with the same period last year, we doubled the company's net income from BRL 75 million to BRL 154 million. And when we look at the LTM on the right side, we also have a record level of BRL 231 million. And that is even with the pressure on our financial results. This year, we have a higher average interest rate than last year. And in this quarter only, we had financial expenses of about BRL 45 million higher than the same period last year. If not for this effect on the financial result, we would have doubled the net income this quarter versus last year.
On page 16, our working capital, we had an increase of seven days in our working capital and an increase of five days in our average payment term. Here we have an important point, which is we are recomposing our receivables portfolio, which increased the average payment term in three days. Despite the negative impact on the cash cycle, this is a positive movement for the company. So today, we are much less dependent on the anticipation of receivables than in the past. Also about the average payment terms, we see great evolution in prescription drugs, like we saw in the beginning, and semaglutides. These drugs tend to have a higher level of installment payments in our stores. We also had a relevant increase in popular pharmacy products. This contributed with an increment of two days in the average payment term.
In the average customer payment term, as I said, we had an increase in prescription drugs and semaglutides, and this also affects our average payment term. So this, we reduced in nearly four days the average payment term compared to quarter three last year. The average stock time, we are also evolving well. We had another two-day reduction in our average stock time compared to quarter three last year. So the company is very focused on reducing low turnover items, revisiting our launch policy, improving reverse logistics, and this all is contributing for us to reduce the average stock time of the company. On page 17, we see the company's indebtedness and the leverage. We continue on a very intensive leverage trajectory, going from 3.9x in the beginning of last year to 2.5x , one reduction of 1.5x the EBITDA.
The follow-on resources in October, it started on October 3rd. So consequently, we don't see yet the impacts on the company's leverage. So in quarter four, we will probably show a relevant reduction in the leverage indicator due to the resources from the follow-on. Not just because of that, but the company has been organically reducing its leverage, generating operating cash, controlling capital allocation, and reducing the company's leverage. On the right, we see the average spread of the gross debt and the amortization schedule. We have a very prolonged amortization schedule, and the spread is reducing consequently. So a very good evolution in our debt profile. On my last page, and then I will turn back to Jonas, we would like to show this very important chart showing that quarter three is a tipping point in our presence in the capital market.
So the company had its third investor day since the IPO. It had been three days since our last investor day. We had our investor day in São Paulo with a very good adherence from our investors, a lot of people interested in and wanting to learn the recent history of the company, with a very high NPS of these investors, which also culminated in our follow-on with demand that was three times the supply of shares, 32 new high-quality investors improving the free float, improving the liquidity. This aligned with our deliveries makes us very optimistic about the evolution of the company in the capital market as a whole. I stop here and I turn it back to Jonas, and he's going to talk a little bit more about our strategy. Thank you, Jonas.
Hello. I must admit that this is not a continuity error.
In the movies, you would say, "Well, I was wearing a white shirt. Now I have a black shirt," because this is Black Friday. I want to present to you our strategy. If you blink, you will miss our promotion. Let me give you a strategic update now. Like I said, our strategy that was developed in late 2024, which was rolled out in the first day of this year is our continuous care client, who is in the center of our strategy with all the enablers. We know where to play and how to win. What makes us really happy is to see the growth in our average sales per store per month, particularly driven by prescription drugs and OTC, which makes us close this gap.
Because when I joined the company two years ago, this was the question: when are we going to close the gap for average sales per store? We are now delivering this and with profitability. Our numbers are really strong, and they stress that we are on the right track because growing is easy, but growing by burning your margins or convincing your customers to download the app inside your store, this is not what we do. Our digital strategy is an omnichannel strategy. We want to offer customers the opportunity to buy in the most convenient way to them, the way they want, the way they feel comfortable buying, without burning our margin. Growing by delivering good margins, expanding your gross margin, expanding your EBITDA, like we have been doing for two years, and expanding your net income, this is the game that we want to play.
Of course, always diluting our expenses, which was one of the highlights of our work this quarter. This is our strategic focus. It continues to be our CCC customers. The winners of the game are the nos and not the yeses. You a company that is worth BRL 16 billion, every day here, we have people knocking on our door with new ideas. We have our team. Our team is extremely creative, and we have been really disciplined because the name of this year is consistency. It's discipline. It's focus on operation and execution. We will continue with this strategic focus. Now, next page. This is exactly what I was talking about since the beginning, the results for our continuous care customers, CCCs. A good execution of our strategic plan is what has been bringing these numbers. The number of active customers, continuous care customers, is growing.
It's 14.1% increase versus first quarter 2024, and an acceleration starting in quarter one this year. This is how retail works. Retail is live. There's no tomorrow. If you. Perform a test, you start, you implement, you start to see growth. On the right side, we see our average ticket for the CCCs, which is also expanding and increasing very strongly, particularly in quarter three 2025. When we compare quarter three 2025 with the start of 2024. The increase is practically 16%. This is super solid, super consistent. This is the confidence that we want to convey to you, that we are working nonstop with a lot of focus, a lot of discipline, a lot of love, a lot of passion for our mission of making the life of CCC customers better, giving them more quality of life, because these are the customers that really need a drug store.
Value capture. This is our promise, and we are delivering on it. Since the beginning, we have been stressing the same thing. Since our first 90-day plan, I have been conveying to you that this is exactly what you see here. 2024, the basics were very well done. We focused on hygienic missions and awakening people's energy. If you go to our stores, you see that the energy has changed. How can you move masses, the 25,000 people in our points of sales? In addition to giving them energy, you have to take care of these people. These people have basic needs. You have to improve the processes. You have to improve execution. You have to remove friction. Sometimes we lose a customer because we don't give our staff the right tools to really service these customers.
This is what we have been focusing on, and this is what has changed the lives of our employees. The basics were well done. Then in 2025, we resumed our investments, and it was a year of consistency. We are in quarter three now. I can't tell you anything about the quarter four right now, but what I can tell you is that we're doing really well because Okta is not about if, it's about when, and we are working towards delivering this to you. This is not guidance. You cannot say this is guidance. 2025 is the year of implementation of our structuration and consistency. In 2026, we want to increase scale. We want to consolidate our value proposition, and this is what we're working towards. Remember that our new shareholders. We presented this in our investor day. The presentation is available to you. The strength of Telemetry.
Telemetry is expanding in our operations and in our staff. This is our proprietary system that we are implementing to increase our results and increase our efficiency. Our transformation office, which permeates this pace that we're working. To capture all the levers and to deliver as planned. This is what I wanted to share with you today, Renan. We will now open for questions. We know that this question and answer session, we have four banks that were in our follow-on present with us. They cannot ask questions, but we are very welcome here today. And the rest of you, you can send your questions because this is how you give us the opportunity to explain more about our numbers. Thank you.
We found that, Jonas, that the banks that were in our IPO, they have some restrictions for the reports, but they can take part in our session today.
So we have some bank analysts that also helped with our Q&A session. So welcome, BTG, Itaú, Bradesco, and XP.
We will now open the floor for questions. We will take questions from investors and analysts. To ask a question, please click on the button, raise hand. If at any point your question is answered, you can remove yourself from the waiting line by clicking on the same button. The first question is from Ruben Couto Santander. The microphone is open.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I'd like to go back to the working capital, Novais. I think you explained really well what led to this increase in your cash cycle in quarter three, but looking forward. The GLP-1 trend or even popular pharmacy could continue gaining space.
So I'd like to understand what are the prospects, your expectations for the main lines of the working capital, not just in quarter four, but also for 2025. Can you give us an idea of the percentage today that is for GLP-1 and popular pharmacy? Thank you.
Thank you, Ruben. Good morning. We see very good prospects, even with the expansion of the share of semaglutides in the total sales of the company. Popular pharmacy is also growing. We are working with our entire structure, our sales team, operations, implementing actions to improve the company's cash cycle. Semaglutides themselves, they are a category of products that we offered installment payments up to 10 installments for our customers until recently, until a few months ago, but we reduced the maximum to six installments in 10 states of the country where we used to offer five installment payments of their shopping card.
We reduced to just one payment. In these 10 states, we have a ceiling of four installments, four installment payments. We are also working strongly to improve our stocks, to improve the cash cycle. Our sales team is also helping us revisit the commercial conditions of our suppliers. So our expectations for quarter four this year and next year is a relevant improvement in the company's cash cycle. The second part of your question, semaglutides are still growing. Compared to last year, it practically doubled in the share of our sales. Last year, it represented about three points. Now it represents close to 7% of the total sales of the company. This continues to evolve. I hope I answered your questions, Ruben.
Yes, very clear. Popular pharmacy, can you give us an idea of the percentual share in generics or total sales?
Popular pharmacy in the total sales of the company is close to 4%. 4% for popular pharmacy.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ruben.
Our next question is from Danny Elgar, XP. Your microphone is open.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I was worried because I was in the waiting line and I couldn't ask a question, but now Novais said I can. I have two questions. My first question is still about GLP-1s. How do you see future supply, supply/demand? Because we know there's some scarcity. We know that there are some new versions with higher doses of Mounjaro that came to the market in the end of this quarter. Can you give us an idea of the sales in October?
If a share of your stock in your working capital dynamics was already accounting for this stock in a picture for the end of the quarter, I don't know how much this could have impacted your results and if we can see some positive carryover in stock turnover, considering that these products have a very high turnover, very high demand. This is my first question. My second question is thinking of other levers, not just GLP-1. You said you have multiple levers. You talked about this in your investor day. Now, looking forward to next quarters, where do you still see space for growth? Then your gross margin, which has been mitigating the headwinds in your mix because of the prescription drugs and GLP-1, do you see space for this improving in the future?
Can you give us an overview about the main levers that you see growing in the future, particularly in the next coming quarters? Also an update for your private label. When should we see more launches and your private label gaining more traction? Thank you.
Would you like to go first, Novais?
No, you can go first, Jonas.
Danny, thank you for your presence and for your question. First, GLP-1s. I'd like to call your attention that if you go back three years ago, two years ago when we only had Ozempic, we didn't even have Wegovy. The Pague Menos's market share for GLP-1s for Ozempic was, according to its fair share, or even slightly lower. Now with Mounjaro, it's completely different. We have Wallace heading our sales team. He has an excellent relationship. I was also 30 years in the industry working with our partners.
I would also like to take the chance to thank them because since the beginning, we were in contact with Eli Lilly, and we are the first chain of drug stores in Brazil. On the 1st of May , at midnight, we started offering the product to our customers and delivering the product. This gave us the opportunity to reach double our fair share. We have about a little over 15% in the sales of Mounjaro. This is really good because this shows how fast we were to service our continuous care customers because these are the patients, these are the consumers that use GLP-1 the most. Now I turn it to Novais.
Well, Danny, GLP-1 has a negative cash cycle for us, right? So it puts pressure on our cash cycle. However, it really boosts our sales and the company's operations as a whole.
Like you heard from Jonas, demand is higher than supply today. So if we had more stock, we would certainly have even better numbers, not just us, but the entire industry. So there's a lot of room to grow in this category. About the levers, I think this is the greatest advantage of our business at Pague Menos. We have different levers. We show in our investor day our nine levers. So in addition to our private label, and I'm going to give you more details about it, but we also have the brand conversions, which are still growing at a much higher level than other stores. We are close to, we have close to 70 stores with an Extrafarma banner that we have the opportunity to convert. We are also working on a product to review the store clusterization and product pricing.
So we're closely connected to Simon, the consulting firm that is supporting us in this project. We're very happy with the upsides that this project could bring to us. We're inaugurating a new DC in the start of next year, which is the DC in Paraíba, which will improve the company's tax condition, the supply conditions, and consequently, it will improve all lines in our P&L. Digital channel is evolving exponentially, so I'd like to give kudos to our digital team. Here in the north and northeast, we have a somewhat lower maturity than in the rest of the country, particularly compared to the southeast for digital channels, but still, it has a nearly 20% share. The digital channel. Also all the improvements made by the operations team and the training team, improving the quality of customer service.
We have been greatly improving our customer service, so continuous care clients are satisfied, they increase their ticket, and they contribute even more to the company's growth. Going back to our private label, our team is completely focusing on this front. We have a very nice project to reinforce and relaunch the brands that we have today. Also, we have a pipeline of new launches, very interesting for 2026. So these are some of the levers, Danny, but we also have others that we're working on. These are the major.
I'd also like to say, Novais, that we are always asked, since one year ago, when we had a first same-store sales of 17%, the questions we heard were, do you expect the same level of growth for the next quarter? We couldn't really answer that question at the time, but this is what we delivered.
Three quarters ago, we answered the same question, and we delivered again, and now we delivered again. So we hope this question doesn't show up today, but I will explain how we're working connected to what you said. Promotional activity is about intensity. It's about energy. It's about not being compliant. So in the end, we're going to tell you, we're going to tell you about Black Friday, a Black Friday campaign. It's the greatest of all times. It is a real Black Friday. So since we're changing greatly and fastly the perception of our customers, this also generates frequency in addition to an increase in the average ticket. This is what really scares our competition. We're very happy when we find the CEOs and VPs of the competition in our stores. But if they go the next week, they'll also find a different situation.
So it is about the intensity of our work. About GLP-1s, I'm sorry for going back, but we still have a lot of share in the compounding pharmacy. So there's a lot of room to expand. We also have the generics coming. So we are preparing, and we are ahead of this. Time to understand how these changes will affect the market and preparing ourselves to meet the needs of this access expansion. I used to work in the industry. We don't want to have private labels to compete with our partner. The industry is our partner. We want private label for access. So why do we have an overshare of our private label versus our competitors? Because this is the identity of Pague Menos. Pague Menos is a company that promotes access because our main customers are in the expanded middle class, particularly the C&D classes.
So you can await some novelties in the future, and the expectation for private labels will exceed all expectations. All expectations you may have.
Excellent. Thank you. Very clear.
The next question is from Renan Sartorio Safra. Your microphone is open.
Good morning. I have a question first about the increase in your investments. What generated this increase, and is this a recurring effect? About your working capital, these initiatives to improve the receivables term. Should we expect them in quarter four? Also the installment payment changes, can it harm you in any way?
I can answer your question. Well, about the increase in the share of investments, our DC that we inherited from Extrafarma. Until recently. It was already being used to supply Pague Menos' store, and more and more the demand from this DC is increasing.
The share of use of the distribution center in the past is lower than today. So this is contributing to increase the volume for the entire company. It should stay at higher levels because this DC is. Since the entire company is growing at 18%, the level of distribution from these DCs to the stores is increasing relevantly. These actions to improve our cash cycle will certainly have a positive impact, relevant positive impact, and you also have a carryover effect to the next quarter. We are being very careful in measuring how much we are reducing installment payments. We only put this into production after we implement in some stores. We compare with a control group in the same city or in surrounding regions, and they are not affecting the sales of the company at all. We're also monitoring the competition in each region in Brazil.
Our installment payment conditions are not so different than the other competitors in the same region. So we're very confident about this movement. We really need to keep advancing it. Because, like you saw, the cash cycle in the past few quarters had suffered with some pressure by the increase in prescription drugs and semaglutides that have a negative cash cycle for us. We will certainly improve the conditions in quarter four and for the year 2026.
Thank you.
Thank you, Renan.
Next question is from Rodrigo Gastim, Itaú BBA.
Good morning, Jonas. Good morning, Novais. I have two questions. The first question, Jonas, is one of the main questions that we have been hearing throughout the investor process. What are you doing to improve your sales per store? BRL 830,000, 17% increase year-over-year.
Jonas, I want to hear from you some empirical or anecdotal examples of what you have done so far. I know you did a lot of things to improve your sales per store, but in the next 12 months, I believe this will be an important lever. So what are other practical examples of how you're improving this store productivity? This is my first question. My second question, going back to the working capital, you talked a lot about accounts receivable, and I want to ask about suppliers. You talk about suppliers, you know, earnings release, but when you add to this calculation [Foreign language] condições comerciais que obviamente vocês estão negociando com a indústria, o que seria patamar razoável de fornecedores nesse novo mix da companhia? São essas duas perguntas. Obrigado, pessoal.
Legal, Gastin, muito obrigado, abraço.
Gente, é o seguinte, é como vocês sabem, talvez esse seja dos poucos calls do mercado que não tem teleprompter, não tem script, não tem cola no papel. Aqui a gente faz ao vivo. Obrigado pela tua pergunta. A escassez. Thank you for your question, but. [Foreign language] A coisa mais importante. Scarcity. [Foreign language] Na vida pessoal e talvez. Is what's most important in our personal life and in corporate life as well. What moved us to increase the average sales per store was understanding that we didn't have the capacity to understand, to expand. I'm talking about early 2024, that we had to invest in the assets that we already had. So remember, we put our entire budget and we re-steered it to the retrofit of 500 stores to invest. In people, the basics done well, and we could only increase the return on the debt that we already had.
We were obsessed with the front line. Think about obsession about the front line. We went to the stores to understand what were the frictions that we had. This was part of our mission. What we found was that, for example, the printer was not working. Why? Because they needed scissors to buy the price, to cut the price tag. So our employees were not available to talk to customers because of all these frictions at the point of sale. This is an empirical example. Also, assortment review. If we want to really service our customers, we cannot have stockouts. If you look at our stockouts, it is dropping. Greatly, sharply. We have reduced our stockouts and reduced our losses. The last number I have for reduction in losses is 30%. Also, store clusterization. We had premium stores in pop areas and pop stores in premium areas.
If you fix this, if you fix your layout, you fix your assortment, you remove friction, you train people, you recognize people, people are permeating everything. So this is how we did it. Together with Telemetry, this is what caused us to achieve these growth numbers. This is increasing in speed. How are we accelerating this even further with Telemetry? Telemetry, you came to our office in Fortaleza and Fortaleza, and you saw how it works. People Telemetry gives us the right data so that we can apply meritocracy, so that we can make decisions and correct our course. The same thing for operations. So this is our obsession now, as I said. This absurd growth that we had in the number of stores over one million, this explains also the increase in the average monthly sales per store.
Also in Telemetry, we had 50 stores, so 50 stores with a negative EBITDA. When we plugged them in Telemetry, and we built a simple plan to them, we talked to the people, we were able to reverse the situation in only three months to a positive EBITDA. So there's no magic bullet here. There's no silver bullet. This is what I said in our investor day. You need to have the right mission and be obsessed with the front line and have a sense of ownership. So what you find here is a spirit. You can't really touch it. This is how we changed the spirit of this mass of people. We have 25,000 people in our points of sales, and everybody wants to win.
So bad, I cannot add you to our WhatsApp group for you to see what we have been doing, what we are generating in our points of sales. And if your next question is, are you going to continue to grow? Yes, of course. Because what will not change is our intensity. And this intensity, this holistic way we work, work on details and work at every minute is what really makes us the company that is growing the most in same-store sales today. Thank you for your question.
And the second question, the second part of your question about the average payment term. Thank you, Gastim, for your question. Well, in the two last quarters, our PMP was close to 67, 68 days. If you look at our further past, we had 70, 71 days.
Today, we're close to two to three days less than in previous periods, except for quarter four, which is when we build our stocks for the vacation period, so we can reach about 78 days. But this follows the PME. These two or three days that we were able to decrease today compared to the past gives us the opportunity to further decrease this, to shorten this interval. But what we're really focusing on is on the PME to compensate for this reduction in PMP. Our sales team is always working, discussing with the industry, but you're right, the prescription drug category and semaglutides have a worse payment condition regarding other suppliers, and this puts pressure on our PMP. We're working on these two fronts, but majorly, primarily, we are compensating the PME of the company, and also we have actions in PMR to compensate for this reduction.
Excellent.
Thank you, Jonas and Novais.
Our next question is from Mr. Ian Seskin, BTG. Mr. Seskin, you can open your microphone now.
Good morning, Jonas. Novais, I have two questions. My first question is still about GLP-1s. What do you expect now with the generics coming? Generic semaglutide coming to the market next year? Could this open an opportunity to accelerate your share gain in the category, considering that it will improve the supply? And my second question will explore growth. I know that you cannot give any guidance, but I want to understand if you could give us any qualitative details about the growth dynamics expected for the start of quarter four, your expectations, and if you can't give us any information, what is the cause of this growth in generics?
Because in addition to the higher continuous care customer penetration, can you give us an idea of the therapeutic class that have been performing better and the share of your digital channels? This would help us understand the mix. Thank you.
Obrigado, Ian, pela pergunta. Thank you, Ian, for your question. In GLP-1, we have mixed feelings about a potential break in the patent. Of course, there is a huge demand for people that today cannot pay the current price for these products. With the generics, the addressable public will be much greater than what it is today. On the other hand, we see the risk of the generics industry starting to compete for price. [Foreign language] Tem volume gigantesco. That would destroy the value of the category.
So we have huge volume to be explored, but there's a risk of the average price decreasing too much, depending on how the companies that offer the generic will behave. Now, in respect to how much can grow in the future, in generics particularly, this relevant evolution in popular pharmacy has certainly boosted generic sales for us. The increase was nearly 25%. However, our operations team and our sales team have been intensively working in supply and operation and execution, not just for this category, but also prescription drugs, which are the ones that have the highest demand by customer continuous care customers. Yes, there's the impulse, there's the momentum of Farmácia Popular, but also there's all the work that we have been doing in this category. We're very optimistic, Ian, we're very positive about quarter four and the year 2026 as a whole.
We gave you more details in our investor day. We are now standing in the middle of the trajectory of value capture of all the levers that we explored in the question we answered to Danny Elgar. For some of them, we haven't even started capturing the values like private label and also the pricing project, and the capture will be more visible in the start of 2026. We're very positive about our top line and bottom line.
It's written in stone. Pague Menos can make miracles. You just heard our CFO. You just heard our CFO saying that we are very positive. You stop me, Novais, or else I start talking about the October sales, but I can't. Ian, let me just give you one figure. Think about our positioning as a company. We are the largest drug store in Axis.
When we talk about GLP-1 and generics, we will have to work hard because we will be, we will be the first to be sought by this customer because everybody wants to improve their glycose levels an d lose weight. Now, our last question. Thank you, Ian.
A próxima pergunta vem do senhor. The next question is from Marcio Osako, Bradesco BBI. Mr. Osako. [Foreign language] Está liberado. Your microphone is open.
Good morning, Jonas. Good morning, Novais. I have three questions. My first question is about your revenue. Can you please talk about HPC competition and the growth in the category? I think it has sustained the same speed of last quarter, but on a basis that grew slightly less in quarter three last year. If we look at these two years, there was a slight deceleration in the growth of HPC.
Also, for your gross margin, can you please give us some details about the gains that came from commercial conditions this quarter? Last quarter, you said it was from the campaigns, your anniversary campaign. What generated this gain in commercial conditions in quarter three? Finally, about AVP. I just want to understand why the net effect was negative, and if you think this 0.2 in your revenue will be maintained looking forward. Thank you.
Can I start, Jonas?
Yes.
Thank you, Márcio, for your questions about HPC. We're very happy with the category evolution. Of course, when the company grows at 18, you see an 11% growth. It may give you the false impression that the category is not going well, but it is going very well. As you said, it was an 11% increase, which is equivalent to that of quarter two.
Now, in quarter three, it grew equivalently to OTC, which also grew about 11%. What's really driving the company's growth are prescription drugs, as we said, to address the demands of continuous care clients. So, 11% growth in this category, which means three times the inflation rate. We're very happy with this level of growth. Of course, we're never satisfied. We're happy, but never satisfied. There's still room to improve. Now, in quarter four, with Black Friday, we are seeing a lot of promotions, a lot of activity. We have very positive expectations for this category, but as you said really well, the bases are already very high. Last year, in Black Friday, we grew 42% compared with 23%. We are very positive. Jonas is going to talk about our Black Friday campaign, which is making us very positive.
Gross margin, the commercial conditions are contributing very relevantly to, as you saw in our composition. The AVP effect was negative this quarter, 0.2 points negative. The sales team, for all the campaigns that we rolled out, the sales team is working to have support from the industry. This is helping us recompose our margin and even bringing it to higher levels than what we had in previous quarters. This is really helping the company improve its performance. I don't have here the composition by category, but overall, the sales conditions, the commercial conditions are evolving relevantly. The AVP, Marcio, it's not just you, but other people also want to understand the components of the AVP with more clarity. We included attachment five in our earnings release with the compositions.
This quarter, what put some pressure and what made our AVP not have a positive effect on our margin like it had in previous quarters? Because we are demobilizing the anticipation of receivables, and this ends up decreasing the revenue from bringing it to present value, both because we are decreasing the installment payments from the semaglutide and prescription drug sales, and also anticipation of receivables are also contributing to this effect. I think it should stabilize in quarter four, and for next year, we believe that we will see a neutral effect, maybe slightly negative, about 10 basis points. The AVP compared to 25. I hope I answered all your questions, Marcio.
Yes, thank you.
[Foreign language] A sessão de perguntas e respostas. This question and answer session is now closed. Now I'd like to turn the conference to Mr. Jonas Marques for his final remarks.
Thank you so much for attending. In my final comments, I want to do something different. I am extremely proud, but also extremely humble, and I am privileged to have such a wonderful team. So I'd like to call to the stage Rose, our HR VP, our People and Culture VP. Carlos Fernandes. He is a Master of Operations. He leads our operations team. Also Wallace. Wallace heads our commercial team and also Renato Camargo. In clients and marketing. We want to tell you about our Black Friday campaign. You can't miss it. Don't miss it. As an investor and as a consumer. Stay tuned and don't miss it. I want to invite all of you. We have the most incredible promotions. We are preparing ourselves with the industry to ensure profitability because Octa, we are working on Octa.
I would like to invite all of you to visit our stores. To see the best offers, the best customer service of a drugstore retail in Brazil. Our motto in Black Friday is Real Pague menos de verdade or really pay less. Thank you so much for your attention and time. Keep cheering for us and keep giving us the opportunity to enchant all of you. Take care. See you next time.
[Foreign language] A videoconferência da Pague Menos está encerrada. Pague Menos' earnings call is now closed. Thank you all for attending and have a great day.