Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome, everyone, to Panvel Group's conference call to discuss results relative to Q4 2022. This video conference is being recorded and a replay facility can be accessed at the company's IR website. The respective presentation deck is also available for download. All participants will be only watching the conference during the presentation. After that, we will have a Q&A session when further instructions will be provided. Before moving on, we would like to reinforce that forward-looking statements made here are based on beliefs and assumptions on the part of the company's management and also on information currently available. Those forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties as they refer to future events that depend on circumstances that may or may not materialize.
Investors, analysts, and journalists should have in mind that events relative to the macroeconomic scenario, to the industry, and other operating factors might lead these results to differ considerably from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Here with us this morning, we have Mr. Julio Mottin Neto , CEO, and Mr. Antonio Napp, CFO and IRO. I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Mottin Neto, who will start the presentation. Please, Mr. Mottin, you may carry on.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you. Thank you for the introduction. Thank you for your participation here. We are here to discuss our numbers relative to Q4 2022, and also for the year 2022. Let us start then. We start the year 2023 with about 10,000 employees. For a retail company which is run by people, that is an important number. So we take very seriously the way we approach our values. Those values have been with us since the beginning. This is an important year when the brand Panvel turns 50. Fifty years of existence. The company is 55, but the brand Panvel is 50, and our focus has always been on quality, excellence, developing people, bringing results, being agile, and above all, being a very ethical company. That is what brought us here and what led to the brand, a brand which is known for its quality and its execution capacity.
Yesterday, I was at an event in São Paulo, a retail event, and somebody said something to me, a question and a comment. They said that there is Panvel and then the other drugstore chains. That is an acknowledgment that we are always looking for. We want our brand to be different from the market, and we are able to do that, have been able to do that for the past few years. As for the numbers in 2022, very good numbers. It was a year where we consolidated a journey of two years, where we invested heavily, BRL 320 million of investments in the past two years. And the company showed a very strong ability that throughout this process to grow and preserve results, and above all, also preserve a capital structure which is highly healthy.
We closed 2022 with a leverage level of 0.03% when compared relative to EBITDA. Going into a year with high interest rates, high uncertainties, but with that capital structure, that makes us, of course, stand out in the market. The past two years, 60 new stores per year. A very healthy store scenario. You will see that in a moment. We will be breaking up the numbers for the stores and the new stores. Of course, working hard on mature stores, right? Retail needs to depend on also mature stores. Same stores also need to grow. 2022 led us to increase to over BRL 44 million in revenue. Quite significant. BRL 4.2 million, that is the number on the slide. BRL 4,280,000 gross revenue. Also important to notice that quarter after quarter, we have increased the average number of stores for Panvel.
Today, if you look at our cost structure, our gap is on the average sales. That is what will bring us a higher dilution of our sales expenses and will lead us close to the market benchmark in terms of sales expenses. That is the way to go. That is what we have been working on to increase average sales. We continue to be a digital benchmark. We closed the year with the same share of the previous year. Digital continues to grow. Even as people go back to the physical stores, we see digital still growing. Also, we are not including in our number the WhatsApp channel, so that number will be included in the results for the first quarter 2023.
We have not done that because we could not audit yet. That was informally conducted. We have been investing in the platform, WhatsApp Business, and a proprietary platform to sell through WhatsApp. So in Q1 2023, we will include those numbers in our results, WhatsApp sales. We are also always part of the solution offered to clients, help them save time, for example, and that is where digital plays an important role. Some competitors are buying digital share at any cost, having different pricing in digital vis-a-vis the physical store prices, and converting people as they try to increase their digital numbers in a nice, quote-unquote, way. Maybe the CAC is better, but that is a short-term strategy. When the digital share grows too much, they will be squeezing their profitability, and that is not sustainable in the long run.
We have been investing so that our digital becomes part of the solution. Our freight is increasingly faster and more efficient to all our clients. Our own brand is also a nice case. It has been growing. The number for the quarter still includes the sales of face masks, but still, it grew over 20% last year. I think this is the 13th consecutive quarter where we have gained market share across all regions where we have a footprint, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná. The market share in São Paulo is still small, but growing steadily, with a special highlight to the state of Paraná in the last quarter. So very healthy numbers, as I said. Sales growth of more than 23%. If you look at retail numbers, that accounts for 92% of our sales. It was a very close number, 23% growth. We have maintained our margins.
Actually, growth in margins, 0.5% in the group and in retail as well, which shows our ability to build value. It is easy to bring margins down and increase sales if you sell cheaper, but the secret is to build value through our time and then preserve healthy margins. We also grew our EBITDA to the tune of 25%, closing the year at a level of over BRL 200 million in EBITDA, and we have been increasing our customer base. 15.8 million clients or customers in our database here in the south of Brazil. That accounts for more than 50% of the population in the regions, which is about 30 million. We also grew our income, affected by an increase in financial expenses. As I said before, digital expansion continues to move forward. As of Q1, we are going to see numbers coming from the WhatsApp channel as well, as I said.
Now I will turn it over to Antonio, who will give you more details on our numbers, and then I will be back at the end for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Julio. Let us move on. Good morning, and thank you for being here. Here we have a chart on our growth on slide number five. I would like to talk about our consistent growth for the past few years. You know we always insist on this because we understand this to be a distinguishing factor for us. Our gross revenue for the past decade has seen a growth of 15%, a compounded growth until 2022, way above inflation. 2022 is pushing that average up, as we grew over 23%. Also important, our performance in a shorter period from 2020, when we did our follow-on, until now. If you look at the period between 2020 and 2022, our compounded growth is 20% in sales and over 25% in EBITDA. That is a clear sign of a good return of our investments, totally in line with our planning for 2025.
I would like to remind you that we are a company that has never saw a loss in its history. That is why we are proud to say that consistency, solidity, and innovation remain our trademarks. Going ahead and talking about sales on slide number six, we talk about the strong sales performance in the year and in Q4. We grew 23.1% as opposed to 2022 and 21.1% in the fourth quarter. That record growth, once again, was above the market average. I am going to be talking about market share in a moment. It is not driven only by store expansion but also driven by the growth in average sales per store above the market. On the right-hand side of the slide, you have that data from IQVIA comparing Panvel with other chains in the south region. We also continue to try to increase average sales per store.
We are quite happy because in the fourth quarter, we have reached a level of something close to 650,000 stores of average sales per store, a growth of 13% when compared to Q4 2021. We are anticipating pushing back a target which was predicted for the next years, and we have reached that level of average sales even as we sped up our physical expansion, 60 new stores in the last 12 months, and still average sales continue to grow. Now looking at slide number seven, when we look at the same store of sales growth and mature sales on slide number seven, results are also very robust, both in the year and in the quarter. A growth of 15.8% for same stores in Q4, almost 20% in the year, and 11.6% for mature stores in Q4. Way above inflation in the period.
In other words, the operational leverage conditions are comfortable. Now moving on, talking about expansion. In the quarter, we opened 14 stores and closed the year with 60 new stores in the last 12 months. Unlike other years, in 2022, we had a much more constant pace of opening in the fourth quarter, which makes our operations easier and allows us to reach better results from those assets. We are very satisfied with the ramp-up of the stores, which have recently opened, which leaves us comfortable with our capacity to execute our expansion plan. I'd like to call your attention now to the fact that we are now today with the higher market share within our portfolio. They account for 30% of our base mature stores. If on the one hand, that pressures short-term results, it's also a guarantee for the mid to the long run growth.
That's also important to note that we closed three mature stores and transferred three older stores to new stores locations, trying to optimize the return of our assets. Our view is that those changes are necessary and very healthy for the business. Down the road here, I'm going to look at the results and talk about the returns per store, but I can already say numbers are very, very solid. Now about the market share. As a direct consequence of the growth in average sales of mature stores and a successful expansion, in slide nine, we can see that market share continued to grow and reached 12.3% in Q4. A strong growth of 0.5% when compared to the previous quarter. Growing across all states in the southern region of Brazil.
With all respect to our competition that compete with us in the South, once again, Panvel shows consistency in execution, which is above average with yet another quarter where we have increased our market share. I'd like to highlight the strong growth of our share for medications in the South, especially generic medications. That speaks directly to wellbeing for the population, and it's totally in line with our strategy as we continue to invest in following up client, the customer journey, who have chronic diseases with generic medications and also Panvel Saúde Empresarial. And it's also an important margin driver. Oh, yeah, sure. And it calls our attention then. I'd like also to say that looking at the beginning of the year 2023, we already have data for January and February, we continue to gain share.
Let's see how we're going to close the month of March, but we're going towards a positive quarter in terms of market share gain. Now digital. On slide 10, other numbers make it clear that Panvel continues to be a benchmark for the pharma market. In Q4, the penetration reached a level of 16%, a growth of more than 26% when compared to a strong base in the fourth quarter of 2021. To continue to grow on a solid base in a period during which we are clearly see customers coming back to physical stores means that we are benefiting from all opportunities we have to further digitalize those customers. To increase high penetration in digital is a source of pride to us. Julio has said this before. In this share, we're not including sales by WhatsApp, which are quite relevant.
We're going to start reporting those sales in Q1 2023. That sales level is linked to the quality of the experience that customers have with our channels in our last mile delivery. We have the fastest delivery in the pharma retail in Brazil, and we're investing in processes to deliver even faster. I have a chart that shows clearly the evolution of our share in deliveries in up to 60 minutes when compared to the total deliveries made by the Net chain. We moved from 28% in January this year, 2022 rather, to a share of 45% in December 2022. Nobody else in our sector can do that at that pace, and one of our targets is to maintain that competitive advantage. We are doing all that with a service level of 97%, which is another enviable index.
To make that possible, we have a very structure of over 132 delivery stores and nine mini DCs, our dark stores. Not to mention the click and collect option available in all our stores. The main highlight of the quarter and in the year and in line with all our efforts to digitalize the company was the strong increase in the number of app downloads. The base grew more than 50% on top of the fourth quarter of last year, 2021. Today, we have over 1 million active users per month, leading our MAU to a great level of 32% of the base. To reinforce all that growth in our case is not offending the margin. We use the already existing structure to deliver, and we lower CAC. We're able to accelerate digital sales in a profitable manner. With that, we improve our stores' productivity levels.
Other important pillar is the service pillar, the Panvel Clinic. It is a fundamental building block in our health ecosystem, and we continue to position as leaders in providing health services to the community in the southern region. We closed the year with 336 clinic stores, a growth of 31 rooms when compared to 2021. 86 of those are able to apply vaccines. We take this so seriously that when we talk to vaccines, we have reached over 54% of share in this market in the southern region, an absolute leadership. I can assure you that there's a lot of things to be done in vaccination alone, not to mention other services. As expected, the reduction in COVID tests reduced the share of services, getting close to 1% of share.
Still, we remain with the highest share and services in the pharma retail, turning our mission into reality, which is to provide health and well-being to our clients. People talk about future when we believe that Panvel is making a difference in the present and monetizing all its projects and sowing the seeds that will be reaped down the road. Also important to highlight is our customer journey at the Panvel Clinic on the right-hand side of the slide. We continue to invest in services. It makes a lot of sense as that customer or persona, as we call it, has a ticket and a frequency which is much higher than a normal customer. We have the expectation that in this year to include projects very important under this pillar, which will increase the share of services in our sales. Always trying to address pain points.
Important regulatory landmarks will be implemented that will represent great business opportunities for us. Moving on to slide number 12 and closing the sales part, we come to the Panvel products, another fundamental pillar for us, both for brand and margins. We are proud to say that Panvel continues to be the only chain where customers can take the brand home. In Q4, the share of our products reached 7.6% of total sales and close to 18% in hygiene and beauty products. Once again, as a benchmark of the Brazilian retail industry. As Julio mentioned, we saw a drop in the sales of the COVID services and products as face masks, and that affected the total share of Panvel products. If we exclude that effect, Panvel products have grown more than 25% in 2022.
That's a seasonal dynamic that will reach a balance until the end of 2023, both because of new launches and because of the growth of other existing lines. To illustrate that effect in the fourth quarter, 30% of sales of Panvel products were made up of items launched in the past 12 months in a continuous renovating process. With over 1,000 active SKUs, our products remain a good support for gross margin, accounting for 6% above the other products, and 30% of those items are made by our industry, Lifar. That verticalized strategy ensures quality and superior margins for our private label operation. Here on slide 13, a couple of images of our products, which will be available at our website as well. Lastly, the virtual cycle closes when we measure the level of satisfaction of our customers as information currently available on slide 14.
This is a summary of the main service KPIs that we monitor. Our NPS closed the quarter at 83 or 80, the same level posted last year. We continue to have the best assessment of pharma retail in Brazil, reaching 8.5, and we have remained as the best assessed app in Brazil, both at Apple and Play Store. Panvel also was awarded as the most admired pharmacy in Brazil, another source of pride for all of us. Now, speaking about gross margin on slide 15, we can visualize its breakdown. Gross margin was one of the highlights for the quarter in the year. In retail, it reached 30% in Q4, a growth of 0.3% vis-à-vis Q4 2021. That performance was driven by several actions, but I'd like to highlight our growth strategy around generics and the OTC category also performing well.
We also had a lot of success in our mix, which allowed us to offset the lowest share of services in Q4 in 2022. In the year, gross revenue also performed well, 34.4%, a growth of 0.4 percentage points vis-à-vis last year. Going forward, there are good perspectives for gross margins as we continue to evolve our project, which is focused on increasing sales and in the share of generics and in the evolution of other convenience lines linked to beauty and toiletries. When we assess our expenses on slide 16, the good leverage in mature stores allows us to mitigate impacts of the expansion of new stores and also investments in logistics. We have reached the lowest expense level in the fourth quarter, showing a trend that we continue to see throughout 2023. In the case of G&A expenses, we continue to have strong financial discipline, our trademark.
We saw a drop of 0.1 percentage points, both in the quarter and in the year. We continue to present the best G&A expense percentage in the sector. It is important to reinforce that all that cost control and the search for productivity is part of our DNA. When we analyze productivity KPIs as employees per store, we are among the most productive in the retail in Brazil. We have maintained our productivity levels with a focus on quality of our service in a scenario of close increase of traffic in our stores. We talked about sales, margins, and expenses. We come to the EBITDA. Our adjusted EBITDA closed the year at over BRL 200 million, 4.7% of our revenue, a growth of 25.7% over last year.
The fourth quarter have reached an adjusted EBITDA of BRL 58.6 million or 5% of revenue, a growth of more than 19% vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2021. We are quite happy that in a year where we have inflationary pressures and a strong investment that have impacted short-term expenses, still, we are able to expand margins in real terms, as we mentioned and as per our planning. As we analyze the EBITDA in retail on slide 18, the consistency in execution will be even clearer. We have reached one of the main highlights of our quarter and the year 2022. That metric shows the results coming only from stores and closed the quarter spinning up at 10.8% of sales, a strong growth of 1.1 percentage points vis-à-vis the previous period. The closed year, we resumed the level of 10.5%, a growth of 0.7% over 2021.
That was our previous level before the follow-on. Spinning up the opening of stores in the last 10 quarters and still growing results are clear indicators of the success of new stores and mature stores. The growth of that indicator, as we will explore further in the presentation, is one of the drivers that explain our optimistic view that we will continue to gain margins in the coming quarters. In line with all that has been said, we come to net income, both in the year and in Q4. The adjusted net income reached BRL 100 million- BRL 104 million, accounting for 2.2% of gross revenue, a growth of 10% vis-à-vis last year. We saw a strong operating performance, and an impact of financial expenses, which was expected in any event.
Panvel continues to position as one of the most profitable operations in the pharma retail, with a net margin that indicates our operational excellence. I would like to take the opportunity to thank our team, people who work hard to deliver those numbers and always focused on the customer. On slide 20, we can see the evolution of our cash cycle. We continue to move forward in managing our deadline and have reached at the lowest cycle of the year. There is room to improve, both in terms of inventory days and in suppliers' lead time. Worth mentioning is our capital structure, which continues to be very solid. With a cash generation for Q3 and Q4, our leverage, which was already low, was even lower, reaching 0.38 x our EBITDA. Low debt distinguishes us in the market and provides us with safety to continue growing.
That makes a lot of difference in a scenario where we have higher interest rates, such as the period we are going through now. In line with Brazil's current market scenario, we have established for this year the target of reducing even further our leverage level. That reduction will not happen in the first half of the year, which seasonally is a period where we consume more cash. We invest in inventory, and we pay out dividends. The road towards that is clear and will include improvements in deadlines, lead times, and also on a better financial performance throughout the year. As we finalize the analysis of our operating and financial numbers, we will now share with you, as we always do, a bit of our strategic pillars. They represent the main values and the main actions we have.
All of them, with no exception, are playing an important role as we grow the company at a fast pace. Starting with the strategic expansion on slide 22. It is nothing new that physical stores is and will continue to be for a long time, the gravity center of our business and the main pillar across all. Being successful in that expansion is key so that all the other pillars will be effective. Our expansion plan continues in line with the planning made until 2025, with a focus on the southern region of Brazil and pop and standard model stores and in the countryside of the states. We already have most of the locations prospected for 2023, and we will maintain the same expansion pace this year as we have for the past two years. In slide 22, we share information to confirm that strategy.
From 2020 to 2022, pop and standard models dominated, supporting service to income brackets A, B, and C. The focus outside of the capital cities is also clear. Close to 80% of our new stores spread across the countryside. That is a trend which is only natural, in line with the way the market is spread. On the right-hand side of the slide, we share information about the size of the market in the three states of the southern region. That makes clear our alignment with this region's realities. Moving forward on slide 23, we have a different view about the success of our expansion and the operation of physical stores. We have already mentioned in the gains in market share we have been obtaining the past years in the south. Here, we chose to have a snapshot of how we fare and how we are growing in that region.
The growth of 23% in sales of Panvel in 2022 is made up of four components. The first group, dark blue, new stores. The second group, in gray, the impact caused by the growth of the average price of the products we sell, either by inflation or because of the product mix. Number three is the growth coming from volume. More tickets, more customers, and higher frequency. The fourth group in red is the impact of the stores that are closed. When we compare Panvel with the competition, be it chains or smaller independent stores, it is clear that we are gaining share, be it because of the quality of our expansion, the percentage of which is above the average of the region, and because of the quality of the existing stores.
We are much more efficient than the competition in 2022 in increasing our customer base and increasing recurrence at a proportion above that of the whole market. Also a highlight, we are more efficient than the average in choosing stores to be closed or transferred. The impact of those choices was very small in the sales performance level. If you have been following us since Q3, you know we are always sharing with the market a deep dive in our strategic expansion. Here, that increases our certainty about everything. When we look at data as return and retail EBITDA, we see how healthy the group is. For example, EBITDA for all or retail EBITDA, the evolution year by year of the result shows a trend tendency to improve our margins throughout time. It is a steady growth, and this will push the average up at every year.
That is the engine for our successive margin gains we have been obtaining and we expect to continue to gain this year. When we look at the return levels, ROIC, it is the same conclusion. We take as a starting point the position of the company back in 2019 when we defined the targets that would guide our expansion from the point of view of return on investment or ROIC, and that is the calculation. That is forward sales. Correct. If we look at the pharma industry for the past few years, with the exception of the RD chain, all the other companies did not fare well in expanding. They built a new base of stores that brought no results. Our trajectory is quite different. A lot of discipline. Yes.
Our first year starts with over 10% of return, and we close the third year with over 50%, and with all the expansion we have been doing. If we look at the data from 2020, 2021 and 2022, we opened about 160 stores, and they are all here. The average return for Panvel as a whole, in other words, mature and new stores, continues at the level of over 40%. We have been able to accommodate all that. The future is already a fact for us. Yes. When you look at the data on the right-hand side of the slide, we can see the results for each one of the states where we have a footprint.
We can safely say that we deliver great results across the region, especially when we analyze the performance in Paraná and Santa Catarina, even São Paulo, regions that have several stores still in maturation. Every quarter, we are bridging that gap with the performance in Rio Grande, our original state, and of course, the more mature and more profitable area. Also important to say, and it has to do with the expansion plan. When you look at the market share for each one of the states, in specific Paraná and Santa Catarina, around 6%, opportunities are clear, are obvious. There is a lot of room to grow in those states with good results and low risk of cannibalization. That is also true for the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul. Panvel is prepared, well-poised with a strong brand, and we strongly believe in the execution capacity for that plan.
Moving on. When we talk about physical stores, we are also talking about digital abilities. Panvel continues to evolve in digitalizing the company and the customers. On slide 25, I would like to reinforce that we have our digital roadmap with several deliveries have been made and a lot more to come. We have a challenge to stay ahead of the market with the best solutions and best delivery qualities. We started the year with very important functionalities, always focused on improving the purchase experience. One of them is the split order, through which you have reduced the risk. With that functionality of the split orders, when an item is not available at the store inventory, automatically, we refer that customer to a different lead time, so customers always find what they want. Also, have integrated the purchase baskets of our customers, calling omni basket, including online and physical purchases.
We are the only player in the market which is omnichannel. That functionality, the omni basket, when the customer navigates in our digital platforms, if there is a push from some product that is part of their basket and with a different price level, customers will include that item in their basket, be it the app or be it at their website, but they do not finalize the purchase. Our agent is able to identify the item at the store and then suggest that to the customer. That is what we call omni basket. In terms of customization, we have also launched the custom showcases within our website, which already use machine learning algorithms to customize all product offerings based on purchase behavior. In the last mile delivery, we are still evolving as well.
We have a totally new order tracking for 2022, and always looking at opportunities in our internal processes so that our delivery will be increasingly faster and below 60 minutes whenever possible. Social commerce, very nice project. We have our digital managers. This is literally an initiative to digitalize our employees. We talk about digitizing customers, but we are also digitizing our employees. Through that platform, we transform our store managers into digital influencers in their communities. Over 200 stores under that platform, over 10,000 postings, and over 30 million impressions until the end of the year. And of course, expands our capacity to communicate with our customers at each and every stores when we have to offer coupons, promotions, services, and products. Also important landmark was the launch of our marketplace in the second half.
This marketplace focused on health and wellbeing, closed the year in line with our expectations, 14 sellers and over 7,000 SKUs available. In this project, we are quite focused on customers and on quality of delivery. There is no use having a marketplace or e-commerce if you cannot ensure quality and excellence. With that in mind, we continue to develop the project very carefully and special attention to details. In 2023, we will continue to evolve in the marketplace arm, and it will be a great support to our objective, which is to expand our customers' purchase basket. Looking at the whole year, I can assure you that there is still a lot to be done. Digitizing, as we call it, is an endless journey with the objective of turning or making customers' lives a lot easier, be it the physical stores, be it through the e-commerce.
This will guide all our projects going forward. We cannot talk about digitalization without addressing CRM. Here we have a robust relationship platform where we have been investing in data science analytics with the intent of increasing loyalty. Of course, respecting all data protection laws. Results are clear. We have close to 16 million identified customers in our base, which is a unified base. That is a distinguishing factor. Our base is truly unified. In this base, we are able to follow the whole journey, especially for those customers who buy continuous or who have chronic disease or chronic conditions that require continuing purchases. Our price level today is a price defined for each customer. We have our agents, when they provide services, they have at their disposal a price for the medication if it is in promotion, the price based on the customer's health plan, website plan.
They are always able to offer the best price to customers. That is also a nominee approach. We grew that base by 26% in the year. Most of our growth in sales came from the healthier part of the puzzle. We did not grow because inflation, because of higher ticket. It is because we brought more customers to our stores. We have always been successful in increasing purchases from our active masters. That grew more than 15% in the quarter. That growth in active customers was followed by an increase in frequency, very healthy to our businesses as well. We have increased our customer base, our active customer base as well, and we are creating a base of loyal customers. Loyal customers come to our stores 3x as much as a normal customer, and that loyal customer base has grown more than 13%.
Another customer we follow is the omni customer. They buy through all channels we offer, physical and digital, and they represent our efforts to digitize the company. That is one of the KPIs that we monitor here in the company. Omni customers account for 10% of our customer base. They buy 3.5 x as much as other customers and have an even higher frequency than loyal customers. We have a very robust strategy to follow on that road, involving activation campaigns, exclusive products offerings, always using all our platforms, both physical, our stores, and digital platforms. It is important to remember, we have not talked about this in a while. It is important to remind you that the expansion would not be as successful if we did not have this strategic pillar, which is logistics.
I would like to call your attention to the opening and expansion of our CD in Rio Grande do Sul, which happened in March, this month, where it doubled our capacity in the region, and we are ready to provide support to more sales, more stores here in Rio Grande do Sul. The investment, when you add to the investment made in São José dos Pinhais in Paraná, we closed an important cycle of almost BRL 60 million , which will support the company until 2025 at least. From now on, we will be reaping the results. In this slide, we have pictures and the main numbers relative to that investment. The solar panels generating energy to all our operation in Eldorado do Sul. When we talk about ESG, we will come back to that point. But those are sustainable initiatives, no doubt.
If we combine good production and self-sustainable production, of course, that's a scale gains. About 70% of the stores. That's a very good percentage, and that's a journey which is never ending because we'll expand and continue to include more solar plants. Another pillar, we talked about logistics, and now another pillar is innovation and technology. 2022 was a very rich year in connections, projects, and actions. The first building block of that innovation ecosystem, as we call it, was Panvel Labs. Panvel Labs is now in its fourth year of existence. Time flies. 24 startups already connected and over 287 startups in our pipeline. This does not stop moving forward, bringing increasingly more businesses. Several innovation fronts came from that as our startup acceleration program, and also our intra-entrepreneurship program that we call Panvel On.
Through Panvel On, this last project, we encourage our employees to create mini startups in here to bring ideas, products, and services using agile methodologies and implementing that in our stores. The first Panvel On program was very successful in 2022. The second program is already on in 2023. Another natural evolution from Panvel Labs was the creation last year of our CVC, Panvel Ventures. We are ready and prospecting investment opportunities, always looking for solutions that are in line with our core, with a very pragmatic view about what can really generate return to the business. A lot of financial discipline, always important when you allocate capital, and we're doing the same here in this case. Now we have talked about ESG, let's reinforce the concept. It's good to close the year talking about that. Our platform, Todos Bem, is in full steam.
We are deeply engaged in our four fundamental pillars, our people, our partners, our customers, and our home. The Todos Bem platform combine initiatives which are part of the group's DNA and sets metrics for the next five years. I invite you all to visit our platform through the QR codes on the slides. There you'll be able to know more about the platform and about our commitments. All our commitments are public, transparent, and can be followed constantly. 2022 was a very rich year. Some of the accomplishments were listed today as we mentioned, and in terms of energy savings, and they're all available at our website through our QR code. For 2023, in addition to established targets, we'll have a very important deliverable, which is the publication of our first sustainability report, expected for the second half of the year.
We have more news on that very soon. Moving now to the end of the presentation, I'd like to share with you a summary of our view looking forward to the year 2023. The implementation of those projects and all our record for the past few years within our strategic pillars makes us all confident in this year. The main points will be we'll maintain, as mentioned, our pace of expansion of physical stores, and we expect to expand same stores in two digits to reach that performance level. We continue to focus on the service level of the stores. We'll continue to digitize our customer base, and we'll continue to invest in data analytics, CRM, and in digital. Looking at the categories, 2023 will be a year of strong growth. That's our expectation, both in generics and OTCs.
We're also observing a resumption in the past months of growth in beauty and toiletries, especially lines that suffered during the pandemic. The work with the non-medications, which was always a differentiator here for us, will be especially important not only for sales, but also for maintaining our gross margin. Speaking of gross margin, our mix and pricing strategy intends to maintain a healthy gross margin this year, similar to what we saw last year. As I mentioned, the growth in generics and OTCs, hygiene, and beauty will offset the readjustment in medications, which will be lower this year. Panvel products will also be an important trigger for growth because we see COVID-related items lagging behind. Expenses will be benefiting from our operating leverage as we decrease expenses. A summary of that can be seen as we have increased our EBITDA. That means three things.
We expect our stores, our mature stores, to continue to gain efficiency, that new stores continue to accelerate in maturity, and if we're going to maintain our expansion pace, and that's the objective, the impact of stores opening 2023 in our results will be proportionally smaller. On the other hand, after two years of intense investments in logistics in 2023, we'll go into a cycle of efficiency and scale gains. We understand we have all the elements in place to expand margins 2023. Mature performance above inflation, new stores impacting less the short term, and scale gains in logistics. All our story, the results, our execution capacity, makes Panvel be a unique and safe asset within the pharma industry, representing a great investment opportunity for old and new shareholders alike. Once again, thank you all for being here, and we can now be available for questions. Thank you.
We'll now start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you have a question, please press the raise your hand icon. If your answer has been removed, you can click on lower your hand. Our first question comes from Danniela Eiger from XP. You can carry on.
Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. You have addressed almost everything I wanted to ask. Just one final question about the cash generation dynamics. You did mention that we could expect an improvement in the cash cycle for the year, but if you could give us some more color on the main triggers and levers. If you could also explain the inventory dynamics as well. We've seen other players increasing that line. You also increased that line in Q4 because of a sort of imbalance in the supply chain. How do you see that going forward?
Thank you. Okay, Danniela, thank you for your question. As for the cash, how do we see as the main levers for 2023? On the one hand, we will be capturing opportunities in suppliers' lead times. This will continue to happen in the first quarter. This will be an important factor, and that's what we're working on in terms of cash cycle. In terms of inventory days, we are now going through a moment where we are anticipating our purchases, so it's only natural that inventory days will be slightly higher. There are challenges in terms of service level for industry. A main distinguishing factor for us, 2022, was that we had an inventory management was quite strict, which allowed us to have a better service level, better than the competition. We continue to focus on that.
We continue to maintain our inventory level close to what we had in 2022, maybe with one or two days of gain. Another important variable within our cash planning, we are estimating an expansion in our EBITDA for 2023. In other words, the operations will generate more cash than in 2022 with more positive results. This will help our cash. From the point of view of investments, and that is an important piece of data, CapEx will go into 2023 with an investment level which is lower than what we had in 2022. That is only natural because we have already closed a strong investment cycle in logistics, and now we are focused on stores and on technology. When we combine all those elements, what do we see for the year?
Once the first half is passed and there is a higher cash consumption in the first half because we buy more, we pay out the dividends, it is seasonal. As of the second half, those elements start generating cash, and our expectation is that we will close 2023 with a debt level which would be very low, close to what we had in 2022. A smaller percentage, closer to 0.2 x our EBITDA. This is very important. We are now in a period of high interest rates. Capital costs have increased significantly. Having that discipline in our cash management, without a doubt, will be an edge for us. We see an average retail company's deep in debt, which is not our case. We are in a much more comfortable position to continue to expand and invest and making the better choices.
We continue to expand. We are in expansion mode, and that conservative approach might make more sense in the high interest rate scenario. Our service level is different.
Thank you. If I can have a follow-up about the inventories in the first quarter, does it make sense to have that in Q1 given the high interest rate level?
It makes sense, but we have not yet.
We need to be quick in our turnover of the inventory,
But it is still an opportunity. We still need to analyze from two points of view. There is a chance of readjustment, which is lower. Also there is a deficiency in service level, which is quite normal at this time because all retailers and distributors do that sort of together. If you are not ready in terms of inventory, you run the risk of, after April 1st, your service level drops and you will suffer with some disruptions. To avoid disruptions and to maintain a healthy gross margin, it is normal to have that now, but again, at a lower level than what we had in 2022.
Thank you.
Thank you, Danniela.
Our next question comes from Clara Lustosa from Itaú BBA. You may carry on.
Good morning. Congratulations. Thank you for taking our questions. For sales, we saw a very positive dynamics. You talked about same-store sales above inflation. I would like to know what are the main drivers for that sales growth in mature stores. Is there still room for that with the current initiatives? What would be other triggers for you to continue to boost that and continue to have that expectation of having mature stores growing above inflation? Also, if you could talk about the competition. You talked about consolidating and gaining market share across several quarters. How do you see that competitive dynamics in the short run, especially in a scenario where you have medications readjustment, which would be lower than last year's high capital costs? What can you share with us about the competition dynamics? Thank you.
I think as for the first question, our service level at the stores saw no oscillation in the period. That was a very important component, especially for mature stores where there is no growth driver for sales. We continue to be that drugstore where customer goes with a prescription and they find what they want, and they buy additional items. If the customer does not find what they are looking for, we have all the digital tools to deliver that at home or find that in other stores. We have a very efficient inventory integration process. Also important was our strategy in generics.
You have been seeing that year after year, our growth in generics has been very aggressive. That is one of the main windows of opportunities that we found in the past years, one of the most attractive opportunities we had. We put together a strategy two years ago. We bid for suppliers to put together a commercial policy more aggressively. Today we have generics that compete with independents, other chains, and there is still opportunity for growth. Because if you take the share of generics for Panvel in the southern region, it is about 9%. And our share in medications is close to 12%. There is still 3 percentage points of share in generics that might come our way because it is lower than our share in the region.
There is room for us to grow, and this will be yet another trigger for us to continue to grow mature stores or same-store growth. As mentioned during the presentation, the quality of the expansion is also key. We have launched, for the past three years, 160 new stores. 160 new stores. If you have a base of 580, that is significant. It is a very positive expansion, and they explain the numbers. Expansion, as I mentioned before, expansion is the avenue through which other chains got it wrong and had to take a step back and close stores. Not us. Our future sales look very promising, both in terms of results, sales ramp up. We have been expanding very carefully and very efficiently. Those are the three main elements that explain our sales numbers.
I would add, Julio, going back to the pillars, each one of the pillars, especially digital CRM/services, they will continue to play the important role of maintaining or keeping customers connected in conversation with us. Our main asset last year was to have grown our loyal customers base, and we got ready for that. The projects are there and that effort will continue. When you talk about early year data, we see customer base continuing to grow. That is quite relevant. But there is no silver bullet. It is good execution, good service level, high NPS, customers finding what they are looking for.
I haven't mentioned, but what we do through digital, through Panvel products, through our stores, which are pleasant places to go, cozy, and a frictionless digital experience, all of that combined explains in a very competitive scenario, to your second question, that explains why we grow our market share more than others.
Speaking about the competition, I had mentioned, and I'd like to reinforce the dynamics we see in the first quarter so far is very similar to what we saw last year. We continue to gain market share across the three states. When we look at the competition, and again, with all due respect, serious people, working hard, competent players, but Panvel has been showing an edge. We see the competition is out on the street at the same pace. The questions always asked, is competition higher? Lower? It's exactly the same. Fierce competition, but our value proposition is, as we see it, higher than that of the competition, and we see that in our numbers.
The main point here is that we're not looking at the number of drugstores that we have. We look at our stores more than we look at other stores, because we do believe in our products. If you check the data we have shared, especially the market share data. There is a lot of room to grow.
Market is extremely fragmented. It's never going to be a limited place. There's a lot of room to grow, provided you have efficient execution.
A nd that requires financial and strategic discipline. We're not going to be opening stores in Brasília or in the Midwest or in Northeast. No, we are going to continue on our plan, which is to grow share in the southern region of Brazil.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Mrs. Gabriela Ferrante from Safra. You may proceed.
Hello. Good morning. Thank you. I have a quick question. You talked about the portfolio of your own products, Panvel products. What kind of launches can we expect this year, and what kind of percentage breakdown you expect to have after those launches?
Our objective in the mid-run is to reach 10% of share in sales. That's our target. The number of launches, I'm not really sure. It's a huge number. I just talked to our new professional who came from Europe. They managed hitos. They have stores around the world, and this person will be our new manager for our own product. We have huge expectations for that. Panvel products, without a doubt, if we see it as an edge, it's the only edge we can actually build and which is not subject of replication.
Panvel products will only exist within the Panvel Group, and we have a very broad catalog, in addition to beauty and toiletries, food items, convenience items. There is a regulatory challenge. We cannot grow in medications. Maybe in the future, and we are ready when that happens. This would catapult our products to way above 10%. Still, another bit of information that we shared in our release, Panvel products lead several categories. 40% of the categories are led by Panvel. Makeup, childcare. We have skin products.
Makeup. 70% of our makeup sales are Panvel.
Sunscreens as well. That remains a strength and it will grow. Once we are past COVID. Of course, COVID helped some sales, but it hindered our comparative basis. But as of 2023, we'll see that share grow as we are past COVID.
If I could complement, out of the categories, do we tend to include a new category of products?
We see many opportunities in food supplements and functional drinks or energy drinks. It's been a very short period of time. There's no specific category. Skin products, cosmetics, makeup. Cosmetics is maybe number one or two category, with the children's category. Dermativ, it's a skin product which is quite popular, so lots of opportunities in skincare. Panvel makes skincare products more affordable to people and more accessible. They're close in the store. They're exposed or displayed close to well-known brands.
Accessible, affordable, but with quality. Other own products, they focus on margins. Our focus is on the quality because our name is on it.
Thank you.
The Q&A session is now over. We'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Mottin for his final remarks.
Well, I'd like to thank you all for participating. Retail is made of people, as I said, so it is important for us to say thank you to each and every one of our 10,000 employees who worked hard in 2022 and helped us reach those good numbers. Our message is that despite the economic news, which is not that positive, the stock market is pressured, but we are confident in our ability to execute. The entry point now for our shares is quite attractive. That's the final message. Thank you, and let's move forward.
Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for participating, and I remain available, myself and IR team. Any other questions or comments you may have, reach out to us. We're always ready and available. We'll see you again to talk about Q1 results. See you then.
This concludes Panvel Group's video conference. Thank you all for participating, and have a nice day, everyone.