Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to RD People, Health and Well-being Conference Call to discuss its 2Q 'twenty one results. The presentation can be found on RD's Investor Relations website at ir.rd.com.br, where the audio for this conference will later be made available. We inform that all participants will only be able to listen to the conference during the company's presentation. After the company's remarks are over, there will be a Q and A period.
Before proceeding, let me mention that forward looking statements are being made under the Safe Harbor of Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of RD Management and on information currently available to the company. Forward looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect future results of RD and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward looking statements.
Today with us are Mr. Eugenio Desagortes, Investor Relations, Corporate Planning and M and A Vice President and Mr. Fernando Spinelli, Investor Relations and Business Development Director. Now I'll turn the conference over to Mr. Eugenio Desagotis.
Sir, you may begin your conference.
Welcome to the Rio de Janeiro 2Q 2021 conference call. I'd like to start with by saying that this was a great quarter for the company. We're very proud of that. But not only financially, this has been also a great quarter in terms of how our strategic plan has advanced. And so there's a lot of things that we'll be talking about in the call that point to very successful steps in terms of delivering our 3 element strategy, which is in pharmacy, marketplace and health platform.
So to talk about the highlights of the quarter, let me start here. We ended the period with 2,374 units in operation. We closed we opened 62 pharmacies in 2017. We had market share gains in every market with a national increase of 1.1 percentage point. Revenues reached BRL 6,200,000,000, 32% growth over a very weak comp base of last year, but a very robust 40.6% growth over the 2Q 2019.
So for a company our size, we're talking about a CAGR of 20% top line growth. So this is really, really strong number. Our contribution margin reached 10.8%, 81% of growth and also significant margin expansion because of the weak comp base of last year. EUR497,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA, 8% margin. If we talk about the this is non IFRS numbers.
This is the traditional accounting standard, the one we believe represents better the economics of the business. But for comparison sake, if we talk about IFRS, we'll be talking about 11.1%. But we really believe the 8% best represents the business because we pay rental on our stores and that has to be accounted into numbers. We had a net income of BRL 232,000,000 3.7 percent of net margin, Cash flow negative EUR300,000,000 in free cash flow, negative EUR 387,000,000 in total cash flow. It's important to mention that we had a peak in cash cycle every year in the second quarter and we're comparing here versus the Vale of the Q4.
So this is kind of an abnormal number and this is a number that will come down as this cash cycle normalizes. So by year end, I think everything will be normal and probably next quarter it will be already low. I think other highlights of the quarter, it's the announcement of the launch of Fitet, which is our new health platform focused on the promotion of Integral Health. We also announced yesterday the acquisition of another startup, CUKO Health. I'll be talking more about that during the presentation.
And finally, we disclosed in the quarter not only the objectives that we have until 2030 in terms of sustainability, but also very specific targets for each of those objectives. We'll also be talking about that in the end. So going forward here, as I mentioned before, we ended the quarter with 2,374 pharmacies, 62 openings, 7 closures. We had 69% of mature stores, 31% of maturing stores, so still a lot of maturation potential on our numbers. And we lost it's also important to highlight that the guidance of 240 new pharmacies both for 2021 and for 2022, it's still unchanged and we are progressing well towards the numbers guidance.
Give you some more color on the expansion. I think we have seen over the last 2 years a big difference in terms of strategy. I think until 2018, 2019, we were opening still a lot of stores in markets where we had already a pretty good presence. So it was more about share gain in existing markets than about entering new markets. We can see that from the 2Q 2018 to the 2Q 2019, we increased only the number of cities where we compete from 3 11 to 3 37.
But over the last 2 years, it's a significant increase in the number of cities, opening stores in 40 new cities in the 2Q 2020, last 12 months there for 1 year and now reaching 436. So this expansion means that that's much more focused in new markets as well as increasing density in existing markets. Of course, both happen, but I think the focus is clearly more now in new markets than before. This results in an expansion that has way less cannibalization than before. And as a result, we're seeing the internal rate of return going north of what we used to do.
Generally, we talk about the internal rate of return on expansion. On real terms, net of cannibalization of 20, we are now more into doing like 25 rather than 20. Finally, the profile of the stores we have been opening has been changing not only geographically, but also in terms of income segments. It's easy to say here to see here that 2Q 2018 40% of the stores we were opening were still upscale stores, 40% hybrid, 20% only popular. Now that makes us completely different.
We have only 10% premium pharmacies opened, nearly 60% hybrid and 31% popular stores. So both hybrid and popular serve the expanded middle class. The popular stores serve almost only those clients or the hybrid serves a combination of customer profiles including those customers. So when you look today at the total portfolio of stores, 1 third of the stores is premium pharmacies, 45 is hybrid, 22 is popular. So hybrid plus popular is 2 thirds of our total store base.
We are present today in every market but three states and this is something that we're changing this year as we already have contracts signed both in the states of Acre, Guaremi and Manama Park. So these 3 missing states won't be missing by the end of the year. We'll have stores in all of them. Of the stores we have today, 10 19 are higher, 13 55 are Durges' stores. I think we have advanced in a lot of markets.
I think one of the main highlights has been the South. We have now 2 60 stores in the Southern region. In Gilberto and Yudu Sur alone, where we still have half the store base of Parana, Those are similar markets. Hubertus is actually slightly larger than Paranazza market, but we have about half the size. But we are advancing very fast here.
Our operation is really good. We have added 19 stores over the last 12 months. We have more stores coming here. And I think another highlight has been the Northeast. We reached 3 17 stores in the Northeast.
This is an amazing operation. We are evolving as well in the North with 68 stores. We already have 10 stores in Amazonas, which is a pretty recent market. Five stores in Mondonia, which is another recent market and now entering these 3 missing markets. So the growth is happening everywhere, but especially North, Northeast and South have been very important areas.
Obviously, Apollo, we already have a very sizable operation, 1100 stores, we keep growing there as well, but less than in previous years. And I think there's more focus on these new in these other markets. I think this has been a great quarter in terms of market share gain both on a national basis, but also we have been sharing in every single market. Talking about revenues, obviously when you compare 2nd quarter versus 2Q 2020, this is a pretty there's a pretty easy comp base as the 2Q 2020 was finalized by the pandemic, was the toughest quarter in recent history, so 32% top line growth. But I think the real meaningful number here is the 40.6% 2 year stack growth when we compare this quarter to the same quarter 2019.
So for a company our size, a company which expansion on a percentage basis has been decelerating obviously to 40 stores every year over a growing store base. So percentage wise, this is coming down. But still, we have a catered north of 20%. So this is a very expressive number and this is obviously a consequence of the digital transformation of the company. As customers have gone digital, the total spending of these customers has also increased and this is driving a very sustainable growth in mature store sales, total demand as well.
When we look at the mix, if you split the mix in prescription versus front store, the mix has become has been constant. The only difference here is that within the front store, OTC has gained 150 bps, HPC has lost 150 bps. I think this also has to do with the pandemic. Obviously, there are a lot of categories in OTC driven by the pandemic and also to some extent HPC is penalized by less traffic than normal. In prescription, it's flat numbers versus last year.
Here, looking at our comps, not only I think the 20% 2 years back growth is amazing, as I mentioned before, but when you look at mature store sales growing 15% 2 years back, this is really, really strong number. We are talking here a real growth over this 2 year period of 5%. So we're talking 2.5% per year of real growth for mature stores. This is exactly a reflection of digitalization for our customers, generating more loyalty, more spending, more frequency, etcetera. And exactly here, we have some numbers about the issue that I was just talking about now.
The 2 quarter 2020 was a strong number 7.6. If you look before this, the numbers were much, much lower than this. So we reached this peak during the peak of the pandemic when which was a peak like that when people were fully locked up at home. Over the coming quarters where circulation started normalizing, this number came down, but still maintained a very strong residue. But now as we keep pushing digitalization, we see the numbers growing again.
We reached 7.7% digitalization in the Q1 and now 8.9% in the Q2. So this is a very important KPI for us and this is what is driven, what's driving the comp and top line performance we have seen. We see that the customers who become digital, they start spending average 20% to 25% more than before, and they do this across all the channels that we offer, app, stores, websites, etcetera. So this increased loyalty is driving the comps we're talking about. I think another highlight here is the number of cities from where we do motorized deliveries.
We have 400 cities with operation like this, not to mention that we have Click and Collect and Neighbourhood delivering 100% of our stores. So this is on top of that. And finally, we reached 11,800,000 in cumulative app downloads. I'll talk later about digital in more detail, but the performance of our app is very important, not only in terms of how much it represents on the total digital sales, but also in terms of the kind of conversion rates that we have seen here and experienced improvement as well. Gross margin, we reached 28.8% in the quarter.
This is a consequence of the price increase. So we have an inflationary gain of inventory every year concentrated in the 2nd quarter. When you compare to the previous year, it's important to mention that last year because of the beginning of the pandemic, the price the timing of the price increase shifted 2 months. So the 2Q 2020, we saw only 1 third of the gain. The 2 thirds of the gain were in the 3rd quarter.
Obviously, this affects our gross margin on base as we move to the next quarter. But 28.8% is a really good number and we have taken advantage of this price increase. We have accumulated lots of inventories as you can see here in the cash side, 68.8 days, obviously, lower than the 80 days we had last year. These 80 days, it was not only related to price increase, but was mostly related to the supply chain uncertainties brought by the pandemic. So we stockpiled a lot of inventories in order to prevent any disruptions.
In the end, it didn't happen. So when we compare the same quarter, it's lower now. But when we compare current cash cycle versus end of year, which affects our year to date cash flows, it's a significant increase. But this number will start coming down and it will normalize by the end of the year and so will the cash flows. Selling expenses, 17.9%.
I think this is a good level. I'm not comparing to the 2Q 2020 because it's a completely different scenario with much lower sales and loss of operating leverage. And so these selling expenses combined with a strong gross margin generated a very strong contribution margin of 10.8%. Finally, when you look at G and A, we had 2.9% of G and A versus 3% last year, so similar numbers despite a much lower top line growth last year. What's happening here is exactly that we invested 40 bps in the digital transformation, simple as that.
We're talking here IT investments, not only in IT as an accounting line, but looking more IT like more like a cost center. So that the Agile teams are here, we have cloud here, we have developers here. So we have people. We have services. We have every IT line here.
So 40 bps, this is a structural expansion. This is the cost of doing the kind of digital transformation we're doing, of launching a marketplace, of launching a digital health platform as well. Finally, the adjusted EBITDA 8%, BRL497,000,000. Just for comparison sake, because some of the players in our industry for some reason they prefer to report IFRS 16, which in my view are artificial numbers. But if we look at this, it's 11.1%.
But the right number to look is 8%. Here we have the reconciliation of the EBITDA. The main point here is the non recurring gains we have adjusted from our reported EBITDA. We have in the quarter 52,000,000 tax gains related to other fiscal exercises. So the accounting EBITDA was even higher than the €497,000,000 we reported.
The accounting EBITDA was €549,000,000 So very strong, but obviously we are very stringent in terms of the criteria we use to adjust number. This is true for non recurring revenues as well as non recurring expense. This quarter clearly shows that. Finally, EUR 230,000,000 in adjusted net income, 3.7 percent of margin. And as I mentioned before, we had negative total and free cash flows driven by the peak in cash cycle we see in the quarter versus the very, very low level of the 4Q 2020.
Finally, despite this peak in cash cycle, we still see 0.8 net debt to EBITDA, very low gearing ratio and this gearing ratio will fall even more as we normalize the cash cycle in the coming months. Finally, our stock price fell 1.3% in the quarter versus 6.3% appreciation by the IMO VESPA and we reported an average trading volume of EUR 149,000,000 which is I think a pretty expressive number. Obviously, our compounded returns since the IPOs of Rio Grande and Rio Grande, they are really staggering numbers and we keep reporting this kind of number as we move forward with the company. I would like now to focus on some of the strategic highlights of the quarter. So we have this strategy that is based on 3 elements, new pharmacy, which is the combination of digitalization with a health hub marketplace that is in the early days.
We just launched that for 1 of our banners. And finally, health platform, so I'll talk 1 by 1 with the main highlights. So here we have the new pharmacy highlights. So the first number here we already talked about this. We reached 8.9 percent utilization, 11,800,000 cumulative downloads.
And it's amazing to see that our app has more than 10% sales conversion, which is an amazing number. The app accounts for 60% of our digital sales. Obviously, the Net Promoter Score of the app is still below that of our physical stores, but it's improving and it's improving at a very good pace. So I reinforce what we have been saying. We have a good app.
We don't have a state of the art app, not yet, but we'll get there and we are exactly in the process and we see the numbers showing the improvement here. Finally, when you talk about the footprint, these 4 36 cities where we have deliveries, they represent 99.5% of our total demand. So the cities where we don't have this service, they are irrelevant in terms of total sales. But even those cities, they will have click and collect, they will have neighborhood deliveries because we have that in 100% of our network. Another highlight I would like to mention is comparing here the online visits of our websites versus those of our competitors.
Obviously, Hydro Gas is the leader. We have the obligation to be the number 1, but the point goes beyond that. We're the number 1 individually for the banners. But again, the higher Drug Azul is the number 1 drugstore brand in the country, the highest the number 2 drugstore brand in the country. So yes, we should still be ahead even on individual basis.
But when you look versus the competitors, we have more traffic than our fair share. That's the message here. We are as a company and even individually as banners way ahead of our other competitors in terms of traffic. And finally, when you think about the health care side of the new pharmacy, it's unbelievable that we have applied up to date 3,000,000 COVID tests. This started in May last year.
And this year alone, we have applied nearly 2,000,000 COVID tests. So this is very important in terms of our expanded role, not only as a pharmacy retailer, but as a health site, as someone who can support the customers in taking better care of themselves. On top of this number, another highlight is that we have applied more than we have applied a big number of COVID vaccines. Obviously, this is a partnership with several municipalities in the country. So we allow the public system to use our stores as an expanded network for the public service.
So this is completely for free. We don't charge the municipality. We don't charge the citizen. And very often, it's a professional from the public health system who does the vaccination within our stores. But this is also part of making our structure available to improve public health.
And this also helps showing to the customer this new phase of the pharmacy. Moving to the marketplace, it's still too early to talk about GMV. Right now, we have the marketplace only in one banner, which is Raya. So we are probably now in August to start rolling EduGazio because of introducing a new system release before doing this. Now we're getting ready to do it, but we already have 136 sellers.
This number is moving up. We have 28,000,600 SKUs available as a 3P offering on top of the 13,000, 14,000, 15,000 we have as our 1P operation. And finally, we have sold already 6,900 different SKUs on the 3P operation here. So obviously, this is very early days. We don't have our logistics.
The GMV numbers are still not material, but they're growing and we're happy with the way this is progressing. We are absolutely convinced This is a very important growth lever for the company. And finally, we launched in the quarter VITAD, which is our integral health platform. We have a specific app for VITAD. The Health Hub in the store is named VITAD Space.
And we have along with this Health Hub a space in the store in which we also sell curated healthy products, things like sustainable products, organic products, vegan products, etcetera. So the beauty here of this health platform is exactly the fact that this is an omni channel offer. So this is not this is way more than a simple app that help people take care of their health, which we do. But here, you can through the app schedule COVID exam or whatever test in the store. Once you do the procedure in the store, we store the data in the app so you have a health the consumer can have a health wallet in the app.
We have 25 free programs that we offered at launch. We have already 4 HealthHUBs working in tandem with the app. We'll have 20 health hubs by the end of the year. And the chassis of our app is exactly one of the startups that we bought, TechFit. And TechFit has brought us 40,000 paying customers who are using some of our digital solutions.
So this is an amazing starting base for us to start building upon these solutions, bringing new programs, further integrating with stores. And in the end of the day, all these three strategies, they are fully integrated. They are all enhancing the engagement of the customer, increasing the frequency of the customer, increasing the spending of the customer and as a result increase the customer lifetime value. In the end, doesn't matter where the customer is coming from or where the customer is spending their money. What it matters is that we have a full solution for taking care of people's health and well-being and this full solution will have a platform effect within it.
So this is very, very, very, very important for us. Finally, we have announced yesterday also the acquisition of another startup, Cuckoo Health. And with CUKO Health, we have an amazing ecosystem in terms of retail and healthcare solutions. So the basis of everything are the high end of consumer banners, which are omni channel retailing operations and they start to become also marketplaces. We have a group of private label brands that we have in our stores and our digital platforms.
We have we also have solutions here for enhancing for increasing customer engagement. So we have Styx, our joint venture with GPA, which supports our loyalty program. So it's a common points platform with GPA. We also have RDS, which is this is an organic development. It's not a company we bought.
So this is today it's a business unit, but to become a company to support digital marketing activities both for the pharmacy and for 3P within the marketplace. And then when we think about health care, we have a lot of assets related to health promotion. So Techfit has brought with itself the Techfit brand, the workout brand and the Techno Nutri brand. We have Vitet, which is like the 3 60 degree health solution that brings along several of these specialized solutions like workout, which is a workout kind of thing. We have nutritionals.
So VITA combines everything with a focus on the customer journey. And we also have HealthBeat, which does health promotion for company and health operators to reduce medical claims to improve population of health. So these are to help promote B2B and B2C solutions in terms of health promotion. When you think about access and adherence to the treatment, we have 2 businesses here. We have Universe, which is part of Hydro Gasuits.
It's not a separate company. What Universe does is increase the access to the treatment. We do partnership with health insurance companies to bring people to our stores to provide more discounts, payment facilities and things like that. And now we have Cuckoo, which is a startup specializing adherence to the treatment. Adherence to the treatment is one of the main gaps in health care all around the world.
There are statistics that show that people adherence to the treatment is less than 50%, And this is really a win win opportunity for us and for the customer because a customer who is fully compliant will live a better longer life, will have less cost for the health care system and also will increase their spending with us. So we have tried to do several initiatives, some successful internally, but now we have a team, a company fully dedicated to put all our assets together to build a DRAM 360 degrees adherence solution to our customers. And finally, when you talk about specialty, we have Forbio, which is specialty pharmacy and we have Manipulare, which is compounding pharmacy. So this is an ecosystem in the making. There will be more startups joining this ecosystem.
We have a nice pipeline of negotiations through Archie Ventures, which is our corporate venture capital platform. But it's easy to see how this is combining to transform our execution in the coming years. And finally, we have recently announced our objectives and targets for sustainability. So this is a program that we call Walking Together for a Healthier Society. We have 3 fronts here, healthier people, healthier business, healthier planet, and we have several major objectives here.
When you think about healthy people, taking care of the health of our employees, so any health transformation starts inside the company with our employees having better health, also promote healthy habits to our customers and promote health in the community. So these 3 macro objectives are related to healthy people. In terms of health and business, we have another 3 macro objectives, which are include and empower our employees through diversity promotion, expand personal development opportunities for them and also promote empowerment and diversity within our supply for our suppliers. And finally, when you think about the healthier planet, potentialize the circular economy within this value chain and contribute to a 0 carbon world. To do this, we have set 35 goals, which are aligned to these macro objectives and to these objectives.
And we have the link here for the detailed 35 goals that we have set for 2,030, but we have here several of the main goals like reducing by 50%, health risk factors of our employee, become a net 0 company, 0 landfill, boost professional development certification, general equality, minority representation. So all these goals are very clearly set and now year after year, we'll start monitoring them and reporting on them. So these were our prepared remarks. We'll now like to open for the Q and A. Thank you very much.
We will now start our Q and A period. The first question is from Maria Claring Fantozzi from Itau.
Hi, guys. Thank you for choosing my questions, and congrats for the results. So I have two main questions. Could you please give us more color on what are the main drivers for the constant improvement that we are seeing in the digital penetration? In other words, does it come from new clients, from better conversion rates or from a higher average ticket?
We are also impressed with the ad conversion of 10% that you've shown in the release. Could you please give us more details on what do you see as the main drivers that boosted this conversion rate at this level in the app? Thank you.
Okay. Maria Clara, thank you for your questions. And so let me talk about the digital penetration. I mean, as I mentioned in the beginning, we have a strategy that has 3 very complementary elements in pharmacy marketplace and platform. Marketplace and digital platform are almost fully digital businesses.
So in the end of the day, the capacity of this business to create value depends on our capacity to digitalize the customers and onboard them at our pharmacies. So the digital penetration within the new pharmacy is the main KPI for the company because the highest the number of people will be using our apps and digital platforms, the highest potential that spending in the marketplace and the potential usage of the health platform as well. So we are boosting we're trying to boost digital penetration. We have been very aggressive about that. Obviously, a lot of that has to do with improving our delivery services.
So having delivery in more places, have been better operation, faster operation. So this all increases usage and the usage brings people back together. This has to do also with Bussi, the usage within the store. So two examples, sticks. So every customer who gain points and wants to redeem those points for products, those ticks points, they have to use the app.
The app is the only platform where they can track the points, exchange the points, etcetera. So this is another driver of digital penetration. And finally, our exclusive offers, which are one of our main elements of our full store execution, they are moving to the digital environment. So not only we have the physical pupil we have always had, but we have a high and increasing penetration of the smart coupons. And obviously, we are giving a lot of discount incentives as well.
So the prices online are more aggressive. The smart coupons, the digital smart coupons more aggressive, the physical smart coupon and this is on purpose because we want people to use more and more our digital platforms. They want people to buy digitally more and more for us because these people, they increase their loyalty, increase the frequency and become customers of the new businesses in the marketplace and of the digital platform. So this is what we're doing. We're very healthy with this number, but we want to keep increasing that.
We are glad, but we're not happy. We believe that this digital penetration can be much bigger and we'll keep pushing them. Obviously, it's a gradual buildup. It's not a turnkey process, but I think we've been very successful here. And this opens all these optionality just for the company in the future.
In terms of the conversion, I think it has to do first with the relation that we have with the customer. We have a very strong loyalty, a very strong relationship with these kind of customers. So the customer gets used to the app. And obviously, when the customer gets the app, generally because he wants something specifically. So this results in a high conversion.
The second thing is that when we send a push with a customer about an offer, that offer is relevant, is in categories the customer is interested about. So the conversion of the push is also high. The experience of the app has been increasing as our squads have been working month after month after month, bringing new functionalities, eliminating bugs, improving navigation, user experience, etcetera, etcetera. So all that has really is really driving this amazing success that represents like something like 60% of digital sales and has a 10% conversion rate.
Very clear. Thank you, Eugenio.
Thank you.
The next question is from Gustavo Sendai from XP.
Hello, Eugenio. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions here. The first is on the RD Ventures. I was just wondering if you could give us more color on the acquisitions pipeline.
I mean, are you guys focusing on specific segments or specific type of company? And the second question is about market share. I was just wondering also if you gain share over smaller and regional players or you also gain share over from larger and well established players? Thank you.
Okay, Gustavo. Thank you very much. So I mean, when we look at the ecosystem chart, obviously, we have more we have company a company like Forbio, we can hardly call it a startup. It's a BRL1 1,000,000,000 company, BRL1.2 billion, BRL1.2 billion in revenues. We have the joint venture with GPA, BRL6 billion, which is also very specific thing.
I wouldn't call it a start up even though it's a start up. It's not a traditional start up in the sense of something that we buy from entrepreneurs, something that we build together with GPA. So we have today 4 start ups, 3 we already own. KUKU, we just announced yesterday, we will go through the antitrust clearance and then we will actually start owning KUKU. But these start ups, I mean, they already they're becoming very important for us.
For example, Techfit is the whole chassis of the digital platform. We have 40,000 paying people per month at that business. And all the solutions that we're bringing, they started with the start up and now we are enhancing them. We have Manipulae, which is a compounding pharmacies marketplace. So it's also improving, it's also growing.
We have HealthBeat, which is a customer a company that serves corporations and health insurers in terms of reducing loss of medical claims, improving population of health. And this is a gateway for us not only to offer universe to more accounts, but also tomorrow when we have a deeper suite of solutions in our health platform that we can maybe have a B2B platform as well and HealthBeat will be very instrumental in doing that. And finally, CUKU is a company fully focused on adherence to the treatment. We have done some initiatives, sometimes more successful, sometimes less, but we have had some success even internally in increasing adherence to the treatment. But doing that as a full time on a full time basis, as a full time business, I think it will be very different.
So this is a huge opportunity for us economically and for the customer in terms of improving the health. We are negotiating with other start ups. I don't want to be specific, but there are health techs in this process. There are also companies that are enablers to our digitalization, but as we sign and as we are able to announce, you'll see more clearly more with it. Thanks.
The next question is from Genel Prata from Citi.
Hi, Eugenio. Thanks for taking my question. I think I have only one from my side. It's a follow-up on Maria's question. When you look to the digital competition, I mean, we understand that Haia has an important competitive advantage given the company's popularity across all regions.
But I mean, when you look to the big retailers or the big e commerce players, do you already see these names as a directive competitors? Or do you expect that this name will focus on the health segment in the near future? And if so, what will be the main strategies to handle this competition? So thanks again.
Well, thanks, Eduardo. It's a very, very good important question. I mean, obviously, we are looking a lot to the leading platforms, V2W, Magaloo, MercadoLibri. I think these guys have been through this path before us. There's a lot of learning for us.
I think they have seen they have an amazing execution. The numbers are really impressive. But in the end of the day, they are generalistic platforms. What we want to do is different. We want to be a vertical platform, a specialized platform.
And I think we have assets also that allow us to differentiate our offerings. In terms of pharmacy, today there is a very there are regulatory barriers that prevent other general platforms from becoming online pharmacies. Obviously, they want to discuss these barriers. I think these barriers they are there for a reason to protect the customer. What they barriers in the end of the day, you cannot have a medicine being delivered by a company who's not a pharmacy without a fully audited and a fully licensed value chain, without the supervision of pharmacies.
So if anyone can become a pharmacy, they become a pharmacy, they can do it. But without becoming a pharmacy today, they wouldn't be able to do it. But even if they want to do it, I mean, when you think about pharmacy, we are very happy that 9% of digital penetration today, guess what, 91% of the penetration is in the stores. We have 80,000 pharmacies in Brazil. It's different for a customer to buy a pharmaceutical product because you have a pharmacy with parking, with amazing experience in every corner.
So it's very easy and convenient. So the main enemy of any digital pharmacy, us or anyone else's, is the physical presence and is the high level of convenience at the pharmacy office. So this is something very important. The other aspect is that we have a capillarity of 2,400 pharmacies all over Brazil. We reached 3,400.
So we can deliver very fast with a very low cost. We have a wide array of partnerships with manufacturers, with various programs with that they support. We have a lot of partnerships with healthy sugars, payers that give specific discounts. So pharmacy execution is a very specialized execution. The best example I can give is that supermarkets, even physical ones who own a pharmacy have never tackled the challenge of being a great pharmacy.
You look at supermarkets today, they become irrelevant in the pharmacy because they have the customers, they have the space, they have the pharmacy, they have the pharmacies. They don't have a dedicated specialized pharmacy execution. They don't have a dedicated logistics. They don't have dedicated systems. The only thing we do in life is being a pharmacy.
Now we will do more in terms of health, but we come from this very strong experience that we are moving online what we already do on the physical. So it's not easy for anybody to penetrate on the physical stores, but if anyone can penetrate in the physical stores of the digital offering is us by having the same level of specialization online that we have offline. Obviously, there are some in terms of the 3P, we will be developing categories that nobody has. An example is for powdery pharmacy. Nobody has it.
We want to have optics. We want to have other kinds of categories they don't have. And some categories they have and we have like beauty, like personal care. And so these are open categories and yes, there's competition already. So I think we have our own space where we can lead, where we can develop this business and become a very relevant merchant platform.
Okay, thanks. That's very clear. Congrats, Pat de Priscilla. Thanks.
We wish to thank all the participants for the questions. Now I'll turn the conference over to Mr. Eugenio de Zagoches for his final remarks.
Okay. First, thank you all for attending the conference call. Just to summarize on some of the things we have talked today. First is that I think this has been a great quarter. Financially, very, very good margin expansion, very robust 2 year stack growth, 20% CAGR, 40% 2 year stack growth.
So this is a very impressive number and it's a number that is driven by the digitalization of the company. This 40% 2 year growth implies in a 5% real mature store sales growth over 2 year period, It's like 2.5% real growth of mature stores per year. This is driven by digitalization because the people who get who start using digital according to the numbers we have within the company, they start spending 20% to 25% more than before. They spend more online, they spend more offline and we are agnostic in terms of channel. Our commitment is to provide the best possible service to our customers regardless of the channel that they choose.
So I think the new pharmacist is progressing really well. We have the initial health hubs being implemented. We have done this year alone nearly 2,000,000 COVID tests and more services and vaccine shots, flu shots, a partnership with the public system to do COVID immunization. So this will be significance of the store that's bringing a digital element and a health care element. It's happening at full speed.
We're also launching our marketplace. I think it's very early days, but it's very encouraging what we're seeing. We are being able to attract a lot of great partners. We are starting to look at our sellers as another customer of the company, a customer that deserves a value proposition on our part that we help them be effective. We offer them logistic solutions, market advertising solutions and other solutions.
So this will be all built in the coming years. So but today, it's 30 days, but very encouraging signals. I think over time as the numbers become more material, we'll start sharing GMV numbers, but I think it's still too early for that. Today, we are in a single banner, which is Raya. We are now starting to launch the drug as you banner.
So this is another important stage. Another highlight has been the launch of Byted, our digital gas platform. It's an omni channel platform. You can think about a customer, for example, who has diabetes. This customer can subscribe to a program.
Today, the programs are free. I think in the future, we have like a free meal format. So this diabetes customer, they can buy pharmaceutical products from us with more discounts, they will be able to gain more points when they buy from us, they will be able to go to the HealthHub, I don't know, once a week, once every 2 weeks to do exams to measure the sugar level in their blood, weight, cholesterol, whatever they need to measure. It's an omni channel offering. So there's a platform that helps them in the everyday management of the disease adherence, eating healthy, sleeping well, exercises, but then it integrates with the service and team.
So it's again early days. The acquisition of Techfit has been instrumental for us to launch this platform that fast. And we are ramping up and I think this is a longer term process even than the marketplace, but I think this can also this will be a very important piece of the whole puzzle that we're doing. And finally, we see our Arctic Ventures progressing. We just acquired our 4th startup.
We're starting to leverage the startups to transform the company to accelerate our digital and health care execution. So this is I think the main points we discussed today. I'd like to thank you all for your support as shareholders and we remain available for you whenever you need to talk to us. Thank you very much.