Earnings call. The slide deck can be found at the company's investor relations website at ri.rdsaude.com.br. This conference's replay will also be made available later at the website. All participants will be on a listen-only mode during the company's presentation. After the presentation, we will hold a question and answer session when further instructions will be provided. Before we begin, we would like to inform you that forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Forward-looking statements are based on the company's management's beliefs and assumptions, as well as on information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements do not guarantee performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors should understand that overall economic conditions, the industry's conditions, and other operating factors may affect the company's future results and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today with us are Mr. Renato Raduan, CEO, and Flavio Correia, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs. I'd like to turn the conference over now to Mr. Raduan. Please, Mr. Raduan, you may proceed.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our company's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Again, it is a huge pleasure to join you once again to give you more details about our results. I'm sure we are going to have a very rich one hour, one hour and a half together this morning. Flavio, good morning.
Good morning, Renato, and good morning, everybody.
Thank you very much for the partnership and the patience for waiting for the results that were published last night. Now we are ready to give you more details on the results and answer your questions. Okay. As usual, let's talk about the highlights first. Very briefly, I'd like to touch on 4Bio. Last Monday, we signed the closing and finished the deal. We are very proud of 4Bio and its success, but now it is in the past, and it is no longer part of the continued operations. This is how we are going to address the results from now on. In the quarter, we finished the period with 3,614 units in operation, opening 68 and closing one.
We continue to pursue the plan of 330-250 openings according to our guidance, but our expansion is still above 20% IRR, which is the minimum that we expect. We reached 53 million customers, those 53, 52 million customers in this quarter, we served them with 111 million tickets. What we take the most pride on is the fact that we were able to sustain an NPS of 91% despite such high number of tickets. It is not easy to keep such a high NPS with over 3,000 units all around Brazil with so many tickets. That's why we are so proud of it, and that's why we have been so successful in our results. Excluding 4Bio, our gross revenue came to BRL 12 billion, 20% more year-on-year.
A significant growth. It means that we grew by BRL 2 billion in revenue quarter-on-quarter. That was accompanied by a growth in mature stores of about 12%. Considering our expansion, you can see how solid this growth and how solid this result was. We had a very significant market share increase with 150 bps. We had already had that increase in the previous quarter, you should remember that we had a very solid, very good Black Friday compared against a Black Friday that was not so good. Without the Black Friday effect, we were able to gain 150 bps across all regions. On the digital channels, we reached BRL 3.6 billion in revenue, 66% growth, and we exceeded 30% share in retail.
That led us to an adjusted EBITDA of BRL 821 million, virtually 32% growth in our EBITDA. Our EBITDA grew by BRL 200 million. Our net income came to BRL 300 million, actually BRL 299.8 million. 70% increase. It's BRL 120 million added to our net income. A free cash flow of BRL 285 million and BRL 136 total cash generation. In our perspective, this is a very solid, consistent result that consolidates Recovery that we showed all throughout last year, but it is important also to have a second quarter with the same level of results to be able to show you that we are indeed consolidating this type of performance in our company. We went from BRL 10 billion in gross revenue to BRL 12 billion.
We grew by BRL 2 billion then in 12 months. Most of that growth came from the brand-name drugs, the GLP1 drugs are included here, Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro. If we exclude this, if we exclude those drugs, the brand-name drugs are still growing very strongly. We can see here that HPC grew by 11.7%, and I have a highlight here. It rained more than usual in the South and Southeast of Brazil. If we were to isolate the growth of repellents and sunscreen, the growth in HPC would have been 14.2%, in line with a healthy growth and above inflation. If we exclude repellents and sunscreen from this number, the rest of HPC grew by 14.5%, which is very consistent as well.
As I told you, we grew by 20.4% in total, with 12.8% growth in mature stores. There's something that I should mention here. It is a 12.8% growth, yes, but on top of a sales base that was already above BRL 1 million. In the previous year, we grew less than expected, but it doesn't mean that the base was low. The sales were already very good, above BRL 1 million in mature stores, and we were still able to grow by almost 13% on top of that. Our mature stores are selling at around BRL 1.2 million. Again, very strong results. Before I turn it over to Flávio, I'd like to draw another comparison. Of course, comparing our results against our own results, we are very happy to see what we have done.
When we compare ourselves to the rest of the market, we are very happy to see that we gained 150 bps in market share, reaching almost 20% of nationwide market share. In São Paulo, the leap was very significant, 31.6% to 33.8%, to 120 bps of market share increase in São Paulo. That is the result of a very good mature store performance, but also expansion that we accelerated here in São Paulo. You can see here the share of the states in our year-by-year expansion. The darker color indicates the expansion in São Paulo, and we can see here that we sped up the expansion in São Paulo over the past two years. In the Southeast, 160 bps growth rather.
In the South, it was a smaller growth. In the Midwest, we went from 22.8 to 24.5. Here you can see that green accounts for our growth in the south of Brazil. It used to be 20%. It is now 13%, then 10%, so the market share increase there was smaller. In the South, we have the most saturated pharmacy region. It is the most saturated region in Brazil. We had a very solid market share gain in the Northeast, 130 basis points, then 130 basis points in the North of Brazil as well, although we slowed down our expansion in the North and Northeast. Still, we gained market share because of the growth of the existing stores that grew above the average.
The nationwide average was 12.8%, in the Northeast, it was even more than that because of the expansion that we had there. That's why we had such impressive market share gain there. We can see that the top-line sales were very strong, and that is the voice of the customer telling us that they are choosing us more and more.
That is great, Renato. Again, this just shows that the customers are happy and choosing us, and that's also the result of the digital channels that are stronger now. They are really the powerhouse of our business. It is an activity that accounts for about 30% of our sales. It is an activity that in 1Q alone received 170 million accesses, which is very significant.
We have a recurring base of customers coming back to the apps and website to find good opportunities and engage with us. The digital activity was already strong last year with 20%-22% share in our business, but it still grew by 66% in the period, which is extremely positive. The activity is consolidating itself through the app more than any other channel, which accounts for 83% share in our digital channels. We should remember that the app rewards customers for their recurrence and long-term loyalty. It's not just about the volume, it's also about the quality. The digital channel embraces many ways of engaging with the customers and the app is by far the biggest store that we have in our business.
Also, we serve our customers from mobile and desktops and laptops, and we also have the super apps accounting for 5% of our sales. It is important to highlight that the marketplaces are systems that bring together a number of customers and page views, and we are present across all of them. Of course, we are providing good services to the customers through those channels, but it is not the preferred channel that our customers go for when they come look for our products. Now, the mix of deliveries, we have the click and collect, which is a very important channel for us. 95, or actually 97% of the deliveries right now are done in less than one hour, be it with click and collect or home delivery or when we deliver the products to the customer's workplace.
We are very proud about our app NPS 81%. There was a slight drop in the delivery service, which is related to the inventory of certain categories. Sometimes when they go there to get the products, the products are not there. We had that instability with GLP-1 drugs, but it is going to normalize as the inventory goes back to normal, and we are very proud about the fact that customers are showing us that they are happy with our digital journey through the NPS. Our gross profit, we have a stable margin of 28.3%, but a nominal growth of 20% year-on-year. Here we are talking about over BRL 500 million in growth year-on-year, which is positive as well.
We started from a margin that was under pressure due to the GLP-1 drugs that caused a pressure of 40 bps, but that was offset due to the write-off of some losses and other commercial gains, including partnerships and relationships. Now let's talk about our SG&A. This is a very solid part of our results. We can see here the sales expenses going from 19.1%- 19% in the period. These selling expenses will dilute themselves. Although we had a strong capture of our EVP, we're talking about 50 bps here in positive impact with compensations to our team, and still we were able to offset that with our expenses, bringing the selling expenses down by 10 bps. G&A, our G&A has been stable.
Nominally speaking, we had 294 last year, and we're standing at 296 this year, which is very difficult to maintain. Still we had a very strong dilution in the period by 50 bps. When we performed a few adjustments last year in the first and second quarters, there was some doubt in the market about our ability to keep that level and if it wouldn't be necessary to hire more people, this is the proof that that was not necessary and our movements were correct and sustainable, the number will be maintained at this level over the coming years. That takes us to our EBITDA.
Every time we talk to the market, to the investors and analysts, I always say that that this company is working to increase profitability as expected, of course, and that increase will come through the dilution of SG&A than from an increase in the gross profit. That works both ways. It causes us to be more efficient on the expense side and also keeping our competitiveness with stable gross profit. As a result of that, we can see that our EBITDA reached BRL 820 million in the period, a BRL 200 million increase or 32% increase year-on-year and an increase of 60 bips in the period, as you saw in the previous slides. Our cash cycle is another very strong part of our results.
We had a drop of 10 days in our cash cycle in the period. That drop was caused by a decrease in the inventory level. We had a drop of eight to nine days in our inventory cycle. There was an effect here related to the taxes in the state of São Paulo related to some categories of drugs and HPC as well. We are talking about here a drop in three days in our inventory cycle just because of that, and the other indicators are very positive as well.
When we look further into it, we see that the adjusted financial expenses are stable at 1.8%, with the base interest rate being high at this point, so it's challenging, but we're doing well. The income tax is at 0.4%. The adjusted net income is BRL 180 million, and it has been growing year-over-year. Here, there is a BRL 120 million increase at 2.5% of the result. This is quite positive. We really wanted to highlight here in this breakdown what 4Bio was, what the positive results of 4Bio were. We have BRL 15 million here from 4Bio, and 4Bio was the reason why we sent our release a bit later last night, because we really wanted to show this breakdown excluding and including 4Bio.
We really wanted to show that 4Bio is no longer an operation that we have. It is a discontinued operation of ours. The resources that were generated that are discontinued from a net income perspective, they now are going to be part of our result in the financial expenses with the payments of the sale of the company. We have the results of the past and the results of the future as a discontinued operation of 4Bio. It's easy for you to compare both situations. That's it, yes. When we look at our cash flow, there isn't anything special to say about it. Our cash flow improves our adjusted EBITDA in BRL 200 million. This is sustained throughout. We also see the 4Bio effect in different line items with the resources, the proceeds from the operations.
I think this is quite well explained. There is stability, we end this period with a total free cash flow of BRL 130 million and BRL 112 with 4Bio. This can also be seen as a stable net debt considering the size of our company and a financial leverage that is 1x our EBITDA. Before we open up for the Q&A, back when I was an engineer at the engineering university, we needed to answer exercises where there was 1 result and you had to get to that result somehow else and prove that that was the right answer. This is what we see in our D-Day, we really show how the snapshot of the one or two quarters doesn't really represent the future potential of this university or, pardon me, of this company.
We're really improving our competitiveness, our value proposition. We have a superior value proposition. Our sales and market share gains with superior performance and investment power. BRL 200 million in EBITDA, BRL 120 million in net income, that allows for more investment in the value proposition. This flywheel had already been seen with very strong assets. The results from the previous quarters is really what we wanted to show with this plot. These assets are going to get stronger and stronger. I think the only thing that won't change here is our founding date, right? The NPS is 91 right now. We'll soon look at it and it's going to be higher. We are among the 20 most valuable brands, most recognized brands, we'll soon be among the 10 most valuable brands.
We're gonna continue to increase the number of customers. They're 84 million. They will be soon over 100 million. We'll soon have 4,000 pharmacies, and we have 30% retail sales, and it'll soon be more than that as well. It's great to see our beliefs translating into numbers. The work of the 75,000 people in operations, in the pharmacies, in customer relations, in the corporate department, all of us creating these results together, leading to this satisfaction. We're going to have more time for the Q&A today, I will have my final remarks at the end, of course.
Thank you, Renato Raduan, and thank you, Flavio Correia, for your explanations. Let's now start the Q&A. We have Joseph Giordano starting from JP Morgan.
Hello, Renato Raduan and Flavio Correia.
There are two points I like to ask about. You already spoke about the top line, the slowdown that we had because of the calendar effect stemming from Black Friday, which we don't have in the first quarter, and Raduan has really detailed the HPC. Were it not for these effects, the performance might have been much better. When I think about GLP-1, we understood that the supply was a bit tighter. There was some quarter-on-quarter stability. There might have been an expectation that it would have risen. Is there any change when we get to the end of the quarter, if there's a change in the supply, is this going to be carried over into the second quarter? When I think about HPC, we have less seasonal effects in the second quarter, I assume. Can we adjust it more excluding the seasonal events?
That's my first question. The second question has to do with the gross margin. I understand that it should have been better or more neutral. You think about trade allowance has been normalized with industry price warrants and HPC. How do you see opportunities to improve the margin in the category that is growing the most, which is GLP-1, and considering that there is a potential opportunity for new generics in the coming months?
I'll talk about GLP-1 and the margin.
All of your assumptions are correct. GLP-1 hasn't had restricted availability or unrestricted. Mounjaro 2.5 and five was more restricted. That caused GLP-1 to be more stable from the first to the second quarter. It's higher than. It's two digits, but it's low double digits, and it's quite stable there.
As of the second quarter, starting April, we understand there'll be more availability in our inventories. The generics start to gain more traction, and that will reduce the average price of the whole category. There are new generics, you know, they're gonna be joining the category. There was a lot of apprehension in the past around the generics if it was just going to bring down the price of the category and allow more people to access the medication, but no one really knew how this access was going to be. I think everyone now understands how big the parallel market is, be it compounding the drug or importing it.
It's natural now that everyone understands how big the market is, that there should be a migration from the parallel market to the pharmacies where you have a more reliable origin of the product. I think in the long run, there is a chance that there'll be a share that is over 12%. We see McKinsey and other studies showing that. I think that the growth pace should be slowing down. GLP-1 increase in the course of 2025, I think it will continue to accelerate, at a slower rate. Our gross margin is growing in this segment. When there is a monopoly, there's one single player, they have more pricing power. If there's a second player joining, the first needs to be more competitive already.
When you have generic medication, then you have more of a price war, more competition, and that will increase the retail margin. We see that our margins are already improving with new similar drugs and Well, remember that the general margin is 20%, and now we have the brand and similar drugs. It's not going to be massive, but it's improving what's already good. Even if we had a stable penetration, we would have already increased our profitability because profitability is rising. We could have an increase in profitability and share and penetration with this with the new prices. Would you like to answer the HPC bit? Just to complement on your answer. We always talk about the formal GLP market around 1 million packages a month. The informal market is 3 million-4 million packages.
When Raduan speaks about the parallel market migrating, the informal migrating into the formal one, we're talking about something that is three or four-fold larger than the official, the official market. HPC in the second quarter, there isn't much we can anticipate. There's no calendar effect in the second quarter, let's wait and see what the results are going to be like. In the course of 2025, we showed we had less promotions than we wished we had. We had slightly less than 50% being sold through promotions, through sales. Every shelf in every pharmacy, whenever you're going to buy a deodorant, there's a buy two, get the third one free sign. HPC continues to be stable. It's higher than 30% as it's always been.
The margin has always been above 30%, and with a 14% growth excluding seasonality. We don't see the need to invest even more in it at this level of growth. If your question has to do with higher level of competitiveness through other type of competition that we see in the market, then we do not see it. The competitiveness, or rather the competition we see now is the same that we saw in last year, and that we're going to sustain while the market stays as it is. We are operating well. The numbers and the figures are quite positive, this really leads to good results. Thank you very much, Diego.
Thank you, Joseph, for your question. Now we have Luiz Guanais from BTG Pactual with his questions.
Thank you, Raduan and Flavio. I have a question around working capital.
That was a highlight, a positive highlight, and the quarter was higher than what the market expected. How have negotiations with suppliers been doing, especially focusing on the pharma side? You've given more details on HPC, and this was a balance you were seeking and pursuing last year. When you look at the pharma front, how have these negotiations been going? When you think about rebates and you think about terms. Looking forward, what can we expect in 2026 for working capital, also considering that GLP is going to be growing, maybe not as quickly, but that it should continue to grow anyway.
Thank you, Guanais, for your question. We talked a lot about how we'd been working with HPC suppliers to deal with the price wars in marketplaces, and we had partners here to help us be more competitive.
We haven't really spoken much about the pharma negotiations. That continues to go well. Even though we're very competitive, we invested in prices and campaigns and sales. Even absorbing GLP-1 with a strong campaign from last year, we continue to have a strong margin. Now when you think about the cash cycle, I think the star of the show wasn't receivables or payables, it was the inventory reduction. Inventory reduction was really the star of the show here. That's really the driver that led to this cash cycle. As Flavio said, some of that has to do with the ST leaving, that's the tax changes we had, and GLP-1 with a strong turnaround.
That's part of it, but there's a structural part of inventory reduction that comes from a structural analysis, which is the result of the work of supply chain, the commercial department and operations department working together. They are reducing the inventory and the inventory that we have, and reducing also inventory, lack of materials in the inventory. We really see that we have a reduction in our inventory. I think this is going to be sustained and we should see some improvement. I don't think the cash cycle should relapse and go back to growing. It's quite structured. It's well-structured. It's quite solid. We got almost 10 days in cash cycle here, and that's an improvement. We should continue to move forward slowly but surely.
The payment from customers, the payment terms have extended in comparison to what we had because you have high value-added products being paid in multiple installments. We've also increased our payments to suppliers as well. We talked about this in our last quarter's call. It is expensive to grow. You have to burn cash to generate more turnover. We're a BRL 50 billion company growing 20% a year, so you need to burn cash for this growth to take place. Now we have the second quarter above 20% growth. Now, we will have an increased need of cash. When I mean, when you speed up, you have more cash being burnt, but when you steady the speed, then you have this, a slower or a lower cash consumption.
We should have a new cash burn level because of this new level that we have established after these two quarters growing 20%.
Thank you, Luiz, for your question. Next up, Vinícius Strano from UBS will ask his questions.
Good morning, Flávio and Radwan. I have two questions. First, about gross margin. It was a positive surprise to us. If you can tell us a little bit more about the improvement in the GLP-1 category. If you could give us more color on the drivers of the commercial gains of 40 bps offsetting the mix effect that you mentioned on the release. If you can be more aggressive on price in other categories. If you can give us more color on that would be great. My second question is about the expenses. What should be the impact of the labor law change in which the employees would work five days per week and rest for two days instead of six to one? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. About margins, there's no silver bullet. It was many different things that allowed us to grow so much on the GLP-1 category. To invest more in HPC, we were removing or decreasing the discounts on medication in the digital channels, and we were able to do that without harming the growth of the digital channels with 30% share. We have to negotiate with the suppliers every single day, which is brilliantly done by the commercial department. There's a distribution center in Hidrolândia, which greatly improves the distribution to other distribution centers in different regions with a service level that is much higher with lower inventory. There is a tax gain related to that. There are many levers, many drivers.
There was a loss, and that improved to 0.1 or 0.2, and there is still a lot to be done there. There are still value generation drivers going forward. We are also starting a process with a consulting firm to help us with pricing so that we use more science and invest in the right places. There's another project, a restructuring project in part of our commercial processes. There's still improvement to be captured. But what's most important is that we cannot lose our price competitiveness. We've always said very clearly that it is a non-negotiable, and that is part of the reason why we are growing by 150 bps in our market share. It is a priority for us.
Of course, we don't want the gross margin to go down, but we are not anxious to grow our gross margin so quickly that will harm our market share. When it comes to scale and to days of weeks that our labor is going to be like, our team is already working five days per week and resting two days. 100% of our operation is already operating like that. We were able to maintain and even decrease the selling expenses, as Flavio said. Although we increased the number of pharmacies and staff benefits, our staff is working five days per week and not six, and still the selling expenses are under control.
There are very few pharmacies that close on Sundays, and in those cases, they have a staff that rests only on Sunday, and they work six days per week then. That's not even 5% of our staff, our pharmacy staff. 95% of the staff is already working only five days per week. That has been well-absorbed by us. Now, one next step that can impact us is the reduction of work hours from 44- 40. I believe it is a major change for employees, employers, and the Brazilian economy. It should have been discussed more calmly instead of having such a surprise all of a sudden. Still, there will be a transition period. We will be able to adapt. Most of our pharmacies operate from 7:00 A.M. - 11:00 P.M.
If we're going to have eight hours, eight work hours and one hour lunchtime, people will stay at work for nine hours. If we got here in the morning, worked for nine hours, took a lunch break of one hour, and then I relieved Flavio after that, we would have 18 hours of operations. It's more than the 16 hours that we have right now. We are going to lose the overlap of our staff in the middle of the afternoon. In the pharmacies where we have full pharmacy service, we need to have a pharmacy there during the other pharmacist's lunch break. In those cases, we will need an adjustment in our workload if we didn't want to increase our staff in the pharmacies at all. Still, we are operating from seven to 11. It could be eight to 11.
The advantage of having so many stores is that we can choose some pharmacies to operate from seven to 10, and then others 11 to eight to 11 rather. There will be an impact, but it is not going to be a catastrophic change, I think. I believe that we'll be able to absorb part of that change. The first step has been taken already. Our staff is already working five days a week. 85% of our people approve of that. 3/4 of our staff preferred to work like that. It's all been absorbed by the expenses. The service level was not impacted. Our NPS is at 91, as you saw. That first step is behind us.
Just as a complement, what happens, here is Strano and Raduan described, how the staff is working in our pharmacies, and the pharmacies are at a maximum efficiency level right now, and that, of course, entails cost. Another way of thinking of this is that if the personnel cost is about 10 points of our expenses or 10 points on our sales, if we have an increase in the hours, it's a 10% increase. In the worst-case scenario, we're talking about 10% in a number that accounts for only 10 points of our P&L. Of course, part of the issue is related to what Raduan said, and most is absorbed. The part that is not absorbed is bad because it has an impact on the profitability, and that needs to be passed on, for example, in prices.
On the other side, on the flip side of this, it is going to give us some value. We are the most efficient player in the chain, the personnel cost accounts for less of our P&L than the competitors. That takes the weight off of our shoulders if we think in relative terms. As for the first question, when you asked the question, maybe you were referring to some comments in the market related to one-off situations that pictured a higher gross margin. Those situations are related to tax changes impacting the suppliers, and as they impact the suppliers, they have an impact on the inventory. That is a one-off effect that happens, but again, it is a one-off effect that happens when there's a tax change, and it happens every single quarter.
We don't see that as a situation that pulled the profitability up or down in a different way than it would in any other quarter. That's it. That's just the additional comment that I wanted to make.
Thank you, Strano, for your participation. Next up, Irma Sgarz with Goldman Sachs.
Hello, good morning. I just wanted to ask a question about the ICMS tax in the state of São Paulo. You've already touched on it. You talked about the impact on the working capital. I know it is not a permanent situation, but if you can give us more color about the implementation of that policy, which started in January for medication. In other categories, it came into force in the 1st of April.
I imagine that it had some impact on your systems, your pricing. I would like to know more about that, if you can give us more color. Also about the movements in the competitive landscape. Maybe the smaller chains will have to deal with higher complexity during the transition period. Maybe that will be added to other market trends, such as the labor law change that you just mentioned. Maybe all of that will help you gain even more market share. My second question, Raduan, I think you mentioned it already. You said that in March, you hired a consulting firm to capture more efficiencies and help you with pricing and promotions planning. I know it's early, only two months have passed since, but if you can share us some lessons that you have already learned, that would be great.
I can start with the second one, and Flavio can take the first one. Well, we are still in the diagnostic phase. We are still designing solutions. Indeed, we have already learned some lessons, and it is clear to us that there are avenues to improve our prices and be more aggressive in some SKUs and categories that are going to create that perception. At the same time, it is clear also that we can divest in some things and not impact the customer perception. We're very confident with the science behind it and that there are paths forward. We have not generated any value yet reflected on our gross margin. We have just started the diagnostic phase. We are still proposing some adjustments, and we are going to start implementing them gradually in the next quarter. The gross margin that you see today does not reflect any gain from that.
As for your first question, Irma. The change in the ST tax in São Paulo indeed happened for some categories in the beginning of the year and then later for HPC. It was a point that we didn't even discuss here internally. Indeed, it can make the lives of the smaller chains harder. What we see out in the field in terms of price competitiveness, we have not seen any change because of that. If there is any internal complexity, they have been dealing well with that. For us, the systems have already changed and adjusted. We are on a cruise flight mode right now when it comes to that, and medications account for 45% of our sales.
HPC accounts for about 25% of our sales, so it's a significant slice of our results now running on the ST model in São Paulo, which is the main state for us. We are talking about a very high financial value. The commitment that we have with the state is that we are going to receive those amounts in the next 12 months. We started with 24 months, but that number went down to 12 months, but that's not super defined. It can be flexible, and it doesn't have such a big impact on our result. We are going to receive that amount back in monthly installments, but also, at the same time, we are going to start selling those products, and we have to pay the ICMS now.
Although we are receiving a payment, at the same time, we are paying for the product that is leaving our inventory. There is a gap, but that effect is very small. When it comes to cash flow, in 12 months' time, when the key has turned completely, it is going to be positive in our cash cycle because we are going to pay the tax when we sell and not when we buy. When it comes to our everyday operations, it is not going to have such a big impact on our operations.
Next up, Mauricio Cepeda with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hello, Renato Raduan and Flávio. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions too. The first one is about the CMED index adjustment, which was below the inflation for this year.
It would be helpful if you can give us an update on the discounts across the chain, if the industry has already reduced the discounts, and if you did the same to keep the contribution from the different SKUs. Also, if you think that there can be a pressure on your gross profit because of inflation, that would be great. The second question is about HPC and your agreements with the suppliers. It is evident that you are growing, but you don't give us many details about your margins. In the Investor Day event, I understood that there was very little effect from that on your margins. In general terms, can we attribute that to your agreements with the industry?
Is it a win-win model, or is there any risk that the suppliers will see it as pressure and they end up favoring other channels and not the pharmacies?
Thank you for your questions. Well, I believe that that was very smooth. The adjustment index will be about 2.7. It was very well absorbed. We did not have any sharp reduction in discounts. We always wait a little bit. We do our market research, see how the market's behaving, and we make our movements responsibly, keeping our competitiveness, of course. The price adjustments were marginal. Our performance is still as we want it to be, so we don't see any need of making huge adjustments. Let's take a look at the market, see how it goes.
We don't think that it was a problem at the end of the day when it comes to adjusting prices, you know, the CMED index at 2.8. We do know that we are going to have adjustments for inflation. For example, when it comes to personnel expenses, it should happen in June, and I'm sure that those adjustments will be more in line with inflation, about 4.5%. It's good that we are growing so much because that helps us dilute expenses. It is also good to see that we have an efficiency culture all around our company. I said in the past that the adjustments made to the corporate department, seems like a one-off event, and I told you that that was a new moment in our history.
We were much more focused on efficiency and capital adjustment, and that was also what caused the cash and inventory cycle to go down by 10 days and also some movements we made in our invested companies. We are much more focused on efficiency, which will help us offset that gap between the price increases and the cost increases adjusted by inflation. As for HPC, we always said that the HPC margin was between 30%-35%. It was already within that range, and it still is. There was a marginal loss because we invested. Still, it is one of the healthiest categories when it comes to margins. We are still within that range, as I said, still very stable, very healthy for us and the suppliers as well.
HPC is no longer a subject talked about internally by the organization in our meetings and how to do it and find suppliers, having meetings with them and visits, and also how to deal with marketplaces selling the same products. Now it is so stable, and we are keeping investing in it. It's not a big topic, and it's still big for the commercial department. I hope it will continue to be so, but it's no longer a big battle that the whole organization has to fight. Right now we are very happy with the path that we decided to go on. Our performance is healthy, the margins are protected, and we think that the situation is also good for the suppliers.
Before we move on to the next question, if you allow me, did the suppliers reduce the discounts on medications because of the adjustment?
There was a slight adjustment in the discounts. We are running at 75% of the CMED index, so there was a 25% discount. There was just a slight adjustment, but it was not relevant at all. Going back to your original question, Cepeda, that adjustment that was below the inflation putting pressure on the P&L, we should remember that the adjustment last year was 2.1 or 2.3. It was so low indeed that it was lower than this year's increase, which was already low. It's something that we know how to deal with. Been there, done that. Thank you.
Thank you, Mauricio, for your questions. Now, Danniela Eiger from XP Investimentos is going to be asking her question.
Good morning, Renato Raduan and Flávio. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two quick questions on my side. First, can you share with us what your conversations have been like with the main pharma, industries have been in terms of timing and percentages? When we look at the digital front, the Raia consumers see there was a change in the shipping costs when it compares to the price of the order. As of a certain ticket, it became more expensive and BRL 6.99, it probably changes or varies from region to region, but BRL 6.99 is only for more expensive orders. We see this is still a very competitive environment in the digital front, especially in HPC.
I just wanted to understand why there has been this change and why we see these changes in the result if there are any impacts.
All right. Your first question. You said generics, but I assume you're talking about GLP-1 and similar drugs, right? This is really fighting the flames here of more competition. We see that all suppliers are trying to capture the start of the treatment, be it similar drugs or other competitors. The product was launched two years ago, right? The market leaders have established themselves already. There are incentives in the start of the treatment, so buy two, get the third free. You see this natural competition of who is going to be chosen for the start of the treatment. We do see this happening.
We see that this is reducing the average price at the start of treatment with semaglutide and other molecules. We see that in its wake, there are margins that are slowly but surely becoming more or healthier for us. The more competitors, the more they will be fighting for the end customer, and that is good for the end customer, and it's good for the distributors as well. The distributors in this case are us, of course. For shipping, we have a 40-minute delivery time, charging BRL 6.99. This is, well, almost a gift, right? We're not a nonprofit organization here. We have the 60-minute delivery time, and we have made some minor adjustments, so BRL 7.90, BRL 8.90.
Of course, if you have less than BRL 50 in your order, you wouldn't need to be subsidizing the shipping too much, and that would be impacting the end margin. You have to increase the shipping a bit, also as to stimulate people to buy more and increase that order. We understand that the value proposition of our delivery with this BRL 1-BRL 2 increase is very attractive. This is cheaper than most marketplaces will apply other than who those who are Prime or anything special. This is a test period. It's a pilot. Your region is a region that is piloting the test. This is really a pilot that has just begun, it will slowly but surely be applied to the whole of Brazil. Thank you for your preference.
All right. Thank you very much for answering my questions. Thank you, Danniela. Now we have Bob Ford from Bank of America. Bob, we can't hear you. Maybe you're on mute. If Bob can't ask his question right now, we can go on to the next question, and then we can give Bob another chance in a moment. Tales Granello from Safra.
Thank you, Raduan and Flavio. Well, you mentioned GLP-1 and the incumbents and the new players should see change there. Do you expect a slowdown in the second half of the year? What are your expectations for the future in this category when it comes to growth and penetration?
As for the gross margin, on the Investor Day, you mentioned there were 20 molecules that had been approved for you to have your own brand, your private label. Can you give us an update on that? I think that's an important lever for the gross margin.
Well, about GLP-1, you have newcomers in the market, but there will be more access. Again, this is an access that is, or this is a share that is stable. We don't see much growth month on month, but there was some intermittent supply. Now, with newcomers and better supply, we expect to see an increase in our share at a slower pace. There's an important point here to be taken into consideration. If prices go down, we lose share.
I was looking at these data recently, and of course, we have an unproportionally or disproportional share in A and B tiers, right? We have 52 million customers. Only 8 million are A tier. They're about 15% of our base. 85% of our customer, over 40% of them are non-A. They are either B tier or lower. No one services B and C tier as much as we have, even though we carry the reputation of servicing A tier better. I mean, after this 8 million, we have 48 that are non-A tier. These are the ones that are gonna be joining the official or the formal GLP market more. This is the potential that we see with this increase in the masses going from the informal into the formal market.
Again, this is difficult to detail. There are studies by McKinsey and other studies that show that there will be a long run up to 2030, and this category could account for up to 20% of the revenue of pharmacies. It doesn't mean it is going to get to 20%, nor that it will represent an increase of three point a year. It could be a bit erratic. It is quite stable right now, but I do expect some improvement in the course of 2026. Remember, Mounjaro just got here May last year. That was the first time we sold Mounjaro. In the next quarter, we will have a base from GLP-1. The third quarter, it's going to be even higher. The fourth quarter even higher. There should be stronger numbers.
You mentioned the exclusive brands. Our D-Day last year was the day where we launched this initiative. We mentioned our interest. This is still taking its first baby steps. It's not yet performing, we don't have much to share about it at this point. I was speaking to Paolo yesterday, he's from our expansion team, we're trying to quantify the situation, the different clusters, the different audiences, target audiences that we have. We are highlighting the A tier and B tier, we also have the other tiers that are serviced by us. Out of 3,600, we have 600 that are low income. Low income areas or low income audiences. If you look at our low income, we would already be one of the biggest in Brazil, you have hybrid stores and high-end.
We understand we are a preferred channel.
Thank you very much, Flávio. Thank you, Radwan.
Now we'll listen to Bob Ford from Bank of America.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Radwan and Flávio. The new PDV systems in cross-sell and upsell. Do you see any expectation to increase a point of sale?
We didn't remember we had mentioned this. We rolled it out. We changed the totems that we have at the counter. This is a system that is improving. There is more efficiency. It's a lot easier for you to get information as a customer. For you to look at industry programs, for you to have the items in your basket. It is quite good for that. There is AI embedded in it.
This AI will understand what the profile of the customer is and will make AI suggestions so that that can be even better for that customer with targeted recommendations. We see AI put in practice with the 60,000 people at the POSs. Oftentimes people don't remember what they bought the previous visit, and this is a system that helps them recall that, for example. It's going well. It's far from achieving the full potential it has, be it in efficiency, be it in customization. We can still go a long way, but we needed to roll out and train people in the system. Now we've rolled it out, we've trained people, and we'll continue to improve. As for consolidation, well, this is the year where we had the most closures.
We see the main chains are increasing their share over the smaller chains. The smaller ones are not really enjoying this tailwind from GLP-1. They don't have investing power to create digitization, to go digital and have an app. They lag behind. We have higher base interest. This also makes it harder for smaller chains, for smaller companies to compete. I understand this consolidation will continue to take place, and it has been accelerating these past two years. We get more share in the total market, and we also get the share in comparison to the bigger chains.
That was quite clear, Raduan. Thank you very much. Congratulations.
Thank you, Bob.
Now our very last question, Márcio Osako from Bradesco BBI.
Good morning, Radwan and Flávio. I've got three questions.
The first has to do with the CMED index. When it comes to PIS and COFINS taxes, well, that should have an impact of 1 percentage point, right? How does that impact your business? The second has to do with HPC. Do you understand that the HPC income from the first quarter was a weak comparison basis, the rise in the coming quarter should be lower now in comparison to the first quarter because the first quarter-over-first quarter wasn't a good comparison. The third question has to do with the gross margin. What do you expect in the future? In the coming quarters, you probably have a lower pressure, say from GLP-1, also digital. Well, that is still a pressure, but it's lower than it has been. You mentioned the losses there.
Yeah, these are basically my questions.
Let's start with the gross margin. We're quite stable, I would say. Looking forward, there's nothing that would drag this margin up or down. We don't have any structural difference to the, well, competitive landscape in the past quarters and including this current quarter, anything different to what we had seen before. Our gross margin was just stable. As Raduan said, we have a challenge here with the losses. The losses play an important role in our gross margin. We have improved a number of structural initiatives in comparison or regarding the losses when it comes to shipping items and distribution centers and transport. All of that has been improving. We have finally started improving our loss level as a whole.
The flip coin, the flip side of the coin, which is robberies and we still see that take place in our stores. The losses are still high, but the losses dropped 10 bps. Looking forward, we don't expect any factor to lead to major changes. Specifically when you think about the quarters and the halves, with CMED at this point at 2.8%, that hardly impacts the situation. When CMED was higher compared to inflation, we were able to have better results bringing forward our acquisitions. Now the volumes have to be very substantial in volume for us to have a substantial impact. Really operationally, we can't work on this on this volume. When it comes to CMED, the effects should be similar to what we had last year.
We can't promise anything, but it's something like that. Would you like to talk about HPC and growth? Well, HPC grew less last year, but it doesn't mean that the sales numbers were low. HPC was 25%. It just grew less in comparison to a year we had grown a lot. We were looking more on the quarter-on-quarter comparison. We understand it's a healthy growth level. This quarter it was 11, but it's impacted by the seasonal categories that have no impact on the second quarter. We understand it should climb back to normal levels. Again, this is not something we understand to be underperforming. It's in line with our expectation. As for CMED, the PIS and COFINS taxes, CMED grew more in states where we had this tax situation to offset it somehow.
We're talking about 1.2% due to this different tax burden. In the end, it's neutral.
Thank you very much, Márcio, for your question. This is the end of the Q&A. Now we're going to have our final remarks.
Do you have any closing remarks, Flavio? No, it's just that I know that you have to leave quickly today. Well, I just wanted to make some final points. We're talking about extremely strong results, BRL 2 billion in revenue, 200%, BRL 200 billion EBITDA, and BRL 120 million in income. I would be very happy to be an executive in such a company. BRL 2 billion, BRL 200 million, BRL 120 million, that's just our growth. It's not our net profits. It's just the size of the growth that we had in our revenues, EBITDA, and income. BRL 2 billion, BRL 200 million, BRL 120 million, those numbers speak for themselves. That comes from consistency, delivering expertise and strengthening our core business, being efficient. We are not a B2B company.
We are not a publicity agency that grows by 20% because it landed a new account of a big organization, and that's why there was that big leap. No. We don't take that shortcut. No. That happened because so many people are coming to our pharmacies, approving of our choices of how to take good care of them without silver bullets or working miracles or anything like that. It's just about being consistent, believing in our people, believing in our digital channel that's improving day after day. The numbers really speak for themselves, and we need to be proud of our solid results. Of course, we need to continue to pay attention on our cost efficiency discipline. We have been very disciplined in managing our expenses, but we also need to save money on what's worth saving money. We increased our staff in some pharmacies.
We improved the proposition in some distribution centers for our staff in the centers. We are also investing in technology and AI. We have a number of use cases that are advancing. We are keeping the discipline, efficiency, sustaining operations that get better and better, and investing in the company that we want to have in the future. That's why we are so happy about this quarter's results. They paint a very fair picture of what the company is and what we will be in the future than prior results. We are very happy about them. Once again, I would like to thank the 75,000 people who come to work every single day working for our company, delivering their very best to the customers.
I would also like to thank the investors, those who have always been able to believe in us despite results that were not so good in the past. We're talking about fantastic market share gain here, 150 bps. Flávio said that I had to leave. Let me talk about that. Here in Brazil we had a boxer, Maguila, and I'm going to do the same as he famously did once here in Brazil. I'd like to say happy birthday to my daughter. She's turning 15 today. She's my princess, happy birthday to you. Also my wife, it was her birthday yesterday. I'm not going to mention her age, but I'm turning 51 this month, so it's more or less in that ballpark.
Thank you very much, and a big kiss to my wife and my daughter, and see you in three months.
Thank you Renato and Flávio. Thank you very much for joining us. This concludes today's RD Saúde's earnings call for today. Have a good one.