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 Mr. Flavio Correia, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs. I'd like to turn the conference over now to Mr. Raduan. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Good morning, everybody. It is a pleasure to join you this morning to talk about RD Saúde's third quarter 2026 earnings. It is a pleasure for us to be here, talk about our numbers, and answer your questions. Good morning, Flavio. We will go over the results very briefly.
We are happy because yesterday we released the press release, the results release earlier, and I'm sure that you had time to take a look at the results and interpret them. Now we have the chance to talk about them directly. I'll try to be brief in the presentation to leave more time for Q&A. Before I start, I'd like to thank all of you. In the Extel ranking voting about the market professionals, you recognized us and our investor relations team and the whole company. Thank you very much for that. It was an honor for us to be voted by you in such significant numbers.
I like to underscore our commitment to bringing results and facts with maximum transparency and honesty to help you see reality in the best way possible, trying to clear up the fog so that you can do your analysis in the best way possible. I'd like to confirm our commitment to transparency and honesty in our company. That's how we deal with you and also our board, our controlling shareholders, executives, and everyone really. We want trust and credibility in everything that we say. Again, thank you very much. I didn't even know that award existed, to be honest, but thank you so much for that incredible recognition. Now, let me give you an overview of the results. This quarter was very strong. It was a very strong quarter, as you usually put it. Let me show you the operational results and also some financial highlights.
We finished the period with 3,770 stores in operation. We are about to reach the 4,000 stores. We'll do it in less than 12 months. We opened 92 stores and closed nine. We opened 333 stores in the last 12 months, getting near to the guidance of 330 to 350 openings. I can tell you that we are going to be closer to the upper range of the guidance, closer to 350 than 330. It was a very healthy year in terms of expansions. We are aiming at the upper range of the guidance that we informed you about a few months ago. We had 53 million active customers in the last 12 months, about 25% of the Brazilian population. We are very proud of that. We had almost 120 million transactions in the quarter with an NPS of 91.
The customers are telling us that our performance is top-notch. We need to be proud of the number of transactions, but also the quality of those tickets. As you can see, the revenue was very solid. The base from last year was already very high, so we can see that GLP-1 drugs will start slowing down, but still the growth was at about 16% and a nominal increase of BRL 1.8 billion quarter-on-quarter. In mature stores, we had an increase of 8.4% with 5.6 points above the CMED price inflation adjustment index. We grew by 110 basis points in market share. In the last quarter, it was 18% market share. Now it is 19.1%. As I told you in the previous call, we had grown by 170 basis points, and that was very much related to GLP-1 drugs.
Here we are still growing our market share on GLP-1, but that gain will be diluted as the growth in that segment decreases. This is very much in line with what I told you in our last call. On digital, BRL 3.8 billion with a retail penetration increase of over 200 basis points. There is a quarterly effect that slows down our penetration this quarter, but it is 100% related to GLP-1, where people are going to brick-and-mortar stores to buy the products and not so much to digital channels. 75% of GLP-1 drugs were made on digital channels. Now it is brick and mortar. If we exclude that effect, quarter-on-quarter, the results are in line with our expectations. We closed the quarter with BRL 1 billion EBITDA, with almost 15% growth and a margin of 7.8%, with a drop of 0.1 percentage points.
Our adjusted earnings before taxes came to BRL 548 million, with a very strong growth of 31% and a margin of 4.2%, in line with last quarter. Our adjusted net income, BRL 439 million, rather, with a margin of 3.3% and a growth of 9.2%. If we exclude 4Bio from last year and this year, in relation to the financial revenues coming from the disposal of 4Bio, the growth would have been about 20% in net income, excluding 4Bio. It is a very strong number. Cash generation and leverage came to BRL 160 million in free cash flow. Flavio will give you more color on that later. Our leverage is getting more stable, with a net debt over EBITDA ratio of 0.8 times. As I told you, we grew by 16%. There is a double effect here.
We had the Stix loyalty program effect that is now consolidated, so we have that positive effect of 0.4 percentage points, but we also have a calendar effect of minus 0.3. One really upset the other. If we exclude that, we can see that we grew by 16%. It could have been better if seasonality had been more favorable. You can see that most of the growth comes from our branded medications, and then you can see that in the previous quarter, it was about nine to 10. Starting in the last quarter last year, the base came to 12% in generics, and that is where we are right now, 12-12.5. Most of the growth comes from the branded RX medications, and HPC grew by 13.4%, and OTC grew less because we had a winter seasonality that was not so strong as last year.
Anti-flu, anti-cold medications related to the flu season, they were not so strong. Even generics, excluding antibiotics, they underperformed our expectations. If it weren't for the seasonality effect, OTC and generics would have been in line with the growth that we had in HPC. Even HPC could have been better. September was an exceptionally rainy month for us, so we didn't have the winter season that we expected, and also, the summer season, the beginning of summer season, was weak in terms of the sales of sunscreens and the like, because it was very rainy. Our inventory was robust, but it didn't sell that well as we expected. You can see that HPC still grew by 13.4%, although we had those seasonality negative effects. Excluding those one-off effects, the other categories are performing well too.
We grew by 16%, as I said, and in mature stores, we grew by 8.4%. The growth is comfortably above the inflation index and also the CMED index. For the fourth quarter in a row, we grew by over 100 basis points, and we grew across the board, across all regions, 210 basis points in São Paulo and the Southeast, 110 basis points in the Midwest and the South by 50 basis points. The South did not expand so much in terms of new stores, so we should bear that in mind. The Southeast and the Northeast, the North are growing as well. The Northeast will probably be the third-largest region for us in terms of market share. We expect that to happen soon. You can see that the results, the top-line results were very solid. Now I'll turn it over to Flavio, and I'll be back for Q&A.
Hello. Good morning again. Now let's take a look at some more numbers about the third quarter. Our digital sales were very solid. We reached BRL 3.8 billion with a 29% penetration on sales. The penetration is a little lower than our penetration in the second quarter this year due to one single factor. In the past, we had the sales related to GLP-1 very strong on digital channels, but now, starting in the third quarter, we are bringing those efforts to our brick and mortar stores, the same type of offer. T he customers that go to the stores, they can buy the medications there, and that makes a huge difference. We are removing part of that overhang that we had on digital channels for GLP-1 drugs, and we're bringing that to our stores.
If we exclude that effect, this quarter and the previous quarter as well, we can see that the digital performance was very good. The quality of the digital sales is still very high, best in class, with 83% of digital sales taking place on our app. Then we have the other channels, 9% our website, 3% other websites or apps. T he quality proposition is great with an NPS of 80, which is great. If we look back, we can see that the digital sales over the last 12 months reached almost BRL 15 billion. That number, in and of itself, is at the same level as other major chains that we have here in Brazil. I t's an incredible number, really. Now, let's talk about our gross profit. Our margin came to 28.8%, 10 basis points of growth year-on-year.
And those 10 basis points come from the integration of the Stix point-based loyalty program into our result. That number will add to our gross profit. If we exclude that effect, our gross profit is very much in line with last year. It is very healthy, with a nominal growth of 16.5% year-on-year, reaching BRL 3.8 billion in comparison with BRL 3.26 billion. The net present value had an effect that put pressure on our gross profit, but we also had the growth of GLP-1 growing year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. We were able to offset those one-off situations that were putting pressure on our gross margin. Selling expenses came to 18.5% as a percentage of the gross revenue.
We also had the employee value proposition investments made in the fourth quarter of 2025, and those investments put a lot of pressure on our results at that time, a pressure of 50 basis points. That is why there is such a big difference between the different quarters. We still can see some of that effect in the third quarter of 2026, but they were absorbed by the operational leverage, the fact that our mature stores are growing by 8.4% per year. That incredible growth offsets those expenses, although the effect was still a little bit negative in the last-mile logistics costs and also security.
Our G&A expenses, they came to 2.6% as a percentage of our gross revenue. It is the same number that we had in 3Q 2025, and we have the Stix loyalty program effect here as well. It accounts for about 20 basis points in this number.
We can see that operational deleveraging movement here, going from 2.6% to 2.4%, but now because of Stix, that number went up to 2.6%. With that, our EBITDA margin came to 7.8% in comparison with 7.9% year-on-year, and that can be explained by all of the points that I already mentioned. Still, our EBITDA came to over BRL 1 billion this quarter, which is an extremely solid result. Our cash cycle. We can see that the cycle is at 54.2 days, 2.4 days better than last year, and that comes from basically two effects. First, the supplier's term of delivery, and also the inventories that increased from 101 days to 102.4 days, and that is related to what Raduan said. That happened because we did not have a cold winter season here in Brazil, and we are also putting together the inventories for the summer season.
The inventory is slightly up. It is not a structural problem. It is just a hiccup that is very natural. The inventories that we accumulated during the winter season, they sell very fast, so we will be able to sell those products over the coming months.
Now we see the financial expenses, it drops dramatically from 1.9% to 1.3% year-on-year. This is basically due to a debt that is being reduced over the course of time, as well as the SELIC base interest rate that is also reducing. This is approximately 40 basis points, and there are another 20 basis points that come from AVP, or rather NPV, net present value, and they are offset. This is the financial result, and now let's look at the EBT. We get almost BRL 150 million in this quarter. It's growing strong, 50 basis points year-on-year. It's a 31% nominal growth. This is a solid recurring result that we deliver to the market. Want to look at the income tax. It grows slightly, and it's now at 8% of sales, 8% of revenue.
It's basically because the IOE, the interest on equity, had a lower impact, but it's natural to the business. W e get to the end of the quarter with a 19.8% share, slightly higher than what we had last year. I think that's it. The net income is BRL 439 million in the quarter, with a 3.3% share of our gross revenue. Our comparison base was 3.5% in the third quarter 2025. That had the 4Bio impact as well. There was a particularly favorable quarter for 4Bio because there were tax credits they had recovered, and we were quite clear about it. If we deduct it, then this number goes down. It goes down to a level that we would have a 10 basis points increase on our recurring base in comparison to what we had last year.
Instead of seeing a number that drops 20 basis points, we have a 10 basis points increase year-on-year, excluding the 4Bio effect. The cash flow. We have BRL 56.8 million in the quarter. I think the result that most caught the eye of the sales side has to do with our cash flow. The explanation was already given around the inventory, so the ready-to-sell inventory in a winter that was less cold, and also the ready-to-sell inventory to be sold in summer. T his is part of our normal flow. This is not structurally different. It's just a point where we're taking the measures in the half of the year, in the second half of the year. We go from 1.1x to 0.8x EBITDA quarter-on-quarter, pardon me, year-on-year. We also have the impact of the 4Bio sales.
This is something that we can take into account and see as a very healthy result of the company. Just one last point to wrap up. I will talk a little bit about this slide, and Raduan will also say a few words about it. Considering the level of uncertainty there is in the market, considering the political picture, I think we should step away from this fire and take a look at it from a broader perspective. RD is a company that navigates a structurally strong market, the pharmaceutical market in Brazil. The CAGR of the market has been 13% of the year, not mentioning RD, but it's been growing this level from the start of this century. We are a thriving company in a thriving market. We're a solid company in a thriving market.
We've been growing here at 1.1 point in market share year-on-year. It's 50 basis points that we have had since we had the merger. With the NPS, with our solidity, with our expansion, a number of factors, also having more digital client experience or customer experience. All of that has had a positive impact for us. This has caused us to have an organic growth that is very solid, 16% growth year-on-year. An important point to mention is that if we look at the last 12-month sales, we surpass BRL 50 billion in sales for the very first time. That's a very relevant number, a very satisfactory number. Very satisfying. Growing the profitability even faster than we're growing our revenue. Our EBITDA is growing about 20% a year.
When we look at all of the new seeds that we're laying all over the country with our expansion, this expansion can grow or contribute in 25% IRR in all these years. Whenever we sow a new seed, there is a profitability that is growing, so that's very positive. We do not depend on one single channel, one single category. We have a lot of diversity in our portfolio. We have a best-in-class execution, and this gives the base for a number of situations in the pharmaceutical market, so being more digital and the GLP-1, the vaccine initiative. Any new trend in the market is something that we are able to capture almost twice as much the market share we normally have. Normally we have 20% market share, and we have 30%-40% whenever we see a new market, an innovative market opening up.
To wrap up, we still have a company that is reducing its leverage, reducing the weight of our debt and the cash contribution we can have in the course of time. Would you like to make any other comments? No? I'll make my last comments in the final remarks. Let's open up for the Q&A.
Thank you, Flavio. Thank you, Raduan. Let's now start our Q&A session. The first question comes from Luiz Guanais from BTG Pactual.
Good morning, Raduan and Flavio. I've got two questions, actually. Can you talk a little more about the GLP-1? There is some stabilization here in terms of sales penetration. How has the generic been behaving? What is the difference in terms of consumers? Is there any overlap considering semaglutide and any other non-generic and the generic products? Did you hear my question?
Yeah, please go ahead.
The capital structure, my second question has to do with that and capital allocation. In the third quarter, we see a greater consumption of working capital, but we're still generating cash and still reducing leverage. What can we expect in terms of capital allocation in the next 12 to 24 months?
Thank you, Guanais, for your questions. I'll detail out the first answer a bit more because I think other analysts will have that question. GLP-1 has been at about 12%, and let's break it down into two worlds. We have semaglutide, and that world, that scenario is very stable. 3.4% for 2/3 Mounjaro, a 1/3 tirzepatide, and 1/3 semaglutide. There has been an increase in volume in semaglutide that has been offsetting the impact. We did not have unlimited access for all of the pharmacies. We expect now to have more product availability in the next quarter.
We understand that maybe the average price may be lower than the volume uplift. We did the recent analysis for generics and similar products, and almost 2/3 are new customers. They had never bought this type of product with us, so these are new customers in the market. Maybe they were our customers already, but they were not buying GLP-1, or they were not our customers at all. That 1/3 of the customers is migration also semaglutide to similar products. There was a very small migration from tirzepatide and Mounjaro. For now, we see a lot of stability there, 3.4%-4% and 3.5%-4%, and semaglutide has been quite stable.
You probably saw this data in the public databases from. I mean, tirzepatide, when the combo started, there were some peaks in the demand, and after that, it went down a bit, but it is still on the same level of penetration. T here was a peak, and then it went back down. Combining all of that, we continue on the 12% level. We believe that next year there should be an increase in penetration, be it due to more availability, more competition in semaglutide with unlimited inventory levels, be it because of some oral medications that should be available at the end of the first half of next year. W e have an optimistic perspective when it comes to the increase in penetration next year.
I try to flesh out the answer as much as possible, because many of the analysts here probably have questions around the semaglutide we have had. As for the second question, in the last quarter, we normally improve the cash cycle even further. There is some spot-on impact, but we should be able to reduce leverage even further. We are revisiting our guidance around how fast our expansion, or how much faster expansion can get. Our concept pharmacy has surpassed our initial expectations. Of course, we had high expectations, but it still surpassed them. And we are going to accelerate and convert some pharmacies. This also consumes some of the cash. We have to continue to invest in our logistics and infrastructure so that we continue to have the lowest rupture levels that we have ever had. P art of the cash is devoted to that.
We have been making the necessary investments for technology, for AI in the organization. These have been the main allocations of our capital and will be for next year. If there is anything that is new that we understand would yield better returns, we will let you know, and we will invest in there. These are excellent problems for a company to have in a more challenging scenario, as retail has been in Brazil. We have a very solid company that has been generating more and more cash. I t is good to know that we can really count on more cash to invest in what we want. We will probably give you more color around that on our investor day at the start of December.
As for GLP-1, we have been talking about this for a while, the new players, these new players in the market will encourage competition, and this competition will increase our profitability in this category. We see some light being shed there. These are eminent proposals. We are probably going to see this growth in the course of time as these new products come in, as these new products come into the system.
Thank you very much. Vinícius Strano from UBS, you may ask your question.
Hello, Raduan and Flavio. I would like to ask a question around your gains in the commercial settings and how you have been seeing the commercial relationship with GLP-1 customers. You talked about the inventory effect, the impact in the third quarter regarding the weather, but as you prepare for Black Friday, what do you expect here for the end of the year as well?
Thank you for your question. Our gross margin is very robust, and it does not only come from negotiations with the customer. It has to do with very accurate pricing analysis and negotiations. It also has to do with having a strong partnership with the industry. We have almost 20% of the market share, but in some specific products, we have up to 40% of the market share. We need to use this bargaining power to negotiate terms that are favorable with the industry. Other factors have to do with managing losses. We have been managing our inventories better. We have the lowest inventory waste in our history.
This robust and stable gross margin does not only arise from good negotiations with the customer, but from these other side elements that combine to a very substantial impact. As I already said, we have worked on a project with a consultant. They have been doing a fantastic job with the commercial team. We are revisiting our practices and methodologies, our category pricing, negotiation management. We have been using AI and data, trying and being as scientific as possible. We are very optimistic looking forward with price competitiveness on the one side and margin protection on the other. There are several initiatives that make us comfortable and confident that we will have good news in the future. As for the inventory, we are also optimistic about Black Friday. Black Friday was strong last year.
It was the best Black Friday we have ever had, and we learned a lot from the Black Friday previous experiences, what has worked and what has not. We are making substantial investment in inventory and commercial investments as well. On the other side, we are also managing inventory as accurately and scientifically as we can. The snapshot shows the cash cycle as slightly less favorable. That is not keeping us awake at night. We are really comfortable when it comes to the inventory management. We have one leader for inventory and commercial departments. We have a new executive there also helping us see new opportunities and helping us make progress there. Structurally speaking, we are very comfortable with these improvements on inventory and with the cash cycle.
Well, Raduan already mentioned the inventory, but about the cash cycle, there is one specific point that we mentioned, and that was a very important factor to our results. The ICMS-ST return, right? The COGS rebate. This will continue to happen for a few months. There are some payments that will be recovered next year still. This is about the state of São Paulo. There are other states that are analyzing this proposal, so we may have good news coming from the other states in the categories that we sell in. But for now, it's just an expectation. It's not something that we are accounting for in the business yet.
Thank you. Maurício Cepeda from Morgan Stanley is up next. Please go ahead.
Hello, Raduan and Flavio. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is about the digital value proposition. You said that you brought GLP-1 to the brick-and-mortar stores with the same strategy that you had on digital, and the customers preferred to go to the stores and buy it there. Does that make you rethink the digital value proposition? In terms of everything that you build on the digital channels, have you reconsidered the implications of bringing the customers back to the brick-and-mortar stores? Doesn't that have an impact on security expenses, for example? Maybe that can also offset the last-mile logistics costs that have gone up. If you can talk more about the digital strategy, that would be great. The second question is about your working capital.
Now with uncertainty around interest rates, how are you going to negotiate with suppliers? It seems that the suppliers are a very important part of the working capital because of supplier financing. What should we expect going forward? Is it going to be sustainable? I imagine GLP-1 drugs have an influence on that because the inventory turn is better, and you have to sell. Maybe you can pay installments. What is sustainable in terms of working capital financing right now?
Thank you, Cepeda. I'm going to address your first question. That's a very good thinking process, but it's very hard to extrapolate the GLP-1 situation to other categories. The price difference between brick-and-mortar prices and digital prices was BRL 100. It's a lot. That's why the GLP-1 penetration in digital channels was 75%. There's no other SKU that will give us that break between digital and brick-and-mortar stores.
The driver behind that was that discount of BRL 100. In many cases, the customers were buying on a click-and-collect basis. They would go to the store and talk to the pharmacist, and the pharmacist would tell them that it would be cheaper for them to buy on the app. M any of them would go to the store anyway. It's a very specific situation. I don't think we can extrapolate that experience to the entire digital channel value proposition, which is still very strong. If you exclude that, the digital penetration is still about 25%. The price differences are BRL 2 or BRL 3, BRL 5, not as significant as the GLP-1 price difference. That was the single driver behind that situation. I don't think that weakens our belief that the digital channels are extremely important in our value proposition.
We are also bringing the prices at the stores closer to the digital prices, and still the penetration has not dropped on the digital channels, with the exception of GLP-1. We still believe that the value proposition is very strong for digital channels. To have another SKU with a 75% penetration in digital channels, that was a one-off situation. We will continue to strengthen the digital channels. Still about the digital strategy. We should remember that we have 53 million customers. It's a one-fourth of the Brazilian population, and we are adding 2.5 million customers every year. But only a fraction of that customer base buy online. Those are digital people, but many of them are not buying online. They are happy with their brick-and-mortar experience, and we are creating a differentiated experience on the digital side as well to bring more and more customers.
The digital customers, the regulars, usually spend 30% more per year than those customers that are not buying online frequently. Digitization has many layers, and there's a lot of benefit to be captured as we expand digital presentations to those customers that are not there on the digital channels yet. Now, as for working capital, there's not much to be said. Inventories as a whole have been a focus of ours. João and his team have been working on a number of initiatives to make sure that we are going to get better and better results with more quality. Today, the inventory is structurally smaller than last year, but there was an inventory disruption that was a lot better than last year. That shows that we are more efficient than we used to be.
Suppliers is one area where we still have to capture more opportunities, and things tend to improve. We don't intend to go back on that line. When it comes to payment terms, payment conditions, that line really depends on how the customers want to be treated and how they want to transact with us, but that line does not represent a pressure or a benefit for us. Our working capital management has been very positive.
Okay. Thank you.
Now, Joseph Giordano is up next with JPMorgan. Over to you.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I still would like to talk about working capital. When we look at your past credit liabilities, we can see that the company is really a safe haven for many of your suppliers. If we think about the long tail, what's your perspective about opportunistic buying opportunities since we are probably going to have more uncertainties around credit? Also, related to that, do you think that competition, regional competition, is slowing down? For example, if the local players need better payment terms from suppliers, maybe that can hurt the competition and not you.
Another question is about the labor reform. If you could share with us some more details about that, if there's any estimate about any impact that we might have and that we have to reflect on our analysis, that would be great. Also the tax reform, the PIS/COFINS tax credits that used to exist in the past don't anymore. Is any impact to be expected for 2027?
Thank you very much, Joe. I'm going to answer the first two questions. Well, first, it's hard to say. Of course, the interest rates are at 13.75%, so it is an advantage for us to buy more at once, but it all depends on the numbers and the conditions. We have to do the math and see if it is worth anticipating our buys. We are trying to be as scientific as possible in our analysis. As I mentioned, we have a project with consultants to analyze our profitability in each supplier, and we are including the costs related to losses, logistics, all those hidden costs.
We are trying to bring them to light to have more clarity about our situations with each supplier. I think that we can have some favorable conditions that we can take advantage of and buy more and bring forward some of our purchases to avoid interest rate impacts. As for the labor reform, we are ready for the necessary adjustments.
As you know, we already had a five-day work week. Now we have to go from 42 hours to 40 hours, 40 work hours per week, and that should happen in the next month. Let me talk about the pharmacies first. There is a number of pharmacies that work around the clock, almost 700, and we have pharmacist managers, and we will not have to change a thing in those stores. The other stores that are not open 24/7, maybe what we have to do is to shorten the work hours by 20 minutes. T hey would have to open later in the morning or close earlier. The impact would not be that great, because early in the morning and late at night, the flow of customers is not that big.
In some pharmacies, we close on Sundays, and now we will have to close on Saturdays as well or add more staff. It is a scenario that deserves deep analysis, and we are going to make the necessary adjustments. The work hours do not really have that much to do with the opening hours, but really the throughput. We will lose two hours of work every week, and we need to adjust the processes so we do not have to add more people. For the customer service department, I do not think we are going to need any adjustments. We are not going to have a one-size-fits-all solution. We have to analyze each category of pharmacy and minimize the impact on our operations and also on our customers. Flavio, over to you to talk about the tax reform.
It is a weird situation really. There is a world of theory and a practical world. In theory, the tax reform should not impact our results. Although it is very difficult to implement, we should not expect theoretically any impact. Our performance should remain the same despite those changes. There are many things to be defined yet. In practical terms, things can look a lot different. We signed two letters together with Abrafarma and IDV in relation to an understanding that it would be healthy to delay the implementation of some new reform acts.
Today, we have a system plugged into the tax system of Brazil for banks, suppliers, ourselves, the entire tax operation. We have also an environment that is not performing as much as it should, considering our operation flow. W e can attest to the functionality of many features, but not all, especially at a large scale such as the case of our company.
There are many things to be defined still in the tax reform. Many numbers will be validated on December 15. December 15 is very late in the year for us to do a number of things that need to be done for the migration to happen in a structured way. For example, we need to take into account the cost or the price of all pharmacy items that are regulated according to CMED. It's not really just about looking at the cost in the market, but it's also a cost that has to be regulated by CMED. We are short in time. We believe it would be healthy to delay that deadline. However, we are going to do whatever is necessary and whatever the law mandates.
On the operational side, we are already working with most suppliers with the new system operating normally with all the different entries that are required by the Federal Revenue Service, but we still don't have that for some products that we do not resell, for example, leases. We are on the right way, on the right route. We expect to deliver everything on the deadlines. However, we think it would be healthy to look at the big picture, and we believe that it would be beneficial to delay that deadline.
The next question comes from Bob Ford with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning, Raduan and Flavio. Thank you very much for taking my question. How effective has Anvisa been in fighting illegal GLP-1 products, and how much more semaglutide could you have sold if it weren't for the illegal products? What is your perspective in terms of price elasticity, considering generic semaglutide? Now that you have Stix, the loyalty program, what changes?
Well, it's hard to tell what the elasticity would have been. I believe that now with more inventory in the fourth quarter, we will be able to give you a better answer. We should remember that semaglutide accounts for 3.5%-4% of our sales. We don't have a shortage of supply in the branded products. We do have on generics, but we believe that the price deterioration is not going to be such a big problem. If you buy the combos, you will spend BRL 350 per month. The drop of the price has been a lot sharper and faster than we thought.
The new entrants that have been negotiating with us, as you know, there are many products that have been approved by Anvisa, and the new entrants want to charge the same price that is charged by the other players. The gross margin has been around 20%-25%, which is a step up from what we had before. We thought that the competition would bring more gross margin, and those projections are materializing in our negotiations and our conversations with suppliers. Again, I expect for us to see a net positive elasticity effect with more supply and more competition, and the volume will grow more than the price drop from now on, and the balance will be a positive one with better gross margins on semaglutide. Now, fighting the illegal product is indeed very hard.
We are saddened to say that the public agencies have not been very effective, because it is indeed a very difficult effort. All pharmacies have been selling more syringes than they used to because of these new injectables, quote-unquote, on the market. You can't stop selling syringes because many people need them for their regular treatments and their legal products. You can't simply cut that supply. But the internal indicators show that the entities have not been effective in fighting the illegal market, and this market seems to be still huge. We believe that as more and more people know other people that use those products coming from other countries, and they do lose weight and they survive, that sense of risk decreases, and customers are not afraid anymore to try those drugs. It is a health hazard that the country is facing.
We believe that tragedies will happen soon if they have not happened yet, and there's no other product that works the same way in the market. We believe that time will work its miracle, and things will come to normality with time. If the price of tirzepatide in the formal market becomes more affordable, then people will not turn to illegal solutions that much. But unfortunately, that market is still huge. We don't have official numbers, of course, because it is illegal, but we believe that with time, things will come back to normal.
As for Stix, that is a very good operation. We wouldn't have bought it if it weren't. Our customers really value that. They understand it to be a good service there at the checkout. They really see that as a loyalty-increasing factor. Our perspective is to continue to develop the business. We want to have more partners into the ecosystem and want to increase the value perception by customers even further. We've been very transparent in our earnings calls, always talking about the Stix results in our P&L. This was a positive impact, right? It will impact a bit in gross margin expenses, G&A, and we're talking about a company that is adding about BRL 5 million in EBITDA in the quarter. It's a small impact in the magnitude of our system.
Even though the Stix invites the change in our P&L because of the Stix integration, we captured half of that result even before we bought Stix in its entirety. It's not like we're seeing something we didn't see before. We saw part of it, and now we're seeing the whole of it. Strategically speaking, Stix makes sense, and operationally speaking, it is adding to our results. Thank you, Bob.
Thank you.
Goldman Sachs, [Foreign language].
Good morning. Most of my questions have already been answered. The value proposition for employees that joined the company in the last quarter, how that is impacting the base? There are other potential pressure sources. Could there be a dilution or a decrease in expenses, in selling expenses in the fourth quarter now?
Yes and no, Irma. We had investments around value propositions. We increased the pharmacy teams that increased our NPS. For the first time in history, we had 92% NPS with that high number of transactions. The investments made sense, and they were recognized by our customers. There are some minor pressures, some homework that we still need to do. We have a little bit more turnaround or turnover in the staff positions. People leaving the jobs and we're needing to hire more people. There are adjustments we think we can make, but everything that we do is always cautious and careful. We want to have changes that are smaller than the ones we had in the employee proposition, but there are other sources of expenses and general expenses in the gross margin. We'll never do anything that will impact negatively the company's results.
We'll try and find a path forward that will allow us to continue to increase the company's profitability and also make the adjustments in investments that we deem necessary and that the staff deserves. There should be some minor adjustments, but they will have offsets that we'll find internally. Sorry, I was looking at the wrong camera. Thank you, Irma.
Pedro Caravina from XP Investimentos.
Good morning, Raduan and Flavio. Thank you for taking my questions. Most of my questions have already been answered, to be honest, but if I can touch on two points, they'd be. Anvisa approved the oral Wegovy today, right? Wegovy in pills. Have you had any information from other geographies? What do you expect when it compares to the generic medications? I wanted to understand the rationale behind the GLP discounts and brick-and-mortar versus digital stores. There's the BRL 100 real gap. Is it a defense considering the increase in competition because of platforms? If you could add some color to these two points, I'd appreciate it.
The second point, I think, has to do with the market, the consumer. The consumers who are already going to the pharmacies, most of them were buying it online or through the app, they were seeing this friction. In the end, they would go to the pharmacy, buy it there, 80% there, but with the price online. There was just a difference just for show. Our direct competitors also made it easier for the consumers to buy it in the brick-and-mortar store with the same price or at the same price they had online. This is not even a new decision, it's just a habit the consumer already had, and the competition was also doing the same. The competitors all did the same, so we just followed suit. What was the other question? Pardon me.
That Wegovy, the oral version of the medication, the pills.
The data is very positive in the United States. It's helped spread the size of the market, increase the size of the market of GLP-1. New consumers start using the product. If they are afraid of needles, for example, they may now start the treatment with the pills. There are a substantial number of people who feel more comfortable with the oral medication. People also will migrate from the injectable to the oral medication. There is an increase in the market that is expected, as we saw it in the United States. In the first half of 2027, we should see an increase in the market for the whole pharmaceutical segment, not only for us. But we don't have a lot more information around it. We can delve deeper into the American market. Please come to the RD Day, and we'll talk about it then.
Lucas Esteves from Santander.
Good morning, Raduan and Flavio. Thank you for taking my questions. I'd like to look at two points from a different perspective. Looking at the data from Anvisa, we see that the GLP sales in Raia grew mid-teens, 13%-14%. That's lower than the market that is in about 30%. We see that the Southeast is losing some of the national share. Do you expect the GLP share should converge to the 19% that you have in the pharmaceutical market as a whole, or is there any strategy to keep it above that average? Thinking about the margin in 2027, there are some important impacts that are coming together.
The historical effects are to be reduced with GLP contributing less to growth. The EVP will come into the base now, and there are some shops that are still maturing. When we combine all of these different effects, what can we expect for the margin next year? Can the maturation of the stores offset that, or should the margin be more stable?
Our answer is no. We don't expect to have 19% share in GLP-1. We expect the share to be higher with this molecule, with these products, because they also have a higher price. We lost no share in tirzepatide. We continue to have over 40% market share there, and semaglutide is over 30%. Of course, we're closer to the lower 30s than higher 30s as it was before.
That was expected because the prices were reduced and other doors were opened as these new cheaper products came into the market. We expected the share to be reduced, but we're still comfortably higher than 20%. I don't think we'll converge down to 20% or even 25%. It is a product with a price of BRL 250, and the average ticket at BRL 110, the competition is even lower. This product alone has a threefold higher price than the average ticket. W e expect to have at least 30% of the market share, as we have other products that have a higher average than 20%. We give no guidance around the margin. If I give any guidance, Arthur is going to give me a scolding, but I'll give you some guidance. No one works hard to make no progress, right?
We're concluding our budget plan for next year, and we're putting in place initiatives and projects that we understand are important to face this headwind and allow us to improve our margins slowly but surely, of course, without any crazy moves. A lways growing step by step, slowly but surely, year- on- year. That's crystal clear.
Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Leandro Bastos from Citi.
Good morning, everyone. Coming back to the digital business and the GLP front. The company started ahead of the rest of the market in the digital front. We see the industry trying to catch up with apps and aggregators in the digital environment that has become so important for the sector. Can you tell us what you see in this competitive landscape and the strength of these aggregators? Thank you.
Our digital business is very strong. Our NPS is very good. We have been delivering 39 minutes, so the customer experience has been excellent. We have a very strong overshare in the digital channel. We are disproportionately high there at about 40%. Not only because of digital, but because we have 3,700 pharmacies that are within a five-minute distance from so many million Brazilians. The aggregators, there is actually only one aggregator that is relevant. I mean, excluding HPC, speaking about pharmacy, that is iFood. iFood is doing its job. They are one of our partners. They also help us on a certain level, especially with the 24/7 or night deliveries. iFood is the only meaningful aggregator. There are other new entrants, Keeta, 99. They will play the role there. And they are middlemen, right? Th ere will be customers buying from us through them.
As they have to pay a take rate to them, then you have to have a higher margin, right? I f you have to pay a commission, you have to be more conservative in the pricing. T hese platforms are convenient. They give a good experience to customers, but they would not be competitive from a pricing perspective. They would not curb our growth, not ours and not our competitors'. They even add value as a partner.
Thank you. Guilherme Domingues from HSBC.
Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Raduan. Thank you for taking my questions. The concept, the model pharmacy, how have you been seeing the ticket, the average ticket, the customer flow, the whole performance there? As for GLP-1, there is a direct impact. What about the indirect impact with, say, vitamins or other related products?
We have seen an increase in supplements and vitamins. We have been investing there in the online channels and in the brick-and-mortar channels. T hey buy not only GLP-1, but there are adjacent products that are consumed more, and we are very attentive to this demand. The model pharmacy, the concept, it really did a lot better than we expected. The buzz there in the first month was really something that impressed us. It has been performing really well on high income. It has been accounting for 65% or 70% of sales.
Almost every line we have put there, the Korean products, fragrances, the professional hair products, everything we added there in terms of product portfolio really did well. I t was really, really good. There is a second one to open in November. It will be in Alphaville. It is my hometown. Not really my hometown, it is my wife's hometown. I was dragged into Alphaville.
There should be a third one that could open this year. It is an important growth avenue, we understand it to be so. It is an important opportunity for us to learn around the assortments that we have to have, the offers we have to have. We may not be able to apply the full model into other pharmacies, but we can pick and choose aspects that worked. The sensory experience of customers, of them going there and actually seeing it, touching it. Friends that go together, parent and child, mother and daughter, father and son. The people going together. This is something that the digital channel cannot offer, this physical experience. And of course, everything that we have there, we will also be able to sell online. And you are all invited to this new opening in Santana de Parnaíba.
Just to invite you to this, model pharmacy allowed us to explore a number of initiatives in HPC. Follow us on Instagram, Raia Oficial, Raia do Brasil. Our campaign for the Black Friday is also going well. There is this context with the doramas, the Mexican soap operas, the Korean soap operas. This is also going really well, so keep an eye out.
Thank you. Now we are going to take one last question from Henrique Spavieri from Bradesco BBI. Over to you.
Morning, Raduan and Flavio. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first question is, after the relatively slow CMED price increases, what are your expectations for 2027's price adjustment, and how can they create a more favorable environment for you to grow your revenue and your gross margin? The second question is, in the macro scenario that you described during the call, if we think about your operations excluding GLP-1, how resilient do you think the categories and the regions are? Do you see any movement of sales slowing down anywhere? If you can give us any color at all, that would be great.
I will start with the second question about resilience. Our results have been very resilient and solid, and you can see that in HPC performance in the third quarter. OTC and generics would have performed at the same level if we were to exclude seasonal effects. The performance has been very solid, and it is very sustainable as well, even if we exclude GLP-1. Of course, the tailwinds that we had in the past will now be neutral going forward from GLP-1 drugs. Now, about CMED price increases, we believe they will be more similar to the inflation index next year. A few questions ago, we talked about the headwinds in terms of margins that we will experience next year, but there will be some tailwinds as well. For next year, the pre-high season period should be good if the CMED price adjustments are closer to the inflation index.
The gains should be much higher than this year before the peak season. The tailwinds will offset the headwinds. At least that is our expectation, and we think the CMED price increases will be more similar to the inflation index.
Thank you, Henrique. That concludes the Q&A session for today, and now our executives will have the floor for their closing remarks.
Well, first of all, thank you very much to the entire team. Once again, you delivered a very solid third quarter result. Our people working at the pharmacies, the distribution centers, here at the office, the customer service people, thank you so much for your commitment to our purpose, our commitment to our customers, our people, and all stakeholders, really. Be proud of these results. Be proud of the customers' recognition. Our NPS is at 91, 92. That is proof that the customers recognize our hard work.
The market share has been increasing month after month, and that is yet another recognition of your hard work. C ongratulations. I am very proud of our entire team. I am very optimistic about the future of our organization. I am very optimistic based on the stock price, on our stock price. I am very confident in the fact that we created very unique assets. Our brands are strong. They are synonymous with credibility and trust in the healthcare sector. Our customer service is recognized by our customers. In any survey, we can see that, and that comes from a strong culture. It does not come from a well-defined process. No, it comes from culture. Our brick-and-mortar footprint cannot be replicated by anyone. We are reaching 4,000 pharmacies. We are right there together with the customers. No one else can do that.
Our digital channels are a huge strength, and we are present across the board, present on every single digital channel. Our assets are extremely strong, and we know that we can add improvements and value propositions to those assets. We know exactly what to do to continue evolving. Of course, we have reasons to be optimistic based on what we have done and what the customers believe that we can do from now on. Sometimes I think that we focus too much on the future, and we miss things that are happening right now. As the main executive at this company, I have to think about the future and understand if there is any threat coming, if there is any new entrants and things that can detract from our growth. That is healthy. That should continue because we need to be diligent.
We need to work harder and harder to strengthen our value proposition. But we cannot afford to miss the movements that are taking place right now at our company. In the last 12 months, our revenue came to BRL 50 billion. If we consider the last four quarters, our profit increased by BRL 8 billion year-on-year. In 12 months, we grew by BRL 8 billion year-on-year. We are reaching 4,000 pharmacies. We gained 110 basis points in market share quarter- after- quarter for four quarters in a row. W e need to try and find where we can improve, but we need to focus on the present as well. The present shows a clear message about how strong this company is and how fast we can be in consolidating our company, growing by BRL 8 billion, reaching 4,000 pharmacies, growing by 110 basis points every quarter.
This is my call to action for you. Continue paying attention to the future, but do pay attention to the present as well, because we are consolidating our company that is going to greatly improve our bargaining power with the suppliers. It is going to help us dilute expenses, and it is also going to help us invest more in technology to be ready for the future. Sometimes we are looking way ahead of us and not celebrating our achievements here in the present. T hank you once again. Thank you to the entire team. Thank you to the market players for recognizing our team. Please make sure to come to the RD Saúde Day because there you are going to learn more about our brilliant future. Thank you very much. See you next time.
Thank you very much for participating. This concludes RD Saúde's earnings call for today. Have a good one. Bye-bye.