Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Grupo SBF webcast, where we'll be discussing results from the Q4 of 2021 and the year of 2021. This is Pedro Zemel, CEO of Grupo SBF. Mr. José Salazar, our CFO and IRO, is with me, as well as Mr. Daniel Regensteiner, our corporate finance officer, and Luna Romeu, our IR manager. As you can see on slide two, we'll have two parts to this presentation or three parts to this presentation. First, we're going to talk about the main highlights, then results, and then a Q&A. You can send questions through the webcast platform, and they will be answered right after the presentation. Let's get started with slide number three.
After a significant recovery in results which we presented in the last quarter, in the Q4 we were able to deliver even better results, which emphasize the trends that we saw in the H2 of the year. For the first time in the history of the company, we had gross revenue above BRL 2 billion and again, a record EBITDA at BRL 271 million. This is the first year where we were able to present full results as the Grupo SBF after acquiring Fisia. Even after the impact from the closing of stores in the H1 of the year because of the pandemic, this goes to show that we really improved our company.
Our revenue more than doubled, getting to BRL 6.4 billion in 2021, with an EBITDA growth of 54%, reaching BRL 709.2 million in 2021. With these results, we can say that 2021 was a year that made us really proud. These were results we obtained in a very harsh scenario, and this is the result of a transformation we started to not only be Centauro but be the SBF Group, an ecosystem of sports which is now comprised of Centauro, Fisia, NWB, OneFan, and X3M, our new investment. Over on the next slide, we see two big points of focus, growing our DTC or direct-to-consumer channels and integrating our operations to the group. We finished the year with integrated teams and with advanced systemic integration, which allowed for synergies in back office costs.
With the future conclusion of systemic integration, especially with e-commerce platforms and the SAP system, we expect to accelerate the velocity and speed of innovation and technological development in both business units, and we expect to unlock other levers to create value for this business. Before Fisia, our DTC market share was 30% of sales, 10% for the digital channel and 20% for stores. For Fisia, our strategy has a key point of the growth of DTC channels, and we have been doing this successfully. In the Q4 of 2021, this has already reached 50% of sales. Our digital channel reached BRL 723 million in sales this year, an estimated growth of 300% compared to 2019, representing 22.3% of our revenue with Fisia. This is only the beginning.
The digital channel has a lot of potential to continue having accelerated growth, and we are now creating new meaning for the channel that we used to call Outlet to what we now call the Nike Value Stores. These stores sell discounted products, usually from old collections for consumers who are looking for more affordable prices. Our initiatives to reduce expenses and improve our gross margin have already brought us eight points of profitability increase for this channel. 8 percentage points. Throughout 2021, we developed other strategies for direct-to-consumer channels, and we plan on deploying them over the next years. With our marketplace out strategy, we started operating as sellers in the biggest online sports marketplaces in 2021, migrating some of the sales from wholesale to DTC, which will lead to significantly bigger profitability.
We do believe there's room for opportunity to keep on increasing the share of this method. With initiatives to increase the gross margin of Nike Value Stores, we have a profitable channel, and we only have 21 stores in Brazil. We see a great opportunity of expansion here with dozens of points of sale that could be launched over the next years. Finally, we created the strategy to introduce Nike stores to Brazil, offering a full brand experience and expanding the assortment that is available, focusing on women. According to our forecasts, we can get to this level of profitability that is similar to the level of the digital channel, which is the most profitable for Fisia. We also see great opportunities for expansion for this kind of store, which does not exist in Brazil.
With these initiatives of DTC growth, meaning digital, 3P, NVS, and Nike stores, we believe there's a lot of potential for growth and profitability with Fisia, even better than what we forecast when we completed this acquisition. Over on slide five, we see a new picture of the new Nike Value store that we launched in February 2022 in Santa Catarina. This is the first Nike store launched since the Grupo SBF took over Fisia. On slide six, we see that for Centauro, we are really confident with our growth hypothesis with expansion of G5 stores, strong growth of the digital platform, gains in market share, and a better omni-channel experience.
Even though we saw the impact of restrictions for physical retail at the beginning of the year and an online market that was still a bit off-balance, we were able to finish 2021 with 14% growth compared to 2019 and 27% compared to 2020, and a gross margin that was higher than before the pandemic. By reworking on prices, which is something we started in 2020, and by using strategies for assortment, digital marketing, and distribution, we were able to grow our revenue without letting go of profitability in a challenging year. We re-accelerated the expansion of G5 stores, and after the end of lockdown, we were still delivering above the average of network stores, which goes to confirm once again that it's important to offer to customers a special experience in stores.
During this year, we started 17 new stores, we renovated 19 stores, and we finished the year with 227 stores to a total of 231,000 sq m. In this quarter, we launched two new G5 stores at Iguatemi Shopping and Faria Lima, which will be important to increase our presence in the most important regions in the country. Our digital platform reached BRL 1 billion in sales with a 28% share of total sales for Centauro, and it is still growing in a healthy way. With ongoing investments in technology and marketing optimization for performance, in the Q4 , we again saw a bigger contribution margin for the digital than the physical stores channel, which is important since we want this channel to be the one that grows the most in upcoming years.
After going back to physical retail, it is important to have inventory and integrated operations in an omni-channel platform. 15% of Centauro's sales in the year came from omni-channel only. In addition to solid results with Fisia and the recovery of results for Centauro, 2021 was also a year of important achievements when it comes to our sports ecosystem. As a group, we evolved in structuring projects to support growth in upcoming years, especially when it comes to reviewing our logistics network and the creation of SBF Ventures. We are now executing the first part of a plan to improve SLA in digital channels and integrate logistics for Fisia and Centauro. The first initiatives started being carried out in 2021 with clear improvements in delivery deadlines or shipping days.
On slide seven, we can also see concrete steps with SBF Ventures, which is supporting the management of our investees and looking for opportunities in the creation of a sports ecosystem. In addition to acquiring NWB at the beginning of 2021, which brings expertise in content, we are also investing in OneF an, something we did in January 2022, a company that is focused on a digital relationship of soccer clubs with its fans. Also X3M finished in February 2022, a company that is specialized in organizing races and sports events and which has in its portfolios important brands such as XTERRA and Uphill.
SBF Ventures will keep on trying out its hypothesis so that we can be ever more present in sports in Brazil. Now let me hand it over to Salazar, who will talk about financial results in 2021 so that you have a clearer vision of the new level we've achieved.
Thank you, Pedro. Good morning. Before we talk about results in 2021, let me make it clear that during our auditing, the company concluded with its auditors that it was important to have a restatement of comparative amounts for our financial statements in 2020. We decided to do that because of the changes in deadlines for improvements in Centauro stores, which went from 20 years to seven years on average.
This change had an impact on the balance of investments in improvements for the last 20 years of Centauro's, which had an impact on our net property, plant and equipment of BRL 220 million, out of which BRL 9 million were the results of depreciation in 2020. I would like to highlight that this change in depreciation deadlines has no impact on our investment decisions on a day-to-day basis. The fact that we have quicker depreciation of a store does not change our estimated financial returns. The only effect is that because of depreciation, the income tax paid associated to it could be smaller as well, which improves the NPV of a project. If we think about the types of future impacts that we could expect from our results because of this, we imagine neutral impact.
On the one hand, we'll no longer have the depreciation of BRL 220 million, which were written off from our results in upcoming years. On the other hand, the investment in improvements for new Centauro stores will go through quicker depreciation. We imagine that these impacts will offset one another in upcoming years. Another important thing has to do with the cash flow statements. Investments in Fisia went into cash flow for investments, and in the past, it would go into cash flow for operations. With this restatement, we also made other minor adjustments which wouldn't justify a restatement. You can see all of them in our explanation note number seven of financial statements from 2021. Out of these minor adjustments, the one that most impacted our results was the cutoff for the Fisia e-commerce.
We removed from these results the e-commerce sales from 2020, which were not delivered in 2020, the last days, actually, of December. This had an impact of BRL -8 million in profit and BRL -10 million in CMV. Actually BRL -18 million in revenue and BRL +10 million in CMV, these are the correct numbers, which leads to BRL 8 million in profit. This change won't be significant for results for this company. Our cutoff will be much smaller. When we put all the adjustments together, the total impact in our equity for the year of 2020 was BRL 238 million, out of which BRL 19 million had an impact on the net profit or net income for 2020. We have more details about this restatement in our release and in our financial statements.
In this quarter, we also had both positive and negative non-recurring effects. In our release, we show all of these effects. What we will see over on the next slides has been adjusted by these non-recurring effects, taking into account IFRS 16. Since the last quarter, we showed you a comparison with numbers from 2019 because of the impact of the pandemic on results for 2020. Since the Fisia acquisition was finalized in 2020, the results for 2020 and 2019 are only for Centauro, and the results for 2021 are for the group. Slide nine. As Pedro was saying, we truly had very good numbers in this quarter and year, which took us to the next level. Let me emphasize some of our highlights.
We got to BRL 6.4 billion in gross revenue for this group in 2021, a 101% growth compared to 2019. 63% growth of EBITDA in this quarter compared to the Q4 of 2019. Our net income was BRL 426 million this year, reversing our net loss in 2020 and overcoming our results in 2019 by 63%. Gross revenue for Centauro was BRL 3.7 billion this year, a 29% and 14% growth when compared to 2020 and 2019 respectively. Direct to consumer sales from Fisia were BRL 478 million this quarter, representing 50% of their total sales and an eighteen percentage point increase in comparison to the Q4 of 2019.
For Fisia sales on the digital platforms in this quarter, we had BRL 243 million, a record number and a 21% growth compared to the Q3 of 2021. Slide 10. Net revenue, consolidated net revenue for Grupo SBF was BRL 5.1 billion in 2021, 113% growth compared to 2020. In this quarter, revenue was BRL 1.6 billion, 56% growth in comparison to the Q4 r of 2020. Please remember that in the Q4 of 2020, we had one month of Fisia revenue in the results. On the next slide, we can see how revenue behaved for each business unit.
Net revenue for Centauro was BRL 2.9 billion in 2021, a 16% growth in comparison with 2019, which was heavily boosted by the growth of the digital platform and the opening of new G5 stores during this period. The blow from the pandemic in the H1 of 2021 stopped this growth from being even more. The digital platform compared to 2019 showed a 101% growth in this quarter and 79% growth in this year. We had record sales online in the quarter and in the year of 2021, which has to do with positive impacts from events such as Black Friday and Christmas, as well as progress that we were able to make in investments in technology, marketing, and logistics.
Centauro stores had BRL 779.3 million in net revenue in this quarter, a 10% growth in comparison to the Q4 of 2020 and 9% in comparison to the Q4 of 2019. In the accrued numbers, net revenue grew 42% in stores compared to 2020 and 2% compared to 2019. With better vaccination efforts throughout the country, our stores went back to showing a positive same-store sales. Also, with the expansion of the network with models such as G5, we've seen growth and recovery after the pandemic. Since the Q4 of 2019, we launched 21 stores, G5 stores, and renovated another 33 stores, a total of 54 G5 stores that were added to the network.
In the last quarter of 2021, G5 stores showed a same-store sales of 8.2%, 9.9 percentage points above the same-store sales for the stores on average. Net revenue for Fisia was BRL 746.5 million in the quarter and BRL 2.5 billion in the year. The results of this quarter were impacted by a drop in the revenue from wholesale, which is seasonal because of how we purchase and receive products for holiday season. Even with this drop, we still see a clear trend of growth in operations with a Q4 which was 91% better than the Q1 of 2021.
We also had changes in Nike Value Stores assortment, and we keep on working on initiatives that were adopted in the last quarters for the platform, the digital platform with sales for Black Friday and Christmas and a growth in s-in sales for Marketplace out. DTC represented 50% of Fisia revenue in this quarter. Our gross profit was BRL 790 million in this quarter, 68% of growth compared to the same period of 2020 and 93% growth in comparison to 2019. In this year, we had gross profit of BRL 2.3 billion, 122% of growth year-over-year and 85% compared to 2019. Fisia has a wholesale operation with smaller margins, so we saw a reduction in the consolidated gross margin compared to 2019, going from 49% to 46%.
On the next slide, you can see that each business unit individually has a healthy margin. Our Centauro gross margin reached 50% this quarter, a 4.7 percentage point recovery compared to the Q4 of 2020 when we had a bigger level of markdown, which had an impact on our digital platform as a consequence of the pandemic. With the initiatives to improve margin over these two years of the pandemic, we saw an increase of 1.7 percentage points compared to the Q4 of 2019, even with a bigger share from the digital platform. With a strategic campaign, very accurate campaign for Black Friday, especially online, we got to the biggest level of gross margin of the year during the last quarter where we usually have lower margins.
In the total numbers for 2021, we still had the impact from lockdown in the H1 of the year, but we still got to a 49% margin, the same level as before the pandemic. Gross margin for Fisia in this quarter grew 1.3 percentage points compared to the previous quarter with a positive impact from profit strategies or profitability strategies from NVS, new pricing in June to make up for foreign exchange devaluation and the growing share of DTC. For 2021, we also had a margin of 36%. It is important to see that for Fisia, as of this quarter, we're going to have a comparison base with the previous year, even if it's only December.
In the Q4 of 2021, we saw a growth of our margin over December of 2020, which goes to show that our initiatives are working. On the next slide, we see operating expenses increasing 68% compared to the Q4 of 2020. In the year, this change was 95%. This happened because we had to incorporate CIESA into the company with expenditures that didn't exist in 2020. Compared to 2019, in addition to Fisia, we also had the negative impact from inflation and from new investments in business areas which we needed to make because of our ecosystem vision.
Even though we faced this pressure, our operating expenses for the group as a percentage of revenue were 32% in 2021 against 35% in 2020, which is a dilution explained by operating leveraging as a result of revenue growth, back office synergy and logistics which we got from integrating operations and incorporating the wholesale channel from Fisia. According to how its operations work, they have a smaller percentage for expenditures compared to other channels. EBITDA was BRL 271 million in this quarter with a 16% margin, a recovery of 1 percentage point compared to the results of the previous quarter or actually the last quarter of 2020. In the year, EBITDA was BRL 709.2 million, and we recovered 4.8 percentage points in our margin.
Our biggest factors here contributing to the recovery of our margin were an improvement of our gross margin for Centauro operating leverage caused by the revenue growth and synergies from integrating Fisia and Centauro. Compared to 2019, our EBITDA grew 54% with a 4.2 percentage points drop in our EBITDA margin, which is explained by incorporating operations from Fisia wholesale with lower margins and by the investments in new areas. Our net income was BRL 303.2 million in this quarter, 441% more in comparison to the results of BRL 56.1 million in the Q4 of 2019. The results from this quarter contributed to the positive result of BRL 426.5 million in this year, reversing our losses in 2020.
Net income in this quarter was positively impacted by a net value of BRL 185.9 million of acknowledgment of deferred tax income, which was outside of our financial balances. We finished 2021 with historical results. Even in a challenging year and with the integration of an M&A, we were able to offer the general assembly a dividends payment at BRL 28.6 million, the first in the history of the company. This is the minimum value because we are focused on our hypothesis that we'll need investments for growth, but we're happy to have found profitability that allowed us to offer dividends to our shareholders. Our net margin was 8%, 3.6 percentage points above 2019.
Our cash flow for operations was BRL 179.5 million in this quarter and BRL 211.2 million in 2021 because of our growth, which created better consumption of working capital. In this quarter, we had transfers in the short to long term of tax assets, which led to worsening of the item called others. Cash flow for investments in this quarter and this year reflect the investments that the company has been making in technology, logistics, and stores. We also acquired NWB. Our cash flow for financing in this quarter reflect the payment related to banking debts, especially interest rate. The variations in this year also show the collection of investments with the second issuance of debentures.
We finished this year with BRL 549 million in cash and a net debt of BRL 426 million. We're comfortable with our final financial leveraging of 0.6 x our EBITDA. In 2021, after uncertainty because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are now focusing on the long term again and on our strategic investments. Our CapEx for 2021 grew 79% compared to 2020. The increase in CapEx reflects the investment in projects for Centauro stores and the G5 models and in projects to structure technology and logistics. We can now have a Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you, Salazar. We already have a few questions that came in while we were speaking.
The first one comes from Eric Huang from Santander.
His question is: The year of 2021 had really consistent sales results both for Centauro and especially Fisia. Can you please talk about sales performance in the Q1 of 2022 and your expectations for this year? What does the company see as consumer interest for sports items and athleisure after the strong sales in 2021?
Thank you for your question, Eric. We've seen a very strong quarter. In our forecasts, we believe that the group will be able to offer growth at around 60% compared to the Q1 of 2021. This is a number that makes us really happy. We'll see this growth for every division and for every channel. Some of it comes from comparisons to March, where Centauro stores were closed last year.
Even if we think about February or other periods, this is the kind of growth we're talking about. We think that we started this year on the right foot. This is the fruit of many of the initiatives we mentioned and continued resilient interest from consumers in sports items. We believe that now we see new consumers coming into this industry every single day. People care more about health and well-being, and we have a huge number of consumers coming into this market and helping us be resilient and be a company that is growing. We are growing even though we do have challenges in our economic cycles. We started the year on a very good note, and we are optimistic about the future.
There's a second part to Eric's question.
Regarding Fisia, in the release presentation, you see many opportunities. You mention many opportunities. What are you going to prioritize in 2021? You also talk about a better assortment for women. Can you please go into product lines and what you plan on offering?
Thank you again, Eric. With our hypothesis for Fisia, we have one key element which matters the most, both for our outlook for growth and profitability. This is direct to consumer. We're going to keep focusing our efforts there. We had significant progress in 2021 because we were able to unlock nike.com. Direct to consumer reached 50% way before we had planned for it. However, we are at the beginning of working on our hypothesis. With nike.com, we see accelerated growth yet, and we still have a lot of homework to do to make more progress. In the near future, that includes migrating our platform.
50% of digital sales from Centauro happen in the app, and Nike doesn't have a sales or e-commerce app in Brazil yet. We still have a long way to go to build this IP. Number two, we have our marketplace out. Nike is connected as a seller in many sports platforms. We included other platforms, and I think this is another avenue of growth and avenue of profitability as well. Number three, we have stores. In 2021, we were able to adjust the profitability of Nike stores. They were known as outlets before. We are not only rebranding them, but we are creating new meaning for the Nike Value Stores. We are adjusting gross margin through rebuy, and we are working on SG&A. We went into details with the number of people and everything that needs to be analyzed for this operation to work.
Now we need to understand whether or not we have a very profitable operation here, and after figuring that out, we're going to hit the gas. We expect to accelerate this initiative with very powerful stores. We were blown away with the sales coming from this format and with the powerful connection made to customers or made with customers. It also represents new possibilities with new groups of customers who want to have access to this brand. We don't have overlapping assortment between this store and other stores in our industry. We have a specific segment, but which caters really well to Brazilians. We have huge avenues of growth here to explore this year. The first store we opened in February has been hugely successful. We have the Nike store models as well. We have none in Brazil. Nike has different concepts all over the world.
We are using Nike Rise here, around 800 sq m, and we're going to start expansion this year. This brings us a lot of opportunities and possibilities, and this has to do with the second part of your question. We didn't see progress with the female audience because we lacked a channel for that. We needed to understand the important channels with enough scale to offer a good assortment to women in Brazil through Nike today. We didn't have many options. However, with the Nike stores, we'll have the possibility of offering a better assortment. This assortment already exists. All over the world, Nike has a lot of products for women. They have yoga, they have sports tops, they have gym clothing. They have a lot of items that are extremely good for the female audience.
Brazil didn't purchase these products because we didn't have a place to sell it. Now we do. We're going to use nike.com, and we're going to sell it in these stores. We're going to unlock this power. With sourcing, it is like SK-One. We have 40% of local manufacturing and 60% of imports. Now, female and male items are not going to be broken down like that. What we need to figure out is what plants are able to manufacture, like tennis shoes or clothes, et cetera. We don't expect huge changes in sourcing because of changes in assortment. Let me recap because this was a long-winded answer. 2022 is going to be focused on direct to consumer for these places. We have nike.com, 3P, marketplace out, Nike stores, Nike Value Stores.
We're going to grow with the female audience because Nike already has these products. We didn't bring them to Brazil before because of a lack of channels, but now we're going to have this solution. Thank you for your questions. Let me hand it over to Salazar for the next question.
Thank you, Pedro.
We have another question from Eric from Santander and Maria Clara from Itaú.
Regarding margins, we know we have many initiatives at the company for better OPEX or bigger OPEX. What can we expect from a journey or from the results of a net margin for 2022?
Thank you for your question, Eric and Maria. We believe this year will be a transition. We'll have some positive impacts. For example, the new operating margin from Centauro and going to grow revenue without increasing fixed costs. We also have increases in DTC from Fisia.
This is certainly going to help us improve our contribution margin for the end of this period. On the other hand, we also have cost pressures. Foreign exchange rates are going to be a bit worse in comparison to 2022. We have the growth of buyout and the payment of Fisia according to the agreement we settled with them. We have inflation, especially for wage updates and rent, around 10% each. We have investments which are considered OPEX, but it's actually a big piece of investment which we're making in marketing and logistics. We see both positives and negatives. These impacts are probably going to offset each other. Our margin for 2022 is expected to be neutral compared to 2021. We expect to maintain the same level.
As of 2023, as the company grows, as DTC from Fisia grows, and as we go back to these marketing and logistics initiatives or as we get returns from these marketing and logistics initiatives, we believe that we'll see a growth in the contribution margin.
Maria Clara has another question.
Please talk a bit more about initiatives boosting Centauro gross margins in comparison to the Q4 of 2019. Can you please talk a bit more about these initiatives? Can we expect these gains in margin to be sustained in the Q1 s?
There was a lot of work behind expanding our margin and returning our margin to levels that are similar to the Q4 of 2019. We can talk about a few things. First, this is a more segmented market. We can control price better with the brands. We're also working on better allocation through the logistics work we've been doing and through a lot of planning, sales planning. We have fewer items left to be sold at a discount. We're also more aware of where and how to offer markdowns. More and more, we're learning how to manage our discounted lines.
We also have the right incentives. We're not just creating targets based on revenue. We're creating distributed targets between revenue and profitability. Of course, there's something we must mention here, especially for the e-commerce operations for Centauro during the year of 2021. These initiatives were helpful in changing this and improving our gross margin for Centauro.
Maria Clara asks again.
When it comes to Fisia, the gains in sequential margin, is it going to be supported? Is it going to be maintained from now on?
Well, our business thesis when it comes to Fisia has always involved this understanding, which is really strategic to us. We had to buy Fisia, strategically speaking, because we had to change the importance of a DTC channel for Nike in the world. All over the world, Nike wants to improve its share in DTC to rely less on partners. Now, why? Of course, because we want to be closer to customers. We want to have a direct relationship with them. We want to learn about our customers, and also because we want bigger gross margins. We don't need to pay markups to sell directly. Also, the brand is extremely strong, so it is easier to drive traffic into its own DTC channels, especially e-commerce. Now, since on this channel, this is the best margin we can get.
This is the channel with the best margin out of all three channels: stores, e-commerce, and wholesale. By performing this migration, of course, we improve the company's gross margin. Fisia's gross margin and of course, its contribution. Since we're going to keep on expanding DTC and also the other channels, and as Pedro was saying, in the stores, we have NSP stores with non-discounted items, with premium items, and we're also going to expand the e-commerce. We also have another strategy to control prices better. We believe we're going to keep on seeing this trend. Every time we have better share in our sales share in DTC, this is going to help us improve the contribution margin from Fisia for the SBF group.
Now let me hand it over to Pedro because we have one last question from Eric.
Thank you, Salazar.
This is a question from Eric from Santander.
Can you please talk about the performance of sales for legacy stores? What kind of initiative could you implement to improve performance while they are not renovated?
Thank you, Eric. Let me give you an idea. For Centauro, at the end of the Q4 , 97 stores G5 and 130 for the traditional model. The first strategy for innovation is turning them into G5. This brings us additional opportunities of growth. Of course, we can add service packages, we can improve customer experience, and oftentimes we can find bigger, better spaces. We can improve the stores for clients. Now, having said that, people who are working there on day-to-day work for the 227 stores. So at stores, sales do not rely only on the brick-and-mortar space.
We have other factors having an impact on its performance, and we have many other initiatives. Let me give you an example. A big point of concern, and this is applicable to any store formats, is our ability to offer connected assortment, which has to do with the audience in that specific region. Our team has been focusing heavily on trying to map out the most important sports in the region to offer an assortment for these bronze, silver or gold stores for certain categories. This has been really efficient in improving sales per square meter because we get the assortment right for specific stores. For instance, with the new store in the Iguatemi Mall, we know that we are close to the Pinheiros Group. We know people in that region play a lot of tennis, way more than the average Brazilian population.
There's also better price elasticity, so our assortment is adjusted for that. This is an example of something we do regardless of the store format. Another example is our ability to use technology regardless of its format. With mega stores, our possibility of selling in brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce items, which is over 10% of average for stores, we were able to make progress. We're able to offer marketplace products according to the mega store system. We expanded the assortment of a certain store in assisted sales through our sellers, not only through the assortment that we have in the distribution center, but also through every sports partner working with us. These are some of our initiatives. We have people thinking about this 24/7, how to have mobile checkout in every store. This is another project we're going to finalize this year.
We're taking care of every store regardless of its format. Having said that, renovations are important. Salazar, back to you.
Great. Let's take turns.
Wagner has a question.
Can you please talk about what you expect from savings from non-collection of DIFAL in 2022? How much is this going to have an impact on P&L?
Wagner, it's hard to answer this question. Let me tell you why. Up until April, we are sure that our results will have a positive impact for not paying the tax rate differential. For this year, we expect this benefit from Centauro and from Fisia. Monthly, on average, this represents a benefit of BRL 15 million. As of April, this thing becomes a little trickier because it is possible we'll have to go into a legal battle to get this benefit.
In practice, it is possible that states are going to start charging us for this as of April because it is 30 days after this norm, this standard was signed. Then we'll need to start a proceeding to fight in court for this tax rate differential. The initial deposit we'd have to make for that and working on the assumption that we're going to use this strategy in every state, we'd be talking about a deposit of BRL 15 million a month. This won't have an impact on our P&L while we haven't won in court. This will be different from the first four months of the year. Pedro Zemel, go ahead.
We have a question from Irma from Goldman.
Can you please go into more details about redesigning logistics, what has been done, and the focus for the next months, and the results you expect?
Thank you for your question, Irma. In January of 2021, we had a new vice president for this. The H1 of the year included redesigning a plan, and the H2 of the year included deploying this plan. Last year, when it comes to deliveries, to get a bit more concrete, we were focusing on São Paulo. We had to restructure our storage processes, for example. We wanted to be faster in São Paulo, and our focus was 48 hours. We had to improve the times it took for us to go through the DC, the distribution center.
Distribution center deliveries for São Paulo last year were 98% performed within 48 hours, which is great. Now structurally speaking, we designed a three-part plan. Our first step is to increase SLA of digital through building more distribution center area. We're probably going to launch a distribution center in the northeast this year towards the end of the year. We want to have quicker delivery in the northeast. This is one of the pillars. Then next year we're going to open up more sq m in this DC. This also has to do with synergy with Nike. The company doubled in size. Nike is outsourced right now. Regardless of what we're going to outsource and what we're not going to, we're trying to think in an integrated way.
It is much easier to open new square footage because it is easier to do that with synergies. The second part of this plan is to have faster delivery or faster shipping in more competitive areas, for example, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and that is why we are opening up service centers in these locations, for São Paulo next month, for Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the H2 of the year. We want to have really fast shipping for these places. Now, the second part or the third part actually is when wherever we don't have a service center or a distribution center, we need to optimize some stores to turn them into a logistics hub to create a competitive edge in the SLA for clients purchasing online.
These are the three parts of our plan to develop logistics and systems. Of course, we need to work on logistics and systems for that. We are confident. We're really confident with the first results we saw and with our ability to keep on making progress.
We have another question from Irma.
This is a question regarding potential adjustments in the prices from Fisia at the beginning of this year.
Irma, yes, we do feel pressure from inflation in the country. In order for companies to remain healthy, they need to transfer costs. Of course, Fisia is impacted by that. We are making price adjustments to recover our margins. This also happened at the beginning of the year. Of course, we're keeping an eye on what is happening in our economy. Fisia is a part of the Brazilian economy, and we'll need to make price adjustments if Brazil keeps having its inflation as is right now.
The good news, though, is that we've seen better elasticity than what we expected for price adjustments. Yes, we're being forced to do it, but fortunately, we haven't been as impacted as expected in volumes. That is why we see the growth that we saw last year, last quarter, and in the Q1 of this year. This was revenue growth after price adjustments. Yes, this is relevant. Let me turn it over to you, Salazar.
Thank you, Pedro.
Carlos Herrera from Condor asks,
D o you want to keep opening new stores or is the new macroeconomy going to lead to cash flow protection?
Yes, we are going to open new stores. Out of the top of my head, we plan on opening around 14 NVS this year, 5 NSPs, and around 10 Centauro stores. This is our goal, but meanwhile, we're looking at company leveraging, which has to do with another question here. We believe that maximum leveraging shouldn't go over two times our cash flow generation.
Next question.
Do we still have synergies to be obtained from the Nike acquisition?
Yes. There are some operating synergies, let's put it this way, that we could make the most out of this year. We go into a new stage of synergies. We'll be migrating the e-commerce platform from Fisia, which right now is operated by a third party, and it will be operated by our Grupo SBF e-commerce platform. We believe this is going to improve our operations, including conversion rates, browsability, et cetera. We're also going to migrate Fisia's SAP, which is currently being operated by Nike abroad. It will be done by our group.
As we do that, we'll be able to also work on omni-channel operations with Nike's website. We also have a lot of logistics work to be done when it comes to optimizing inventory. As Pedro was saying, we have investments in logistics to improve our service. When we look at our working capital, we could see many gains from reducing our working capital because right now we basically have four types of inventory. We have inventory for Centauro e-commerce and Centauro stores in Extrema. We have Louveira inventory for the Fisia wholesale. We have inventory for Fisia's e-commerce in Minas Gerais. As we migrate these systems and develop the logistics plan, we could consolidate these pieces of inventory. Whenever we have different pieces of inventory, we need a safety margin for all of them, but we'll be able to consolidate it.
Yes, we do believe we still have synergies. We also have another big thing that we need to work on, its migration. We have two fiscal incentives that we could take advantage of for Fisia. We took advantage of one of them because we didn't need to migrate the platform, so this is basically for the e-commerce. We still have two outstanding fiscal benefits, one for wholesale and one for imports. This is certainly going to give us good returns for Fisia, which Fisia is not making the most out of right now. We also have a question regarding EBITDA, but this one has been answered, and I believe that's it.
Great, Salazar. Thank you. Our time is up, and Salazar's answer was great. We did have some outstanding questions, but our IR team is here to help you with them. Salazar was talking about synergies, and I think this is a great way to sign off. We are happy with where we are right now, but we know this is the beginning of a journey. We have a long road ahead of us. This is the end of our Q&A session. Again, I would like to stress that our IR team is available to you to answer any outstanding questions or any questions whatsoever that you might have in the future.
Before we wrap up, let me emphasize once again that we are extremely proud of the records we broke in 2021. We went through the pandemic. We went through interest rate increases, foreign exchange problems, and a very relevant M&A. We were really happy with what we were able to deliver. Please remember that this is the beginning of a journey, a long, long journey.
Let me take this opportunity to thank our shareholders, advisors, employees, and partners who are always supporting our company. We're starting 2022 knowing that we have another challenging year ahead of us with important investments to be made. However, our commitment to sustainable results remains the same. We're going to keep on pursuing new avenues of growth to foster sports in Brazil.