Good morning. Welcome to the SBF webcast where we'll be discussing results of Q2. This is Peter Usemio, CEO of the group and I'm here with Jose Salazar, our IRO and CFO and Daniel Hergensteiner and Luna O'Neill, our Investors Relations Manager. As you can see in slide number 2, we will be breaking our presentation down into 3 parts today. 1st, an update on current moment and the main highlights of this quarter.
Then I'll be talking about the results. And finally, we will have the Q and A session. Questions can be sent through this webcast platform and will be answered after the presentation. Let's start with slide number 3 now. Since the beginning of the pandemic over 1 year ago, we were impacted by the restriction policies in Brazilian retail.
We could partially offset that with accelerated growth of our digital platform and with the acquisitions of Fizia and NWB, but impact on our margins and revenues were really significant over this period. In the Q2 with the flexibility of restrictions to opening hours starting in April. And particularly starting in May, we had consistent results that made us feel even more confident in our results, the results we can deliver after a long period in the market and the market as a whole being impacted with too many markdowns. We started having gross margins in line with the lie what we had in previous years. In May 1st month with all stores open, we saw a quick recovery of Centauro's numbers In spite of reduced opening hours in malls, we also had growth in this sales compared with the period pre pandemic.
Now we can go to slide number 4. Cisia grew 48% when compared with the 1st quarter. We managed to many synergies between these two business units, improving operations and outlets, having negotiations together Centaur of Fiza, particularly logistics. And we have operations of Fiza now in the city of Extrema in the state of Minas Gerais. The growth of this TTC direct consumer sales through the digital platform is another key point in our thesis and this has been responding pretty well to our initiatives using this channel with a more directed marketing and an expansion of the portfolio we offer.
Thanks to our investments in technology and in people, Visa Santoro's digital channels account for 28% of our total revenues compared to 18% in 2019. An important progress in this quarter was internalization of marketing investments that enabled us to have many more activities in managing our strategic channels. With that, in spite of a generalized increase in marketing costs in the market we managed to decrease the cost to bring new customers to our platform. Going now to slide number 5. We have still a long way to go.
The history of growth of Fisia is just starting. The expansion of Centaurus stores conversion to G5 model has a high potential. This year we accelerated again our investment in Visa and we have finished 8 renovations and 5 openings. 44% of our sales area are already G5 stores. Centaur's digital channel is growing year after year and we are looking for opportunities to further evolve this ecosystem.
Now I give the floor to Salazar to present our financial results, which in the short term are still getting better as the effects of the pandemic decrease and now we have a clear view of the new level of the SBF group that will be the basis for our future. Thank you, Pedro. Good morning. In this quarter we had non recurrent effects both positive and negative. In our release, we showed all these effects.
The results I'm going to present in the next few slides are adjusted by these non recovered effects considering the effects of IFRS 16 exceptionally this quarter because of the effects of the pandemic in addition to showing you the comparison with 2020 numbers we will also be showing some figures compared with 2019. With the acquisition of Fize was completed in December 2020 results of 2020 2019 presented here are only for Centaurus, whereas results for 2021 are of the whole group. Let's now go to slide number 6 with the main highlights of our results. As Pedro said in the second quarter less impacted by the pandemic we could have an idea that a more normal level of results for the SPF group reached 1.9 €1,000,000,000 net revenue in the first half, a growth of around 80% when compared to the first half of 2019, where the 51% increase in EBITDA this quarter compared to the Q2 of 2019 and we reversed the negative effect of the Q2 of 2020. Gross revenue of Santaro went back to 50%, going back to historical levels in 2019 and previous years.
And Fisas gross revenue this quarter grew 48% compared to the Q1 reaching BRL159 million. We can proceed to slide number 7. In the Q2, net revenue of the group grew more than 300% when compared to 20 20. To date, we grew 159 percent when compared to the results of the Q2 2019, it more than doubled. The income of Centaur in the second quarter grew 163% when compared to 20 20 and 50 15% when compared to the 2019.
The brick and mortar store channel grew more than 800% when compared to the Q2 of 2020 and in line with the revenue of the 2nd quarter 29 megawatts, our extended inventory. This channel available to all Centauru stores, what they highlight, grew 211% compared to 2019, accounting for 7.2% of all sales. After closure of virtually all our stores in March April, stores little by little started reopening with a gradual flexibilization of restrictions in May with most of the stores already opened we reached a same stock sale compared to 2019 4.8%, a sign of normalization of our operations. We should stress here that we reached this positive figure even with a reduction of around 20% in the opening hours still because of existing restrictions to the pandemic. In the digital platform of Centau, we had a decrease of 2.4% in revenues explained by high level of markdown in the Q2 of 2020 in order to favor cash generation when the pandemic started, when the stores were all closed.
This dynamic benefit online sales in 2020 which impacts our comparison basis when we compare with the Q2 of 2019 the digital platform grew 81%, which can be explained by investments in technology and marketing that are still being made by our team. Another factor that contributed to this growth were marketplace sales in this quarter. They accounted for 12.6 percent of total sales of the digital platform, a growth of 283% compared to 2019 and the reopening of stores benefited also multi channel sales that grew 28 0.7% when compared to 2019. Looking at Fisa, total net revenue reached r574.8 million bbrosilio a growth of 47.1 percent when compared to the revenue of the Q1 of this year. Fisia's revenue in this quarter accounted for 43.6% of the total net revenue of the group.
This increase in sales was due to initiatives adopted to accelerate the digital platform with expansion and platform use of investments in marketing. Additionally the retail in brick and mortar stores were more impacted earlier this year explaining increase in sales in wholesale and outlet. Now we go to slide number 8 to talk about gross income. The for the whole group was BRL215 1,000,000, a growth of 5 18 percent when compared to the Q2 of 2020. Up to date we have a gross income of BRL 869,000,000, a growth of 163% compared to the same period in 2019.
Income grew over 80% in the quarter and 60.5 Centauros gross income margin reached 56% this quarter, a recovery of 18.16 percentage point when compared to the Q2 of 2020. With this recovery, the stores and with the stores recovering their shares and with the reduction of markdown levels which were observed since the beginning of the pandemic, margin went back to the same levels found in the Q2 2019. Visa's gross margin is in line with the margin presented in the previous quarter, which was benefit with the 20% share in the digital channel, nike.com.br, which has the largest margin. As a result of the initiatives we have been using to encourage the growth of this channel in addition to increased share, the recomposition of prices to offset the currency devaluation was well absorbed by the market, which also contributed to the stability of that brand. And as in previous quarters part of the inventory sold in the period was previously purchased as a subsidiary of Global Nike with thus because of this effect we hope to get a decrease in gross margin in the next quarters as inventory is renewed.
Now we go to slide number 9 to talk about operating expenses. Sales of general and SG and A grew over 200% in this quarter compared to the same period in the previous year. Up to date we had an increase of 110%. This increase is due to incorporation of Visa's operations and the results of the group, expenses that didn't exist in 2020, investments in new business areas which is necessary for the implementation of our ecosystem vision such as logistics, technology, strategy. They also contributed to a pressure on expenses, but in spite of that with the percentage of net revenue we see a recovery of 18.8 percentage point because of the operating leverage, because of the recovery when compared to the Q2 'twenty, which was heavily impacted by the pandemic, when compared to the Q2 2019 in addition to the cooperation of FISIA we also had an higher inflation rates and that led to operational deleveraging in spite of all pressures on expenses I mentioned our SG and A as a percentage of net revenue was 34.1 percent in line with the figures found in the Q2 2019.
Slide 10. EBITDA reached BRL159 million with that we reversed the negative result we had in the Q2 2020 and we recovered 29.1 percentage points in EBITDA. Up to date. Our EBITDA was 186,800,000 visavis, which was different from the one we had in the Q1. This result is explained particularly because of the fees gross margin above expected and the recovery of the gross margin of Centaro compared to the Q2 2019 it grew 51%, a decrease of 4.9%.
This decrease is a consequence of the operation deleverage of Centauro still because of pandemic particularly in April and investment in new areas in the company and also the Fisius share less than which is less than Centaro. Going to slide number 11, our net income 41,500,000 dollars Reversing the net loss in the Q2 2020, exceeding 33,000,000 in the Q2 of 2019. The result of the Q2 also contributed to a positive result in the update in 6 months, totally SEK 13,500,000. Now we can go to slide number 12. In this quarter operating cash flow was negative and because of the growth of the company compared to the first quarter is still affected by the pandemic, particularly in inventory and accounts receivable.
Long term assets and liabilities were negatively impacted because of taxes, but it was offset by use of short term credits. Investment cash flow, we had the impact of the new investments in Centaurus stores and G5 models in this quarter and up to date acquisition of NWB. Variation found in financing of funding cash flow is explained by our second series of debentures which took place in May. We finished the 2nd quarter with 390,000,000 in cash, a bank debt of BRL400,000,000 total net debt of around BRL646 1,000,000. Slide number 13 now.
In 2020 we had to lift most of our investments to preserve the cash because of the uncertainties caused by the pandemic. Now in 2021 with a reduction of risks, we will focus on long term regarding our strategic investments of capex and the 2nd quarter had an increase of 228% when compared to the Q2 of 2020, reflecting the new investments in Centauru stores the G5 model we renovated 8 stores this quarter following the strategy of the company to focus renovations in the first half. We opened 4 new stores and we have started the design and projects for new stores that will be opened in the second half when we are investing in logistics, technology, innovation for the progress of the ecosystem as a whole. Now we will open for the q and a session, questions can be sent through this webcast platform. Thank you so much for your attention.
Thank you, Salazar. We will now start the Q and A session. There's a first question here by Richard from Bradesco. How do you see competition? It seems that smaller and independent companies will survive more than we expected when the pandemic first started.
Am I right? Where do you see the main chances to gain market share? Richard, thank you for your question. Yes, this is our perception too that fortunately less stores or companies closed than we thought would be the case because of the severity of the situation. However, as we see it that from the structural point of view those players who had greater penetration gained more share.
I mean those who were better prepared to occupy this space in this channel. We see that in the market as a whole. And in fees, wholesale, these are the signs we see and we think that the group, because of the development of the Centauro digital platform and because of the development of the nike.com with a stronger investment really benefited with this gain in space from the players that were prepared in the digital world and in our case that were connected to stores. So we we have a vision that is similar to yours that was resilience from the smaller retailers, but the big ones gain share, particularly because they had penetration in the digital market. Another question by Richard now about casual and lifestyle categories, casual and lifestyle.
We've already talked about the potential of these two categories And we see that indeed. We are in the sports market and part of this market is related to people expressing themselves through sports. That's an important group of customers who are connected to sports by wearing a sports brand not only when they are practicing sport but in their day to day life. This is what makes our market expand really. We have a huge market here and we see this potential.
In the case of the Centaro business division, the brand is connected to sports, so we do see a connection with the lifestyle of the different sports categories, but always considering that Centaur has this connection with people who do sports, who cheer for sports, so lifestyle. As for instance, a tennis player, we use a polo shirt to play, but he or she will wear that also during weekends, so this is an expansion of the sports category. And in the case of casual, we think that the group as a whole has to pay attention to the opportunities presented and one of them is with the Nike brand. The Nike brand through its sneakers line, casual sneakers and also clothing. They are very much connected with this group of consumers and this is where we think there's a lot of room to grow and we will go on looking at it because this is undoubtedly a very big market.
We weren't working on this market 1 year ago. Now we are doing it with Mike, but definitely the small room to grow. Thank you for your questions, Richard. I'll continue here with a question by Elena from Itau Bebe. So every quarter we see a more constructive tone in Faesia.
What are the reasons? What changed since the first announcements in 2020 so that you are now increasingly excited with this acquisition? Thank you for your question. That's true. The tone is more constructive because we are becoming really more confident.
I think that the main difference here is because we had a thesis and now we see that this thesis is really becoming true and thus we make we become confident. So we see that we can deliver the thesis, we make that makes us confident. The thesis is very similar and what it is, growth in direct sales market and we see that. You could see where the penetration of the channel, nike.com, it has been growing and we have many projects so that this channel goes on growing. So we gained confidence there and now we are more confident because we see there is room for Nike stores in the Brazilian market and that, that could be an important avenue for growth.
We also gained confidence in our ability to capture synergies and take advantage of the scale these two businesses can bring working together. An example would be logistics. We also became more confident in our thesis that we can increase or expand local production and this has already happened like 5 percentage points and we have major projects so that this will continue to grow going looking going forward. We are more confident too because we see the connection of this brand with Brazilian consumers. Recently in the Olympics, we tried that.
And to give you an example, a hybrid campaign the brand did with Raissa, with this skateboarder, and this is she got an olympic medal for that in skateboarding. We have this more constructive tone because we see the ability of the team to deliver and the impact on results. We are indeed very excited and really happy with the prospects going forward for Faesia. There's another question here by Elena. The question is related to content.
She's asking for more details regarding production of content with the olympics and the test we did in the Q2. Thank you for this question. This gives us a chance to talk a little bit about the NWB and the things we have been doing. NWB is a company that has been with the group since March. We have been together for like 4 or 5 months and we're really happy with the way things have been developing there.
There's a lot of things to do, yet it's a new business that has grown that has many opportunities, but over this period we could see their ability to use a different tone of voice to talk about an event, for instance, during the Olympic games. It's a relaxed and fun way of dealing with this subject. We saw the folks at NWB creating new channels, the CAMMESA VINCIUM. We are seeing a new one being born right now. We saw the pass the ball channel focused on women's soccer.
We saw the ability NEWB has to do live content production with many women's soccer matches and the viewership that brought, we're really very proud to see simultaneously tens of thousands of people watching the matches of women's soccer team. We were producing the event, narrating the events, commenting on the events, so NWB Talent doing that, we saw the connection we can have among our different brands. On Father's Day, there was a partnership in a campaign between Centaur and Zimpegidos, and that was really cool. We see the number of member channels growing a lot. So when we first announced the business, something around 50 and we've now we have 100 members and there's a lot of possibility to scale it up.
We are starting occupying the space and really be a benchmark for influencers, digital influencers, I mean, who are connected to sports. And we see a lot of innovation. We see many new things. We are protecting innovation. We're careful about that because innovation must be protected.
We are trying and we see many good things going on and if you follow the social, their social media, you will see some tests, PANELA, 1 app. There are many cool things going on there. So we will continue with these trials, creating something that will ultimately make connections so that we have a deeper relationship with our customers. Thank you so much for your questions, Elena. I think the next question, I'll give the floor to Salazar.
Okay, Pedro. The question by Marcelo Imoi, Perfic. How do you see the sales at Centaur and AIC now in the beginning of Q3? Marcelo, we still see the same movement of recovery, a solid growth in July. Centauru, for example, we had a growth of around 5.4% in brick and mortar store brick and mortar stores in digital 63% growth of MP.
So we see a very good movement. Feesia, because of this movement we see in Centau, wholesale is going strong, NFS which are our outlets have a pretty good performance and e commerce because of other issues not only the recovery of the economy but also because as has been said here what we are doing with physio is still growing strongly. So July was a good month too and Father's Day specifically for the 2 companies was very good. So we are going the same path of May June that we've just reported. There's another question here by Irma from Goldman.
How should we think about the second half of the year for Physia seasonality this year? Will it be different from previous year because now we will have a greater demand in wholesale or wasn't that really relevant? Year mark. Of course, we have had an effect with sales that should have been made in the Q1 that were postponed because stores were shut down in February, March and particularly in April. But what we see is really a recovery in the sports market.
As I said previously, Marcelo's question, we see a pace of orders for this quarter, for this new quarter and wholesale very strong, also in small accounts, very strong pace in terms of orders placed. So it has had an impact, but we believe that this impact wasn't only the result of this shift between the different quarters, but also a stronger recovery we see now in the economy. I think, Pedro, I'll answer another question here, then I'll give you the floor back. Okay, Pedro, this is a question by Gustavo Oliveira, P3 Asset Management. What is the expected effect on fees as gross margins in terms of renewing inventory?
What about the decrease in fees as gross margin? I'll answer it in a different way. If we had in this quarter not considered this effect of the purchase of this product for a different price than the one we will buy. So the physios margin would not be 36%, but 33% actually. Thank you for your questions.
Now I'll give the floor back to Pedro. Thank you, Salazar. Damar asks the following. More details on the road map of changes for physia, particularly the website, integrating logistics and so on and so forth? Thank you, Priti Gao, for your question.
This is a priority integration of Faiza is one priority. We have been working hard to take over the management of the website, the technology in the next few months. We'll be doing that still this year. We will be internalizing, we will finish complete the internet internalization of the operation of the website, and we are carrying out a very in-depth analysis on logistics so that we can advance working with integrated companies. This has been a major focus of our work and as part of this focus we are using, of course, the scale we have with Faizia between Santoro and Fizia.
We have already done some changes in the website, which is still operated by a third party. So we changed to the city of Istrema in the state of Minas Gerais. So all sales are being shipped from there. And now we will further advance in our project of integration between the different sites, but this is a project that will happen continuously. There's nothing there will be nothing like a big bang.
So we change the size to Xtrema and we are starting advancing in logistics projects to improve our services and also to use this scale between Centauro and Faizia. So this year, we will finish a complete integration regarding technology and marketing, then customer service and logistics will go like in a continuum over the next quarters and big new things we'll be sharing here. We will have a lot to talk about logistics and the quarters coming forward. I'll add to your answer in this quarter specifically no now in June he corrects himself now in June because of all these integrations systems being integrated and so on and so forth we also started operating geezusecommerce with tax relief which is provided by the government of the state of Minas Gerais and as we implement more things we expect for January 2023 to have this tax relief in the import channels in the state of Minas Gerais. We believe that adding to what Pedro said in his answer to Elena many of the thesis we had the things we thought we could do as we integrate the operation as we integrate systems and so on We also are able to leverage other things, things we thought we could do, but we had, but we still didn't know whether we would really get it.
Now so tax relief is important because undoubtedly this is something extra for our company. Perfect, Salazar. And this is import starting in January 2022, yes, sorry, 2022. And this e commerce incentive is not part of the figures because this has been agreed upon with the government starting in July. A question by Fernando Ferre from Empiricus.
Could you please talk a little bit more on the results achieved with the strategy to get new customers and how was it in the Father's Day? Well, being really honest here, we are still in an experimental phase. We get things right and then we get very excited and other things do not deliver the results we expect. We are still in a trial phase. We're still learning.
We are making progress. And there's a pipeline here that I'm very excited about. But I don't really feel very comfortable to talk about a result that can be very can be used firmly to project the future. So we will be discussing all this progress, but we have been very careful internally to effectively treat TWB as a venture and with time, space and patience for it to develop. So the results from NWB from the point of view of viewership, revenue and results are better in all lines than we expected when we first acquired it.
But it's a company that is too boring, so to say, and we want to give this air for them, this openness, because the bigger this business is, the greater the benefits will be for the ecosystem as a whole. Thank you for your question. Next question by Andres from MFS. There are a few questions here from investors who are not corporations, VIT or SOL. They have similar questions.
I'll bring these questions together to answer Andre and these other investors. The question is how have we seen is there any opportunity new opportunity in the market? And the other question is what about competition with players who are becoming stronger in sports? We want to establish this sports ecosystem and we know we are just beginning, we are just in the first step of a very long wave. And in order to complete this ecosystem, We have tools that go through our ability to innovate, our ability to establish partnerships that go through building societies and minutes.
So we reinforced the teams at all fronts. We brought entrepreneurs to do that in the company. So we started a venture team to do events in a corporate VC to foster this ecosystem. So we are paying close attention to that and we want to build and help all those who are relevant in the world of sports building viewership and competences. I cannot go into details here and speculate, but we are always paying attention and we have this ambition to grow.
Having said that, the good news is that even though we have this very big dream and the business divisions we have today, we have very good prospects in terms of growth as we could see. This company doubled size visavis2019 Centaro is growing a lot. Now with stores open, Centauravo's growth is over 15%, Fisa is growing very well. So we have a prospect in terms of income and growth in revenue with the businesses we have today that gives us the condition and the patience to build this ecosystem the best way possible, being really calm to take the best steps. Thank you for your question.
Now the second part, how do we see other players becoming stronger in sports? Well, this market is and has always been very competitive. This is a market that is really has many, many, many competitors with many retailers and brands that are really very competent that compete for the attention of consumers. Maybe multi category platforms horizontal or clothing players or footwear companies, that's okay. So we are part we have been part of this market for a very long time.
We have been in this market for 40 years, and we have been successful to find our space for the relationships we have been building with our consumers. Even though we, of course, are paying close attention to the competitive movements going on, we are more focused on our customers and more focused on how we will be enhancing the relationship we have with our customers so that increasingly they are able to see value in being close to us and making business with us. So we are thinking about that all the time. So if we are relevant to our customers, we will go on having our space. Thank you for your question to all those who ask questions along this line.
Just a second please. There are some individual investors here, Paolo and others, they're asking about the wholesale channel and how we strengthen it. The wholesale channel is extremely relevant even though the strategic priority is to develop the redconsumernike.com and the priority is also growth of our stores. We are still investing in this wholesale channel and here investment historically, well we have had accounts that couldn't be serviced because of the costs and then the possibility, for instance, in further away areas in Brazil. And in the past, there was a major focus on some cities.
So we see an opportunity here, maybe start once again having contacts with good customers in other areas, in other regions. And we also see the development of a platform we have, which we are internalizing, a digital platform that works with around 1,000 accounts. Nike reaches 9,000 doors and out of this 9,000 doors, a 1,000 buy from a digital platform. And we think that this is a very important way to develop. So another thing we are paying close attention to in terms of developing the wholesale channel is to turn it digital in the relationship with our wholesale customers.
I think these are examples of things we are doing in order to strengthen the wholesale channel. I'd like to thank Paolo and the other people who asked this question. I think there's no additional questions here. What about you? There is one here by Andre Heiss from MFS.
Could you please explain this negative variation in over $500,000,000 and $110,000,000 positive in other accounts receivable? Basically, when we acquired Faizia, we paid basically working capital to simplify things in. We also paid for the taxes. So the taxes that were part of the balance, working capital we paid, the working capital, the cash that led around BRL 900,000,000 and these credits we would only pay as we used them. Meaning I use this credit in our operation and then I pay Nike Inc.
And then what happens is we do reallocation between accounting accounts to better repeat the nature of this payment, so it changed from other obligations and other accounts receivable. And between long term and short term in terms of tax payment, As we become more assertive, as we understand the results of the company and the ability of the company to generate taxes or sales to use this tax credit, we change the line from long to short term. That's basically it. There's another question here, Salazar, by Alex Tanaka. And the strategy, how you think about using consumer credit as a way of engaging customers more?
This is something we are looking at and but well we are thinking about it but there's no really concrete regarding this. We believe that this could be a test, a trial to see what kind of value we would add to further enhance our relationship with our customer. There is nothing concrete in this regard yet, Tanaka. Daniel Salazar, could you please check if there's any additional question? Could you please check that?
No, no further questions. Great. Okay. Thank you all who ask questions. It's really good to have this context.
So I'll close the Q and A session here, but our team will continue to be at your disposal for any questions you may have. To close, I'd like to thank the whole team of athletes at the SPF group, our coworkers who since March 2020 went to great lengths to overcome all challenges as a result of the pandemic. I would also like to thank our investors who have been supporting us throughout this very long crisis. I have no doubt that we will be stronger after it and this quarter we start showing that in figures with a company that is twice the size it had, well before the crisis. In the short term, we are prepared to act quickly to any change in the macro scenario, but going on putting in practice our plans focusing on providing the best sports experience in our different business divisions.
In the long term, we will work hard so that we continue to have sustainable, accelerated and health, healthy growth, consolidating the SBF Group