Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Vivara's Third Quarter 2024 results video conference. In this quarter, the company will dedicate 100% of the time of this video conference to the Q&A session. The video with opening comments and analysis of financial performance made by Otávio Lyra, the company CEO, has been available since yesterday and can be accessed at any time at Vivara's IR website. For those who need simultaneous translation, this tool is available in the interpretation button located at the bottom center of your screen. Select this button, then choose your language: Portuguese or English. For those listening to the video conference in English, there is an option to mute regional audio in Portuguese by clicking on "Mute Original Audio." For sell-side analysts who cover stocks and other financial instruments, we offer the possibility of participating live.
All you have to do is send a message with your name and company to the Q&A icon at the platform. We'll then release you by entry. By default, your name and company represented will be announced, so you can ask your question live with audio and video connected. Simply accept the request on the button that will appear on your screen. For other participants, please send your question via the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. If your question is not answered live during this video conference, the investor relations team will contact you later to answer all your questions. Let me introduce the Vivara team. Here you have Mr. Otávio Lyra, CEO and Chairman, Mr. Icaro Borrello, COO, and Mr. Caio Barbudo, Investor Relations Manager. We'll now start the Q&A session. Please wait while I collect the questions.
Our first question comes from Rodrigo Gastim, sell-side analyst at Itaú BBA. Rodrigo, we will enable your audio and camera. You can go ahead, please.
Hello everyone, I'm sorry, I clicked on the wrong button. Now it's okay. I have two questions. First, regarding sales, and I would like to break it down into buckets. First, I would like to understand if you see any dynamics of this acceleration due to the macro scenarios, elasticity, something like that. How are your feelings about sales in November and October versus the third quarter? What can you share about this on sales? And second, also on sales, can you help us think about brands, about segment, let's say? My perception is that assortment work at Vivara has been done for a while, but Life, say, is giving more traction now, increasing stock and inventory, sorry, inventory in stores. Do you have any results of this increase in inventory in the store? And what about sales acceleration by segment or product?
I have a second question regarding working capital in inventories. Many people wonder what is the trade-off between the inventory in stores and the recovering sales and acceleration in sales. I'd like to understand how you see inventories going forward. In the third quarter, you were flat, more or less, year on year, in spite of the sequential growth you have discussed. And how do you see the modeling of inventory from now on?
Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you all here. So let's start. Rodrigo, you answer your first question about this acceleration of stores and some feeling of lower sales during the macro scenario. We do not believe that we have grown in Vivara due to better allocations in terms of inventory. You can see this. In fact, your comment was pertinent regarding Life.
Life segment had a structural problem due to smaller levels of launches, especially in collections and for male clients, especially. We've been dealing with that. Now in the fourth quarter, we will launch 12 collections. Some of them are already going or getting to stores. You can check some of them in our website. This will continue in the first quarter of the next year, where we'll increase a little more to remove this gap regarding lesser or lower level of Life launches for the next year. Regarding working capital, we understand that the better or the best allocations here to eliminate this rupture at Vivara Life will also go through an increment, an increase in inventory. It's lower in terms of costs if compared to Vivara, so it's a source of lesser concern to us.
We understand that we need to launch new products, new things that the level of inventory will be dealt with. Just let me add, we are making some important bets. We extended from the second to the third quarter. We increased this, and the expectation is to, obviously, we always depend on seasonality. We are hoping for Black Friday and Christmas season. We have some flat days, and we have to take this all into consideration.
Thank you very much. That's very clear. Thank you, Otavio and Caio.
Our next question comes from Danniela Eiger, sell-side analyst from XP. Danniela, we'll open your video and camera. You can go ahead, please. Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for accepting my question. Congratulations on the results. I have two questions. First, regarding gross margin dynamics, many people were paying attention to the drivers behind this margin pressure.
It's clear the mix dynamics and also investments in the factory. I would like to check the understanding if you can expect improvement in this dynamics for the fourth quarter both in dynamics because we have more Life participation, you have more launches of new collections. Does it make sense to think like this, and also regarding the use of the factory, through time, this will decrease this pressure as you reduce this idle capacity, so I would like to understand this gross margin trend, and going forward, you are pretty optimistic regarding 2025 in terms of profitability and growth, so I'd like you to explore the main leverages, the main drivers. Maybe this Life inventory adjustment will be one of the drivers of this growth, and what else can you see in terms of opportunities moving forward?
Thank you, Dani, for your questions.
I believe regarding gross margin, and you were very assertive in your reading of these movements and these trends in your explanations, the reasons why are very clear too. In fact, we continuously throughout the year, we see a dynamics of seasonality of sales that is pretty known by all of you. After we went public, you all know about that. And with the new hopes for Life, the 12 launches, and all of many opportunities in terms of inventory, we do hope to address part of this margin effect coming from this mix dynamics you mentioned. We can expect something of this for the fourth quarter and also throughout 2025 as we reinforce this additional inventory on top of the contribution of BRL 250,000 per store we've been signaling through the past few quarters. The factory has gained speed in production. We have some adjustments still to make.
We will increase the number of people. It comes first, and we had a large increase of number in the payroll. You can see that 830, it went from 800 to 1,200 people in Manaus. You can see that to deal with this increasing volume we're dealing. In the fourth quarter, due to the seasonality, we can see an offset of this pressure because the payroll will be the same, and we have more sales in this fourth quarter. And throughout next year, the expectation is that in the middle and long terms, we will have some gains, but we will respect seasonality between quarters. Maybe we'll see some pressures concerning factory and payroll if compared to the previous year in terms of comparison year on year.
But it makes sense that this additional sale, not only for the fourth quarter, but considering a healthy growth for next year, brings another scenario for this line. For the medium and long term, this line makes a lot of sense. So you get traction and growth margin. Life will represent a larger part of our business as we expand the number of stores and gain more and more number of sales versus other categories. I believe what has happened this year has to do with allocation of inventories we've been making so far. And in 2025, in general, we can expect that this will be pretty similar to what we have shared annually. The expectation is to have a continuous expansion in terms of physical stores, super based on Life, as we've done this year. We've been looking at the 70 stores in 2025 to be opened.
We do have a good pipeline for the first quarter. It's possible that we can start next year in a more accelerated fashion as we did in this year in 2024. But what we see is another year of accelerated growth, both considering the ongoing projects. We'll still hope to capture part of this benefit. We can see it. We already can see in the second and third quarter. Next year, we'll have benefits considering the movements of Vivara improvements in inventories and capturing benefits in the fourth quarter and throughout 2025 based on the improvements we want to bring to Life to this category, and improvements in new products. Not only that, but all of this rupture, this rupture movement we've been taking, and we have taken a long way throughout this year of 2024.
We redesigned in the past, and we shared with you these figures, very expressive figures due to the redesign of our mix, especially because of that, and we have taken a long way in this sense, but we still have work to do. It's possible to reduce this in our stores, and we will address more in the fourth quarter these issues, and we'll bring more improvements in this next quarter and next year, so before I pass on to Ícaro, I would like to tell you that we hope to have an expansion of operational margin. We've been disclosing good news regarding that, adjustments, corporate adjustments in terms of efficiency and expenses. We centralize purchases throughout the year based on synergies and gain that were captured throughout the year, so for next year, this has already been hired, let's say. It's already done and expected.
Just let me complement onto a very important pillar, especially Life. We've been working hard to increase this level of nationalized products to have a very good appearance in this final quarter and beginning of the year. And in terms of logistic mesh, we will gain in terms of taxation plan. This is a very good promise for next year. We hope to expect this for the second half of next year.
Excellent. Pretty clear. Congratulations on your results.
Our next question comes from Eric Huang, sell-side analyst from Santander. Eric, please, you may go on.
Good morning. Can you hear me? I'm sorry. I had to reconnect here a little bit. Congratulations on your results. On our side, I have two questions. Regarding expenses, we saw a relevant adjustment in expenses in accordance, in line with what you said in market.
Moving forward, this level we've seen in marketing expenses of this size, or are you expecting some changes due to seasonality? In terms of personal and staff expenses in stores, we have a level that we can consider more normalized, more reasonable to carry this level moving forward, respecting and also considering the seasonality. Another question regarding the project on Life inventory. How are we for the beginning? How are we positioned for this beginning of this fourth quarter? How to understand this ongoing project and the ramp-up of this project in this first stage? What is the level? In which level are we right now, and how can we expect to evolve in the next quarter and also in the beginning of next year? How to understand the effect on this for sales? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Eric, for your questions.
Let me start with your first question. Obviously, the marketing line called the attention on this quarter due to the operational size. It's worth mentioning and highlighting the magnitude of this impact of this image and marketing movements in this quarter is affected by a higher level of marketing than normally expected by the company. I mean, the third quarter of last year. So last year, we had 5.7% of the revenue in the third quarter of 2023 in this area. And this was an annualized level. We have never updated. So we invested more. So we had three additional points in the marketing side. We do not expect to have that moving forward. But what we do believe, due to the work we've been carrying out through these past quarters, is that it is possible to invest more efficiently this capital we've been allocating to generate sales, especially.
So we do have some fronts we can capture. We can start working on right now, ongoing. And we probably will go back to the previous level. So we can continue to see this operation moving forward. In terms of stores, in this quarter, we saw a first quarter that was cleaner in terms of events. And in the expenses with sales, there is an administrative part of sales, the business units that help dilute in this addition. But in fact, the highest impact comes from adjustments of commissioning during the second quarter. In April and June, we completed in sellers and managers in Life and also Vivara, looking for a stronger maturation of the stores. And this was the first quarter that was cleaner in which this base was consolidated. We should see some pressure moving forward. We will continue opening stores.
good part of our portfolio, the Life portfolio, 35% of the stores are mature, and we will continue adding stores to this portfolio of this brand in a relevant way, so some pressure is to be expected, but we work to improve this moving forward as the portfolio matures, obviously, so the first question was well addressed. Maybe we can move on to the second on Life. Well, just let me complement something. Ícaro can share this with you. We've been doing a movement to start improving inventory per store. We haven't seen this result on the Life sales up to now. We expect to have that in the fourth quarter, along with increasing the number of collections. What Otavio mentioned is important because when you look at the park maturation, 35% of the Life stores have achieved maturation. Last year, it was 18%.
So we expect to have a more complex park and leverages are posed. And we are working to have more collections to reap the benefits of these movements, of this work in the next few quarters.
Thank you for your answers.
Moving forward, our next question comes from João Soares, sell-side analyst from Citi. We will enable your camera and audio so you can move on. Thank you.
Hello. Can you hear me? How are you doing? Well, first of all, I would like to go back to what Eric mentioned. Could we talk in a broader way about the staff? You've been investing in the factory staff, in factory employees, because Life has a higher volume. It makes sense. But when we look at the other divisions, I would like to understand whether I mean, I understand that the marketing expenses were higher if compared to last year.
But is there an optimal level in terms of additional investment? Maybe in a given moment in time, are you going to revisit these expenses? It's important to try to understand what is the optimal level for this business. This is the first question. And secondly, I would like to talk about top management. Now we are going through a period of stabilization, but it's important because people have been asking about CFO and financial management. How is these processes? Thank you very much.
Thank you, João, for your questions. To give you a little bit more information about this, the level we hope from now on is 3%-3.5% of the revenue. In fact, we will remain on a lower level than in the previous years. Most of this has to do with a better efficiency in the management of this money.
We keep on working on the complementarity of channels. We keep on betting on this complementarity. This will be the focus of our investments going forward. Regarding the organizational structure and top management, especially, we've been sharing with you in the past few quarters that we've made the major changes we had to do. The structural changes have already been implemented, and now we will go through a period of regularity, of normality. Any company has people who leave and who come in in CNTPs, and it's a regular movement, but now, I believe this will happen to us, this regularization. Regarding the financial title, we're still looking for a name to work at Vivara. We are in the advanced stages. We hope to have news for you soon, and the rest of the positions are already placed. We have very strong staff in these positions.
Perfect.
Just a follow-up. Ícaro talked about efficiency of taxation efficiencies for next year. Could you talk a little bit more about these, please, about this topic?
Well, João, we cannot disclose so much about that. We're still building this strategy. But basically, we want to change our logistic mesh. Where are we going to make our deliveries in terms of store distribution? Well, yes, when we have this process in a more mature way, we can share this with you. We can disclose this with you, okay, for maybe 2025.
Thank you very much, and congratulations for your results.
Moving on, our next question comes from Alexandre Namioka, sell-side analyst, EMEASO. Alexandre, we will enable your audio and video and camera, please. You can move on.
Hello, good morning. I'm sorry for the delay here. Congratulations on your results. Thank you for accepting my participation.
I'd like to go back to what Ícaro mentioned in the beginning. One of the leverages you are working with to improve Life performance specifically has to do with the increase of the number of collections, the launches of collections. You said that you started launching new collections in the fourth quarter. So regarding the performance of these new launches, the launches you already made, how do you feel about their performance? And moving into 2025, how much can you quantify in terms of improvements of Life sales performance coming from these inventory adjustments in stores, and how much will come from these new launches?
Thank you, Alexandre, for your question. Regarding the launching of new collections, what we have internally diagnosed, we have 50 to 60 collections so far. And they were kind of old because of the lack of launches since the second semester of last year.
We launched much less than we hoped, and now we are launching 12 new collections in this fourth quarter, and especially, they will be in stores more strongly from the first quarter of 2025 on, and I mean, they've been going to stores in a very fast fashion. It's hard for us to keep up with the demand, but this inventory will work to be replenished for January and February, especially by February. We will work to balance this demand with the inventory, so in Life, we identified that the sales of these collections launched less than a year ago was pretty relevant. Last year, with an important number, and this relevance fell. So this is an important movement to improve our sales for this segment, for the Life segment.
Perfect, and can I just make a quick second question regarding gross margin?
I believe it's clear what you said about the pressure coming from the staff in the factory in Manaus, in the plant in Manaus, but we had an increase of almost 50% in the number of collaborators in Manaus. Maybe throughout 2025, will this increase be more incremental? Or in a given quarter, should we have another increase of that order, of that magnitude?
Well, we do not expect to have another big increase like this. The increase of people comes before the increment or the increase in production. So the number in Manaus, we need to train all of these people, all of these employees, these goldsmiths. And they gain experience in three, four months. We need this learning curve, this working curve. And so the expectation is that, especially for Life, we will produce more and more moving forward.
Yeah, that's another minor aspect to it, Alexandre, but it's worth mentioning. This year, we feel there are 0 to 2 points there. So this is why it's a minor aspect. But there is a pressure of a higher investment made last year. So throughout this year, we see some pressure coming from that. But next year, this will not pressure results or earnings anymore. So this is another good aspect moving forward to contribute a little more for them a slightly better margin in the future.
Perfect. That's super clear. Thank you very much.
Moving on with our questions, our next question comes from Guilherme Vilela, sell-side analyst from J.P. Morgan. Please accept our request to enable your mic and camera. You may go on, please.
Hello, good morning. Caio, Otávio, Ícaro, thank you for accepting my question. I had a question regarding penetration of watches.
Thinking one or two years ago, maybe this category didn't have a high acceleration in terms of revenue growth. Specifically, this year, this is around 20%-25% growth. So what is the strategy of the company regarding this category in terms of the mix and the penetration of this product? And regarding RPJ credit in terms of Exploration Profit benefit, can we expect this line in tax return moving forward? And from this third quarter on, and how much? Thank you very much.
Watches, penetration, we have seen a very good performance of this category, not only in terms of sales, but also in terms of profitability. We've had good renegotiation with our dealers, with our providers. We see this in the next quarter.
Our business is much more focused on jewelry, but we don't want to change this share, but we want to increase our sales, both in watches and accessories. In the past quarters, we have felt a specific issue in terms of that it was already solved with good assertive purchases. More and more, we understand that watches are relevant for Vivara and for Life, but we cannot have an idea in terms of share because we've been increasing the inventories for sale for Life and Vivara. In terms of the tax return on tax, it's smaller and recurrent, but it's smaller than what's presented this quarter.
Thank you very much. That's super clear. Thank you very much.
Moving on, our next question comes from Wellington Santana, sell-side analyst from Bank of America. Wellington, we will send you the request. Please accept it so you can enable your mic and camera.
Please. Good morning, Otávio, Caio, Ícaro. Thank you for accepting our questions. Congratulations on the results. I have two questions. First, one of the things you mentioned before was the possibility of increasing the penetration of Vivara's brand in areas we do not have a strength of this brand. So to capture a higher level of sales, have you completed this process, or can you still see opportunities in this regard? Or in the second question, you did, I mean, you showed the performance of synthetic products in terms of unit economic performance of these products because they have a different margin if compared to other types of diamonds. I'm sorry, can you repeat the second question? It was a little bit of a problem in your audio. Well, you mentioned a collection of lab diamonds, right?
What about the return of this type of product, the synthetic diamond products and their return and performance?
Well, regarding the penetration of Vivara's brand, in fact, we had a reclustering of these stores especially in smaller cities, and some of them are the main jewelry store in these smaller cities. So we managed this in an expressive way. We do not expect big-scale movements from this standpoint. Well, regarding your second questions on lab diamonds, this is an initial movement. We have some products, just a few products launched in this line with expressive sales due to the reduced number of items. Next year, we'll have collections to be launched and a number of products that will grow. We believe this has an exponential trend in the short, medium, and long term. And they last longer if you compare to natural diamonds.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Now we will listen to Isabela Simonato from UBS BB. Isabela, please enable your mic and camera, and you can ask your question.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on your results. I have two quick questions. First, going back to this reclustering of Vivara, the reclustering of Vivara, since last year, we've been working on the pipeline and the revenue for the brand, and in which point are you regarding the mapping and the evolution of how many quarters could we expect to see the results from these improvements, and now, thinking about Life, would you have any idea on when you wish to apply this project to reap these benefits also for the Life brand, and the second question has to do with the internationalization. In October, you opened a store in Panama, so could you share the first comments?
We know this is a recent opening, but could you talk about the profile of this Panama store, the product mix there, and how can you see the step-by-step? We know this is a pretty gradual process made in a conservative way, very carefully. But can you tell us about this plan? Can you share more about this planning?
Thank you, Isabela, for your questions. Let me talk about the reclustering of Vivara brand. We can clearly see that this reclustered store, they pull a growth of the Vivara brand. We have a continuing we will see a continuation of this effect next year. And we have mapped all the opportunities they are in place. Now, looking to the Life brand, it's a little bit different because we do not have a differentiation of clusterization of store mapping. In Life, we are studying this procedure.
We are still understanding we are beginning this trajectory for the Life brand. But we do not have a perspective for the Life brand to have an increase in performance, but an increase of performance for the Life brand coming from inventory and coming from new collections. Regarding the internationalization, we opened our first store in Panama. This is a pilot project that will help us evaluate potential future operations. We are taking gradual steps. Our beginning is in line with our business plan, with good sales. We know we have a maturation process that is natural. It's a new brand in the country, and we are in this learning curve. This is a process that is promising. As the operation gets or solidifies, we'll have more to share. Just a little more about the international stores.
And in the beginning of Vivara, based on the idea of our founders, we launched the small stores. And in Panama, it's very important in terms of square meters. This is the main store in terms of square meters, in terms of size, maybe one of the largest. And based on our founders' idea, each time we launched a new store, we had to think about before launching new stores. So thinking gradually. We have a good number of sales, important inventory there, both in Vivara and Life brands. But that store is much more focused on the Vivara brand. So talking about your question about product mix and type of store.
Thank you very much, guys. That's perfect.
Well, if we do not have further questions, we now close the video conference on Vivara's result. The Investor Relations department is 100% open to answer further questions.
Thank you all, and I wish you have a great day ahead.