Answer session at the end. If anyone needs simultaneous translation, we have this tool available. Clicking on the globe that says "Interpretation," which is located in the center of the screen. Choose your preferred language: English or Portuguese. For those that are hearing in English, there is the option to turn off the original audio, clicking on "Mute Original Audio." For the analysts, sell-side analysts who cover this stock, we can see the participation, the possibility of participating live. Just send your question on the Q&A icon, and afterwards we will liberate your question in order, according to the order of sign-up. Your name, please give us your name so that we can make your question live, and you can click on the button that will appear on your screen.
Other participants, we orient you that your questions be sent through the Q&A icon on the lower side of your part of your screen. If your question is not answered during the video conference, the RI team will enter into contact afterwards to answer your questions. Thank you. Presenting the Vivara team we have here together: Ícaro Borrelo, Director, President; Elias Rio, CFO; and Caio Barbudo, Manager of Investor Relations. We now start with the word Mr. Ícaro.
Thank you for your words. I and Caio are here representing the Vivara team, and it's a great deal of satisfaction that we get to talk about all the results of 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2024, and also answer any questions that you might have. 2024 was a very intense year from the standpoint of changes, but also a very significant year in results, expressive results.
I wanted to point out the resilience and hard work of all the team, which delivered historic results. These results, which are the production of the highest EBITDA and the highest net profit in the historical series from the standpoint of a percentage rate. I would also like to cite the efforts of everybody on our, of all of our collaborators, which fill me with pride. The team from the factory, which have done broken records in production and are more and more advancing into the nationalization expansion of Vivara. Our office, which has been more and more efficient and agile, putting clients always in the center of our decision-making process. Finally, and perhaps the most important, is the store team. This team, which has worked very hard and fills us with pride and has been fulfilling our mission absolutely to fascinate each one of our clients.
We're going to start the presentation now. Let's look at the principal messages, and afterwards we'll look at a few points. From the standpoint of 2024, the principal messages with three major blocks. The first is solid trajectory of growth. We had an expansion of net revenue of more than 17% compared to the previous year. This was very significant, with very, very important advances of 15.5% in our physical stores. That's a very high number because in 2023, the same number was 7.1%. We're going to talk a little bit more about this, but it was very much driven by the migration of stocks in the Vivara stores. The second block is a significant expansion of profitability.
We reached the highest EBITDA in the history of the company since we opened our capital, with BRL 657 million, and also the greatest margin registered in the history of the company, reaching a rate of 25.5%, an increase of almost four basis points year on year. Consequently, these results affected our net profit, our net profit, which is also a record of BRL 653 million, a very important advance in relation to 71% in relation to 2023. All of this gives us great pride, and we're based basically on three major fronts. We've had a number of initiatives during 2024 in a way that is very concise. We want to translate this for you, but basically it was based on three principal blocks, three pillars. The first, the better allocation of stocks, of inventory.
In the beginning of 2024, we identified that Vivara had a concentration of inventory, which is very high in our distribution centers, with more than 40% of our inventory in our distribution centers. We did an important movement to push this inventory down to the stores. This naturally, especially in Vivara, which is more well stocked, brought to us the possibility of increasing our sales in the same stores from 7-15%, a very important sale in terms of same-store sales. The second pillar, the second block, was an initiative, a very robust initiative focused on redimensioning the headcount, the corporate headcount, the centralizing of purchasing and renegotiation of contracts, revision of investments and marketing, maintaining the efficiency by making more with less, being more assertive in cheaper ways, correction of the commissioning and the Life stores, these Life stores which had a very high level.
Finally, and very importantly, an improvement, better tax management, especially based on the fiscal fees taxes. We had a lot of profitability in two major fronts. On a more optimized structure and a tax vision that was better, which gave us more than 800 additional basis points of profitability in our bottom line. The third pillar, and very important, we enforced our lines of service to our clients to take away friction from our journey. Here we focused on four major fronts: logistics, SAC, technical assistance, and stores. Our NPS has been reflecting this, our improvement in NPS, and there is still lots of room to grow, to improve. A retail company always has to be focused on its clients and has to always be focused and very concerned in what is the level of service that we are offering and this level of excellence.
We leave an NPS of 79-85. This initiative will continue in our mission in 2025 and during the coming years as well. I want to now pass this over to our CFO, Elias. He recently joined us, a brilliant young fellow. He's arrived playing hard, and we're very happy to have him here with us, and he's going to enter into some of these lines and proactively explain some of the questions of our results. After that, we're going to open up for Q&A, where we will answer any questions or doubts that you might have. Thank you all very much.
[Foreign language]
I'm very proud to be here. It's the first time that I'm presenting about the results of Vivara. Here, speaking about, as you mentioned, historical numbers. As you spoke about some of the numbers, I'm going to comment on the presentation. I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about some of those numbers and two accounting changes which have helped our results in this fourth quarter and consequently for the year. They're already well detailed in the release, but I'm going to give a little more color during this presentation. Going forward, 2024 was a year beyond the revenue and EBITDA. We had the guidance of 72 stores, nine are Vivara and 72 Life. We have 170 load stores. We opened our first Vivara store in Paraná State. These are the stores that are in full growth, reaching the level we've increased our maturity.
This operation is being very important so that we can adjust our process of exportation, export process with clients that we have, growth outside of Brazil, and also the long-distance operations, other languages, other countries, which is very important for us as a model going forward. As you know, we have a presence in all the states in Brazil. Nonetheless, we see potential growth here, especially in Life, but also in several shopping centers where we have a possibility of locating Vivara stores as well. Now we're going to open up our revenue by channel here. Next slide, please. Excuse us one moment for a slight technical issue. Okay, here we go. You can see a little bit more our revenue per channel, channel by channel. We had growth of 14% in gross revenue, quarter over quarter. Give me a little more visitor.
The three principal channels, the Vivara, the Life stores, and the digital channel in Vivara. We had a gross revenue of BRL 2.1 billion for the year, an increased growth of 13%, very important. These are stores that are already mature stores, 266 stores in Brazil, and even with able to sell same-store sales of 12.7% in 2024. Life stores, which is our category with more potential for growth, we see a rhythm of growth which continues very strong. We closed the year with BRL 646 million in gross revenue, a growth of almost 56%, and same-store sales of almost 30%. Life already represents 26% of our revenue in the physical channel, in the brick-and-mortar channel. Beyond that, it only represents 56%. The Life stores only represent 56% of the sales that we did in the whole category.
The third channel, the digital channel, which I want to talk about as a digital channel. We had almost BRL 470 million in gross revenue, 14.7% growth, and growth in the omnichannel usage, which is something that we're working on a great deal. Going into the details of other numbers, we bring here our gross margin. We closed the fourth quarter with 74% of gross margin, a very substantial increase compared to 2023. The first change, the accounting change that we did here, the fourth quarter of this year, we started to do the allocation of these credits, which would be FGF and these other—we're going to hear a lot about this going forward—CGF within the unit cost of our products. Until 2023, the value of this cost hit the results in the company in the period in which it was occurred in that year or not.
With the increase in production in 2024, we started to allocate these costs into our product costs in a way that it will affect the results only when that product is effectively sold to the final consumer. The effect for 2024 was absolutely recognized in the fourth quarter. For comparability, we're presenting here also the gross revenue on the same base, excluding this change in accounting. Looking at the comparative base, we had a pressure of personnel, which is something that we had been speaking about, of 1.5%. This pressure was partially offset by the increase in margins and the increase in markups, which we've been able to include in our stores, generating a good percentage of gains in our gross margins.
In 2024, the hope for the full year, we closed with a gross margin of 70.2%, a growth of 0.9% compared to 2023, and impacting positively by the CMV line and negatively by the personnel costs. We closed the year, as Ícaro said, with the highest EBITDA in the history of the company, BRL 650 million of EBITDA in 2024, a margin of 25.5%, growth of 37% compared to 2023. Also on a comparative basis, including the effects of the CGF, which affects our gross margin, we also have an increase in EBITDA margin for the quarter as well as for the year. This increase came from the equation that we did between sales and this percentage with sales.
We also have greater efficiency in the marketing investments, optimizing G&A of the office and all of the structure, corporate structure, and centralizing our purchasing processes and other contracts. Even taking out the effects of the CGF, our margin increased by 2.2% in 2020 and 2% for the year. That is very significant. We also see that the net profit also was a record number, BRL 650 million in 2024, a growth of 71% compared to 2023. We also look at the second accounting change that we did this year because of the deferred income tax, which we have in the intercompany operations. The company applied a rate, an effective rate, which we expected from those operations. For the CPT 32, we started to apply the nominal rate, which was in the 34%.
This effect was all done in the fourth quarter of 2024, but it was a tactic that we will now apply going forward in the results that are coming. Also, for comparability, taking out these effects of this, not only by the GGF, but also by the increase of the rate, which was deferred income tax rate, looking at these impacts going forward, we calculated a comparable net profit for 2023. This would have been BRL 558 million, a significant growth of 51% compared to 2023. In the perspective of cash, they have CapEx of BRL 129 million, almost 30% less than in 2023, principally due to greater discipline in the CapEx, use of CapEx and the operation of investments in a change of the factory, which was done principally, which affects the CapEx of 2023.
We also had a generation of operating cash of BRL 86 million and a net debt of BRL 400 million, which gives us 0.2 x a very healthy level of leverage. I'm going to pass it back over to Ícaro. He's going to speak a little bit about the perspective for 2025 and our closing and open up for closing for questions and answers. I want to also thank all the receptivity I've had in Vivara. I've had an opportunity to visit several stores, to visit our factory, and I was very impressed with everything I've seen, both in the stores as well as in the factory and the offices here. People are motivated, knowing where we want to go, and this makes me very confident that this will be even better in 2025, that the future of Futuro is very promising. Ícaro,
Thank you, Elias.
Okay, connecting a little bit what we did in 2024, which was very much focused on profitability of SG&A and profitability and NPS. We continue looking at this initiative, focused on the level of service. We focus also greatly on the productivity, productive capacity. Since 2024, this growth in production. Finally, we bring an agenda, which is very important from the standpoint of innovation, innovation, which is divided into two major boxes here. First, technology, and the second, products. These products, which are an initiative which is very important for the prove the allocation of our capital in our inventory. Here are several fronts. First, the factory, two initiatives. One, to conclude the journey of nationalization of Life. We reached good levels in 2024, but a great deal of evolution of 55% - 80% of our production is now done nationally.
In 2025, we want to finalize this journey. The second major step in the factory and the biggest mission is to continue gaining more and more productivity, being less expensive and producing more and more so that we can follow the expansion in the life cycle. Our inventory is very important for us to address this. First is the optimization of the management of our capital. By allocating capital, we did a change last year for having larger, higher inventories, which made it possible for us to have same-store sales, which was very important, important improvement in same-store sales, especially in Vivara. It was an important move given the level of orders that we have today. We have an inventory priced of BRL 480-BRL 490. Today, it's BRL 550. We have a competitive advantage, which is very important.
Finally, talking about Life, an increase in stops of inventories in the stores, prioritizing a refreshment, both from this question of collection as well as we did an important movement in positions, and it has been giving us very important results. Over the next few months, we're going to do the same thing with the NOMIS line. The third major pillar is about operational efficiency. Everything that we planted, we're going to harvest everything we planted in 2024, continuing the same levels of efficiency. Here, two more initiatives. The first is optimization of the logistics network, which will give us the right to do a better execution of the tax planning, which will be better executed. The very important thing for us, you're going to see, you'll be feeling this in the second half of this year.
These initiatives have been moving forward well for us to be able to put this into place. Finally, beyond that is our teams of engineering. Principally, our engineering teams have effort, a great deal of effort to reduce our level of expenses per square meter in our store. We had a CapEx of BRL 12,500 per square meter, and now we're down to BRL 10,500 per square meter. An initiative which is very important, which permits us to enter more and more into places that are into markets that are smaller. Two more pillars, the level of service, as I commented to you. We're going to focus this on a great deal. This will be part of our goal for the payment of bonuses in the principal areas of the friction with the clients, technical assistance, SAC, and store care.
Also, the improve and go back to our training, our on-site training in the stores. The digital training has helped us a great deal, which is a very good contact, more permanent with the stores. The live training is also very important. We are going to go back to having these local teams to impact more and more our salespeople and our managers. This is very important because a manager who is well-trained or a salesperson, which is very well-trained and well-applied, naturally, this increases our conversion rate and also increases our sales. Finally, our pillar of innovation and expansion, innovation, the two major points here to increase the production of our collection of the two, which is the silver and gold and also the lab diamonds.
These two initiatives are very important for the management of our allocated capital because it has to be less at a price, an entry price for the clients, which is better and makes it more possible to bring more and more people into our base. The second major focus is a roadmap for technology focused mainly on increasing our audience, our public, which is also already very relevant, but also increasing our rate of conversion. We are going to have a launch in our app in the next few months and also our new version of the website. Finally, our expansion, this expansion, which we, as we mentioned to you yesterday, we are going to focus on expansion of 40-50 stores and expansion, which is still very fast.
We have a pipeline already, a very robust pipeline with points that are very interesting and which helps us to manage our money and the money of our stockholders, shareholders more and more, so that we take better decisions with this pipeline, with this robust pipeline. I also think I'm going to pass it over to just one more thing, one more new thing. This year, it's important for us to mention that one of the strongest points was our brand, which is very strong.
Due to that, we brought one more ambassador, and I'm very proud to mention here that we have the best team of ambassadors in Brazil, with Gisele, focused on Vivara, with Marina, already continuing our long-term relationship with her, and also Larissa Manuela, who's been giving us a great deal of pride, a person who is super involved with our brand and who has come very connected with the new generation, the younger generation, which has consumed a great deal in our lifeline of stores. Once again, thank you all. Thank you to our collaborators, our employees. Now I'm going to open up the question and answers.
We'll now begin the question and answer session. Remembering that to make questions, you should click on the icon Q&A in the lower part of the screen to get into the line.
We will announce you to turn on your microphone and camera and appear on the screen, and then you should accept it to be able to make your questions. We ask you, please, to limit yourself to two questions per participant. Starting off, the first question comes from Eric Huang from Santander, Eric. Please turn on your audio and video. Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. Hi, Ícaro. Caio, thank you for taking our question. I think starting here on our side, we have two questions from our side. One is with respect to the comment you made about the release where you said accelerated a bit the purchase of raw materials in the fourth quarter to protect yourselves from future increases in price. When we look at 2025, what should we think about in terms of this additional buffer that you've done?
How much will this impact the dynamic of average costs for you during the year? This will be the first question. The second question is that I think looking a little bit more at this side of optimization, especially looking at the mix of stores, if you could comment a bit on how you see this evolution, especially on the Life side, where we see results that are a little bit more encouraging in Life. If you can give us a little more color about how this has in fact been translated at the point. Jumping on how you've seen the performance in this beginning of the year, when you can speak a little bit more about your projects and inventories, both in Vivara and in Life running at a rising sea.
Thank you for your question, Eric. Let's go to the first answer.
Commenting a little bit more wide-ranging from the strategy of stocks. We've stocked a lot in the beginning of last year, projecting an increase which is a very successful strategy. From the standpoint of retailing, we stocked up so that we can make some commercial bets, which have come out, which have done very well, especially in Vivara, where we increased our same-store sales. In Life, when we increase our inventories of collections, it has also been working very well in this first quarter. What is the direction of this? Our direction is in fact aimed at the historical levels and numbers of days of inventory. More and more, we're going to be selling our inventory, which have a higher speed, have a slower speed of sales, and stay with these products which are on the ABC curve.
How we're going to treat this, how we're going to address this of allocated capital. The first is the allocation of stocks. Everything that we have in-house, we made a few bets. A lot of things went well. We went up to same-store sales went up to 15 from 7 to 15. And something that didn't work as well as we would have liked. This is what retails, that's the way it is with retail. The good news is that we have already returned these stocks of these inventories of things that did not work very well back to our distribution center. In March, we're going to be pushing these down to the stores who sell a lot of those products, these SKUs.
The second point, which will help a great deal to address this question, is the increase of the DUO line, which is our silver and gold price line. The price is lower because this will help us a great deal to be able to do this management and also a great deal on the top line to bring a new client base to us. The third largest point is the stocks. Today, we see internally the opportunity for us to sell out these things, especially on a seasonal basis, which is something very important for our business. These three major fronts are going to take us to a level which is much more adequate from the standpoint of days of stock. I'm going to pass this over to Elias, who also has some very good information about raw material, which is where your question was aimed.
Looking at your question, I think that we see very clear to Elias this change which happened in raw material, which happened in the fourth quarter. When we look at the full year, we purchased an average in the first half of the year of 70 kg of gold. In the second half of the year, this went to 140 kg of gold. I'm talking about gold because it's what really makes a difference in our inventory. The other things have a much lesser effect. We doubled the amount of gold we were purchasing per month in the first half and the second half of last year. In this first quarter, our average per month is below 60 kg of gold. We do not expect that this will increase during the year.
There is a significant reduction with the levels of purchases of gold in the first semester of last year. This strategy, as he mentioned, is to allocate better our stocks, our inventories, and our stores. Less purchase of gold, which should mean that our days of inventory will decrease in the next few quarters.
The optimization of the mix of stores. We are going to address these two subjects here, which we focused on Life. We mentioned that at the end of last year, we came with an increase, which is very important from the standpoint of the quantity of new items in these collections, which has given us results, very important results for us here in this first quarter. We have had a turnover between the collections in the different categories of Life. It has worked very well, this refreshing of our stocks.
From the standpoint of store mixes and the allocation of inventory, we've made a bet to increase the Life inventories, which will bring a very important return to us from the standpoint of top line and hurts very little in the question of inventory. It doesn't have much inventory cost, and it brings an important top line increase for us. That's our bet on these inventory questions right now.
Thank you for your answers. That was very clear. Thank you for those answers.
Our next question comes from Bob Ford from Bank of America. Bob, please turn on your audio and video and make your questions, please.
Good morning to everyone. Thank you for taking my questions.
I want to know, what are you thinking about the and how much time you need to make these adjustments and what has been the initial return from the market and the lab diamonds as well?
We addressed this question a little bit in Eric's answer. We understand that by the end of this year, we'll be at levels, historic levels from the standpoint of levels of days of inventory. The second answer is about lab diamonds and the Duo line. We see growth here of more than triple-digit growth, which is very relevant from the standpoint of Duo. In March, which will be in the next few days, next week, we're going to start to publish this in a more wide-ranging way for our consumers. We've never had this doctrine with our consumers. It's something new that we're going to start to communicate.
We believe that this thing is going to start to take off, which it's already selling a lot, but it's going to be more and more relevant from the standpoint of share of Vivara sales, both from the standpoint of Duo, which is gold and silver, and as well as Lab Diamonds, to increase the number of items, SKUs, and increase this proposition and exploit this in a more significant way in the Vivara stores. We are going to have a very important penetration, and we hope to arrive at a level which is much more important than it is today by the end of the year.
I think it's very much in line with the trajectory of the company over the years, which has always been able to adapt to the increase in commodity prices and take into account the tastes of the consumers and has given a good answer for our clients. Oh, how beautiful, how interesting. The lab diamonds has been a very pleasant and relevant surprise, and we've had very positive results from that, and we hope to improve that communication going forward.
One more question. How do you feel about your cost structure? Do you have a need for adding more muscle in certain areas, or do you think are you happy with your current levels, in your opinion?
We made important adjustments, especially in corporate structures and our expenses in marketing.
As we communicated to you in the third quarter, our marketing expenses were close to 2.5% or 2.6% of net revenue. Naturally, we need to take some of that, but it is not even close to being the level that we had in 2023. We are going to continue maintaining this level of efficiency in our marketing expenses. The second major question is the corporate structure. We have added people, key people, and people on a point, timely basis, much focused on sales. Somebody who thinks about sales 24/7. This naturally will generate an important increase. We are not going to make a prediction, but it will make an important improvement in our day-to-day over the next few quarters. This will help us to unlock a lot of value.
Summarizing, in marketing, we maintain a level which is a little bit higher than we've seen in the third quarter, but still with important gains compared to what we had in 2023. In personnel, it's an increase, but what makes a huge difference in our day-to-day, which will help us to prepare for the next steps to be a company 3 or f4x the size of our current size in the medium to long term.
Thank you.
Continuing, our next question comes from Guilherme Villela from JP Morgan. Guilherme, please turn on your microphone and your camera. Can you hear me? Yeah. Good morning. Ícaro, Elias, Caio, thank you for taking my questions. I have one about the flexibility of your business model. We talk a lot about the, at the end of the day, a collection.
If one collection does not work or gold, you can return that to the factory, melt it down, and redo it, turning it into new collections. How does that work in the day-to-day of the company? Is this an alternative? You commented a lot about testing products which have low turnover in other regions. How would this effectively make this flexibility since we are talking about gold, which is a flexible raw material? My second question is about the stores. If you can give us a little more visibility of how this should be divided between Life and Vivara and how this should be divided between the different geographies and states to have better visibility on these new frontiers.
Thank you. Also, thank you for the question and the question of flexibility. If you compare this with other retailing, it is an advantage.
The competitive advantage is huge because we're still able to return to the finished products to our cycle of manufacturing. Our choice from the standpoint of melting down a part is always the last when you have an inventory with a good relevant markup. Without having a dynamic, a promotional dynamic, which is very large because this is not interesting from the standpoint of our brand and desire, we're able to play with this markup so that we can more and more sell off this inventory which doesn't sell so well, slower-moving inventory, which is not interesting for us. On the other hand, we have that inventory which eventually where a stone fell out or something broke, and you can no longer sell it, and it's no longer available from the standpoint of the store, but it's a stock.
It's an inventory which naturally we address for melting, and it goes back to our back factory for remanufacturing. This is our first answer about flexibility. From the standpoint of guidance, I'm going to pass it over to Elias here. It's going to help us. We brought some guidance at the end of the day yesterday to bring a lot of clarity of what we're thinking about for this year. A little bit less stores than we had last year. We want to increase the quality of the business plan that we have been approving. The stores from the past were doing very well. We have stores that answer more quickly, some that are more slow. When we pick up the whole picture of stores, we have more than 60 or 70% of positive results, close to what we projected.
It makes us comfortable that our business plan is going forward in reality. What do we see for this year? We've seen a prioritization in longs. We covered all the shopping players in Brazil. We did a study, a very detailed study of the potential of sales in each one of those points and the mix and quality of the shoppings and the localization, what other stores are in those shopping centers, how many stores we have in that region. Taking all that into consideration, we've done a prioritization. We have more than 300 opportunities mapped out for new stores. Obviously, all of this would be divided. The center of the question here is whether a certain potential shopping center has a potential for our stores. We've had two good negotiations.
We've been well received by the directors of these shopping centers that we see in the system because Vivara and Life, our stores, are important for the majority of shopping centers in Brazil. We expect these stores, which are going to open this year, will have good returns, even better than they were last year. With the metrics, it'll be very clear if that available point is a good point, if the shopping center is a good shopping center, and if the quality of the business plan of Vivara. We don't have the final definition of where these shops will be opened because in this first wave, we're looking at shopping centers in all of Brazil. The points that we think are the best points in the shopping centers which are available.
We only go to the best places in shopping centers, and if we're able to get good negotiations, which will bring a good return for the investments of the company. Another point here, our velocity of expansion is still very fast, and we're very focused on increasing our level of service. When we look at our service levels, we can observe that it's already at a good level, but that doesn't mean that we can't increase our speed of expansion because we have this pipeline, which is very robust. It is still a very fast rate of growth. We have lots of work to do, but we're preparing the teams to execute more if we understand that it's the correct moment for that.
Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Daniela Eger from XP. Daniela, please turn on your audio and video. Thank you. Hi.
Thank you all very much. Thank you for taking my question. My first question, back to the question of profitability, you made it very clear that the question of the dynamic of gaining on products at the factory, I wanted to look at both in the question of the factory, this focus on productivity, and understand if there's any points which are being addressed or which will be addressed where we should see any gains over the first quarter in terms of the factory, if you're already seeing this evolution in productivity, which is being done so that it can happen. The second point in products, since you've already had an expansion of 100 basis points, as you see the size of the magnitude, there are many factors which seem to be favorable to your product margins, such as e-commerce, which is more profitable.
You're focused on the profitability and to focus on your growth. The pass-through of prices that you've done with more force in the end of the quarter. Also, there's the mix, which may be an offender. If you could help us a little bit to how we should think about these gains going forward, especially looking at the strategic moment that you said in the side of inventories. If you could bring us a little bit more color on the moving parts of this calculation. Also, the second question is on the question of expansion to understand how we can think about the mix between the two brands and what has brought you to rethink about this expansion rate since the macro is challenging, the macro situation.
If I look at the KPIs and same story that you have, especially in the Vivara accelerating and the sales in mature stores does not seem to be changing much, and that it should not make much of a big impact on ROIC, marginal ROIC. Thank you.
Okay. From the standpoint of profitability and productivity on gross margins, we have seen a very good performance in this first quarter in the Life factory, which is where we have been concentrating this effect of labor, this negative effect of the costs of labor. And we have had important gains there. In the last quarter of last year, we had a rate of reworking in the Life factory when you have to take a piece and you have to redo it when going through this process of manufacturing. And in the middle of the process, you have to go back some steps.
Naturally, you need more hours or more people to make the same number of pieces. We had a rate of overtime, which was very high. We see this rate falling off in a relevant way in the first quarter of 2025. This difference will not be felt in the first or second quarter because the bases are very different. In 2024, in the first and second quarter, we did not have the number of people to diagnose that we did enough people to be able to attend the production that we need, both from the standpoint of expansion of Life to reach the numbers we wanted as well as the level of nationalization. We increased our headcount. They increased our productivity. We made adjustments in the processes and our rate of reworking, which was 35% in the fourth quarter, fell from the level of January and February to 8%.
Naturally, this diminishes greatly the number of extra hours that we need to make the same number of pieces. We have a policy of discounts, which is a little less aggressive. As you can see, it impacted very little from the standpoint of top line in the digital, but also it was something that was very well asserted, very assertive. We have space to grow in the digital world as well. The digital, which was not only impacted by this change in strategy, we saw a better cash margin, but we also have an occasional problem with integration of inventory and availability of products in November and December, and even the middle of January. This problem has been corrected. We now have the inventories working at the level which we believe is from the standpoint of growth, which is necessary.
We see in this quarter, in the fourth quarter, an important increase in gross margin and CMV, the reduction of discounts and pass-through of prices, and things that we will start seeing going forward. All of this will be partially offset by the CGR. We are going to see an increase in stocks and in costs. All of these effects that we have been talking about here will be much more clear when we effectively go out as far as the sales for the final consumer. Your second question about the lines of growth, the growth this year, new stores should be essentially in Life, principally in Life. The majority will be Life stores because it is where you have more opportunities, where we are able to have much more shopping centers in Brazil which do not have a Life store.
We have some stores that have Vivara, but they do not have Life. We have been proactively sought out by various shopping center companies and individual shopping centers wanting Vivara. If we have good negotiations to be able to put Vivara stores in attractive conditions, we are going to do that as well. I would say that more than 80% will probably be Life stores, but we are attentive to look at the Vivara stores as well because the Vivara stores are also doing very well. Two more points. In fact, we have opportunities to expand a little bit more Vivara, even though the same stores are doing very well. To bring a little bit of color, Brazil has 600 shopping centers, a little bit more than 600 shopping centers, and we are present in 180 of them. There are still lots of opportunities for expansion for the next few years.
The decision was to reduce a little bit from the standpoint of the increase in stores very much to be able to grow in a sustainable way. We still have an expansion which is quite accelerated for our level of services. We have several other 450 stores. Beyond the expansion plan, which also has been very well cared for, our NPS has increased greatly. That was the center of the question when we distributed the distribution of our stores, when we looked at the distribution of stores. Thank you very much for your answers, and congratulations for your results.
Next question comes from João Soares from CG. João, please turn on your audio and video, and please go ahead. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. João, go ahead. We can hear you.
I have two questions here, two quick questions.
I wanted to look a little bit more at the comment about Ícaro, about the beginning of the year. You spoke about the beginning of the year and how things are performing very well. I wanted to hear a little bit more how you've seen, better understand this, not only the performance of Life in a more wide-ranging way, but how do you see the performance of these collections, both Vivara as well as Life? It would be interesting. Also, a question which is just a more timely question about the lengthening of the useful life of certain fixed assets. What generated this change? It would be good to hear that as well.
Okay. The first one, and Elias can take the second one.
The first one, we launched a lot of collections, and we've been able to make these collections be in the stores and get them to the middle of January, let's say, 100% focused on Life. We've seen that the share of these collections recently launched has been more and more important, more expressive from the standpoint of sales compared to the older collections. It's clear to us that we had to update our portfolio, and this has been doing very well. We think that it was a strategy that was successful, and we have been able to sell off the collections in the other categories that we're still in the process of updating. From the standpoint of the first quarter, it's a little bit confusing, the first quarter with changes of carnival and different months.
I saw a growing tendency over the quarter, and we have to project solid top line growth. In relation to the useful life of our assets, we have several five-year contracts. When we see that at the time of the renewal, we'd have to do a renovation of the stores. Many stores don't need a complete renovation. They're not completely depreciated. We reevaluated that subject and looked at all the stores and those that are obsolete, some which need to be renovated, some which are not depreciated. With that, we increased in a few cases on a store-to-store basis. Now it's going to be much easier, closer to the reality, looking at the rate of fiscal in terms of impact on the P&L. This would have a higher impact. We'll have assets, higher impacts. How will this affect your P&L over time?
We should have a depreciation a little bit slower, more stretched out, and then a lower depreciation, but it should not have any significant effect on our results.
Thank you very much.
Next question is from Rodrigo Gastin from Itaú BBA. Rodrigo, please turn on your audio and video. Can you hear me? Gastin, can you hear us?
Okay. Here we go. Two questions here from my side. The first is going back to the subject of inventory. I want to understand the dynamics of the inventory with gross margin.
You spoke about this during the call, but looking at the importance of reducing this level of inventory and how much of your gross margin have you seen over this first quarter and this dynamic of gross margin over the year, how much comfort are you able to have today to reduce your level of inventories by a normalized level at the end of the year? How much investment, or if there will be any investment of gross margin, to do that? Secondly, we're talking about gross margin is if CMV did not pressure your gross margins, then we had your factory costs. Looking at comparative basis without doing an adjustment of the accounting numbers, how should we see this dilution of factory costs over the year? Is it only at the end of th e year?
The sales are coming, or how do you expect this to shake out during the year over the next few months? These two questions.
I'll take the second, and then Nick can take this. We're going to see in the first quarter, based on the comparative base, some pressure. Important to say that we see following this, we adjusted several processes in the factories, in the silver factory and so forth, which is very healthy and very controlled. You have to have a comparative basis. Later, in the first half of the year, for a comparative base, and in the second half of the year, in delivering what we expect, diligently controlled over all the months of the year. You can piece that on here.
We understand that the work that we have to do, we have an important position, and we have mechanisms to do that, to manage this allocated capital, transferring products. This does not translate into cannibalization of our gross margins. To do this better management of allocated capital, we have to continue a positive trajectory of gross margin delivering. We're going to still have this trajectory, increasing our pricing, lower amount of discounts, and over the year, we expect that will continue. We always have routes between the stores, so nothing can be significant to do this transition from one moment to the next. We have no significant investments to do here to do this increase in days of inventory. From the standpoint of how we're going to address these inventories, there's a normal dynamic in retailing. We don't see any penalty from the standpoint of gross margin.
Even if we have to diminish a markup to address this, we see it as something simple because at the end of the day, it helps to dilute our fixed costs and generates more results for us. I would say it's a natural effect. Historically, it happens. Very clear. One quick one, if you allow me, that part of the logistics network, you have a deficiency in the logistics of the DC with the loss of certain subsidies. This may be a relevant point for you this year. It's a very relevant point. It's evolved well. We're already in this process of hiring, of hiring the necessary labor shortages. The standard is going to start to impact in a more relevant way in the second half of the year. Yes, it's very important from the standpoint of results.
Once we've defined all of these evaluations, we'll share more details for space, investments, and eventual gains.
Great. Thank you all very much.
Okay. Please turn on your audio and video. Alexandre, please turn on your audio and video. Thank you. Alexandre Namioka from Morgan Stanley.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. The biggest part of my question was already answered. However, a few quick follow-ups. Ícaro, you mentioned about the CapEx per square meter was improving in the new stores. If you could share a little bit more about the detail about that and also perhaps link it to the marginal ROIC of these new stores. The second question also quickly, the question about expansion.
I understand that it might be difficult to share the mix of geographies, but if you could talk a little bit about the mix of types of malls, types of shopping centers where you're going to be opening these stores, that would be interesting as well. Thank you.
I'll take the first one, and Liz can take the second one about the expansions. From the standpoint of CapEx, Alexandre, we have two initiatives. The first is purchasing in large scale. We have guaranteed to our suppliers a larger purchase so that they can prepare for that and give us an important discount to us. The second major front is the realization of especially air conditioning and electric boxes, which are very expensive in our CapEx and which do not impact from the standpoint of customer experience.
Obviously, we're only going to take advantage of those things which are still good and which still have a useful life. These two levers have permitted us to have a more relevant CapEx. At this exact time, we're redoing our economic studies to understand how much this will impact our profitability. This we have in our release about the roles of our expansion. In shopping centers in large cities, in shopping centers which have a large potential sales, we have shoppings with the major groups. Shopping centers have good potential sales which attend the A-class public in several cities in Brazil. We're addressing and seeking to open, first of all, in these shopping centers. The first item in the prioritization that I cited is the potential of sales, the highest sales potential. Obviously, the other important items are important as well.
We have to go to those places that have the highest potential sales in shopping center A, B, so we can first get to stores in the stores and shopping centers that have the highest potential sales. Later we can go to other shopping centers that have lower potential sales, but due to discounts on rents and stuff, it might still be interesting.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Isabela Lamas from UBS. Isabela, we will send you now. Please turn on your audio and video. Thank you. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Ícaro, Elias, and Caio. Thank you for this space. I now wanted to get into a little bit from the standpoint of prices.
Danny mentioned this in her question, but I wanted to focus a little more on understanding this last quarter. You had some pass-through, especially in Vivara, to catch up with the dynamics of the price of gold. Just to understand if this gap still exists and if there's anything that needs to be done in the first quarter and in the first half of the year. If you've seen this dynamic having any significant impact in volume, how do you see the trade-off between the two brands, Vivara and Life, and also entering into the Life strategy? I wanted to understand a little bit how do you see the price point of that brand. We know it's a brand that's more younger, and even with this movement of Larissa Manuela as an ambassador, who's very important for the Generation Z and Generation Alpha.
How do you see this range of prices? If this becomes less important for presence and becomes something more premium line, if it's still in line with this category of presence that's just significant and which brings a great deal of attractivity in the comparative dates. The question of these two brands and these pass-throughs and the strategy of Life. Thank you all very much. Thank you. I'm going to address this on two different fronts. First, we're not 100% updated from the standpoint of pricing since gold has been going in price, going in price over the year. We have monthly looked at these quotes and checked our prices. We can only pass through if we have a choice to gain share. In Vivara, we're a little bit behind this curve, but it's still very healthy.
What we've seen, the category of collections, these are less elastic. They don't suffer so much from the increase in prices because it has design and the perception of price by the consumer. When we look at more commercial items such as wedding rings and chains, yes, these are more sensitive to gold increases. In January and February, we've understood that it's a category which is very elastic. Each 1% in price, it changes 2-3% in volume. We've expanded these tests to find a level which is a correct level from the standpoint of top line as well as margin. For Life, the second question here, the strategy of pricing, we have two principal levers, two major ambassadors. Marina speaks much more about collections, and Larissa talks a lot about the younger generation.
With no doubt, the strategy, as you brought up, these present type of pieces, this is going to work more internally. We understand that even though there's a fight that we have with the other jewelry stores, we also have to look at the consumers and with other brands. More and more, we're going to intensify this journey of these pieces that are adequate for presence, for gift-giving. We don't have the intention of making the brand the most, make Life into a premium level. We think we're at the correct level. We're going to work between two principal groups of clients, the 30+ and the younger clients. We're buying people that are buying for the moment.
Very good. Very clear. Thank you.
Due to the time of this call, we're now closing the call from Vivara.
The Department of Relations with Investors is at your service to answer any other questions. Thank you to the participants, and please have a wonderful day. Thank you.