Of 2025, and afterwards we'll open up for any questions you might have. Okay?
As far as our first quarter, what we've seen is growth, a very consistent growth, growth which we have seen over the last quarters, independent of a macro scenario which has been a little bit more difficult. We have been very consistent in our deliveries. In this quarter, our revenue, gross revenue grew by 15% year on year, inspired by same-store sales of more than 10%. The good news here is that this was driven on both our channels, both in the physical store channel, where we have seen good sales, as well as the acc leration of the digital channel as well. This acceleration was due to several corrections which we've made, course corrections we made during the from the middle of January on. The second main highlight is our net revenue, which registered an increase of 22.8% compared to the previous year.
This was driven by two things: one, the increase of production, as we mentioned over the recent quarters. We have been bringing our level of stock up to what we imagined would be the ideal level. The second fact was that during a moment of productivity for manufacturing, we're increasing our capacity to internalize our production. This generates more ICMS credits and a higher gross margin over the next quarters. We'll detail this during the next slides. We're still very diligent from the standpoint of operating expenses. What we see here is an SG&A, excluding depreciation and amortization, where we delivered efficiency of 6.7 percentage points compared to the previous year when we're talking about net revenue, and a very relevant amount about our gross revenue of 3 percentage points. Our net revenue and net profit has given a growth, a relevant growth.
We've been delivering $115 million in net profit. This is the way we relate with our stockholders, our shareholders, which becomes dividends later on. It's been a very important expansion with a margin of 22.4% and an expansion of 13.4 percentage points year on year. Finally, our highlight here is the evolution, the manufacturing evolution, which we have been seeking over the recent quarters. We've been growing that, our number of headcount in the factory. This gives us a higher level of expenses, it increased our costs, and depressed a little bit our gross margin. But we're starting to see the benefit of that over the next few quarters. We increased our production of Life products, which we need to sell to increase our availability of stock in more than 110%. We reached 23,000 units.
These 23,000 units today are the units that we need to be able to sell at the level which we want to reach. This makes it possible for us to address several questions which we had problems with in the past, which we're addressing now. The first was the increase in the availability of products to reduce the level of stockouts. The second point, the major question was to accompany the evolution of the expansion, which is an expansion which is accelerated. The third, as I mentioned with you, is the possibility of internalizing more and more our production lines and depending less and less from outside suppliers. As a consequence, this generates more ICMS credit and generates over the quarters a gross margin, a higher gross margin. I'm going to pass it over now to Elias. Elias, it's good to see you again. It's good to be with you again.
He's going to share with you some of our numbers. Thank you all. Good morning, everyone. In this first quarter, it's been very intensive compared to the year. We've seen a lot of what worked and what still needs to improve. There's still lots of room for improvement. We've seen a better line and our commitments to excellence and seeking better governance. We brought new contributions to bring us strategic thinking and seeing what's best for the company. After the last assembly of the council fiscal committee, we believe that we've had lots of counselors in our council. With these board members, independent board members are very senior leaders with experience on several boards, not just in retailing, but that's a question for you. However, we have with us these questions and strategies which are very much a great deal richer.
Specifically talking about this quarter, we had four new Life stores which were inaugurated. Due to these holidays, we inaugurated seven Life stores in April, a little bit after the end of the quarter. With that, we've opened 11 stores, Life stores in 2025, reinforcing the presence of the brand, the Life brand in several cities which already had Life stores. In some others, the first Life stores in several cities around which have been very receptive to this product in the areas which we've entered. We're looking at this, analyzing where we have opportunities based on the online sales that we've seen in the regions and the sales that we have in the Life category within Vivara. Of the 11 stores we opened in this, only one is in São Paulo and five are in cities which had no Life stores.
With that, we did five retrofits of stores, a very important factor to start to improve the client experience, customer experience, and the same that we have in other stores. Also, these retrofits have brought a higher return on investment and a cost of execution, which is quite low. With this program, we have delivered in quality between 40 and 50 stores over the year, which have turned into the best points in the best shopping centers in Brazil. Here, going back to revenue, we look at our gross revenue, which continues consistently growing the more we invest. We see that this is about 15% of growth in gross revenue and a growth of 16% in the physical stores and 1% in the digital sales.
We've grown by 13% while Life grew 13% in the stores which we had in this period, but also with same-store sales which grew by leaving from 9% in the fourth quarter to 10.1% in growth in same-store sales, giving you more details. On the next page, I wanted to look at this next slide that we see that it's grown more than the gross revenue of the company with the ICMS credits, which is totally related to the internal production which we're doing in our factory. In the last quarters, we made our stores in Vivara and the same-store sales of these stores. Naturally, in the same quarters, there's a tendency for this to be reduced. The best purchases of gold that we've done in recent months, where we've been able to invest with our inventories going forward. It's simply what we're doing.
We have looked at in the past, and we're now harvesting the fruits of these investments in recent months. We have a strong gross revenue growth over the next quarters. We believe that this will be offset by the evolution of the internalization of Life, which we've done in our factory, the level of production that we have reached, and then the gross margin. We expect to have a reduction in the cost of Life, of our production cost for Life. This will also, when it's sold and passes along to the consumer, the final consumer. Beyond that, we have the distribution center, which should generate new presumed credits over the next years, which is totally within our program of implementation. We'll be looking at that over the course of the year.
This is the normalization that we expect of these credits, which will give us a healthy evolution in our gross margins and generate a great deal of maturity in the manufacturing model as well as the retail model, which is one of our strengths in Vivara. Now we're seeking gains of efficiency, improving all that's been invested, whether it be by capital or investments in the operation. Specifically, in the different channels, which are the Life stores, we see that we reached $135 million here of gross revenue, growth of 31%. The numbers of Life in the Life stores grew by 57.9% in the sales of this category, getting the more maturity that Life has as its own brand, as a standalone brand and a standalone store.
In the same-store sales of Life, we see a positive effect that we've had when we brought new options of collections, which were released over the year, especially at the end of the year. We see this effect in the stores. Starting in April, the new models of products with prices adjusted. We already see that this has begun from Mother's Day. We're already seeing good signs of reactions of sales of these new models, these new products, with the sales that we're seeing in the last few days. Looking at Vivara, we have $435 million here as gross revenue, 13% compared to the same quarter last year.
In the same-store sales, we got 11%, very healthy number, which is already stores that are already consolidated, which helps us to understand the importance that has been to have the right amount of stocks in these stores with potential for selling. During the constant renewal, especially in the dual in our laboratories and the principals, we see that these sales have come once these new innovations, these new ideas, new lines have been highlighted as the preferred products of our clients. Next slide. We see here in the digital channel, there's been a growth in this quarter much higher than we saw in the previous quarter, going from a growth of 3.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 8.6% in the first quarter of 2025. It's course corrections in the process of integration that we have with the other sites under our management.
We've received a lot of this in this journey. We're getting more and more integrated with our clients. We see that the sales which are done on the site, but sold through the stores, are now representing 46% of our digital sales, with more than 24% of growth in the same period compared to the period last year. It's much more assertive in terms of media and integration with the media and the site. We're talking about sales. This has also brought a larger amount of recurring sales, digital sales, with a higher sales for these clients who are much more recurring clients.
As part of these investments, more assertive investments, we see that the activation that we have done of the new ambassador, Lisa Morela, has brought us a lot of involvement with the networks, more than 37.8% to 40% of the digital sales. We've had a growth of gross profit of 20% compared to the first quarter of last year, with gross margin compared to a similar gross margin. It's very similar to what we had last year with a small gain, a small change of 1%. We increased our headcount of the factory, which was totally offset by the realization of the FGF, which we had expected. This is principally because Life only started to reach productivity that we expected the factory now in this first quarter.
We see that we've had to, at the end of last year, reinforce the importation to maintain the stores stocked. Now looking to the merchandise which have arrived in this first quarter and the rates of nationalization, which makes the stores Life stores more totally run by the Valentine's Day, [Foreign language ]. In the factory, with the increase of which will happen over the year, which has stabilized in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter, has happened. We see the full rate reduced and the overtime reduced and the number of pieces produced per day increased. This reinforces the relevance of having made this investment in the factory and the return that we're seeing in scaling up very quickly and important and consistent and with less dependence on imported products.
We had growth of 54% in our EBITDA, reaching 18.8% of EBITDA compared to 4.1% with an increase of profitability, which shows greater efficiency, operator efficiency, especially in sales. The sales, we're still being more efficient with our personnel and our G&A and our marketing. As I mentioned previously, we're being more assertive in the marketing areas. We have continued to be very diligent to maintain the gains that we made in 2024 and always seek out new ways, new increases in efficiency. In this quarter, more than tripled, reaching a new level of profitability for Vivara. They like our business. They like our factory, the retail, integrated factory and retail and our capacity to vary this, which we've been able to do with an increase in profitability. This quarter, we've had a lower CapEx than in the previous periods due to allocation of capital.
Each investment per store has been due to the efficiency of the factory. Also, within what we expected, we had a cash burn with imported products, as we mentioned, for Girlfriend's Day coming up in June, Brazilian Valentine's Day. And a contract that we did last year. Since last year, we have been classified as a loan, but we made new realizations to increase our period for the repayment of these purchases with our suppliers. We've been able to see naturally that this cash consumption happens, and we've purchased less raw material, less gold and silver over this quarter, which is also coming up on April and May. The effect of all of this is that we have a net debt increased and a net debt in the same proportion that we had the coverage. But this increase is not a structural change in the debt.
It's only a change in the accounting of this debt, as we did these hirings of these loans, of these advances with our suppliers, with a leverage at levels that are quite healthy. So with that, I'm going to come back, hand it back over to Icaro, who's going to talk a little bit about our perspectives for 2025 and going forward. Thank you, Elias. Just for the seasonality, what we've seen here in the fourth quarter. In the second quarter, we did a live special for Mother's Day, where we got together our almost 4,000 employees. It was a day that was very special for us. We've been preparing strongly for this Mother's Day. It starts now. It didn't start now. It started way back with our process of production, innovation, our marketing campaign, and our production in parallel.
We produced quite a bit to attend our needs, the needs of volume. Put it with this perspective, what we've seen up until now, up until the 8th of May, is a month very, very satisfactory, very satisfactory, and a quarter independent of the disconnection between the holidays, which is also quite satisfactory. So we're very happy with what we've seen, with the evolution of this second quarter. For 2025, I'm going to give you a little bit of the pillars that we have been commenting on, our five pillars, which are the pillars on which we're focusing our operation for the year. The first is the continuing increase of service, which is one of the most relevant things that we've worked on. We've worked hard to increase our level of satisfaction, of our client satisfaction.
This has also had an effect on all of the areas of contact with the clients: technical, the SAC, the client service, logistics, which is a reflection of the e-commerce and the digital, and also the stores. Coming back to physically present training with salespeople and managers, this has given us a lot of fruit in our customer satisfaction numbers. The second main pillar are the operational levers, and we break this into several activities. The first is the control of expenses. We've done a lot of work with this focus to maintain our scale and gain efficiency and scale and efficiency in our expenses. The other one is increase of our manufacturing capacity to increase the verticalization of our production, especially in the Life segment.
In this first quarter, we've had to see it as a brand that has become very important, which is our 23,000 pieces produced per day in Life. I thank all of our workers in the factory who have worked very hard to get to this level. We lowered our levels of waste, which will increase in our level of productivity, which is very, very important. The third large major lever is the utilization of our tax planning. As we mentioned, we are here very, very advanced in our plan to be able to start. Put this into practice. In the next quarters, we're going to see the benefit, which is very important, coming from this lever. So the third pillar, which is innovation of our portfolio products. I'm going to break this in two.
First is the products to be more adequate to the purchasing power of our customers. Over the last 60 years, the price of the commodity has evolved greatly from the standpoint of the gram of gold as well as of silver. We've done basically a design, and this makes it easier for our consumers to be able to afford these pieces. What we've shared with you is our intention to increase the collections, the relevance of these collections of the dual, which is the gold and silver, and the laboratory diamonds, which we've seen in the middle of March. We started to intensify the communication of these campaigns and the way in which we expose this in our stores, displays in our stores. In recent days, we've seen the relevance of these products double in the category of Jewelry. It was a real goal.
It was a gigantic win for us. We understand that this will increase and make it more potential and will grow even more by the end of the year. The next question within our accessibility of attending the purchasing power, which is the Prata Vivara, which is a, we know it's natural to suffer a cannibalization in the category Life inside the Vivara stores. When we open another Life store in the same shopping center, to attenuate this, we are intensifying the release of more collections of silver, of Vivara silver collection, to have a very similar ticket and a high level of acceptance, a very high level of acceptance, especially from the standpoint of volume for us. Over the next quarters, we will be starting to see the benefits of this attenuation of the cannibalization effect.
The second activity in this area of innovation in the portfolio is the renewal of our current portfolios. As we mentioned, collections of Life, which we've already been doing this since the end of last year, much more strongly in the first quarter of this year. We opened up a very important space in Life of practically 15% between collections and Moments between the two when compared to the previous year. It was very successful, this release of Moments in the collections. It's already started to work with Moments, the Moments collection. We've seen in the second quarter very satisfactory sales, both in the Jewelry as well as in the Life area. Pillars that we open up for questions in our park of stores. We're in line with our guidance for the year.
Between 40 and 50 years, 40 and 50 stores, what we've seen here is we have a level of use of the shopping that is very adequate. We opened 11. We're going to continue this during the next quarters. Looking at our last pillar, which is the management of stock, we have a slide, a specific slide for that, just to give you a better idea. The stock management, we're breaking into two major fronts. One is we've already seen from the purchase of raw material in recent months. We have an increment in raw materials as a percentage, much lower than finished goods. We're transforming this raw material into finished products. The reflection of this is that we get more ICMS credits. How do we address the optimization of our stocks up until the end of the year?
A very important point for us. The first is the reduction of the purchase of raw material. We have a very healthy level of stocks on hand. The second talks about the finished products. Last year, during the last two quarters, especially in Jewelry, we stocked up on certain stores, which had a very strong reflection, very positive in same-store sales. Even so, we had some high kilo, high carat sales. Some stores did not have a diversity for a good turnover. The same jewelry are very relevant in other stores. We're doing a redistribution of these products between the stores, and we're seeing a sales velocity increase, which happened at the end of March. It's also a positive effect explaining our second quarter, our good performance for the second quarter.
Also in our plan of optimization of stock is the removal of slow-selling products, but those which have overstock. We are, in general, we have 8% of our stock is in this category of products which are overstocked and slow sellers. We're going to do the meltdown of this material and do a production of more high turnover products so that we can generate more value for the company over the next quarters. In general perspectives, we think we're very satisfied with this first quarter. We're above the plan we have designed. We understand that the next quarters will continue with this expansion, both of profitability as well as results compared to the previous year. I'm going to close here our perspective. I'm going to pass the ball over to you if you have any questions.
Remembering that to make your question, please click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and write your question to get into the line. When your announcement will tell you to turn on your microphone and camera, so you should turn it on to make your questions. Thank you. We orient that the questions be done all at once. Our first question comes from [XP] from Danni Eiger. Now we're going to ask you to turn on your audio and video. Please accept. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two from my side. I wanted to know a little bit about the dynamic of gross margin, if we can talk about the dynamic looking at the comparative situation so we can have this flow of continuity and see how that will evolve.
In your question, as well as in the release, you've done the pass to a price that you've been more agile than the company historically has been and collections doing better in Life than in Moments. And from my side, this should also help quite a bit your. I understand that the factory is as much as you expected. So I want to understand what we think about these moving parts and when we'll be able to see, in fact, this translating into an improvement in margins going forward.
On a second note, for me, maybe this is for Elias, this movement that you're doing of the prepayment, I wanted to understand how you're going to advance this money, how this works out for your financial costs, and if you're going to open, how much this will affect your costs and how this will be reflected on your final results so we can understand better this evolution of gross margin, comparative gross margin. These two questions. I'm going to start with the gross margin, and then please feel free to add. It's a mix of several questions. The first is that we saw that since we have some markups that are lower, we've seen an expansion almost three times higher from the standpoint of the acceleration of sales rather than what we enjoy for Jewelry and Life and other categories.
This pushes our gross margin, but it's benefited by the bottom line. As we've explained to you in the recent quarters, we've been able to see this as an offset of the GGR, and we've had to increase our headcount to reach these levels of production, which we needed, especially in the Life category. Today, 23,500 pieces per day. So over the next quarters, we're going to see two effects. The second is that we're going to see in our DRE, in our financial statements of products, cheaper products. This is true so much so that our ICMS credit is coming upfront when you increase your production. I think I answered that question. I think that's true. The line of personnel is clear. It was expected. It was foreseen.
This pressure exists in the first quarter, in the second quarter, and from the third quarter on, it'll be 100% normalized. We're going to have more benefits, in fact, going forward. What we had in this quarter, the impact of importation realized last year because we had a period of lower productivity in the factory. So now to bring these in product, we have passed that, which hurt our margins in the first quarter. But now we're drawing out these effects. So with this, when you take out the importation, then we see an advantage. What's the size of the advantage? In the mix that we have now, the current mix of growing, as the things are growing, it's all inside these numbers. Just to design for the plan for this year, the expectation is exactly that. The dynamic of evolution of gross margin is gradual.
However, the productivity share is certainly correct, and the number of personnel and the mix of Life accelerating, which is an important factor. We're going to have Life with same-store sales as the collections are delivering, and with the Life category growing, and this in our plans will help. In the closing in the next quarters, we'll see. But it's designed in our plan, built into our plan for these coming quarters. A new factor in your analysis from outside is the importation that we did to be able to keep our store stocked, and this starting now will decline. It's very clear in our presentation how we have evolved our production of pieces per day in Life. Last year was 11,000, then it's 14,000, 16,000, and so forth.
We've been gaining scale with our production, and now we reached a level which we believe is enough to attend the demand of our internal demand in our stores. Just a quick follow-up, just to make it more clear, we see this evolution, which is very evident in the release, but it's not so much in the gross margin. That's a point that even though productivity is increasing.
[Foreign language].
The mix of products, what's the gap of collections in Moments between Life and Moments in terms of margin? This should be helping, both collection as well as Duo. These are things that help. The margin should be better.
It's true that the margin is gaining representativeness, gaining importance in our numbers. Even though it's working from a smaller base, to give you an example, what [Relógios] is growing compared to Duo and Momentus, it's growing as fast as the market in terms of representativeness. The margin, the Watch section, which has the best margin among the other categories, I think it's very important, but it's an important cross-selling. We're not just discussing margin, we're discussing the sales overall. It's a combination that we've done over time. To understand about the little of the dynamic of this advances that we from our suppliers to improve the capital situation of the company. In the past last year, we made several purchases of gold and silver, relevant purchase of gold and silver.
Since last year, with the use of our capital and with better spreads, with the advantage of the banks and the question that come before the company, we understood that this was very good for us to bring this increase of time at rates that were quite very healthy rates to be able to finance this increase in stock, which we did last year, which has been happening since last year and was being produced in this quarter and the presumed profit. How many months we have of stock? It's not just a material. We're going to study this to see if there's any better way, if any improvements to be made. Our next question is Rodrigo from Itaú BBA. Rodrigo, we're going to send you a command. Please accept. Everything okay? Two questions from me.
First, I would like to listen to your comments about satisfactory sales, which you talked about for the second quarter, to understand better if my understanding is correct. During the presentation, this question of stock management, which is helping with sales, in my perception, my reading. Obviously, without any numerical guidance, but an improvement in sales in the second quarter compared to all this stock management and products which you're doing. I wanted to understand if it makes sense, my understanding that this is satisfactory is in line with this line of acceleration. The second question is in gross margin. When we put all of this in the blender, improvements at the factory, personnel, changes of credits and subsidies, how do you see your margin growing over the year in a comfortable way? Are you comfortable in working with this first quarter with this margin pressure?
If you think it should be better, a better dynamic in the second quarter, and how that will be? How do you think about that compared to your budget for this year with these first five months of the year, these first four months of the year already gone by? Thank you for the question, [Gastin]. From the standpoint of sales, satisfactory sales, we're very satisfied, yes. We have delivered above what we planned. Here, the three major categories of Jewelry, Life, and Watches, it's been very satisfactory in Life, especially due to the combination of releases in Moments and a small pass-through of prices that we did in the category as well, and the launch of the collections that we did last year. Jewelry continues to do very well, very much based on the level of stocks that we have brought into the company over the recent quarters.
We prepared very well from the standpoint of quantity. We passed through the prices as was necessary due to the price increases in the commodities. We add all this together, we've been launching collections which are very well received by the market. The tendency is very satisfactory without any numerical guidance, but we're very happy vis-à-vis the first quarter. The second question in relation to the gross margin, the tendency here what we've seen here in relation to our plan is that we're a little bit above our planned amount. We see the next quarters, we're going to stop suffering the pressure from the standpoint of increase in headcount, which is 1.4 percentage points of increase in this quarter. In the second quarter, we still didn't have a base of comparison.
We shared that number, but in the third and fourth quarter, we will have a base that is 100% comparable with the much higher level number of products being produced in-house and also gaining more and more productivity. So we're going to open up for you the race, the level of waste, and we've shared with you the number of hours necessary to do this production. But the number of overtime hours that we had has been reduced by three times compared to the last quarter of last year. We've gained efficiency, and this will be reflected over the next quarters. Obviously, our plan contains expansion of margin as well as absolute numbers compared to last year, and we're very satisfied with these numbers. We're above that which we had estimated internally.
This effect on the margin winds up being more based on the strong growth that we had in the factory. Over the next quarters, when we have these seasonalities arriving at sales, we expect that this effect of the Moments in the factory will be reduced by presumed profit, and the changes within the net revenue will be reduced over time, and consequently, the gross margin will increase over the next quarters. Very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you for the answers. Our next question comes from Eric Huang from Santander. Eric, please, we're now going to open up your microphone and camera. Please do. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking our questions. We have two questions here from our side.
The first is looking more at these comments which you made about the Life and looking at the comment in the release about how much better it has been, the same-store sales and collections in the first quarter. I think we can understand that the Moments at that time were still slower. Just to understand better, when do you expect, or perhaps you already are seeing the closing of this gap between same-store sales in the two due to these operational adjustments which have been coming, the new collections in Moments, and also based on that, looking at the Life, how we can when we would expect to see potentially a closing of the gap of same-store sales which we've seen, especially in this quarter between Life and Vivara.
The second question heading in direction of the gap between gross revenue and net revenue, we had an expectation that it would be relevant, and it came a little bit higher than expected. But looking at the next quarters, we expected that there might be a closing, a full closing of this gap due to the bases which are more comparable, and we can still see the maintenance. Perhaps a little bit higher than we expect. Thank you, Eric, for the question. I'm going to start here with the question about the sales of Life. We saw a difference, a space between collections in Moments. Collections is 60% of our sales in Life. It had a performance which was very important performance based largely on the new collections, the new launches, and this continued a positive tendency. Moments, we have two large opportunities looking forward.
We started this movement at the end of March, which is bringing the prices, bring our prices up to level. We had to raise our prices a little bit. The second is that the arrival of the new portfolio in the stores, which has started to arrive at the end of April, only at the end of April. April was a month in which we had different bases from last year due to the holidays. Even so, we had the results that were in line with our plan. What May has shown us is very satisfactory results. Putting these two together leaves us very happy up until we see them from the standpoint of same-store sales and Life. We see a gap of collections and Moments closing that gap will be narrowing.
The tendency is that it will close this gap. We see same-store sales Life as a total benefiting from this movement, but also there will be an opportunity to, by the end of the second quarter and the starting of the third quarter, a tendency to even improve even more because we don't have only movement Moments working, but the profitability that we reached at the end of the first quarter helps us to do a movement to increase the stocks in our live stores, which had not been able to execute due to the end of last year. We had not yet reached this level of production.
At the level of production we reached, we will permit us to reach a quarter. The change of the next quarter with some increases in stock and the stock of Life stores, perhaps not total, but it will help us to be more responsive to these movements to bring same-store sales, which tend to be better. As far as the difference between gross and net profit, you said discrepancy of the growth much higher in the net than in gross. As we've been commenting, this tends over the year to diminish this difference and the dynamic of net revenue higher than gross revenue. We've seen that already. Since we're internalizing more and more this production, the percentage is higher than it was in the past. Even so, the effect of this quarter will. The second and third quarters of last year changed this dynamic.
At the same time that we have this roadmap, which we've been following according to the plan, this is the dynamic. It's not going to be necessary to invest much more than what we have already done due to this moment that we have to see this, to see the conclusion of these processes. Okay, thank you. Just one more follow-up on the comment of the price increases, the pass-throughs of prices in the Moments collection. In the past, we talked about this, looking at this equilibrium of pass-through and increases of prices and how do you see that in terms of volume. I think perhaps you've had in some specific products. I'm going to have to go back in terms of this. How is this balanced today? How do you see this from the client side, the receptivity in relation to this price increase?
We made this movement in Vivara. It had a good reflection on the category in the fourth quarter. In Life, we saw that as we commented to this part in the Moments collection, we saw that there was space there to permit this, which also in volume. I also think that it's more or less this trajectory. Basically, our exercise was looking at Vivara, and then we saw the performance and the volume, the dynamic in the first quarter was better than in the fourth quarter of last year. Thank you very much for your answers. Our next question is from João Pedro Soares from Citi. João, we're going to send you a link to open up your microphone.
[Foreign language] .
Excuse my delay in coming in. I think that people addressed the principal points that I had.
I just wanted to make it clear if I understood if you exclude the effect, the mix effect, what was the impact? How much did your gross margin vary year on year? What we did was including in the mix and getting rid of the import effects. If we get rid of this mix effect, the margins would have grown more. We don't open up this mix effect on purpose, but if you look at Vivara, it's 68%, 69%. Life is about 70%. When I look at the Watch effect, I think that these numbers you're able to extrapolate. But even if I take out the import costs in relation to our factory, as we mentioned, we make it generate these efficiencies. It tends to generate more efficiency going forward because it affects the production and the people that have come in to help and so forth.
It's all happening. Much so that we've worked with the pricing in a certain way. The orders have been coming, a correct trade-off. In other quarters, we looked at the gross margin. It tends to be better and better. In that case, looking at these subsidies, Icaro, you mentioned about this revenue. If I understood correctly, is that we're going to see this diminishing over time until you get totally set up your distribution center in Minas. Is that correct? I was addressing my question to the wrong person. Let me point out, as far as these subsidies, when we compare, let's talk about December, the fact where our production was. If I look at October, September, and November, the volume, we looked at about BRL 100 million.
If I look at the first three quarters of 2025, it was approximately BRL 80 million. So you had this demand. The factory reached its level of productivity. It starts to, relatively speaking, starting now, to produce less and less than it did in the last year, which means that this gap will be as big as it was in the first quarter. From the standpoint of the second quarter of this year, the dynamic will be the opposite. The relevance of production in the second half of the year will be much higher than it was last year. At this current moment, as we had programmed, we're still setting up this plan. We're going to give you more details when it's all set to offset this inversion. We're going to reach a level of acceptance. We're going to gain in our gross margins without losing these subsidies.
As we mentioned, I'm going to sell to this guy in the future, and his production at home is cheaper than the production in importation. This will benefit the gross margins. It's going to lose these subsidies and look at the gross margins. Since we had additional operations, it will be reduced by production, relatively speaking. I'm not sure if that was clear. One thing is that the higher production in the Life, we're producing double what we produced last year, and this is a permanent change. It's production which continues to generate credits and generates also better numbers. If you look at both the credits in the CMV, in the cost of material, it improves our gross margin. This difference has come to stay. It's a permanent change. We need this. We're not overstocking. We're not overstocking or anything.
If we ever need more, we even need more, but we're not able yet to increase. But we're on the way on an accelerated route to increasing our production. So if you continue, one follows the other. We're trying to think to isolate the effects of these subsidies from your gross margins. At the same time, the dynamic of production itself will accompany this. It's hard to isolate the effect of one from the other. If you can expand, the question is if you can expand, what will be the trajectory of gross margin without the effects of this subsidy? But I'm not sure if it's relevant that one is accompanying the other. The increase in gross profit and margins. Our next question is from Vinícius Strano from UBS. Vinícius, we've sent you a link to talk. Please click on that link.
Bom dia, pessoal. Tudo bem? Desculpa aqui.
Good morning, everyone. Sorry for the delay. Thank you for taking my question. Ícaro, Elias, Caio, good morning. Just following up on this theme of gross margins. You made a big change in stock levels with things increasing recently. I wanted to know if this is a lever to help your gross margins in passing this through to prices, perhaps a little better than you imagined. Just to confirm if this effect of 60 bps in the importation in the second quarter, if this would be annulled. And the question of additional personnel costs will be comparable. Just want to confirm that this understanding.
Also about the subsidies, when we look at 2024 with the percentage of gross revenue, close to 8%, this would be a level that you see annualized, normalized in terms of efficiency in the area of fiscal efficiency, as you mentioned. Thank you. Vinícius, talking about passing the products that are produced internally. This will accompany the evolution. It's very much in line with our plan. It's not above what we expected. Looking at the dynamic of the subsidies, as a percentage, more than we've had historically. To give you a number, imagining that as a percentage, it's more representative than the historical numbers of the company structurally over the next. We attended the demand that's necessary to support Life. We've had to make a choice between purchasing and putting this up. We chose to import rather than run out of stock in the short term.
So a diminishing of our in the following quarters. Okay, very good. Thank you, Icaro. Thank you, Caio. Our next question is from Alexandre Namioka from Morgan Stanley. Alexandre, please send you a link. Please use it to talk. Thank you.
[Foreign language].
Alexandre, are you able to turn on your microphone? Seems to be a little technical difficulty there on the part of Alexandre. Let's go to the next question. Alexandre seems to have a problem there, so we'll go to the next question. Next question. It's from Joseph Giordano from JP Morgan.
[Foreign language] .
Joseph has left the conference.
[Foreign language] .
So our next question is from Gustavo Fratini from Bank of America. Gustavo, we sent you a link to open your microphone. Please use it.
[Foreign language].
Hi, everybody. Good morning.
Thank you for taking our questions. We wanted to understand a little bit more what you see in this dynamic of the repass of prices and volumes. You put in the release that the price of commodities continues to increase year to date, and we know that you have made some pass-throughs along the year. You had even commented about thinking about making one in April. I wanted to understand how was this pass-through of prices and how this was reflected in volumes. If you could comment a little bit more specifically, both for Vivara as well as for Life. Thank you. This is a management of pricing that we do. What we do, what we accompany here in the item-by-item list, what are the items which are gaining velocity and which are the items which are flat or losing sales velocity from the standpoint of volume.
We do this management to maintain our level of markup, very healthy markup. We have already passed through two price increases on these items, which have space for that. We've seen a good level of acceptance by the market. On the other hand, on those that we've seen falling off, those which are slower sellers, and the other things which for us are commodities, which are solitaires and wedding rings and chains, we've seen these categories to combine profitability with volume. It's always important to maintain the volume, maintain our volume strong. From the standpoint of pricing of these commodities, the price of the commodity is not our price. It's not our average cost in our stock. We built up our stocks less in the past, so we have space, especially compared to our competitors. We believe very firmly in that.
We don't have this need for pass-throughs, immediate pass-throughs of prices. This is very clear when we look at the evolution of our market share. We've been gaining more and more relevance based on that. If I could just make one follow-up. In the first quarter, can you say what was the breakdown of the growth of Jewelry between volume and ticket? Is it just ticket, or is it ticket and volume? What I can tell you is that the dynamic of the first quarter was better than in the fourth quarter. My trade-off, price-volume in the fourth quarter was a little worse, and in the first quarter, it improved. Exactly this process of evaluation and calibration of the prices that we used at the beginning of the year, the relationship between Jewelry and gold, which has helped us. Thank you.
Due to the time, we're going to close the video conference results for Vivara. The Department of Investor Relations is at your service for answering any other questions that you might have. Thank you very much to the participants, and have a great day. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you all very much.