Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting, and Welcome to Viveo's second quarter 2024 earnings release video conference. To those who need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on the platform. To access, just click on the Interpretation button through the globe item at the bottom of the screen and choose your preferred language, Portuguese or English. For those listening to the video conference in English, there's an option to mute the original audio in Portuguese by clicking on Mute Original Audio. We inform you that this video conference is being recorded and will be made available on the company's, our site, where the complete material of our earnings announcement is available at www.viveo.com.br/ri. You can also download the presentation from the chat icon, even in English. During the company's presentation, all participants will have their microphone disabled. We will then begin the Q&A session.
To ask questions, click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and write your question and company to join the queue. Upon being announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must activate your microphone to ask questions. We advise that questions be asked all at once. We emphasize that information contained in this presentation and eventual statements that may be made during the video conference related to business perspectives, projections, and operational and financial goals of Viveo constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information currently available. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events, and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors may affect the future performance of Viveo and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today, we have the presence of Mr. Leonardo Byrro, CEO of Viveo; Frederico Oldani, Vice President and Financial Administration; André Pacheco, VP of Strategy and New Businesses; Guilherme Goulart, CFO; Flávia Carvalho, Director of Investor Relations and M&A; Vilson Schvartzman, Commercial Vice President of Distribution and Services; and Renan Hervelha, Commercial Director. I would now like to turn over to Mr. Leonardo Byrro, CEO, who will begin the presentation. Mr. Leonardo, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here at our results meeting.
I would like to talk to you about the company's strategy and the plan we have for the second quarter, and the plan we'll have for the future quarters on the advances. I will then turn over to Fred, so that he will talk about all of the financial details, and then in the end, we will return for the Q&A session. Starting with the three pillars, the main large one is a focus on operational excellence of the company. As you all know, after all of the integrations we had last year, we faced operational challenges. We worked hard to map the main issues of the company, and today we have a very clear diagnosis on what has to be made so that we can have operational efficiency, which is one of the pillars of the company, and of course, it is based on two axes.
We have to be able to fund everything using our payable accounts, and we had a moment where we had some worsening in the quality of our services, but we've already seen important improvements for the second half of the year. Number two, we have improved or grown our businesses with better ROIC. We want to leverage more resources and have a growth leverage based on our ROIC, and also the advances we've had in terms of financial optimization by means of a resumption of our cash generation, the strong corporate structure, and consequently, in the next quarters, we will have a total focus on the company's deleveraging. This is my priority agenda and for the team as well. We are really confident that the diagnosis made and the plan we'll have will help us leverage our results in the future quarters.
Now, in details, in terms of supply chain, I think that the main highlight for the half of the year is the improvement of services. More at the end of the second half of the year, we have clients in different markets. Our service level is resuming the excellence levels we had before the integrations that harmed our services a little bit last year. But it was a trade-off with the stocks for the second half of the year. We had a good advancement in reducing excess, and we continue reducing these excess over the next quarters. This did not happen in the second quarter. We focused on organizing our level of services, but we remain absolutely confident, and this is our priority agenda as the level of service goes back to the level we would like to have. Availability of services has improved.
Our distribution centers are working well, and we can gradually reduce excess stocks without affecting the level of services. An important part of this evolution is the centralization in strategic businesses. Here you can see the new center in Cajamar. We have a different level of capacity to meet the needs of our clients and with embarked technology and better productivity. This is something we'll see in the future quarters, and the same thing is true for Brasília. Brasília is a very important hub for us. We are integrating services with Brasília now in the third quarter, and we are very confident that these operations will improve our level of services and the productivity of our operations over the next quarters.
As I mentioned, the quality of stocks and reduction of excess inventories will happen by the end of the year, and the other initiative in supply chain is cost competitiveness on the industrial platform. We have different initiatives for readjustments of production lines, changes of production sites, renegotiation of contracts, closing some production lines which do not have the ROIC that we would like to have, so that we are more and more competitive in terms of the products manufactured. And then, as of the fourth quarter of 2024, this is something that we will, be emphasizing and then continuing into 2025. We have a very intense agenda for the next quarters. And then in the next slide, this is another agenda. We have the readjustment of the costs and expenses of the company.
First of all, we're going to have a simplification of the organizational structure as of the fourth quarter of 2024, and then we're going to have other actions taking place in the fourth quarter of this year, aiming at having a simple decision-making process in the company so that we can make expedite decisions. And it is now time for us to have faster decision-makings, use a lot of automation and technology to reduce freight costs. As you've seen, this is one of the main bottlenecks for the company. We have integrated different operations with different companies, and we are investing a lot in technology systems, different management models, so that we can reduce freight costs. This is something that started in the second quarter and will happen in the future quarters with the support of specialized companies, so that we can reduce our freight costs.
Number three, the review of all of our costs and expenses. We had scattered activities, which will now be carried out through our shared services center, led by Fred and his team. We will review fixed contracts, and then looking at the different operational units, be it execution centers, plants, offices, we are trying to concentrate the activities, so that we can optimize our network. As of the third quarter, we will start working on this, and we expect to have some results in the fourth quarter and subsequent quarters. Now, talking about our priority projects. As I mentioned, we will focus on better ROIC businesses. We want to grow. We have to check what our market shares, the possibility of returns, margins, and working capital. We also have another project, which is a pricing project, so that we can improve our ability to choose what products to sell.
We're aiming at profitability using this initiative. This is something we will see in the next quarter, and we expect to have results over the next year. Focus on cash generation and working capital optimization with impacts already seen in the first half of 2024 versus the first half of 2023. We will talk about this a little bit more later on during this presentation. And then issuance of new debt, improving rates, and lengthening payment rates. Now we also have people and governance. So this is an important part of my agenda and of the board. We will bring in new members of the board of directors, members who are independent members, but also have an experience with management and the moments we're going through in terms of operational challenges that may contribute to this agenda.
We have an agenda which is aimed at following all of these projects and initiatives in the company. This is a monthly committee, and we are getting closer to management so that we can check all of the initiatives. It's important for us to retain and leverage talent. Today, we do not have any significant loss of talent, which is very important at the moment we're going through right now in terms of transformations. So we want to guarantee our culture alignment with our purpose and mission. We know that we have some operational challenges, but we are also confident that in the near future, we will resume the profitability results, and we'll need to have good people working with us to align our culture. Finally, before moving on to Fred, we will get into the details, but I would like to highlight our focus on cash generation.
We had BRL 314 million in the second quarter of cash generation, BRL 142 million in the first quarter. And if you remember last year, the main challenges we have were in terms of working capital, but of course, we have the cost of interest rates and CapEx, where we had to invest last year because of the integrations we made. So when I look at these three aspects, we can already see an important evolution, and we'll have further evolution in the second half. We want to have our CapEx as it was, better results when compared to last year, and then the working capital is something that we will see along the next quarter. We will be very disciplined, and this is the agenda of our company.
In terms of stock inventories, we had an expectation to reduce it in the second quarter. It still hasn't happened because we gave more emphasis to the level of service, but this is something we will see over the upcoming quarters. I now turn over to Fred and remain available for the Q&A.
Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here at my first results call. I will talk about the net revenue, and would like to highlight the main hospitals and clinics, double-digit growth, and sales in high-cost medicines in line with the market growth. I would like to highlight that the specialty segment will start improving after the third quarter. Our performance in the area of vaccines has grown, and we have an increased average ticket in the analytical segment.
Now, moving on with the net revenue, we had reduced sales in some categories, and also a price pass-through on items manufactured in April 2024. We will have some recovery in the upcoming quarters. In terms of services, we had a significant impact from Rio Grande do Sul, which impacted our revenue, margins, and working capital. This is something that will be stabilized by the end of the year. This is a very important segment, and except for some specific effects, this is something that we will continue investing in terms of our strategy at the company. And now, in the next slide, I would like to talk a little bit about the gross profit. We had 17.9% and went to 14.94%. Our gross margin was 1% higher in this quarter and better than what we had last year.
And now, I would like to highlight that the margin for the second quarter is in line with what we had in the first quarter, and then after different quarters, we can see better results, and we have an expectation that we will capture some improvement from now on, with all of the investments that the company is making. I would also like to talk a little bit about the reactive effects. We had gross margin in some segments, which had already been decreasing in some quarters. We also had a very important effect, lower growth in retail and services, in addition to the effects of Rio Grande do Sul, to which we've already given some highlight.
In the next slide, I will talk about the Adjusted EBITDA and the gross margin pressure and higher operating expenses, especially freight expenses. So in addition to the decrease in the gross margin, we had an increase in operational expenses, as commented before. I would like to highlight that we have a series of activities that we are carrying out: structure, freight optimization. All of them are already ongoing. The results are more immediate, and we can see results throughout the next quarters. But our plan is well structured and should generate important gains in terms of cost and expenses for the next quarters. Moving on, slide 13, our financial results. In millions for the second quarter, I would like to highlight that we had these non-recurring results because of activities held in the second quarter.
When we removed these two effects, we had BRL 166 million, which is in line with our usual expense, with interest rates in the area of M&A, in addition to lease expenses, among others. But this is part of the normal flow of the business. With that, our adjusted net profit was BRL 5 million negative in the second quarter, and BRL 3 million negative in the accumulated for the year. Then moving on with slide 14, I will talk about cash flow. Here, we can clearly see the improvement of working capital. Here, you can see our EBITDA results, and it reverts the negative cash results we had in the past quarters. Here, we can clearly see the end of the cycle, where we need to have more working capital, cash consumption, and from now on, the trend for cash generation is positive.
With that, we expect to have a reduction of the company's debt throughout the upcoming quarters. In slide 15, we clearly show the positive effect we had in working capital for this quarter. When we look at the accumulated for the year, we can see something which is very important, a high level of EBITDA conversion of free cash. With the accumulated EBITDA, we will have BRL 142 million of cash generation, which is a significant improvement, marking the beginning of a new flow with working capital generation for the company. In slide 16, we can see the cash cycle. Here, we had a better cash cycle than in the first quarter. Clearly, the figures show that we still have some challenges. What we can see here is that our, our inventory is still not funded.
We still have excess stock inventories, and we will be addressing it in the next quarters. It was commented here that in the first quarter, our priority was to level up our services. We are now going to concentrate on reducing excess stock inventories so that we can have our stock inventory 100% funded. Now, in terms of working capital and net revenue, we have the accounts payables, stocks, tax, interest rates. We still have opportunity to release more working capital if we do a better job. Today, our net revenue is in the order of 24%, and of course, we're going to work so that we can reduce these figures for the next quarters. Slide 17. Here, we can see our debt.
Our net M&A debt closed the quarter with a reduction of BRL 90 million when compared to the first quarter, leveraging 3.16x, and 4.3x when we include the M&A liabilities. It is worthwhile highlighting the reduction of our net debt in some of the quarters, and this is a clear consequence of the positive cash generation. We're very confident that we have the ability to continue reducing the debt of the company. I would also like to highlight the work that we did in the second quarter, where we reduced our debts by reducing costs. The amortization schedule with debt and M&A shows our results, and we do not expect to have any other relevant facts until 2025, which puts us in a more comfortable position without significant pressure with debts to pay.
So this is what I had to say about this quarter, and I am available to answer your questions. Thank you very much.
We're now going to start our Q&A session. I would like to remind you that to ask questions, you should click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your Zoom screen and write your questions to join the queue. When announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must activate your microphone to ask questions. We kindly ask you to ask questions all at once. We will now move to our first question by Leandro Bastos, sell-side analyst for Citibank. Mr. Leandro, we're going to open your audio for you to ask your question. Mr. Leandro, please proceed.
Well, hello, everyone. Good morning. I have two questions.
The first one is regarding the stock, which you mentioned, you have your decision to improve your level of service. I would like to understand better what these or how these processes were changed so that you can improve the level of stock without affecting the level of service, and also how this stock will be released from now on. This is the first question. And then number two, could you tell a little bit more about the resizing process of the company? You talked about something for the fourth quarter, but do you have any idea in terms of gains that have been mapped and non-recurring costs that you can have in the short term? Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. This is Fred. Regarding the stocks, we have made relevant changes. We changed our stock process.
Part of the problems have to do with the complex settings of the SKU, and this combination ended up leading to issues where we had a product available at the wrong place. So the centralization process we started for high-cost medicines was the first aspect that we implemented, and we found a lot of opportunities to optimize our stock with changes in processes. We also have a series of other new tools. We created OTB, which we didn't have in the past. Our OTB, in terms of molecules, we have a more effective control of every excess. We have SKU, SKU, DC, DC, and we have a combination of products. After a certain level of stock, they cannot be replaced until everything is formalized, and this is something that we did in the end of May, early June.
It started operating in July, and we can already see our stock with a higher safety level. We have two objectives here. The first one is not to worsen our level of service while reducing excess. This is an important lesson for us, having the right stock size at the right place, and this is something we will be able to have from now on, and it is clearer to us. Yeah, this is it. In terms of stock, we're very confident in our agenda. We've seen some important results for July. We started May, June, and in July, this agenda evolved and will continue like that. In terms of resizing, Leandro, I will give you a timeline here.
We will finish our analysis on the size of opportunities by September, and then after that, we'll start our execution mode, going from indirect costs, all contracts, service rendering, third-party contracts, and so on and so forth. Of course, we have a, an organizational structure which should be lighter and more expedite. The implementation will start in September, and that's why I said that we expect to have more concrete results for the fourth quarter and in the first quarter of next year. But we will start in September, and we've already mapped everything.
Thank you very much. Good day.
Our next question is from Emerson Vieira, sell-side analyst for Goldman Sachs. We're now going to open your audio. Please proceed.
Good morning, Leo, Fred. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. One is a follow-up.
I would just like to comment about the reduction in excess stock. This will result from the intelligence that you have implemented and not necessarily a more aggressive promotional policy in select areas. I would like to better understand if this, release of excess stock would have an impact on the gross margin. If the answer is yes, how would you work with that, so that these improvements are implemented? The second question is regarding receivable accounts. We can see an important evolution quarter after quarter, but when we look at the seasonality, there is a decrease of two days, and because of the anticipation of receivables, we see a more positive impact by adjusting seasonality. This effect on receivable accounts is something that, shows a more stable accounts.
But I would like to know how you see this when analyzing July and perhaps a little bit of August, or even in the midterm, so that you can have improvements in this specific line. Thank you very much.
I will start talking about stock, stocks. Yes, our reduction of excess has to do with an improved process. We do not expect to have relevant impact on the gross margin. In addition to what you'd already seen, our figures today already have some excess, and we should not have anything additional. Regarding receivables, there's something that you didn't comment regarding Rio Grande do Sul. Rio Grande do Sul had a relevant impact on our receivables, not only just a few cases that we voluntarily authorized late payments, but that affected our receivables significantly.
Accounts receivables is something that we made some recent changes, but we still don't see that in our figures. We will only see an effect in the fourth quarter... the deadlines we work with today, it's not very likely that we will have an effect for the third quarter, but we did start working to adjust deadlines. And of course, this is not just an internal issue. Today, we've seen an improvement, and this is within the normal receivables, process. We've been able to significantly recover some late payments, but we still have a lot to do in terms of accounts receivable. Of course, that, when looking into the market, we still have, we still have some pressure caused by the dynamics of this sector, but it's no longer worsening over the quarters. We've improved the receipt, and this improves our aging.
We still have some delayed payments, but our aging has been recovered. When we exclude Rio Grande do Sul, we understand that we do have an improvement. It is small, but also with the changes in processes and practices, we will have an effect in the upcoming quarters. And in terms of our stocks and margins, even the items that we have in excess, our products are rotated very quickly, and we have some specific suppliers that we can solve this in four months. So it doesn't mean that I have to, in fact, open up my margin to make these things run. We have a readjustment that we will make happen as we adjust our stock inventories and start buying across the normal flow of the product.
Well, thank you very much. This was very clear.
Next question from Samuel Alves, sell-side analyst from BTG Pactual.
Please proceed.
Good morning, Leo, Fred, and other directors. The first one is about the different options the company have today in terms of balance and liquidity. We had adjustments of credit in the second quarter in the order of BRL 100 million. The first question is, I would like to know if you're going to anticipate receivables or, sales of assets, even considering that the resizing you commented about in the short term, it could be a little bit recessive, and we do not see a lot of significant difference in terms of leverage of the company and the debt to date. So this is the first question. We have to talk about a line that you commented about in terms of cash flow. Also, the subsidiaries, and you commented... and also the amounts.
I would like to better understand how much you paid, how much, of your cash you used, to do that in the second quarter, and if that will eventually happen again. Thank you very much.
I will start talking about flexibility. We have receivables, and that's more simple. We have credit cards, but we have, a good client portfolio. I do not see why we wouldn't be able to eventually anticipate amounts or like BRL 100 million. I think that, with our receivables alone, we would be able to obtain significantly higher amounts. With, suppliers also, we have alternatives to extend deadlines, negotiate payments. But we are at a very comfortable position. And all of this is done within our conversations in terms of, our agenda. It is very intense today. We have a very intense agenda with the industry.
We have different articles and positive dialogues with the industry, which is very open for us to consider new models so that we can readjust our accounts payable with our stock. We have financial adjustments, as you mentioned, and also evaluate assets which are not performing as we thought of in our ecosystem, and that will somehow turn into monetization for us.... We have all of these options, and we understand that they are more than enough for us to make the adjustments that we have to make. The second thing was regarding the payments. We had payment of Cremer, but there was an error in the update. This update was not made, and we ended up having to update it in the period. This was an error. It was corrected, but there's nothing special about it.
We had a process which moved on. We do not have others like that. This was what we had.
Well, thank you, Leo, Fred. Good morning. Thank you.
Our next question is from Felipe Amancio, sell-side analyst from Itaú. Felipe, please proceed.
Hello, good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is about the results, the non-recurring result of BRL 40 million, and this is related to the process, and I would like to understand if this is the total provision that you intend to make, or whether it makes sense for us to wait for new provisions. This is for question number one. Second question, high-cost medication. We've seen a good growth in the high-cost market, even though this is not within the gross margin. I wanted to better understand the strategy of the company.
Does the company intend to give up growth to focus more on profitability of the market? Thank you very much.
Fred, I'm going to answer the first part, and then I will complement. About the default, our assessors evaluated the law in all of the states, and the amounts we provisioned has to do with the states where we followed the law accordingly, and there's nothing for us to discuss regarding these cases. But this is what we consider to be controversial today. The other cases, we understand that we have good arguments to support payments, and we would only move on to a provision in case there is a change in the understanding of the default in the other states. But for now, we have these 42. The other cases, we understand that there is an opportunity for us to discuss it legally.
Now, regarding the costs, it's an important part of our portfolio strategy, one-stop shop for our clients, and the market alone grows. We have product launching, new drugs that come up every year, so the trend is for us to have a market growth, and there's an opportunity for us to grow there. What are we doing differently? We are more and more selective in terms of ROIC, working capital for these businesses. We clearly understand what these items are, the providers, the high cost of medications today, which are detractors to our strategy to readjust the company's working capital. We have important discussions ongoing for this readjustments, and if this not take place, we will drastically decrease our growth, put more energy in other high cost of medication, which have a good ROIC working capital. And there's a part of it, which is our homework.
Changes in processes and internal flows, what we buy, what we sell, so we can capture part of this improvement by adjusting our working capital internally and what we can do to a sustainable renegotiation for these medications in the long run. But this does not mean that we will grow at lower levels. We have wonderful opportunities for us to operate even better than we do today, with better use of ROIC. It remains an important part of our future growth, but with discipline and austerity, which is higher than we've ever had.
Well, thank you very much for the answers and have a good day.
Our next question is by Ricardo Boiati, sell-side analyst from Banco Safra. Ricardo, we have opened your audio. Please proceed.
Fred and other participants, my first question is regarding the receivables.
We can see a worsening in the delayed payments, and then also the PDD has decreased in the past quarters. Is there any specific reason for this behavior in the provisioning level? You mentioned Rio Grande do Sul, which had a significant impact on your receivables, but I would like to know if you have a little bit more detail. The second question is regarding the initiatives to reduce costs and expenses. You mentioned that we will see a more significant impact as of the fourth quarter, but first of all, I would like to understand if something is to be seen in the third quarter, even if the magnitude is not as large. I would like to understand the pace of this evolution.
I know that, you cannot, give me a guidance, but if we look at the historical profitability of the company, taking as a basis, 2022 and 2023, is this a level that makes sense for us to consider the EBITDA margin in the short run as of 2025? Or is this a more gradual evolution for the company's profitability? Thank you very much.
Fred, I will start, talking about this. Yes, our provisions start after 180 days of delay. Our client profile today, our default client, is very good. These are clients with which we operate normally on the day-to-day. We are discussing some deadlines. They are making late payments more than usual, but these clients are good clients, and so, the deadlines have been expanded, but, it's not really PDD.
PDD starts with 180 days, and before that, we do not necessarily see this waiting. We do not have any specific provisions, but there are segments where we have longer provisioning, such as 210 days, and this is why you will not see any relationship between over 90 days and the provisions. Now, regarding the reduction of costs and expenses, this is really for the fourth quarter. As I said, we will conclude our analysis in August and start implementing in September, and so capture will come after the fourth quarter. When we look at SG&A rate, we will see a reduction of at least 10%. Freight, we started our initiative now. We still do not count on it now, but maybe more towards the end of the year or next year.
We want to keep track of our service level. We have to be very cautious so that we do not affect our level of service, but we already have a plan that is feasible for us to start in September. And then looking at 2025, our objective here, and what has been decided with management and the board, is for us to readjust the company's main metrics of gross profit with adequate expense levels. Our working capital will be readjusted so that the company can look at the different levels we had in 2022, 2023, understanding the reality of the market today, being a company that works well, readjusting gross profit and all of the working capital funding, so that we can grow at the levels we want to grow without any need of capital. This is something that we've been discussing here.
I cannot tell you exactly how much it will be, 2023 or 2022, but in 2025, the company will have readjusted its main operational metrics, gross profit, adequate profit margin, and working capital, which is readjusted, especially in terms of our stock, which is to be 100% funded, which will be a lot more effective in terms of receivables.
It was very clear. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Estela Strano, sell-side analyst from JP Morgan. Ms. Estela, we've opened your audio. Estela, please proceed.
Hello, everyone. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Talking about this competitive environment, I would like you to tell us a little bit more about the market dynamic as you see it now, thinking about July, early August. Do you see a better environment for pricing?
And also, as you mentioned during the presentation, I would like you to talk a little bit more about Rio Grande do Sul. Is everything reorganized there, or are you going to have any effect in the third quarter that you can anticipate? Thank you very much.
Hello, Estela. Thank you very much for your presence and your questions. Regarding this competitive scenario, we've seen two dynamics. The first one is in terms of growth opportunities in specific businesses with specific suppliers that come to us to offer new businesses, client portfolio, or clients who are having challenges in their own businesses. So this is very positive, and we see a lot of opportunities. We are very disciplined, though, about, start working with businesses that have a positive scenario.
This competitive scenario is generating good opportunities for us, both in the area of medications and also in the agenda of materials as well. In terms of payable accounts or working capital pressure, we still have some deadlines of specific competitors, which are longer than what we understand as being acceptable according to our discipline. So perhaps with some contracts and clients, this will hinder our competitiveness, but we do not see any worsening. In some cases, we can even see that this effect of being very aggressive is leading to our competitors feeling it more harshly. We are dealing with the funding of our accounts payables so that we can adjust it with receivables.
This is something that has been thoroughly discussed in the past months, and this is something that we discuss every month, every week with our partners, so that we can find a solution that works well for everyone. I do believe that there's a lot of opportunities in terms of competition, but things are stable with a positive scenario for us. In Rio Grande do Sul, I think that most of our businesses have already resumed our operation for manipulation. We have a ramp-up and return of this production. We are not 100% there yet. We will have an impact with the sales, and this is something that will happen over the third quarter for the ramp-up of this operation.
But, we are improving week after week, month after month, and, for July, we have excess stocks, and when we resume our operations, the stock could not be used there. So we still had some impact in July. Yeah, but this is not very different from what, we had for the second quarter. The volume will be very similar, and in addition to that, we will probably have expenses, for constructions or renovations, but this—these amounts are not going to be significant.
Perfect. It was very clear. Thank you very much, and have a good day.
Our next question is from Marcio Osako, sell-side analyst from Bradesco BBI. Marcio, your audio is open. Marcio, please proceed.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first one is regarding the gross margin. You commented lower margins in the segments that you work at. Could you tell us a little bit more about these segments, and was this a continuous improvement when compared to last year? Also, did you have other impacts in operational expenses, sales of products with lower margins? Was that something that you observed in the second quarter as well? Could you tell us a little bit more about this effect? Regarding the mix, could you tell us about this mix and the gross margin? Will you have a reversal when compared to the effect of the mix from now on? Second question, working capital. Could you tell us a little bit more about the other lines of improvement for the next cash cycle? Thank you very much.
Marcio, thank you for your presence and the question. I will start talking about the gross margin, and Fred will talk about the working capital. In terms of excess, we did have some things that we had to accelerate sales or readjust margins, but the margin level that we had here, as Fred mentioned, is very stable when compared to the first quarter, and we are now trying to have improvements of the gross margin over the incoming quarters. But the main thing is for us to improve the execution of our strategy, as I commented in the beginning. Regarding the different segments, I think that basically we have all segments here with a good margin pressure. The mix among them, vaccine grew a little bit more, and we also had some specialty.
We lost a contract that we mentioned here, so there was a mix effect. But even so, our margins and scenarios had more pressure over the second quarter when compared to what we saw in the past. And then looking ahead, we have more opportunities for growth in the second quarter than we had in the first quarter. I would like to highlight that we have a specific plan for retail specialties. We had a signature with another global player to resume activities, also with other players, vaccines, and diagnoses. We understand that we still have good growth opportunity, but especially in retail, manipulation, and specialties with a higher growth in the second quarter, that will help us improve our mix effect. And this is a little bit about what we are looking at for the next six months in terms of our strategy.
I think that, the main line, in working capital, taxes, we've tried to improve this, and if you look at the first quarter this year, we started with BRL 15 million of taxes. This is a relevant amount. We've also worked with the accumulation of ICMS credit. It's important for us to maximize tax incentives, but we've tried to reduce the excess we have in different locations. We are evaluating alternative routes, agreements with different states, and if you look at our taxes account, we probably have BRL 100 million or BRL 150 million of excess taxes that we will try to reduce. I cannot tell you the exact timing for this, but when we look at this line, we can clearly have BRL 100 million-BRL 150 million that we will reduce over time.
Well, thank you very much.
The Q&A session is now over, and we would like to turn over for the final considerations of the company.
Well, once again, I wanted to thank you all for your presence here. We remain available to all of you for any additional clarifications. We're also very confident about the plan and about what we're doing here. We're confident that the combination of this focus, generation of operational cash, the strategic initiatives for the improvement of gross margin, reduction of expenses and fixed costs at the company, in addition to add to that, as I mentioned in the last call, as of the fourth quarter, it will start helping us with a deleveraging effect. And the combination of all of these factors will help us later on to deleverage for 2025 as of the first quarter. So we are working hard at it and very confident about this strategy.
Thank you all for your participation, and we remain available. My best regards.
The video conference for the second quarter of 2024 of Viveo is now over. The IR department is available to answer any eventual questions. We thank all of the participants and-