Good afternoon. We welcome you to the Sonae's full year 2022 results conference call. During the presentation hosted by Mr. João Dolores, Sonae's CFO, all participants will be on a listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after his presentation.
If you wish to ask a question during the Q&A session, you may do so by pressing the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you're experiencing any difficulty in listening to the conference at any time, please make sure you have your headset fully plugged in, or alternatively, please try calling from a different device. I'll now hand the conference over to Mr. João Dolores. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Sonae's conference call for our 2022 results. As usual, besides myself and the investor relations team, we have on the call Cristina Novais from Bright Pixel, Hugo Martins from Zeitreel, Luís Mota Duarte from Sierra, Paulo Simões from Worten, and Rui Almeida from MC.
As you all know, after two challenging years due to the pandemic, 2022 was another eventful year for the global economy, with a lot of geopolitical and macroeconomic instability, which was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, and that continues to impact our businesses as well as our daily lives. And this is particularly relevant when we see record high inflationary trends, particularly in food inflation, that reached new highs at the end of December. We also have been witnessing rising mortgage interest expenses, soaring energy prices, and supply chain disruptions.
All in all, Sonae was able to deliver a very resilient performance, with NAV standing at EUR 4 billion, in line with last year, despite the turbulence in capital markets that also affected our TSR, but benefiting from the value-accretive portfolio moves made during the year and the good operational performance of our businesses.
The year ended with a strengthened financial position for the group that allows us to maintain our dividend policy and increase dividend per share by 5% year-on-year. Taking a closer look at our performance during the year. I will start by presenting the evolution of our net asset value. 2022 was a tough year for equity markets, with high volatility underpinned by significant headwinds, notably inflation, geopolitical tensions, slowing economic growth, and also an uncertain earnings scenario weighing on the minds of investors. This resulted in increased market rotation.
Despite recovering in Q4, Sonae's share was no exception and fell 7% in the year, with total shareholder return reaching -2% at the end of the year. Under this turbulence in capital markets, implicit valuation multiples were negatively impacted. Consequently, our NAV slightly dropped. However, given our business' operational performance and our portfolio value accretive movements, we were able to offset most of the negative impacts.
At the end of 2022, the value of our portfolio stood in line with 2021 at EUR 4 billion. In terms of portfolio management activity, during the year, we increased the direct stake in NOS and Sonaecom ended its partnership in ZOPT, a move which was fully aligned with our intention to remain a reference shareholder of NOS and to ensure the adequate conditions for the company to deploy its ambitious strategy.
Bright Pixel did several moves, in its portfolio, namely the sale of stakes in Maxi, Sales State, SellWise, and C- Value, apart from the acquisition of several minority stakes and some follow-on investments. Bright Pixel cashed in a total of EUR 188 million of proceeds during the year, representing a cash-on-cash ratio of 2.3 times, and at the end of 2022, its active portfolio NAV amounted to EUR 305 million.
Universo finally completed the sale of MDS that was pending regulatory authorizations with a cash-in of EUR 104 million and a capital gain of EUR 81 million. The company also made an important move, by announcing a new 50/50 equity partnership, with Bankinter Consumer Finance Portugal for the creation of a leading consumer credit operator in Portugal.
Sonae increased its stake in Sierra to 90%. In fact, we have just completed and announced today to the market the acquisition of the remaining 10%, and we now own 100% of the company. This last stake was acquired for EUR 88.6 million, which represents a 10% discount over the company's NAV.
In the meantime, this week, the Portuguese market regulator registered our voluntary tender offer on Sonaecom shares at EUR 2.5 per share. Results of this operation will be known on April 17th. Moving on to our consolidated results. Turnover increased 12% year-on-year in Q4 and surpassed EUR 2 billion. This was mainly fueled by MC and Worten and led to an 11% growth in the year, to a total of EUR 7.7 billion.
MC maintained its positive track record with strong top-line evolution, 11.5% to EUR 6 billion, driven by both food and health and wellness double-digit growth. The food formats continued to deliver very strong top-line increases, mainly associated with rising prices that more than offset the slight decrease in like-for-like volumes trading down to on brands and mix effects. The non-food formats continued to benefit from the normalization of consumption after the pandemic restrictions and saw solid double-digit growth in the year.
Total turnover at MC increased 14% year-on-year in Q4 with a like-for-like figure of 12% to EUR 1.7 billion, leading the annual figure to reach EUR 6 billion at the end of the year, 11.5%, again, year-on-year with a like-for-like of 9.6%. Worten was also an important contributor to our consolidated top line performance, with a growth of 8% to EUR 401 million in Q4, and a total like-for-like of 5%. In accumulated terms, the growth in electronics and appliances as well as the new categories, pushed the year's turnover to EUR 1.2 billion at 5.4% year-on-year increase and a 3.8% like-for-like growth.
Sonae also showed a positive recovery, growing 12% in total and practically reaching the 2019 sales level, which was a very good result given the last two years, very much impacted by the pandemic. Both MC and Worten were able to reinforce their market leadership during the year in a very demanding context. In terms of profitability and despite the top line performance, our consolidated underlying EBITDA reached EUR 635 million in 2022, an increase of 6% below the evolution in turnover, given the margin contraction from 8.6% to 8.2%.
This was mainly due to our important efforts to absorb parts of the purchase price increases to protect families and their budgets, and also the very harsh pressures we felt on our retail businesses in terms of cost base, and mainly due to higher energy prices, which increased by more than EUR 30 million in the year.
MC in particular saw its underlying EBITDA margin decreasing 0.6 percentage points year-on-year to 9.4%, mainly due to product mix and trading down movements, and also the substantial increase in energy costs. Worten, as previously mentioned, had some strong effects on the cost base combined with its ongoing digital transformation, which led to a margin decrease of 47 basis points in the year to 6.2%.
Our businesses were able to sustain these pressures with an outstanding level of resilience and a clear long-term perspective on their value propositions and reinforce their competitive positions. In what concerns consolidated EBITDA, we reached EUR 383 million in Q4, driving the full year figure to EUR 927 million versus EUR 732 million back in 2021.
Also due to significant capital gains in the year, namely from the disposals of MDS and Maxi, which I mentioned before, and the higher contributions from equity method accounted businesses, which totaled EUR 129 million in 2022 versus EUR 79 million in 2021. Direct result in Q4 reached EUR 244 million, an increase of EUR 156 million, driven mostly by the capital gains from the sale of assets.
In the year, direct results reached EUR 449 million, an increase of EUR 192 million, fueled by capital gains and other non-recurrent impacts, equity method contributions and obviously the evolution at underlying EBITDA level. Indirect results stood at minus EUR 43 million in 2022, very much driven by Q4, where we had a negative EUR 92 million of indirect result.
This was mainly influenced by negative impacts in valuations of Sierra's investment properties in an environment of yield expansion, despite the operational improvements of its assets, which were quite positive. Also, the negative impacts in the valuation of Bright Pixel's portfolio also helped by the evolution in exchange rates.
Last but not least, some impairments related to our fashion businesses, considering the expected negative impact from the macroeconomic context on fashion consumption. Excluding nonrecurrent results, mainly related to asset sales, net results reached EUR 179 million in the year, minus 17% year-on-year, mostly driven by indirect results. Notwithstanding, at the end of 2022, net results stood at EUR 342 million in total, a 28% growth versus 2021, driven by the effects that I previously mentioned.
In terms of cash flow generation, in 2022, our cash flow benefited from our businesses' positive operational performances and also our portfolio management activity with three hundred and million and one euros in total in terms of proceeds from asset sales from the operations which I already mentioned, namely at MDS, Bright Pixel, with a highlight for Maxi. We continued to invest in our business units a total of EUR 634 million related with both operational and M&A activities. In total, cash flow generation reached EUR 187 million in 2022 before dividends paid.
Therefore, net debt decreased further to EUR 540 million, the lowest level in many, many years, despite the strong investment efforts, which demonstrates once again the group's financial strength and led the holding LTV to just below 6% to 5.9%. The group's capital structure remains solid, with comfortable leverage ratios and robust liquidity levels and an average maturity profile of more than four years.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that 68% of our total long-term credit facilities are now linked to sustainable green or ESG performance, which clearly demonstrates our commitment to sustainability. Regarding dividends and in compliance with our established policy, the board of directors will propose to shareholders a 5% dividend increase to EUR 0.0537 per share, which corresponds to a current dividend yield of 5.7%.
Despite the challenging year, we remain committed to taking care of our people and our planet, and are well on track to achieve our ambitious targets in these fronts. Sonae businesses reduced by 24% versus 2018. Their Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions in line with our commitment to have carbon neutral operations by 2040. In terms of plastics, our businesses reached 80% of packaging recyclability in our own brand products in 2022. One more step towards our commitment to have 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic by 2025. In fact, the group was recognized by CDP with an A- rating for our efforts in the fight against climate change.
Besides the positive performance regarding our historical targets, we also established a new commitment, the zero deforestation commitment by 2030, subscribed by our portfolio companies and continue to involve our portfolio companies in our Sonae Forest project. In the social front, we reached our target of leadership positions held by women one year ahead of time, at 39%.
Sonae's commitment towards gender equality promotion was recognized as we were included for the second consecutive year in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, with a score of 85.6%, which surpasses the world average of 72.9%. Very importantly this year, we also reinforced by 47% the investment in our communities to EUR 31 million. Going forward, the outlook remains highly uncertain and volatile, as you all know.
The inflationary trends and rising interest rates will continue to impact households disposable incomes and their consumption patterns. For 2023, as a holding company, we will continue to deal with this demanding context. We will keep supporting our portfolio companies to quickly adapt to these changing circumstances and also future-proof their business models. Given our strong financial position, our the strength of our portfolio and the quality of our people, we continue to be well positioned to face the emerging risks and capture the opportunities that lie ahead. Thank you very much. You can now open the session to Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. As a reminder, if you would wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from João Pinto from JB Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to start with Sonae MC. If you could comment on the consumer environment in the beginning of 2023, the gap between food inflation and like-for-like at the end of last year was quite high and food inflation remains very high in the beginning of the year. How are you seeing this gap between like-for-likes and food inflation evolving in the beginning of this year? My second question, also on Sonae MC, there are a lot of press reports talking about investigations from the Food Safety Authority in Portugal. Do you know what kind of impact this may have?
Is there any similar cases in the past that resulted in some kind of impact for supermarkets? Also on Sonae MC, could you update us on your store opening plans for 2023? Finally, for Sonae Holding, could you update us on your CapEx plans for 2023? Specifically, if you aim to increase your stake at NOS, because in the prospectus for Sonaecom, you say that you would like to reinforce your position in the company. Thank you very much.
Thank you, João. Maybe I can start with the holding question. I will also touch upon the Food Safety Authority question. Then I will hand it over to Rui to follow up on the MC specific question. Starting with the CapEx for 2023. Look, what I can tell you is that we will continue to deploy investments in our current businesses which are consistent with the strategy that we have been developing at each business unit. We have the financial strength, as I mentioned, not only at the holding company but also at each individual business unit, to continue to invest in our markets. That means continuing to invest in expansion where it makes sense, namely in food retail.
I will let Rui cover that point in a minute. Continue to invest in IT, for instance, at Worten, which is a critical element in Worten's value proposition, continue to invest in development opportunities and investment management opportunities at Sierra. Each of the business units will continue to deploy CapEx according to its strategy. Obviously NOS deploying CapEx to reinforce its network. Regarding the specific point on NOS, reinforcing our stake in NOS. We've always said that we feel comfortable with the level of exposure that we have right now at NOS, so we do not have a short-term desire to increase our stake in the company.
What we said in the prospectus of Sonaecom is that, and to clarify, Sonaecom is a natural vehicle for us to invest in telecom and technology. As you know, we currently have a direct stake in NOS at Sonae. In the future, the right place for that space to be in the portfolio is within Sonaecom. It's likely that Sonaecom would probably take invest in that space. If we feel somewhere down the road that it makes sense for us to reinforce our position in NOS, we always have that flexibility, but it's not a short-term priority. Regarding the investigations from the Food Safety Authority, and I will let Rui complement this one as well.
appened is that there's a lot of information right now in the Portuguese media, which is being taken out of context and used, and using some isolated cases to generalize a behavior or an approach by distributors and food retailers in the country. I want to make this very clear. The Food Safety Authority does inspections, hundreds of inspections every year in our stores, and this is no different. They continue to make these inspections. I can tell you that we make many more inspections internally, thousands of inspections internally in our operations, every year as well.
What came into the news was that the Food Safety Authority found some differences between the prices that were on the shelves and the prices that were then actually charged when customers paid at the till. This is unfortunately, it happens, but we are talking about residual cases, and it happens both ways.
We have instances in which prices are higher at the shelves and situations in which prices are lower. This has been reported in the news and used, instrumentalized by people to convey some messages which we cannot condone and which we cannot agree with. I can tell you that nothing that has been reported is out of the ordinary.
We agree that the authority continues to do its inspections, but these are really residual cases that are not representative of what happens in retail in general and especially in our stores. Rui, do you wanna take the MC question?
Sure. If I may. First of all, hello as well. Thank you for your questions. If I may, João, I will complement your answer, which is t otally correct. I would add two or three comments. The very first is there are several investigations generally promoted by ASAE and other authorities. We feel very comfortable with those investigations. We feel very comfortable.
We help them to continue to do those to do those investigations. We feel totally. We feel that those procedures are totally correct, and we help them to conclude. In for instance, just to give some hints or some conclusion regarding what happened during 2015- 2021, to the end of 2021. We had several investigations that came out being, having six proceedings.
Five of them were closed, we only had a fine of EUR 10 thousand in just one case because it was totally marginal in what those things that, for instance, João mentioned a while ago. It was not a crime. It was just a fine. Nothing had in regarding sort of a crime.
Regarding the other questions you raised, João, starting by, for instance, the expression plan for next year. We are planning to continue to keep our investment plan, enlarging our footprint in proximity stores. We are counting to open between 15-20 Continente Bom Dia proximity stores and two o three stores of Model, meaning large supermarkets.
Apart from those stores in the food area, we continue to complement those stores with complementary formats side by side of those stores, like Wells, Note!, and ZU, in a smaller size, obviously. To continue to grow in terms of health and beauty in Iberia with Arenal format.
Regarding the other question you raised, this is in what concerns the actual trading momentum. Well, we continue to grow in a double digits, double digit growth. Yes, it's true. We see that the inflation rate continues to be very high. We need to consider that we also see that trading down phenomena continues to be very intensive.
Last year we saw the private label in fast-moving consumer goods increasing its weight in our portfolio of sales by 3 percentile, 4 percentile points. In the last two months of this year, February and January, fast-moving consumer goods continued to increase their weight by 6, almost 6 percentile points. That means that the consumers are pretty much, as João said in the very beginning, are pretty much aware of their concerns about the disposable income.
They are finding solutions to fight against the increasing of products with the same level of quality the products might have. We feel very comfortable because consumers are telling us that they trust our brand, they trust the products that we sell, and that they trust our value proposal.
When we offer them more products or market, which more, a very wide range of products of private label. Meaning, yes, inflation rates when, for instance, the National Statistics Institute or even ourselves, we compute the inflation, we generally compute prices or the evolution of prices year-on-year, obviously. We compute that evolution on an average rates.
What we are seeing today is people are changing and starting to consume products with a lower price. Even for instance, the levels of products that they are consuming in terms of private label. Meaning we are not seeing such a decrease in terms of volumes.
What we are seeing is the trading down phenomenon is basically maintaining marginally decreasing year-on-year. Sorry, in a like-for-like basis in the total, we are basically increasing our volumes. What is happening is that the fact for the same volumes, the prices, the inflation rate basket for the consumers is much lower comparing to the inflation rate we see if we compute the average price of all the products that we have in our portfolio. I hope I could be effective answering to your question as well.
Yeah, that was very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, João.
The next question comes from the line of Guilherme Sampaio from CaixaBank BPI. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. Three for me. One on net debt, second on Sonae MC, and the third on Sierra. First on net debt. Very encouraging net debt performance this quarter. How are you seeing the working capital in the first quarter of 2023? Second on MC, appreciate your comments of the tough consumer environment. Can you touch upon your EBITDA growth expectations on Sonae MC for 2023? You're seeing EBITDA growing in euro terms. Third, on Sierra, do you expect NAV year-end 23 at higher levels versus year-end 22? Thank you.
Sorry, Guilherme, can you just repeat the question on Sierra, please?
Yes. In terms of NAV, how are you seeing the NAV at the end of this year comparing to year-end 2022?
Okay. Very good. I'll take the first one, and then I'll ask Rui and Luís to comment the questions or to reply to the questions on Sonae MC and Sonae Sierra. Look, regarding working capital, we expect basically to have the same efficiency in the management of working capital as we, as we've enjoyed recently, as we've achieved recently.
Obviously, we keep monitoring the situation, particularly in what regards our suppliers, larger and smaller suppliers. Given the difficulties that some of our suppliers are feeling, we have to be careful in the way we manage this. To be honest, I think at this point in time, we are quite confident that we will be able to maintain the same level of efficiency in working capital management going into 2023.
Rui, do you want to comment on the MC question?
Sure. Thank you, João. Hi, Guilherme. Thank you for your question. Again, as João said in his presentation, initial presentation, it's very difficult to anticipate what could happen in Portugal, in Portuguese market during 2023. The environment is a little bit volatile. Frankly, it's very difficult to anticipate the major drivers of the Portuguese arena.
Nonetheless, I would try to answer with the same way I answered to Gerard last year. Generally, we don't provide guidances or forecasts, internal forecasts for the year. What we generally say is that we continue to protect and to shield our customers against inflation.
We continue to be to focus in trying to find new ways to become a little bit more efficient. We continue to find ways to improve our value proposal to be better recognized by our customers and being awarded by that. We continue to focus in enlarging our footprint in the Portuguese market with mainly with the proximity stores in bigger cities. We fight, again, to fight to continue to increase our EBITDA in euros. Again, if we are asking us what would be the margin factor, we don't know. We don't know how to be the final result of this year.
Having, considering the major topics I raised, let us focus on the customers, trying to continue to grow and getting market share, continue to offer the best prices to our customers and best solutions. To continue to have our team totally motivated to continue to be one of the best players in the market.
Thank you.
Okay. Luis?
Right. On the evolution of our NAV and expected evolution for 2023. I mean, as you know, we don't give specific guidance, but let me help you in terms of some of the sentiment and operating improvement that we're seeing in our business at the moment. Very simplistically put, the NAV is evolution of two factors of our operating performance and of the valuation of the different assets that we have, shopping centers and non-shopping centers.
In terms of operating performance, our business performed very well in 2022, and we are performing very well in 2023. Our shopping center sales are increasing year-to-date by around 15%, at 15%, across all the different assets across Europe on a very consistent basis. From an operating point of view, we are seeing strong sales growth.
We are seeing occupancy rates in the order of 98%, we're seeing collection rates in the order of 100%. Again, continuing what we saw last year and have been seeing for a while, post-COVID, the shopping center portfolio is performing extremely well. From an operating point of view, we are very happy. In terms of valuations and yield evolutions, I guess, the $1 million question is what will happen with interest rates. The fact that I can tell is that, as you know, is that interest rate expectations today are not very different from what they were at the end of last year when the last valuations were conducted.
We saw yields increasing by around between 25 and 50 basis points, depending on the different assets last year, reflecting the significant increase in interest rates that we saw last year. If expectations stay the same this year, there should not be a reason for valuers to change expectations on yields. There is a big push in terms of sentiment and in terms of general retail sentiment.
Also factually, I think it's worth bearing in mind that shopping centers are the real estate asset classes that have had that saw the most or the largest yield diversion over the last couple of years, particularly with yields increasing, while many other asset classes saw yields decreasing. When comparing us against the risk-free rate, we are in a better place than what other sectors are at the moment.
Again, it will depend very much on interest rate expectations. What I can tell you is that from an operating point of view, year-to-date, we've had a very strong performance, which is a continuation of what we saw last year. The yield evolution will depend on interest rate evolution and investor sentiment across the board.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you, Guillermo.
The next question comes from the line of Artur Amaro from CaixaBI. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. I have three questions, if I may. I think they're quick. First of all, if you can disclose the share or the penetration of private labels, if this percentage has increased or decreased. I assume it has increased over the last quarters. Also, if you can disclose the incidence of promotional investment at the moment, again, if it has increased or decreased versus the previous quarters. A quick reminder of how many stores you plan to open this year. Thank you.
Hi, Artur. I assume all three questions relate to NP.
Yes. Correct, João.
I will ask Rui to cover them. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, João. Hi, Arthur. just to very first question, so very first question, the private label is weighing roughly 35% in March this year. almost 5%, 6% more than it was weighing last year. It ended this year of 2022 weighing a little bit more than 31%. It has a seasonal impact, seasonal effects during our portfolio, more 4%, 4 percentage points than that it was weighing in the final year of 2021. regarding the promotional activity, yes. The promotional activity is representing roughly 50% of our total sales.
More or less the same level of the market was slightly a little bit, more, but aligned with the market and with same figures that we had in 2021. The third question, frankly, I missed. Could you repeat?
Sure. How many stores you plan to open at MC 2023?
Oh, okay. Well.
I have the idea of 20.
Yes. As I was a while ago, I said to Guillermo, I suppose. Well, we are planning to open in proximity stores, Continente Bom Dia, between 15-20.
Okay.
In Modelo, which is large supermarkets. Between two, three, I would bet on three because it depends on the permits that we could get for open the stores this year. Also several stores. Well, you need to understand that with the majority of the other stores like ZU, Wells, Note!, et cetera, they are complementary, and they open as long as we open the other stores. The other part, we continue to invest in enlarging our footprint in the north of Spain with our Arenal format. We plan to open six, seven stores this year in the north of Spain, enlarging our operations. That is going quite well.
Giving us the confidence to continue to invest in Spain.
Okay. Thanks very much, Luís. Very clear.
Thank you very much.
Before we go to the next question, please be reminded that you can ask a question by pressing star followed by 1 on your telephone keypads. The next question comes from the line of António Seladas from AS Independent Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two related with Sierra, one with Sonae MC, and just one related with the NOS stake. Starting Sierra, I didn't understand very well the rationale to increase just by 25 basis points the discount rates, and in Brazil and Colombia, 50 basis points. I guess that spread went down, but maybe you can explain better. If interest rates stay where they are, in one year time, it means that you don't need to increase your discount interest rates. Am I right or not? Second question is related, Sierra, with your CapEx. Your capital spending over the last two quarters were very intense. Can you provide some color? What are you acquiring? What are you buying?
Regarding Sonae MC, if you can provide some color in terms of competitive environment, because I just read in newspapers a couple of days ago that you lost market share in 2022. How is the competitive environment regarding your competitors, namely Lidl and Mercadona, and I'm guessing those. Last question related with NOS stake. I didn't understand if you will try to concentrate all the stake under Sonaecom. Yes or not?
Thank you, António. I can take the final question. The final question really depends on the outcome of the tender offer that we have in the market right now. Obviously, if we are able to delist the company, it doesn't really matter because we will integrate the company 100% in Sonae. If that is not the case, what I said is that probably given the liquidity that we have at Sonaecom, that one obvious investment would be to transfer all or the majority of the shares that we own at Sonae to Sonaecom. We will have to wait for the end of the offer period, and then we will obviously see what comes out of it, and we will take our decision.
I will ask Luís to comment on the Sierra one first.
Thank you very much, Antonio. Around yields. One, I did not say that the yields changed by 25 basis points in Europe and 50 basis points in Brazil.
I thought you mentioned it in the press release. I think that you wrote it in the press release.
Well, don't know. In any case, the yields varied differently across different asset classes. This is on average, that's where they moved between 25 and 50 basis points. To clarify on the logic as to why those 25 basis points. Firstly, that is not our decision. I mean, the valuations are done by independent valuers that rotate frequently in very market standard terms. The other thing to bear in mind is that when you compare cap rates or yields against the risk-free rate, which typically the difference should be the risk profile of the different asset classes. The spread between shopping center yields and the risk-free rate was at an historic high before the increase in interest rates most recently, and it was at an historic high even compared to other asset classes.
If you compare that with the actual risk profile of the shopping centers, I think if anything, the shopping centers have weathered extremely well, and underline the word extremely, the COVID-19, but also the whole discussions that have been around e-commerce, et cetera. As I mentioned, shopping centers performed very well last year, with sales increasing significantly against 2019.
This year we are seeing increases against 15%. With occupancy rates high, with collection rates high, we don't see a change in the risk profile of shopping centers. Therefore, before the interest rates increased, the risk premium was way above what it should be given the risk profile of the shopping centers, particularly when compared to other asset classes. It's very, very normal and expectable that the yields in shopping centers haven't moved as much as they have in other sectors.
I think that's an important consideration to bear in mind across the board. To your second question, around CapEx. We have spent a meaningful amount of CapEx, and I would maybe provide it simplistically in three main avenues.
One of them has to do with Brazil, where we have increased our shares in Brazil to a stake of 5.3%, in the combined entity now, which is the post-merger entity, where we have invested roughly EUR 60 million, six zero. We have significant investments into our development pipeline. As you know, as part of our renewed strategy, we are going back to doing development, most of mixed-use residential and offices, where we have spent round figure EUR 40 million.
There are additional CapEx initiatives that we are doing in our centers to consistently, obviously, increase their value and attractiveness for customers and other investments that we're making as part of our investment management growth strategy. What I would say is the exceptional figure from what you've seen in 2022 has to do mostly with our increased stake in Brazil. I hope I answered your question.
Okay. You mentioned in Brazil 60, EUR 60 million. 60, yes?
EUR 60.
Okay. Thank you very much.
I think it's me.
Yes, please. Take the MC question.
Yes, yes, yes. Well, Anthony, thank you for your question. I take the opportunity to rephrase what generally I say regarding the market shares. It's very hard to give you a precise figure regarding the, our market share, because there are no single entity providing that data, but we generally follow the data that Nielsen provides the market. We feel very comfortable with the data that Nielsen provides. Generally, after that, after some months, we can check that figure regarding from the data for instance that the Bank of Portugal offers about the total market, total industry in Portugal.
According to the figures that the sub-companies provide, because they are listed like for instance, Jerónimo Martins or even Mercadona as you may realize yesterday they provide some figures. Those figures are totally aligned with the figures that Nielsen provides us in terms of the evolution of market share. Having said that, according to Nielsen, we increased our market share by 10 basis points in 2022 comparing to 2021. Basically the same that for instance, Jerónimo Martins increased in 2022. In fact, it's totally true because we had more or less the same levels of growth in Portugal.
The growth that was a little bit higher than comparing to the market, the evolution of the market, that market. That figure was provided by Nielsen. Again, we are growing in terms of market share. We are seeing, we are anticipating, we're feeling that when we are visiting our stores as well. All the researches that we do confirm that situation. Frankly, I know that you probably are mentioning and mentioning the other, the other entity that is providing some information that we don't feel very comfortable to accept.
Thank you.
Okay. What about in the competitive environment, do you think that is tougher now than 12 months ago, for instance, or it's pretty much the same?
Sure, sure. I apologize for trying to not answering to your question. Well, the as you may understand, we have now in this market, more competitors, comparing to the number of competitors we had two or three years ago. Meaning, market is tougher. Market is tougher, but we feel we are continuing offering and we are totally dedicated to continue to enlarge our value proposal, to reinforce our value proposal. We feel confident that we will continue to continue gaining market share as we continue to invest in our proximity formats that they are proving they are very successful in our portfolio of stores.
Okay. Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Thank you, António.
We have no further questions in the queue, so I'll turn the call back over to your host.
Okay. If there are no further questions, thank you very much for attending our call, and we look forward to speaking again in May when we release our Q1 2023 results. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.