Thank you very much. Hi everyone, good afternoon and welcome to Sonae Q1 2022 results conference call. As usual, besides myself from the investor relations team, we have on the call Rui Almeida from MC, Paulo Simões from Worten, Hugo Martins from Zippy, Luís Mota Duarte from Sierra, and Cristina Novais from Bright Pixel. Just before we dive into the results, I would like to give you a quick note on the portfolio management activity in the quarter. First, as you know, Sonae acquired an additional 10% stake in Sierra for EUR 83.5 million, following the exercise of a put option by Grosvenor, and we now hold 90% of the company. This acquisition was done at a 10% discount versus NAV at the end of 2021.
On the other hand, Bright Pixel continued to actively manage its portfolio, with two exits, at SafetyPay and ciValue, which represented a total of around EUR 40 million of cash proceeds, and also two new minority investments, apart from some follow-on investments, on its portfolio companies. I will touch upon this a bit later in the presentation. I would also like to highlight the deal that was announced earlier this week by Bright Pixel to sell Maxive, its cybersecurity group, to Thales for a total EV of EUR 120 million and an estimated capital gain for Sonae of EUR 63 million. The completion of this transaction is expected to occur during the second half of the year, as it is. It's still subject to the fulfillment of customary conditions and regulatory approval.
Now let's go through the performances of each one of our companies in the first quarter of this year. Starting with MC. For MC, this was a demanding quarter but with a very positive performance, especially given the last two years in which the company had a remarkable track record. Turnover reached EUR 1.3 billion, up by 3.8% year-on-year and a 2.2% like-for-like growth, especially driven by the strong recovery of non-food formats that grew 30% like-for-like versus last year. In what regards Continente, we registered a flat like-for-like, which was actually quite positive, given a comparable Q1 with pandemic restrictions and also an earlier Easter. This top line performance led to yet another reinforcement of Continente's market share, which we estimated to be around 40 basis points year-on-year.
Online sales decreased 14% versus last year, an expected evolution given the extraordinary circumstances that we had in 2021, but remains at twice the level of 2019 as Continente retained its clear market leadership. Regarding profitability, underlying EBITDA remained broadly stable in terms of margin and increased EUR 2 million year-on-year to EUR 108 million, in spite of significantly higher energy costs, which represented a delta of EUR 60 million versus Q1 last year. Net profit reached EUR 20 million at the end of Q1, a EUR 10 million year-on-year increase. In terms of free cash flow, MC generated EUR 227 million in the last twelve months, which drove net debt down to EUR 466 million.
Overall, MC maintains a solid balance sheet structure with total net debt to underlying EBITDA at just about 3x , 2.9x , to be more precise. Moving on to Worten. For Worten, Q1 was a challenging one given the overall market context. After two consecutive years of significant growth, on the back of the pandemic context, that strongly benefited the online channel and pushed for IT-related product sales. The electronics market in Portugal decreased in the first quarter of this year. This drop was also impacted by a milder winter that limited demands for seasonal categories.
This unfavorable electronics market context, combined with the effects of closing stores in mainland Spain by the end of Q1 last year, contributed to a top line decrease of 4% to EUR 261 million in Q1 this year and a like-for-like decrease of 3.4%, which contrasts with a 29% like-for-like growth that we reported last year. In any case, the company maintained its solid leadership position in Portugal with leading market shares both offline and online. Saw a very positive sales performance of all new product categories in the marketplace and also in services such as repairs, extended warranties, and insurances. Overall, and despite a challenging context, Worten demonstrated the strength of its value proposition as an omni-channel player in the Iberian market, and we remain quite positive for the coming months.
Regarding profitability, underlying EBITDA decreased year-on-year to EUR 13 million, reflecting not only the top line evolution but also the company's investment in its digital transformation, as well as the high energy costs which also impacted this business. At the end of the quarter, underlying EBITDA margin decreased by 1.3% points to 5.1%, still significantly above pre-pandemic levels. Moving on to Zippy. For our fashion businesses, Q1 was marked by a clear recovery after two very difficult years for the fashion industry, given the strong restrictions, which were associated with COVID-19. Turnover increased 57% year-on-year to EUR 96 million, with the recovery of the offline channel and a natural slowdown, of the online channel when compared to the lockdown periods from the past two years.
This top line performance was particularly positive given the postponement of the sales period in Portugal, coupled with still some pandemic control measures. Also some supply chain pressures due to the strike of the Spanish professional truck drivers, following the increase in fuel prices and also a significant drop in consumer confidence since the last week of February with the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Still, the company did quite well in terms of top line, and we are very happy with the performance of Zippy. In terms of profitability, Zippy delivered an underlying EBITDA of EUR 6 million in Q1, a significant improvement of EUR 10 million from last year, mainly driven by the top line performance. This recovery and operational results was achieved across all the banners in the portfolio. Moving to ISRG.
For our sports business, the last quarter showed another very strong display across all brands and channels. Over the last three months of the company's fiscal year, store sales improved 50% year-on-year, which together with the contribution from the new businesses which were acquired during 2021, led total sales to grow 66% year-on-year to EUR 366 million. The online channel increased its contribution from 16% to 21% of total revenues, largely driven by the acquisition of Deporvillage. In what regards profitability, EBITDA increased 8.5% year-on-year to EUR 34 million in the same period. This was mainly fueled by the sales performance, which more than offset some negative impacts in the cost base.
Overall, ISRG achieved an important milestone by reaching EUR 1 billion of consolidated revenues in the fiscal year ending in January 2022, an increase of 61% year-on-year, and EBITDA surpassed EUR 100 million. These milestones were achieved well ahead of time and under a very challenging backdrop. All in all, ISRG's improved performance allowed for a higher equity method contribution to Sonae's results with a positive value in the quarter of EUR 7 million and EUR 19 million in the last 12 months. Moving on to Sierra. Sierra has had a good start to the year across all fronts. Sierra's European shopping center portfolio maintained high occupancy rates on average around 97%. Total like-for-like tenant sales increased more than 90% year-on-year, showing a significant recovery in all countries and ending the quarter just 3% below the first quarter of 2019.
This despite the restrictions that were still in place at the beginning of the year, also the later Easter, and some decrease in consumer confidence that I mentioned before on the back of the war in Ukraine. Overall, quite encouraging results this quarter. During Q1, Sierra also made significant progress in the execution of its strategy, namely by signing new contracts in property and condominium management in new locations, making new investments in the development of mixed-use assets, and building a pipeline of new investment vehicles. On a proportional accounting basis, direct results reached EUR 11 million in Q1, EUR 6 million above last year on the back of improved performance of both the shopping center activity and the services segment. This positive performance led net results to EUR 10 million, EUR 7 million above 2021.
This coupled with a favorable FX evolution led Sierra's NAV to increase 5.1% versus the end of the year to EUR 972 million. In what concerns the company's leverage profile, Sierra's gross LTV stood at 45.3% at the end of Q1, a 50 basis point decrease versus the end of the year, once again in line with its targets and all assets and vehicles remain with healthy financial situations. A quick note for Brazil, where the merger of Aliansce Sonae with BR Malls was approved by both boards of directors, a major milestone in the path to develop the largest operator in Brazil and one of the largest in South America with Sierra as a part of the controlling shareholder group.
In what regards Universo, Q1, I would say, met our expectations in terms of ramping up of results under the partnership with Banco CTT. During the quarter, the macroeconomic recovery, backed by the favorable evolution of the pandemic and despite the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, enabled Universo's production volume to increase by 23% year-on-year to EUR 257 million with a positive contribution from several business lines, in particular, purchases, wire transfers, and also personal loans. The customer base also continued to grow, with an increase of 96,000 customers versus last year, reaching 989,000 at the end of Q1, and with digital clients already representing 63% of the total customer base.
Finally, the company's turnover surpassed last year's results, reaching EUR 8 million at the end of Q1, and underlying EBITDA continued to show an upward performance with a year-on-year improvement of EUR 2 million. Moving on to Bright Pixel. Q1 was another important quarter in terms of transactions and portfolio management as the company completed the sale of its stakes in SafetyPay and ciValue, as I mentioned at the beginning, for EUR 40 million of cash proceeds. The company continued to expand the portfolio with two new minority investments, Experify, which is a platform that enables an authentic product review experience by connecting prospective buyers with purchasers and Hackuity, an attack prevention cybersecurity startup.
The company also continued to invest in some of its portfolio companies, namely, CyberSecio, in a financing rounds of $35 million. All in all, at the end of Q1, cash invested in the active portfolio reached 159 million EUR, and NAV stood at 378 million EUR. As I mentioned before, the sale of Maxive to Thales, announced already in Q2, is a key milestone in the company's portfolio management strategy and will represent important cash proceeds and capital gains. As we believe it is also the best solution for the company and its people going forward. Finally, NOS. NOS already published its results, in the beginning of this month. In Q1, it continued its strong recovery path after the lifting of pandemic restrictions and kept its focus on leading 5G adoption in Portugal.
Turnover posted an 11% year-on-year increase, fueled by both the telco and the audiovisuals and cinemas segments to EUR 373 million. EBITDA increased 5% year-on-year, benefiting from this top line performance with the margin standing at 43%. Net income increased 35% year-on-year to EUR 41 million at the end of the quarter, leading to a higher equity method contribution to Sonae's results of EUR 9 million versus EUR 7 million last year. Free cash flow totaled EUR 4 million. In terms of capital structure, net financial debt for the PA after lease payments stood at a conservative level of just below 2x. A quick note also for a transaction that was announced in April.
The company announced the agreement with Cellnex to sell an additional portfolio of up to 350 mobile sites, a transaction which should imply an additional EUR 155 million of proceeds and significant capital gains for the company. Finally, at the consolidated view of our Q1 results, turnover stood at EUR 1.7 billion in total at the end of the quarter, an increase of 5% year-on-year, mainly fueled by the growth of MC and also the recovery of our fashion banners. EBITDA reached EUR 149 million, 17% versus Q1 last year. This was driven by both the increase in underlying EBITDA and the strong recovery of all businesses which consolidate through the equity method.
This is despite the significant additional year-on-year increase in energy costs, which amounted to around EUR 20 million in total this year. These were obviously fully offset by higher sales and also by significant operational efficiency gains. Sonae's net results surpassed last year's level by quite an amount, reaching EUR 42 million. Over the last 12 months, Sonae generated EUR 267 million of free cash flow. Once again, supported by the solid operational results of all businesses, combined with the value accretive portfolio management operations in the period, namely the sale of the 25% stake in MC, the 50% stake in Maxive, and the several portfolio movements which were completed under Bright Pixel.
As a consequence, net debt decreased year-on-year by almost EUR 600 million to EUR 931 million, as we maintained a low cost of debt, which is now less than 1%, and an average maturity profile of almost five years. Finally, and most importantly, NAV reached EUR 4.1 billion, which represents an increase of EUR 65 million versus the end of 2021, mainly due to the evolution of Sierra's NAV, the growth in the NOS share price, and the improved operational performance of MC. Going forward, the overall macro context remains volatile. We are obviously witnessing high levels of inflation, high energy costs still, and also a lot of uncertainty in financial markets. We are confident in our ability to navigate through this environment.
As always, we will remain focused on serving our customers across all markets and on future-proofing our portfolio of investments. Thank you, everyone. You can now open the session to Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure you're unmuted when speaking. We have a question from José Rito of CaixaBank BPI. José, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon to all. My first question on Sonae MC. We have seen inflation picking up and reached double digits in April for the inflation. Any sign of trading down in recent weeks or in April? I know that we have Easter and eventually a little bit more difficult to compare year-on-year, but any comment on this will be great. Also would like to confirm that if the company continued to see EBITDA growing in euro terms this year. This was something that we have discussed in the full year results conference call, just to confirm that post Q1 and actually EBITDA slightly increased if you continue to see this increasing this year. Second question on fashion and Sierra.
Some retailers calling attention to the impact from the war and this inflationary environment that we are seeing, the impact in discretionary consumption. Any effect in fashion and/or in the shopping mall business recently? Any comments will be nice. Finally on Sierra, if you can share the percentage of rentals that are CPI-linked, if there is any cap, and when are these contracts adjusted for the CPI? Thank you.
Thank you, José. Maybe I can quickly comment on your second question. Yes, the goal continues to be to reach the end of the year with an increase in EBITDA at MC in EUR terms, in absolute terms. We have managed to do it in Q1 under a very difficult backdrop. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty. It all depends on how the market is going to evolve. If we are going to continue to see a pressure in energy costs as we saw in the first quarter. Yeah, the goal is still to increase our EBITDA level at the end of the year in absolute terms. I will hand it over to Rui to touch upon the inflation question in food and to Luís to tackle the Sierra questions and maybe also give space for Rui to comment on discretionary spending in the fashion business. Rui, you can start.
Hi, José . Thank you for your question. First of all, I think it's too soon yet to give you a precise figure regarding the trading down and the impact of the inflation in the consumption of our portfolio of consumers. Yeah, yet we have recently been noticing some signs of changes in customer behavior such as trading down in some of the categories that are more expensive to consumers. While they are increasing their preference for private label brands, yeah, it's true, and a reduction of purchase frequency in some goods.
It's important to mention that this is first analysis that we performed over the first quarter, but we are also seeing some signs during second quarter that they are not reinforcing this trend. Yes, it's too soon to give you a proper figure regarding this trend. We feel that private label are increasing its weight in our portfolio of brands, meaning slightly, yes. Meaning that probably there are some signs of trading down due to this inflation surge that we are witnessing in our market. Thank you.
Thanks, Rui.
Thank you, Rui. Just to follow up on this. Sorry, just to confirm if in percentage terms the private labels have higher margin than A brands? Because it depends on the retailer. I think that in most of the retailers, the private label has, well, in euro terms, a lower EBITDA because of the lower sales. But in the margin terms it adds a positive accretion to the margin. Can you share?
Well,
I would like that.
Exactly. It depends on the categories. There are some categories that when our private label, it has a % margin higher. There are other categories where our positioning in terms of pricing, in terms of reaction to our competitors doesn't allow us to have the same % margin that we are having in the A products. It depends. Again, what we are basically saying is that the weight is varying slightly. It is not clear for us, because we are having a totally different first quarter comparing to first quarter we had last year. As João and Fernando mentioned in the very beginning, yes, we are.
The impact is different because due to the lifting that we are having in terms of the initiatives in order to prevent the spread of COVID. Yes, we know that we are lifting those measures. More important than that is that the fact that Easter last year occurred in the first quarter and this year occurred in second quarter. It's too soon to give you a proper figure regarding the trading down, but we feel that probably the increase of the weight of our private label will occur in the months to come.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Luis, do you want to take the one on discretionary spending and the specific one on Sierra?
Sure. Good afternoon, everyone. The answer is actually quite easy to the question. We are at the moment not witnessing any impact of the war in Ukraine or any reduction in income across our shopping centers. We had a very good February. We had a slight decline in March, but we have seen a very good April. Even in May, things seem to be trading very well. To give you a sense, in April we were at very high single digits of growth compared to 2019. We are seeing similar levels in May. Although a bit below the high single digits, but still very comfortable levels above 2019. Occupancy rates are stable, collection rates are stable.
At the moment, we're not seeing any impact at our centers. In terms of your question around inflation and contracts, the vast majority is inflation-linked. There might be few, if any exceptions, with few, if any, caps. The standard rule and the default rule in our contract is that they are inflation-linked with no caps at all. Yeah, I think that was. Those were your questions on Sierra.
[crosstalk] Yeah. I don't know Rui if you want to, go ahead. Go ahead, Rui.
Yeah, sorry. On Sonae Sierra, because it's different if the contract and the CPI is, let's say reset, the prices are reset in January or in April, because in April, CPI was much higher than at the beginning of the year. Just to confirm that, when is this adjustment, the CPI adjustment made? It depends on the time and the contract?
It depends on the contract. It depends on when the contract is signed. Again, I would say the default rule, it's done based on the previous year's inflation, and there are different rules by country, where in some countries it's the average inflation of the year, and some others it's the end of the year, month-on-month inflation. Overall, that would be just a very minor impact in terms of timing. The overall conclusion is that, I mean, we are contractually well protected against inflation dynamic.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Hugo, do you wanna give some color on our fashion business and how it's
Yeah.
How you see the impact of the war?
Sure, good afternoon. For the impact of the war, I kind of make my own the words of Luís. Not much of an impact there. We had a very strong April, as Luís was saying as well, for the shopping centers. The performance of, I would say, all of the vendors is pretty good. In terms of the impact of the inflation, I would say that they are mostly at the transversal level, so not specific to fashion, so in terms of energy and the type of supply costs. In terms of fashion-specific costs, we were already expecting part of the rise in cost of some of the raw materials. We've been preparing for that, I would say, for two seasons now. The impact is also, at the moment, not relevant.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Hugo. Thanks, Luís. Thank you, José, for your questions.
Our next question comes from António Seladas of AS Independent Research. António, please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three. First one related with your balance sheet. Now less leverage than probably ever. It's something that we should get used to this kind of high profile or just a temporary situation and will change again if you believe there is an opportunity. If you can share with us what are your thoughts about it. Second question is related with Sonae MC supermarket like-for-like. I think it was -2% or -2.1%. Does it mean that it will be an early effect? It was just one-off effect, or it's something that is related with your expansion plan and maybe there's a saturation on your expansion plan.
Do you think that you should slow down your expansion plan on supermarket? It's the second question. The last one is related to Universo. You mentioned that the performance was according to your expectations. Nevertheless, it still seems a poor performance. Taking into consideration that everything was more or less in place, I don't know if you can share what we should expect for the coming quarters in terms of Universo. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, António . I'll take the initial questions, and then I'll hand it over to Rui to comment on your questions around the supermarkets and the expansion. On the balance sheet, yes, we do have a low level of leverage right now. This is a result, as I said, of the very good cash flow generation profile of our businesses and also some transactions that we completed over the last couple of years. Obviously, some asset disposals, which translated into very hefty cash proceeds. This obviously gives us a lot of confidence looking into the future, and actually in scenarios of more uncertainty and volatility, we are very well protected given the level of liquidity and also the maturity of debt that we have.
If this is something that we should expect going forward, I think the answer to that is it depends. It depends on the opportunities that we might find to deploy capital. We do not have a goal of having this level of leverage. We do have a cap, and so we would always like to remain with a conservative level of leverage, which we would not like our LTV to surpass 15%. Currently it is around 8.5%. We have room to deploy capital if we so wish to do, maintaining our conservative level of leverage.
This is what we will always do is try to find interesting investment opportunities that we feel are value accretive for Sonae, where we feel that we can play a role in adding value to those investments. We can do it across all our sectors and even in other adjacent sectors that might be interesting for Sonae. We keep always an eye open. We're always in the market looking for interesting opportunities that comply with those criteria. The answer to that is not necessarily maintain this level of leverage in the future, but it depends on being able to find the right investment opportunities.
Regarding Universo, I would just dispute the poor performance label that you gave to the business, because when we changed the business model from our partner BNP to Banco CTT, we changed the way in which we were going to register revenues in this business, right? Previously, we were paid a commission on every contract that we opened with any new customer. Now basically we have a split of the interest rates with Banco CTT.
That means we need to have a ramp-up period to reach a level of credit stock, which will enable us to have a steady state level of profitability in this business. When we signed the contract, this valley which we are crawling out of right now is something that was well expected. We started with a relatively low level of profitability because we were ramping up that credit stock. Right now this is very much in line with our forecast. We expect to reach the end of this year, the last quarter will probably be a quarter of breakeven. We expect the business to have sustainable profitable levels from next year onwards. This is, that's how we see the business.
We see the business progressing still well with a lot of take-up in credit, a lot of take-up in the number of cards, and so we see it going in the right direction. Regarding the question on supermarkets in MC, I will let Rui answer. Rui, do you wanna take this one?
Sure, João. Thank you. Well, António , thank you for your question. Regarding the figures in terms of like-for-likes from supermarket during this first quarter, as João said, in the very beginning, we all need to take into consideration that the first quarter last year was totally different comparing to this year due to the Easter being in the first quarter compared to this year Easter was in second quarter, and the seasonal effect plays a very important role in terms of comparisons when we do this year comparing to last year. Yes, it's true.
More important than that, for instance, in a year-to-date basis, and for up to the second week of May, we are having already positive figures in terms of like-for-like in supermarket. We feel that we continue to provide you with sound performance in supermarket. Regarding the CapEx plan, well, we are keeping our CapEx plan going forward for this year and maintaining all the figures that we provided you in the last two years. We feel very confident with this format. The format is delivering very good results, and we feel that we could enlarge our footprint in the Portuguese market with this format. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rui. Thank you, António , for your question.
Our next question comes from João Pinto of JB Capital. João, please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Four questions, if I may. Two on Sonae MC. The first one, the margin decline in the first quarter was lower than in the fourth quarter of last year, despite the rising energy cost pressures. What were the main drivers for such a resilience? Is this only explained by the recovery of adjacent formats, or are there any other effects? Also on Sonae MC, can you tell us about margin evolution in the beginning of the Q2? Are you seeing decline similar to Q1, or are they as overheating? My third question on capital allocation, is there anything that you can tell us about potential new investments? Have you already defined the sector that you want to target, or should we not or shouldn't we expect anything major in the short term?
Finally, also on capital allocation, would it make sense to revisit the possibility of acquiring Sonaecom minorities, especially taking into account the value at Sonae IM, Bright Pixel? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, João. I will answer the capital allocation questions first, and then I'll hand it over to Rui to answer a couple of questions you asked on MC. On potential new investments, we keep investing in several areas. We keep investing in our current businesses, as you know, and we have in the last couple of years invested a lot in our current businesses, be it within the businesses and also in reinforcing stakes in some of our businesses. That's part of the investments that we have done. We will continue to look for those opportunities, where there might be opportunities to continue to invest significantly in some growth areas within our businesses. There will certainly be, and we will continue to invest there.
For potential new areas of investment, there's not anything in particular that I can disclose at this point in time. What I can tell you is that we keep looking in the market for opportunities that somehow relate to who we are and where we can feel that we can add value. That's what we have done throughout our history, and that's what we will continue to do. On the Sonaecom question, and to be quite direct, we have no plans on revisiting that topic right now. Luckily, we have a very happy shareholder base, both Sonae and also the minority shareholders. Sonaecom has shown a very strong track record that is obviously, but we have probably other areas to deploy capital.
We are luckily 90% exposed to the upside that we see in Sonaecom, and we have other areas to deploy capital, beyond that. That is not on the table right now. Rui, can you take the Sonae MC questions, please?
Yes, João. Starting by the drivers that allowed us to be resilient in terms of EBITDA margins regarding the first quarter. Yes. You mentioned one of those, our performance was tremendously impacted by the energy prices increase that represented a lot of money in our P&L. Those costs were positively impacted or counterbalanced by the robust top line delivery that we had, mainly in health and wellness. Well, there is another factor that is important to mention, the fact that the health pandemic faded, the lower impact of COVID-19 related to expenses, and the absence of rent discounts that we had in the past allowed us to counterbalance those effects as well as you may imagine. Our efforts continue to be efficient throughout the performance that we are having. This allows us to be continuously to be very resilient in terms of evolution of margin.
Regarding the second quarter, as I mentioned well again, it's important to see and to understand that we have the calendar effect this year is more favorable to our performance as we had the Easter effect during the second quarter. Yeah, we're okay. In fact, we have very good like-for-like up to now during the second quarter in our calendar. We feel very positive and confident regarding the rest of the quarter.
Thank you. That was very clear. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, João. Thank you, Rui.
There are no further questions from the participants line. I hand the floor over to Mr. João Dolores.
Okay. Thank you very much, and thank you everyone for listening.