Good morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Cencosud's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. I will now turn the call over to Oscar Bentjerodt, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Danielle. Good morning, everyone. The presenters on this call today are Rodrigo Larraín, our Executive Officer, Andres Neely, our Financial Officer, and Irina Axenova, Investor Relations Director. Before we begin today, let me remind you that statements made today by the company may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and may be influenced by future events, including changes in macroeconomic conditions, political developments, legislation, and operational factors that may affect Cencosud's future performance. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise these statements except as required by law.
Please note that no part of this call may be recorded in whole or in part without the company's prior consent. The earnings presentation accompanying this call, which includes additional information, is available on the company's website in the Investor Relations section. Please note this call is being recorded. I will now leave you with our CEO, Rodrigo Larraín. Rodrigo, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining the conference call. Before we walk through the details of the quarter, I want to start by acknowledging that the second quarter 2026 was a weak quarter that fell short of our expectations. While part of the pressure came from foreign exchange effects, the inflationary impact of U.S. denominated debt, the transformation related and efficiency costs, and temporary sales disruption at stores and malls under remodeling. As a management team, we take full accountability and have taken action for improving them as we move through the second half of the year. At the same time, headline earnings only tell part of the story. Beneath the reported results, several of the indicators we monitor more closely as leading signals of future growth, customer relevance, and profitability moved in the right direction during the quarter.
While these improvements are not yet fully reflected in our financial performance, they give us confidence that the actions we have been taking are beginning to gain traction across the business. We saw that traction in multiple areas. In Chile supermarkets, we recovered approximately 100 basis points of market share versus the previous quarter. In Argentina, we gained roughly 50 basis points of market share over the year before in our main formats. Online sales grew 14.6% year-over-year across the region. Active loyalty customers reached nearly 31 million, and Prime Membership increased 31.3%. During the cyber event in Chile, we attracted more than 500,000 customers, generated 26% sales growth, and reached record traffic levels. In Brazil, remodeled and converted stores continued to show encouraging sales trends after reopening. Taken together, these are not signs of a business standing still.
They are signs of a company strengthening its competitive position while executing a transformation designed to create sustainable growth and profitability over the long term. The financial results of the quarter were disappointing, but the underlying direction of the business is more encouraging than the reported numbers suggest. Our strategy is simple to state, even if it takes real work to execute. We aim at being the most relevant omnichannel retailer ecosystem in our customers' lives. We believe we're well positioned to do that because of clear competitive advantage. We are a multi-format retailer operating at scale across six countries with strong, well-recognized brands, more than 700 million annual transactions that gives us real customer principality and granular data, and a large growing base of active loyalty customers across the region.
To capture that advantage, we launched a transformation plan back in 2025 with the goal of becoming a truly integrated customer-facing company, one that can deliver consistent, personalized value proposition, operate with greater efficiency and agility, transfer know-how across countries and businesses, and offer customers a genuinely integrated value proposition. Over the past several quarters, we've made real progress on the foundations of this new model. Our data and technology. We have been integrating our customer data to build a complete view of the customer journey across our ecosystem, supported by world-class AI and advanced analytic tools. Deploying a new generation of platforms to scale our digital commerce and retail media business. This takes time and sustained investments, but once built, it becomes a durable competitive advantage.
That online momentum was broad-based with double-digit growth in five of our six markets, led by Argentina and Colombia. At the same time, we've been revisiting and deepening our value propositions across our businesses, supermarkets, department stores, home improvement, and shopping centers through operational and assortment adjustments, sharper commercial strategies, and a meaningful remodeling and organic growth plan. We have also deepened a strategy of synergic formats that let us compete in shopping missions that we were previously not present. Cash and carry in Argentina and Colombia through Makro, the continued evolution of GIGA in Brazil, and hard discount in Chile through Don Salva.
One particularly interesting move has been converting former cash and carry stores in Brazil back into neighborhood supermarkets, as they were before, under a differentiated value proposition that plays directly to the recovery we're already seeing there. That is complemented by our agreement to acquire St. Marché, a premium supermarket format closer to Jumbo in the fresh market, with highly recognized brands in São Paulo, a market where we see attractive opportunities ahead. All of this is being tied together by a new operating model, an integrated organizational structure that we are in the process of implementing. It is letting us strengthen our cross-functional capabilities, align the organization around the customer across our ecosystem, eliminate duplication, build more robust processes, and become a simpler, more agile, more adaptable company.
We are in the final stretch of putting in place the foundations to scale e-commerce, retail media, loyalty, and data personalization, along with AI tools that are making us meaningfully more effective and more profitable in how we manage pricing, promotions, and assortment, all within an organization that is more aligned, more agile, and more efficient. This is how we intend to navigate the current cycle, but more importantly, it is how we build a stronger Cencosud, one with the strength and agility to lead the omni-channel transformation of retail in the region, to earn our customers preference for years to come, and to grow with discipline, adding points of profitability every step of the way. With that, let me hand over to Andres Neely, CFO, to walk through the quarter's financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Rodrigo, and good morning, everyone. Starting with the presentation, during the quarter, we continued strengthening our omni-channel multi-format ecosystem, with Prime program subscribers increased 31.3% year-over-year. We also expanded and enhanced our regional footprint through the acquisition of St. Marché in Brazil, the announced acquisition of Makro in Colombia, the remodeling or conversion of 28 stores, and the opening of seven new stores in Chile. Quarter's performance reflected the competitive consumer environment, mostly in Chile, while underlying profitability remained resilient. Our operational execution continued to strengthen profitability across the region. Adjusted EBITDA grew 80% in Colombia, 8.1% in Brazil, excluding the gain from the break of sale in 2025, and 105.7% in Argentina's supermarket division.
Moving to the next slide, we saw important improvements in our e-commerce and loyalty strategy. We delivered double-digit online sales growth in five of the six markets where we operate. We also saw important growth in our loyalty programs, with a 31.3% growth on Prime subscribers, led by double-digit growth in Chile and Peru. Our ecosystem strategy is generating timeline of our value proposition and supporting deeper long-term customer relationships. Private label remains the key pillar of our strategy and continues to deliver strong results.
Customers continue looking for quality, innovation, and value, and we continue expanding our assortment to better meet those needs across both food and non-food categories. During the quarter, private label penetration reached almost 19% of consolidated sales, supported by continued growth across the region. Argentina and Brazil delivered meaningful increases in private label penetration during the quarter. This quarter, we also made progress in building the capabilities required to achieve our strategic goals.
Through the One Cencosud program, we are building a more agile and integrated organization around shared regional platforms, allowing us to deploy technology faster, strengthen our processes, and leverage the scale of our business more effectively. This includes the continued integration of customer data, the expansion of our digital and technology capabilities, and the development of common platforms that support e-commerce, digital media, advanced analytics, and AI. While much of this work takes place behind the scenes, it strengthens our ability to scale innovation, improve execution, and continuously enhance customer experience. Alongside these initiatives, we continued allocating capital with discipline to strengthen our regional portfolio. In Brazil, we refined our strategy in 2025, which led us to the sale of Bretas Minas Gerais. Since then, we have been deploying several initiatives to strengthen our presence in Brazil and improve profitability.
The acquisition of St. Marché strengthens our position in São Paulo, Brazil's largest consumer market and one of the country's most attractive economic regions. With a value proposition centered on quality, freshness, service, St. Marché is highly complementary to our existing formats, such as Jumbo and The Fresh Market, expanding our presence in the premium supermarket segment and giving us greater exposure to higher income customer segments. We also saw important growth opportunities with this format. The acquisition is subject to closing conditions, including the approval of Hortus Group's judicial reorganization plan, which also limits our ability to provide more information on the transaction at this time. By now, the Brazilian antitrust authority has already approved the transaction. In Colombia, we also announced the acquisition of Makro, incorporating a full cash-and-carry platform with 20 stores across its key cities.
This transaction significantly broadens our customer reach by strengthening our position with B2B customers and the HoReCa segment, while adding an attractive real estate portfolio. Makro also brings a well-established private label platform and meaningful opportunities for operational synergies and scale for our ecosystem in Colombia. Together with the acquisition of Plaza Central, completed early this year, these investments reinforce our commitment to Colombia and our confidence in the long-term opportunities we continue to see in that market. Now moving into financial results of the quarter. Financial performance during the quarter reflected a competitive consumer environment, foreign exchange headwinds, and certain temporary factors. Despite these challenges, we continue advancing our omnichannel ecosystem, maintaining resilient underlying operating trends, and delivering profitability improvements across several markets and formats. In terms of revenue, excluding Argentina hyperinflation accounting effect, revenues reached CLP 4.1 trillion during the quarter, declining 1.2% year-over-year.
Excluding FX conversion and portfolio investments and closures, our revenue grew 4.5% year-over-year. Peru continued to deliver solid above-inflation growth. Chile remained resilient despite a challenging consumer environment, and the U.S. posted positive local currency performance. Digital sales also continued to outperform. Shopping centers continued to perform strongly, with revenue growth of 8.5% in Chile, despite grounding and remodeling projects underway in assets that represent approximately 1/3 of Cencosud's portfolio. Overall, the quarter reflects a business that continues to grow in strategic priorities while navigating a softer consumption environment. From a profitability standpoint, adjusted EBITDA reached CLP 329 billion, decreasing 12.3% year-over-year. Profitability in Chile reflected elevated promotional activity in supermarkets, investments aimed at strengthening value proposition and competitiveness in home improvement, and challenging comparison base in department stores.
On the other hand, Peru maintained double-digit EBITDA growth, while Colombia almost doubled its adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. Argentina supermarkets more than doubled adjusted EBITDA in local currency, and Brazil continued to improve profitability, thanks to multiple initiatives and the portfolio improvements made. All these improvements demonstrate that the initiatives implemented over the past several quarters continue to gain traction. Chile, the main driver of second quarter financial results, saw important progress in executing our strategy. While the consumer environment remained highly competitive and promotional activity continued at elevated levels, we made meaningful progress in strengthening our omnichannel ecosystem across all formats. In supermarkets, online sales increased 13.6% year-over-year. Online penetration reached 16.4%, and we recovered approximately 100 basis points of market share compared with the previous quarter.
We also expanded our physical footprint through the entry of Santa Isabel into Chiloé and Calbuco, the launch of Don Salva, and more recently, the opening of a new Jumbo store in Santiago, reaching 60 Jumbo stores in Chile. In home improvement, online sales grew 22.8%, while B2B sales increased 8.6%. Club Easy PRO, which was launched in June, has already reached approximately 22,000 members, strengthening our value proposition for professional and business customers. In department stores, digital channels continue to gain presence, with online penetration reaching 34.2%. Marketplace sales increasing 33.2%, and 16.5% sales increase in the last Cyber Monday held in Chile. We also continue transforming our physical store proposition, including the inauguration of the next generation Paris format at Cencosud Alto Las Condes.
These indicators demonstrate that despite the near-term pressure on profitability, we continue to strengthen mid-to-long-term value creation initiatives, improving customer engagement, market position, and omnichannel capabilities. The progress achieved during the quarter and initiatives already underway give us confidence in a stronger operating performance during the second half of the year. Now moving to net income. Net income was primarily affected by non-operational financial factors. During the quarter, we saw higher inflation in Chile, which increased the accounting cost of our U.S.-indexed debt. This represented a non-cash accounting effect during the quarter. In addition, reported earnings reflected foreign exchange effects, Argentina's hyperinflation accounting adjustments, and approximately CLP 17 billion of our productivity plan, which we exclude from adjusted EBITDA for better clarity. As a result, reported net income for the quarter was a loss of CLP 18 billion.
During the quarter, we strengthened our financial profile through a series of refinancing transactions in both the Chilean and international debt markets. These transactions allow us to successfully refinance our 2027 maturities, extending the average duration of our debt from 5.5 years to 7.3 years and improving our amortization profile. Net leverage increased modestly during the quarter, mainly reflecting higher U.S. indexation and Argentina's hyperinflation accounting adjustments. Our long-term objective remains net leverage of three times. Moreover, we ended the quarter with a solid liquidity position of approximately $820 million. Overall, we continue to manage our balance sheet conservatively while maintaining the financial flexibility to support our long-term growth strategy. With that, I'll hand it over to Irina to discuss our performance by country and the progress of our sustainability agenda.
Thanks, Andres, and good morning, everyone. I'll go briefly through the country's performance, as Andres both already touched on the key developments across our portfolio. Let's start with Chile. As both Rodrigo and Andres mentioned, despite a competitive and promotional market, we continue strengthening our value proposition, advancing omnichannel growth across all formats, supported by online sales growth, portfolio expansion, and improved customer engagement. Supermarket remained resilient, with strong online sales increasing almost 14%, and we've also improved market share quarter-over-quarter. Home improvement continued to gain momentum through e-commerce and B2B channels, while department stores further strengthened their digital proposition through marketplace, which grew over 30% year-over-year, and we'll see continued flagship store renovations.
Shopping centers delivered another strong quarter, with almost 9% growth in sales, supported by higher occupancy, traffic growth, and additional GLA, despite ongoing renovations and development projects in our key assets, as Andres mentioned. Although profitability continued to reflect elevated promotional intensity and some inflationary pressures on costs, supermarkets remain a double-digit EBITDA margin, underscoring the resilience of the business.
Cencosud obviously partially offset retail pressures, expanding its EBITDA margin by 40 basis points to almost 81%. In addition, looking beyond the financial results, the quarter reflects continuing progress in strengthening our omnichannel ecosystem through increased customer engagement. We already mentioned the bio campaign, but this was our first cross-format loyalty campaign, Un Clic, Una Vida Premiere, which will run across six weeks in Chile across all of our formats and all our platforms. It has successfully connected almost a million people who were engaged with this campaign.
At the same time, we had a very successful Cyber Monday this quarter, which demonstrated very strong traffic growth, transaction growth, with double-digit sales growth in all of our formats, while our physical expansion continued for seven new stores opening during the quarter. Yesterday, we also integrated our next generation Paris department store here at Alto Las Condes, and a couple of days ago, a new Jumbo for Kinder in Santiago. Together, these initiatives contribute to the growth of our omnichannel ecosystem and reinforce our competitive position in Chile. Moving now to Argentina. Despite continued challenging environment in the country, we are seeing significant improvement in our supermarket business in Argentina, which contributed to revenues growth, with Jumbo and Disco formats sales growing in line with inflation, while online channel grew over 90% in local currency.
Shopping centers also contributed positively to the results, supported by new international brands and improvement in lease conditions across our assets. Argentina supermarkets adjusted EBITDA more than doubled in local currency, reflecting continued operating efficiencies, commercial execution, and the successful integration of Makro. Although financial services affected consolidated profitability during the quarter, we expect this impact to normalize during the third quarter of 2026. We have implemented several initiatives to improve growth and profitability in Argentinian business.
Digital remains one of the fastest-growing channels, while private label, together with the imported goods participation, delivered the strongest expansion across the region. We also initiated a renovation project at Unicenter, which will contribute almost 17,000 additional sq m of new GLA. Moving on to the U.S. During the quarter, The Fresh Market continued to execute consistently against its premium value proposition. Online sales maintained strong double-digit growth at almost 19% year-over-year.
Revenues grew almost 2% in local currency, supported by recently opened stores, which continued to mature and contribute to revenues, and together productivity initiatives, which helped offset some temporary inflationary pressures. We also continued strengthening customer loyalty, private label, and operational efficiency, supporting another quarter of resilient profitability. Moving on to Peru. Peru once again delivered one of the strongest performances within the portfolio. Both revenue and adjusted EBITDA increased, with EBITDA growing double digits and margins expanding 56 basis points, supported by healthy consumption trends, commercial execution, and continued momentum across both supermarkets and shopping centers. In Peru, we're also advancing on digital adoption, loyalty, and private label, which all continued their expansions. While Cencosud La Molina kept maturing successfully, contributing to both revenue growth and operating leverage. Now moving on to Brazil. In Brazil, we continued executing the transformation of the business.
Although reported revenues reflected the divestment of Bretas Minas Gerais sales and ongoing store renovations, the underlying business continued to improve. Excluding the positive gain from Bretas Minas Gerais, divested in second quarter 2025, EBITDA increased more than 8% in local currency, while remodeled and converted stores are already delivering encouraging sales improvements. During the quarter, we advanced the conversion of Bretas Goiás stores into Fresh format, expanded the Perini concept, and continued evolving the GIGA value proposition, further strengthening our confidence in the transformation underway in Brazil. Moving to Colombia. Colombia delivered another quarter of meaningful operational improvements, better commercial execution, disciplined cost management, and continuous portfolio optimization translated into strong EBITDA growth and margin expansion. During the quarter, we continued converting Metro stores to the Metro Almacén format.
We converted five stores during the quarter while advancing the divestment of service stations, and we also introduced new private label categories, while e-commerce sales grew more than 20%, increasing their penetration. Before concluding, I'd like to briefly highlight a few sustainability milestones. Sustainability continues to be an integral part of how we operate at Cencosud and create long-term value across the region. During the quarter, we were once again recognized as the number one business holding in Cadem's Marcas Ciudadanas Study, and continued advancing our ESG agenda for concrete initiatives across governance, environmental stewardship, and community engagement. On the environmental front, we were recognized as a Zero Waste awards and also expanded one of the largest renewable energy agreements for the retail sector in Chile. At the same time, we continue supporting the communities where we operate.
A good example is the comprehensive reconstruction initiative led by both Easy and Paris to support families and schools affected by the Chilean wildfires last summer, reflecting our commitment to creating a positive impact beyond our operations. With this, we conclude our prepared remarks. We will begin the Q&A session. Danielle, we are ready to begin.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. If you are joining via phone and would like to ask a question, please press star two on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you are connected via the webcast, you can also request to ask a voice question or send your questions as a text. Our first question comes from Melissa Byun from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for the opportunity to ask some questions. I have two topics. First, I wanted to ask about the productivity plan, if you can provide some more specifics on the areas impacted and potential savings, and there's a reference to transformation costs as well in the press release. I wanted to understand what this involves and whether this might be more recurring in nature or persist over a longer period of time and the expenses related to it. Then the second question I had was on your operating experience, with Makro and in Colombia competing with PriceSmart. How is this informing your strategy in Chile, and are there any plans to bring the Makro concept to Chile? Thank you.
Hi, Melissa. Good morning. Regarding your first question regarding the productivity plan. The focus of the productivity plan has been both a combination on the administration of the business and also in our operations. We provided some insight on how we are trying to integrate our company and generate cross-format and cross-geography platforms and capabilities. Our productivity plan has been oriented toward that goal. We see at the payback of one year of the investment we did in productivity. So far, we have done productivity investments of around CLP 17 billion, which have been provided information in our financial statements in one of the notes. We expect most of the productivity to be completed by the end of this year. That's the focus and the timing we have for that.
Hi, Melissa, how are you? Rodrigo here. I can take the second question about Makro and the format. First of all, it's been very interesting for us to start re-analyzing our portfolio strategy, from the learnings from GIGA. We have been learning a lot with the Makro operation in Argentina. We've seen a lot of opportunities in terms of synergies, operationally and commercially. With that learnings, we launched a new plan on Makro Argentina, which is starting to show very encouraging results. That's how we were interested in the opportunity to expand in Colombia. Again, we have a similar situation in terms of opportunities with the, and complementing the current footprint and formats that we have in Colombia. We have nothing to announce in Chile or specific plan in the short term. Today, Cencosud is much more well prepared to consider expanding to other formats.
Our focus is in Argentina now and Colombia. We're building those capabilities. Also, Don Salva is another possibility of continuing expansion, expanding that format, starting in Chile. We have a very strong start. It's a format that's different to the traditional business that we've been developing in terms of supermarkets. Today the company is very open-minded and building on capabilities. It's very interesting what we're seeing in this format, particularly in Argentina and next in Colombia.
Great. Thank you so much, Rodrigo. If I could also just clarify on the productivity plan, is this the start of the new plan or is this a continuation of the plan you began, I think it was in the third quarter last year. Are there deeper or more transformational opportunities that you are pursuing? I'm just trying to understand the reference to the transformation costs as well and what that might involve.
It's a continuation. We started this program and these improvements in 2025, as I said, we're expecting to complete most of that transformation by the end of this year. For now, we have nothing to announce regarding how material the productivity plan could be by the second half of the year. What we can say is that we aim to complete most of the changes we are seeing by then.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Andrew Ruben from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much for the question and all the detail. Curious if you could talk a bit about the outlook for your EBITDA margins in Chile. It looks like contraction across the main segments, and you mentioned a bunch of the initiatives on the call, but some of the headwinds, whether it's competition, price investments, logistics, it feels like those could potentially be stickier. Just how to think about the balance and some color on the margin outlook by your retail banners in Chile, I think that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Andrew. Good morning. In supermarkets, we posted a 10.5% EBITDA margin this quarter. This has been the 27th consecutive quarter we have a double-digit EBITDA margin for our supermarket division in Chile. As we have mentioned several times, we saw this quarter and probably over this year, a lot of promotional activity and soft consumer market. With the initiatives we have been deploying, our expectations are to continue maintaining this situation as we move forward of double-digit EBITDA margins in supermarkets. The situation is different on home improvement with a weak demand during the second quarter for that segment.
What we are seeing probably for the second half, the weather that we had in Chile impacts that business positively. We are seeing much better traction on that business as we move forward. For department stores, we expect that all the changes we are doing, both to our online capabilities and our physical value proposition, allow us to have higher margins and reach the high single EBIT margins we saw on the second quarter of 2025.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Hector Maya from Scotiabank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. In Chile, just a little bit more details to understand. With the promo intensity still elevated, when do you see on timing the bottom of Chile's supermarket margins? Do you think that maybe that could come in the second half of this year or still last or get to that during 2027? Or do you think we already reached it? On capital allocation, after your recent acquisitions, what's the M&A appetite going forward considering your current leverage level? Is there still space for more, or you maybe focus now on lowering your net debt levels? Thank you very much.
Hi, Hector. How are you? I can take the question on margins in Chile, I imagine it's particularly about supermarkets. We're starting to see a rebound, that not necessarily because of a change in the market competitiveness or conditions, but because of different tools that we have been implementing. Now that we can work on a consolidated customer transactional data platform that we have been putting in place, linked to AI tools. We've been reshaping our promotions, our pricing strategy, have better, I would say, availability of information for negotiating with suppliers. With much more accuracy, we're seeing rebounds in our margins that are very encouraging. It's difficult to anticipate how the market competitiveness will continue to evolve in the short term. Regardless, we are seeing improving margins due to these other factors.
Yeah. Hi, Hector. Regarding your second question about capital allocation. For sure, the short-term focus will be on the two transactions we just announced, the integration of St. Marché and the integration of Makro in Colombia. We still are doing several initiatives with Makro in Argentina as part of the integration plan for that. I would say that's the focus in the near term. Of course, capital allocation is dynamic, we will keep reviewing that. As I mentioned in the presentation, we keep our target of a net leverage of three times. Considering all those factors, the priority would be integrating the two announced transactions, at least for now.
Thank you. Thank you very much. The last one, how confident are you still in reaching the guidance that you shared in January?
Yeah. Regarding the guidance that we did at the beginning of the year, we had assumptions for macro, for exchange rates, for consumer demand in each of the markets that have been different during the first half. We remain optimistic. Also, as Rodrigo was mentioning, we are seeing a better performance already in the third quarter of the year. I would say we are optimistic, we will do our best to be as close as possible to the guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year.
Perfect. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Nicolás Larrain from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much, Irina, Rodrigo, Andres, thank you for the call, and thank you for taking my question. I have two, actually. The first one is for Rodrigo. On your initial remarks, you mentioned, of course, as you know, that it was a difficult quarter, but you mentioned some underlying trends and indicators that you were watching that showed a better picture. I wanted to see if you could give more color on what numbers or what metrics specifically you are tracking that are showing this better picture. I think this is very important.
Then on food retail in Chile, again, I just wanted to clarify if when you look at the initiatives deployed into the third quarter, I just wanted to clarify if you've seen profitability improving, this would be versus in the number of second quarter or already we could think about a stabilization versus the third quarter of last year. Thank you.
Hi, Nicolás. Well, we included in the press release and the presentation part of the figures. We are recovering market share, talking as a trend throughout the quarter, and the initiative that we have been executing. The indicators are recovering market share. Seeing some recovery in margins that are not fully expressed in the second quarter, but we are seeing those leading indicators. We are seeing recovery in traffic and therefore sales. We have seen much more steeper growth in commerce, in loyalty and memberships. As a summary, we are seeing much more traction and recovery of customers and transactions in our brands. E-commerce, we have been, I would say, kind of behind in the last few quarters in E-commerce for several reasons and preparing and changing a lot of our IT that are now more deployed.
We are seeing increased sales, steep increased sales in E-commerce, and that trend should continue with new capabilities and tools. Our E-commerce also is profitable. As we know, and it is market known, an omni-channel customer brings much more sales than a one-channel customer. It is a combination of factors where we see that we are recovering market share, we were bringing back customers, and we are seeing some recovery also in tickets and sales and loyalty. Not all that is fully expressed or being able to see it in the financial numbers of the second quarter. Those are the leading indicators that we follow, and we are confident on the actions that we are taking in that sense.
Maybe trying to complement the answer, the productivity plan we just executed was concentrated in Argentina and Brazil. We already explained improving profitability in those markets as we move forward. We also see very positive trends in Peru and Colombia as we are showing for this second quarter. In Chile, we continue to see improvements, probably not yet at the levels of the 2025 third quarter. As Rodrigo said, we see early signs of recovery and we continue to deploy several initiatives to recover that profitability to those levels.
Also, we have to consider that during the first part of the year and the second quarter, we had several stores in renovation. From department stores to supermarkets, and that has an important impact on sales during that period. Most of those stores have been completing their projects. We are entering the second part of the year with most of these stores already relaunched, having very good performance in the first period of reopenings. In home improvement, the same. We have a better outlook for home improvement, particularly in Chile with the new reforms. We would expect some pickup in terms of construction and projects gradually. All that together allow us to see better prospects in the second half.
I understand. It's super clear, like understanding the metrics of the ecosystem interaction. If I could, you mentioned those remodelings of those store remodelations. Is it possible to maybe comment to try to quantify this impact, or is something you do not disclose? Thank you.
I think we do not disclose it in particular. In many cases, in terms of enhancing value proposition in stores and like in Brazil, we have been very positively surprised with the impact, because we bring more experience to the store, more or better service, and the customer reacts very rapidly to that. I don't know if we disclose any detail.
Hi, Nicolás. We haven't disclosed a particular impact on sales. What we have disclosed is that, for example, when it comes to department store renovations, we're running renovations in the four flagship stores, which account for approximately 10% of department store's revenues in Chile. While you mentioned there's definitely some impact on sales because the stores have limited maybe assortment or have some areas closed for renovations, it's a different customer experience. We completed one in Alto Las Condes , and we just opened that completely new renovated, absolutely next generation store. We'll continue with the other three. That will produce obviously impact on sales and actually see expected completely different positivity impact on sales.
When it comes to shopping centers specifically, again, in Chile, we are running different projects across four flagship malls that we have in the country. They account for approximately one third of Cencosud malls revenues in Chile. Again, they're not closed. There are customers obviously. When you have certain interruptions, certain construction going, remodeling going, certainly have certain impact on customer experience. Here at Cencosud, there is significantly sales growth in the high single digits during the quarter. As Rodrigo mentioned, in Brazil, we were doing during the quarter with this transformation, renovations and conversions in 28 stores. None of the stores actually closed to customers. Some were closed partially, so they're not removed from the same-store, for example, calculations. They continued being open to customers. Again, with a limited customer experience, limited assortment.
Once they were fully open to customers, they are delivering almost high single-digit sales growth right after the reopening. Again, very positive. It did have certain impact on sales during the quarter, but the results post renovations and again, what the management was just saying, going into the third quarter and the second half of the year, these stores and these malls and shopping centers will contribute. We expect them contribute significantly to the results.
Last but not least, maybe a good example is what we did in Colombia. Remember, in Colombia, an important part of the profitability improvement we have seen has been for reformulating our Makro value proposition. We changed them from traditional hypermarkets or supermarkets to our Makro and Almacén format, a more cash-and-carry-like operation. Those remodelations have been an important pillar of the recovery in margins we have seen in Colombia. That's a good benchmark of the impact in profitability that remodelations can have on the P&L.
Amazing. Thank you very much, everyone, for the call in.
Thank you so much. As a reminder, if you are joining via phone and you'd like to ask a question, please press star two and wait to be prompted. If you are connected via webcast, please submit your question using the Q&A box. Our next question is a text question from Joel from Itaú. "When you mentioned that the second half should improve, can you give some color by geography and exactly what trends are you seeing, particularly in Argentina? Could you elaborate on the outlook for the home improvement business, which has been the most challenged segment in that market?"
Yeah. Thank you. I'll take it. Hi, Joel. Starting from home improvement in Argentina, I would say that's one of the most challenging segments. Remember that home improvement was a safe harbor for hyperinflation, so there was a lot of consumption that went to that channel for durable goods, in the peak of the hyperinflation period. We still see a very soft demand in that category. Despite that, we expect that our new program, the Easy PRO program we have been launching Easy , not only in Chile but also in Argentina and Colombia, start generating traction in the professional and business segments of that. I would say in Argentina, we are seeing a very positive trend.
Supermarkets continues what we saw during the second quarter with relevant improvements in market share on our end and increasing profitability led by imports and private labels that have been an important part of the scenario that we are seeing now in Argentina. Peru, we continue to see a very strong trend, a very solid performance for our operations. Also in Peru, we expect Cencosud La Molina, the new shopping center we opened, is gaining more traction. We see occupancy increasing, and that also will be an important pillar for the next months.
In Colombia, we still see a very positive trend, both in our omni-channel ecosystem performance, very positive trends on the digital space. Also, we continue to see positive trends on our margins. The U.S. has been a little bit more challenging. We see a very resilient business so far. Chile, I would say provided a lot of color in the previous questions.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Irma Sgarz from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was just curious, I know it's super early days on the discount format in Chile, the Don Salva stores. Yeah, perhaps if you can share a little bit about sort of early learnings, some sort of thoughts, on perhaps as it relates also to Santa Isabel and distinguishing the formats and perhaps also about private label penetration, build out of new private label products within that format. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Irma. It's been very interesting so far for us. We put a special team on that, dedicated to that format. To learn about the format, to be very engaged with the customers, to select a specific assortment, again, to that format, more on small packages, unitary sales. The reaction has been very positive because we've been able to source our stores very effectively and efficiently in one way. Also the customers appreciate the back of Cencosud. It's a seal of quality that the customers know that we are competitive in prices, but our products are good quality. We have been incorporating also some fruit and fresh products to the format in small quantities, that has also allowed to make a difference.
We've been very disciplined in cost reductions, being very efficient, and very specific on assortment, on a small assortment, very curated to the type of customers. So far it's been a very good experience. We expect to open 40 stores of Don Salva until year-end. So far it's been a very interesting experience, very positive, better than what we expected in our pilots. From there, we will analyze how to continue forward.
Interesting. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Since I'm not seeing any more questions, this concludes the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to the Cencosud team for the closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you everybody for the call. I think it's been very interesting to cover all these topics. I hope you have a better understanding and context of where we are as a company, where we're heading, the challenge that we face, and we're totally available for any other questions, comments, in the following days or weeks through the IR team.
Can I just also remind you that we do have an event on August 20th here in Santiago, which will also be available on webcast live. We look forward to having all of you on this event. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the call for today. We are now closing all the lines. Thank you, and have a nice day.