Good evening. My name is Nihogi, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to PagBank PagSeguro's webcast results for the fourth quarter 2021. This event is being recorded and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company's presentation. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. At that time, further instructions will be given. Should any participant need assistance during the call, please press star zero to reach the operator. This event is also being broadcast live via webcast that may be accessed through PagBank PagSeguro's website at investors.pagseguro.com. Participants may view the slides in any order they wish. The replay will be available shortly after the event is concluded.
Those following the presentation via webcast may pose their questions on PagBank's PagSeguro's website. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements included in this presentation or mentioned on this conference call are based on currently available information and PagBank PagSeguro's current assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events. While PagBank PagSeguro believes that their assumptions, expectations, and projections are reasonable in view of currently available information, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those included in PagBank PagSeguro's presentation or discussed on this conference call for a variety of reasons, including those described in the forward-looking statements and risk factor sections of PagBank PagSeguro's registration statements on Form 20-F and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on PagBank PagSeguro's investor relations website.
Finally, I would like to remind you that during this conference call, the company may discuss some non-GAAP measures. For more details, the foregoing non-GAAP measures and the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are presented in this last page of this webcast presentation. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Ricardo Dutra, Co-Chief Executive Officer. Please proceed.
Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining our fourth quarter results conference call. Tonight, I have here with me Alexandre Magnani, our co-CEO, Artur Schunck, our CFO, and Éric Oliveira, our Head of Investor Relations and ESG. Before I start, we will break this call in three presentation sections followed by the Q&A. First, I'll share a brief overview about Pag's milestones in the past years. Then Alexandre will share the 2021 achievements by segments and 2022 outlook. Wrapping up, Artur will comment about our 2021 financial results. Well, we have been living unprecedented times in Brazil and around the world. After two years of COVID-19, the global pandemic starts to phase out as vaccination levels continue to grow. However, the consequences are everywhere.
The government's financial aid programs are being reduced or removed around the world, and inflation levels are skyrocketing in many countries, like United States and Brazil, forcing central banks to raise interest rates. In addition, in Brazil, the households' indebtedness reached a historical peak, raising concerns in credit offerings and delinquency rates. The political turmoil around the world and the Ukraine war raised additional uncertainties for the future. After more than 20 years working for UOL Group, the last six as Pag's CEO, I know that an unprecedented crisis like the current one will be just another one for us. Pag's track record shows that our performance has not depended primarily on the macroeconomic scenario. Remember that Pag has been profitable since 2015, 2016, the worst years ever for Brazilian economy.
Furthermore, we have been fast and flexible to expand and to adapt, exploring opportunities that arise, always prioritizing businesses with the best balance between growth and profitability. We also know that UX and technology combined with efficient execution are the core for tech businesses, especially in a digital world where fintechs are pursuing tactics to increase its clients' lifetime value. Our last four years revealed how powerful and disruptive Pag's business' model is. Since our IPO, we have grown 4x our revenues, becoming much bigger, profitable, and relevant. Moving to slide five, I would like to start with our main messages. Our profitability remained resilient with unbeatable underlying fundamentals despite a tough 2021. PagSeguro, our acquiring business, captured 45% of payments profits, although investing BRL 300 million in PagBank in 2021.
Our ongoing repricing increased our take rates by 15 basis points in Q1 2022 when compared with Q4 2021. The price increase that we planned will be fully implemented in April 2022. Our bank is much more complete today for merchants and consumers so that we can address the banking profit pool, which is 30 x larger than payments. For 2022, we have a positive outlook with growing volumes and keeping profitability while we pave the road for PagBank monetization. Moving to slide six. After four years of our IPO, although market has become more competitive, PagSeguro was able to capture a record lion's share of 45% in the Brazilian payments profit pool, 27% of revenues, and 9% of TPV market share. Moving to slide seven.
We ended 2021 with BRL 1.8 billion in net income excluding PagBank. We are the most profitable company among payments companies and digital banks. Therefore, we are very well positioned to scale up our banking strategy, diversifying revenues and profits in a banking industry which is still highly concentrated among incumbents and 35% larger than payments profits. Moving to slide eight. We see that in less than three years, we built up a very complete ecosystem that combines payments, day-to-day banking services, a complete card offering and loans. On the next slide, we can see we have launched additional features to enhance our ecosystem such as investments, insurance, marketplace, and other partnerships. We became a complete bank offering the best UX for consumers, micro merchants and SMBs in Brazil.
To finish this first part of presentation, I'd like to say that I have been working in the past seven years with the new CEO, Alexandre Magnani. He is the most prepared person to run our day-by-day operations, to motivate our team and to get the best of them. I will dedicate my time to build our vision of the future, to participate in our board of directors and our executive committee. Before I pass the word to Alexandre, I'd like to thank our clients, suppliers, shareholders, stakeholders, and especially our PagBank, PagSeguro team for all the confidence and support. Alexandre, go ahead please.
Thank you, Ricardo. Hello, everyone. Before I start, I would like to share a little bit of my experience and some thoughts. I have built my career in payments and financial services in Latin America for almost 30 years, seven of them in senior position at PagSeguro. Here, I saw things evolved very quickly, transforming our company from a start-up to one of the most relevant fintechs in Latin America. Besides the great achievements in payments, there is a huge opportunity to be captured in Brazil. The banking industry continues to be highly concentrated. The top six financial institutions' net income reached more than BRL 105 billion in 2021, approximately 90% of the banking industry profits. I'm really excited about this opportunity and count on me on the next steps to come.
I would like to start with the 2021 highlights, which is shown on slide 11. We ended the year with almost half trillion BRL in financial transactions, composed by BRL 252 billion in payments and BRL 204 billion in PagBank transactions. Our total revenue and income grew 53% year-over-year, reaching BRL 10.4 billion. Number of bank accounts totaled 22 million, with 13 million active clients positioning our company as the second-largest digital bank in Brazil. Total deposits accounted for almost BRL 8 billion, up 66% year-over-year, and our loan book increased three times, reaching almost BRL 2 billion. Net income on a non-GAAP basis grew 12% to BRL 1.5 billion, resulting in earnings per share of BRL 4.68, while capital expenditures decreased by 15%, reaching BRL 1.8 billion.
After the great achievements in payments, we'll focus our strategy and decision process according to the following: increase and diversify our revenues and profits by consolidating PagBank, grow above the merchant payments with efficiency and profitability, develop our two-sided ecosystem to gain client preference, execute everything with a 360-degree security approach, invest in our most valuable resource, our people. Moving to slide 12, I want to share some financial and operating highlights of PagSeguro, our payments vertical. Total revenue reached BRL 9.2 billion, up 54% year-over-year, led by a net take rate of 2.19%, which is much higher than the industry. The accelerated growth in other segments such as SMBs, larger merchants, and cross-border has significantly contributed to the solid revenue growth with a healthy net take rate.
PagSeguro TPV ended 2021 with more than BRL 250 billion in payments processed, 60% higher than 2020 when excluding the coronavoucher impact, ending the year reaching almost 10% of the Brazilian market share. Next slide, we summarize the highlights of this business unit. On the left side, we ended 2021 with more than 300 hubs, concluding a massive cycle of investments to serve SMBs in Brazil, covering more than 80% of the Brazilian GDP with the best-in-class solutions for these merchants. Our strategy in payments is to focus on the most profitable segments, working on margins recovery, reducing subsidies, and continue to grow significantly above the industry. Our CAGR from 2017 to 2021 was 60%, while the industry was 18%. We also have improved customer satisfaction, which was confirmed by the awards from iBest and Reclame Aqui.
Price increase, operational leverage, and new markets expansion are our main priorities for 2022, to keep the best balance between growth and profitability. Moving to slide 14, I want to share some financial and operating highlights of PagBank, our fintech vertical. Total revenue grew 63% year-over-year, ending 2021 at BRL 970 million, approximately 9% of total revenue and income of Pag's. Total payment volume reached BRL 204 billion, up 187% year-over-year, with engagement TPV gaining traction driven by cash-in, bill payments, card spending, and credit underwriting. Upper right, we show for the first time our net interest income, which grew 142%, totaling BRL 395 million in 2021. Gross profit, including revenue from service minus provision for losses, grew 20% year-over-year, accounting for BRL 498 million.
The PagBank P&L reconciliation is available in our appendix. Turning to slide 15, we summarize PagBank highlights. We reached 22 million bank accounts, more than 24,000 new accounts per workday during the last year, with active clients surpassing 13 million, maintaining a high activation rate of almost 60%. Today, 50% of our active clients are consumers, not related to our payment business. PagBank cashing, composed by wire transfers and PIX, increased by 9 x. 50% of PagBank clients use it as their main bank. In January 2021, this number was 35%. PagBank represents 9% of all Brazilian PIX transactions, which shows the strong customer engagement of a digital bank account. For the next years, we expect to foster engagement and revenue growth, prioritizing products with higher stickiness, increasing collateralized credit offerings for consumers, micro-merchants, and SMBs. Banking remains extremely concentrated in Brazil.
This reinforces our confidence that through technology, better customer experience, and low cost to serve clients, approximately 90% lower than incumbents, we'll be able to gain share in a profit pool that is 30 x larger than payments. Slide 16. Let me share the evolutions in Pag Invest, which is our investment initiative. Our platform is simple, mobile first, and affordable. We reached 1.3 million clients in 2021, 2.7 x more investors per day year-over-year, and 87% more inflow per client on average, leading our AUC to grow 7 x excluding deposits. Pag Invest is another growth avenue that makes our banking offering more complete, contributing to the expansion of our revenues and profits for next years. Finally, let me share some results for the first Q 2022 and the outlook for the full year.
PagSeguro TPV continues to grow at a very strong pace, 48% in January and 58% in February. Our price increase, partially implemented in first quarter 2022, has improved our take rate to 2.48% in January and 2.64% in February. 8 basis points and 24 higher than first quarter 2021, respectively. For first quarter 2022, we expect total revenue of BRL 3.3 billion-BRL 3.4 billion, up 60%-64% year-over-year, PagSeguro TPV of BRL 79 billion-BRL 81 billion, up 58%-62% year-over-year, PagBank revenue of BRL 240 million-BRL 260 million, up 60%-73% year-over-year. For 2022, we expect to fully execute pricing increases by April 2022. Repricing will be examined and if necessary, implemented on a regular basis as interest rate continues to rise.
Pag will continue to invest in PagBank in 2022, and we anticipate a better credit portfolio performance. We also expect operational leverage in marketing, SG&A and chargebacks. Now I pass the word to Artur. Thank you.
Thanks, Alexandre. Hello, everyone. In the top left of slide 19, Adjusted EBITDA in recurring basis increased by 27% year-over-year, despite of the Brazilian interest rate. In the last quarter of 2021, the company decided to stop PagPhone project due to the underperformance of our initial expectations to this product. We still have the devices in our inventories, and the one time accounting impact in our Adjusted EBITDA was BRL 139 million. Moving to the graph below, our consolidated net take rate decreased by 17 basis points year-over-year, reaching 2.42%, mainly driven by client mix. This impact was partially offset by higher mix of credit and prepayment volume, which have higher take rates. On top of that, PagBank revenue growth contributed to the consolidated net take rate.
In the right side, we present our managerial P&L for the last five years in recurrent figures. In 2021, our total revenue and income surpassed BRL 10 billion for the first time, growing 53% year-over-year. Excluding transactional costs related mainly to interchange and scheme fees, financial expenses related to cost of funding to prepayment receivables, exchange expenses and other financial income related to financial investments, our gross profit grew 41% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA closed at BRL 2.7 billion, up 27% in comparison to 2020. Net income non-GAAP achieved BRL 1.5 billion, growing 12% versus last year even with the tougher macroeconomic environment and the increase of the Brazilian interest rate.
Earnings per share in non-GAAP measures achieved a record of BRL 4.68, growing BRL 0.49 versus 2020 and surpassing the pre-pandemic levels. In the next slide, our Q4 2021 Adjusted EBITDA in recurring basis achieved a record of BRL 751 million. In the chart below, the consolidated net take rate increased 10 basis points versus Q4 2020, driven by our efforts to increase prices to mitigate impacts from the country interest rate hikes. In addition, better credit mix, higher prepayment volumes and PagBank revenues contributed positively to increase net take rate. In the table on the right, the managerial P&L shows a strong quarter versus Q4 2020. Total revenue and income grew 55% year-over-year and 16% quarter-over-quarter.
Net income GAAP was BRL 393 million, growing 5% year-over-year and 22% better than Q3 2021. Next slide, I am proud to share our solid financial position built by our extraordinary team. We closed 2021 with BRL 8.8 billion in the cash position, which is the sum of the cash and financial investments, accounts receivable from bank issuers and credit portfolio, minus payables to merchants, PagBank balance accounts, deposits and borrowings. The positive position increased by BRL 1 billion year-over-year, mainly due to more BRL 7.7 billion in accounts receivable, partially offset by BRL 4.6 billion increasing in payables to merchants. This was driven by better TPV mix towards credit cards and volume of same-day prepayment to merchants.
At the same time, we have been improving our capital structure, ending the year with 66% of our financing position funded by third-party capital, better positioning our company in terms of tax shield in the cash flow. We have been increasing the APRs and reducing the APYs to manage the higher financial expenses. At the same time, balance accounts increased, being a competitive advantage to Pag's. In the right chart, our financial expenses reached around BRL 403 million versus almost BRL 30 million in Q4 2020. The biggest impact comes from country interest rate that rises almost 4 x year-over-year. PagSeguro TPV growth, PagSeguro TPV mix, and prepayment average term, and APYs on deposits. Last year, for example, prepayment TPV grew 90% in comparison to the same period of 2020.
Through the early redemption of card receivables with the issuers, we have been raising a relevant portion of our capital needs, which cost a few basis points above the Brazilian Interbank Rate, CDI. On top of that, our deposits work as an additional funding source at the same time being part of our customer acquisition cost strategy, which also impact the financial expenses due to the APYs paid by the company. We will continue to look for other funding options and market opportunities to manage the financial expenses like the borrowing contract of BRL 1 billion at a cost of 109% over CDI. Moving to slide 22, we present our assets and capital allocation. We ended 2021 with almost BRL 2 billion in credit portfolio, with working capital loans being the most relevant product, followed by credit cards.
The portfolio increased BRL 1.3 billion in comparison to 2020. Since the company has been adopting the IFRS 9 and provisioning upfront expected losses, we ended the year with provisions for 22% of our loan book, being 8% related to provisions for write-off. Important to mention that for tax efficiency purposes, we did not do the write-offs yet, but they are fully provisioned. This represents an important improvement in comparison to 2020, reducing the balance provision from 19% in 2020 to 15% in 2021. This year, our goal is to remain cautious during the first half while increasing our exposure to secured loans, mostly tied to our CDI and payroll. As the time evolves and market conditions improve, we can review our credit and the underwriting policy for the second half.
At this stage, the economic outlook remains challenging with interest rates surpassing double digits again while we expect the inflation to go down. Brazilian households' indebtedness reached the historical record number, and there is no rush from our side to speed up credit underwriting in such a very volatile scenario. CapEx per sales ended the year at 17%, 13 percentage points lower than 2020 and much more focused on R&D expenditures. Given the recent market sell-off, which has been dragging down stock prices of several tech companies like us, we took the decision to use part of our share buyback program ending January 2022 with more than 2 million shares in our treasury department.
Finally, I would like to share our ESG milestones, consolidating all the positive impact PagBank has been promoting in Brazil, creating shared value for the stakeholders, and establishing the goals to keep increasing our commitment to a more sustainable, fair and diverse society. In 2021, we released our first sustainability report, which was our kickoff to look at all impacts the company has been doing in our society. During the year, we created our ESG committee composed by directors and senior directors. We hired a seasoned team that reports directly to the committee. We also signed the Global Compact, conducted our GHG inventory for 2019 and 2020, and we were awarded by Women on Board since 42% of our board of directors is composed by women.
We also were able to see how impacting our business is in the lives of those who need more. In 2020, we reached 100% of Brazilian territory with our services, allowing millions of merchants to accept electronic payments to generate income for the young entrepreneurs, empower women in business, and enable elderly to complement their retirements. This is just the beginning. In 2022, we expect to release our second sustainability report completely aligned to the GRI Essentials. We are in the middle of the process to do the GHG inventory for 2021, audit the data, and set a goal to be a zero neutral carbon company, reporting the data in the CDP.
We hired a consulting firm to help us to address the goal to be a more inclusive and diverse company, as we will also apply for the Great Place to Work.
Now we concluded our Q4 2021 presentation and open the Q&A session. Operator, please.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star one, and to remove yourself from the question queue, press star two. Our first question comes from Mario Pierry, Bank of America.
Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for taking my question. Let me ask you two questions. First one is related to your client base at PagSeguro. We noticed that the client base declined by 8,000 while, you know, you have been growing more than 100,000 per quarter. Can you discuss a little bit about the trends here in mortality of clients, the churn? Is this churn all related to your acquisition of Moip last year, or does it reflect the fact that it's more difficult for you to increase prices than you expected? Yeah, that's the first question, is about your client base and how do you think that's gonna evolve in 2022.
The second question is related to the repricing, right, that you have underway right now, and you're talking about being fully executed in April. What does that mean? Does it mean that 100% of your client base is gonna be repriced by April, or you know, the clients that you wanted to reprice are gonna be repriced by April? If you can discuss a little bit about the segments. You know, are you able to increase prices in the micro merchants versus the SMB segments? If you can discuss your ability to reprice by segment, that would be helpful as well. Thank you.
Hi, Mario. Thank you, Mario, for the question. I will start with the first one about the client base and then I'll pass to Alexandre or Arthur to talk about the repricing. Regarding the client base, you're right. When you make the math, it's 8,000 decrease versus Q3. If we exclude Moip from these numbers, if you look only PagSeguro, we would see something like a growth of 130,000 in the quarter. Really what is impacting this number is the clients from Moip that has stopped making transactions with us one year ago. We don't see this churn from these clients affecting our TPV. As you can see, we are growing pretty strong in TPV. They were clients with very smaller TPV per month.
Yes, it affects the number. What we've been seeing so far, the gross adds keeps being very strong, similar to what we had in the past, I don't know, 10 quarters. We don't see gross adds decreasing. What we see, though, is that we have a base that is reaching almost 8 million clients. The churn as a percentage, to some extent, can make some pressure in this number because the percentage of a big number, right? The percentage of 8 million. We don't see that as an issue because we had this mortality from many, many clients because of two years of pandemic. We don't see that because competition is much more related to mortality than related to Moip.
We are focusing now in bringing clients with the better relation LTV versus CAC, which means, with a little bit more TPV per month than the nano merchant, so to say. This churn, just to be clear here, there is no relation with price increase at all because mainly we are measuring this churn of the clients that we made repricing that Alexandre will talk later. Even if you had the churn, it would appear only one year from now. We don't see the churn increasing because of repricing. Alexandre will talk later, but just to be clear here. Going back to our question, if we exclude Moip, we would grow something like 130,000 in this quarter in PagSeguro.
We are looking for clients a little bit larger than the nano merchants. Again, we don't see that as an issue because it's part of the business maturity after two years of pandemic. Alexandre.
Okay. Hi, Mario. This is Alexandre. Speaking about price increase, we have been doing price increase since November last year. We have planned our price increase in different waves, and we supposed to conclude these waves by April this year. We are increasing prices across all client segments, from long tail to SMBs and larger merchants. The impact, the full impact of this price increase, will be observed during the second quarter. This means that, depending on the microeconomic scenario and future adjustments of the rates.
The interest rates, we can still do some other increase moving forward.
Okay. Now that's helpful. Let me ask then two follow-ups. On the price increases, right? You showed that in the fourth quarter, your net take rate was 2.40%. You are at 2.64% by February. How much higher can we see this net take rate? What is the level that you think we're gonna reach by April? And then the other follow-up is on the net adds, on the churn and Moip. Is this complete now? You know, like basically it seems like you lost 130,000 clients from Moip. I think when you bought them, you added about 400,000 clients. So it's a big chunk of clients that have left.
If you can be a little bit more specific for the reasons why they're leaving and if you think that this is complete now, that you know, whoever was gonna leave has already left. Thank you.
Hi, Mario. I'll start with the last one and start backwards. Regarding these clients from Moip, what we used to have there, let's say if you have a marketplace and then you have many, many thousands of smaller sellers below this marketplace with very, very small TPV per month. The base of Moip, we also reactivated some clients. We added some new clients at the base. But when you look at the churn, part of that is of the legacy that we got from the company that we bought in 2020. So part of these clients, it is still related with the transition period between July and November 2020, that the company was, let's say, without management, so to say, in Brazil. That's why we had this impact.
Again, this is not a concern because they were very, very small merchants below some smaller marketplaces. It seems that it's over the impact from Moip, because we already had this impact in the past quarters. If you look at the core, which is PagSeguro, we keep growing. Most important for us as a main metric is the TPV per merchant that is growing again. Even if you look at the guidance that you gave for Q1, it's very, very positive. If you think that in Q1 we will probably have the same TPV or even a slightly higher TPV than what you had in Q4, because Q4 is the high seasonality in the industry and usually the TPV goes down in the first quarter.
With the guidance that you gave, there is a chance it's gonna be even higher than what you had in Q4. It's super good trends for us.
Okay. For the second part, going back to repricing. Moving forward, we want to recover the margins as much as we can and increase our margins moving forward according to the interest rate rises. Also we want to be very competitive in the market. We'll do all these moves very carefully in order to keep increasing our profitability, but also observing the competitors and the environment, so we can still grow in an accelerated way.
Okay, guys. No, thank you very much. I'll let the other analysts ask questions as well. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mario, again.
Our next question comes from Tito Labarta, Goldman Sachs.
Hi, good evening. Thanks for the call and for taking my question. A couple of questions also. Maybe first on your margins. Right, just looking at the guidance you give for 1Q, it implies margins around, you know, 10.5, 11%. So a bit lower than what we see in 4Q. Yet, you know, your take rate is going up. So just to understand a little bit that dynamic, is that just higher financial expenses? I mean, at some point, will you be able to offset those higher financial expenses? Or is this more investments in hubs or PagBank? Just to understand that dynamic. Is there any color or guidance you can give maybe for the full year, either margins, revenues or TPV like you gave for 1Q?
My second question on PagBank, you know, you initially guided for PagBank reaching 30% of revenues in three to five years. You know, that was now about two and a half years ago. Do you think that that's still a reasonable assumption? You know, particularly you mentioned you probably will be more cautious on credit given the macro environment today. Will that delay things in terms of monetizing PagBank? Just how you think about the PagBank growth in this current macro environment. Thank you.
Hi, Tito Labarta. Thank you for the question. We're starting the first one regarding margins. You're right. If you look at the guidance and the TPV is a little bit smaller than what you had in Q4, and the main reason is financial expenses. There is this time mismatch between the growth of interest rate versus the speed that we increase the prices for our clients. That's why we said that it's gonna be the first wave or the first increase that we planned, and it's gonna be fully implemented by April. That's why in Q1 you're gonna see still this pressure from financial expenses because we didn't have the price increase fully implemented. That's the main driver for the margins.
Just to give some idea here for those who are not familiar, the interest rate in Brazil in March 2021 was 2.75%, and now in March 2022 is 11.75%, so it's 9 basis points more. That's why we're saying that we didn't increase the prices in the same pace that the interest rates increased in Brazil. Regarding PagBank being responsible for 30% of the revenues by 2024 or five years, we do still believe it's feasible. Right now we have the situation in Brazil with the families with the highest debt in debt as ever with this inflation hikes in Brazil. The credit operation, we are not accelerating the way we expected, but that's fine.
we do think that in the medium term, it's gonna be possible for us to close this gap and have this 30% of the revenues coming from PagBank. also just worth to say here, looking at perspective, we launched PagBank in 2019, in May 2019, as a very basic account, and then in three years we built a very complete ecosystem, and of course we had the plan to give more credit. in March 2020, we had this pandemic for two years and we had this, in my opinion, very right decision not to speed up credit. we didn't hurt our P&L by being anxious to keep giving credits in a macro scenario that was not favorable for that.
Going back to your question, in the medium term, it's totally feasible to have these revenues being responsible for 30% again.
Okay, great. That's helpful. Thank you. Maybe if I can ask a follow-up on the margins a little bit. Just going back, you know, to your investor day, you had mentioned that margins could be kind of flattish, maybe even a little bit higher in 2022. Now I know rates keep going up maybe faster than expected. But I think in December, you know, we probably still expected double digit rates. Just, did anything change significantly since then other than, you know, rates have continued to go up? And any color you can provide also on the impact on margins from the investments in hubs and, you know, when you think you become profitable on those hubs?
Tito, compared to the event that we had in November, there are two main drivers here. The first one is that the rates increased faster than what we had projected in November last year, and everyone was caught by surprise in Brazil. Today we saw a report from a big bank saying that Selic, by the end of the year, could be close to 14%. That scenario no one was talking about last year. Just to give an idea, the inflation is coming very strong, and then the interest rate is growing faster than what we expected at first. Second, we didn't make the price increase at the same speed, and we thought that we could do it faster, but we decided to be more cautious.
That's the second reason. The color that you asked about the margins that we're gonna have, it depends how it's gonna be successfully our price increase. I guess we are doing, let's say in the right manner, we are accelerating price increase in the clusters that we think is not price sensitive and increasing basis points that we think is feasible and makes sense. The good news is that the industry as a whole is making this repricing. It's not a movement that only PagSeguro is doing because as we said last quarter, the interest rate in Brazil is the raw material for everyone. When you have your raw material that was 2% going to 14%, you need to increase prices. Everyone is repricing.
That's a movement that we are seeing in the industry, and then we plan to recover, even if partially margins in the following quarters.
Okay. Thanks. Just anything on the hubs?
Yeah, regarding the hubs, Tito. The hubs we gave the information that the payback is between three to five quarters. We keep executing very well. Of course, part of our TPV growth is because of the perfect execution we are having in hubs, but we don't give too much color on hubs because of strategic reasons, Tito. That's what we decided here. I mean, the more we can say we can give you color in the following weeks, but we give the hubs TPV usually and then the payback which is between three to five quarters.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. Sorry, just one quick follow-up on PagBank. You had initially mentioned probably profitable by year-end 2022. Is that still feasible?
Tito Labarta, let's wait for the following quarter, but if it's not breakeven, that is said it's gonna be breakeven, if they're not.
Exactly profitable. It's not breakeven by the end of this year, it's gonna be by the beginning of 2023, and that's fine. Is that one quarter more or two quarters more is not a big deal, and we are doing things very carefully. If you can see our slides, you can see that the net income margin is growing in a very healthy way. It was BRL 140 million, now it's BRL 280 million, if I'm not wrong. I mean, it's growing very well, the PagBank and the fundamentals. The fundamentals of the business is very strong. You can see that in net income margins and the number of clients that are having, and we keep following the credit portfolio very close to avoid any bad surprises.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thanks for answering all the questions.
Thank you, Tito. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Jorge Kuri, Morgan Stanley.
Hi, everyone. Good afternoon and congrats on the numbers. I wanted to just follow up on the questions that were answered before. I ask specifically on the repricing, what percentage of the total repricing that you plan to do by April do you think you've done so far? Are you know, half the way, 2/3 of the way, almost done? I'm asking this obviously to understand what is the potential upside on your take rate vis-à-vis the 2.64% that you had as of February. And also to understand as well the issue of the net net margin, which you're guiding for 11% in the first quarter, so to what extent that still has room to go.
That's my first question. The second is on PagBank. I guess you've said this before, I just wanna be specific. You know, the revenue earning TPV of PagBank was flat for the quarter. I just wanna understand why, if you're growing the business so rapidly, why would it be flat? I guess you mentioned something about the leverage of the families, et cetera, but you know, there's other ways you generate revenues through TPV other than lending. I just wanna understand why it is flat with all of the, at least on the number of clients, you're really expanding that business very rapidly.
Hey, Jorge, it's Artur. Thanks for the question. Related to pricing, I would like to say that we are working to adjust prices for almost every client, but state by state. For strategic reasons, we prefer not to share with you the percentage of clients that we have already adjusted. We are adjusting prices as the market conditions allow us to do that. Also, taking a look at the competition, taking a look at churn, taking a look at external KPIs that we need to look for. We are cautious to adjust price and try to avoid increased churns, as we are not seeing until now. We are continuing the process to adjust prices. In April, we believe we will have a big adjustment.
Just to give more color, Jorge. In March, the take rate is higher than February, just to give an idea that take rate keeps going up. I know some people are asking about margins and it's expected that but we gave the guidance for Q1 2022, and considering our price will be fully executed by April, we see this positive impact from Q2 onwards for the rest of the year. We are not giving some color on that right now, but let's say the trend is that the margins will be better than what we had in Q1 because we're gonna have this price increase in April. We are seeing, let's say, strong revenue growth. We keep investing in PagBank, but the main driver, of course, is the financial expenses.
That's why we're doing the repricing. In March, we had so far the previous numbers, it's better than what we had in February in terms of take rates.
Great. Thanks. Thanks for that. The issue of the revenue earning TPV at PagBank.
Jorge, if I got your answer correctly, you're comparing the percentage of PagBank versus the total revenue of the company and which is around 8%.
No, no. The revenue earning TPV in PagBank was flat quarter-over-quarter. I'm trying to understand why the revenue generating TPV was flat quarter-over-quarter, given all of the growth in clients.
Yeah.
I'm assuming just ramp-up in usage, et cetera, so not only the growth in clients in the quarter, but actually just the maturity of the clients you added, you know, a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, et cetera. Why aren't we seeing the revenue generating TPV go up quarter-over-quarter?
No, that's fine, Jorge. I got it right now. Just to, you're comparing quarter by quarter. Just for those who are in the call, in slide 14, we have that for the full year. We increased it eight basis points from 136 to 144. Your question is about quarter by quarter. What happened is that we are adding, as we expected and as we planned, much more consumers than merchants at this point. Consumers takes a while to make this monetization.
Because of reasons that we already know, the caching takes a little bit more. They don't have the automatic caching the same way you have for the merchants. They don't have the same amount of caching that is in the merchants, so that's why the monetization takes a while. We also took this decision to be more careful in credit concessions in the past months. Those are the two main drivers why the revenue versus TPV PagBank was kind of flat. It was a little bit smaller. When we look forward, it's unavoidable that we are gonna have more credit in this company. That's what we have in the plan, but the market scenario needs to help us. We will not make, let's say, crazy movements here just because we need to give credit.
We'll give credit for those we have the confidence we will have good results and of course, adjusting, risk and return all the time. The reason that we are gonna be able to expand is because we're gonna have this leverage related to credit for the PagBank clients.
Jorge, this is Eric. Thanks for the question. I think when we look at the NII of the company disclosed for the first time and the trends in the gross profit, I think we have been getting more and more sophisticated in credit underwriting. Nowadays, it's much more a matter of being cautious and diligent in capital allocation credit underwriting instead of just speeding up very rapidly and posing additional risk into our balance sheet and company. This is why the monetization is stable, but the engagement is coming stronger and stronger.
Great. Thank you. Thanks for that. That's very clear. Just a follow-up on my first question, on the repricing and the impact that has on take rate on margins. If I understand correctly, you don't expect net margins to be flat for the year, as you pointed out during the Investor Day. Is that right? Am I understanding your answers correctly to those questions?
Oh, you're right. We don't expect to be flattish because of the two reasons that I mentioned to Tito. First, interest rates increased faster than what we expected. I know it seems that it's not too much, but it is, and impacts the P&L very fast, very strong. Again, as I said, big bank in Brazil today said that it's expected for the Selic to reach close to 14% by the end of the year. That's a scenario that no one was talking until, I don't know, two weeks ago. That's the main reason. The second one is related to credit. We thought the macroeconomic scenario would be better, so that credit could help us to have more revenues and of course, help the margins, and that's not the case. You're right.
We will not be flat the same way we mentioned before. Because of the time is matched between repricing and the increased interest rate, that it was faster than our repricing.
Great. Thanks. Thanks for the detailed responses. Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Jorge.
Next question comes from Bryan Keane, Deutsche Bank.
Hi, guys. I also wanna ask about the price increases. When I think about how much does the price increase offset the higher interest rates, so the 9 basis points you're calling out? I mean, do we get 50% there, you know, by the time we're fully implemented? Then do you plan to get the full rate increase impact sometime in the future? Or is that gonna be you're gonna have to eat that higher rate as a loss? Or do you finally at some point pass it through in 2023 or 2024? When do you get back to fully pricing through the higher rates?
Hey, thank you for the question, Bryan. Our intention is to reprice the biggest portion of clients and. But it will take time to do that because as we said, we are adjusting step-by-step. We defined some stages for the clients, and we are going to adjust those prices. It will take time. I don't know exactly if we could cover all the impact coming from the cost. But the big portion we believe we can cover during the year, and maybe for 2023, we can have the biggest portion of the cost offset by the repricing of our clients.
Right. If the rates do go higher to 14% as maybe some are suggesting, does that mean then we should expect further price increases in 2023 or even in 2024 to get back to where we fully have passed through the higher rates at some point in the future?
Yeah, exactly. You are right. If the interest rate in the country continues to go up, we have the ability to adjust prices 1x-3 x, no problem. Also could impact 2023, and we have some adjustments in the coming years if the cost continue to increase and will affect all the industry. We believe all the players will adjust the prices going forward if it's necessary.
Great. That's helpful. Then my follow-up is just on Moip. You know, how fast is the revenue growth in Moip, you know, versus the industry? You know, are people still adopting in e-com? Just thinking about how that business is positioned for revenue growth in this year versus the churn, I understand, you know, with some of the smaller base coming off, but how much of an impact is there to the actual top line?
Hi, Brian. What we saw in Moip was a very accelerated growth during the pandemic, and now we see that it keeps growing, but not the same pace that it used to do in the past. The same behavior that you can see in big marketplaces in Brazil. There are some other public companies here, and they say that, of course, they increased it a lot. They grew a lot during the pandemic because people stay at home and buy online. Now with people getting vaccinated and going back to the normal lives, the e-commerce keeps growing, but not at the same pace as it used to do in 2020, 2021. Of course, we got Moip. We made some changes there, in the structure and also in the systems.
The business is, I would say, in a very good shape compared to what we had a few months ago, and it's ready to grow. I mean, we are gonna be aggressive by getting new clients in this e-commerce that we had some features we had to fix and to launch at Moip, but we are ready to go and to approach new clients right now to keep growing Moip faster than the industry is growing in Brazil.
Go ahead, João.
I can add some color here. We are working in a more integrated way between our three e-commerce platforms, our BoaCompra, which are our cross-border platform, PagSeguro e-commerce platform, and Moip. We can get the best of each platform, so we can grow faster in e-commerce and card-not-present transactions move forward. This is one of the areas that we are investing a lot, and we are certain that we will extract a lot of value from it.
Yeah. I mean, it'll be great if you guys are still taking share versus the overall Brazilian e-com growth, and that's probably the most important point there. All right. Great. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Bryan. Take care.
We now proceed with Neha Agarwala, HSBC.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Could you just help us break down the PagBank revenues? What percentage is roughly interchange, how much comes from credit, et cetera? And, do you have any update on the prepaid interchange regulation? Then I'll ask my next question.
Hi, Neha. This is Eric. Thanks for the question. Since 2021, early 2021, the revenues from the credit products has increased its share. Why? Because the credit portfolio increased from BRL 600 million to almost BRL 1.9 billion by the end of 2021. For strategic reasons, I cannot break it down to you, but you can assume that credit revenues or interest income coming from credit offerings is already or almost reaching half of PagBank revs.
Neha, related to the change in the regulation, I will talk a little bit about the public hearing 78, that there are some changes in the capital requirements for payment institutions.
In our opinion, the central bank continues to foster competition in the industry, reducing potential regulatory asymmetry and also adjusting it to tie to company volumes. Rise competition market remains, you know, very concentrated. In terms of credit, like, 70%, or in profits, more than 90% is concentrated in the top six big banks in Brazil. Maybe central bank is trying to grow financial inclusion in the sector. We believe the scenario for Pag is positive. This implementation will take 3 years, starting 2023 and fully implemented in 2025. As we acquired our banking license in January 2019, we have already complied with the capital requirements regulation.
Just to give you an idea, our Basel index is more than 60% right now. We are very comfortable with these new requirements that the central bank launched in the 78 public hearing.
Thank you so much. My next question is on the financial expenses, which almost doubled quarter-over-quarter. Given that the rates continue to grow up, what should we expect the financial expenses to look like? Is there any way that you can optimize the financial expenses during 2022? I believe these financial expenses also include the amount that you pay for the deposits at PagBank. Could you just break it down a bit for us and maybe explain how should we think about financial expenses? Because I think that is key for profitability for this year.
Yeah, Neha, as we said, working capital is our raw material, and especially in high growth cycles, we need to add capital to the company. Our biggest portion of our credit TPV is prepaid. As you know, we have a product that is an advantage to us in the market. That is the prepayment right after the transaction is approved. As we are growing very fast in our TPV, we have a huge volume, and this is one big impact in our financial expenses. I would like to say that we have a very good performance in our company and it brings pressure to us in our treasury to fund this operation.
On top of that, the current interest rate grew very fast and also impacted our financial expenses in Q4. As Dutra said, we moved it from 2.75% in our current interest rate to 11.75, and the projection for the year is almost 14% in the end of the year. In terms of deposits, obviously deposits is the best option to fund the company because it's more cheaper than other options. We are investing a lot in PagBank to have a more complete offer, engage more clients and then they can consider us as the primary bank, concentrating their wealth with us, and we can use these deposits to mitigate the high cost that we have in other funding options.
Understood. Thank you so much. I think last question, if I may ask. You mentioned that you focus more on collateralized credit products in the first half. Could you give us more color on what sort of products you're looking at? I know you mentioned payroll loans. What is the kind of model that you're looking at for payroll loans, and what are the other loans that you can maybe provide during the first half? Thank you so much.
Hi, Neha. Well, we have these payroll loans that you said, and we also have the product related to credit card with CDI. That's another product that we are making some changes, and we see some potential there. But the idea is of course to have some collateral that we can use in case of delinquency from the client. We just want to make it easy for them to hire the credit with us, and also of course to give the collateral in a very easy way. We don't think that today we have the frictionless process in some of these products, so we are focused on that. Also in the salary backed loans that we have, we expect to have this product grow in the future.
Those are the main products that we already have and we are making some changes to improve and to grow in a more fast way in the following quarters.
Thank you so much. Very helpful.
Thank you, Neha.
Our next question comes from Jason Mollin, Scotiabank.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Great. I have two questions. My first is on PIX, the instant payment platform. You stated that 9% of PIX transactions are done through PagBank. So can you talk about the implications for PagBank's and specifically its profitability? My second question is on your 2022 guidance. When management thinks about that or even the first quarter expectations, can you talk about the upside and downside risks to revenue and profitability expectations? Perhaps some comments on the macro and the competitive scenarios. Thank you.
Hi, Jason. Thank you for the question. Well, regarding PIX, the number that we gave that we have 9% share with, 727 million transactions PIX in PagBank, I'm sorry. It does not affect our profitability because this is more like replacing wire transfers, making people to use more electronic transaction other than cash. We are growing 58% in TPV year-over-year. That's, we gave the disclosure of this number, this 9%, is more to show the strength of PagBank, how people are using us. For all the transactions in the country, 9% of that happens through us if you think about wire transfers, people sending and receiving money. It's more like for the PagBank perspective is a very, very good number.
That doesn't mean this is cannibalizing acquiring. That's not the case here. It's more like people using PagBank more and more. Related to the margins that you asked, we are doing this repricing that we said the first wave is gonna be done by April. We expect that from April onwards, we're gonna have positive impact in our bottom line because of the repricing. The repricing we have done so far didn't affect churn. That's why we kept doing that in waves, and we don't see that increase in churn. The industry as a whole is increasing prices. We see more rationality out there with other players also increasing prices. To be sincere, we see upside on April onwards.
If we have some change on that, we're gonna give you more color, but the idea is to increase the prices and have this positive impact from April onwards. Regarding the macro, I guess we already mentioned pretty quick. Inflation in Brazil and inflation also around the world, in U.S., and also the central banks, in order to keep inflation under control, are increasing basic interest rates. And the expectation the interest rates to be close to 13% by the end of the year. Some banks saying about 14%. But we have the ability to pass this to our clients. Maybe not, maybe not in the same pace or the same speed that the interest rates grow, but we can offset that, at least big part of that.
If not 100%, but big part of that by repricing our clients. Because at the end of the day, everyone will make repricing, our competitors and so on. We see the positive impact from April onwards.
I appreciate your comments. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Domingos Falavina, JP Morgan.
Thank you and congrats, I guess, on the ability to pass through the cost of fund increase, I guess, the Selic. I think this was a major concern. My question is more, I guess, on a little bit of an accounting adjustments you guys are doing. I realize you adjusted by BRL 142 million associated with PagPhone. When looking through the presentation, it seems you adjusted revenues by BRL 3.4 million, but then the expenses, you know, by BRL 142 million. Sorry if I'm not very familiar with this, if I missed something. Just wanna understand kind of the history behind it. Like, basically, you spent BRL 142 million buying cell phones and you only sold 3.4 million, and you're basically writing this off, and you're not gonna use these anymore.
Why would you consider research and development projects non-recurring? And then, I guess linked to this one, my second question is when you are just guiding to about BRL 360 million in non-recurring earnings, what adjustments are you doing to this non-recurring that is not share-based compensation? Ex share-based compensation, what else are you adjusting?
Hey, Domingos Falavina. Good to talk to you. Related to PagPhone, it's important to mention that it was a project whose acceptance has been lower than expected, so we decided to write off the assets. Part of the devices are in our inventories yet, but 100% of the write-offs was booked in our financial statements. Look, following the best accounting requirements to be conservative, as we are, we always are conservative in the company. The impact going forward is zero because we did 100% of the write-off. This is the reason that we consider as a one-time, because we do not expect any impact going forward. Related to revenue is because we had some devices sold by the company.
To be fair with anyone that is analyzing our income statement, we are excluding also the revenue that we had with this devices sold. It's just to be clear and to be fair that we have positive impact in our revenue and we are excluding. Also the negative impact in our expenses, we are also excluding from the result. The other two effects that we had in Q1 2021, one is related to the digital losses that we had. Probably you remember that we gave this disclosure in Q1 2021, that we have some issues related to a product that we launched. There was some chargebacks on that moment, and affected heavily affected our Q1 2021.
We do not have any other impact related to this product going forward. It was a one-time on that moment. We had a tax reversal in Q1-
I'm sorry if I misspoke. Super clear. Thank you for addressing both ends. I meant more like the first Q1 2022, you're giving like BRL 360 million. I'm assuming there is no PagPhone impact in the next quarter. Anything else that it
There is no impact in 360 in Q1 2022.
Yeah. Domingo, just to make sure. This write-off of the PagPhone, we executed the full inventory, and this is why we considered as a non-recurring effect. Investors-
Great.
Analysts do not expect further adjustments related to PagPhone anymore.
Also there is no adjustment that we are expecting for Q1 2022. Okay?
Fantastic. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
We now proceed with Sheriq Sumar, Evercore.
Hey everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Hopefully the last one on pricing. When I think about your pricing and the expectations for further increases in the Selic rate, are your pricing actions all done manually or are you adding like a CDI escalators, which is pretty common for like the larger merchants in the market?
Yeah. Just to explain a little bit, for the larger merchants, we have already negotiated the cost for them linked to the CDI. It's almost automatically. Obviously we have an agreement, we need to negotiate and discuss with them, but the adjustment is mostly done for micro merchants in terms of being linked to CDI. For small merchants, we have a prefixed interest rate, so it's not linked to CDI and we have this negotiation with them because it's more simple for them to understand the price when we have a stable price across the year, across many years, and so it's easy for them to understand. For them, we need to adjust in the system.
Obviously we are following all the conditions of the market, competition and the ability to adjust we have. We just decide at some stages to do that, and we are doing a big portion right now in March that will affect April on.
Thank you so much. Yeah. My follow-up question is for Alexandre. Just wanted to get a sense of what's your top priority for 2022 as to how do you think, like as to what changes do you think that there could be implemented in the organization to kind of drive better profitability for 2022 and beyond as well? Thank you.
Well, our priorities are, first one is to diversify our revenues and profits by consolidating PagBank. Secondly, we want to grow profitably in an efficient way in payments and above the industry. We are focused on developing our two-sided ecosystem to provide much better experience for our consumers on both business, on the acquiring business and on the banking business. We want to execute all of that in a 360-degree security approach, which we consider critical for our business payment and banking business moving forward. We also want to invest a lot in our human capital now, which is our most valuable resource.
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, that's helpful. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Sheriq.
Our next question comes from Jamie Friedman, Susquehanna.
Hi, this is Anita calling in for Jamie. Jamie has a question about the credit debit spend mix that you guys are expecting for 2022. What are your assumptions around that and how it might impact the take rate, and if we should be aware of any seasonality in that mix?
Thank you for the question. What you see between the mix between credit and debit is we see a credit getting some share back mainly because of the behavior of the clients, right? People are going out, people are going to restaurants, people are traveling, buying clothes again, using installments. Usually when people stay at home during the pandemic, the behavior for those who are at home is not to make the consumptions of large tickets with installments or so on. What we see that people going back to the streets, traveling again, and of course, all these things use usually people use credit cards and they use installments. We see the mix going back to what we had before pandemic with more credit card transactions again versus debit. It's a good sign.
Of course, we are doing the repricing to offset the increase in the interest rates that comes with the transactions through installments.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Kaio Prato, UBS.
Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. My question is related to PagBank. We see that in your guidance for PagBank revenues in the first quarter, it ranges from around BRL 240 million - BRL 260 million, which implies a decrease in revenues quarter-over-quarter. In that sense, can you give more color about the drivers of this expected reduction? Moreover, to complement, we saw in recent news that card networks already indicated that would reduce interchange fees of prepaid cards.
Could you please clarify if fees are already lower today, and if this means that we can see further reduction on a quarter basis going forward? I will follow up with my second question, please.
Hi, Kyle. The main driver for the BRL 240 million-BRL 260 million revenues in PagBank is because of our cautious behavior with credit. That's the main driver. That's what we did in January and February. We were more cautious in credit, so that's why the revenues are not growing maybe in the same way it used to grow in the past. That's fine, because at the end of the day, we have 13 million clients. The base keeps growing, people keep making transactions, and we just need to do credit in the right moment, in the right size for the right clients. That's not an issue for us. That's not something structural. It's something that we are just waiting the best time to do so.
Regarding the interchange for the prepaid, we saw some networks making some changes. There is no dates to be implemented. There is no execution plan in a very clear way so far, how it's gonna be executed. For us, for the company as a whole, is a neutral impact because we have this natural edge. If the interchange goes down in one of our business, it also goes down in the acquiring, so that you have lower cost there. We need to wait to see how it's gonna evolve this definition. It's good that some card networks decided to be proactive in making some changes. I mean, we are fine with that because we have this natural edge at the end of the day.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Just a final one, it's actually related to it. If you can share with us, at least some round numbers, what is the percentage of this PagBank TPV today come from prepaid cards, please?
Kaio Prato, to be sincere, I don't even have this number at the top of my mind. We don't give too much disclosure on that. Again, this should not be an issue. Mainly because if we have, by any chance, some decrease in this revenue here, we're gonna have decrease in cost in the acquiring. From the bottom line perspective, it's gonna be the same. Okay. Someone could say, "But the revenues in PagBank could go a little bit down." Yeah, but at the end of the day, the company is gonna have the neutral impact. It could be even more positive because sometimes the prepaid cards in the acquiring, when it gets some transactions there, grows faster than our prepaid card issuance. It could be even positive for us.
Again, I don't have the number here to give you the exact number. Also worth to say that we have credit cards as well. We don't have only prepaid cards, we have credit cards. We recently launched debit cards. We are having this full portfolio of cards, and prepaid is gonna be one of these three cards that we have in our company.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Kaio Prato.
Our last question comes from Geoffrey Elliot, Autonomous.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking the question. Just in the context of the discussion on repricing, when we look at the advertised pricing that we can see for micro merchants on your website, it really doesn't look like much has changed at all. How does that fit into the discussion? What would it take for you to change those headline advertised rates that we can see up on the web?
Well, Geoffrey, you're right. As you can imagine, we need to have this price increase in a very cautious and a smart way. We didn't change the price in the website. It doesn't move the needle because when you compare the 8 million clients that we have versus the website, the website means nothing because people that comes there still need to receive the device in the next following day because we have very good logistics. When you compare the TPV that the new cohort will bring versus what we already have from the 8 million merchants, it's nothing. That's why we decided not to change there. It is important for us to keep being getting new clients. That's what I said earlier in this call, that the growth rates keeps strong.
We always balance between the return you're gonna have by increased prices versus, let's say, if we get less clients or the amount of clients go down. That's why we didn't change in the prices. We are doing this in a very surgical way, so to say, in our base, so that we don't have the impact in churn, and we have the positive impact in our financials. You are right, we didn't change the prices in the website.
Geoffrey , remember that the online sales channel is just one of the many that we have. Since we didn't change yet the price in our website, it's just one of the channels, okay? Make sure of that. Thank you.
Understood. Thank you.
This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to invite PagBank PagSeguro for its closing statements.
Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for your time, for the questions. Looking forward to meet you in person. For those who we don't see, we can talk next call. Thank you very much.
This concludes PagBank PagSeguro audio conference for today. Have a great night. Thank you.