Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to C&A's conference call to announce the results of Quarter 3, 2024. Today we have here with us Mr. Paulo Correa, CEO, and Laurence Beltrão Gomes, CFO and IR Director. This presentation and the earnings release are available at our website on our Results Center. This conference call is being recorded and simultaneously translated into English. To access the English version, please click on the Interpretation button. The replay will also be available on our IR website right after the call. After the company's remarks, we will open the floor for questions. To ask your question verbally, click on the button Raise Hand, or if you prefer, send your question directly through the Q&A icon on the bottom bar. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements that may be made during this conference call relative to the business perspectives of the company, projections, operational, and financial targets are based on beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information currently available to the company. These forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks and uncertainties and premises, and they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions, and other operational factors may lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now I'd like to hand the conference over to Mr. Paulo Correa to start his presentation. Mr. Correa, you may proceed. Thank you. Good morning to all. Thank you for being here with us once again. I'm very happy to be able to share with you today another quarter of robust results with consistent performance and growth in all our financial and operational metrics. Our net revenue, for example, had a strong growth of 16.7%, reaching BRL 1.8 billion, with same-store sales in apparel reaching 18.9% on top of a strong comparison base of 12.5% in Quarter 3 last year. Our gross margin for apparel also continued to rise, reaching 55.1%, the highest we've ever achieved in Q3. We continue to maintain strong financial discipline, which has led our EBITDA margin to an important increase of 4.4 percentage points, reaching 17.6%. I also want to point out that we were able to reverse the result of Quarter 3, 2023, to an adjusted net profit of BRL 52 million, yet another indicator of a solid and well-executed strategy. Another highlight is that we ended the quarter with a leverage of one times the net debt/EBITDA ratio, a significant improvement compared to last year. Laurence will give you more details on these figures later, but first, let me explore with you the factors that are driving this solid growth. First, I want to talk about the assertive strategy we adopted for our winter collection. In the first and second quarter calls, we had already said that winter is a story that starts in April and runs until the end of August, and the cold weather hit really hard in July this year, and we were very well prepared to deliver what our customers were looking for. The result was an excellent performance of our winter products. Then, in September, we launched the spring-summer collection, which has been very well received by our customers. These collections, along with the full-year collection, have been showing their strength and consistency since last year, and once again, they have performed exceptionally well. That is exactly what I've been emphasizing. This performance is only possible thanks to the agility of our operation and our ability to test and scale up quickly, always keeping the most sought-after products in our stores. In addition to this assertiveness in our collections, we have been increasingly recognized by our customers, showing consistent growth, resulting in a significant improvement in all our KPIs. For example, in our physical stores, the website, and our app, we are receiving more and more customers who, in turn, are buying more and more. Their perception of us has also improved, as we can see by our average NPS for the quarter, which grew by 5 percentage points compared to last year. And online, our app had a 120% increase in the number of monthly active users compared to the same period in 2023. And it was the most downloaded fashion app in Brazil in the month of September. And this proves the strength and relatability that customers have with our brand and our products and collections. We are also seeing an increase in the number of items per ticket and an increase in the average ticket compared to Q3 2023. Now, let's talk about the evolution of our strategy, Energia. I think it's important to point out that today, more than 180 stores already have at least one initiative from this strategy. And I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you of the pillars of this new momentum that C&A is going through now. First, I'd like to talk about brand and relationship. In the brand and relationship pillar, we recently launched our positioning, "I'll see you at C&A." This is our hashtag, which reinforces our commitment to being our customer's favorite fashion brand, the place where they connect with themselves, where they find the perfect look, the perfect outfit, and they stay on top of the latest trends. C&A is a charismatic and inclusive brand committed to listening, learning, and transforming its collections using data to anticipate and meet the needs of each consumer. And let us also not forget that C&A was the official look of Rock in Rio, and this brought excellent results for the brand, especially in terms of engagement with our customers on social networks. During the concert, for example, we became the fourth most talked-about brand at the festival, according to Buzzmonitor. We had more than 10 million interactions on our networks. This move not only strengthens our presence as a brand, but also creates a deeper connection with our customers, the customers who attended the festival and watched the festival from all over the country. We saw a huge increase in the flow of stores that received the exclusive Rock in Rio collection, particularly in Rio de Janeiro. Our sales in the City of Rock in 2024 grew by 67% compared with the 2022 edition that we also sponsored. And in addition, we are also stepping up our CRM actions, which help increase the flow and conversion both in our physical and online stores. In the product pillar, we have already implemented our new denim area in more than 70 stores, driving double-digit sales growth in this category in those stores. Also, we are continually investing in strengthening categories other than women's, and all of them have shown robust growth compared to the same quarter last year. A particular highlight is the beauty category, which performed very strongly, with a nearly 64% increase in sales compared with Q3 2023. We are also moving forward with our push and pull implementation. Today, we already have 50% of our assortment in this new distribution model, which improves the assertiveness in each of our stores, and speaking of assortment, today we have three product categories that are being tested in our new dynamic assortment model. This is a very important step towards increasing the assertiveness with which we offer products to our consumers, taking into account not only the differences between the macro regions, but also the specific profile of each of our 330 stores. In the omnichannel pillar, our app has shown excellent performance with strong growth in the monthly active users indicator, like I mentioned, and also in sales, which were 50% higher year-on-year. Throughout the third quarter, we reopened three iconic stores that had undergone major renovations, and we have another four to reopen later this year. These stores showcase the best that C&A has to offer and will serve as a starting point for our new store format in 2025. The Expansion Project, which aims to implement customized initiatives to increase sales productivity in each of our stores, continues to make significant progress, and we are seeing double-digit sales growth in our stores participating in the first wave of the project, which is above the average growth of the other company stores, so this is another growth factor that we're seeing. With all these factors together, we have achieved double-digit same-store sales growth for the fifth quarter in a row, and this is just the first year of this strategy. All these highlights are part of this journey and our strategy that we call C&A Energia. As I mentioned, we had growth in our gross margin with special emphasis on the gross margin for apparel, which grew for the 13th consecutive quarter, reaching 55.1%. This is the highest level we have ever recorded in a third quarter. This result comes from the combination of the talent and experience of our teams, our modern management tools such as dynamic pricing, and also our testing process, which is based on intensive use of data. All these elements give us the intelligence that we need to offer the products our consumers really need to become fashionable. In other words, we are increasingly assertive in our collections, and this is reflected in the consistency of our results. On the next chart, I'd like to take this chance to share with you some of our recent recognitions. C&A was included in the IDIVERSA B3 portfolio as if it's the first Latin American index focusing on diversity. We are now part of a select group of companies that promote a fairer society that value diversity as a cultural value and a strategic pillar. Also, C&A, which had already received the GPTW seal in regional categories since 2019, for the first time, has joined the national list of the top 20 largest companies to have received the stamp. This is an important milestone for the company as it reinforces our commitment to creating an increasingly inclusive, diverse, and sustainable work environment. Another achievement we're very proud of is that our brand continues to be one of the consumers' favorites. A study by Kantar showed that the preference for the C&A brand continues to grow among fashion retail customers, with an increase of 3 percentage points in Quarter 3, 2024, compared to the same period last year. We had a 5 percentage point increase in Quarter 3 in our general NPS, with absolute delight to the improvement in the perception the customers have of our brand, especially in areas such as customer service, checkout, and fitting rooms, as well as their perception of the value of our products. And to top it all off, we came first in the clothing store category of the list's most loved by Brazilians in 2024, according to a survey conducted by Ecglobal, published by Meio & Mensagem. All of these achievements and advances, combined with our financial discipline and the strong expansion in our gross margin, have enabled us to post yet another quarter of significant growth, 55% in our EBITDA, and as a result, we achieved a net income of BRL 52 million. This, once again, is proof of the solidity and consistency of our results, reinforcing the confidence and our certainty that we are on the right track to continue on this path towards success. I now hand it over to Laurence, our CFO, to continue with the presentation. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to first thank you all for attending. Thank you for your time, so Paulo has already gone over main numbers, but I'll give you a bit more color now. This quarter, we again saw strong growth compared to the same period last year. In apparel, we recorded growth of 19% in our same-store sales, even on a strong comparison base of 12.5% last year. It's worth noting that this growth was substantially due to volume, given that the average sales price was slightly below inflation. This was the fifth quarter in a row where we delivered double-digit growth, and this is mainly due to the talent of our creative team, our management tools, and the discipline in our store execution. I'd also like to take this chance to highlight our Commercial Intelligence Hub, which we presented for the first time at our C&A Day in April. The Commercial Intelligence Hub is a set of intelligence tools integrated into the entire commercial strategy of the company, from demand projection, demand forecast to assortment, product procurement, and monitoring of our commercial performance. All these processes generate greater analytical capacity for faster and more accurate decision-making. Now, turning to the next chart, we saw an expansion in our apparel gross margin for the 13th consecutive quarter, reaching 55.1%, a record-breaking margin for a third quarter. This evolution comes from greater sales of products at their full price, resulting from a commercial proposal which was well received by our customers, which creates opportunities for dynamic pricing. We also continue to make progress in our push and pull strategy, which has reached 50% of the mix of the company. In addition to our focus on the evolution of the quality of our products, the test and learn methodology confirms the assertiveness of the programs and helps measure the ideal volume for the different categories. The gross margin for merchandise continues to evolve strongly due to the increase in the apparel gross margin and the change in the product mix, given the growth of the beauty category and the reduction of the Fashiontronics category. Here, we should continue to see the same effect on the dynamics of our merchandise margin as we will continue to advance with the demobilization of the Fashiontronics category. On the next chart, we can see our operating expenses. We continue to be very disciplined in controlling our expenses, but at the same time, we are identifying expenses that are required to carry out the initiatives of the C&A Energia strategy. In this quarter, we have a few points that I would like to comment on. We invested more in marketing, with more brand exposure and greater intensity in our communication actions with our customers, both online and offline. We also had a higher volume of sales of apparel, and we had an increase in the penetration of push and pull to 50% of the product mix, which had an impact on logistics costs, but this was already expected. This was already planned. As a result, our operating expenses increased year over year, but they remained practically stable as a percentage of our net revenue. In the pre-IFRS 16 view, our operating expenses were diluted to one percentage point of our net revenue, which shows that C&A continues to rigorously control its operating expenses. On the next chart, we show you some of the figures for C&A Pay, our proprietary credit instrument aimed at supporting apparel sales in an integrated way, integrated into the shopping journey, and it also promotes a better relationship with our customers. C&A Pay ended the quarter with a portfolio of BRL 887 million, 24.4% higher than last year. The share in retail stood at 25%, which represents an increase of 3 percentage points year over year, even with a slight reduction in share compared with Quarter 2, 2024, and here, it's important to note there was a double-digit growth in apparel, even with the reduction in C&A Pay's share. We had a 32% increase in C&A Pay's net revenue, which demonstrates the consistency of the offer of financial products and services. We also recorded dilution of our operating expenses within C&A Pay and a 33% improvement in the net losses for the period. This increase or this improvement in our net loss is the result of a better rollover of our cohort, combined with higher levels of credit recovery, which represents, which in other words means that the quality of our credit portfolio is higher now, and C&A Pay made significant progress compared to Quarter 3 last year, recording an EBITDA of BRL 18 million in Quarter 3. Now, with regards to C&A Pay's default indicators, as we can see on the next chart, we need to see a significant evolution. The net loss on the portfolio for the period reached 5.3%, an increase of 3.1% compared with Quarter 3, 2023, and 2.6 percentage points compared with Quarter 2, 2024, due to the improvement in the rollover of overdue bills. The overdue balance between $19 and $360, the NPL was practically stable at 19.7% compared to Quarter 2, and a 3.2 percentage point improvement year over year. The NPL formation, which takes into account the formation of overdue balances more than 90 days on the $360 portfolio, also improved by 2.2 percentage points in the sequential comparison with Quarter 2, 2024, standing at 4.9%. The level of coverage on our over 90 was 99.9% in the 720 portfolio and 104% in the 360 portfolio. It's important to note that the level of provisioning in the 360 and 720 bands has already a coverage of 95.3%, which means that we are practically 100% covered in this range. On the next chart, we show the evolution of our Adjusted EBITDA. Here, we had a strong growth of 55.2% and a margin expansion of 4.4 percentage points, reaching 17.6%, a record number for the period. This is a significant improvement in our performance, resulting from the evolution of our fashion product creation and development process, as well as good management of our gross margin and operational efficiency. Regarding the bottom line, we also had a record-breaking adjusted net income of BRL 52 million, which represents a sharp reversal compared to the same period last year. As we already mentioned for last quarter, we are now accelerating the investments in our stores and starting a renovation program aimed at testing some attributes for the new concept that will be launched in 2025. As a result, the improvements were 73.5% higher year over year. Finally, on the last chart, we show the evolution of our total indebtedness, including this card, with an important improvement in our net debt, which ended the quarter at BRL 878 million, with a leverage of 1x the net debt over EBITDA ratio pre-IFRS for the last 12 months. This improvement in our indebtedness is due to a record-breaking cash generation for the period, resulting from better operating results. This level of debt is a very important milestone for the company. It is a healthy level, which allows us to move forward with investments in our energy strategy. For example, investments to resume expansion of our store, our new openings, expansion of our stores, and accelerate our renovation programs. I stop here. This is the end of our presentation, and now I give the floor back to Paulo. Thank you, Laurence. We just heard very solid results. We are very confident that we will continue to deliver solid and consistent results, not only due to the continuous evolution in our strategic plan, C&A Energia, which is just at the beginning of its implementation, and we're already seeing a lot of results, but also because we prepared several actions for Quarter 4, including the launch of a collab in the second half of November, which will be fantastic. We will also have a great Christmas story, which we have prepared with great care and dedication, and I'm sure that I'll see all of you at C&A. For those who haven't seen it, let me show you the video that shows the launch of our new brand positioning. I'll see you at fashion. I'll see you at C&A. Thank you. We will now open the floor for questions from investors and analysts. To ask a question, please press the button "Reaction" and then choose "Raise Hand." If your question is answered at any point, you can click on "Raise Hand" again to leave the waiting line. The first question is from Mr. Vinicius Strano from UBS. Mr. Vinicius, you can ask your question now. You talked about the growth of your concept stores, which was above the rest of the network. Let me understand the drivers of growth in this specific cluster of stores, and I understand that the Dispersion Project may have helped here, and what is the sales gap that you're observing for high concept compared with the most popular stores? Now, looking at the long term, how relevant has been the expansion of C&A Pay for your sales and your perception about the macro dynamics for the next quarter? Thank you. Thank you for your question. Let us start with the high concept stores. The drivers have to do with this ability that we have to propose and test new products very fast and scale up based on the acceptance of these products. The response that we're getting from these stores with this more interesting presentation of the items and this connection between the trend and the type of concept we have in these stores is something very natural that has been accelerating the speed of performance of these stores, which have been able to grow significantly above the pop and super pop stores. We also have to put all this into context because the macroeconomic dynamics also has a role in this journey. Our fashion product proposition with very consistent basics has a great impact on the store format, on this store format specifically, and so the macroeconomic environment also puts some pressure on our pop and super pop stores. Now, regarding C&A Pay, what we are seeing is an evolution of our model. We always say that pay has a role of promoting retail sales. I think we have always made a very direct association between the growth that we see, so 100% of this growth being needed to C&A Pay, and I think this quarter showed that this is not how things work. What we're doing in terms of commercial proposals and journeys has a very high relevance with our clients and is evolving with the indicators that we have, NPS, and we have pay as a vector. We have Pay as an enabler, an important element in the building of relationship. So Pay has a continuous dialogue with our customers and can facilitate the journey and operation of our stores as you use your C&A Pay card. So all this macroeconomic context, for example, when we hear yesterday, we heard about interest rates, of course, that this will create some lessons learned for us to fine-tune our credit-granting models, and this is something that will happen continuously. We will have to do this continuously and consistently looking forward. The third point, I don't remember what was the third point of the question. I think I answered your question. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Danniela Eiger, XP Investimentos. Danniela, you may ask your question now. Congratulations on your results. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is about how much value we can expect to see looking forward. Paulo reinforced that this is just the first year of C&A Energia, and we see a strong evolution in your gross margin over time. Can you please help us think of the levers to generate more results looking forward? And maybe Laurence can help us think about which lines of your P&L are involved, maybe saying stores, gross margin, dilution, or operational efficiency, just for us to try to establish a strategy on how to think things forward. And my second question is about Vinicius' question about C&A Pay. You said you are now slowing down the credit-granting strategy, but the reduction of the share quarter on quarter was due to the breakdown of higher-income stores that have a lower penetration. So when did you start really decelerating your credit-granting, and have you seen any impact from that impact on your sales or other metrics? And how can we think this forward, either from the connection with credit-granting and also from the standpoint of the market, considering that we're past October and we start in November now, so what are your prospects for Quarter 4? Thank you. Thank you, Danniela, and sorry for the confusion. They called you Mr. Danniela instead of Mrs. Danniela. So let me break this down into two parts. The first part is about value creation, and I'll ask Laurence to explore this with you, the C&A Pay. In respect to value construction, remember that the Energia strategy has a strong foundation, which is significantly increasing the sales per square meter and the level of sales productivity at each of C&A's assets. This has always been the motto of this story. Now, when we talk about products, we have different categories that we can better explore in terms of assortment in each of our stores to generate higher sales per square meter. Now, when we look at the journey, we see that there are several opportunities to generate a simpler, easier, streamlined journey, more productive for our customers, which will lead to higher conversions and higher sales per square meter. Now, when we talk about relationship, what we are creating here is an analytics machine to really make the relationship with our customer more and more customized, personalized, and therefore more relevant, which will enhance the occurrence and the frequency of these customers and consequently improve these three major pillars. Now, this combined with the positioning that we started to launch and implement this quarter, the idea is to see a very strong impact, stronger and stronger in our sales per square meter, so the major value driver that we see here in the Energy strategy is our capacity to progressively change the level of sales per square meter that C&A has. This is factor number one, but it's not just that. Of course, we also have a lot of developments that we have to implement in our analytical models, in our distribution models, aiming to tap in these opportunities, perhaps smaller opportunities than the ones we have tapped so far, but also significant opportunities to increase our gross margin, so we still have a way to go in the next two years for our gross margin. We still have room to improve. Of course, always respecting the market dynamics and the competitive situation because, of course, this could cause changes or the need for adjustments in this trajectory. Everything is set for us to continue expanding our gross margin. Now, with the format that we have in our DNA of managing our expenses very consciously, very disciplinedly, this should lead to a good dilution and an expansion of our EBITDA margin looking forward. So this is our design. This is our idea for the Energy program, and I think we're executing this program with a lot of discipline and consistency, and we are giving it a very good pace, a very strong pace, a very strong pace to the evolution of the company. The evolution of the company, which is a clear opportunity to us, is what will allow for this construction of value and this value will allow this value to be created over the next two years. Now, Laurence is going to talk about pay. Danniela, thank you for your question. We have two aspects now. First, I don't know if you remember, but we mentioned at our C&A Day that we were evolving and making improvements in our credit-granting model with two bureaus, all developing our internal bureau and an internal behavioral score. And this credit-granting model evolves over time. It is not static. It evolves as our portfolio evolves, as we get to better know the portfolio that we have, and also that our external variables, macro variables that are also relevant and are also a part of the evolution of this model. This is a natural movement. Everything related with C&A Pay, all decisions related with our credit-granting strategy are based on models and numbers and data. We see this as a natural effect. The answer is no. I think that is no impact whatsoever. We have not seen any impact whatsoever of this reduction in the C&A Pay share or the production of new cards. I think this is a natural consequence. I think this is one more piece of evidence that the sales is due to the proposal, to the product offered and the value proposition, and not the credit granted. However, of course, credit is important. It is important for our sales. It is important to consolidate the relationship and gain loyalty. We see this as a natural evolution of the process. The second point, which I think is an important point that I should mention, is that historically, Pay has always had a smaller share in our concept stores. However, what we see now is a higher frequency, a higher frequency. So the growth and the curve that we're seeing is for customers that require less credit and use C&A Pay less. And this is all across C&A. This is another important facet of this growth in our active customer base that we're seeing in C&A. Customers that demand or require less credit or are less interested in C&A Pay. There will be no changes in our plan in respect to the penetration target that we had for 2026, about 35%. However, the nature of this growth until 2026 will be different, considering that we have already reached a very interesting and appropriate level of penetration of credit, and also considering that we will always be paying a lot of attention to external conditions, to the macro scenario, and also the prioritization of the quality of our credit portfolio. Excellent. Very clear. Thank you. Congratulations once again. The next question is from Luiz Guanais, BTG. You can ask your question now. Good morning, Paulo. Good morning, Laurence. I have two questions. Can you please comment on the selling expenses dynamics for the coming quarters along the lines of what you said, Paulo, about the sales growth, which is very robust, and I think you have been positively surprising the market in this sense for the past few quarters. And my second question is about C&A Pay. Should we expect any changes in the portfolio coverage levels, Laurence? You talked about a stable level compared with quarter two, but considering your portfolio growth and behavior, what can we expect in terms of coverage? T hank you. Let me answer this question, Guanais. In our selling, we see a good performance and good control of the expenses. And although we have this mobilization, I think that our strategy, C&A Energia, has also been bringing some opportunities to optimize our structure, to optimize our expense structure when it comes to selling expenses as well. So we continue to be very positive, very confident, even with the new initiative that we are implementing, which sometimes can naturally entail some expenses. We will keep our commitment and our focus on delivering a dilution of our expenses and the total SG&A of the company for the year. We are very confident in this sense that despite the new initiatives that we are implementing, we are also reviewing our processes and continuing to do the important work. We are already seeing greater growth of our marketing expenses, but this was something that was planned because we ended up leaving this movement for quarter three and quarter four with the launch of the brand, with the new positioning of the brand, and not just for this new positioning, but also to make the most of this higher brand exposure, this moment of higher brand exposure, to bring a higher flow of customers for quarter four, for the important dates, particularly the dates in December. Guanais, you asked about selling, but I think that we are also confident in our G&A expenses and that we will be able to maintain this good operational efficiency that we're seeing and this good operational leverage that we see for the company. Now, in respect to C&A Pay, about the coverage, this coverage is a consequence of the rolling over. Our models put us in this direction. I think I can say we have very robust coverage levels currently, and I don't really see any reason to expect any major changes in these levels. Perhaps the over 90 coverage for the 360 portfolio could get closer to 100%, but this coverage is a result from the portfolio, the rollover, and the performance of our portfolio. Very clear. Thank you, Laurence. The next question is from Toronto IDC Bank. You can ask your question now. Can you hear me now? Yes. Good morning, Paulo. Good morning, Laurence. I have two questions. My first question is about the renovation programs. I heard your interview, and you said that very few stores have been completely renovated, but you also made some small improvements in your stores. So what does this evolution look like? How are you tracking the performance of these stores that have already been renovated or improved? It's very clear that you will have a more robust renovation program next year, but I want to measure what is the opportunity brought by these small improvements that you made in your stores, and also the opportunity in your gross margin. When we look at fashion and beauty, this was an important driver in the consolidated merchandise gross profit. And I want to understand that with a mix of de-emphasizing smartphones. At what stage are you at now, and what is the level of gross margin that we can expect for this category? Sure. Thank you for your question. Let us start by the renovations. This year, we completed three renovations: Porto Alegre, Brasília, and here the Ibirapuera store. These renovations and improvements were made with the entire arsenal that we have in terms of each of the categories. However, the Energy strategy is also promoting different discussions. For example, the denim area. For the denim area, we reached a clear understanding of our customer's journey, and we revisited the proposal for that area. This is what we call small improvements. We carry out in a few stores. We look at the results based on the results of these first stores, always with this methodology of trying to understand the control group with the same conditions with and without that type of presentation or that type of experience, and as we see solid and concrete results, we start to roll out these changes progressively in other stores, aiming at capturing the upside that we saw in the first stores in our first pilots, so this is what we are doing with different categories. That's why I said it's more than 100 stores that have somehow undergone some type of change or adjustment based on these new proposals, new categories, or new presentations, or the size of the area or the layout, which is also connected with a Dispersion Project, which is a different vertical, but which somehow is also bringing us changes in presentation and categories, but also other changes such as the size of the areas, the team, the sorting, the location of certain areas such as fitting rooms and checkout, so this is all in the same package, so ultimately, we have three stores that were improved this year. We have four that are now undergoing improvement, so we will complete seven. We will have seven complete renovations for this season, and we will gradually advance with the rollout of some new solutions that we are for which we're seeing good results in some categories. Now, thinking forward, next year, we are now finalizing the discussion of our plans with our management board, but the idea is to be able to accelerate the renovations program. I mean, more than the seven that we did this year, but we want to put together all the lessons learned, and on these lessons learned, we're based on very clear and quantitatively measured strategies with pilots and control groups, trying to come up with a model which will be the new store model for 2025 and which will grant us with a better speed and a higher number of stores renovated. Of course, there's the investments expected that will also be a concrete impact on our same-store sales and the general productivity of our stores. Now, as for the gross margin, we did mention the demobilization. So smartphones, we're speeding up the demobilization of smartphones. And as I said, we're looking at this store by store. We're looking at the contribution capacity of that square meter versus the contribution capacity of other square meters, such as in beauty or apparel. And we are making decisions to demobilize. This is a continuous process. We have a continuous analysis that we're doing. And of course, that increases in productivity in beauty, just like we said, 64% increase in beauty this quarter, as well as the increase in the sales per square meter for apparel. This all contributes to a more favorable equation for these categories that I mentioned. And this makes the replacement or demobilization of Fashiontronics even more urgent, or there's a need to do it even faster than we had planned initially. So looking forward, we are a fashion company, and we also have a robust beauty category. And the Fashiontronics category or smartphones is getting smaller and smaller. Of course, the general merchandise margin of the company, considering the lower Fashiontronics margin, the general merchandise category will grow due to the mix effect according to this strategy that we are implementing and executing. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Can we think of a similar margin to that of apparel, Paulo? Just to understand what is the size of this opportunity. Well, my engineering background, I think that it will get closer and closer to that of apparel, but we have to remember that the beauty category has a lower margin than apparel. So I think this mixed gap will be smaller and smaller compared to apparel, but the share of this category, the beauty category, it operates at an intermediate level of margin compared with Fashiontronics and apparel. Thank you. Very clear. Congratulations. The next question is from Rodrigo Gastim, Itaú BBA. You can ask your question now, Mr. Gastim. Good morning. I have two quick questions. The first is about the evolution of your apparel same-store sales. One question that I always get is, what was the dynamics in this quarter? If we look at industry data, we know September was a month of strong slowdown, strong deceleration. Did you also see that in your company in quarter three? And when you talk about the improved productivity per square meter, did you also see that in September and October? Qualitatively speaking, was there a different dynamic than the average of quarter three? This is my first question. And my second question is about the working capital. When you look at supplier financing, year over year, there was a worsening both in suppliers and also in inventory. And since you're accelerating your sales at the customer end, how much of this is coming on sales or in quarter three? The supplier financing, will it go back to the structure you had last year in terms of working capital? So these are my two questions. Thank you. Rodrigo, thank you. We didn't really see acceleration in September. The performance in July was a higher impact on July due to the temperature and the sales of winter products. But September was robust and very important for us. And we understand that all these initiatives that we are bringing for the energy strategy are also helping us in this journey to reduce any macro fluctuations or improve the absorption of these macro fluctuations to these evolutions that are being implemented under our new strategy. Laurence, anything else? Yes. I have some important comments to make. In our DPO suppliers finance, I think this year we have a greater mix of imports for which we have shorter payment terms. So this is an important point. Also, the improvement in the beauty category has an effect on the DPO or the suppliers finance. However, we are also seeing a good evolution in our receivables days, the DSO, and this is partly mitigating this effect. This is partly offsetting this effect. Also, the reduction in Fashiontronics or smartphones also required a longer payment term. So that's why we're seeing this offset and mitigation of this effect. And in terms of inventory, we've ended the quarter in a better position and better prepared for quarter four. I think also the commercial planning was more robust so that we could be better prepared right in the start of the fourth quarter. What's important here is that our inventory levels, our inventories right now are 30% newer than last year. So these are the main points about our working capital. And one thing that I would like to highlight is that we will continue to pursue opportunities to release our working capital. This is an important valuation driver for the company. Although the low-hanging fruits have been collected, we still see some good opportunities to release our working capital and create value next year. Very clear. Just one quick follow-up. This macro dynamics of the industry and this combination with increased interest rates, this in theory leads to a lag in the perception of your activities. So I would just like to corroborate this point with you. Do you see any impact of the increase in interest rates or the dynamics will continue to be similar to what we're seeing the past quarter? Any relevant changes? Any slowdown? No, we can't really see anything significant that would point to a change in our curve or a change in our evolution in terms of a slowdown or deceleration. No, we will continue on this journey and we will continue to track this evolution. Excellent. Very clear. Thank you. The next question is from Alexandre Namioka, Morgan Stanley. Ms. Namioka, you may proceed. Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on your results. I want to further explore the point about your gross margin, Paulo. Like you said in the beginning, I think that in the past few quarters, you are consistently expanding your gross margin, particularly when we look at apparel alone. So I want to better understand how much more room do you see to improve this metric. And another point, another question. I don't know if you have already mentioned this. I apologize if I missed it, but if we could break down this same-store sales performance by region, was there a better performing region, better than others, or was this uniform across the board? Thank you. Alexandre, thank you for your question. Now, going back to the gross margin, it's what we said. We had an increase of practically five percentage points, more than five percentage points in the past few years in our Gross Margin, which is very significant, very relevant. Now, looking forward, we understand that, yes, we still have room to improve. Number one, the assertiveness of our collection has to be better and better. The assertiveness is a determinant factor in the dynamics of our Gross Margin. Number two, our pricing models are evolving. We are always learning and making them more sophisticated, our pricing models. So they should be another factor for evolution of our Gross Margin. Third, the distribution capacity of having the right product at the right place, which we're helped by the Push and Pull strategy is another vector that will help us in this journey. What are the backwinds? The headwinds are, for example, a structural dynamic of the industry in terms of cost or a structural dynamic of the competitive movements, more aggressiveness, more promotions. This is what could lead to a slightly different story, a slightly negative story for this equation as a whole. However, what we see is that in our structuration, in our work, we are working more and more towards implementing this test and learn dynamics, and we're expanding this movement, which really helps our gross margin. Our pricing model is also evolving, and we're striving to make it evolve even more. Distribution and assortment is more interesting over time, more and more assertive in each of our stores in a personalized fashion, so these three factors are an evolution of the company's competencies, and we're very confident that we will keep seeing this positive journey in the future. If we have captured some points, some percentage points in our margin in the past few years, what we are creating here is a movement that perhaps will not keep the same level of speed. Maybe we'll have increases or an order of magnitude of basis points in the next few years, but there's no way we will not grow because we will keep evolving in these competencies that I mentioned. So this should be a continuous evolution, maybe at the level of basis points instead of percentage points like we have been seeing in the past. So this is the idea. Now, when you talk about the performance by region, if there are any differences, well, it depends. We have a lot of opportunities. C&A, across the board, when you look at, if you look at an x-ray of opportunities to improve the sales per square meter by region, this comes from all our efforts, the Dispersion Project, and everything we're doing to create strong performance in all regions. We're talking about double-digit growth all throughout Brazil. These differences, these nuances could take place not just because of peculiarities of a certain region or the macroeconomic situation in that certain region, but especially due to the actions that we are carrying out in terms of evolving, improving, and improving the assortment in each of the regions, improving the operations in each of the regions. It's very difficult to tell you whether that is one region that is performing better than the others at the macro level. At least there's no major difference that we can see. So we don't see any major differences between the regions, which could be explained with the outside of the macro dynamic of each region. Thank you. Perfect. The next question is from Ruben Couto, Santander. Mr. Couto, you may proceed. Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have a philosophical question. I want to better understand how will this rebranding of C&A be? What is the purpose of this new positioning? Is it to call more attention to your physical stores, to rejuvenate your brand, to better communicate with youth, or position your brand as a fashion reference, maybe to have more premium practice in where you operate? So can you help us understand the purpose and how important this new positioning is and what we can expect after this change? I remember that you talked a lot about this rebranding that you were preparing and how important it would be for your store format upgrade strategy. So can you please give us more color about the purpose of this change? Thank you. Yes, thank you. That's a great question, Ruben. Do you remember that when we talked about Energia at our C&A day, when we talked about the Energia strategy, one of the most critical elements was the rebranding or the repositioning of our brand? And what we said is that we wanted to recover the prestige, the shine of our brand. This brand is a very important brand that has a strong connection with the Brazilian public. And perhaps due to the smaller investments that we made over the past few years, maybe we lost some of that strength and that capacity to have a consistent dialogue with our consumers. So we have two points here. First, we want to assert that we know about fashion, that we are knowledgeable in fashion, and that we're knowledgeable about Brazilian women. So when we connect these two dots, we have greater and greater capacity to talk about the topics, the trends, to bring the products, to offer the dynamics, and to foster the behavior that we want from Brazilian women. So what we want to do is we want to promote something where people can find what they need, where they can find the fashion that is suitable to them, to find the product or the items that they're looking for in our physical stores or our online store. That's why the new motto is, "I'll meet you at C&A." Meeting someone at C&A means exactly that. If you go to C&A, you will meet, you will find yourself, you will find what you're looking for. I'll find you at C&A. I'm finding my personality. I'm finding the outfit for the event that I have next week. This is what explains the motto "I'll find you at C&A," because we want customers to find much more than that at C&A. This was based on the conversations that we had with our current customer base and our general customer base in Brazil. This is the utmost purpose. In practical terms, when we think about the business model and our P&L, this will bring us two things. First, better assortment in our collections and our products to give more knowledge and more exposure to these fashion solutions and the products that we're offering, and in the end, if all this happens, we expect higher traffic in our stores, both the physical stores and our website, and a higher level of conversions both at our physical stores and online stores, so an improvement of our productivity per square meter, which is what we have always been talking about and what we are pursuing with this journey, so the idea of this brand, the brand is a large umbrella that embraces all the initiatives that we're carrying out to evolve our business, to evolve the company as a whole, and to drive further and further foster this relationship with our customers through a dialogue that is relevant to them. This is the logic behind this movement. And this is the real origin of this slogan, "I'll find you at C&A." Thank you. Very helpful. This question and answer session is now closed. Now I'd like to hand the conference back to Mr. Paulo Correa for his final remarks. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your time. Thank you for attending our conference call. I'd like to once again stress the high level of confidence our team has in the execution and the capacity to deliver results for this new strategy that we have at C&A. And the utmost purpose of this strategy is to bring our customers the best of fashion around the world and the highest value possible with these fashion products so that they can be whatever they want to be. I couldn't go without acknowledging the C&A team, who I know is always watching our conference calls. And these results are thanks to you. We're together in this. Let's keep the hard work. Thank you very much. This conference call is now over. Thank you all for participating and have a great day.