Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting. We would like to welcome you to our earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2023 at Grupo Mateus. For those of you who need simultaneous translation, this tool will be available on the platform. To access, you can select the interpretation button through the globe icon at the bottom part of the screen, and choose your language of preference: Portuguese or English. Now the option to mute your original audio. We would like to let you know that this earnings call is available on the company's investor relations website, where you'll find the full material of our earnings release. During the presentation, the company all participants will have their mics off. Soon after, we'll begin the Q&A session. To be able to submit questions, please select the Q&A icon, and write your question to enter the queue. As we are announced, a request to activate other questions will appear on your screen, and we'd like to ask you that you submit all of your questions at once. We'd like to let you know that the information in these presentations and possible statements that could be made during the earnings call related to business perspectives, forecasts, and financial targets at the Grupo Mateus represent beliefs and assumptions from the company's management as well as information that's currently available. Future statements are not a guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. As they refer to future events and thus rely on circumstances that could or not occur, investors must understand that general economic conditions and market conditions, as well as operational factors, could affect the future performance at Grupo Mateus and lead to results that differ materially from those listed in future statements. Today, we like to count on the presence of Mr. Ilson Mateus, our CEO and founder, at chairman of the, sorry, Ilson Mateus is the chairman, Jesuíno is the CEO, and Sandro Oliveira, our VP for operations, logistics, and commercial. Now I'll pass the floor on to Mr. Ilson Mateus, the chairman of the board. Good morning, everyone. I want to thank you so much for your presence in our presentation here. As you're seeing, we have a strong expansion to share in our fourth quarter. We had a major concentration of 12 new stores opened in the fourth quarter, and these are 6 units still in the metropolitan region of Recife, a very important city for our expansion, and we're also really happy to share two new stores in Maceió, which is an important capital in the Northeast, and we also have been occupying this major capital city. Now we also have four stores in the states of Maranhão, Bahia, Paraíba, and Sergipe. As we move on, we'd like to continue with our presentation and say that we have 28 new stores in 2023. Here you can see an all-time high of stores in the cash and carry format. We have 22 stores, and this is an all-time high, that's super important what since we're only in the North and Northeast with a volume of stores like this. This is really important because it means that we're occupying many important cities and a really important level of revenue. three retail stores, three electrical stores, and another very important achievement is that we were able to reach three new capital cities, which are also very important, like Recife, Fortaleza, and João Pessoa, and also 29 new cities, which is part of our expansion project with our initial plan that was presented when we had our IPO. We really structured our activities during these last three years to be able to reach this point of these important numbers we're sharing. Moving on with our presentation, I'm going to show you a bit of the scenario today. We have 258 stores in total, over 3,900 commercial reps, independent commercial reps. When we look at this slide, we can see that we have some significant numbers, which is the occupation rates in certain states that are very relevant for our presence in the Northeast. We have 11 stores in Ceará, eight stores in Paraíba, seven in Pernambuco, and seven in Bahia. So it's really important for us to mention that with these numbers, we with all of the structure we prepared, such as the amount of reps we already have in these states, can dilute costs a lot. And so we can also search for more efficiency in our important results in 2023. So moving on with slide seven, we mention the important accelerated pace of our expansion. So on this slide, we mentioned these two stores, which are in Caruaru. This is an important hub in Pernambuco and Northeast. Caruaru, and we're also going to be building two stores, which will lead to important occupation and a market share that's also significant, through this search in the Northeast. Now I'll pass the floor on to Jesuíno Martins. Well, good morning, Mr. Ilson, Sandro, and I wanted to share with you guys some of our achievements throughout the fourth quarter of 2023 and also the full year of 2023. I'm really happy. In the first part on the left, upper side, we wanted to share, that when it comes to the gross revenue, we have BRL 8.6 billion in revenue. This is a super important number if you guys have been, monitoring us throughout this year, and we've been growing over 25%. This is an important milestone for us as it, leads to a continuity of everything we've been discussing throughout 2023, the same intensity of growth. On the bottom part, I wanted to share with you a bit of how we ended the year of 2023 because for us it's very symbolic to reach BRL 30 billion in revenue, and we're really happy to share this with you guys as you watch us during this morning. We're able to reach BRL 30 billion in revenue, we grew over 20%, and with the same kind of intensity we've been sharing over the last quarter, we also increment this important add-on of BRL 6 billion, and this is super important. We're really happy with this, our team is really happy, and we decided to share this with you guys this morning as well. Soon after, in the second block, we have the same store performance. This number is also very important because we've been talking about this throughout the entire year. This indicator is one of the indicators we most discuss internally. Once again, we deliver a growth in our same stores that's a real highlight in our sector. In the fourth quarter, we're delivering BRL 8 billion of growth, all of our brands grow. We know how challenging it's been to grow our same stores because we experienced a deflation scenario all year long, and 100% of this growth has been coming from volume because prices drop. So this is really important, and it demonstrates the resilience of our model, our team, and our business format. We're really happy, and we wanted to share this with you all. What's important is that at the bottom part of the presentation, you can see the same store growth in the full year. We started the year with strong same stores, and we ended delivering this also strong performance. So, you know, we shared with you guys a lot that the focus we have is to keep our consistency in the results. We're ending this year with this feeling of, like, really having achieved this and fulfilled this goal. We've been dedicating ourselves as much as possible to make sure this is consistent. Then in the third block, I wanted to share the consistency of our gross margins. This is a topic that we discussed a lot during 2023, Túlio, and everyone that's watching us. So now we're delivering 21.8% gross margins in line with what we planned and also in line with what we started the year with. If you notice, we keep up the same level and demonstrating the resilience we've been having throughout the entire year. In the bottom part, we also have our gross margins for the year. We end with 21.7, which is very similar to the gross margin of the third and fourth quarters and also in line with what we started the year off with. We want to highlight also that in the fourth quarter, in the bottom and the top part, we grew compared to last year. And you remember last year we had a real interesting point, which was in the fourth quarter, and we just understood that this number really makes us quite happy, and it demonstrates the resilience of our model and our team in the bottom in the fourth block. I wanted to also share that our EBITDA in the fourth quarter, we delivered BRL 571 million. This is super symbolical. Our team is really happy with this because it's a proof of a lot of dedication and work. We grew over 47% of our EBITDA, and we have a 7.5% EBITDA margin, which you guys have also been discussing with us throughout this process, Túlio, Mr. Ilson, and Sandro. This is an indicator we really like looking at internally, so we deliver 7.5%. And if you notice in the bottom part of the fourth block, the EBITDA margin is at 7.4%. So we talked about this a lot throughout the year, and we're really happy to deliver this EBITDA margin that's extremely resilient and balanced throughout the entire year. We didn't have major variations. We followed the same trend, and we're going to keep up with this, keeping the same level of consistency. Now, the EBITDA added up to BRL 2 billion. We grew over 21%, which is also something that makes us quite happy, and we decided to share this all with you. So finally, I wanted to mention our net income for the fourth quarter. We delivered BRL 332 million, which is above our expectations. We grew over 61%, and we also celebrated this a lot internally. We felt really happy, and that's why we wanted to share this with you guys. Then in the full year, we delivered BRL 1.2 billion of net income, and this is also an important example because we're growing over 20% in our net income. And we were able to divide and share this with you guys because these have all been important achievements for us during this year, and we are really happy to share this. So finally, to wrap up here, Mr. Ilson, Túlio, and Sandro, the chart here on slide 10, I wanted to share quickly because ever since we listed the company in 2020, if you notice on the left side, we went from BRL 14 billion, and we ended 2023, four years later, with BRL 30 billion in revenue. We more than doubled the size of the company. We've been sharing with you guys some of our dreams and some of our strategies, the pathways we followed, and, as a fruit of all of this dedication, we've wanted to share with you guys the major evolution we had throughout the last four years. The EBITDA in the company also is growing over 70% from 2020 all the way here. This is something that really makes us happy. So finally, Mr. Ilson, Túlio and Sandro, thank you so much, everyone in the team and our employees that have been dedicating their time and energy to delivering these results with such quality and consistency. I want to thank you all, investors and the overall market that has really believed in our work. And I want to thank you so much for supporting us in this sense. I'll pass the floor on to Sandro, our VP of Operations and Commercial VP. He'll share a little bit of our results, with the expansion in the last three years. So this is something we've been discussing a lot, with you and the overall market. And Sandro also brings a bit of these good news as well. So good morning, Jesuíno. Hi, good morning, Túlio. Good morning, everyone watching us. I'm really happy to share the results of this year. Also now, as we focus a bit on our expansion, on the left side of the slide, we notice the evolution of our EBITDA at the stores that started entering our comparable basis. So we went from the second quarter of 4% and the post-IFRS EBITDA, and we reached 6.8%. And that means 70% growth when it comes to performance in these stores. So you can all remember that as they evolve and mature, they also gain and deliver greater results. So they already add up to 15 stores, and this year we have another bunch of stores coming into our organic store base. And from the 39 stores we have today in the entire expansion, moving on to the following the same slide, we have an important presentation here that adds on to this vision of our EBITDA deliveries in the organic stores. This is our share gains in the Northeast. So we went from year to date in 2023, which was January and February, compared to January and February 2024, which was 17.8% to 22%. So it's about 4.2% additional share gains. And I think that this really reinforces the fact that we've been able to be precise and assertive in our commercial locations. We've been able to really get it right with our regionality strategies for the negotiations and also the maturity of these professionals. So I have a special thanks here to our regional team, especially for 2023, because it's really been a joint effort from our entire team and everyone conducting these activities at the regional level and all of our team working in this sense as well to make this result be transformed into reality. These are things we've planned, we've dreamt, and things we've considered in the past few years. Finally, we're seeing this happen in this last year in practical terms. I wanted to thank the team. Besides this, we would really like to reinforce the fact that we believe we're on the right path, and this expansion will be consolidated year over year. We will gain some share points we've discussed during this process. Moving on, as we discuss this a little more with the main issues involving expansion, we in October 2023, we opened our Olinda store there in Casa Caiada. This was a major transformation. We spoke about this a lot and these transformations. In this store, we had, we were very enthusiastic about a joint activity we had with our team to add services and in a very innovative way. So we're not talking about expanding services. We're just talking about something that really made a difference. We have over 1,200 square meters of services provided with important butcheries and cuisine options, food options. We have 140 seats for people to sit at. We have a beef butchery service, which was really something that made a lot of sense. You can see looking at the images how the stores were really full and welcomed. In some way, it seems very similar to this reality. The wine cellar, fish, boulangerie, bread, etc. This has been something that our customers really compliment a lot and love. So in this kind of cash and carry option, it's really important to have such a significant service area, which demonstrates our capacity to innovate, believing in this model and that this can offer something beyond what we imagine. We need to understand our strategy. Each city is different, but especially in Olinda, you can have a real clear example of how we can service a full scope of customers, and in some way, they're willing to experience cash and carry with more services in a more structured manner. We're really happy to share all of this with you guys as it's something we have been performing in the last few years. The company has really been checking into this and at the forefront of all of this. This is a result of the work done by many people. The store was opened with many details, well thought of. It's a cash and carry store with a lot of services and very well accepted by our customers. So, this is now. I want to just say thank you, everyone, and I'd say goodbye to our team. Now I'll pass the floor on to our Financial VP, Túlio. Well, before Túlio speaks, I wanted to talk here about the store. I wanted to really thank the team that helped to create and define this project because we had many, many weeks defining and researching this. Everyone was involved. It was a pleasant surprise, really, to have this store take place because it's an ongoing improvement we've been seeing take place during the last three years. It's really about how we can service our customers in a cash and carry store, how we can retain them, generate loyalty in a cash and carry store, and how to make customers really enter and remain in these stores, right? So these are challenges, and we need to try, and we need to innovate, and we need to make sure that in our segment, we are always thinking about innovation, thinking about the future and how we're going to attract new customers and enchant these customers and generate loyalty. So if not, we're always going to be doing more of the same stuff. So thank you, Ilson. Thank you, Sandro. Have a great day. Good morning, everyone. And now we're going to move on to slide 15. We have our numbers for the gross profits, and I'm going to quickly cover these first points. Jesuíno brought in many, many highlights and the main details, but I think it's worth mentioning that the consistency of the gross margins. We've been keeping up a pace ever since the fourth quarter of 2022 when we had that first working capital improvement advance. From that moment, we had some gross margin pressure because of the stock work. But ever since we've been building this process to recover this indicator, providing more consistency, and then we had performance where we were able to overcome 21% in the next quarter and so on, the 2022 and the third quarter, and now 21.8%. So we were able to keep the performance of our gross margin. This slight reduction from 22%-21% is mainly due to the amount of store openings in the quarter. So you, we opened 12 stores in the fourth quarter, and from these 11 are cash and carries. So moving on to slide 17, 16, sorry. We have some of the numbers about operational expenses. Here, it's important to highlight that in the full year, we had a lot of consistency in this indicator. As you know, the company's been focusing a lot on prioritizing the expansion axis, working with the working capital, initiatives, and also the consistency of the gross margins and same-store sales. And when we look at 2024, no doubt at all, it's an axis that we can really go deeper into and take advantage of opportunities. We've been working on some initiatives that are very significant, and our search for efficiency is a constant focus. So I think the main issue is choosing the priorities, focus when we need to, and search for results. So, I think we're pretty stable in the full year, but in the quarter, we had a slight increase of 14.9%-15.1%. We want to highlight that the administrative expenses in the fourth quarter did pressure things a bit, especially when it comes to the expenses related to long-term incentives for the executives. If you exclude this administrative expense, it would grow 25% in the quarter, within the average of the company. Moving on to slide 17, we have the numbers about other operational revenues. Here is a number we share, especially with the revenues related to logistical expenses. In the full quarter, added up to BRL 52.7 million. The number we always highlight quarter-over-quarter, as we mentioned, between BRL 50 million and BRL 55 million in the first quarter, sorry, in the first and second quarter. Then in the third quarter, this number was around BRL 32 million, and now it's recovering those operational sources around BRL 30 million-BRL 45 million, sorry. So this is some work we started off very recently in the company. In 2023, it was our full year, our first full year with ever since we had started this initiative. And so there's definitely room for evolving and improving. And of course, it's a win-win scenario. So the suppliers also gain confidence and perceive the value of all these initiatives, and then things happen. So from then on, when it comes to some extraordinary effect, gains in the fourth quarter of 2022, we also worked on that first block of opportunities, tax opportunities related to fiscal finance tax credits. And this calculation basis was considered upon the inflow. And then in 2023, we had two different blocks, right? First, we had the increment of the PIS and COFINS upon the essential expenses of the company in the second quarter. Now in the fourth quarter, we also bring the accelerated depreciation mechanism. Essentially, these are the effects to impact the EBITDA. This impact of PIS/COFINS, you'll see in the slide up ahead, which also affects the net income mechanics. Moving on to slide 18, we have all of our numbers related to the EBITDA. Jesuíno mentioned this very well with consistency, as you all know, this process day after day, week after week. Anyways, we've been able to bring this consistency quarter over quarter. We're really happy with the graph here where we can demonstrate this on the right side. This graph demonstrates that we have the broad and one of the lowest levels of gross margins. It was only 0.25 percentage points in 2023. Very different than the curve in 2022. We bring this more into a consistency and predictability view. This is what we're searching for every day. Now moving on to slide 19, we also have the net income numbers in the group, which excluded the non-recurring effects. BRL 332 million in the quarter and BRL 1.2 billion. Here, I think the rationale is still valid, right? It's a combination of these effects, same-store sales, a gross margin, an operational expense that's pretty controlled, the revenue related to operations with suppliers that's growing. A combination of these effects really brings a level of quality into our net income. We're also going to see that the levels of leverage and debt continue quite controlled. This also helps, and it brings us more adherence towards our performance. In the chart below, we're just bringing in some more details about the non-recurring effects because the accounting net income was BRL 338 million. And here we can bring some of the non-recurring elements, as you noticed, the BRL 45 million, which are impacting the EBITDA, as I mentioned. And we also bring in the accelerated depreciation perspective of the PIS/COFINS with the BRL 31 million related to the first nine months of 2023. I think this is important to highlight because when we look at only the depreciation line, this is really affected, right, because of these effects that came in the fourth quarter. And then when you correct this, you have this normality. So moving on to the next slide, we have the numbers related to the cash cycle of the group. This is another point also that we were really happy with. So this was something that we also worked on daily, week after week. You probably remember this; in the end of 2022, it was some work to really take on this first step. After the, for the next three quarters, we were really talking about the consistency. In this fourth quarter, we can really take on this next step, right, about what this was like. This is for sure a consistency initiative. Of course, there's still opportunities when we look at 2024. But this supplier issue is something we've been discussing a lot. We know there are opportunities so that we can always preserve the quality of this partnership, the respect with our partners. We know that this needs to be a win-win scenario for everyone. So that's why we are very careful with these levels of intensity. However, I do think the results are happening, right? So when it comes to stocks, we know we have opportunities. And when it comes to receivables, the main point is electronics. But we also know that when we look at 2024, there are many opportunities for improvements as well. So with this, we close the year with 77 days against 86 in the previous quarter and 80 in the end of last year. On the next slide 21, we talk about the numbers related to cash generation in the group. So you can notice that in the quarter, the company generated almost BRL 172 million in cash. And this makes us really happy because when you look at the left side, from an operational perspective, the company has already BRL 472 million. You can see that the working capital is pretty much zero, zero, null. This is mainly because of the improvement in our cash position. When we consider the CapEx, of course, and the properties that we possibly sell, then you have a consumption of BRL 300 million additionally. When you have the net result of these two elements, you have a cash generation of BRL 172 million in the quarter. On the next slide, number 22, we've already mentioned this. We end the year with a level of leverage that's really reduced. The net debt is quite lower, a lot lower, so 0.3x net debt to EBITDA. And the company is expanding a lot. So we have an important challenge ahead. We know about the importance of control and discipline. Wilson's always very careful with the guidelines, about each budget cycle. We want to make the company always grow with its own cash generation. This has been a real important guideline for the group and our day-to-day activities. On the next slide, slide number 23, we just have some details on the CapEx. I want to remind you that in this year, we were left at a level of a net CapEx of 1.5x our EBITDA. Here, the main point are the new stores. So BRL 86 million related to this from the BRL 785 million in the years. We have 36 that are amounts related to projects in 2024, and also BRL 214 million, which are related to properties, which are possibilities for new opportunities in the future. So these are the main points we had to share initially. Now we're going to be available, of course, to hop into the Q&A. Thank you. Now we're going to mention the Q&A session. To submit a question, you must select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of the screen and choose, write your, type your question to enter the queue. So as you're announced, the request to activate your mic will appear on the screen. And then you should open it up to submit your question. So let's move on to our first question from Thiago Macruz, sell-side analyst at Itaú. Thiago, please, you may proceed. So hey guys, good morning and thanks for taking my question. I had two questions. First is about the working capital. We had important improvements in suppliers in this quarter, and there's still opportunities here in this line. But I wanted to get some more details on this. Which would be these opportunities? What can we expect? Can you explain a little more about this important advantage in our working capital? The second question is maybe a little more theoretical, which is related to services in cash and carry stores. I wanted to understand how this facilitates the cash and carry opportunity to have its own DC, right? To have these services. Would you consider that having your own DCs and using your DCs to supply your own stores are some facilitate this process of having services at the stores? Or do you think they're two different elements or factors? Well, Macruz, I'll start off with your point about the working capital. Then I'll pass the floor to Ilson and Jesuíno so that they can also talk about these topics, about services in the stores. On the working capital, we've been implementing some initiatives that are very intense ever since mid-2022 overall. I think at that moment in 2022, we were able to take on an important step, with the cash conversion cycle that was 110 days. We were able to change this, to about 80. So, that was an important step. We knew that over 2023, we would need to have more stability on these indicators because this is a process that we're constantly evolving with. We had some strong initiatives to promote awareness among our commercial teams, setting targets and goals, monitoring the performance of these goals, and then associating these goals also to short-term compensation. We had many different steps towards this topic. But what's most important here is that we considered that with the evolution of this process, the actual team started to grow in their understandings and their analysis. They start being more comfortable to take on some greater steps when it comes to the stock levels, but also when it comes to suppliers. For the supplier topic, I think this is super important because it was a really intense agenda, right, during 2022, because we had to negotiate the terms, but also we had a lot of points related to maintaining the consistency of our gross margins, but also developing some different operational budgets related to these suppliers. You can imagine that it was very intense, and no doubt at all it's going to continue to be in 2024. When we look at our numbers and our working capital numbers and compare these with the main competitors, we can see that there's an opportunity. We know that there are differences in the business opportunity, models and some challenges also related to certain regions. But the difference, so even so, is quite big. And so when we look up ahead, we're going to keep up the same pace of ongoing initiatives, for respectful negotiations with suppliers. And also when it comes to stock levels, to gain comfort and in-depth analysis, take on some steps related to this topic. And with the evolution of these analyses, we were able to find some opportunities even in the receivables. So we found that in certain markets in this new unit or new regional, we would offer 30 days more deadlines for payments and credit cards. And so there were many opportunities in this sense as well. So I think that the idea for 2024 is that we'll continue to work. I think the good news is that Ilson and Jesuíno approved a target for this. And when you approve this target, of course, this comes into the weekly monitoring of the team and the action plan to be negotiated. And this is also part of the short-term compensation. So we are very confident about how we're going to be maintaining and evolving in this topic in a very respectful way, respecting our commercial relationship with suppliers. Well, Túlio, just one point here on your presentation. I wanted to get into Macruz's question, right? I thought this was a very interesting question. I took note of certain points in your question about services. We have our full team, me, Jesuíno, we always do, we've been defending services for many, many years, ever since we began, right? So, since we started off with retail, and then after we moved on to cash and carry, we tried to find a balance point. These services are super important because for the higher income public, they lack a level of service. We're trying to find some way or some means to service this public. So, of course, not all of the cash and carry stores will be able to have this level of service, but we need to have some rigorous research done. We have a team that's very dedicated to this and to these research initiatives. We also have a team that's dedicated and has been prepared over the years to supply these services in-house. We also evolved in this cash and carry store. It's really important, Macruz, that you can see in a store like this one in Olinda, we have the Emporium area, right, where we have the deli cold cuts, the wine cellars, other services. We have also food options and ready food that's really diversified. So it's like you're going to sell on a Sunday 1,000 pizzas, let's say, that are ready for consumption or pre-made. We also have an important differential, right? So we have like the big pastel. It's like a fried pastry that's very traditional in Brazil. We also have like a bakery that's special, an emporium. And so we'll be working with these different products. But of course, for this purpose, Macruz, we must have a unique logistical service, right? Because for a store like this, you're going to operate with 5,000 or 6,000 SKUs more, beyond that. And you need to have a commercial team that's ready and trained, which is not just a buyer that's going to buy commodities or that's going to buy a bazaar or some special beer. So, or sushi materials, for example, or special wines. We have many different services that need to really be supplied by a logistical service. And we need to have this ready at our DC, concentrated, and ready to go to the stores. And as we open up more stores, then we'll have the critical volume we need. And over time, well, initially, this is going to be a weight, weigh on the logistical costs. But we'll always search for a balance point, right? Because, we need to have the necessary balance between this point so that the topic can be balanced. And we can search for loyalty, of course, bringing in revenue. And another very important point we consider is because these services have a different, a separate P&L. They're measured, separately. And so each one needs to provide, their results. Excellent, guys. Thank you so much for the answers. Thank you, Thiago, for your question. Now our next question comes from João Soares, the sell-side analyst at Citi. João, please, you may proceed. Thank you, guys, and congratulations on the results. I have some points I wanted to explore with you. First, I wanted to hear about the expansion a bit of the cash and carry operation. We looked at some numbers with the expansion of the sales areas and the number of units you open. And these units have a smaller area, right? When we, according to our numbers, of course, correct us if we're wrong. But if this is right, could you explore this a little bit more and understand this new area? Is there some strategic change? We understand that, of course, you have the services and, not sure exactly how we can get into this topic, but just about this a bit. And then, some of the most accounting-related topics we wanted to discuss. First, Túlio, I think you even talked about the depreciation a bit, if I'm not mistaken. But if you could discuss this dynamic, right, the sequential drop and the depreciation. And then the second point is about the receivables, right? You talked about the opportunities. And I wanted to understand if in this quarter, besides electronics, you had any other point that would explain this increase in the terms for the receivables. Well, about the expansion, João Soares, we've been searching for ways to bring projects that we're researching to have the right size considering the revenue we've researched. So we try to balance out the services, the size of the store, if it's going to service a city, multiple cities, etc. So we've really been searching for this balance because we have this CapEx cost and we want to have this balanced out. And we need to make sure that we'll have this tier that's also balanced. Well, João, about the depreciation topic, as I mentioned here, the non-recurring effect is related to the peaceful things credit and accelerated depreciation. So just so you can identify this, it's related to the it goes beyond 2017. And it considers the equipment related. And then here, how did we consider this, right? Well, the number we reported as depreciation in the quarter was BRL 24,736. And in the third quarter, it had been BRL 59,994. In the second quarter, BRL 58,607. So when it leaves the 59 level to 24,700, why does this happen? Well, because we took on BRL 40 million related to this peaceful things credit. From this amount that was considered in the fourth quarter, BRL 8 million are related only to the fourth quarter. The 31,700 that appears in this chart as a non-recurring effect refer to the. And these are the elements, considering the PIS/COFINS credit. So if we didn't have this dynamic, then the depreciation we had considered where we had BRL 58,700 and BRL 59,900, it would move on to 65 and 42, which would be the BRL 40 million of non-recurring effect with the BRL 21,736 that we reported. So the combination of these elements would be 65.42. So here, I think that there's this disclosure of the depreciation mechanic or mechanisms about the receivables. Here, it's an important point here where you consider the increase of receivables, especially in the fourth quarter, where you have an effect in the different mechanisms. You see the performance of growth was also very strong. So we also have been working on this topic, with seasonal events such as Christmas, New Year's, and even Black Friday. And also some receivables related to budgets and income from suppliers also. So it's a combination of all these factors, right, jointly. Okay, very thanks. Very clear. Thank you, Túlio. And thank you, everyone, for the answer. So thanks, João, for your question. Our next question is from Vinícius Strano, the sell-side analyst at UBS. Vinícius, please, you may proceed. Thank you. Hey, guys. Good morning, everyone. And thanks for taking my question. My first question here is on the side of expenses, right? How are you looking at possible investment needs for logistics, creating some regional offices? I think this was a point. How are you looking at all of this for 2024? If you could talk about the opportunities to be capturing the operational leverage up ahead. Another question is also in the compensation effect for the executives. If this is something we should consider during the fourth quarter, or if it's something that's more phased out over the next quarters, etc., so that we can understand the baseline to project these expenses. The second question is about investment subventions, right? So if you could talk about the company's positioning about this tax issue with the subventions, and if you could also talk about possible initiatives to mitigate this impact. So these are the main questions we have. Would you want to answer this? Well, I think Vinícius can clarify this. Great question because we invested a lot during the last few years in logistics and all of the different states. We've been discussing this, and we really invested in offices, administrative roles. This structure is already set. Of course, we understand that there could be more expansion. But the idea is that from this side, we would not need to have major impacts on this now because this is already established. We obviously adjust, but the most intense part of the investment is already done. So that's pretty much it, and I hope that was clear. Now, if you want to answer about the leverage and operations. So about the during 2022 and 2023, also dedicated to expanding in new regions, etc. So when they made this decision for this expansion, they knew it would bring short-term pressure, when it comes to profitability. And of course, you need to develop this logistical structure, management structure, and support. and so now, we have the central mechanisms developed, and, there's always stuff to do, of course. But from the moment when we, kind of fill in this region with more stores and dilute these expenses, and consequently help with the, result about this region. So we're super excited, and we understand that 2021, 2022, and 2023 were the moments where we had the most pressure for profitability coming from this expansion, phase. And from now on, we're really going to take advantage of the store maturity, keeping up with the same level of intensity of the new store opening. So obviously, we're going to add more levels. We're going to increase profitability. But this is kind of what we're thinking about now, João. But as we add on to the other questions, especially related to the subvention, of course, whenever you're challenged, you find opportunities, right? So when we planned 2024, this was a main topic, right? Searching for efficiencies, residue, and oil. So Sandro, who, they all worked strongly towards this topic. And yeah, it's really about thinking about efficiency in all segments. So of course, part is more mathematical with a natural leverage, but there's also some opportunities that are being left on the table still. So when you grow very fast, it's normal sometimes to focus on the core business and the expansion. But over time, it really becomes important to look in-house and reflect on this. This would be combining this issue with the operational leverage and the search for new efficiencies. When it comes to expenses, of course, this is the new topic in the organization. It was the first year where the company really performed this mechanism. And so we were also preparing internally for all of this, part with the controls and accountability and with this, done in the fourth quarter. The idea, of course, now is that we'll be able to do this quarter over quarter. And so about the subvention topic for investments and possible initiatives, as you all know, this was the central topic for us here ever since mid last year. But now I think we have a lot of clarity, and some of these other measures. With this provisional measure becoming a law, the subvention that was not taxed before is now started being taxed with the PIS/COFINS, income tax, and social contributions of 9%. So when you look at all of this and these effects in the subvention levels, you would reduce the company's results by about 38.5%. So if we didn't do anything about it, 38 would become 100% downwards. But from then on, you're going to start working on these countermeasures, and you start rethinking about this with the entire planning process. So you can see this issue with the accumulated losses that we're going to be working on throughout 2024. No doubt at all, this is an important measure. And besides this accumulated loss, we also have the interest on equity. And up until then, the company did not perform the distribution of these interest on capital. Most of it was on subvention, but now it can't be. So now the interest on equity is really bringing on important efficiency for the company. Of course, there are some other elements coming from the provisional measure, but they have very limited impact. So I think a combination of these effects, and of course, then you have another topic that we're also working on, which is the SUDENE and SUDAM agreements. We have industrial operations, and we also have industrial transformation operations. So SUDENE and SUDAM are two topics we're looking at. So when you combine all of these factors, then we estimate that, despite the results of the company being dropped by 38.5%, they should be reduced by maybe 16% only. This is the base scenario. So we're, of course, understanding all of the mechanisms, and of course, we're going to have more or less of this, but we are super comfortable with the base scenario. And when we look at this gap, then it's really about what I mentioned, when it comes to efficiency, productivity. I think Jesuíno and Ilson had a brilliant idea of really having an organizational, internal event to demonstrate to all of the company's leadership how significant the impact will be with the tax topics to make the leaders aware of the size of our challenge and engage everyone as we search for efficiencies, think about ways to extract more value, so that we can continue with generating value more and more. So just to reinforce this, Sandro, and sorry, Túlio, it's a good point is that we have a lot of signs and ways to search for efficiency. So, as you mentioned, we had this event where each leader in each area had really defined targets to search for more efficiency. So this is going to be a really important point, right? Reinforcing a bit of what you said. Okay, thank you for the answers. Our next question is from Tales, sell-side analyst at Safra. Tales, please, you may proceed. Hi, good morning, everyone. I think most of my questions are already answered, but I just had one point. I was curious about which is the same-store sales performance, which was a lot stronger than your peers. We saw the food inflation pretty stable, so I wanted you guys to talk about a little bit of what caused this strong performance in the same-store sales. And also understand how we should look at the, income from, the corporate funds. And, I wanted to understand a bit of the space or the room we have, with this topic. And so when it comes to same-store sales, it really is a number that's really impressive. It really calls a lot of our attention. And as I mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, we're really happy because we've been able to, throughout the last year, keep up with this number. And especially this year, and especially the fourth quarter, which are very similar. The fourth quarter, Tales, what had your percent to this growth? Came from share gains, right, and volume. So Sandro shared this a little bit. Price has a slight drop, but if you look at this, all of the different channels were really levered by volume. So I understand that our model, Tales, and our proposal has been contributing a lot to this because it's a different model. And I also consider that most of this is due to our team's dedication towards achieving this because it's something we really experienced daily. And so this is something that we search for daily in our meetings. It's one of the points we most discuss. So generally, we can understand that the model contributes a lot. And of course, the focus, this, and the team understanding its importance as well, has really been ensuring that we're able to deliver this level of quality. So with this, Túlio has mentioned also that, we have been understanding that there's really a pathway to search for more of this, right? So we, agree and believe in this. And, so it's really important to, discuss this, although it may be difficult to share the exact numbers, Tales, but we do believe that it is possible. There's room for this, and we're going to continue searching for ways, to evolve in this direction. I hope I answered this clearly. Yes, very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tales, for your question. Our next question is from Ruben Couto, our sell-side analyst at Santander. Ruben? Hi, good morning, everyone. Just a quick point here on subventions. The offsets were clear, as you described. But from a pricing perspective, have you guys seen competition transfer part of this effect to pricing? Could this become some kind of a benefit with greater competitive advantages on your side? I just wanted to understand how this will be discussed. Just about the Northeast region, we had some important evolution. Now I wanted to hear a bit of an update on where you consider we can keep this margin level, keeping this balance, and in line with this topic still. So Sandro talked about the market share evolution. What comes into this calculation? I thought the share was a little high for the amount of stores in the region. This increment, in the share, is it coming from a same-store acceleration in the beginning of the year, or is it just the effect with adding more stores and the maturity itself? Well, Ruben, thank you for the question. Now, about the subvention topic, this discussion, with being able to transfer this to prices or not, is an interesting point to reflect on because if you consider the full impact of this change in the law and the reduction in the results from 38.5, as I mentioned, it would be a transfer in the prices of about 2%. So, of course, the countermeasures are going to help a lot, as I mentioned now recently, just a bit ago. But I wanted to understand if it's possible to transfer this to pricing. It seems that the topics have been gotten a little confused because in the beginning of this year, we've also seen many states increase ICMS tax rates. We've seen this in basically all of the states. So effects kind of get mixed up sometimes. But this has been a process, really fitting this into the prices. This is something we've been noticing as a process. It's so important more and more. So we've been very careful with being transparent towards our suppliers when it comes to cost compositions, negotiating in a very transparent way. Of course, in markets where we are more relevant, naturally, the price transfers tend to have a higher potential, such as Maranhão, Pará, Piauí. Then in other regions, for example, you'll have maybe a bigger challenge. So it's just about a process you must build, and we have been building this throughout the year. It's not a small challenge. It's a lot. We have tax commercial challenges, efficiency challenges also to offset certain gaps. So no doubt, 2024 started off booming in the sense. And all of these elements, right, not only the price transfer topic, but all of the countermeasures represent an important agenda that must be worked during 2024. And we're super confident about the development of this agenda in the overall year. So when it comes to performance in the North and Northeast regions, I'm just going to start off here, and then after I'll pass the floor on to Sandro and Jesuíno. But beyond, of course, we're not going to give you guys any guidance, but we've been very careful with, from the moment when we gained any kind of level of relevance, or when we started having 7 stores over a year, we started to demonstrate the performance in the EBITDA margin. And then from every quarter onwards, we've been demonstrating this and gaining more relevance, right? So with this amount of stores. So we ended the first quarter with an EBITDA margin level of 6.8%. And of course, these are processes that involve maturity. We're learning with these. We estimate that it should probably be 4 years long. And we also estimate that the level of the EBITDA margin would be, high quality, but maybe not exactly the same as what we have in Pará and Maranhão. If we're able to achieve this, great. We'll work towards this. But it also involves another discussion, which is the maturity time. We're learning with this curve. We're really happy with the 6.8% EBITDA margin. We know that there's some stores that have been around for two years, others only one year. So from the third year onwards, these stores really gain EBITDA margin, close to 7.5%. Then business would be excellent, right? Because, you can see the level of returns really high. And, that's what we're working towards, right? So the agenda has been very strong. And in the beginning of the year, it's really been one of our main focuses for planning and profitability in this new region. And, I think now I'll pass the floor on to Sandro and Jesuíno for their initial remarks. So I'll let Sandro answer. But I just wanted to mention, Ruben, that, we think this share is low. You thought it was high. Well, we thought it's low. So I'm going to pass this on to Sandro. Yeah, I thought it was pretty high considering the number of stores, but that's pretty much it, right? So, compared to what Túlio mentioned, I have nothing else to add on when it comes to the EBITDA margin evolution. But it's really just this maturing process. We're learning as a team, and I understand that we have been able to reap good fruit. And about the share, and Ruben, there's part of the stores from its own store network, conquering these 39 stores, and part comes from the store opening. So reinforcing what Jesuíno mentioned, we consider that we're far from what we need and imagine for the region. But, of course, this includes our expansion, and part of this is also coming from a same-store performance. That's quite interesting, right? So when we compare this with the market, looking at the average number in the company, this is pretty much reflected in the expansion as well. So we have the same-store performance that pulls this number upwards. So, just to add on to this, Ruben, and make you, make this even more clear, this share is not only from the expansion, it's from the share for Grupo Mateus in the Northeast of all stores. So with this, we include Maranhão. And so all of the new stores that are audited, we have that share. So we want to just mention that that's really the, it's not only the new stores, it's the full network, right? So that makes sense. Thank you guys so much. Okay, great. Thanks, Ruben, for your question. Our next question is from João Soares, a sell-side analyst at Citi. João, please, you may proceed. Okay, guys, thanks. Sorry for that. I just have one last point here that people have asked about, just about their performance as well, if you could talk about this a little bit. All right. João, I think here, as you all know, we mentioned that there were many challenges for the company and the tax front, structural challenges really. And of course, we had some signs of development in this plan for tax topics that will naturally implement throughout the year. But Pará arrival is also really related to this and has been helping us a lot. But of course, it's a step for development and deployment of all these measures that we discussed here. And alongside this, the planning team has also instigated all of the teams to search for efficiencies. And that's not only operational expenses. And that includes sales and everything. That's why we have a lot of planning required for 2024. In each of these segments, we have planning also in the working capital, in the initiatives for corporate funds with suppliers, etc. All of the main areas in the business provide challenges that we can try to use to fill in this gap caused by the tax challenges. From an operational perspective, we continue, right? It's natural that from an operational perspective, the consistency remains as the main topic. Sales also remain with a good trend for sales performance, which is very much present in January and February. Of course, the first quarter brings in very different themes when it comes to tax topics. As I mentioned, throughout the year, all of this has been addressed, from a tax perspective and operational perspective, and we're super confident. And we're sure that we'll be able to bring this tax challenge to the table and digest it appropriately. So thanks, guys, very much. Okay, thanks, João, for your question. Well, we'd like to remind you that if you need to submit any questions, you may select the Q&A icon on the bottom part of your screen and write your question to enter the queue. So we want to remind you that all of these questions should be provided at once. Since we do not have any more questions, we would like to end now with the Q&A session. So we'll move on to our final remarks of the company. Well, to end our presentation, I want to thank you all for your patience and participation. And I wanted to especially thank our team. each person, we have almost 600,000 employees. During this year of 2023, on behalf of the management and thanks to Jesuíno and Sandro, I want to thank each of the directors, each of the managers, and each of the employees that are really working at the store level, at the DCs, at the transportation for the dedication. We know that a retail company without people will not get anywhere. So we've had major initiatives, and Sandro and Jesuíno have made a big effort to work with the HR team to train these people and develop these people. And the level of expansion we have, if we don't train people, we won't get anywhere. So I want to thank you all so much. And I also want to thank you for your confidence and trust. With investors, shareholders, and banks, have been really giving us this trust. We know that this is going to be a year that's really challenging. We know that in Brazil and around the world, we are experiencing a very different moment. So as food retailers, we need to reinvent our activities daily, every hour, every day. But we're confident and calm because amidst all of these challenges and achievements we've had, we have been dedicating our time intensely to this. We know about a lot of what we need to accommodate to achieve this. But I want to tell you all that we are firm in our initiatives and work. I want to ask you all to please keep confident about our work. We're making a real big effort. So we want to continue to honor your trust. We have a strong work. All of our team at the management level has been tirelessly searching for these results. So we had major events, Jesuíno, Sandro, Túlio, and they worked with fantastic initiatives so that we could work with our leaders. And we were able to present all of our projects and all of our needs. And each one had the mission of searching for efficiency. And so we know that we have efficiency in all sectors with Túlio and all the financial team. So with these new searches for tax planning, we have some clear signs also of possibilities we should search for. And Jesuíno and Sandro have major challenges. And so we are dedicated to this, each buyer, each buyer store operator and sectors. And they're searching for this, and struggling towards this. So I want to thank you all, our employees and investors that really believe in our work. We're working every day to really deserve your trust. So thank you all so much. The earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2023 at Grupo Mateus has officially ended. The investor relations department is available to answer any possible questions. Thank you so much, participants, and have an excellent day, everyone.