Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Pague Menos and Extrafarma's conference call to discuss the results of Q2 2023. This conference call is being recorded, and the replay will be available at the company's website at ri.paguemenos.com.br, where the slide presentation is also available for download. We kindly inform that all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the conference call, and right after the company's remarks, we will open for questions when further instructions will be given. We also inform that this conference call will be conducted in Portuguese by the company's management, and that we have simultaneous translation into English by clicking on the interpretation icon. For those listening in English, you can mute the original audio at your convenience. The slide presentation will be projected in Portuguese, but the slide version, the English version of the slides is, is available at the ri.paguemenos.com.br. Before proceeding, let me mention that any forward-looking statements made during this conference call are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Pague Menos' management, as well as information currently available to the company. These forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties because they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors, analysts, and journalists should know that events relative to the macroeconomic environment, the industry, and other factors may lead to results that m- differ materially from those expressed in said forward-looking statements. Today, we have with us Mr. Mario Queiroz, CEO, Mr. Luiz Novais, CFO and Investor Relations Director, and Renato Camargo, CMO. Now, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mario Queiroz to start his presentation. Mr. Queiroz, you may proceed. Hello, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our earnings conference call for Pague Menos and Extrafarma. We will be discussing the results of quarter two, 2023. This was a very good quarter from the operational standpoint. We had a top line growth of more than 35%, looking at Pague Menos standalone, we also had a very significant growth rate, over 11%. Now, as for our EBITDA, we also had double-digit growth. Looking at Extrafarma in its first quarter of positive EBITDA. We had a significant reduction of our administrative expenses due to the capture of the synergies with Extrafarma. Our digital channels grew more than 60% this quarter, and our private label, when we look at Extrafarma, more than doubled year-over-year, and is getting close to the level of share that Pague Menos' private label has. We had strong growth of our Health Hub. Nearly 9% of all the clients that visited our stores used some of the services of our Health Hub, and this is considering that the pandemic is over. Renato will explain the importance of these numbers. The type of customer that is loyal to Clinic Farma has a higher ticket than that of regular customers, and unfortunately, due to the high interest rates and the level of leverage of the company, particularly due to the acquisition of Extrafarma, financial expenses are corroding the operational results of the company. To address this, yesterday, we announced BRL 4 million in private capital, which will bring our expenses to a more comfortable level. This is a demonstration of trust from our shareholders, which subscribed to 82% of this private capital volume. Now I'm going to turn the conference over to Mr. Luiz Novais to talk about our financial results, and I'll be back for the Q&A session. Thank you. Novais. Good morning, everyone. Let's start on page four. We have our highlights. Let's start with the highlights of Q2. You already heard some of them from Mario, and I'll give you some more details. Starting on the left side of the slide, we had some important operational advancements. In sales, we had an increase of nearly 36% consolidated, and 11% increase consolidated, and very good level for Pague Menos standalone as well. We have been positively capturing the synergies. We finished Q1 with the next IFRS 16 EBITDA that was positive. Looking at the capture of synergies, we have nearly R$100 million of incremental EBITDA for the company. On the right side of the slide, we have some strategic and important advances in our Health Hub and digital channels. You're going to hear more about this from Renato. The market share, also, we had positive news. It's the second consecutive quarter where we have increases in the growth of our market share. We reached 6% in Brazil. The last box here, you already heard from Mario, and we also communicated yesterday, very relevant fact, which is a point of attention of the market. For three consecutive years, we had very good operational results, but yes, the leverage level of the company was, was slightly higher because of the acquisition of Extrafarma. Now with this increased private capital, private capital, we will address this point and decrease the pressure on the operational results of the company, and we can resume expansion in the next year with a commitment of, from 82% of our shareholders who will adhere to our private capital increase. This is a very healthy combination of same-store sale, 5.9%, and new stores contributing with 5.7% of our growth, with a total of 11.6% growth for the quarter. On the right side, we also see the positive evolution of our mature stores, reaching nearly 690 per store. Here we have the very positive performance of our newest 200 stores, which were inaugurated in 2021 and 2022. They are within their expected maturation curve, and they're approaching 80% of their sales potential, which proves the efficacy of the expansion model that we have been adopting since 2021. We're very happy with these cohorts of stores. This result is also driven not just by new stores, but also older store, because of the lower stockout levels, balancing out the stockout levels that we had in the two previous years. After the pandemic, this has been balanced, and the CRM actions are also greatly contributing to increase the base of active customers of the company. On page number six, we see the sales of Extrafarma. We had same store sale, same store sale of 4.5%, same-store is still modest. When we look at the migration waves in terms of supply and systems, the right side charts are very exciting. The first migration wave that happened from September to November last year, we had nearly 13% same-store sales for these stores, Bahia, Pernambuco and Tocantins, and the second wave is close to 5%, and the third wave, we still have lower numbers. We're very positive about the actions that we have implemented for Extrafarma, reinforcing our stocks and CRM actions to gain loyalty of our customers. We believe that we will have a gradual increase, exponential increase, in the coming period for Extrafarma. We reached R$ 481,000 average sales per store, which is much higher than what we had one year ago. We're very optimistic, and we believe that with the evolution of Extrafarma, not just for sales, but P&L as a whole, as you, as you're going to hear later on. In market share, we're growing organically and inorganically. Of course, that in the North and Northeast, this is driven by the inorganic movement of the company. We have very relevant share in these two markets, 19.2% in the Northeast and 15.7% in the North. We have two more regions that are growing importantly, the Midwest and the Southeast. In the Midwest, we've reached 4.3% share. Same stores and new stores are having excellent performance in this region, so we're very happy with our performance in the Midwest. In the Southeast, we're also very positive, particularly with our digital channel, which is gaining share quarter after quarter. We have reached 1.7% in this market, and we're very happy with this performance. On the right side, we see our components of growth, according to IQVIA, both for same stores and new stores. We're very in line with the market, and we see a very favorable environment to grow our market share. Now, with this increase in our private capital and resuming the expansion of the company in the next year, the newly inaugurated stores already have a positive performance. New stores have a positive performance. We have a very favorable environment to increase our market share in the coming periods. On page eight, we see our sales mix. We continue to have very strong performance in two particular categories, generics and hygiene and beauty. They are growing above the average of the company. We reached 25.4% for health and personal care. The two categories are growing really well, and this is due to the assortment, the work that we're doing in assortment and pricing for these categories. When they grow, they favor our growth margin. They help us boost our gross margin. On the right side, we see the evolution of the same categories. For Extrafarma, we didn't have any major changes. On page nine, another very positive piece of news, which is the result of... Which shows that what we believed when we acquired Extrafarma is now becoming a reality. We grew 15.7% in our private label sales in Pague Menos, and we more than doubled the share of private label for Extrafarma, reaching 5.6% of the total sales of Extrafarma. Exponential growth in the past two quarters. We continue with a positive outlook. We have a very nice pipeline of launches planned for the next periods. This is helping us boost our gross margin. On page number 10, we have the, our gross for profit and gross margin. Here we have a very strong comparison basis compared with last year, where we had the readjustment of 11%, and this year we had a readjustment of 5.6% on average. This already means a drop in our gross margin of 100 basis points, but we could minimize the impact of this reduction. For Pague Menos, we've finished quarter two with 30.7% gross profit, and in Extrafarma, 32.5% gross margin in quarter two. Very positive news. Consolidated gross profit, 31%. This pre-price increase effect was slightly lower. There's some pressure from our digital channel, but we could boost our margin with the generic and health and personal care categories, which whose margin is evolving really well. Selling expenses, also positive news. We were able to dilute 10 basis points compared with quarter two last year for standalone. A very relevant reduction compared with quarter one, 80 basis points, that we had. announced in quarter one that we would invest more in marketing, that we had to invest more in marketing in quarter one, due to the seasonal campaigns that were planned for the year. When we isolate the effect of same stores, our selling expenses grew only 2.1% in same stores, which helps us control our expenses, control our costs, and we see an evolution, a positive evolution in our expenses this year because of the drug inflation of 5.6% in April, and the IPCA around 4%, the IGP-M is negative. We see a positive trend of dilution of our expenses in the second half of the year. Contribution margin as a combination of gross profit and selling expenses, we finished the quarter with 11.8% consolidated. It's important to mention that we consolidated Extrafarma starting quarter three last year, so we don't have a good comparison base for quarter two last year. On the right side, we see a reduction of 70 pips for Pague Menos standalone, 12.7 to 12, due to the reduction in the gross margin, due to the pre-price increase effect. In Extrafarma, we see a positive evolution reaching 10.8% contribution margin. Here, we were already able to eliminate two-thirds of the contribution gap between Pague Menos and Extrafarma. When we acquired the company, it was 3.3, and now it's 1.2 percentage point. We're very optimistic about the evolution of Extrafarma, and we believe that one year from now, we will be much closer, or we will even have equalized the contribution margin for both banners. On page 13, also good news. In the quarter for G&A expenses, we had an important reduction, both for standalone, Pague Menos standalone and also consolidated. This is also due to the capture of synergies from Extrafarma. We are a larger company now, we can better dilute our expenses. We also had a reduction in our administrative structure of about 200 headcounts right after the acquisition of Extrafarma. This means we finished Q2 with for Pague Menos standalone at 2.5% G&A expenses and consolidated 2.7%. Q2 had a positive effect due to the sales effect. We had a slightly higher level of sale than in the other quarters of the year, so we don't think that 2.7 should be a stable number until the end of the year. It will be closer to 2.5, but we are seeing positive results in terms of reduction of our G&A expenses for Pague Menos standalone and consolidated. On page 14, we have our adjusted EBITDA. On the IFRS 16 page, it reduced from 6% to 5.7%, so 30 basis points. We were able to dilute this effect with the reduction of our expenses, a 50 basis points reduction of our expenses. The EBITDA level is very close to that of last year. We had record-breaking numbers last year, last year for our EBITDA. For Extrafarma, we say that we went from water to grape juice. We still have a significant way ahead until we get to wine, but we had a positive evolution in our EBITDA margin. A complete turnaround with a company that is now operationally positive and generating cash. As I said, two slides ago, we believe that one year from now, we will be much closer to the margin levels of Extrafarma, of Pague Menos with Extrafarma, and consolidated also will show positive numbers in the coming periods. On page 15, we have more details about the synergies being captured. In our understanding, we are two quarters ahead in terms of the capture of synergies, and we have an annual R$100 million increment in EBITDA, which is close to the potential that we announced of R$180 million-R$200 million. Last quarter, we finished the most critical part of the integration in terms of systems and stores, supply. We also closed 23 Extrafarma stores, and now in July, another nine were closed. We are finishing the cleanup process for the Extrafarma store. We already switched the brand of 11 stores from Extrafarma to Pague Menos. Some of these stores had a more than 40% increase in their sales, and we should have more brand conversions until the end of the year to boost the capture of synergies from this new company that we acquired. On the right side, the BRL 100 million, the largest part of the BRL 100 million come from the G&A expenses, then the gross margin. 30% of this capture come from the gross margin, which is based on commercial conditions and the evolution of private labels. The other two elements here, logistics and sales increment. Sales increment is still at a low level, more and more this levels, but we're very optimistic, as we talked about in the beginning of the presentation. We're very optimistic about our migration waves, we're very positive about the capture of synergies from Extrafarma. On page 16, we have the adjusted net income. We went, we went from minus a positive R$56 million to a minus R$10 million. For Pague Menos standalone, we had a variation of nearly R$50 million, which is mainly due to the higher level of leverage of the company. This was strategic and important, as we just heard, the acquisition of Extrafarma. We're very happy with the acquisition, but of course, there was a negative impact on our financial expenses. Which was already being addressed with the improvements in our cash cycle, operational improvements on the level of indebtedness of the company. We were working to normalize and normalize this cash cycle, and now the increased private capital will accelerate the reduction of our leverage. We tend to have to see better results in the coming quarters. On the right side, we see the net income bridge. We still have negative results, close to BRL 19 million, but as we heard in the previous slides, we are also seeing a positive evolution, where we will have better results in the coming periods. On page 17, on cash cycle and indebtedness, as you heard, in Q1, we had higher pressure in our average stock times because this was about logistic integration with Extrafarma. We already had a normalization of nine days in the average stock time, so this corresponds to about BRL 300 million of demobilized stock for this more acute integration phase. We still have another five days to reduce, which will be implemented in the coming period. This reduction is not seen yet in the average payment terms. We tend to increase three or more days in our average payment terms, the reflect of the PME and PMP combination will help in the operational cash generation of the company. We already started to recompose our customer base. We went from nine to 11 days in terms of the customer payment terms, we are near our total customer payment term. We talked about the stock time and the payment terms, this is also accelerated by the capital. 13.1% net debt over EBITDA. Operationally, we would now start a reduction cycle, with the fundraising, we will get to a net debt of 2.2 times, next year, 1.7 times net debt over EBITDA, as we had announced previously. Finally, here we have more details about the private capital increase. This was a point of attention. We were being alerted by the market, we were already aware that due to the acquisition of Extrafarma, we had a higher leverage level. Now we are addressing this point by reinforcing our capital structure, which will help us reduce our financial expenses and allow for the resumption of investments and opening of new stores and infrastructure investments. As I said, we have a payment market now to increase our market share in the future, we already have commitment from 82% of our shareholders to participate in the offer. We announced BRL 400 million, it can get to BRL 533 million with a subscription bonus, which can be used by the shareholders that adhere to this capital increase. I stop here, now I turn it over to Renato, who is going to talk more about our Health Hub and digital channels. Thank you, Luiz. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here to talk about two very strong levers of the company, our Health Hub and our omnichannel strategy. I'll start with one that was on the spotlight in the last few days, due to Anvisa approving the point-of-care testing at drug stores and pharmacies. I'm going to talk about our Health Hub. Let me go back in time to explain a little bit about our, our strategy and how far we've come, and how since 2016, we were pioneers in implementation of this service in our stores. At the time, our goal was to have a convenience model. Bringing walking customers to the out-of-pocket model. In 2020, we were 100% prepared, and once again, we pioneered the offer of point-of-care tests in Brazil. After the COVID pandemic in 2021, 2022, the COVID tests decreased, but customers found out that in Pague Menos stores, we already had more than 60 services being offered, so they started consuming these services, particularly high ticket patients, which are chronic patients and polypharmacy patients. In 2022, we started to pivot our convenience model into a recurrence model, so we went to a B2B2C model with partnerships with large companies to bring their employees to be tested and vaccinated in our stores, and also partners in health plans to offer primary care services. We went from the convenience model to the recurrence model, our focus is to become a one-stop care shop. We became a reference as a one-stop shop to ensure the loyalty of these customers, who, as I said, are high-ticket customers. This was a very well-implemented strategy, which brought us very good results. We have nearly 1,077 pharmacy clinics, Clinic Farmácias. Before, we only had vaccination or injectables clinics, and now it's becoming a complete Health Hub. Adherence to our health clinics, has reached a very satisfactory number of nearly 9%. Of the total customers that visit our stores that have the Clinic Farmácia service, 88.6% acquired at least one service in our Clinic Farmácia. You can see the quarter over quarter comparison.... showing that we have very good execution, very strong focus, and a very good adherence of our customers in connection with the strategy. Conversion, conversion means the total customers that bought at least one product after receiving a service in our Clinic Farma. In the last quarter, it was 50%, now it's 75%. Quarter-over-quarter, it was a 25 percentage point increase in the total number of customers that after receiving services at Clinic Farma, bought at least one product in our stores. This reinforces why are we supporting this strategy? Because this is our main customer. We're talking about polypharmacy customers and high-ticket customers, as you're going to see on slide number 22. Who is this customer? As I said, of the total customer, it's 8.6% of our customer base. 30% of these customers are heavy users. What is a heavy user customer? A heavy user customer is customer that spend up to six times more than a regular customer. We have 4.3 times more frequency, more frequent visits in our store, and the average spending is six times higher. That's why we're going to invest more and more in this strategy, because we believe that by gaining the loyalty of this high-ticket customer, this heavy user customer, we will generate more and more value to the company, and we will be able to keep the loyalty of these customers, which is our ultimate goal. On the next slide, we have our omnichannel strategy. We have nearly 61% growth in the revenue of our digital channels. These results are consistent, quarter after quarter and quarter, and quarter over quarter, when we compare, we've showed that consistently, our digital channels are growing. The Pague Menos brand, although it seems that it's moving horizontally, it had a very strong growth because it is our strategy with the Extrafarma going from 3% to 8% share. This means that we are being able to consolidate the two banners, which was our initial strategy, reducing costs, increasing our capillarity, increasing the number of stores that can deliver products, and reducing the delivery time. That's why we had this integration. Extrafarma goes from three to nearly 8%. Pague Menos, it looks like it's moving horizontally, but it's not the case because Pague Menos' customers are receiving from Extrafarma store and vice versa. When you look at the consolidated numbers, the intermediate line here, we went from 8.3% to 11.4%. This focused on profitability, because when we look at our digital channels, we see that we could work on the channels that are much more productive, faster, and cheaper for the company. I stop here, I hand the conference again to Mr. Mario Queiroz. Thank you, Renato. Thank you, Novais. Now we can open the follow-up floor for questions. Thank you. We will now open the floor for questions. We will take questions from investors and analysts. If you have a question, please press raise hand. If at any point your question has been answered, you can remove yourself from the line by clicking on the same button. Please wait while we pull for your questions. The first question is from Vitor Fuziharo, Santander. Mr. Fuziharo, you can open your microphone now. Good morning, Mario. Thank you for taking my question. Can you please tell us more about the performance gap between Pague Menos and Extrafarma? The increase in the profitability of the Extrafarma operation is clear, but can you talk more about the short term, if you see an potential increase in the sales of Extrafarma stores? The second question is about the synergies. Do you see any possibility of any changes in the guidance that you had provided us with previously? Thank you, Victor, for your question. I'll start with your second question. We consider that we are actually ahead of what was planned, this is just an anticipation of the volume of the synergies that we were expecting to capture. There's no change. There's no possibility of changing the guidance in terms of the volume of synergies. Next quarter, we will probably make some adjustments because of the inflationary level, the inflation rate, just like we did last year. What we see is that we are being able to implement all the actions. We are implementing them actually faster than planned, that's why we're capturing the synergies before what was planned. The volume of synergies will not change. It's just an anticipation. Of course, that time is money. If we can do it faster, it's an increased value for the company. Novais, I don't know if you have anything to add. As for your first question, we still see potential to increase the average sale of Extrafarma. We implemented a lot of actions relative to assortment. As Novais showed you, we had waves of migration, particularly when it comes to supplies. We had to supply the DCs of Extrafarma because these DCs were not just supplying the stores, but they were also supplying to Pague Menos stores. In order to do this, we couldn't immediately switch and have Extrafarma's DC supplying Pague Menos' stores in the lane, which already had a better level of service, so that would be harmful to these stores. We had to first ensure the supply from Extrafarma's DC, and then migrate the stores. Now, regarding the migration, the migration, of course, had an impact on the stores. As you heard, the first wave, which was Pernambuco, Bahia, and Tocantins, we already have a very good level of performance. Nearly 3% things were dealt. The latest wave, which was Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Maranhão, we're still seeing modest numbers. They still suffered this quarter because of the systems migration and also the supply migration, but we still see potential for growth. We're talking about a nearly BRL 200,000 difference in the average sales. Pague Menos is BRL 688, and Extrafarma, BRL 488. Of course, there is potential to increase the average sales in Extrafarma stores. I would just add, Vitor, that when we acquired Extrafarma, at that time, we were not considering that Extrafarma would reach the average sales of Pague Menos in the short and midterm. The level of R$ 500,000 is already very close, and there's also some upside compared with the model that we established when we acquired Extrafarma. The capture of synergies comes from the dilution of our expenses. We still have some space to improve our margins and to increase sales. The R$ 200,000 gap is more in the mid to long term, because we need to reattract the customers, and this is more in the mid and long term. The potential synergies is already at the level or above the level expected. Thank you. The next question is from Danniela Eiger, she's XP Investimentos. Danniela, you can open your microphone now. Hello, good morning. Thank you for answering my question. My first question is about the Extrafarma stores. You talked about some of the migrated stores that are having good performance, so please, can you give more details about the economics of these stores and what you're expecting from them, and what you have already mapped out in terms of the next steps? Also about Extrafarma, can you please share with us your expectations in terms of closing of the year? What can we expect by the end of the year in terms of the cleanup of your stores still in 2023? My second question is about the integration. Can you please tell us more about the main levers of acceleration for this integration? You showed your curve, we can see that it's above expectations. I don't know if it's just the speed or the volume as well, but where can you see more space for acceleration, and what would be the timeline, the time frame for that? When can we expect Extrafarma's margin to be closer to the number of Pague Menos? Thank you. Thank you, Danniela. Novais, I'll leave the question about the synergies for you to answer, but I'll talk about the store conversion. We have been doing some tests and surveys, and it's very clear to us that the marketplaces of Pará, Maranhão, Amapá, and Ceará are markets where Extrafarma is very strong, particularly when we talk about branding. In the other states, we are already feeling more comfortable about the migration. We did it in Pernambuco and Bahia, four stores in each. Two stores in São Paulo, and in Paraíba, three or four stores. We plan to advance more in these states, where we already feel more comfortable about the acceptance of the migration. We will be starting our pilot, our tests, in the other states that I mentioned, Ceará, Maranhão, Amapá, and Pará. I'm sure Novais can share more about the economics, but as you heard from him, some of the stores are approaching 40% increase in their sales. As for the expenses, there's no major change. It's about the sales. That's how we're going to dilute the expenses and increase the contribution margin. Now, as for the gross margin, as you heard during the presentation, Extrafarma has more than 32% growth margin. When we look at the consolidated numbers, Extrafarma has a gross margin that is higher than that of Pague Menos, but it's about the location. Pague Menos, in the states where Extrafarma is present, the gross margin is very similar. We look at the South, Southeast, and Midwest, where Extrafarma is not present, that's where Pague Menos needs to invest more in pricing, pricing, so that's why our gross margin is lower in these states. Extrafarma's margin is higher than that of Pague Menos in these states. About the closing of stores. Well, where we still see a lot of opportunities to increase our results in Extrafarma, we have different levers here that I can mention. For example, in terms of expense dilution, there's some strong work that we have been doing, reducing our expenses with rentals. We see that the average occupations, occupancy expense of Pague Menos is much higher. We also have private label and digital channels. Extrafarma still have a lot of potential to increase the share of these elements, which will help improve the margin and the EBITDA. In terms of margin, we still see a lot of opportunity to grow this margin, because the stocks in normal conditions with Pague Menos, the turnover is not complete. We're still realizing stocks that were bought at the previous prices, more expensive prices, so there's still opportunity to improve our stocks. Store operation, also baskets team and the operations team, they're working hard to improve store operation. They're already at a very good level, there's still room to improve. We have some items relative to pricing, so we have a lot of fronts in which we can work to accelerate the capture of synergies. We still have a lot of good things that will happen in the future. In terms of closing of our stores, we closed 23 stores, Extrafarma stores. We actually closed 23 by June, and another nine in July and the start of August, and we're still planning to close some more. The numbers will be very similar to the initial plan, about 40 stores. I think I answered your question. About the synergies, will there be any changes in the guidance, considering the speed at which we're capturing the synergies? Well, as Mario answered to Victor, the guidance of R$ 275, we still believe this guidance, although we're seeing a faster pace than expected, but it's more about the timeline and not so much about the volume, at least for now. Thank you. The next question is from Mauricio Cepeda, Credit Suisse. Mr. Cepeda, you can open your microphone now. Good morning, Mario, Renato. Thank you for answering my question. I have two questions. The first is about the sales mix. We see that branded products are accounting for a smaller share of your mix. Do you have any strategy trying to maximize brands or even branded or even similar to improve the average sales per store? My second question is about your share growth metric. I see that you use the IQVIA data at the consumer level, so the CPP data, in your report, you talk about 9% year-over-year. When we compare that with the PPP, which is the pharmacy level that is communicated by ePharma and Sindusfarma, the growth is about 13%. What is causing this difference between the CPP and the PPP? Is there any difference, and what is the share by region if we consider the PPP logic? Thank you, Mauricio. Thank you for your question. Your first question, the share has to add up to 100%, so if one category increases, another one will decrease. It's not that we are minimizing our investments and strategies in branded. No, it's actually the opposite. We're investing a lot in generics. We have a lot of promotions in generics because we still have another share in generic, so there's a lot of potential, and this helps compose our gross margin. We are also investing in promotions for personal care or hygiene and personal care, which is also increasing its contribution. When these two categories increase, the other ones have to decrease. We continue to be very strong in branded drugs when we look at the Pague Menos banner in Extrafarma. There was already a gap because of assortment and availability, so they chose to invest more in generics. We continue to invest in generics with Extrafarma, but we are improving our assortment for all categories of products, and as a consequence, there was this difference in the growth. Our focus is particularly increasing the profitability and the growth margin of the company in generics, which is what we have been doing in the past quarters. As for the IQVIA question, this is the metric that we have been using for the past 12 quarters. For comparison purposes, this is the metric that we have always used. I don't know if Novais knows about the PPP base, but this is the metric that we have been using. Good morning, Mauricio. to add to what Mario said, I don't know if I understood your question right, but we didn't see any increase or decrease in the prices or discounts of the industry in retail, in terms of what is passed on to consumers. The adjustments that were passed on to retail, we were able to pass on to our final prices in April. In our metrics, there was no relevant change in terms of discounts and promotion. What we do see is that the basis will change. The institutes will update their basis for the previous period. IQVIA, in quarter two, looking at quarter two only, we saw in Pague Menos, an increase of nearly 8% when we adjust for prices, and we grew 11.6%. When these comparison bases are reviewed, we sometimes can see some distortions, but in the mid to long term, these distortions will be neutralized. In our latest report, we show the consolidated numbers for the first half of the year, and there's, the volume growth that is seen by IQVIA and Pague Menos, is more in line. What I can tell you is that we didn't see any increases or decreases in the discount rates in the industry that would justify any difference in the two methodologies that you talked about. We will continue to investigate, and if we find something, we will share with you. Okay, Mario Novais, thank you. The next question is from Clara Lustosa, from Itaú BBA. Clara, you can open your microphone now. Hello, everyone. Thank you for answering our question. My first question is about your private capital increase. This seems to be very important to accelerate the deleveraging of the company. I want to know how you're thinking. Of course, that it will depend on the final amount, but I know you have other levers to deleverage the company. We're also now starting to see the interest rates decrease. What do you plan in terms of new openings? You talked about resuming your new openings next year, but are you expecting any new openings this year? I also want to understand if with this increase in your private capital, do you think you will have addressed the-- your plan to open 120 new stores next year and reach the guidance of 1.7x that you established by the end of this year? A very quick follow-up about Extrafarma. I think you have the very interesting data that you're communicating in your release about same-store sales due to the takeover waves. I want to understand, the stores that were migrated later, are they reaching a curve that is similar to that of the first migrations? Thank you. Thank you, Clara, for your questions. As for your first question, we will maintain the guidance of 120 stores next year. I don't think we will open more stores. It's not impossible, but it will be difficult to open more stores this year. Because the process of opening new stores takes 7-9 months. What we are starting now, we will only inaugurate in January or February, unless we have stores that only require renovations or maybe a store in a shopping mall, which takes less time. I don't think we will be opening a new store this year. Our guidance is for next year, and we maintain the guidance of 120 for next year. What we could do is maybe anticipate or expand the banner migration. Some of the Extrafarma stores have a potential to switch to Pague Menos, so that we could accelerate. Novais, I don't know if you want to talk about the performance of our migration waves. Thank you, Clara, for your question. Yes, we do see that the behavior of the latest migrations is very similar with that of the third migration. We're very positive with the sales evolution of the different migration waves, and not just due to the sales component. As we said, we are also positive about the other P&L lines. We already increased our sales a lot. We still have room to increase even more, but considering what was planned, we're very close to what was planned for this time of the integration. We're now working on stock turnover and continue to decrease our expenses to advance capturing our more EBITDA. We believe that from now on, the increment in our sales base and the reattraction of customers will happen gradually, step by step. We won't be seeing any leaps. It will be more gradual. About what Mario said about the new openings, I think that our, our shareholders have shown and our board has shown that we are having good control of the company's indebtedness and cash management. We'll maintain the guidance of opening 120 new stores, and we are now at a very important moment in terms of increasing our market share, but we're very focusing on managing and controlling our cash management and the company's indebtedness. Thank you, Clara. Thank you. Our next question is from Joseph Giordano, J.P. Morgan. Joseph, you can open your microphone now. Hello, good morning. Good morning, Mario and Novais. I have a few questions. Going back to the last question about the store expansion and the seven to nine-month term for opening a new store. How many points of these, how many locations of the 120 new stores that you plan to open next year are already contracted? I want to understand the phasing of the opening of new stores during next year. The second question is about the tax reform. I want to know how a potential VAT that will come in the future could change things for the company in the future, considering that there will be a transition period. My last question is about your capital structure. When we look at the level of receivables of the company, it's pretty low compared to what you had in the post-IPO period. I want to understand from you, if this increase of up to BRL 500 million in your private capital will be enough to solve the capital structure problem of the company. If you take the ex-IFRS debt and the leverage, and you put the stock risk and receivables risk, I want you to further explore that point, please. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you for your questions. Your first question about the expansion, we always have a buffer of stores. Our guidance for this year was 60 stores until we revised this guidance and decreased it to 20. We have about 40-60 stores that have already been contracted, and they're just waiting for the improvement in our leverage level, which will come with the increase in our private capitals. That's when we will resume our contracts with the builders, the construction companies, and the tenants. The phasing, we try to be as linear as possible during the year, so we try to keep it at 25 to 30 stores per quarter. Usually, we will have a larger concentration of new openings in the second half of the year, in the end of the year. The idea is to keep it as linear as possible with a plan of 30 new stores per quarter, and Novais will answer your other questions about the VAT and the capital structure. Good morning, Joseph. Thank you for your questions. As for the tax reform, we are seeing this simplification movement and restructuration movement in a very positive light. We know the tax structure is very complex in Brazil, so this will be a positive change. We started to do some studies with consulting firms and partners who estimate the effects of this reform. It's very early to say anything. As we heard, the healthcare sector will have different tax rates, which makes sense in our opinion. I can't really give you an answer right now about any impacts on the company's P&L relative to the implementation of the VAT. Now, when we talk about income tax and how this will impact our investments, our benefits based on our meetings so far, we are in a very good situation, very well supported in the mid to long term. This gradual movement to reduce substantial incentive will take place in the future. The horizon, the time horizon is more than five years in the future. As for the leverage, with the increase in our private capital, you're right to say that when we add the bank debt and what we owe due to Extrafarma's acquisition and the receivables, we would right now be at a level of five times the net debt EBITDA ratio. Now, with the increased private capital and normalization of our cash cycle, we get closer to three times, because we have demobilized our cash cycle. Now in quarter three, this will go back to the levels closer to normal. We're closer at two, three times, and by the end of the year, we will be closer to two times because we will have finished paying to Extrafarma. The company will be already generating cash. Now, with increased private capital, the receivables will be neutralized. We have BRL 1 billion in-- nearly BRL 1 billion in receivables that we do use to make cash and to normalize the cash cycle. With this increase in our capital and the movements that we have been implementing to improve our results in 2024, we wouldn't be using that anymore. We would have a nearly complete recomposition of the these BRL 1 billion in 2024, and we should finish next year closer to two times the net debt EBITDA ratio in total. Considering all anticipations and bank debts, which is a very healthy level, considering that we will continue to have BRL 1 billion in liquidity, and the companies will help us increase our EBITDA. Extrafarma, starting in Q3, will start to contribute positively to our EBITDA. The comparison base for our EBITDA will be more favorable. All these points are being addressed and have been addressed, but now we're going to do it even faster. Thank you. Thank you. This question and answer session is now closed. I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mario Queiroz for his final remarks. Mr. Queiroz, you may proceed. Thank you. I would like to thank everyone for attending our call. I'd like to once again stress how happy we are with the operational results of the quarter. About the villain, which is affecting the bottom line of the company, with the increase in our private capital and with the initiatives that we have already implemented, we will believe that we will see improvements in our cash cycle, and that we will be able to bring our leverage levels to healthier levels. This will allow us to continue to expand and continue to invest in strategic levers to grow in the future. Thank you very much. See you next time. This conference call is now finished. Thank you all for attending, and have a great day.