StoneCo Ltd.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to StoneCo's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings release. The company also posted the presentation to go along with this call. All material can be found online at investors.stone.co. Before we begin the call, I advise you to review the disclaimer included in the press release and presentation, which outlines important information about forward-looking statements and non-IFRS financial measures. In addition, many of the risks regarding the business Artists' Securities and Exchange Commission, which is also available at www.fcc.gov. Thank you operator and good evening everyone.

Let me start with some perspective on the quarter. This was a quarter of steady progress on the priorities we laid out earlier in the year. Reaccelerating TPP growth through better retention, deepening our banking and credit franchises, and keeping a disciplined approach to costs. PPV growth accelerated to 4%, an early signal that the retention initiatives we launched this year are beginning to work, though there is still a lot of work to be done. Banking and credit kept advancing, with retail deposits up 22% year-over-year, and our credit portfolio now more than doubled its level from a year ago. On costs, We kept expense growth well below revenue growth, while scaling the use of AR more broadly across the company. Finally, we continued to return meaningful capital to shareholders throughout the quarter. Having said that, today I want to spend a few minutes on something that goes beyond the quarterly numbers. How we are positioning Stone today for the long term, and how our ecosystem is coming together for the merchants. Let's turn to slide 3. This quarter, we launched our new brand positioning, Stone, the bank for entrepreneurs. This is not a changing strategy, and it does not depend on anything new. We already have the complete offering, payments, banking, and credits, working together in a single relationship. The gap is in the perception. Many clients still see Stone mainly as a payments company. This positioning is our way of closing that gap, so that when an entrepreneur needs banking or credit, his tone is part of the consideration from day one. As that perception builds, it naturally opens the door to more cross-sell, deeper relationships, and growth across the ecosystem. To bring this to life, we also launched a campaign film, the link is on this page. Now, moving to slide 4. This is what the Bank for Entrepreneurs means in practice. Everything starts with a complete account. Money comes in through whatever channel the client sells, in person or online, it goes out to pay employees, suppliers and taxes. In between, it stays within stone, where clients can hold a balance, invest their money or take credits. On its own, this is just what a complete account should do. The difference is what we build around it. Helping entrepreneurs run their day-to-day, by charging customers, issuing invoices, managing orders, with AI increasingly doing part of that work, from enhancing catalog images to creating content that helps merchants sell more. On slide 5, we recently reached an important milestone in that direction. Pagar.me, which historically was our digital commerce front, has been integrated into Stone. For the merchant, this means online and physical operations in one account with one view of the business. It brings our full digital commerce suite into the Stone platform. And with sales consolidated in one place, we understand the business better, which unlocks more credits and more cross-sell. One brand, one account, one experience. For Stone, this opens a new growth avenue, capturing a larger share of digital transactions, a part of the market that is growing faster than the average. Now, let me connect this to our financial commitments for the year on slide 6. In the first half, we delivered 3.1 billion reais in adjusted gross profits and 4.58 reais in adjusted basic EPS. Against our full year 2026 guidance of 6.6 to 7 billion reais in adjusted gross profits and 10.8 to 11.4 reais in adjusted basic EPS. While our guidance remains achievable, interest rates have stayed higher for longer than expected, making the backdrop considerably more challenging than what we anticipated at the start of the year. In that context, while the scenario today is more challenging than it was last quarter, we continue to be focused on delivering towards the lower end of these ranges. Our year-to-date effective tax rate of 15.4% remains consistent with the meeting level we guided to, and we stay disciplined on execution, with performance weighted towards the second half, as credit revenues compound and our commercial initiatives continues to take hold. With that said, I will pass it over to Diego, who will go over our financial and operating results for the quarter. Diego?

Thank you, Mateus, and good evening, everyone. Let me start on slide 7, where we present our main financial metrics for the quarter. Our revenue grew to 3.6 billion reais, led by credit, as our portfolio continues to scale. Adjusted gross profit was broadly stable year over year at 1.6 billion reais. as higher revenues and lower financial expenses per offset by the provision expenses that come with the credit portfolio growth. Adjusted net income was down slightly on an annual basis, while adjusted EPS grew 9% with continued share buybacks over the past year, meaningfully reducing our share count. On slide eight, Our active client base reached 4.8 million merchants, and our POC grew mainly as credit keeps gaining penetration and weight in our client base. Turning to slide 9, TPV growth accelerated to 4% annually, a small improvement over the pace we saw in the first quarter. We're still facing the churn challenges we detected earlier this year, and they still weight on our overall performance. However, this is the first tangible sign that our initiatives are gaining traction. Our work here is focused on three fronts, simplifying our offerings and bundles, aligning Salesforce incentives, and improving client experience to reduce operational friction. So far, the effect is more meaningful on micro-merchants, as simpler offerings and an easier contact allowed us to move quickly and bring churn down. With larger merchants, the breadth of the offerings and needs make the operation more complex and riskier, and therefore, we calibrate it cautiously before scaling. We expect the benefits of our initiatives to become more visible as the year progresses, and therefore, accelerates TPV. Looking at TPV mix, XQR Code continues to grow faster than card volumes. In banking, our deposit franchise keeps building. Retail deposits reach at 10.8 billion reais, up more than 20% year-over-year as we further engage clients with our account offerings. On slide 10, we present the growth metrics of our credit business. Our portfolio reached 3.8 billion reais, two times larger than one year ago. Driven mainly by working capital solutions. During this quarter, we also began disbursing government-backed loans, which already account for roughly R$300 million of our portfolio, while credit cards reached R$400 million. Moving to revenues, given the continued growing contribution of our credit card, we have revisited our credit revenue and yield metrics to include credit card interchange fees, as we see the support of the overall product P&L. Credit revenues grew 14% in the period with flat day shield. The stability reflects the entry of government-backed lines which carry lower rates and lower risk profile. That takes me to slide 11 where I want to spend some time explaining how government-backed facilities will impact our P&L going forward considering its growing relevance in our portfolio. Let me first explain how we segregate clients on working capital products based on the two main distribution channels we have. Our automated desk handles the smaller tickets, about 40,000 reais and typically up to 18 months standard, at an average rate of 4% per month. Our dedicated desk serves larger clients. with an average ticket to date closer to R$700,000, but with tenders going up to 30 months and lower rates of roughly 2.5% per month. Through those desks, we are currently operating two government programs, each with a different profile and focus. We began this bursting after the IPAC in April, and it has already gained some relevance in our book. The second program we just launched, so it's still very small. What these programs have in common is a guarantee that reduces losses upon an event of default from a client of ours, considering the reimbursement of guarantees that we obtain from the government. As a result, this reduction on provision expenses affects the coverage for loans on stage 1 and 2. This kind of guarantee allows us to be more aggressive in pricing for clients where we were previously not that competitive, improving the risk-adjusted returns on what we lend. In short, this is about expanding access to credit and deepening merchant relationships while keeping the risk profile of our growth under control. On slide 12, we turn to credit quality and cost of risk. In the quarter, provision expenses reached R188 million. The growth on expenses is a combination of, first, the record expansion of the portfolio, second, the roll-forward effect of the loans disbursed in late 2025 and early 2026 that are moving to later provisioning stages, and finally, the continuous pressure that we've been noticing on the dedicated desks. with records in bankruptcy protection filings all over the country. Although the dedicated desk represents less than 25% of our total merchant portfolio and the average ticket today is at 700,000 reais as I've mentioned, we've been facing the falls precisely on some of the largest tickets we have in our books, in some cases north of 10 million reais. On the other hand, on the automated desk, the improvements that we rolled out during the second quarter are showing significant results, with first payment defaults consistently trending down and the June cohort presenting the best results during the last 12 months. These combined effects pushed our NPLs higher across all indicators and kept the cost of risk at 21.5%. On coverage, The ratio came down to 204%, and I want to address that directly. Two main effects explain the move. One, it's mix-related, and the other is simply a mechanical effect. In the mix, we're steering new disbursements toward better-rated clients and ramping our government-backed facilities, which carry a guarantee and therefore require lower provisioning. Therefore, these two effects combined, structurally lowered the coverage we need to hold. The mechanical part is simply the math of a seasoning book. This quarter, our over 90 NPLs grew faster than our provisions, as the strong late 2025 and early 2026 vantages rolled into over 90 buckets, while write-offs, which cleared the oldest and most heavily provisioned loans, come with a lag. Slide 13 provides a bit more color of the NPL composition by product and channel. On the short end, sequential increase came mainly from new delinquency cases in our dedicated DAS, as I've mentioned. The automated DAS by contracts actually pulled this early metric down, in line with the improvements of first payment default metrics we previously mentioned. Later stage delinquency tells the opposite story. Here, the automated desk was the main driver of the increase as weaker vintages are rolling forward to over 90 days stage. On slide 14, we present the evolution of our costs and expenses. Cost of services excluding provisions was broadly flat year over year as we continue seeking operational leverage using technology and start benefiting from the workforce reduction carried out in the first quarter. Net financial expenses have been flattish for quite some time now as we've been growing client deposits. This shows in our funding costs, which has come down to roughly 85% of CDI. Admin expenses were lower year over year on reduced personnel and third party services expenses. Salary expenses were up modestly on higher marketing investments, Partially offset by lower distribution channel expenses. Other operating expenses were higher year-over-year, mainly reflecting a non-recurring gain in the prior year and higher net provisions for POS. These effects were partially offset by lower share-based compensation. Our effective tax rate was 16.4% in the quarter, slightly higher than the meetings implied in our guidance. We certainly have a long path towards the efficiency levels we want, but we'll keep evolving in time. Finally, on slide 15, we present our capital position and return on equity. Our capital ratio stood at 26%, normalizing after this extraordinary dividend paid in May from the linked sale proceeds. In total, we have already returned R$4.3 billion to shareholders during the first half of the year. To wrap it up, and coming back to Mateus' opening remarks, this was a quarter of steady execution. TPV growth is re-accelerating, our banking franchise keeps building up, and credit continues to scale despite the short-term headwinds we keep facing. Ultimately, this all comes down to the merchant. Our goal is to be the bank that Brazilian entrepreneurs rely on to run and grow their businesses. and we believe that improving our banking and credit capabilities is how we deepen that relationship over time. With that, let's open it up for questions.

We are going to start the question and answer section for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please press the button Reaction and then click on Raise Hand. If your question has already been answered, You can leave the Q&A by clicking on Put Hands Down. Our first question comes from Eric Ito from Bradesco BBI. Please, Eric, you may now proceed.

Hi, thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Mateus, Diego, Roberta, thanks for the call to take my question. I have two here on my side. The first one, I think in the release we saw a $200 million non-recurring allowance for expected losses on the issuers in distress. So, could you please just give us some color on the main train there, or what happened there, just for us to have more color on that? And then, the second one, I'd like to touch on the credits. I think you guys provided very good details on the different deaths. But my question is towards the government-backed loans, already reaching $330 million in the quarter. So, I just wanted to see if you could share more expectations going forward and how does that change your guidance for credit book forward. Thank you.

Hey, Eric. Thanks for the question. So, I'll start giving some context around the provisions and then hand it over to Diego to talk about the accounting piece and the path forward as well as the credit question. So, in terms of the provision we did for selected issuers this quarter, Maybe it's worthwhile to give some context on the topic. As you know, the central bank has ordered the liquidation of a large financial group earlier this year, and one of the subsidiaries of that group was a citable credit card issuer. It now has a little bit over 90 days since we last received the cash flow from that issuer, and then as a matter of account's imprudence, we decided to do the provision. But in terms of how we evolve from here, We have the position that ensuring that these amounts get settled by the issuers is the role of the card networks. And the reason for that is quite straightforward in our view. Just to give you some example and some color on that, whenever a merchant accepts a credit card transaction, usually the merchants don't look at who is the name of the cardholder or who is the issuer behind the transaction. And in order for that to work, The merchant acquires need to trust the networks to manage the risk of their members and to ensure that every transaction that is authorized gets settled to the merchant acquires so that we can pass it through our merchants. If we merchant acquires have to underwrite every issue one by one and then accept only those that we judge it to be credit worthy, the credit card itself would lose a lot of the value that makes it such a good Thank you very much. And so there is a credit question as well.

So, Eric, thank you very much for the question. As Mateus mentioned, since the asset, since the last time that we collected from that issuer was over 90 days ago, we decided to treat the asset as a distressed asset and start provisioning accordingly. So we are being prudent on the balance sheet manage, and you should always expect that from us. We are adjusting the effect in our results because we understand it's just temporary effect. Arising from our accounting standards and not our view on the recovery. We understand it is the responsibility of the network to ultimately settle these amounts, as Mateus just mentioned, as it's very clear on the central bank legislation who bears the responsibility for the risk management. This is not the first time that an issuer goes bankrupt in Brazil, and historically we have always collected 100% of these accounts receivables from the networks, precisely because of that chain of responsibility and trust that Mateus just mentioned, which is what creates value to the overall system. So I'm cautiously optimistic about a good outcome here, but we're going to be very careful with the balance sheet management. To your second question on the government programs and the overall impact on the forecast or on the guidance and so on, It doesn't change anything. When we, during the last quarter, mentioned that you should expect cost of risk to trend down to the mid to high teens, we already had some of that in mind. Naturally, the mix of the disbursements on a quarter-over-quarter basis may fluctuate, so it's not every quarter that we're going to be disbursing the same mix of products, the same kind of clients, so on and so forth. So, it's natural to have some short-term fluctuation, but the guidance still stands that cost of risk will trend down to that mid to high teens in the medium term, probably ending the end of the year already at the high teens level.

Perfect. Just to be clear on the first point here, you mentioned, Diego, that you are optimistic with the outlook. So, going forward, we shouldn't expect more provisions, just make sure we should expect more provisions related to that. And then the recovery will depend on the process. That's correct?

So, we may need to provision more. What we have, the provision level that we have today, it's a weighted probability scenario for different outcomes, including a possible litigation. So, all cards are on the table. I'm optimistic about a positive outcome because of the reasons we've mentioned. We think a possible litigation destroys value for everybody, so we think it's just a matter of time getting to that agreement. But it may occur that it won't happen during the next quarter or it won't happen at all. So we need to be ready for everything. In terms of size, which I'm pretty sure is going to be your next question about what Our next question comes from Daniel Vaz from Safra. Please Daniel, you may now proceed.

Hi, Marcelos, hi Diego, Roberta. Thank you for the opportunity of making questions. I was looking at your 2026 guidance, which you kept unchanged. You need to catch up a bit on your run rate. I know the fourth quarter usually is stronger, but to reach the low end of gross profit and looking at your revenue trajectory, like quarter per quarter, it didn't... Thank you very much. Deliver the low end of the guidance with these new take rate levels that look a bit more sluggish than your past. And if the costs, the COGS, which you delivered a good COGS this quarter, is where you wanna surprise or where you wanna have your most upside to deliver the low end. So how to treat this balance between Thank you. Hi, Vaz. Thank you very much for the question. So, the gross profit was flattish during the first half of the year, mainly because of the reasons we've mentioned in the presentation. So,

Credit revenues keep adding to the top line, payments revenue not necessarily because of lower prices, marginal lower prices in payments, which you've mentioned as well. But most importantly, what waits is the cost of provisions that come with the credit portfolio growth. As to the second half of the year, we expect growth to accelerate, both on credit card TPV, but also on PIX, as we've mentioned, and we start benefiting more from the turn initiatives that we've mentioned. So, these things combined with the credit portfolio growth and an improvement on the overall risk profile that we have for the portfolio should capture an additional benefit for the gross profit during the second half of the year. That said, when we set our guidance for the year, we assumed that the SELIC would end in 2026 at 12.5%, and today that number is probably closer to 14%, maybe a quarter of a point below that, depending on what happens on the next central bank meeting. And as we have disclosed already, every 100 basis points on SELIC carries a pre-tax impact of roughly 200 to 250 million reais. So, rates alone are ahead in north of 300 million reais for 2026. On top of that, the credit environment has been tougher than we all expected, in line with what the broader market is seeing. None of these changes our guidance ranges, as we've mentioned before, but it does make the backdrop more demanding than it was at the start of the year, which is why we're focused on delivering toward the lower end of the guidance. I don't think it's going to have to do with the total cash balance of the quarter or of the year or the benefits that we have on the second quarter in ponds.

Okay, thank you. And if I may follow up, do you have any specific target for your cost of risk for the second half of the year?

So it's going to trend down to those high teams that we've mentioned. Naturally, as I've mentioned, short-term fluctuations are natural because of the mix of the disbursement, but there also may occur because of specific cases on the dedicated desk. As we've disclosed, for example, this quarter, a big impact that we had on the 15 to 90 days NPLs were cases coming from the dedicated desk, and that's hard to forecast. When those cases will happen, if they do happen. So, short-term fluctuations may occur, but we are optimistic about going down to those mid to high teen levels that we've always guided the market.

All right. Thank you. Thank you and congrats.

Our next question comes from Antonio Ruiz from BOFA. Please, Antonio, you may now proceed.

Hi, thank you for your time. So my question is actually a follow-up on the last question related to the cost of risk and the credit business. So my question goes on this large case of the dedicated task. If you could provide a little bit of detail of what happened here, so why you decided to move to this client and which kind of problem did you have and how are you addressing this going forward and did you reduce the size of loans that you are originating, the size of clients going forward? That's pretty much it, thank you. Hey Antonio, thanks for the question.

So I'll give a little bit of color and then talk about the changes that we've made. But first of all, you're right, we have seen some delinquency cases in the dedicated desk and I think Diego mentioned this in the The delinquency we saw was particularly among the larger ticket exposures that we have on the desk. If you remember the overall profile of the desk, we have an average ticket of around R$700,000, which is precisely the core client that we serve. It's part of the core offering. But whenever we try to disburse to higher clients, I think we were a little bit exposed to the records, judicial recuperations that we're having in the country as well, and that's part of the problem. In terms of how we are addressing this, I would say we're doing two main things. The first one is that we're shifting originations towards the government-backed credit lines, particularly for clients where we do not have a long-standing relationship or sufficient historical data prior to the disbursement. And the second thing, we are minimizing the amount of maximum tickets on the dedicated desks so that we don't have exposure to any single clients that can hurt the portfolio or create volatility going forward. So overall, the things I would say is that the dedicated desk itself is part of the core offering. It's something that we have some success whenever we stay around our core clients. I think the issue here has been related to specific cases, especially when we had higher tickets.

And Antonio, just to add a little bit more power on what Mateus was saying, there are different cases, naturally, but just to give you an example, one of the cases that we had on the second quarter was an old client of ours, both in payments and software, which had a long-standing relationship A large client. We had a ticket of 11 million reais, if I'm not mistaken, 11 or 12 million reais. Large list of banks, so on and so forth. And we were supporting that client because of the overall business that we were getting from them. We started discussing them banking opportunities, and then we were all taken by surprise with this client fighting for bankruptcy protection. Once that happens, we move that client immediately from stage one to stage three, and that has an impact on the overall metrics.

This is great, Claude. If I may follow up on this, when you look at most of your large corporate cases, Are these usual clients that were distressed by poor macro and high rates or you consider that most of them are some kind of fraud or it's more macro related?

No, this is mostly macro related.

In this case, Antonio was a large retailer.

All right, that's clear. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Neha Agarwala from HSBC. Please, Neha, you may now proceed.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. You mentioned in your press release that you've seen good results from your efforts in the TAM clients, but you're still working on the SMB clients. Could you explain Why it has been a bit more difficult to gain back the SMB clients? And are you already seeing improvements starting third quarter? So we can see the results in 3Q or would it take a bit more time for the SMB to reduce? Thank you.

And yeah, thanks for the question. I can give some call and then maybe Jill can add. So it is true that we've seen more success faster in the micro-emissions. And the reason for that is quite simple, which is the offer for micro-emersions is usually a lot simpler, and the distribution channel is also a lot simpler. Whenever we talk about SMBs, usually the base spans different offerings, different channels, and different needs. And because of that, there is no single fix. So we have to adjust offers in many different segments and intensify the retention work, which is, by definition, spread out. These changes, when we talk about SMB, there are no silver bullets and they require, by design, a lot of testing and careful calibration before we roll out. So I wouldn't say that we were unsuccessful in these initiatives. I think by nature of the SMB business, we need to test more and the rollout takes a lot more time. But when we see the results that we're having, the reality is that both Both trends are improving in both the micro merchant segments and within SMBs. I think it's just the definition that it's not a silver bullet. It's gradual, and therefore when you talk about TPV acceleration, it's going to be gradual as well. I don't think it's going to be the flip of a switch.

Just to add on, Mateus, most of the capital that we deploy in terms of selling goes towards SMBs. Most of our TPV comes from SMBs. So it's a very large engine and you've got to be careful when changing it significantly. So these things take time. We're evolving. We're optimistic about it, but it's going to take a little bit longer than we would like.

Perfect. If I can ask one more question. We've seen rate from growth and a shift towards the PIX volumes. and I believe you've been giving some offers where you are giving picks. Picks volumes are being processed for free or at very low rates. Should we expect continued pressure on take rate coming from that and also as you try to reduce churn, you probably are giving more benefits to the merchants? So, should we see pressure on take rate coming more from your initiatives and change in mix? Thank you.

Hi, Neha. So, again, yes, on the margin, take rates in payments are falling, mostly as a result of mix because of what you just described, right? PIX is getting – it's growing proportionally on total TPV and in some segments there are other price moves as well. That said, we've been saying for quite some time now that looking at take rates by product tells less of the story as we price the client's relationship and not the product on a standalone basis. It's not uncommon already to have clients with very small take rates in payments, which we would typically reprice in other times of the company, but that today we bundle with credit and payments, bringing economics to very healthy levels. So once the client's on the base, we manage the relationship holistically and not looking at payments on a standalone basis or credit on a standalone basis.

And just to add on that, Diego, when you look at our offerings in place, I don't think we have offers in place where we provide picks for free unconditionally. It's usually tied to a certain commitment of volume or any other commercial agreement as well. which connects to what Diego has just said which is we really look at the unit economics on a broad base and I think it's not a good proxy of unit economics to look at those offerings on a piece by piece.

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Arnon Shirazi from Citi. Please, Arnon, you may now proceed.

Hi, all. Thank you for taking my question. Nice to be here again. My question is maybe related to the communication with the client base. From the past conversations we had, it was clear that I have some problems communicating with them, mostly with core SME clients, while for some clients, it seems that the communication got better, as was just addressed in the past questions from Niha. But how is the communication with these larger SME clients? And how their offer is improving? I see that the integration with Pagar.me is part of this mess, but it would be great to have more information on that. Thank you.

I don't know. We keep evolving on that front. It's still easier to reach out to a micro-merchant than to an SMB, especially when it becomes a larger client, which is not necessarily looking at the app every single day or looking at our communications every single day. Those are two different processes. So we keep evolving on that front and communicating better both new offerings Both the current profiles or plans in which the clients are currently assigned, but it's a longer journey than simply fixing it from one quarter to the other.

Okay, I got it, but there's any expectation on that? Like, should we see that advancing by the end of this year or something for, I started for 2027?

It's going to be a gradual process that will certainly come with lower churn. So you will see that gradually. And the best way to see it, it's not going to be on any other metric other than churn.

Okay, got it. Thank you, Diego.

Our next question comes from Renato Meloni from Autonomous Research. Please, Renato, you may now proceed.

Hi everyone, good evening. Thanks for taking the question. Can you expand your comment a bit on your net revenue from transaction activities declining 11% sequentially here on the opposite way from TPV? You can maybe comment on like how that's pricing mix affecting that or potentially some reallocations affecting the numbers. Thank you. Hi, Meloni. Basically, we had lower revenues from incentives that we get from the card networks related to our activities as credit card issuer. So, every now and then, we collect certain incentives from the networks. Some of those incentives occurred in the first quarter and didn't occur on the second quarter. So, short-term fluctuations.

Perfect.

So we shouldn't expect to see anything like that over the coming quarters? Nope. Okay. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Guilherme Grespin from JP Morgan. Please, Guilherme, you may now proceed.

Guilherme, we're not hearing the question.

That Guilherme Gresson has had some technical problems, we are handing on to the next one. Our next question comes from Mr. Pedro Leduc from Itaú BBA. Please, Pedro, you may now proceed.

Good evening. Thank you so much. A question on financial results of income, but more expenses slide down a bit sequentially. Year-over-year seems very controlled as well. Can you remind us a little bit your strategy here, how you are in terms of home and third party, and maybe what we should also think for the next quarter, see if there are any levers that we should think about, or is it just the lower effect from the sleep maybe? Thank you.

Hi, Pedro. Thank you for the question. There were two combined effects here. So first, yes, it's slightly lower on average this quarter than it was last quarter or at the same period of last year. But most importantly, we had more deposits from clients on average deployed on the operation. The mix of home capital and third-party capital has been pretty much the same as the amount of capital that we've been generating every quarter has been Pretty similar to the amount of capital that we have returned to shareholders every quarter through buybacks, so I'm excluding here the extraordinary effect of linked dividends. As to levers for the following quarters, if any, I would be more cautious on it, basically because we expect assets to grow faster than deposits. Until the end of the year, let's see how that dynamic will evolve. Hopefully, assets will keep growing faster, and therefore, there may be pressure on financial expenses. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mr. Guilherme Grespin from J.P. Morgan. Please, Mr. Guilherme, you may now proceed.

Hi, hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can all. Hi, sorry, yeah.

So my question is specifically on the credit and the government programs. I'm sorry about the, I couldn't ask before, but on the government programs, of course, it seems to be a very important point of growth to the business nowadays. So I have two full questions here. Number one, If you can explain a little bit in more details what is the risk waterfall of the programs, how much the government guarantees in terms of NPLs, especially I think PEAC is the one that is most relevant to you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is. And the second one is just how you're going to treat provisions. Diego mentioned that part of the lower coverage would be natural to be driven by the government programs. How do you handle provisions in this case? Like if you have the guarantee of the government, do you provision at all or know how it works? This timing is matched between when you have the default and when you receive the owner of the government. Thank you.

Awesome question, Guilherme, and that's precisely why we added page 11 on the materials. So the waterfall of the programs are Similar in the objectives, but each one of them has its own nitty-gritty detail depending on what's the public, to whom you're lending, what's the size of the company, so on and so forth. But on average, especially on PEACI, the government guarantees roughly 75% of the defaulted amount. So, the loss given default for a credit under PEAC, on average, it's about 25%, which is materially lower than what we have in our overall portfolio. That's the reason why we have to provision less upfront when underwriting that credit. Other programs, not only... The Sebrae facility that we have here on the material that we didn't talk very much, but others that we've been working on will have different risk profiles, but the rationale is similar. So because of the guarantee upon a loss, we provision less upfront. So whenever one of those credits roll into default, the coverage, especially on stage two, will drop. and the coverage for the loans between 15 and 90 days will drop because we have the right to collect the guarantee from the government on the 91st day after the default. So it doesn't affect that much the coverage for Stage 3 or for over 90-day credits, but it does affect significantly the coverage for Stage 2 and for short-term MPLs.

That's super clear. Thank you, Diego.

Our next question comes from Mr. Caio Prato from UBS. Please, Caio, you may now proceed.

Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two on my side, please. The first one is a follow-up on the credit portfolio. You talked about the... I think you commented about... Could you comment about your current appetite on both the dedicated and the automated desk, given the current landscape that you talked about now? Today we already noticed some contraction month over month on your portfolio under the FedEx as of July, so just wondering if this scenario... Thank you. Thanks for the question. I'll take the first one around credit growth appetite.

and then hand it over to Diego for the second one. So in terms of appetite for growth, we are very mindful that the macro environment has been very tough, especially for Brazilian MSNBs, with rates being very high for so long, probably now over three years of high rates. And this, of course, weighs a lot on our clients. That said, we continue to see a lot of room for profitable growth Because when we look at our share of wallet within our own client base, it is still really small. We estimate that our share of wallet within our own client base at credit is still at around mid-single digits. So the opportunity remains large, and we feel that we are in a strong position of lending to clients whose daily sales flow through our platform as well. In terms of how we navigate this environment, that is tough. while having a share of wallet that is still low. If you remember a couple of quarters ago, we started by proactively raising prices towards the second half of last year in anticipation of this tougher macro environment. And now, what we are increasingly doing is shifting the portfolio mix towards lower risk exposure, focusing on government-backed programs that, like Diego mentioned in the previous question, have a risk sharing profile built into itself. And in terms of the dedicated desk, I think I approached this in a previous question as well, but we're taking a more conservative approach, especially in regards to ticket size. So overall, I think the message is that we still have appetite to grow the book. And the second thing that I would mention, you mentioned the FDIC data as well, I wouldn't read too much into the FDIC data, Especially now that we have not only many other products, but also the facilities from the government, not necessarily every disbursement will go through a FDIC itself. So I think the FDIC data becomes a read or a proxy that is not as good going forward. So in summary, I think we remain comfortable growing the portfolio. We are taking a cautious approach because we think the environment is tough. But again, I think there's a lot of room. Going forward.

Caio, on the T&A, it's fairly simple. We can take it offline if you want, but basically this is just an improvement in our accounting practice that has no effect on the T&L. Basically, we had a provisioning mechanism for POS of inactive clients that was fully provisioned, but existed with a positive value in one line of the balance sheet and the same negative value in another line. So, what we're doing now is merging these two effects on the P&L. So, it's really just a mix effect between lines.

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

The questions and answers section is over. We would like to hand the floor back to CEO, Mateus Scherer, for the company's final remarks.

Thank you all for the support, and we'll see you in the next Uniscope.

Stone's Cove Conference Hall is now closed. We thank you for your participation and wish you a very nice day.