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Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting.

Welcome to the earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2025 at Açaí Atacadista. I want to highlight that if you need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on our platform. To access, please select the interpretation button through the globe icon on the bottom part of your screen and choose your language of preference, Portuguese or English. We'd like to let you know that this earnings call is being recorded and will be provided on the company's IR website, ir.sie.com.br, where you can already find the earnings release. During the presentation, all participants will have their mics turned off. Soon after, we'll begin the Q&A session.

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Please select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of your screen. Write your name, company, and language to enter the queue. As you are announced, a request to activate your mic will appear on the screen. Then, you must activate your mic to submit questions. We'd like to instruct you to please submit all your questions at once. We would also like to let you know that all the information in this presentation and possible statements that could be made during the earnings call about future business perspectives, projections, and operational targets and financial goals at SAE represent beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information that is currently available. Future statements do not guarantee performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they relate to future events and thus rely on circumstances that could or not occur. Investors must understand that overall economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors can't affect the future performance of SAE and lead to results that differ materially from those listed in such future statements. We would now like to pass the floor on to Gabriele Ilu, the Investor Relations Director. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in our earnings call for the fourth quarter and the year of 25. Now we're going to be presenting the executives that are present here. We have Belmedo Gomes, our CEO, Aymar Junior, our CFO, Anderson Castillos, our Operations Director, Belmedo dos Anjos, and Sandra Vicari, our Human Resources and Sustainability Director. Now I'll pass the phone to Belmedo to begin the presentation.

No mudo, no vai.

All right. Hi, Gabi, and thank you, everyone. First of all, we want to say sorry we had to make an adjustment for our agenda. We originally had scheduled it for tomorrow, but considering that we have a carnival and a lot of people traveling, we decided to anticipate this, right, instead of having it on Friday prior to carnival. So about the fourth quarter and 2025. We are going through a quarter with some effects that we had already mentioned and that the market is most likely aware of from a consumption and debt level. So first, I want to highlight the aspects of the fourth quarter. And as we talk about 2025 and reinforce this, just... how the company is really focused on reducing leverage due to the volumes of the interest rates we have, and we can reach levels that we had actually presented as guidance to the market that we're considering an interest rate that was a lot higher than what we're subject to, reaching 2.55 times leverage, and a total volume of sales of 84.7 billion in a year, the growth of the same sort of sales of 2.6, and the opening of 10 new stores which would wrap up 2025 with 312 stores under operation we were able to look at the commercial execution and store maturity and the new pricing systems we've been implementing despite some tailwinds that i'm going to explain up ahead we had some important evolution in our margin of 0.3 percentage points in 2025. our expenses were a bit pressured we have a lot of new projects going on in the company and we're going to highlight this up ahead we are entering into a new cycle of changes in cash and carry and cash cash and carry and um we have a lot of new projects up ahead and some initiatives that are going to be unleashing value and also growing customer loyalty and sales volumes with this the company's ebita also had an evolution of 0.2 and a margin of 5.8 with a volume of the net income of 847 million in the pre-IFRS view and 645 in the post-IFRS view. You've probably already seen this in the release, that the impact with impairment considering the split with the FIC. And about the environment in the fourth quarter, what we've seen, we had a very significant trend of deflation that took place simultaneously in different commodities. So ever since life is life, we've seen commodities go up and down, and that's normal. But normally what happens is you have deflation in a certain category, and this is quite common. then in another category you normally have some kind of inflation but what we've seen in the fourth quarter is that there was deflation that was persisting in multiple categories that have a big share of among low-income customers and also in the overall food basket right because they're loaded value products and normally farmers and producers don't deliver door-to-door, which is different than like health and perfume and cream supplies. Commodities are a big channel that supply cash and carry, right? So as commodities drop a bit, you'll see like rice had a drop of almost 37% compared to the prior system. Milk, 16% drop. Sugar, 11% drop. Beans, 10%. So wheat as well, with almost 5% drop in prices within this normal variation. And of course, as this category has a high share, we're reflecting the volume of sales. So, in the fourth quarter, we brought a breakdown of what the volume would be, right, in tons, and we also increased sales in kilos compared to last year. But, of course, with the category that's so important in this deflation, the nominal volume, considering... the same store sales is below IPCA, right, once we're quite exposed within this commodity. But another factor we've been highlighting also that we also have data in the release, which is what we've been demonstrating here with the K effect, let's say, with inflation, right? So, oh, now he's going to complain about the interest rate. No, but regardless of this, when we look at the mix, of the basic food baskets the population buys, we've seen an expansion at a level we've never seen before, which is when you look at the formats that service high income, they continue to gain volume, they continue to gain sales value because there's a switch for more expensive products, right? So in the fourth quarter, we've seen the formats geared towards high income, and a growth of 4%. When you look at the same formats that are normally supplying themselves with us, which is where you have this persistence of trade downs, these formats drop to about 9%. And so, of course, maybe high income was going... more than low-income, yes, but that variation of 4 to 9% is on one side positive, but also negative, right, compared with the previous year, right? So this is what we call the K effect. So with interest, part of this becomes consumption, and then part of the population, of course, loses this effect, and then it becomes, it ferments it, right, because Most of the volume of interest obtained was also headed to consumption. So we have 7 trillion in fixed income in Brazil, according to the data that Ambima has been receiving. And on the other hand, we have low income with 4 trillion of debt paying really high interest rates. So this, of course, influences the pack of who is more subject to low income. And EBITDA in the fourth quarter was stable compared to the previous year. It was a negative variation considering the volume of deflation with a margin of 6.3. So we can advance to the next slide. So this is where Aymar will be able to highlight this, considering the efforts and leverage from a debt perspective and how things have been evolving. Aymar, it's you. Hi there. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your presence. um with this context that the meters mentioned the company was able to in 2025 reduce its net debt the net debt was reduced by 1.2 billion and This was all in a year where, according to our judgment, was a very positive year when it comes to operational cash generation, a major EBITDA conversion of 3.7 billion. And this cash generation was enough to pay for the CAPEX. It was enough to pay for the services of the debt and the dividends. still had a final cash generation of almost 600 billion reais. So this, combined with a reduction in the participation of receivables, explains this variation of 1.2 billion in the net debt of the company. which led to this leverage here on the right side of the chart, and up to 5.6, right?

So we reach the guidance.

that was provided back then for this leverage mix of about 260. We had the 256 here. And for 2026, the idea is that this financial discipline and effort in the reduction of leverage can really not only remain but be intensified in the sense that multiple actions and initiatives can positively impact this reduction such as a capex that we estimated at 700 million we've been keeping although we have already provided a new expectation for the new stores five new stores but obviously these 700 million at this moment remain because the five new stores compared to the 10 previous stores were bts built to suit so the equipment for the stores which would be an investment in the 700 we've been keeping here considering all of the new projects that we've been working on and prioritizing for 2026. So we keep the value of 700 million, but we also have the possibility of reviewing the portfolio and monetizing assets. So when a company reaches the size we've reached in the amount of 312 stores, we can and should begin to have this ongoing task of reviewing the portfolio, seeing what we can leverage in this portfolio and maybe some monetization as well through an SLV that could happen throughout 2026. So from a debt leverage perspective, I think this was pretty much the information we had

that we wanted to share with you.

Next. Well, let me do. Now here, at this point, Armar shared, and we should look at the portfolio as well. And the company is super focused on reducing leverage, and this focus doesn't make the company stop growing, right? Of course, we all know that Kashikari went through a very strong expansion cycle and became the company with the most valuable brand in food retail and the biggest customer flow as well. And so we've mentioned these initiatives to increase the share of wallet and different projects the company's been working on with a focus on this investment, right? So here we can show you one point that was actually a bit of a polemic, which was the battery and the cold cuts or deli area, right, which represents 5% of the total sale at Açaí, but that's 5% of a company that's making almost 90 billion reais. So 5% divided by this amount made Açaí really become the biggest protein seller in South America. So this was a challenging project, and there was actually a certain level of topics with a higher cost but in our view it was also a way to adapt to this change which is a trend of switching carbs reducing carb volumes and increasing the general consumption of protein so these two projects helped position the company within this point as let me mention we sell one billion reais per year and this is a category right the drop in the rice prices but other categories as well that are growing within this moment so I want to show you this quickly here just to mention how each of these avenues for growth are behaving right and what's the biggest point, we base our activities on, well, the 40 million people that go to our stores monthly, and in the fourth quarter, this was completely stable. So, moving on to the first point, you've probably seen that we announced a partnership yesterday with MercadoLibre. We're going to be starting with acai in the marketplace through a fulfillment model. We had a challenge in the food sector as a whole to have our own efforts in this sense, but there are some operations that are a lot more efficient because they have other categories and other products that dilute their costs. And so this is an important partnership. We'll be the first cash and carry in MercadoLibre for about 400 SKUs that should be worked on. Of course, these are non-perishable products, and since we're one of the biggest operators in the food format, we have the conditions, prices that are differentiated. I believe this is an important partnership because we'll have a new pillar in the digital channel. And for MercadoLibre, they're also having more competitive prices. So we should evolve into other initiatives with the supply and the use of consumption of our stores and with MercadoLibre to perform those adjustments and MercadoLibre has the best and biggest logistical structure as well and so another channel that's also going to be accelerated is our partnerships with the last miles and that's highlighting the partnership with iFood that goes from 56 stores we should have a hundred stores within the platform by the end of the first quarter And on average, the mature stores add about 3% of additional sales. We have also brought Amon in together with Julio. They're leading this project. We still see big potential because the Açaí brand is very strong and the customers are searching for this. some optimizations in the store, as well as the expansion of the Mewa Sa'i app with 60 million registrations, and customers on the app have unique prices and a frequency of almost 61% greater and 40% more in the stores. We can move on to the next page, please. The other initiative. which here is a means to replicate, let's say, as you've seen in previous opportunities. SAE became one of the biggest tire sellers in Brazil. And if you look at this flow of 40 million people, of course, we've been trying to expand the share of wallets of the In-N-Out project. Basically, is to replicate what Costco does very well. So we have one product with an unbeatable price, and this product is not gonna get into the regular assortment, but it's gonna be there today. If the guy comes back a month later, it probably won't be there. We brought in two examples. One is a Bilco refrigerator that's on sale today. If you go to the Angueta stores, there's fromgis. $3,599. It's a side-by-side, 486 liters. We're going to be exclusive. It's a smart refrigerator. It's a lot cheaper than what you'll find on the internet or any other channel, just to provide characteristic for this opportunity sale. So in 60 days and 20 stores, we sold more than 1,000 units of these motorcycles. And then you have a bunch of other items that are going to get in, like televisions for the World Cup, and all of this we're going to be replicating into the Brazilian reality and what we see abroad. So why am I mentioning this? Well, because remember the Butchery project and some other projects, where since we put in services, a lot of people looked at it and said, oh, it's going to be a hypermarket. What's the reference operation? Well, it's probably the Costco American operation that sells refrigerators and motorcycles, jewelry, Rolex. No one calls it a half a microwave though. The fact that we're putting durable goods as opportunity items really demonstrate that this is an evolution because you have a potential for sale. We already have a fixed cost in most stores and the increment of this other product line should help in this customer flow to help set the positioning of the company when it comes to low prices. And in our view, there's a lot of potential for sales and we should see results that are quite interesting. And we'll bring this with a broke down quarter over quarter and we can advance into the next slide. Another important initiative that's been gaining traction is Sergio Leite, together with Leonie, we brought from the market with a lot of expertise and within the private label operation. And we're just going to start having the Chefy brand, which was already exclusive, besides Econoval. And we're going to start using the Açaí brand in a bunch of different categories of products. We hope to have about 200 SKUs with good penetration until the end of 26. These are very important items. The SA brand will start now in the first quarter. And the objective of this project is to, first of all, if we've seen that most of our customers are searching for low prices, of course they're trading down, but they want to continue to have quality, right? So it's a product that's similar to the leading brand, and we want to have a category that with a level of margin that's higher. There was always this challenge in private label. You needed to have a really big volume and density, which is what we currently have in some markets. Within the São Paulo metropolitan region, we have about 60% penetration in most municipalities, and we expect that with the entrance of the private label products, we should also start having our own commercial conditions with big industries because they're going to start having one more competitor within the POS. It's a super important project that's keeping up with a pretty fast pace. And now the other project, just to give you an overview, is a project that most people already know about, which is dividing into two initiatives, right? One initiative we're already going to be starting now in the first quarter, which is space created specifically for supplements like creatine, whey protein, protein bars, and all of this. This is the first plan. we're implementing in 93 stores and also we've seen this acceleration in a shift in habits and maybe the GLP-1 analogs and that probably helped lever this movement and of course now we have to anticipate this movement and adjust right so this is an important project that we've been calling the health world and while We do this, we're advancing in this pilot also with the drug stores. We have 25 stores that are going to be deployed and under operation until July 2026. And this is a pilot, right, because the systems part is really different than what we operated today. We have a team that's very dedicated to this. I also brought in someone that's a specialist in this area. And so in the first phase, the stores are going to be implemented, coexisting within the store area. We're still discussing the approval to have access within the same stores. So they're going to be at the entrance, coexisting with the stores, based with specific entrance, according to the current legislation. But as we advance with this discussion, since we got approval at the Senate, and it should be approved at the House of Representatives, Then we're going to modify the layout so customers from inside the store can also access it. So it's an important category as well. Just as the in and out, you have the fixed costs, property tax, and all of this already included, right? Most of our contracts are fixed rates. So if the IPC goes up, our sales and inflation are 0.9. And so you add more sales and that increases the share of wallet as well. We can advance into the next slide. Now I want to go back because I think There is no one that's more specialized here in this than us to explain the FEEC transaction and share this. We've already had multiple opportunities. But this FEEC topic, since it's a topic that's a little more difficult, and we highlighted this in the release well you can contact our ir department and um we have someone also in the tax area to explain um we'll get into these topics and you can concentrate any questions you may have about this directly in the IR department. Well, this is just like a background to explain why we have this transaction with FIC and also to get into our next initiative here with the development of our financial services. So, we've already talked about this over time. this FIC that started off with GPA in Itaú back in 2004, and over time, it gained complexity because they added the Casas Bahia, and then after, with the split between Asahi and GPA, Asahi also became a partner at FIC, right? So in the last five years, let's say, we had three retailers Sorry, he's on mute. sorry about that so we had these three retailers and each of them had a different business model a different moment and even the itaú partner or shareholder was not very excited with this design and this partnership that had lost its essence that used to be more dynamic over time so we had already been talking about this for a while all of the partners agreed and then we announced a split from the peak that should be um approved um and so we hope this happens before right at central uh bank but this split from uh peak represents the exit from GPA in Casas Bahia. And Açaí and Itaú would continue with this FIC for another two years. And we actually value our Açaí card a lot and this partnership. And so when you start the approval, we begin to have the permission of exploring a series of other products that in the current partnership was not really the focus or the interest justified by partners. But through the approval of the central bank, within this period, we can explore it immediately. And then I'm getting into the next slide, but I just wanna say that this phase with the FIC finishes in 2028, right? So we'll be able to have a new card that can substitute the Passaic card, that continues extremely valid and it's operating in the same characteristics, the same value creation for the company and for customers. Value creation that is especially the value proposal paid by FIC, where customers can buy one unit for the wholesale price, the Passai customers paying with a Passai card. and equity method that we're going to continue to apply together with Itaú and this new stake and this new design representing 40%. And so from the approvals, we can demonstrate the new products we plan to explore quickly, and the first one is the private label card. The private label card is here to add on to the existence of our co-branded papaya card because it'll be able to penetrate customers that have lower purchase power and also in b2b right so b2b customers that quite frequently are confused with B2C customers that own a very small business sometimes, have a huge, have greater chances of using this private label card. So we've seen the experiences of our regional competitors and all of them have a private label that's really, and they've been really successful. And that shows adhesion from this closed loop model for this type of customer as well. So we have a very big expectation to generate earnings and results with this product in the first years. And once again, this is a product that's complementary to what we already have at the FIC. and that's also a product that generates a lot of value, but it's geared to a smaller amount of B2C customers, maybe 20% of them can actually access or use this card. So the private label will take on an important role. And this card, depending on the partnership or contract we're gonna develop through the split year, it could be operating by the end of the year, of course, subject to the approvals of the central bank. Then the other processes and products we're considering here, we also have positive expectations about because we have 44 million customers circulating throughout our stores every month, and the companies operating that already sell and have partnerships with these other products, have always been really interested in starting this channel and working on this with us so through this approval we can work on partnerships with these companies in these different sectors and the expectation is that we'll have a very significant volume of financial revenue generation. All of these, with assistance, consortiums, insurance, are all revenues coming from origination. We don't want to have companies that are like an insurance company or a consortium. We just want to originate and provide these services to our customers through a partner. So we understand that there is a very restrained demand for these services. products that are massified, although there is a context of reduced income, et cetera, but these products have their place, let's say, and so we're really placing a lot of expectation on this, and some other digital solutions as well for B2B customers, and all of these products are connected and included into our app. And our idea is that our customer, through the MailPasai app, can have these other products as well embedded in the app. And the initiative acquired through the Assaipay credit card terminal And this pilot project is already going to be applied to some stores, so we can quickly conquer about 1,000 customers using this machine. And from this moment, where the first phase of these 1,000 customers are at a state or level of operation that we consider to be ideal, we'll roll this out into the other stores in 2026. So the idea here is we're working on this through a partnership. The funding, the discounts, and processing is all going to be under the responsibility of this partner company. And as a final result of this initiative, we really want to have a relationship with these B2B customers and be able to have initiatives that can make these B2B customers have exclusive advantages here in the store. not only generic but also very much connected to their segment right so the transformers will have specific advantages and so on so this is our plan for 2026 when it comes to financial services as we create this new ecosystem within the company based on the approvals of course of the central bank thank you aimer Let's go back one slide, please. One point here. A lot changed in this market, and so I think this fee had adherence, as we have 42% of the sales done to B2Bs, and the other 58 are for individuals in all social levels. At the end, SAE was adherent to about 20% of our public, right? We're talking about 8 million people, let's say, and that actually generated a revenue and will continue to generate a revenue of over 150 million net per year, and that considers the equivalence of these value propositions. And then now you have the opportunity for the other 80, right? So this is a market. that changed a lot with the growth of the digital banks, and they don't need that much, the retail operation that much to access this, but when it comes to cash and carry, we believe that this is where we have the biggest opportunities, right, with individuals, and also in the owners of these commerces that have, that prefer to do some credit operations within the actual business, right, so these two products have a bigger potential than the revenue we currently have, and we'll be working on this to have something by the end of this year already when it comes to private label. So before we get into the next slide, you probably saw the communication about the arrival of the new CFO, Rafael Sánchez. He's going to join the team in the second half of March. He had a period to close his activities in the other company he was in. So in a few days, we'll have a new CFO that will be able to support us. And I think it's a role that will really help us when it comes to capital discipline. It'll be an important reinforcement for the team. I want to take advantage also for this moment to thank Aymar. Of course, he continues working as an interim director, and he'll be involved in this a lot when it comes to financial services. But I just wanted to publicly thank Aymar for his effort, his work in these different initiatives and for taking on these dual roles. roles, let's say, balancing out both dishes at the same time. So on behalf of us and all shareholders, I want to thank you. Thank you, Bill. It was a very important period, and you can count on me as well for the next projects and developments. And I can't leave before we pay off all of our debt, so that's it. Anyways, next slide. We talked about different initiatives, and we've been spending a little more time than what we expected, but from a... perspective here on reinforcement we're a low cost business right so we have some different initiatives and the SG&A of SAE is stable ever since 2011 so we continue to evolve with low costs and When you look at new categories, we're searching for ways to reduce expenses. And, of course, the incremental margin is equal or the same. And also there are other projects, some other projects, as we are getting into an expansion cycle. And we should readjust this within our group. We have different projects even in the operation, which is the remote supervisor or inspector. And so we have someone servicing the checkout person remotely. So that reduces the time to 22 seconds. We have another pilot as well that we're processing the receipts. So instead of having one person per store with technology, you can have the receipt of the invoices and receipts. We're also changing our safety systems. And we're also reducing the amount of people that we have.

even with a better level of coverage.

And we've also been working on pricing improvements. We've been considering the artificial intelligence and the biggest gains are in the marketing areas where we can create in just two minutes a video that's directed to that store with a personality price and consider this in social media and a lot of productivity. We'll have a new people management system as well that will simplify this ecosystem when it comes to training, selection of talent within the system that's under deployment at this moment. So there are different initiatives as we search for ways to reduce operational costs and expenses since we're still in this deflation period in commodities. And also, last but not least, we have also kept our initiatives from an ESG perspective. Of course, the company once again received a series of awards and recognition to the benefit of the time. We're also highlighting this in the release when it comes to brand positioning, respect for consumers. and work consistency and other initiatives, right, where Asahi is really a reference, right, including Black people in leadership, some strong efforts also with our employees that are immigrants and refugees, as well as some other initiatives we have. i've been working on and so thank you all everyone and now i'm going to quickly go up to q a now okay to the benefit due to the benefit of our time limitations now we're going to begin our q a session i want to remind you that if you have questions you should select the q a icon At the bottom part of the screen, write your name, company, and enter the queue. As you're announced, your request to open up your mic will be on the screen. Then you must activate your mic to submit any questions. We'd ask you to please submit your questions all at once. Moving on here to our first question from Daniela Aker at XP. Dani, you may proceed please. Hi, good morning everyone and thank you for taking my question. We have some here on my side, but I'll focus on two so we have time for others. But the first one is, from a market dynamic you've been being very vocal on all of the challenges with purchase power and even food deflation what calls our attention when we look at what we had already known about in the previous quarter with the same sort of five percent in october and with the same sort of one but at the same time you bring in this variable evolving growth If you could help us a little bit on equating this and how we can think about this up ahead. If you're also bringing this initiative with supplements, which I think is a super interesting movement, as we've seen consumer changes and habits as well. But just to get a view on what your impression is throughout the year, right? With these components of volume, price, etc. And that would be interesting to get a view on. But about your comment on What can we think could be a sale of a certain group of stores in a specific region? Are you talking about closing certain stores? What store profile is this, right? Are these stores that maybe have a more outdated model than what you're searching for today? Would it be worse profitability? Just anything you can share with us would be great. Thank you, and congratulations on the results. Thank you, Denny. Well, we brought in data about the volume in the fourth quarter, but as you can see, the basket of cash and carry is very different. We have this mismatch between high income and low income, right? And we... already see this performance difference, but it's not as high as what we've seen at this moment, right? So you still have an important trade-down movement. And when you look at what we broke down in the release, the formats, it's not like they're selling less in kilos. They're just selling a cheaper product. So that's why we call it this K effect, right? Because it's the opposite, actually. Brazil is a world of inequality, and sometimes you forget about this, right? So especially in cash and carry, where it's present in many different social levels, which is different than retail, where you normally have like a niche focused on a specific group, right, like sounds club. Normally you have customers with a similar profile. In our case, we have a lot of different movements taking place at the same time. One we've highlighted is this loss in purchase power movement. due to the level of debt and, unfortunately, you have the bets that are still kind of stealing away a lot of resources. And we're seeing how this really impacts, especially the northeast of Brazil, So customers are buying or trading down still on brands. And there's this movement that's almost the opposite, right? So that's why we brought in this volume. Of course, if you have deflation that's really high with a lot of commodities at the same time, you'll have this variation, just as when you have inflation, commodities were benefited as well. That considers the flow and volume in the fourth quarter that's been growing, right? But now what we've seen is an acceleration in consumer behavior trends and also with carbs and protein. So with this, the company's been really well positioned and we have this movement throughout 2026, migration that's been more accelerated between consumption of beef and protein. And so Also, how to adjust these changes. So normally these changes can be quicker even than people imagine, right? When it comes to our portfolio revision, we normally consider an inflationary cycle of over 213 stores, right? So I'm looking at each region, and there could be that when we close to look into the study, there's some stores that maybe are at a deficit that we could decide to close down or sell to another business format, or even in regions where we grow a lot, you could possibly even have an internal overlap, right? So we're going to try to optimize this, and we're not discarding the revision of our current portfolio with adjustments in our store network and stores that are maybe not performing as planned. I hope to have answered. Okay, thank you. Yes, you did. That's great. Thank you. Our next question is from Rodrigo Gastin at Itaú BBA.

Rodrigo, please, you may proceed.

Two questions here. First, Bermuda, I would like to keep discussing this topic on the sales dynamic. 2026 is an election year, and that's where you normally have better consumption, a lot of fiscal incentives, et cetera. And, of course, we're talking about a category that is not discretionary, but that had a lot of trade down in the last few years, as you mentioned, right? So when I look at the profile, especially we can see this in different regions, right? So when you consider this and all of these challenges, in the last quarters but where you have a lot of a lot more cash in the economy in regions where you operate and considering the profile of income you have how do you equate this variable in your budget or your perspectives for sales in the year and also if you've ever seen something in the first 45 days of 2020 That's the first question. And the second one, I know you asked us not to talk about details on the tax credit. I don't want to get into details here, but when you consider the relevance of the topic, I just think it's important to ask you one thing, which is, do you see this as something recurring? do you consider this to be a recurring event and did you recognize this over time or do you really think that this is something that in your perception you would be able to continue to capture them sitting a lower cost throughout the next quarter so i think i just wanted to focus on this um part of the question right which i think is very relevant well um as there's two factors, right? Two things that are certain, debt and taxes, right? But taxes in Brazil are very complex, so this could also be answered by the tax team a little better, but in practical terms, we considered this as a contingency asset, and that's probably gonna become, Brazil, as we are able to monitor it. So today, what we have is an estimated value of 1.5 billion in this topic. We continue to assess the next few years. But, and a coincidence, we'll have a change in 2027 for the new tax reform. And what we can see at this moment is, yes, it'll be at least until 2026, And then we would look into 27 because from then on you have a new tax that would stop existing, right? So you would lose the recurrence considering the basis generating musical items and categories. But the results are not related to this. That's related to the capacity to transform it into cash. Since it's an uncertain asset, the accounting rules make us only consider the results when we are certain that this became cash. So as it becomes cash, you transform that into results. And then it's still a topic that later on we can look into because we'll have the tax team actually working closer on this to provide more explanation on this. But the expectation is that this will be monetized within two years. Looking at the curve, of course, if there's no legal changes in this period, right? About income, of course, we've seen that it's a World Cup year. It's an election year. We should have some government programs and even exemption of income tax, et cetera. But we haven't seen this effect yet. But what we have to be careful about is we have two phenomenons. One is... the level of families that are really carrying on heavy debt levels. So interest rates were kept too high for too long. And when we see there's still a part of the population that has real high debt. And so a lot of people had zero payments because there are even some credit granting programs. And so there's a service of debt that must be paid. And you're concerned when that's going to be transformed. But it is a positive expectation year. When you eliminate this variation in the commodities, you see rice is not going to keep at that level, right? There's rice that's like 5 kilos and costs 12 rice. That's not going to be there for too long, right? When you consider they would pay 53 sacks with a production cost of 75. So there's going to have to be an adjustment into the prices because commodities are perishable goods. If they drop because of different market factors, you're going to reflect that into sales, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a new price basis, right? So if rice for 12 goes minimally back, you'll have an important sales add-on, right? So this is also the quote to rice, beans, sugar, and this is a movement that is adjusted per area, right? So the reduction in the area will probably be very significant in the next year due to the prices, right? that producers received for SACRA. I hope that answered your question. Yes, very clear. Thank you, Romero. Our next question comes from Joseph Giordano at J.P. Morgan. Joseph will enable your audio so that you can proceed. It seems Joseph's off the list, but now we'll move on to our next question that comes from you may proceed please hi guys good morning thanks for the call i wanted to understand two points about keeping up the guidance for the captains with a lower amount of stores, right? What's the amount of beauty suits and is there going to be a breakdown on this? Is there going to be more maintenance at CapEx? If you could show us a bit more on these two points. Since you guys have been able to do the sales leasebacks and you guys have been delivering the guidance also on tax credit monetization, et cetera, it seems that the balance sheet would allow you to keep up a consistent expansion pace, right? So I want to understand, because there's a more strategic aspect with markets that are maybe a little more challenging to open up new stores, And I wanted to understand if there's something else besides this environment, right, of the balance sheet that could have led to maybe this revision, right? Well, just we have two or three years where we had an estimate. And even if you look at the focus report, the guidance actually of 2.6, when we made that, if I'm not mistaken, the expectation was that we would be landing at around 12.5. And it's at 15. So there are other components that until we're able to reduce our leverage more, we have to be careful about with expansion, which are investments that are higher. So what we did was postpone some projects that were really important. So we're going to be opening up some projects that are all in the state of Sao Paulo where the brand is stronger, the ramp up of the store is quicker and higher. And as we also review the portfolio revision, but also consider the changes in the new business that were added to the current model. So we should have 25 drugstores until July, but maybe we're going to have 100 until the end of the year. so we can gain speed and scale, right? So why is the CapEx still kept? Well, we have a bit of a carryover as well. The CapEx last year was smaller. We have the maintenance of the investments, and there's also an initiative for the new projects, right? So we could even review this, but at this moment we can't, so that's why we kept this number of $700 million, because we understand there are going to be some factors that are going to Reduce this. Most of these stores we already were working on with third-party capital. So not necessarily reducing the amount of stores will be reduced proportionally in CapEx, right? But at this moment, what we still have are the 700 million in CapEx, and so there's a strong investment in technology. even in the areas for picking with iFoods operation and also Rappi, as well as some other initiatives at the store as well. So that's why we didn't want to mess with this number yet. We prefer that the market can work with this number, which is more searching at this point in time. I hope to have answered, Jerome. Yes, you did. Thank you. so i just have two follow-ups here in regards to what we should consider as the average capex for these stores and if it's worth keeping these 10 openings from 27 onwards we're not going to be disclosing this information yet until we have better view on this so because we are already have three projects that um are being done with bts and two with our own capital it could be that this is so going to change a bit so we're also looking at this and the ramp up curve and the legal licensing process of them could still maybe switch projects a bit so um Now in the beginning of March, we should have a better view on this. And so from the network we have, we still don't have complete certainty of which five stores they'll be. Okay, perfect. Moving on here. Now our question from Joseph Giordano at JP Morgan. Joseph, you may proceed.

Hi. Good morning, everyone.

I know it's a year where we've seen the company work a lot on G&A, and I wanted to separate this question a bit here into three parts, right? First, looking at the selling line, where are we now versus what would be the ideal number for the headcount of the store? I think that's the first point. Second point, I understand the company also worked on corporate efficiency work. That was very relevant in January. So if you could also share what could be possible gains coming from this line. And finally, I wanted to explore the... between the profitability of legacy stores for 2022, we had maybe a significant margin drop, about 30, 40 pips, as well as those that are maturing, so maybe we can consider a more difficult year where expansion was a little tighter, and we should also consider revisiting this store network. Well, thank you, Joseph. Let me see if I understood your question right. There is a performance difference again, right? So our oldest stores have a greater stake in commodities, right? So if that drops, it's going to be more affected than the store network at Extra or the more central stores that have a different product mix, right? So maybe this difference is not that obvious. We brought in a little more detail than we did yesterday, but It was huge, right, between high-income stores such as Congonhas all the way to Totonibilala, right? So it's a whole other universe. What you sell in one is liquid soap and powdered soap and such. So the mix is affected differently, right? So there's a drop of 37% in the rice, 10% in beans, right? uh for big uh sales reps uh this won't be affected right but um of course you still have uh why do we have to be careful about some points right well because um rice is not going to keep this price forever right it's going to go up again and anyways whether due to a reduction in the planted areas etc we don't know how this is going to keep on but we'll have some more um So when you look at these important movements, considering the reduction and expansion and some projects that were finished, we also had some changes within the administrative front. We had a reduction in our employee base, and these are all readjustment movements. And also in the store, stores with the checkout self checkouts and other points as well where we also readjusted looking at the head counts per store so we had over 92,000 employees now we have a lot less employees but of course we're also hiring some people for picking but our expectation is that while the company is really well positioned and focused on these different initiatives for innovation but we Also, see the numbers. In Brazil, things happen after carnival, right? So January is a month where people have a lot of expenses to pay with back to school and other taxes. And so you start having better consumption normally at the end of February and March when things kind of get back on track in Brazil. Okay, thank you, Bermuda. Perfect. Our next question is from Irma at Goldman Sachs. Irma, please, you may proceed. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. About the partnership with MercadoLibre, I would like to understand two points, right? If you could discuss how we should think about profitability with these sales made through the platform and also how we should consider if these are going to be incremental sales or potentially there would be a migration from store sales to online. And so how you're going to perform this analysis considering how you're going to identify who's going to perform the sales, etc.

And so...

the second question uh is about the strategy the two brands chef and um i wanted to understand your mindset right we have two different um

execute the private label strategy, be it for a rain guard brand, which would be the case for Açaí, and in a way also Chef, or different fantasy names in each product, in each SKU, which brings perhaps less leverage in this promotion of the brand itself,

This could be more diversified if there's some other SKU that doesn't work. So I wanted to understand how you're looking at these two strategies. I hope that's clear, this question here on private label. So those are the two points. Thank you, Irma. We should also use the Kronenbaum brand for first price products, right? Of course, the project is starting now and it's going to go through a lot of adjustments. Brazil still has when you compare with other countries around the world, to historical conditions in Brazil, logistics and taxes. So you have an expectation also for the tax reform with greater standardization. We have a lot of regional brands with specific regimes. And the logistics issue, which is super difficult, especially with low added value products, where you have to transform things and transport things to Sao Paulo. And so, in our view, for the product to be successful, you have to have a level of density and low logistical costs. And today we have a big volume, right? You have a project sometimes, it's not that they're going to be focused only on Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, right, where you have more than 150 stores in a very small or low perimeter. And the volume that's in some categories We had 35, 40% of everything that the category sells in both states, right? So that's why we finally, I believe we finally reached the right moment to reach this private label product strategy. Of course, the acai brand is a brand that's loved by consumers, but at the same point, you can't get it wrong with this kind of brand, right? It's how you can contaminate other products. So we separated the chef brand and it's going to gain a lot more strength in some categories within the food service public and also Carnival that should also have some of the first price products and the main focus is going to be to launch the acai brand products. So we plan to have an improvement in the margins and also an increasing competition rate. And so about the partnership with Mali, we believe that it's an incremental sale, right? So customers buy through the platform, and we see customers have a purchase occasion that's very different for different categories. And so... when you look at the food sector a lot of people talk about how it's sometimes like a single group but these are actually unique categories when you consider products you need to choose like tomatoes or perishable goods and also soap products or you know exactly what product you're getting right so What we negotiated with Mercado David is really that will be the first cash and carry. We also want to keep our low price level without compromising margins, right? So we've seen... The objective is to have an additional channel with incremental sales for acai. I hope I answered that. Thank you. That's perfect. Thank you. So our next question comes from Lucas Esteves at Santander. lucas please you may proceed good morning thank you for the opportunity we noticed that there's a relevant factor in cash generation which is the increase of revenue related to commercial contracts suppliers for allocation of media space exposure products and other commercial conditions and i wanted to know if you consider this to be a structural change in how we should look at this recurrence up ahead Well, I'm going to pass this on to Blamir. We had a very unique negotiation that was made, and that ended up leading to this impression, let's say, right? So, Blamir, if you could discuss this. Hi. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for the question, Lucas. The effect is just accounting, right? We were negotiating contracts for the backline and suppliers, and the allocation also annually. And this year we made the decision, considering the scenario and difficulty we had in the market, to work on this. Instead of having an annual contract, created a biannual contract, right? And to the detriment of this, we increased balance sheet revenue, but for cash effect, this was zero, right? And so this is going to be considered during 24 months as we receive these amount so this is an accounting effect what we modified however was instead of selling this contract it's annual we started having a biannual contract and so there's no change or perspective and uh we should probably keep this up in 2027 when we renew this we should probably keep up this biannual of course uh we're going to understand this up ahead and see if it really makes sense for us the suppliers understood this as a positive point as well this negotiation with some um compensations and agreements we had with suppliers. So it's just like an accounting balance sheet effect, right? There's no actual cash effects. Okay, thank you, that's very clear. Thank you for this opportunity. Okay, just a correction point. I saw that Joseph Giordano wrote the tax credits that were billionaire, the credits are not in the results. The tax credits are not in the results. They're just a contingency asset. So it's only going to become a result as it is monetized. So considering that we identified the accounting procedures of registering this as a contingent asset, which is just notifying the market, but it's not included in the results just yet. Moving on, our next question comes from Gustavo Francini. Well, good morning, guys. Two questions on our side. First, how do we consider the gross margin from now on, right? You showed significant gains during 2025, but some of the main levers are maybe a little lower, which is store maturity and expansion. of the services, and we also have all of the discussions with the ICMSST that also hindered this delta between the net revenue and the gross revenue, and that also impacted the margins. And the second is about the G&A expenses. As selling is very well controlled, G&A has been increasing a lot due to the new projects that are going to lead to a lot of But how should we look at this from now on? Maybe like a phase-out of the expenses now that projects are more developed? Thank you. Well, obviously, you have one part of this, which is the deflation. So when you have a deflation, you dilute this, but the expenses keep on as the same, right? And so this not necessarily will affect the store results, right? So there is a phenomenon, which is temporary. As these commodities recover, fighting some way or the other, they're always, you have to be careful, right? Because sometimes it looks like everything's here forever. No, it's not going to be 12 reais a package, right? You're going to go back to the price even because of the reduction of the planted area and also because of the balancing out of the supply and demand law, right? So even if you suffer a bit of this during the period, if it's because of this as an identified and reversible reason, you don't want to make the wrong decisions, especially for store operation. There was an increase considering the new projects. Of course, first you plant, and then you reap, right? So there's no way out. And we are investing in people, training, skills, until these projects can once again generate the impact. So when it comes to the expansion of the markets, I disagree. Private label is a project. We're not here just to make the store look cute, right, and fill out a big portfolio of products with the SA brand. We want to increase margins. This is one of our objectives. So there's also been an advance in our negotiation systems and advances also in pricing that allow us to have margin gains as well. So even with these new projects, their sales, when they're accredited, they also help with the margins again. So once again, we still see a sea of opportunities, especially when it comes to financial revenue. Okay, that's clear. Thank you, Bomido. Well, our next question comes from Thales Granelo at Sanford. Thales, you may proceed, please. Thales, the phone is yours. Hi guys, can you hear me?

Good morning, everyone.

My first question is coming at the store network. I want to know how many stores are being reassessed in the company, if you can break this down, and if there are stores that are in deficit or not, and if there's a specific market that's been more difficult, where these stores should be reassessed. And then you have this and some companies in the sector are already testing this model of having two days off and five days of work. And looking at the reduction of the employees in the beginning of the year, how will this interact with this new scale as it is today, or if you maybe have to increase in the future? the uh amount of employees thank you buddies well um first uh the the five by two scale well we've obviously kept up with this and seen some pilot projects but most of them are in retailers, right, not any cash-and-carries or wholesalers. So I think it's going to be a very strong political demand this year, and I'm not going to say whether I think this is right or wrong, but I want to say that if this is applicable to everyone, in cash-and-carry we have a labor expense that's lower than retail. So normally 50%, let's say, and that impacts everyone, but it's going to be – basically null at the end of the day and offset, and we have a lower impact in cash and carry, right? So if it's a change, it's a bit more adaptive, and maybe it will have a little less pressure, right? Because there are days we have a purchase cycle very different, but of course, if it did come in, we would have to increase this to be able to manage this modification and shift. In the store network, we already provided some initial signs. We ended the results this year, and we'll be allocating those per store. So it could be that there's some closings, the margins with negative contributions. But obviously, we're going to be reassessing the store network, and we should bring in more data about this in the first quarter. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Keeping on here, we'll head to our last question. It's a question in English from Andrew Rubin at Morgan Stanley. Andrew, you may proceed.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe can we get an update on how you see the B2B business first, just a general view on the health of the B2B customer set overall, and then second, as some food categories go into deflation, from B2B customers, if that's having an impact on results, would be curious to understand it.

Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Very interesting question. Because the behavior of this B2B customer is different than B2C's. You can imagine businesses that are seeing price of rice dropping month after month, right? They reduce the volume of purchase because they're afraid of losing cash upon their stock levels, right? So maybe they're not going to be able to resell. So decision-making for who's going to resell is very different than who's going to be consuming, right? So when you have an increase in inflation, normally you'll increase volume. But when you also have a deflation, then you also have a drop in volume in this public because they're afraid of accumulating stocks because they've been keeping up with the price. And in the B2B basic items, they normally keep up pretty well. But it's a customer that's been impacted by the lack of cash and low income. So they've been working with a stock cycle that's pretty short. There's a demand for credit. And when there's a price drop, then they get into what they consider the cautious mode. And so actually there is some other points where the market was not expecting really increased margins, even in the sales scenario, right? Because there are some categories where there's no point in dropping prices because customers are not necessarily getting increased purchases, right? Because they're afraid of their stock cycle, right? And I hope I answered your question. Andrew.

Thank you. Yes.

The Q&A session is officially ended, and now we'll pass the floor back to the company for their final remarks. I want to thank the team, Alexandre Blamé, Sandro Reimar, and Gabi. And 2026 is a year where we have really good expectations. We expect that we'll have a drop in our interest rates. And we consider we have 40 million people visiting us every month in our stores. So maybe we have a vision that is very... significant in the food sector, right? And so this has really been highlighting the effect. And we see low-income customers suffering a lot, right? So there's a big expectation. But generally, Acai has been keeping up with this transformation. There are years with challenges, but of course the company's moving along with new projects and initiatives to be able to deliver and continue to deliver customer satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction. So I want to thank the team for the year of 2025, and we're getting into 2026. I want to mention also support from our board as well when it comes to positioning changes, and that's going to help us have a company that's very different than what we currently have. So thank you, everyone, very much. The earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2025 at SAE is officially ended. The Investor Relations Department is available to clarify any other comments or questions. Thank you so much for participating and have an excellent day.