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Thank you for waiting. Welcome to our earnings call. This is the first quarter of 2026 at SAE Atacadista. And to highlight that if you need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on our platform. And for this, you must select the translation button on the icon on the bottom of the screen. Choose your language of preference, Portuguese or English. I'd like to let you know that this earnings call has been recorded and will be provided on the company's IR website, on the IONIQ website, where you can also sign the earnings release. During the presentation, all participants will have their mics off, and then we'll begin the Q&A session. As your name is announced, the request to activate your mic will appear on the screen. And then you should activate your mic to submit questions. We'd like to instruct you that all questions... Sorry, we can't hear what he's speaking. and related to business perspectives, projections, and operational targets and financial information from a faith represent beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information that is currently available. Future statements are not a guarantee of performance. They involve risks and certainties and assumptions as they involve Second senses, it could not occur. Investors must understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors could affect the performance of that price and lead to results with different changes than those listed in such future statements. I will pass on the word to Gabriele Lu, our Investor Relations Officer. Hello, good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating in my earnings call. So, first quarter of 2026, I'm going to present Romero Gomes, our CEO, Papá de Sáche, our CFO, Sánchez Becari, VP for People and Sustainability, Domínguez de Sánchez, who is passing on the role of VP for Commercial Logistics, and Sánchez Leite, the Executive Director for Operations, will pass on the floor to Romero for his presentation. Thank you, Gabi. Good morning, everyone. I know that we are participating in the same presence. The idea today is to share information from the first quarter. This is a quarter that combines issues of adverse effects that have been impacting consumption, especially food. On the negative side, we have one market aspect that we've seen. The current context of the market being extremely complex. If we were to separate this into a few points, the first point is seen as an offending factor is the level of debt among families month over month that have reached all-time highs and that has impacted the lower income population with their purchase power and consumption. So one of the movements that would not be expected for this period in the first quarter of 2016 such as the trade down and some challenges to take in volumes and some categories have really been consistent. So the level of debt creates this bad combination, right, with high debt and high level of interest. And so I think this level of debt has reached an often high, reaching 80% on March. I've also been levered by different market data and an increase in sports bets activities as well, where these bets, especially among the lower income population, when we look at the north and northeast of Brazil or some other regions, This pace continues to be very strong. In the first quarter, the pace of sports bets reached almost 230%, almost three times the same period last year. And Brazil currently has like 1 billion accesses monthly. It's a country with a level of accesses of sports bets, sports bets, higher even than WhatsApp or YouTube, according to the data we've been monitoring in the market. And that has really contributed to that because the correlation of more debt and that every decision that catches fire that pressures our customers for small businesses that supply themselves and then of course what do we brought in the difference of performance came the fifth factor which was the low income and high income and the difference is as I mentioned something you've never seen from one year to um And so in the sectors that are servicing high-income, low-income, this number has been capped at a drop of 9%. So this cash that is being spent on interest has been... So, it's also been a combination in the first quarter of the commodity utilization and in all of the big commodities like rice, sugar, flour, and oil, which in this quarter led to an average utilization of 12%. So, this is an average review of the quarter. And these are commodities of importance, and the sector as a whole, not only Açaí, the Texan trade sector responds for about 50% of the food market, and the commodities from the United States, respectively, are responsible for 65%. And this is kind of very strong, when it comes to flour and milk.

And so, That leads to an impact on the revenue.

And within this scenario, what we observe is that our policy in the first quarter preserves the margins.

So...

When you have this market scenario, you see commodities are commodities. We spoke about this and it's temporary. So the inflationary effect or the depreciation effect of the commodity either through production or demand, that will be, that will be tending to have an adjustment. then we'll highlight the initiatives that when the sufficient pool finishes, and it will finish, and so that the company will be ready to capture this. And we see this shift in this deflation scenario, which would be persistent throughout the first quarter. But we have a new effect, which are the conflicts in the Middle East. When you have a conflict that pressures the oil prices, you have a component that could become inflationary but the most healthiest would be oil derivatives or sub-products and great as low added value products but even some items that are maybe not imagined like water for example So that would be freight and packaging, basically, right? So even the cost of water is very low. So there's probably going to be an envisioning impact. And so at the end of the first quarter, we held the volume of supply and we expanded the stock levels a bit, considering our planning. to also not be surprised by an increase in prices by industry. Despite all of this, even a scenario that was challenging for the series of components I mentioned previously, we were able to keep profitability in a rough margin stable. And that demonstrates that the business model is extremely resilient from a free EBITDA perspective when it comes to cash generation. The margins were completely stable. They're at the same level as last year. Even with the top five, we have a heavy deflation. But they're in the weight of these categories in our sales mix, and there's no way that those initial sales will reach this, right? For our customers, if we were to try to do this, we would spend margins at a moment where the that market's not a buying market so we expected this a little bit and as well as performance in the quarter demonstrates right so he's very strong very strong in commodities despite all of this we have a type of important analysis and a series of initiatives to control and hold our expense levels, and that helped us keep expenses, of course, slightly above the levels because our work shift for a pack of rice at 28 rags at 12 rags is pretty much the same, but we were able to have a series of strategic initiatives from an automation perspective and also from a new process perspective, and we also re-adjusted our employee base especially in the administrative functions of the company, that allowed expenses to be at a level of lower than inflation increases, still higher than sales. If not, we would have an increase in, despite the economic scenario and stability of our EBITDA, is an important indicator, considering the level of sales in the first quarter. And then these quarters that I already highlighted, the first quarter, in the in the fourth quarter sorry that there's a new fiscal change credit which are the items from article 14 that are already highlighted before in the fiscal rules and within our results earnings adds up to 397 million so for more for comparison the EBITDA we're showing here 5.5% and has any influence not have to reflect any volume of this credit And it could just reflect the operational metrics. So what we're looking at, the 5.5 is stable, and that's a phase that is completely comparable to last year. Of course, within the net income of the debt indicator, this volume of credit is being accounted for. And if you were to focus in the following, part of it is non-repairing, which are prior exercises of fees and that were monetized now in the first quarter. and that adds up to a total of $172 million. And then another volume, $724 million in the first quarter, which is recurring now in the first quarter, which is launched and will still be in the monetization queue, right, with the calculation of fiscal pay. And so that makes the recurring profit. When we look at the new base, it's So when it's non-recurring, you have the post IFRS vision, right? So then we have cash management and leverage. We already had the opportunity to speak about this, and the company has a big focus on due leveraging. We have a select rate that hasn't really contributed. due to the volume of our debt, right, and we have an increase in the interest rate of almost 14% compared to the first quarter of last year, so we had an average credit rate that was lower, and we have this feeling of high grounds, which has been persistent over the whole year, but with all the efforts the company made, we're a strong session reader, and so the EBITDA, we and Rafael will talk about the financial side, but they really supported the investments of the company and also the payment of the cost of debt. And the debt also has a reduction of 1.2 billion in regards to last year. And then we took a look at 2.52 of the credits and a reduction of 0.63. And then, of course, there's the financial discipline and the fact that the company is a strong cash generator. The presentation is in every dimension, which is the basis to be able to pay for the debt service and continue to do leverage. And with that, with time, there'll be positive effects of these new credits. So if we exclude these, we would reach a leverage of 2.75%. Then we can see that the leverage, the delivery trajectory is in line with what has been continuing to happen. And so I want to highlight a bit of this with the phase that would be totally comparable where you eliminate any of the costs. And then you have the gross margin that we had already mentioned in this process of expansion. Either because we have a smaller amount of stores, and then as you reduce the store openings, the margin starts reflecting The actual margin that occurred were 20% of the stores were recently open. Then you have an unfortunate amount in our price management, especially at this moment where differently than other formats where you look at supermarket data, for example, most of the chains services single, social level, middle class, high class. In our case, we're exposed to all social levels, either in the direct consumer services or in the B2B public, right, which includes restaurants with high income all the way to supermarkets or grocery stores that are replenishing low-income homes so that it makes different impacts in the economy also justify a different kind of pricing and especially when you look at this with a series of modifications in their product mix so expensive as i mentioned the company's always searching for ways to have automation you can see that projects, automation, self-checkout balances, and that allowed these classes to evolve, keeping the area in line with this phenomenal percentage of levels. And so now I'll move on to the next slide. It's our first session here with Rafael, as I said. So he'll explain the numbers here. He joined our team with me. Good morning, everyone. I want to start thanking the company for welcoming me so well. The board and has really helped me a lot. My parents as well here on my side, really providing incredible support. And it seems it's been collaborative that we can really build long-term work in the company's finances. And a special thanks to Aymar that has been contributing so much. And he took on this role as CFO for a while. And he had very careful and diligent work. And thank you so much, Aymar, for supporting me in the transition process. Now, what are financial results? We reached $565 million of financial results in a period of growth of 10.6%. That was mainly impacted by the growth of the average CDI in the period from the first quarter to the second quarter last year. CDI grew 14%, pressuring our financial expenses. And that was positively impacted by lower card anticipations. The company generated a lot of cash, and it wasn't necessary to perform such a relevant anticipation. We'll see this in the next slide when we consider the reduction of the company's gross debt. When we talk about the net income, we reached $267 million in net income. From an accounting perspective, that means 1.97% of our net revenue. and they were impacted by the peaceful things occurred during the period and also non-recurring expenses of the organizational restructuring and so that generated a negative impact. When we talk about the recurring net income, we were growing 7.3% in the same period last year. And while we consider this on the next slide, talking about our debt and our cash generation rate, we've reached a leverage of 2.58 times and a growth of 0.63. we were at the same period as the previous year and now the main focus is the resilience of this business model where despite a period with more challenging sales there's just a different reason for me to mention the company was able to keep disciplining gross margin and expenses are very strong and strong cash generation period as well so we had 2.9 billion of operational cash generation and then after That's added on to this delta for the normalization of the cards, and it goes to CapEx for investments. We have 700 million in investments, and this is an important alignment, and it goes to the company strategy for getting over here. And so a lower amount of dollars and a level of investment. And that generated a cash generation that was normal, but when we adjusted to the effect of the non-anticipation of college on a comparable basis, We generate 1.2 billion net cash, and that is converted automatically to net payments. So when we talk about our net debt, we go from 13.4 billion to 12.2 billion, right? That net gain is dropping, and that's going to reduce to 1.32 billion. And in regards to the leverage and leverage, we have this trend of the drop in the debt. And an important mention also on the right side of the chart here, the covenants. The company has covenants that were hired a few times, and they consider that both IFRS EBITDA and the conversion of this covenant to be a fee IFRS EBITDA. It is equivalent to one... So that would be less than half of the risk of pregnancy, reinforcing a level of security and financial comfort that the company has in regards to these debts. And finally, on our cash, on the next slide, we finished the fee with 4.4 million, and that's our available cash. And along with this, we also have the non-exempted card, which would add up to a total of 7.5 billion in the end of the first quarter, and the company is really confident about its generation. And due to this, we also launched a buyback program for intervention, which is in regards to 2,200 million euros in a period of 180 days. And this program intends to reduce our grassroots in the company and take advantage of possible opportunities for arbitration of these fees and rates, considering possible secondary market for the venture market. And the early financial highlights of the first quarter of 2026 now pass the forum back to Bill Meade as we talk about our initiatives to evolve the business. Hi, everybody on mute. Sorry about that, guys. Well, within what was mentioned initially, of course, regardless of the external market, we've been going through these different cycles. And we know about the commodity cycles, the high interest rates, low interest rates that the company has been searching for. ways to be positioned, and we have other opportunities even to talk about this and take advantage of an asset that is most important, which are the 40 million monthly customers, so that we can all have these new initiatives focused on low capital and take advantage of the current flow and source structure to add on new sales. and and so we already have 200 stores with the products you can put it in and out and our objective is to have products that have quick turnover competitive prices and that can last for such a period of time right so we're seeing like the refrigerators that we're placing stores and other products that we're going to work with and we're not going to sell like a big a line of figures it's just an opportunity item looking at our flow of customers and that's where we reinforce this perception of low price and increase the share volume. Another important timeline is the shift in the legal framework that will allow us to deploy the full drugstore in our stores and we were able to do this before in our galleries but that's first the layout of the cash and trade to start working on the on the breakfast outside and we start some changes and habits the glp-1 analog drive sounds efficient for greater health in ourselves and have other opportunities for cars protein and supplements and In our view, the drugstore, looking at the public, the existing public and our structure, will allow us to also be competitive and to enter in this new sector and maybe get to sell to their new sales, but also recover a piece of what we call HPC, which is hygiene and personal care products. that besides being important, was also applicable to the products I already mentioned, like supplements and other food complements that we're already advancing with. So our drugstore project with the shift in the legal framework that was a demand from the sector for almost 30 years, and although our expectation is in the second half of the year, we'll already have 25 stores with this drugstore implemented. already included some new products as well that are geared to supplements, vitamins, proteins, et cetera, to adjust to consumer habits and, of course, supplements and vitamins and everything where I understand the fake potential to sell more and to sell, we expect the extra product to advance even more. On the next slide, you can advance. Well, we've already started the first product. We're going to use the Acai brand. It's going to be good to the end customer, especially the chef brand that's good to our food service public. It's a brand Acai already worked with before, and it's already good to some products that should probably be expanded a bit. And they're going to go on with the first product. level price. And we've already advanced on the first 25 up here. The other 175 should be available by the second half or until the end of the year. And the objective is to expand. margins that's a clear objective considering that we saw industry kind of took on a low cost and put this in and we want to get part of this from industry and the objective is expansion of the margin loyalty of our customers and creating a strong point of our commercial versus power and expanding the mix of private label digital This year also went through important restrictions We expanded the amount of stores present on iFood. We have over 100 stores. And if you want to get into the... And we're already looking at the different tests as well for fulfillment, especially invoices and logistics and everything that we can work on this new channel. We're also waiting on the approval of the split of the fee, which is one of the important value levers in our campaign. We have a waiver for the pilot project for the medical terminal. But the other initiatives still rely on approval from central banks. We have over 1.3 million active cards, and we think it's an important opportunity for complementary financial services and also going to the credit label, either for consumers or also for businesses. that may find challenges in accepting credit. So these new initiatives and things that we're assessing, such as fuel stations, SAI has 40 million customers, almost 10 million drivers. We also have the fuel station and the electric power station. So our cost of being in the free power market is maybe higher than like the residential cost. So in big stores with high parking areas, as we advance, how we can also reinforce this, we would be able to sell power to customers even for cheaper than what they would have at their house. really reinforcing price margins, et cetera. And so these are initiatives where if you keep the leverage levels in both level topics, if you consider... we can really consider the value create possibilities and I wanted to go over this and let me is also keeping up with our earnings when it's all and we've already announced that let me will be dedicated to more personal projects and we'll have under some pressure you're checking on some of the logistics and just as sizes are working on this period as well And I want to thank Vladimir for all of his effort, dedication, and contributions. We had an opportunity to talk about this as well. Without your contributions, we'd never get to where we're at. And I want to wish you success for your new personal projects. And then we'll pass this on to Sandra and open up for Q&A. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much. First of all, I just want to... I don't want to get in the way here of the call, but I want to thank you for these 15 years of partnership that I've had with you, and thank our shareholders and the board and management as a whole, my parents, and the financial market as well. But I think I wanted to have two special thanks. One for our suppliers, which, well, I... was leading the commercial area without a lot of support from my suppliers, and I hope they continue to support Founders Now and the company, and to the over 90,000 employees that during this period that I was leading the commercial area, This contributed to the growth of us. I went from a company back in 2011 that had a revenue of 3 billion, making this a company of 80 billion. It really makes me honored to have participated in this. contributed to the growth and development of Açaí and other people. So I end my cycle of this company really proud of everything that we were able to achieve by over 90,000 employees. And I wish you all success, and especially to Anderson and Sergio to take on these new roles. I hope they can conduct this in the best way possible. Thank you all, everyone. Thank you, Vamir. Thank you. Once again, now we can move on to Sandra. Thank you, everyone. Now we're talking about ESG. We're committed to ensuring that our growth continues to generate consistent value for society and for the environment. We have been actively working in three pillars, which are efficient operations, people and community, and ethical and transparent management and industry support. We were able to keep our presence in G5E3 for the fourth consecutive year. We had significant evolution in the ranking, and we're the only company in the food retail sector that's present on the index. In efficient operations, we were able to connect with the increase of 48% of the stores. We're having composting operations, a growth of over 10% of compostable products. waste and we also expanded our direct disposal program to 1077 stores and over 12% growth in donation of food and for people in community we continue to evolve in diversity and inclusion we have over 26% women and over 44% black people in leadership positions and we've also advanced with including professionals that are over 60 and through the SIE Institute we also expanded our social impact with a growth of over 200 percent in training micro and small entrepreneurs around Brazil and over 1.1 million meals donated in this period and that reinforces our commitment to fighting food insecurity And so we will continue to evolve consistently in SG and focus on sustainable value creation over time. These are our main advances in this quarter. And I'll pass the phone to Debbie so that we can conduct the Q&A session. Now we have a slide here from the middle on the closing. Yeah, so before we move on to Q&A, the next steps, I think we kind of already tied together. So the company is really geared to the leveraging and financial discipline. We intend to continue to do leveraging. There's a lot of uncertainty about the interest rates. Everyone imagined that the interest rates would drop a bit. But we've been also highlighting the effect of how high interest rates have really hindered low-income customers. And there are some other factors, of course, that we cannot disregard that this happens. simply impacting this, because although you have maybe kept higher for a long period of time, and when you look at consumer data, with the exception of some points related to new consumer habits, we've been trying to keep control over our investments keeping on the trajectory of our leverage and continue to expand productivity and margin expansion as well. We have 140 stores that are new and a lot of stores that came from the hypermarket project with different initiatives are highlighted that are here to this and ongoing evolution of this model. As I mentioned, Captain Kerry is 50% of the food market in Brazil because it wasn't restricted to the original model. So, of course, we cannot think that a single model will meet all of the demands and needs of all the social levels. So we're going to continue to explore structure of stores and existing flows so that we can search for ways to generate sales, value expenses, and continue to keep our margins as we have, or even increase our margin as you go past quotation, have another scenario of consumption, and I'll pass on to Q&A.

Now we will begin our questions and answers session. Remembering that to ask questions, you should click on the Q&A icon on the bottom of your screen. Write your name. company, and language to enter into the queue. Once you are announced, a request to unmute will appear, and you should activate your microphone to ask questions. We'd like to ask kindly that the questions are made once at a time. Let's go to our first question from Dani Iger, Bellside.

Dani, I'm opening your audio so that you can ask your question. Please proceed.

investments, then you can ask your questions. Good morning, Belmiro. Good morning, Shafet, Sigabi, and everyone who is present. Thank you for the question. I have two on my end. The first is in relation to the recognition of credit. I'm not sure if you have seen this, but there was news a few weeks ago which brought some uncertainty if it would be possible to take advantage of this credit. So you brought the recognition of that result. So it would be interesting to hear your side. When you informed us last time on the results, there was a judicial basis as well as an audit basis to recognize that knowledge. But it would be interesting if you could give us more information on the issue of revenue. There are some markets where there are... And then my second question is in relation to the restructuring, if you could give us more information on the quarter in which it was conducted and how we should think about this for the future. I am not sure if there is any guidance or a clear link, but on the discussion of six by one, this is a discussion that has evolved a lot. I imagine that the self-checkout could be a movement in that direction, but if you could contextualize, what would be the strategies that you have been doing in relation to this short-term challenge? Thank you, Danny. Actually, there are three questions. I'll start with the last one.

Restructuring affected.

areas related to participation in 22 of SAI when we converted actions. We had 14,000 people in construction working. So if you reduce investments, you also have to re-adequate the structure. And besides that, the company has a series of efficiency projects that are internal in various areas to have a new system for employees, not only for payroll, but also for admissions and hiring. A series of processes that were manual will be automated. This is going to begin in June, so we have a system of purchases that will allow stores to have a catalog that is more automated. The Tower projects that we have that are done internally in World 22, we converted the extras with a huge effort, and the projects that we have today that are involved in the area of IT and many others in the company are also changing a lot of things at the same time and we see a series of opportunities to improve the expenses situation and also cost reductions. So for our company, leaving 2010 with 38 stores to 2013 and 40 million clients, there are a series of optimizations happening. These are strategic actions of the company in various areas that are happening at this moment. So it's not restricted only exclusively to the issue of personnel and staff. So we are trying to preserve the service in the stores and the shopping experience, but if part of the volume is not coming or the minimal value of a drop of 2% in the value of companies. I'm not going to remove a cashier. We are working hard not to affect the customer experience in relation to credit. Of course, the tax issue is always difficult to explain, and we saw from the movement launched by the revenue notification to 3,000 companies that do not have any to this credit at the moment. Maybe they will have in the future, but it's in respect to any credit that the companies can take advantage of in a contradictory way. Every company has their own method. In our case, this affects a series of opinions, but the company may have the conditions to have a discussion on this. So, the rights to this is reserved to each So in this, we saw an operation where there are a series of practical issues in the market, which is a movement that the federal revenue can do at any moment. On the six by one labor journey, this is a movement we have observed and we will be observing. And of course, the company will have to adjust. It's an issue that's very important. But today, cattle and dairy is a channel for lower income. prices for the population and it's lower in relation to other channels. So the other channels should probably be more impacted than us. The company has been observing the movements and the discussions that are happening at this moment with the authorities and we would adjust when it happens. If the change is the same for all, I think a good example would be from the previous year where there was a 2% quota on the taxes and the margins were not affected because this happened in the end. We are cash and carriers where you buy and you add the cost and you pass on the price, so within this sense, it will be reflected in the price. This could open opportunities in terms of the shifts and schedules of our working hours but we will be looking towards the period of transition and how we will adjust to that the impact will be affecting everyone those who have lower costs will have less relative costs and those who have more costs will have more costs to pay when you look at it relatively so depending on the way it's applied it will probably even increase our competitiveness Excellent. Thank you so much for those answers. The next question is from Luis Felipe Conay. Luis, open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Good morning, Gabi, Velmido, Shashak. I think two questions we have on our end. The first one, Velmido, you commented on the behavior of inflation over the quarter. If you could comment more towards the end of the first quarter and in the beginning of the second quarter, How did you see the elasticity of the volume to price if there was anything that you were able to notice, especially now in April where the first readings already show an acceleration of inflation in the food sector? And a second question on the working capital and negotiations with suppliers. If you could comment on the dynamic of negotiations over the first quarter and how this, affected the gross margins, if you were able to capture any gains in gross margin with these negotiations. Thank you. Thank you for that question. In the first quarter, I think there is no capture in margin. What we did in the second quarter, we see the market with deflation, so our intention was to close the first quarter with a lower level of stock, but as the market shows signs of prolonging this and a lot of uncertainty in the chains of production, we decided to increase our stocks also in the end of the first semester. So there is a movement. We are seeing the first movements of inflation. Obviously, since it has a tail, the effects should affect us in the second quarter. Until this moment, we have not observed any changes in terms of price elasticity because even though the Store owners, especially when you look at the purchasing power of the population, there's no space in order to increase volume. So we observe more care in the B2B market. There's a project from the government that may insert more money into the market because the level of indebtedness with the interest rates is very high, and inflation will pressure low-income populations even more, so I believe we still need to advance more. There will be higher inflation, but we will be waiting for May and June to see how this movement will be behaving. We are operating with a higher level of stock to avoid Worse discussions with the industry on terms of price, but the categories will be more, there are some categories that will be more affected than others, especially those that are derivative from petroleum. Packaging has been affected in industry, so the industry of packaging, in some cases, there have been adjustments of two digits in prices, especially when we look at the packaging industry. There's also the issue of fuel. And the transportation and freight, but the government has been taking care of this so that there is less impact. But this is something that we'll live on because it is a risk for fuel. So depending – well, this is something that's happening not only in Brazil but in other countries since the consumption – is being affected like mineral water. The price is affected more by fuel than the actual water. I hope I was able to answer your question. Thank you. The next question is from Joseph Giordano from JP Morgan. Joseph, please open your mic so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning to all. Good morning, Belmiro and the team. I would like to explore the scenario of the more adverse demand and how we should think about the upgrade to the evolution of the model.

There are various movements, including electrical home appliances.

Do you have any guidance, especially for the next year and the second point? would be to understand how we should think about the dynamic of opening and closing of stores over the year, if there are any closings or any openings of stores that are carried on from the previous year, how the phasing will be over the year, and if by any chance we should contemplate somehow sale of points or closing, how this should be modeled over the years. Thank you. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you for the question. Yes, obviously, in the fourth quarter, we have been evaluating existing markets, but we still have not been able to visualize anything yet. We are always looking at portfolio stores and seeking to reduce the debt as quickly as possible, especially because this expectation in regards to the income tax and inflation has not been realized, so there is To tell you the truth, there will be more detailed numbers in the second quarter, but the impact is not a relevant impact yet with what we signal. There may be changes, which we are still studying, in the mix of stores that we opened for 26 once we had a quantity of stores in which some of them had the forecast of being done through the but as the interest rates are high, we may delay them, or they may be adjusted, and the projects that were for 2027 will be for 2026, or they may be, 2026 projects may happen in 2027. There is still the issue of legal licensing, so there are important construction works that we are discussing. working on in Capón Hidalgo, for example, it will be the first cash and carry in a region of almost 400,000 inhabitants. Xaxa actually, one of the things that he did when he arrived was look at the space, which we looked at in the map, the regions of the city and see the spaces where we could look at the north zone. There were only three stores in the eastern side. There were a lot of inhabitants where there were no cash and carries, but there are projects that will be executed, the second store in the city of Malagi where there are 400,000 inhabitants within the larger metropolitan region of Sao Paulo. So we will bring a more balanced vision over the second semester once we are closing a lot of licensing and this affects expansion. So what happened in April came from last year. There are a lot of projects that are outside of the company's control. I hope I answered your question, Joseph. Perfect, thank you. The next question is from Lucas Esteves from Santander. Lucas, open your microphone so you can ask your question, please. This, please go ahead. Good morning to all. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. First of all, I'd like to congratulate you for the resilience in such a difficult moment and wish a lot of success In Asahi, there are two points that I would like to approach, Romero and Shashu, first of all, in relation to the dynamic of revenue, if you believe that these initiatives over the year, especially the partnership with MENI and the rollout of the stores, if you believe that this should impact in a relevant way the top line in the second semester, offsetting some of the pressure which we see in the sector of food. And then on the credits of fees and confins, if you saw any expectation of timing for the monetization of these credits, I believe they were not monetized. They were only recognized in the first quarter. And with all of the credits that are historical and also recurrent, considering this, if you see as plausible to consider the possibility of finishing the year lower two times of the expected EBITDA. what your V leverage is expected for until the end of the year. Thank you for the answer. Thank you, Lucas. Let's go. So the new initiative, some of them, for example, within an Argentine tire where the stores have a capacity of generating revenue, but I don't believe that in the second quarter this will be relevant since we are talking about 270 million reais in terms of commodities, what we lose if we get annual and derivatives it would be 3.4 points so if you get rice that goes down from 28 to 12 there is a reduction in the magnitude of 20 or 30 percent in the categories that are our specialization and so there are initiatives that will be long term but it's the same story for those who have been in the food market for a long time commodities have always behaved in this way they go up and they go down so what we will have now maybe is a cycle of many commodities diving down but it will pass and it will be adjusted because the farmers in terms of the rice for example it reached 57 hands and now it's a 75 to be produced so it's just an issue of time obviously the new projects are advancing and they will help us i do not believe they will change but what will change perhaps in the top line is a inflationary change because the main offender today if we look at our situation is that the source should be aligned with inflation. So deflation is the first offender. So there are categories in this magnitude plus a population that is maintained because the base last year was already restricted in terms of consumption and contrary to the expectations, when you look at the income and unemployment and a series of funds that are being injected into the market, the consumption has not changed because indebtedness has been increasing over time. On issues related to credit, yes, your reading is correct. The recurrence was only launched now in the operation. The expectation is that this should happen within the deadline not higher than 12 months. Otherwise, it would also have to be part of the contingency, but this is why it's within the results as a recurrent. Looking at indebtedness, our idea is not, is no different than focusing on leverage. So we will reach the lowest level we can this year. So with the Selic going down, the Amicada came up, but we will be preserving margins. So these new initiatives in the company are not going to change, like, even if we add gas stations and CapEx. It's not pressuring our cash with the initiatives that may generate more percentage. So we would like to become, we'd be lower than the number you quoted, but I cannot give you any guarantees at this moment.

Thank you, Lucas.

Domingo, if I could just ask a follow-up question on the issue of recurrence of the recognition of these credits. I understand that the phase-out of physical things It happened in the last year. If you could recognize these credits so we could deal them as recurrent within 26 and the first quarter of 27, these credits will no longer be existing just to confirm if my understanding was correct. They are recurrent until the moment in which the legislation is changed. I need to confirm if it will be 27 or 28 when will change, but then it will be launched, but for the, a highlight of EBITDA, it's connected, because season confins will change in 27. Exactly, it's in 27 domino. Thank you, everyone. That was clear. The next question from Ima Exas from Goldman Sachs. Ima, please open your microphone so you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. I would like to ask a question. on the digital partnerships, perhaps the partnership with MercadoLibre. I know that it's still early in the cycle, but if you could perhaps share some of the first lessons that you had in this partnership, what products are making sense, maybe about the economics, where they make sense and do not make sense, and also the lessons learned on how the management of stock is being within full and the logistics and perhaps also trace the difference with the other partnership that you had, which you have been increasing with iFood.

Thank you.

Thank you, Irma. I think those are two very different projects, the partnership with iFood. We are the ones that, through the separation of those more than 700, and 70,000 requests, so they're present in four stores in our vision. It's complimentary sale where they buy from the platform and they don't go to the store, but it's all organized by outside, so the platform iFood has a huge reach. This has allowed us in our vision to create additional sales. There are a series of improvements still for us to apply in this process, especially in relation to multi-peaking because some stores are very large, so separating One order at a time may take a long time, and then it's our deadline. There are great gains in productivity and in sales once our sale price is very competitive. With Mandy and MercadoLibre, we are still in tests, especially in the systemic area because they will issue a fiscal document for us in the category of products that will be established, but the goal is to put products that have added value higher added value products that are not perishable of course we are very competitive in those goods and leverage and create additional sales there are some cases where there are many industries also that are within this platform but we need to have a structure of management and tax and fees and we may enter into a second level so we should probably have more data that are robust in the second quarter because the tests are focused on the systemic integrations at the moment. We started the partnership at the end of March. We will extend it to the end of April. There are two large companies that are looking at this very carefully to see if the systemic part works and then the logistical part of the product. So it should reach 250 items in second semester. We should have better data to be able to talk about this partnership. Thank you. The next question is from . Please open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Thank you. Two very quick questions here. Good morning, everyone. The first is that I would like to understand on the converted stores what the performance was, how much the sale per store is, what are the margins that we should expect, And then also thinking about the competitive dynamics when we look and compare with the atacadão and the industry, how do you see the performance of the mature stores, the non-converted stores? And if they're looking towards the rest of the year, how do you see the possibility of increasing competitiveness in terms of more robust market share without counting on the converted stores. I am not sure if my point was clear, but the second point that I would like to explore is on the benefit of physical things. If we can imagine a number higher than one billion and a half. For me, it wasn't clear if There is an upside that could be clearer. I'm not sure. I know it's not easy to clarify this, but if you could help us understand this better. Well, let's go. It is really hard to make predictions. That's why the idea is to go quarter by quarter. We have an original forecast, but the numbers were higher in terms of compensation in the end, but then it also really depends on our there have been changes in the legislation. The inspections and legislation will change, so we cannot estimate too much. But even if the rhythm is continued, this should probably increase a lot in terms of what was recurrent, as we mentioned. When we look at competitiveness, if we gain 0.3 inch shares. So the evaluation that the company has made is that we have a market scenario with indebtedness of the consumers and deflation of commodities. So we will probably be able to sustain the margin, but worse, maybe it could have altered and made difference in sales. That's the scenario we are working with right now. The company is being very, but this will not affect the deleveraging. Despite the deleveraging, we will have a scenario of very tight money in the hands of consumers of low income and those who are at the other end do not notice this. So Brazil has many Brazils at the same time and the reality today, if we look at the numbers with the movement of the government of and other things is because we are still highly with the new factors that appear, I think that it's something that will not affect the higher income, so we already have higher prices and consumers investing more in margins to seek more sales and levels of competitiveness. The main share has been maintained in the first quarter in April. We see there is still a higher advance in share. despite the fact that the market as a whole has been suffering. So since there are few companies of open, public companies, but as I said, this is a temporary cycle. The cycles in commodity have always happened. High interest rates, low interest rates, and we are implementing new initiatives to support us until this cycle passes in the converted stores. There's not a lot of difference in this year. We will stop. uh providing the numbers but if you look at the first quarter where they were above the forecast but what's interesting about the stores especially from extra that many of the new projects even with the layouts and the pharmacies and the gas stations the more adherent stores are the central stores that we have that are not necessarily coming only from extra even with organic expansion stores which we put closer to the central regions to capture the higher income population. I hope I answered your question. You did answer, but just to draw attention to one more point to clarify, looking at the Note 14 about the commercial points, was there anything in this quarter That was abnormal. This is $170 million that was reduced. Is that sustainable? Are you going to continue doing this? Just more color on working capital if you can. Yes, it's sustainable. It should continue to be done. That part of the commercial funds we receive are recurrent given the negotiations. There may be some variations over the quarter, but nothing that is outside of normal with the exception of the fourth quarter where there is higher seasonality. Thank you. The next question is from Rodrigo Gashing from BBA. Rodrigo, please open your microphone and ask your question. You may begin. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions on my end. The first one, Velmiro, is a curiosity on how you internally buffer the budget, how much this cycle of commodities that are more under pressure will last, understanding the 12% that you mentioned for the first part, or how do you see this in your accounts, and in case this lasts for a longer period of time where there is a depletion of more commodities, what could be done in terms of profitability? Is there any space to tighten operations? How much efficiency can you still gain? And the second question, is about the pricing project and the impact on the gross margins. This is something that you have been talking about for several quarters. If this was already captured and how much is still to come in terms of gross margin because of this project, those are the two questions.

Thank you.

Well, I think both of these questions are related to each other because there have been changes in our model of pricing. So we would price in store clusters. And given the geography of stores that we have, there have been advances at the rate in which the projects are maturing. At this moment, there are many components in the margin. There is a margin that has suffered impact at the rate in which there was deflation when the stock gets higher and you need to sell things at a new price where there is a drop in margin. So despite that, what we expect is to continue to deliver the evolution in margin, be it through the system or because the commodity in itself and its participation will affect the mix. It's not so marginal, but in this quarter, it's very marginal, but in the predictability, it is very complex because commodities are very difficult to estimate in terms of prices, so at this moment, what we have been looking at with more caution, we have some strategic stocks being done in April with some projects where we had convictions of purpose, but we are not playing with stock of having more stock than we need more than is necessary in terms of capital, working capital, because there are uncertainties in terms of the consumer. So while this uncertainty exists for the low-income population, we should continue to be reflecting on this and working slowly. The market has been suffering with this and the international assumption as well. So estimating it is very difficult. We basically will adapt to it. So the company has always been resilient in this sense. so much that I invite anyone who would like to look at our presentation for international investments. Our gross profit has increased in the last 15 years, so even in inflationary cycles and deflationary cycles, we have been able to preserve margins, so in a more objective way, the consequences for the price of sales. We are working to have low prices and good commercial negotiations and continue to be competitive and maintain the margins that the company needs. I hope I answered your question. Very clear, Belmiro. And just a quick question that some people asked, and maybe it would be interesting to leave this very clear. When asked about the inflation of food starting in the second quarter, especially in April, just to make it clear, Belmiro, that you are ready. or did not notice in your operations? Have you seen any changes or recovery in pricing? It would be important to make this message very clear because that generated some questions. Thank you. No, in fact, this has altered prices in some categories of products that have been visible. There are products that are more affected because of the conflict that is unrolling. We should see stronger impacts now in May and June. since most of the operators in the sector and even us had stock, but at the rate in which now there is stock that has suffered inflationary impact, we will be correcting the price of sale. Obviously, we need to be careful to not give you a number, but of course, if there's a pressure of price, we will need to pass on the prices that we had. Perfect, so it's a dynamic that's still similar. to what the first barter was in April, but there's some optimism in relation to that for May and June. That's the reading you have today. So there's a nominal correction in the same way that we see a deflation of 12% in the commodities. There is a limit of what we can offset as well as an inverse movement, which obviously is not in our hands. This is in the market context because of everything that we mentioned in terms of the increase Conception, all of this. Inflation makes help correct the top line. Excellent, Belmiro. Thank you for the answers. That was very clear. The next question is from Vinicius from UBS. Vinicius, we will open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please go ahead. Good morning, Belmiro Sachetti and Gabi. Two questions on my end. The first is about the volume of PJs. If you could comment on what you see in terms of your PJ clients, what your perception is on the financial health of these clients in the scenario of high interest rates. And if you think that in a scenario of recovery of inflation, if we can think about a refit, and some movements of anticipation or formation of stock in the profile of clients here at the end of the line. And my second question is about the effects of the removal of products from the tax regime in Sao Paulo. If you think that this can generate the possibility of monetization that is additional for taxes, looking at the ICMS angle, if you have 1.6 billion to recover in ICMS, Maybe this can generate some opportunities. I'm thinking about new phases of tax exemptions. What can we think about in terms of impacts in ICM fee, net revenue, and margins towards the future? Thank you. Thank you, Vinicius. As you well mentioned, Sao Paulo has been removing a series of items in the tax burden, which will be happening over the year, and new patches will follow. We put the variation of gross margins because this will affect the ceiling that SoCALO has in the correction of ICMV once you leave the regime where you only have the restitution of the tax as a reductor of ICMV for credit and debit, so this will be affecting the

in relation to this competitiveness.

We do not expect any change because our numbers were already elevated if you think about the substitution or the imaginary sales with the effectively sales products. So that way we would need to recover credit, which is extremely complex. It would have to be one for every SKU, but per weighted average so in our point of view this will alleviate us in the point of processes because you go into the credit and debit regime which we operate with low price the lower the price the lower the margin no matter how that was already composed before but the lower price the less taxes you pay uh that has a neutral effect from the point of view of competitiveness in my opinion so seriously what will change is the form of the negotiation with pricing and negotiating with suppliers, but the products will be going to the normal level. And the volume of PJs, what have we observed? These clients, as I mentioned, for the 4%, even those who accompany the Nielsen report has a vision that it's a bit distorted. There is a bias in these samples because those who deliver data are the high, are the large industries where low income is only done afterwards. So, the CJ clients are the people that are in the 9% and these clients, we have observed them as highly cautious. From the point of view of credit, it seems that their financial health has not been dropped in this sense because these clients are very resistant. They never had access to credit so they are maintained that they're being very cautious of the origin of the low income that comes and has been impacting cash and carries. Comforting deflation is at the origin of the consumer, so when they feel that, if there's any explosion in any category of products that is not perishable, where they see more opportunities of gain, the clients will be more careful before they invest in stock. That's what we have observed. This movement has been happening in the last two or three years with the PJs being very careful at the moment of absorbing more. So part of this explains the margin movement, which we have been doing. So we do not see clients with electricity to say that, oh, now I'm going to drop prices and have huge volumes. No, this has not happened. I hope I answered your question.

Perfect.

Thank you, Belmiro. The next question is from . Open your audio so you can ask your question. Go ahead. Your audio is open. Please go ahead and ask your question.

We will continue to the next question.

from Bank of America. please open your audio so that you can ask your question. Go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I know it's difficult, but what do you think about same-store sales and operational leverage for the year as a whole? You have deflation, but there are also compensations. Your launch in the Mercado Libre seems a bit delayed. How should we think about the timeline to reach 450 SKUs on a national level. And, Belmiro, it also seems that you are very confident in the value proposals. Could you comment on the price differentiations that you are observing and to confirm the initial proposal would be B2C, B2B, or both? Thank you. Bob, I didn't understand the value proposal in relation to what? You talked about B2B or B2C? Both. What is the value proposal in comparison to the electronic competition in this platform?

Oh, okay.

Understood. I think there are two factors. What we are confident on in the value proposal with the partnership with iFood is because of our capillarity in stores and assortment which we can offer and the price level that we are able to provide. so much that today we are probably the main operators within this platform. And it's an observation of ours that there is still a lot of space to be able to advance for MercadoLibre since we closed the deal at the end of March. We even had announced that the tests would begin in April because there's also a timeline of projects for both companies that the objective is to accelerate more but with the responsibility especially on the part of integration. And I believe that given our size and our scale, to add a series of products, we could, as we showed in the initial numbers, be a very strong competitor within the platform on items that we understand would be adherence. This is a discussion that is done with forehand with us in Mercado Livre. And this is probably strong in the second semester in regards to the stores. We see a scenario which for consumption, it should still continue restricted, obviously. In a deflationary scenario, it could be that the, that there's a turnover and that will affect the sales, but with deflation, we cannot do anything about it in the same way. The inflation would coincidentally be over the main products, which are the ones that have the more competitive credit and also have more weight in the final price of the product and the composition of the packaging, looking at the same source. We have observed the clients doing trade downs, so every time we look at the level of indebtedness of the population, they are holding their supermarket consumption. There are other sectors of retail that are not being affected, but then we have to understand the social classes in Brazil. A movement for higher incomes do not suffer impact even in our stores for higher incomes. Those that are directed to lower income, they are in a market scenario that is very difficult. We hope the scenario improves and we are working on this at the moment to prepare with new incentives, new proposals of value, new channels and new products to be able to best be prepared.

That was clear.

Thank you very much. The next question is from Andrew. Ruben from Morgan Stanley. Andrew, we'll open your audio so you may ask your question. Please. Go ahead.

Hi. Thanks very much for the question. I'm interested to understand more about the plans for private label. You mentioned the 200 SKUs for the year. Do you have any sense of where you could see that thing you're reaching over time and even over the medium term, your vision for what private label penetration could be within your store sales? Thanks very much.

I'm sorry, because you're in the nature of Dover. Tradução não está ativada para mim, Gabi. Não consegui capturar.

Andrew, can you please repeat the question? Delmiro, tem que ativar o globo de interpretação em português.

Não aparece para mim. Vê se você consegue responder ou se a gente pode voltar com ele depois.

Ele perguntou sobre marcas próprias, onde a gente está do projeto, no update, potencial de penetração...

He can hear the translation.

He also asked about the 200 SKUs and how we are doing in that sense. Okay. I think I was able to activate it now. Well, we still have the first 25 products. As there are a series of negotiations with the industry, we will finish the quarter until the end of the year. We should continue with an evolutionary scale, and every quarter brings you the new information. The interest from the industry is very high. Our own label has always been a challenge in Brazil, but as we had highlighted before, in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, we have 60% of penetration in homes, so there are still opportunities for our own brand. This is being discussed at the board, but it's a very favorable moment to come in with an aggressive project for private label. We are also looking for products with lower prices. Obviously, there's a lot of caution, and we need a lot more information because of competition issues in the market, but at the rate in which we can, an ad recorder will be giving more, shedding more light on the subject. Thank you. The next question is from Guilherme Romigues from HSBC. Guilherme, we will activate your audio so you can ask your question. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone.

Good morning. Thank you for this space. My question is in line with the previous one on the private label. And when we look at the more mature markets in the United States, for example, like Costco, the giant Costco, they have their own private label that is very strong in terms of vitamins and supplements. It is just like the Equate brand. Just to know how the company that brought this release of whey and creatine if that is going to be offered connected to higher amounts of protein consumption because of the change of the consumer. You also expect to grow in this category with your own brand. Thank you. Thank you, Guilherme. I think in terms of vitamins, when you look at the other protein supplements, No, there's no restriction from the point of view of doing this with our own private label. There are medications and private labels, and we can work with the brands that are well-known, but the rest would be to work with projects that could be extended. They are in a previous phase because we are creating more space in stores, and in my vision, the pharmacy will also be attractive for this. The coincidence with Costco is that they have a pharmacy as an important point of attraction and they are able to follow on even in these markets with the volume of sales and medications within the food sector is huge. We are still working on this, but the first pharmacies will come out in the second semester, but it will be much faster since it doesn't depend on a license, so for us to be able to advance once the changes, the behavioral changes, especially with the higher classes and the search for more protein products has been quite notorious.

We've seen these changes in the market.

Acai is the largest seller of protein in Latin America, especially with some projects which we've had in the last few years for the inclusion of services that are still under maturity. This was made in order to position us more strongly in the position, in the category of protein, so this is strongly in our radar. Thank you, Belmiro. The next question is from . Please open your microphone so that you can ask your question. Go ahead.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning . I would like to ask three quick questions. If you could open... on gross margins, how much the annual gains come from store maturity and how much comes from pricing projects. Anticipation of credit cards, the level dropped a lot in terms of receivables in the year over year. In relation to the last quarter, I would like to know if this is a recurrent volume that we should expect in the future. And then the last point is in relation to taxes over revenue. There was an increase in this quarter. I would like to understand exactly what the motive of this increase was, and if we should consider a higher volume from now into the future. Thank you. Well, Taliesin, I'm going to talk about the margins of the taxes, and then Chachachi can talk about the anticipation of credit. So the taxes was a change. When you talked about the item leaves the tax substitution when it is in the SAT, the tax of ICMS is within the ICMB when it comes into the normal thematic, the tax is deducted, and that's why it comes in as net revenue. So the weight and the increase of taxes over sale is connected to the change of the system of the substitution of taxes, especially in the state of Sao Paulo. There are other states that also make this change, but it has not been so relevant. In terms of gross margin, we should not probably open. We've showed positive margins, but there are also negative sides. So for So we'll probably reach a number which, in our opinion, opens a strategy for the company and opens a lot of strategies to gain share in the company. And then the margin should also become interesting to competitive competition because it wasn't expected. So the national pass up. pressure is that you lose the top line and then you lose margin, but that's not what happens. So our resilience is very strong in this sense within the food sector, but we cannot open the components of the margins on the taxes. The more products leave the substitution of tax, more will the effect become visible. If there are any questions on that, please speak with our international relations team. because they will be more than available to give you more information on that. And Sachet will talk about the anticipation of credit cards. Thank you for the question on the anticipation of credit cards. Historically, we've always had this as an alternative to recompose short-term cash to accelerate some kind of cash flow to cover the needs of the company. But historically, these are avenues of tax reductions that are a bit more expensive than a structured sale as an adventure or other paths. So given the tax situations, we had a substantial drop or decrease within the period compared over the last 12 months and even in the quarter as a whole, as a strategy. What we see for the company is no activation in this front, but we should prioritize the lower-cost debts. There will have a balance of these parts increasing. Thank you so much, Belmiro and Shashat. Just a compliment in terms of the debts. We have a program of rebuying the debt and this has been improving some taxes or some fees of council. The board approved it and so we can anticipate credit cards after the purchase of the secondary. It's not necessary to have a volume of cash and this has been well demonstrated. The session of questions and answers is finalized. Now we will pass the floor to the final considerations of the company. I would like to thank everyone for the participation in building this material, the board for the support. We had to bring these scenarios. We would like to be talking more about the consumer market in a better scenario, but ASSAI is highly resilient if you look at the delivery of margin independent of the scenarios that we have been going through. And the company, once again, is positioning itself, planting seeds, which when it's connected to indebtedness and the higher possibility of consumption for the low income population, which are highly pressured at this moment, that the company will be well positioned with new initiatives to capture these gains. I would like to thank everyone and thank you for the participation. I'm sorry if I spoke too long in the beginning. I wasted more time on that, but we just like to make things very clear when we talk about açaí, independent of the moment we are in, in our vision, we could say, but, well, things could be better. But given the scenario of consumption, I think the entire team in general is highly congratulated. Thank you so much to all. The video conference on the call of results for the first quarter, of Asahi has been finalized. The Department of Relations for Investors is available to answer any further questions. Thank you so much to the participations and have a great day.