Wal-Mart De Mex V S/Adr

Good morning, everyone. I'm Salvador Villaseñor, responsible for investor relations at Walmart. And I want to thank you for joining us in our Live Q&A session following our fourth quarter and full year results, which were published yesterday evening. Joining me today is Ignacio Caride, President and CEO of Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica, Raul Quintana, our Chief Omnichannel Operating Officer, and Pablo Garcia, our CFO. We will make every effort to answer as many questions as we can in the 45 minutes we have scheduled for this call. We kindly ask you to limit yourself to one question as courtesy to others. Now I will pass over to Ignacio for his initial remarks before moving on to the first question. Please, Ignacio.

Thank you, Salvador. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, depending where you are. As always, I'd like to start by thanking our associates. The dedication to our customers keeps and remains unmatched. And together we successfully navigated a Q4 with intense activity and gaining the trust of our customers and members. So thank you for joining us today. Let's go to our questions.

We will now start the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press the question button in the browser. Please make sure you are not in full screen mode to see the button. The first question is from Mr. Alejandro Fuchs from Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Thank you for the space for questions. My question would be on competitive landscape in Mexico. Wanted to understand if maybe, Ignacio, you can give us some additional color on the quarter, you know, how you saw competition you mentioned on the release. more promotional activity investing in price maybe we can touch on maybe differences between the formats samson bodega how how should we think also on competitive dynamics going into this year online versus brick and mortar so anything that you can you know give us additionally on competition i think would be very interesting to hear from you thank you

Thanks, Alejandro. I'll start and then I'll let Raúl compliment here. But as always, and when you have a year like the one we had last year with let's say, a little bit of headwind at the end of the year, every single competitor and everyone starts reacting to the softness of consumption. And this was exactly the case. What we try to focus on our end is bringing our purpose to life more than ever. This is where we feel with our portfolio of brands and formats, it's where we feel we are Our purpose come to life better than anything. And what we did is invest a lot in pricing in order to help our customers navigate this softness at the end of the year. And we saw the reaction. let's say that this is what's been happening at the end of the year or after half of the year, Q3 and Q4. So our focus was to help our customers invest in pricing and gain in market share. That is the idea of this. 2025 has started pretty similar, but we expect the year to improve along the way. in terms of the formats?

In terms of the format, I think we see consistency in market share gains from Bodega and Sam's, and we're seeing a better improvement in Walmart Supercenters and Walmart Express, which plays to our portfolio strength that we have as a company. So I think, you know, the price investments that we took in Bodega helped increase traffic quarter over quarter. So if you recall, quarter three, we had a little bit of a slowdown in Bodega. Quarter four had an improvement in Bodega in traffic. And Bodega as well gained market shares in quarter four as well as the full year measured by Nielsen and Antap. And then Sam's as well continues to be consistent in market share gains. So I would tell you that our portfolio strength is well positioned and we have good consistency between Bodega and Sam's and we have good improvements in Walmart Supercenters and in Walmart Express.

Thank you, Ignacio and Raul. It was very clear. Can I do one more follow-up very quickly, if that's okay? Go ahead. Thank you. On the new businesses, just very quickly, they were contributing around 30 to 40 pips of margin in the last quarter. This quarter was 20 pips to the gross margin, but it continues to grow very successfully, right? And Walmart Connect as well. So I just wanted to see If there was something extraordinary in this quarter of the profitability of the new businesses that maybe could be some of things like a one-off because of the contribution was a little bit less than the last quarters. That was my second question. Thank you.

Alejandro, no, I don't think you should read much into that. You probably have seen it at Connect, which is a business that is doing extremely well. grew a bit less in this quarter than the normal so as the higher base so it grew 22 versus an a year average of around 27 because last year the q4 was particularly strong but q4 is also says because of seasonality is the highest in absolute terms connects this quarter was by far the highest so don't read too much into that i think we feel comfortable done in terms of what was delivered and what will be delivered going forward in terms of contribution of new businesses to our overall business and overall gross margins. Very clear. Thank you, Paolo.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Ben Theroux from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to actually follow up on Alejandro's last question and if you could maybe share a few early assessments as to what the benefits are or are going to be that you're seeing from the different things within the Wamex ecosystem. you've highlighted, I think, yesterday and the prepared remarks that you're going to provide a little more detail in coming quarters. So maybe a little bit of a tease or something that you can share with us, maybe Rahul or Ignatius, something that we can kind of like maybe track over the course of the coming quarters as to how you're actually going to leverage the WOMX One ecosystem as to growing then the top line once the macroeconomic environment improves a little bit. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Ben. So first of all, this is one of the areas where we're extremely proud of what we're achieving. Since we launched it half of last year, the reception we have coming from our customer is really amazing and has been surprising us. The number of subscriptions was very positive. The great importance of the good importance of our beneficios is, first of all, it helps us to know, understand and have information on the customers that used to pay in cash. And that's about half of our business, especially in Bodega. And once you start gathering data on the customers and the customer getting a benefit for giving us that access, it helps us understand much more their shopping patterns, how they interact between our ecosystem, if they just buy one banner or they purchase in different banners. if they're a bite customer, if they use the health membership, help us understand how they are interacting across our ecosystem. Once you have that information, it's considered like gold because you know exactly who to target and with what proposal you can target and I'm convinced to jump into the ecosystem. Also, this information is what is help us reinforce the value and the information we give to our suppliers through Scintilla, that is the new name for our previous Luminate product. But Scintilla gathers all of this information and make it available to suppliers. So all of this help everyone in the business, suppliers and us, understanding much better our customers and help us deliver better offering for our customers. Let me give you a graphical experience. When you start understanding a customer, you can see that they restock, for example, toothpaste every month and a half. so and you and you start seeing that because it's a pattern so you will know and understand you know exactly when that customer will go into the shopping mission of getting toothpaste inside your inside your store and it will go back to your store because you also know that customer is is a a byte user so for every purchase they do at the store they get they get a benefit invite with with free megas So for a supplier like Colgate, that information is super important, especially because they can know if they're purchasing their brand or another of our competitors' brand. So again, it helps us understand much better the customer and by using all this information together with suppliers, we will improve much better our offering. At the end, it will help us, let's say, remove the guessing or the projection of the sales going forward. It will give you much more certainty on what to expect going forward from your own customers. So if you ask me the one thing that really, really encourage me of what we're doing and and and give me a lot of passion of what we're seeing is is this because the the the potential of all of this program is is is incredible can i just make two very quick builds one is ben ultimately at the end of the day translates into market share and capturing a higher share of wallet and if you see our performance versus on top this year

versus the last two years where the ecosystem is picking up, you see the big difference in the numbers in the performance of Tentat. The second one is the point of inertia. These things are not, unfortunately, very quick. We need a long period of time to be able to get a significant assertion from a statistical standpoint, in terms of the cause and effect relationship. We are working on that. What gives us pride is if you look at in terms of market share, accelerated share gains, almost 200 basis points versus Antal in 2024. A year ago, or 2023, was 50, and the year before was 10 basis points.

So I think it's working. Yeah, and let me complement just one more thing is one of one of the great benefits about this is that this is a win-win situation. So our customers, what we're hearing from our customers joining Beneficios is that in the past for them it was quite expensive maybe to go to the cinema or to get a coffee in a premium coffee shop or to go to a certain restaurant. And now just because they purchase with us, they start having access to these benefits. So we've been doing a lot of hearings with customers and And the value they get from this is that they really appreciate it. So it's good. It's very good. We'll see a lot of value going forward. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Andrew Rubin from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks very much for the question. It was helpful you provided some perspectives for the year ahead. Maybe one item I wanted to dig in on a bit is operating expense, the message around single digit growth and less operating deleverage. So I'm curious if you could break some of that down, how you're thinking about the impacts of wages, the pace of some of your digital investments, and then the efficiency gains, how you see each of those versus this past year when we're looking at 2025 ahead. Thank you.

Yes. Hi, Andrew. Good morning for you. Yes, in terms of regarding ESG, a big component about the difference what you saw last year and what you'll see going forward, and we've talked about that, will be around labor. As you know, Andrew, in the last four years, the gager of labor has been around 20%, the minimum wage salary, which, of course, tends to pull all the other levels of the organization that we have, particularly, of course, in the stores. And US, as you probably have heard it for 2025, that minimum wage increase will be 12%. And there's an expectation that to be around 10% in the next five years. Still well above inflation, but of course, something that together with the things that we keep constantly doing from an efficient standpoint, and in the company is something that, of course, allows us to be able to leverage better than we have done in the past. We will do, of course, in terms of macroeconomic standpoint where we are today, we will review a few of some investments in terms of prioritizations, but I won't reiterate here that at the end of the day, when we think, we still very much abide to the long-term view that we have in doubling this this business we still behind all the growth and strategic investments that we have be turned the distribution centers the automatization we want to continue to expand stores if not even more remodelings and and mentions of the stores for us will be an important investment that we'll continue to do going forward And e-commerce is a great priority in this company. But of course, we have the ability to navigate the environment here and there, reprioritizing some investments where needed. And that's why we talked about that. We feel that this year we will see an increase in SG&A more around the single agent. Very helpful.

Thank you. Okay.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Antonio Hernandez from Act In Verde. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the space for questions. Just a quick follow up regarding the contribution of new businesses. They've been helping profitability, but just wanted to understand out of the three different businesses that you mentioned, maybe if you could provide more info on which one was the most impactful or which one has the most potential to contribute to margins going forward. Thanks.

I think if you look on standalone, Antonio, as you will imagine on a standalone basis, we've talked about that our advertising business and Walmart connect because of the size of the business that we talked about to you in 2023, that is growing now a rate of almost a 30% year on year and a very high industry margins that of course itself is the one that has the highest contribution. But Byte is expanding very fast. We've talked about a couple of times in the past that actually it's a creative also on the gross margin, Byte, and actually it's already a profitable business. Also on the financial solutions, also while we're progressing that in particular money, also we're making also with the income and the factoring income, helping suppliers. But I will argue that the biggest one on a standalone basis advertising and Walmart Connect. But don't forget and comes to the point of Ben alluded before, at the end of the day, all that we are creating these businesses, the role that also they play ultimately is our ability to capture a bigger share of wallet, i.e. driving increased frequency and a higher ticket, which translates to higher sales and therefore accelerated market share gains. And that's how we tend to look. Not always is easier to capture all the numbers. We tend to look at the contribution of the genius business and verticals. Of course, when you look standalone,

is what i was just mentioned to you yes and and let me let me add on this is please don't look at the at the ecosystem as standalone basis and and separated silo businesses because it's not what we're doing it's not in our interest and it's not what we want to whole idea of the ecosystem is this mutually reinforces benefits and and services that will help drive different things so connect will help us uh will help us with profitability uh but bite helps on traffic our health health helps on traffic's particular to pharmacy so each one has their own their own uh their own idea goal on on And maybe we will invest and some of these won't be profitable at all. Never, ever. And we will subsidize that with other parts of our business, especially in the ecosystem. But the ultimate goal is to share gain of wallet. But it's important to understand that our P&L is changing. The shape of our P&L is changing. And what we want to do with this is generate more space in order to reinvest back into pricing. and start spinning the wheel once again with better prices, everyday low prices will help families save money and live better. With that, they will come back to our ecosystem. So it's important to reinforce this because we can get the wrong ideas or things that we're doing if we were looking at a standalone basis.

Perfect. That's very helpful. Have a nice day. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Ms Irma Scars from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. I just wanted to go to gross margin for a moment and maybe picking up on the point that you just mentioned that you're hoping to have the contributions from new businesses enable further price investments, yet in the release you made comments about the new business contribution to gross margin now in following quarters being expected to drop through to the margin again. So I was trying to square those two things up. Was it just specific in the fourth quarter that you just needed a bit more price investment because of the change in economic environment and maybe the combination of the comp being really hard for the new business contributions and it evens out a little bit more in the coming quarters? Or is there something else behind it? And I'm also asking about gross margin in light of the higher inventories that you had at year end, how we should be thinking about you addressing those potentially a few days of excess inventories that you finished 2024 with and whether that could result in some pressures on the gross margin in first quarter. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good question and connecting all the dots there. So actually, just now on the Q4 and as Ines was saying, we really saw an opportunity to help our customers in this macroeconomic environment. And importantly, an opportunity to accelerate market share gains. So that comes to our DNA, to our purpose of the company. Does it mean that every single quarter we have to invest and actually put to your awards, actually risking the gross margin? It's not the case. I think we need to be prepared that the gross margin can vary by quarters. I actually was looking back. a couple of quarters we were talking about and people challenged us about our gross margins were too high in terms of contributions now it's of course there's a challenge where in a particular quarter i think we just have to adapt to accept that the business and environment where we operate is very volatile and then you see volatility on the quarters i think when you look forward and that's what we try to pass in the message that we put in our webcast looking forward ahead We still expect in 2025 that our margins, gross margins will see benefits from contribution from new businesses. And of course, we will navigate the quarters and the economic environment, which is expected to be stronger in the second half of the year than it will be in the first half of the year by actually taking the decisions around taking the best price investments or not to us to help our customers navigating the year or the turmoil, if you will. I think the inventory is just to do the last comment. Yeah, we are right. We acknowledge these first. We actually have to improve that. We have and really is an opportunity. We all look to that as an opportunity to improve also our cash flow. And so I think there is so much that we can do there. In terms of what impact of the markdowns, it's something that we do on a regular basis that we'll have to be able to manage as part of the delivery of our gross margins and investments we make to our customers.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Bob Ford from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my question. How should we think about the performance in apparel and general merchandise in the quarter? And how are you thinking about strategies and tactics in discretionary categories for this year? And then I was hoping you could also comment a little bit on new store openings in terms of returns for Oracle and the concepts and regions that you're most excited about.

So, Rob, at least I didn't pick up the second question, Bob. New stores.

New stores, okay. New stores, returns versus historical and the concepts and regions that you're most excited for.

Yeah, so I can start with the – no, I already forgot the first one. I was trying to understand the second one. I forgot the first one. So, let me start from the second one, I'll come to the first one, and I'm happy for any of you to do that. In terms of the returns of new stores, Bob, as you can imagine, of course, the returns of new stores in the immediate and short term are not the same as the ones that we already have existing. But we really see opportunities, that's where we tend to look at here, there's an opportunity in lots of wide spaces to continue expanding. Often we get the question and ask, guys, if you're actually expanding more in your stores, it doesn't drive cannibalization versus stores that you already have on the ground. The answer is yes. And we have a very sophisticated model. And depending on whatever stores we open, and depending the regions, and there are some days, you know, that we have a lot of white spaces, probably more north and the southeast, the cannibalization is lower. but many times the cannibalization will be higher if we actually let an uh competitor open so that's what we look at the returns of the new stores we need to look at the full picture of course looking at standalone them versus also what if if actually we are not doing there and uh and therefore then we played with the diversification of our portfolio that uh raul alluded to the news that we are going to open versus the other ones that we already have there and we keep on playing those investments and making decisions what are the best returns on investment and we do do it very often in terms of opening more stores versus remodeling or maintaining the existing stores it's an ongoing discussion on this business at the end of the day we have to do more off of the of the two And the second, which was your first question, Bob, look, apparel for us is very low. I often get that question, Bob, it's a very low single digit in the sales of our business. Quite frankly, apparel is a major opportunity for us. And it's a major opportunity, particularly online, where we're hardly playing today with that particular business. And with all the things that we're doing from a tech stack front on the e-commerce, that's something that we'll be able to be playing better going forward. In terms of GM, it's interesting the dynamics that you see there. If you actually look at Q4 in particular, November, there was a huge... So the November was very strong with Elfine resistively this season for everyone, with record years for everyone and the GM with the TVs and toys and so on. And then there has been a bit of a slowdown. I think the people are very smart in terms and savvy understanding when there are best prices to buy this cat crease. I think what we have to do, Bob, is continue to diversify our portfolio in terms of including GM, because we continue to be very strong in a couple of categories, which is TVs, toys, video games, white appliances. I think we have to do more and more of penetrating a few further, a few other categories.

And the opportunity to penetrate those categories comes from our strategy with the marketplace going forward. That is one of our top priorities moving online. So bringing and creating this global marketplace together with the US assortment is something we're building and we're much closer to having in place. And that will help us position ourselves differently to the customers with a much broader offering other than what we have at the stores or in our 1P offering at the moment. So this is how we're seeing GM going forward.

The timing for that greater integration? Just out of curiosity.

This is going to be a very important and pivotal year in our technology. We're doing one of the biggest migrations in terms of backend that will allow us at the beginning to join the hallways. If you're tracking and following US, you can see that US a couple of years ago, they joined the hallway where the customers didn't have to choose between buying groceries and buying extended assortment. It's going to be just one app. The experience is completely transformative. And as you can see, after US, this change results start growing much, much faster. This is happening this year for us. It's a big, big backend technology change and operational change. So we expect that to start adding a lot of value in an e-commerce business and for the whole business going forward.

and i think just to add a couple things on on new store growth i think we we believe we're a growth company we need to double the business faster than we did in the past decade and we're going to accelerate store openings no and that's going to accelerate in all our portfolio it's not going to no but that will continue to be the greatest number of stores but sam's club super centers and supermarkets will also you know have their fair share of that growth uh portfolio And I think to your question on discretionary spending for this year, I think we'll wait to see. What I can tell you, we have a meeting every day at 7.30 with Walmart US and Walmart Canada on tariffs. And we're keeping a close eye on that. We're understanding from the US what that impact is, from Canada what that impact is. some of the learnings that may apply to the Mexico market in those circumstances. And I think to your point on discretionary spending, I think we'll wait to see. But we're well prepared and we are being proactive to understand our imports and our price points so that it still becomes attractive to the market here in Mexico, no matter the circumstance of the economic environment or the political environment.

Very clear. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Alvaro Garcia from BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.

Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for the space for questions.

We can't hear you, Alvaro. I'm sorry.

You need to speak louder. Can you hear me there? Yeah, better.

A little better. All right. Thanks for the space. A question on expenses. I was wondering if you could maybe provide a bit more detail on the DC build out you have planned over the next couple of years to maybe give a bit more context on the grow side of things. I think that would be helpful context. And then two, just to double check on the buyback. Love to see it. Just to double check if you plan on canceling those shares. I'm not sure if you mentioned that earlier on the call or not, but I wasn't online. But just want to confirm if the idea is to cancel those shares once they've been bought back.

Yeah, let me start quickly from the second one. The answer will be yes. Will not make sense that as being on the market, tapping the market and not canceling the stairs. So we will not bring Bradley to the shareholders and not giving the right signal as well. On the on the first one on the sea, basically, as we've talked about that in the past. So these two big investments we are doing in Baku and in Tlaxcala. They will be opening in 2027. We are already working on them. This is basically just going to transform the way we look at our DCs because the level of automation is enormous in DCs. The idea is, of course, In a country where the cost of doing business, you can still argue versus others, is still low, but it's increasing and has been increasing a lot significantly in the last years, we need to drive a lot of automation in our organization, be it on our distribution centers, be it also in the stores and the way we run them efficiently. And that's what we were planning to do with DTC, which the cost to serve and will be a lot lower than what we have in the current DCs. But for that, of course, we have to make big investments. But we are here to stay not just for the next five years or the ten years, we are here to stay for the long term. We have this ambition of doubling the business faster than before, which means we need to create growth capacity and we need to be able to operate in a country that will be increasing the cost of doing business.

Yes, and building on that, Alvaro, is when you know where the future is going, start investing now, right? To be prepared because once the reality changes, it's going to be too late. Investments are big. It takes time to build an automated DC. But I would love to invite everyone when we open it. It's an incredible, incredible experience of seeing them operating and the improvement in efficiency at the store level, not only supply chain, but at the store level is incredible. So you can get your pallets organized by aisle so you can just download the pallet from the truck and go directly into the shelf without the need of using the backroom and with an efficiency that will help us lower our operational cost by a lot. So you can expect us doing much more of this type of investments for the long term and with technology, automation and digital mindset going forward.

I'm more than happy to organize with our U.S. colleagues to visit the one in U.S. If you guys want, Morgan, I'm happy to organize.

I'll take you up on that. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Froy Mendez from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. Good morning. Going back to the cash conversion cycle, we did see some lengthening, especially in the second half of this year. Just wanted to know your thoughts on what is driving this lengthening of the cash cycle and if it's somewhat related to the COFESE restrictions that you are made to implement. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for the question. And the answer is absolutely no, 100% no. The conference has zero impact on the discussion on the payment terms, on the cash cycle. I think the opportunity is the one I alluded to before and we mentioned in the webcast. is primarily in the days on hand on Sony inventory, where we've mentioned before that we have an opportunity to do and that it's a clear priority in the organization and is something that we can use better our cash and put it at to work. And it's something that we are putting a focus in 2025 and to be more disciplined in this area.

And if I may just follow up on Walmart Connect, you have been speaking about the tremendous growth that this business has. Can you give us a sense of the size in dollar terms or peso terms? And if there is a goal on, I don't know, a penetration of sales and how dependent is that on the development of e-commerce?

Yeah, so we published, so in effect, we could give you, but I will give it in one week's time, but I think you can get to the number, Freud. Last year, we said it, that was 3 billion Mexican pesos, $150 million, I'm rounding. You know the growth rate, 27, I think you can do the maths. Last year, what we said it is, to the base that we mentioned last year, our ambition is to indeed next five years to fourfold this business, i.e., four times bigger than the number that we gave in the end of 2023 so which was roughly 150 million dollars in the next five years and you know the margins of these uh industry margins so i think also you can actually make your own calculation around that i think to your point on e-commerce we didn't connect we've always alluded to the fact that today uh the part that we do from all more connecting the stores and the brick and morty still little bit more or two-thirds of our business so one-third is actually more digital and e-commerce and that's also why we are confident in our ability to unleash the potential that i was talking to you because we have a lot of space to grow in the in the digital area as our e-commerce business continue to grow in accelerated growth which is what happens in the our mother company in us actually our mother company in us when you look at the advertising business uh Pretty much, and I don't like to give a lot of stats, but it's a public number. It's almost 90% comes from the digital space. So that's why we believe that we can unleash that opportunity.

Yeah, and let me build on that and to clarify something on how to think about this business going forward. We are not turning our stores or our sites into an advertising business. The advertising business or Connect is something that needs to add value to our customers and need to have a relationship with the customer experience. So you should not expect and we are not going to turn, for example, our stores into a place full of advertising. It doesn't make sense to our customers. So this is why we are building a business that is sustainable, that adds value to the ecosystem, adds value to our customers, and it needs to add value also to our advertisers or suppliers in this case. And the opportunity for us is how we move this more into digital space rather than the physical that we are stronger today, given the opportunity we're seeing that is happening in the US. So together with the changes we're doing in oral technology and e-commerce business, this should be, the opportunity is very big, but doing it the right way. Understood. Thank you very much.

Gracias, Troy.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Ms. Renata Cabral from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. My question is regarding Bodega. We saw that the format is performing above the TED, but it's lagging versus other formats in the WOMX. So I would appreciate if you could give some color of the main drivers of it, ticket traffic, or both. And naturally, we know that this is a reflection of the economy, but do you see a clear opportunity of any change in this format in order to both same-store sales? And if you see that the current economic environment should take this format this year to continue the format amongst the others that will lag, or if you see opportunities to this catch up along 2025. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you for your question. Like mentioned before, we saw a better traffic performance in the quarter for bodega versus quarter three. So our traffic was up. Now, we took some additional measures on price investments that Ignacio and Paolo mentioned. Some of those price investments were tailored to the bodega customer. to help know that customer and the environment for the quarter. But we believe, Renata, that the portfolio is well positioned for any economic situation. So Bodega is going to continue, like mentioned before, it's winning market share and it's consistently winning market share. It won market share in the quarter and it won market share in the full year. And we believe for this year, whether the economic environment gets tougher or not, that our portfolio will be able to succeed. And Bodega is a big part of that. Now, our strength in the Bodega formats were Bodega, Rara Express. We see a good market share gains from an external from an external. amplitude of the market uh from a proximity standpoint uh we see me bodega as well continue in the rural areas to you know be able to provide good value propositions for our customers and the large format on shopping locations for the missions bodega continues to be a good performer in a large format to our customer base as well we saw good performance as well in e-commerce E-commerce is performing strongly in Bodega on Demand, as you saw in the transcript, for more than 70% growth in El Finirresistible for the quarter. So we continue to see good penetration on both Bodega and MiBodega on an e-commerce base. And then, as a reminder, the ecosystem is a competitive advantage for Bodega as well. Bodega stores represent a large portion of bite customers and a large portion of cash in, as well of health. And that continues to complement, like Ignacio said, that will complement my core business to add traffic so that my Bodega customer can have more added value services and continue to see Bodega as not only products, but services and solutions. But we see Bodega with good consistency. We see Bodega with a good value proposition on price, on price leadership, and we expect Bodega to continue to deliver in 2025.

Super clear. Thank you so much for the caller.

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Andres Ortiz from BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.

hello um good morning uh first of all i would like to to start with a follow-up to hearing mass and freud's question on inventory uh how long would it take uh for you guys to to reach the levels that you are comfortable with and if you could share some color on which categories are the ones that actually did not sell as well as you expected, as you mentioned in your remarks. And a second question from my side is, you mentioned this effect on the tax rate. I don't know if you could share some color because it was large enough to offset the pressures that you have below the EBIT line, right? So anything will be helpful here. Thank you.

Yeah, so I think when we talked about your first question, Andreas, I think it's about throughout the year we have the opportunity to actually reduce the inventory levels. We have our internal ambition that we want to do there. I will not necessarily disclose it here, but I think it's throughout. Actually, the opportunity to do better based on inventory is actually in all the categories. Of course, in some of the categories on the general merchandise, We have a bit more inventory. Normally, you have the longer inventory in this category, as you can imagine. There are particular ones on some of this area. But also, actually, in food, there is a rotation, which is much more frequently, and lots of top items that I think we have the opportunity to be more efficient and not hold so much of the inventory in terms of foods and consumables. And that's also another area where we want to reduce. At the end of the day, if you want that to be meaningful and because funds and consumer is still such a big part of our sales in our business, we need to reduce it across. So Andres is not in exactly in a particular category. In terms of your question was around the DTR. So, DTR is now only around the mid-20s. If the discussion was why in this particular quarter DTRA was lower than the normal mid-20s that we tend to offer, I think we alluded to that in the webcast transcript. So, as we reviewed, Andreas, the useful lives and the tax values of our fixed assets, we actually from we had to recognize it or make an adjustment in terms of our values of our the current and deferred taxes at consolidated level on the q4 that last led to uh as we actually put in the transcript a 15 million impact on net income which actually meant was and a recognition of interest, significant interest associated to the tax. We also had also asked GNA a small adjustment one-off related to that, which was partly compensated by a benefit in our effective tax rate. So that benefit on our tax rate, that one-off is actually what pretty much explains our ATR that typically it's around the mid-20s and this time around there's a one-off, it was lower as you have seen it. Andres.

Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your question. That was the last question. I will now hand over to Mr. Salvador Villaseñor for final comments.

Well, thank you very much for joining us once again, and hope to see you at our investor day, March 27th. Thank you for your interest in the company, as always, and have a good day. Cheers, everyone. Thank you.

Walmex would like to thank you for participating in today's video conference. You may now disconnect.