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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Caroline Luccarini from IR, and now we'll begin the conference. I have with us Fabio Faccio, CEO; and Carla Sffair, Senior IR Manager.
Before handing the floor over to them, I would like to make some announcements. First, I would like to comment that everyone in the room is vaccinated and following the safety protocols. This video conference is being recorded and translated simultaneously. The presentation will be shown only in Portuguese. And therefore, if you are attending in English, the presentation is available via chat here on the platform and can also be viewed on the Investor Relations website. [Operator Instructions]
Before we proceed, we'd like to clarify that any potential statements made during this video conference related to business perspective, operating and financial goals and projections are based on the beliefs and assumptions based on information currently available and are not guarantees of performance involving risks and uncertainties as they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin the presentation, I'd like to hand over to Fabio.
Thank you, Carol. Thank you, everyone, for participating in our video conference. I'd also like to say that in addition to the earnings that we disclosed yesterday, we also disclosed a material fact where we're informing Alvaro Azevedo, our CFO and IR Officer, who resigned, so -- given his personal reasons. So I'd like to thank Alvaro for all the services provided to us and wish him all the best in his new project. And also say that until we elect a new officer, I will be temporarily acting as CFO and IR officer.
So now I'll hand over to Carla to talk about our results.
Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Starting on Slide 4 (sic) [ Slide 2 ] where we have sales performance. We have a significant increase in net revenues for the quarter. So not only when we look at the comparison year-over-year, 41.5%, but also compared to last year with 2019, a 22.7% growth. So we see that this trend continued after closing the quarter and the weeks after that. So very relevant in terms of market share gains since then. So given the recovery after mid-April of the stores opening back up, so we see these movements. And as there's more flexibility in store openings, population is -- has more mobility and more social events, that helps in the flow, and it was gradually recovering after time.
We still haven't achieved normal levels, and that has been offset partially actually by a higher conversion rate than usual and given the number of pieces per shopping bag, so more items. And when we look at the business, we even see collection acceptance and operations as relevant factors in building the sales.
Another positive aspect that we have, when we look at the point of view of digital growth, we have a base of comparison, which was record over 200% growth. We also had the effect of the cyber-attack, which had some ups and downs in operation and availability on our platforms for a couple of days. And off-line operations going back to normal, so since the beginning of the quarter, we have already been running with more robust operations in brick-and-mortar stores. And we've grown even so in that year-over-year. And when we look at 2019, the growth is still very robust of over 220%.
In that sequence, you can see that there's an evolution. So that's what you see on the Slide #5 (sic) [ Slide #3 ] with growth in October of over 30%. So in the quarter, we had a share of 12.2% and. Looking at the point of view of customers, our active customer base grew 40% year-over-year, and also important, increasing our retention by 5 percentage points. So it was the brand most searched for on the web in the period. And when we look at the app, the app sales accounted for almost 70% of our sales. And we also maintained our absolute leadership comparing to our national players in monthly active users.
So the recovery in sales, which is very significant, has a very healthy gross margin that has been shown to be higher than what we expected for the period. In year-over-year, it was an evolution of 5.6 percentage points. But even though there is a gap in relation to 3Q '19, it's being sequentially lowered. So quarter-over-quarter, it was already lower. But there are still many challenges, such as FX, raw material pressure and freight in our operations. But on the other hand, we've been working with balanced-out inventories.
And given the improvements that we've made to our business in relation to being omnichannel giving us more flexibility in operating in all the different channels, data use and some of our processes, so allocating products in stores and the markdown engine. And that as you can see on Slide #7 (sic) [ Slide #5 ], has highly contributed to achieve the lowest levels of markdowns ever. And that's what this chart shows, a historical series that's very long. And you can see that we're operating with very healthy markdown levels.
In terms of financial operations, we've seen delinquency at its lowest historical levels, and that really reflects the consistency of credit quality that we've been presenting. The chart on the right shows us when you see the evolution in the level of past due over total portfolio and net losses of over total portfolio in that 5-year history, you can see they're at very low levels. And that has contributed so that the losses are over 18% in the annual comparison, and revenues have been recovering in a significant manner.
If you -- when you see sales going -- getting back to normal, that helps portfolios get back to normal as spending in the cart, given that there is a higher supply of the product. So on the left chart, you can see very robust growth not only in the quarterly comparison, but also in year-to-date.
And then in the combination of the improvement in retail operations, but also in credit, our total adjusted EBITDA grew over 800% in the period year-over-year. And it's also worth noting that within these results, we have all the investments that we've been doing to expedite digital sales, developing our ecosystem in fashion and lifestyle with new things being created, reinforcing our structure and a bit of what Fabio is going to mention is in his talk. So over to you, Fabio.
Thank you, Carla. That's exactly the idea. In addition to the good results that we've been having in the short term, we continue to invest to guarantee our future. And part of that brings on results that could even be better in the short term. But we strongly believe that everything that we are doing in expanding our fashion and lifestyle ecosystem, improving the customer journey has brought on already some gains, but even more for the future.
So in terms of investment, we have record investments when we look at the 9M '21, over BRL 700 million, and it's not just CapEx. In our OpEx, in our expenses, I'd say that we have approximately 5% to 7% of our total expenses are investments in expanding our ecosystem and digitalizing our ecosystem. And the idea is to consolidate that and have a more complete journey and better journey so that Renner S.A. is the best choice for our customers in fashion and lifestyle, and even more customers, increasing recurrence, lifetime value and stickiness to the ecosystem.
Another important point, when we look at the investments in being omnichannel, there are strong investments for us to increase our assortment. We have already done that with what we call the infinite shelf, with over 90% of items available online for our customers. That's the first step of increasing our assortments.
So now we're working strongly to decrease turnaround time and productivity and efficiency in those deliveries. An important example is that currently in the Renner brand, 45% of our deliveries already done in 2 days max, that's country average. When we look at the Southeast and the metropolis, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, that same percentage is for same-day deliveries or maximum next day.
When we talk about Youcom, Youcom has already had a movement of bringing in online inventory to São Paulo. It's a smaller distribution center that we have. It's not the new one that's already built but not -- it hasn't started up yet. With that movement alone, at Youcom, we currently have 70% of deliveries on average in the country in up to 2 days. And in the Greater São Paulo region, 70% are same-day or even next day.
In addition, we have the MVP team the operation, most of the deliveries should be from São Paulo and even from the stores. So we had MVP for a small part of customers. But Renner brand is coming from São Paulo, and we've had important results. For the city of São Paulo, we have 90% of deliveries in hours or even maximum next day. So we're absolutely sure that our new distribution center close to the city of São Paulo after being operational will help us to evolve even more in being efficient in service level and in costs. The construction works have been completed. Now we're setting up the equipment, automation and robots.
Just to have -- so you can have an idea about the size, you can see the current status of the equipment setup of our distribution centers.
[Presentation]
It's in the final phases of setup. It would be much more interesting to see it operating. I've been there with some colleagues a couple of weeks ago. And the change is very important with superior automation in omni platform and robots working. So that's important gains for us after it starts up in the next year.
Still some more about omnichannel. We see a continuous increase in our omni customer base. So our omni customers have increased their share in our customer base. We had a growth of 47% year-over-year. And that comes in many different ways. We have more channels available, and those channels are gaining relevance, even WhatsApp.
We've advanced in communication with our customers before we only received their contact, and now we're being active so -- with our customers for those who prefer the WhatsApp tool. And sales have grown over the second quarter by 27% because it is a smaller base.
And Minha Sacola, my shopping bag, our social sales grew sixfold year-over-year and continues to grow. And now we have more influencers in the base of affiliates -- of members. So they do that through our platform as well.
And based on store operation, we're still expanding. Most of the units were opened in the [ first quarter ]. But in the third quarter, we also rolled out 2 stores. Another important aspect of our omni plan is that all the Renner stores have RFID installed for inventory accuracy. That really helped a lot where we can make products available for online with more assertiveness.
And now we're going into the second phase. We're using the same technology that has already been installed to expedite the checkout lines. We already have 79 stores. We're in the rollout process, where the checkout reads products with RFID, so it's faster. And all of them are scanned at the same time, gaining efficiency and speed in checkout as well.
So in addition to traditional checkout counters, we have other options for checking out where in some stores, they account for 45% of the sales in those units. So we have what we call mobile sale. It's a device that an employee can service a customer in anywhere in the store, and we have Self-Checkout. And we have the digital pay, as we call it. So in the actual Renner app in -- on the customer's app, they can pay with their own smartphone. So in some region, but that already accounts for 10% of sales.
In addition to expanding our ability to sell in brick-and-mortar stores, we can have more customers in our app, offering more speed and convenience and shopping, usability at a much lower cost. So customers can buy with their app, pay with their app, be it online or in the store. So that's a lot of convenience for them, which has been helping all these initiatives and even more for us to expand our omni customer base that have a higher spend than others, even threefold higher in annual terms compared to other customers.
Now based on the marketplace point of view, we have a marketplace at Camicado, what we call our lab. So we've been expanding the categories and assortment. We've increased the assortment in digital with Renner through partners and sellers. We're still in the beginning, in the testing phase.
We had a target of having at least 100 sellers by the end of the year, and we already have 115 sellers. So before the end of the year, we've already achieved our target even though we're still in the testing phase, as we get into normal course of business. We're strengthening our efforts and curatorship and developing the platform and processes so that we can soon have more power in that sense.
Another important aspect is that the assortment is an add-on to our product in categories and price brackets, offering more options for customers and increasing the assortment for them in a very assertive manner. That strengthens our ecosystem.
And Youcom and Camicado onboarded in October to the Renner lab to strengthen other brands in our ecosystem. And an example is that even though Camicado is recent, it is the one that accounts for the most GMV at the Renner lab. -- of all the others.
For Camicado, we have over 150 sellers. We forecast that by the end of the year, we should have 200 sellers, and we're still advancing in curatorship for partners, focusing on add-on categories that will bring in cross-selling flow, not only in 1P but also 3P. And at Camicado, we already have more maturity in the marketplace and it already accounts for 12% of the digital GMV for the quarter.
In the content and branding pillar, we've been investing a lot in advancing. We were focusing on awareness and leveraging flow. We've evolved in building the seasonal campaigns and collections and initiatives focusing on improving recurrence, engagement and customer profitability. We had a recent campaign on The Masked Singer show on the Global TV Network. We also did one with Fortnite recently and now a collection with the League of Legends video game with interactive print. We also have partnerships with influencers. We've activated new partners in different regions in the country. And that has significantly increased our potential outreach. The result of these initiatives in the quarter is an increment of 88% of assisted revenue via digital channels, and an increase of -- by 25% of organic engagement based on the post strategy.
Now about an important pillar, which is CRM and loyalty. increasing our customer base is very significant, and we have active customers in the ecosystem of 16.3 million active, with an evolution of 24% year-over-year. We've increased retention by 4 percentage points year-over-year. And we've also advanced, not only in the size of the customer base, but also in the identification of the base. 85% of revenues have been identified, which is an increase of 13% year-over-year. So our customers are increasingly more integrated, not only among each channel, but also businesses.
We recently mentioned that we've been looking a lot at the customers that buy from more than one brand in the ecosystem in formatting that loyalty program that we're planning on launching next year as well as other benefits and incentives for those customers, to encourage them to be increasingly more cross-brand. And cross-brand customers have spending that is 6 to 7x more than others.
Another important aspect are financial solutions, Realize. Realize is occupying the ecosystem more and more. We are more mature on the Renner side, and we started to capture in other brands, such as Youcom and Camicado, and prioritizing the offer of Meu Cartão, or my card, that it's a very important product for us. And it already accounts for 47% of the active base of Realize.
Another important point, some of the incentive campaigns that we've had at Realize to drive the use of Meu Cartão in on and off-line. So we had an off-line record spending in adding 6 new customers for each one lost. So we're lowering our churn as well.
We also achieved record CDB. The active customer base increased by 7% year-over-year. And services revenues gained more relevance. It already accounts for 27% of the total in 9M '21.
We also have financing for sellers and advance in digital account. We're internally testing, and this month, we'll start testing a specific group of customers.
Another important aspect in our ecosystem is a new service integrated to our business, an adjacent service, which we didn't have. So we concluded the acquisition of Repassa, an online secondhand store. We started the integration to the ecosystem, and we're working on improvements in productivity and service level, which already increases their NPS by 4 percentage points. But we still have a lot to learn together and work together. We believe that the Repassa acquisition will bring in a lot of new things for us soon.
About technology and data, we have some examples here of important advances in the ecosystem. We've been working with the Agile methodology. As an example, we already have 10 tribes and 76 squads with approximately 800 dedicated people to the tribes and squads. So they're trained and they're focused on the ecosystem initiatives.
The sales forecast was also an important evolution that we had in brick-and-mortar. We have already been very assertive in that in omni and digital sales by using AI.
Store replenishment. We already have 43% of the subclasses that account for actually 43% of the sales that are replenished automatically by AI. And 76% of the purchases through AI. We've been advancing in that.
Carla also mentioned in the results prices and promotions, so our pricing engine and our markdown engine. There are 2 tools that use AI and give us data that especially in an environment as volatile that we have with high inflation, we have more assertiveness, not only in product pricing, but also in the decision to how much and when we should mark down the products. And as Carla showed us, we've seen record levels of lower markdowns compared to our track record.
In ESG, we are still advancing in line with our ecosystem in fashion and lifestyle to be durable and long-lasting and sustainable. We have our public commitments to 2021 that we started in 2018. So we've already achieved the first one, which was to have 100% of the supply chain in Brazil and international with social and environmental certification. The other commitments should be achieved by the end of the year. so within our forecast and expectations.
In addition, we also launched new collections with leftover collections and other -- through other projects, such as Jeans for Change, [ Message do Bajo ], among others, in addition to reducing consumption and the 3 solar plants that we have. We also closed a recent partnership with Enel to provide 100% of the energy of 170 stores and our new distribution center in São Paulo with wind power.
In September, we launched the Moda Com Verso, which was an initiative from ABVTEX, and we're part of that. we want to drive sustainable fashion and the good practices in the chain. That's another very important thing, and it's -- we're bringing in other retailers to the association.
On the government side as well, we were chosen first place and -- with the maximum score by -- promoted by JPMorgan. Our general shareholder assembly was solely digital with over -- 67.5% of our voting capital participated in that digitally. Our first circular retail store in Brazil was inaugurated. So in addition to sustainable collections, in addition to being digital and an integrated experience and being omni, it has the circularity concept from the start, from the renovation of the store, the construction style and the mannequins.
I'm going to show you a brief video now about that. And if you go to Rio, visit our store at the Rio Sul Shopping Mall. That's the story you'll see in the video right now.
[Presentation]
So now we're moving towards the last quarter of the year. In addition to good recovery, as Carla mentioned, since the month of April, we can see that the last quarter at the same rate and with some events that are coming. And as well as other events during the second and third quarter that were very positive for us. We had record Mother's Day, Valentine's Day in Brazil and Father's Day. And for Children's Day we had a growth of over 30% compared to 2019, so the pre-pandemic period.
Vaccination is advancing in the country, which helps a lot in terms of mobility. And we've been feeling some robust consistency in terms of sales in the past months.
We're ready for the upcoming events. So this quarter, we have Black Friday, we have Christmas, New Year's, vacation. So we're ready, and we're set up in inventory for all these events.
In addition to the optimism that we have in the short term, we're also confident about the investments that we're making for our future. So regardless of any of the challenges that we still may encounter, we are absolutely confident about our investments and strategies, and we won't give up on that as they've shown to be very important for us and our customers.
Another important aspect here, and we believe that these investments and these initiatives have made a difference in increasing our market share as well as our brand. In times like these, in more volatile, difficult moments and during crisis, strong brands are -- customers can believe in them, and that's how we gain market share and as in the past, and it's also happening now, not only because of that but also because of the investments and all the initiatives that we have had in the company has helped us to gain market share.
An important aspect is that we are the largest apparel omni player in Brazil with great online relevance and physical or brick-and-mortar store relevance. And that, therefore, we've been increasing our online share and our omni share. And that has been shown to be very interesting and important to our customers.
We continue committed to consolidating our ecosystem, making it more digital, all our projects and actually being the leading ecosystem in fashion and lifestyle. Always thinking of enchanting our customers, increasing or bringing together organic and inorganic growth and strengthening that culture.
And one thing that shows us that we're on the right path, when we see the level of enchantment of our customers, and we've been measuring that for over 25 years, in September '19, for instance, we had a record. In '20, we beat our record, and in '21, we've beaten our record again. So between satisfied and very satisfied customers, almost 93% of them are there, and that's the record of very satisfied for that period as well.
That's to show that our customers are more enchanted, and that the path that we have determined in strategy makes sense to them, gives more convenience, more enchantment, a better journey and that leads to better results for our ecosystem. And that's why we still believe and trust the investments that we've been making. Although the pressure that we have in the short term, we're absolutely sure that we will get better results for our company now and in the future.
I'm going to hand over to Caroline.
Thank you, Fabio. [Operator Instructions] The first one is from Helena Villares is from Itaú BBA.
We have 2 questions. They are topics that we've been discussing with investors, and we'd like to hear your opinion on this. The first question is related to margin, which is probably something you hear a lot. But in the sense that we'd like to understand how you see the EBITDA margin in retail in the company when online is 20% of [ cost ]?
How do you see that? We know it's very hard, and we're not asking for guidance. But we'd like to understand your mindset to the investment in a moment where online share is more mature.
And the second one is about Realize. We've received a lot of questions, especially because of the funding, where it's going up a lot. Consumers are having more difficulties in paying their bills because of inflation. So could you give us an overview about how you see that business right now in these difficult times? Because in our opinion, right now, you can benefit from that actually because fintechs and digital banks and so on have less -- compete less with you, and you already know the difficult Brazil and how to navigate these troubled waters. Do you have a different vision on that?
About your first question about the EBITDA margin with more digital penetration. We have a different dynamic in terms of cost, P&L between brick-and-mortar and digital. But they start to get bring -- come together in omni. Some are heavier in digital, some are heavier in brick-and-mortar. Digital maturity is lower, so you have strong or fast growth when you go from 4% to 12% as we see now. However, we still see many opportunities to gain more in efficiency and maturity in digital. So most of the investments, not only in content, loyalty, and even in the logistics platform address higher efficiency in the main digital lines.
So right now, it actually offends the EBITDA margin with the fast growth. But when we look at the long term, and we should have continuous and more gradual growth with all the opportunities of having more efficiency in those mainlines and gaining even more scale between brick-and-mortar and digital and omni. We believe that after a while, we can gain more efficiency in EBITDA margin as well.
In addition, there is an increase in the share of our less-mature companies. And that also brings in pressure on our EBITDA margin. But with their maturity, we'll also have an opportunity to gain more efficiency moving forward. And all the relevant investments that we've been making, it's not just OpEx in CapEx, but also OpEx, so personnel and the tribes and the squads. But right now, we have to gain efficiency in that.
So to answer part of your question, we believe that even with higher share in digital, that it should become more gradual moving forward. And across time, we can have -- we can bring back those margin efficiencies.
About Realize, let me start.
Yes, I've been talking too much.
At Realize, I do believe that your understanding is correct. There are many aspects of appealingness given a different relationship with the customer and the ticket that we operate and that we have -- of it being more appealing in that context. But first of all, the funding cost still has a challenge given the current interest rates. So obviously, we're going to monitor the market and any movements in relation to that in case we have to have any movements.
But more than that, it's all the work that we have at Realize in relation to the initiatives. Fabio mentioned that in his talk. Even in the share of service revenues at Realize, which is gradually giving us less vulnerability to the spread and interest rates with customers and also improves the relationship with them as we know that there is an interest rate trend to downwards.
So if we capture that in the different businesses, and participating even more in the customers' lives and helping them in their lives is probably the path where we see more of that initiatives helping Realize and building that. So it's a correct understanding.
Next question is from Ruben Couto from Santander.
Great data and evolution that you showed us and the omni effect, the delivery speed and in São Paulo. So you mentioned D+2. Is that mentioned in the website or next day and same day in São Paulo. I know you're still in the beginning of that. But do you see any leverage effects in e-commerce by promising better service level? Is there something that you've observed that you can share with us in that sense?
And on that same note, when you talk about the last mile pilot and direct management of transportation, I'm not sure I understood correctly. Is there an incremental cost to execute that? Those are my questions.
Thank you, Ruben. Actually, the data that we've shown is the actual. It's not the forecast or promise. So that would be different.
So first of all, we wanted to guarantee that we actually do that before we promise, so we don't have anybody frustrated. The actual for Youcom, which is very high, it's very significant, actually.
We weren't promising anything until a while back in D+1 for São Paulo. Now that we've started more recently, actually this month, where we started to bring these promises closer to actual. So there's always a safety margin, right, so we don't frustrate anyone. And now we're actually promising something closer to what we were to our actual.
First, we wanted to bring it down. And now we don't want a difference between them too big, so then we can impact conversion. It's really hard to say right now any figures. I can't really say that. But how much it will impact, but definitely it will impact conversion on a positive note. About the MVP that we did in São Paulo, it's about managing the entire process to guarantee that we can eliminate inefficiencies in all its aspects. It's still a small test with a small group of deliveries of shipments. But that's the test of what we're building on the platform. So we're testing that so that the platform is in that model. There's always many adjustments to MVP. You're going to test and then you're going to roll out. So I can't really affirm that that's how it will be because it's still in the beginning. But it shows us that it's a great path that we're designing for our platform. And there are still potential gains even considering the figures that we have today. We still have relevant growth there.
Next question is from João Soares from Citi.
Fabio, my question is about investment. Your discourse in general has been very consistent in speeding up capabilities, developing digital and fintech. But we are seeing a very volatile environment, and digital sales are disturbing that a little. I'd like to know if you're reviewing that strategy, if you're looking more at the brick-and-mortar world.
So I think it's important for us to understand if your investments may include assets actually, real assets so in that environment of brand with points of sale. So I'd like to pick your brain on that.
Thank you for your question, João. Currently, we've been seeing a recovery of omnichannel. So yes, during the pandemic, where we had more restrictions in operating brick-and-mortar stores, digital grew a lot. Now that the brick-and-mortar stores are going back to normal, comparatively, it is sharing that little because brick-and-mortar stores were practically 0 or just a little. And now they're growing again.
But in our model, digital is still growing because it's very integrated to the other. One helps the other in growth. Maybe that's different from others that only had digital or only had brick-and-mortar stores. So they probably had a different variation.
In our model, as the businesses are integrated, even with growth -- relevant growth in brick-and-mortar, digital is still growing. And Carla mentioned in her presentation that digital growth could have even been bigger. Don't forget that we were unavailable for 2 days during the quarter, and that does have an effect. Obviously, it's not that relevant, but it does affect us. So our digital growth may have even been bigger. And we can see that when we look at the current figures. We're still growing brick-and-mortar, and we're still growing digital.
So to answer your question about the investment possibilities in points of sale, brick-and-mortar, yes, we will still we will still invest high in that. We're in our budgeting period right now. We still have to approve our budget with the Board of Directors, but we do plan on resuming our expansion levels and maybe even expedite that, seeing a number -- relevant number of brick-and-mortar stores, maybe 40 to 50 compared to all the businesses next year.
And once again, in the integration, for each point of sale, we open in a market that we are not present, that expedites our digital sales. So on average, and we already have data from some years back about that, when we open a point of sale in a place where we are not present, digital sales for that place increases by 20 percentage points. Not to mention the sales in the store. So yes, we should resume our investments in points of sale, and continue to invest in digital.
Next question is from Irma Sgarz from Goldman Sachs.
I have 2. The first one is about Camicado. Gross margin was a bit weaker in this quarter. So I'd like to understand if in your understanding, is that some -- if that's a one-off or if it's structural, given the higher competition, more online competitors. And then you're going to have to work on the product mix or maybe take other measures to offset that and bring that margin back to the levels that you've achieved in the past, gross margin specifically.
My other question is about 0+5 participation. Maybe I misunderstood but 0+5 in private label and Meu Cartão dropped in the total share year-over-year. Although the stores opened, and there was a new balance between online and brick-and-mortar. I thought that -- I expected a recovery in that. Can you help me to understand the dynamics of that?
Thank you, Irma. I'll talk about Camicado, and then Carla can talk about Realize afterwards. So Camicado gross margin has 2 effects. One you mentioned. Probably the competition in that segment, maybe it's bigger.
But another important effect is the share of our product assortment at Camicado has more imported items than in fashion. And the imported items have a higher inflationary aspect. There's international shipping rates, the FX effect. And adding that to a more promotional setting in that segment didn't enable us to transfer the costs of those products to the sales margin.
There's a third point in that. We're more advanced in the pricing engine at Renner. And now that we're advancing and improving at Camicado, we could probably mitigate that effect even more. But I think that the main aspects is more competition in that segment, more imported items. And the mitigation effect that we're working on is our efficiency in managing pricing in markdowns. I think we can work better on that at Camicado.
Irma, for the 0+5, that's an effect of the base of comparison. Because even given lower sales in the past, it's really hard to read that. There are 2 matters there: One of them is that in a moment of higher restriction you see more concentration in less loyalty of a customer as a cardholder in using the brand.
But I'd like to stress, maybe not -- that's not comparable. Maybe it's best to compare to the snapshot in 3Q '19. And there is the effect of the pandemic. We have a change in the customer base. We did a lot of work, not only an adjustment in credit quality, which obviously reduced the number of new customers entering but also in nonsale, not having a sale because of the closed stores. So that movement's getting back to normal. And Fabio mentioned a lot of the customers more occupation offer of Meu Cartão is higher, enabling us to improve that, of the reality that we had with the pandemic, but still far from what our normal used to be.
Our next question is from Joseph Giordano from JPMorgan. Joseph?
I'd like to explore 2 points. First of all, the cost side. So cotton prices are going up, and based on that, we have freight and shipping and supply chain in Asia. So how do you see that? Looking into midyear where you have a higher import mix, obviously, cotton is -- will affect you in the short term.
And the second point is to look at Realize and see what do you expect in terms of growing that portfolio. So how do you see an evolution of that customer base? You mentioned many factors to set it apart from other digital platforms. So there's the competition. I'd like to understand even how you should think of -- how do you think of the Realize EBITDA share as well.
Thank you, Joseph. About margin in cotton and freight, it's not just that. It's not just the cost of that. It's the cost of everything. We have inflation not only in the country, but we have global inflation. So the freight costs, shipping costs have been very high: oil, fuels, and the raw materials, even the price of some raw materials in apparel. So the inflationary pressure has been high, and that has been happening for a while during the whole year. And the exchange rate, that impacts not only imported products, but also the raw material in the country.
So we've been working on our initiative to mitigate and have more assertiveness in inventory, collections, pricing and markdowns. And even though we see this scenario now and moving forward, we believe that little by little, we can get closer to good margin levels, having a healthy margin and getting closer and closer to better margins. We believe that we can still do work in that sense to get to the best gross margin levels.
About Realize customer base. We also believe that we can have important growth. Don't forget that Realize was only looking at the Renner customer base that were prone to 2 products, to private and the other. And then in that, we embedded products and services. Now we're looking at a bigger customer base. We're capturing customers at Camicado, Ashua, Youcom. We have more products and services for Renner itself where we are more mature. And we're seeing a bigger market in our own customer base ecosystem, and more base of assortment in products and services.
In addition, we're also looking at our sellers and supplier base that require products and services. So that's also a very important customer base for Realize and bringing more customers for us. And Realize may even stop looking at customers that are within one of our brands, but also bring in customers to the ecosystem. And with the digital wallet, that really helps in the interaction when you bring in or add that on to the loyalty program that we'll launch next year. We can bring in monetization in the digital wallet, and that will have -- or offer us a lot of ways to not only address a larger market and also increase that customer base, but also have -- being a higher assortment of products and services and, thus, adding more value, and each one increasing the base.
Just to add and giving some more flavor in terms of figures. Fabio mentioned in the beginning of exploring the base that we currently have that was before probably focused more on some customers of the chain. We have 3.6 million active customers, as I mentioned. And at Realize, we have 5 million, 5.5 million active customers. So we have a very large universe of what our ecosystem already is that can be explored. And given all the investment in the ecosystem and their experience, that customer base will just continue to grow, and we've seen that happen in addition to the current snapshot that's already big to explore, but we can continue to grow that.
And I think you asked as well about the fact that with more customers and more products, Realize will still have a significant share in the ecosystem. 15% to 20% of the EBITDA of the ecosystem should come from Realize according to our estimates.
Next question is from Danni Eiger from XP.
[Technical Difficulty]
Thank you, Danni. Sorry, Danni. We had a problem with our equipment here. I thought we got dropped so I'm using another device. I heard the first part of your question about the CFO. I didn't hear the second part.
The second one is about margin. What do you think about dynamic in the medium-term margin. [indiscernible] if you're sticking with that or would that be earlier or later for your medium-term margin?
Well, about the first question, Alvaro, mentioned in the beginning, as we mentioned -- excuse me, as I mentioned about Alvaro, he had to dedicate himself to a family project. And now we're considering a replacement with -- we're talking to the Board of Directors about that. We picked someone together with the Board members. So we should probably bring in someone from the market. As soon as we have someone, we'll inform you, inform the market. That's the only reason. He had some family things to dedicate himself to. And we really thank him for the time he spent with us.
About the margins, your second question, we believe that we should start to see higher volumes of EBITDA throughout the year, meaning moving forward. And then margin, probably fully, recovering gradually recovering across '23, '24 and maybe reaching the best levels. In volume, I think that from now on, we'll probably see higher volumes. And in margins, as you mentioned, '23 and '24, we should recover the percentages.
Thank you, Fabio. Our next question is from Andrew Ruben from Morgan Stanley. This question is via chat. Can you talk more about the inventory position during vacation time? What do you see in terms of supply chain?
Thank you, Andrew. As I mentioned, we see a problem in the supply chains in general in all segments. In our case, I think it's no different. We do have some restrictions, especially in the imported supply chain. We were already seeing that movement happen.
In relation to imported items, we decided a while back to start off in bringing them in earlier, so we didn't have any problems like in times like these. So we're well organized for this period of events, Black Friday, Christmas, vacation, New Year's for imported items, which would be a higher risk and especially domestic items where we work closely, and we have a great partnership with our suppliers. We believe that the work that we have in our company, historically, I mean, we've had a very positive response from our suppliers and good priority on their side. So even though there are difficult times in the supply chain, I believe that our position -- inventory position is very comfortable for the upcoming months and events.
Thank you, Fabio. Well, given the time, we have to end our conference call. Any questions that weren't answered will be answered by the IR team. Now I'll hand over to Fabio and Carla for their closing remarks.
Carol, it seems like when we were off, there may be another question about the CFO, who is going to be responsible for M&A and Realize. I'm the one responsible for that for a while now. So they were areas that were already directly connected to me.
For my final remarks, I'd like to thank everybody for your attention and say that we're very confident, not only now about the end of the year, which is a very important times for us. We're ready. Obviously, these scenarios had been very challenging, but we do have very positive expectations for the upcoming months, as they're very important for our companies and very confident about the strategy and initiatives that we're developing. I would like to thank everyone -- And we're at your disposal in case you have any further questions through our IR team. Thank you, everyone, to see you next time.