Locaweb Servicos De Internet SA

BOVESPA:LWSA3

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to LWSA's Q4 2024 Earnings Conference. Joining us today are CEO, Rafael Chamas; and Finance and Investor Relations VP, Andre Kubota. For the Q&A session, we will also be joined by the company's senior management team.

This conference is being streamed online via Zoom webinar with simultaneous interpretation into English and will be available for replay at ri.lwsa.tech. You can download the slide deck for this presentation at the same website's Results Center under the Financial Information tab.

The figures being reported here are denominated in Brazilian real and have been calculated in accordance with Brazil's standard accounting practices as per the statements, guidelines and interpretations issued by the Brazilian Accounting Pronouncements Committee.

Before moving on, we'd like to mention that the statements made during this presentation regarding LWSA's business prospects, operational and financial forecasts as well as future growth estimates are merely projections, and as such, are based solely on its management's outlook for the business. This outlook relies heavily on market conditions, the performance of the Brazilian economy, the industry and international markets and, therefore, may change without prior notice.

Unless otherwise stated, all variations and rounded off figures here presented have been calculated in thousands of Brazilian real. This business performance presentation includes both accounting and non-accounting data such as organic and pro forma operating and financial results as well as projections based on the company's management's expectations. The non-accounting data have not been reviewed by independent auditors.

[Operator Instructions] I will now turn over to Mr. Rafael Chamas, who will begin the presentation, followed by Mr. Andre Kubota. Please, Mr. Chamas, you may proceed.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for LWSA's Q4 2024 Earnings Conference. Our idea is to address the most important points for 2024 within our company. 2024 was a very important year for our strategy and our development as a group. There were several accomplishments and challenges and the idea is to go over them so that by the end of the presentation, we can offer a few prospects for 2025 from a strategic standpoint.

On Slide 4, we start by addressing our operational fundamentals, which we call solid given the development in significant indicators, which are important drivers of our performance. On the left-hand side, we talk about the GMV ecosystem that involves all our active users. We're talking about over 70 million users over the year.

This is a significant development in Brazil's e-commerce ecosystem and not only relevant, but also we saw significant growth in both retail and commerce, we saw an increase by 18.4%. This is also very significant for our business value. Our subscriber base has also increased. This was a 5% increase, actually 4.8% to be specific. We end the year with 193,000 subscribers of e-commerce solutions.

And another very important way to understand our monetization, which is our platform subscription revenue with these platforms. And what we have on the right-hand side, there was a 22.3% in platform subscription revenue outpacing our subscriber revenue, which shows how successful we've been with the clients that are part of our operations.

On Slide 5, two more relevant pieces of information. We have our own stores GMV. We end 2024 with BRL 5.8 billion, up 16.3% year-over-year. This is very important news because what we sell on our own stores represent a larger source of monetization for the company, seeing as it is based on this volume that we're able to perform logistics and financial transactions as well.

So it's important for our growth, and that can also be seen in our TPV. So we're talking about just payment processing, amounting to about BRL 7.6 billion, up 15.2% over the quarter. And it's important to remember this is all within our ecosystem. So LWSA offers financial solutions in an embedded store. So this is directly connected to our e-commerce operations and customers.

Moving on to Slide 6, another chapter of what I would call a significant highlight for 2024. This was a very important year for us from a strategic standpoint, considering profitability situations. Following a cycle of close to 4 years with M&As, improving your profitability has always been, first and foremost, in our agenda and producing more cash flow. And we end the year in a very positive stance from that point of view.

So we start with talking about our e-commerce and BeOnline up 24% in a consolidated way and also increased margins. We ended 2023 with 17.5% and 2024 were 20.3%. So 3 percentage points higher. And this can be seen on both sides of the company.

In commerce now a more significant part of the company's EBITDA with BRL 177.8 billion, up 28.2%, close to 3 percentage points higher, and our BeOnline SaaS operations also up 17% with BRL 103 billion a year and about 3.5 percentage points higher to be precise. So this was very strategic for 2024 in the sense that we wanted to continue to grow our profitability and our cash flow. So we were very much successful in that sense.

On to Slide 7, we talk about net revenue. From a revenue perspective, we delivered significant indicators, however, below par for the company standards. This helps me to highlight what I think 2024 was. Our consolidated net revenue increased 6% at BRL 1,370 billion, so still below our potential.

The explanation for that can be partly seen in the chart in the middle. Here, we see the results for the company, excluding one of our subsidiaries called Squid. And over the course of 2024, we executed an intervention in this company seeking more profitability, which led to a contamination of the company's consolidated results. Looking at it in a pro forma way, excluding that figure, the increase would have been by 10.4% overall.

Now looking exclusively to our commerce operations, also in a pro forma way, excluding Squid, growth is closer to what I believe is compatible with the company's potential. So 15.8% this segment specific ended the year of 2024 with BRL 880 million in 2024 as compared to BRL 760 million in 2023.

Moving on to Slide 8. We show you the strategic agenda for 2024 that we can see, especially right now in our profitability, which involved simplifying our operations and our offerings. At the end of 2026, we had acquired over 16 different companies. So we had a broad offering from a product and solution standpoint. And during all of 2023 and 2024, we strove to simplify all of that.

So we are now focused very much on what you see on the slide. So we start with hosting our e-commerce platform for different sizes and magnitudes of customers, financial services solutions and logistics mediation platforms.

We do not have any logistics assets, but within an embedded finance and logistics platform within what we seek strategically, which is to offer convenience in logistics standpoint to both our ERP and finance services clients, we have also ERP and also conversational tools, which allow us to have not only greater profitability for our clients, but also conversational e-commerce solutions, which with AI becomes a very important part of our solution, especially when it comes to commerce within the company.

Over to Slide 9, another very significant point, which I call return to shareholders. In 2024, we shared over BRL 200 million, so BRL 152.6 million in shares to our shareholders. That was because of buyback and dividends. We paid over BRL 40 million in dividends over 2024, and most of that came via the share buyback program.

This is a cash-generating company, which truly believes in the potential of its shares. We are convinced that the company's current share value allows us to use our capital the best way possible, which is to repurchase or to buy back its own shares. We came to 4% of the company's property. And we believe in that strategy so much that we launched another share buyback program with BRL 38.8 million share buybacks in 2025.

So moving on to the last stretch of the presentation. Here, we address the EBITDA development of the company since our IPO. As you can see, the company has now a different magnitude since 2020 when we had our IPO. So as you can see, our revenue moved from BRL 488 million to BRL 1.370 billion.

So when we think about operational leverage via EBITDA, this is also very sustainable growth, progressive growth, and you can see significant development, especially in the last 2 years, 2023 and 2024. This was the time when the company focused primarily on gaining operational efficiency and profitability. So we end 2024 with BRL 280 million, which is more than twice what we had in 2020.

So now over to you, Kubota.

[Andre Kubota, executive]

Thank you so much, Rafael, and thank you all for joining us. Now we will detail the results for 2024 -- for Q4 2024 a little bit better, starting on Slide 11 with the platform's operational indicators.

First of all, about the company's ecosystem GMV. We had 16.3% increase to nearly BRL 20 billion in Q4. And our subscriber base, as Rafael mentioned before, has increased by 4.8% to 193,000 active customers on our platform. Also important to highlight was our platform subscription revenue, which grew by 20.1%.

Over to Slide 12, looking at our own stores GMV. It went up 12.4% to BRL 1.7 billion in Q4, and our TPV went up 15.3% to BRL 2.1 billion in Q4 2024. Now moving on to Slide 13 with a little bit more about our net revenue in Q4. In consolidated terms, we saw 4.8% increase year-over-year. And if we excluded Squid, that increase would be by 8.1%.

It's important to remember that the most significant impact from this business unit took place in the first quarter of 2024. So we believe that starting in Q1 2025, we expect to no longer see that reduction, seeing as growth is expected to normalize and the impact should no longer be significant.

In commerce, we saw significant growth, exceeding the consolidated by growing by 6.7% year-over-year. The BeOnline SaaS unit grew somewhat less by 0.5% year-over-year. But as you'll see in the next few slides, there has been significant improvement in terms of profitability, and we were able to see growth in other operational indicators.

So over to Slide 14 with a little bit more detail on gross profit and gross margin. It's very important to say that our gross margin is still very robust by 46.1%, up 1.3% versus last year, but it's also important to underscore that this quarter, we also reported the nonrecurring effect from 2023, which had no impact on 2024 of the active contingency given the termination of a contract on the logistics side of the company. It was very challenging for the company to recover that amount. But when it finally is recovered we will see that production that we lost being recovered in this quarter.

Now over to Slide 15, on the company's EBITDA. There's been a 19% increase over the year with a substantial margin by 22.3%, which shows the company's ability in terms of operational leverage with very important EBITDA growth in a year when we grew less than our potential allowed us to. Our commerce adjusted EBITDA was up 17.4% with a 21.8% margin. So by and large, exceeding the margin we reported last year. And as I said before, our BeOnline SaaS unit saw its EBITDA going up by 22.8% despite the increase by 0.5% in the company's net revenue.

Now over to Slide 16. Here we see our margins over an extended period to show the clear growth pattern. So since Q2 2023, we see substantial increase by 17% in the consolidated EBITDA to 22.3% in Q4 2024. And obviously, the trend in both units, both commerce and BeOnline is the same.

Over to Slide 17. This is a proxy for our cash generation, considering our EBITDA, CapEx and financial expenses or TPV. We see an increase by 17% in our adjusted EBITDA. CapEx at 9.4% and financial expenses over TPV at 0.48% vis-a-vis the 0.75% figure we saw earlier.

Now moving on to Slide 18, we can see these figures together in a cash generation proxy using the EBITDA minus CapEx and financial expenses for the payments unit. For the quarter, the figure came to BRL 36.8 billion, so up 29% versus 1 year earlier, and representing 10.1% of our revenue. And looking at the consolidated figure for 2024, an even higher figure, by BRL 127 million, up 75% versus the figure we reported in 2023. So for this metric, growth was even stronger than that of our EBITDA and even stronger than our gross debt, which, in turn, is higher than our gross profit.

Now on to Slide 19. Here, we see our net cash position which was very robust at the end of 2024. I'm talking about BRL 447.4 million and looking at what we call net cash according to the IFRS, that's BRL 373 million, and it's important to remember that our restatement of lease liability extends to over 6 months (sic) [ 60 months ] and earnouts to be paid are at BRL 270 million.

And there are two things to be said about this. There is a significant payment by about BRL 230 million in April, and the rest of that will be paid over the next 2 years. I think the most important thing here is to mention that in December 2024, we saw the last significant revision of this figure. So essentially, what we have is the interest payable over the next few months or years with these earn-outs.

In addition to that, the cash for this year already discount the purchases of BRL 230 million that occurred over the course of 2024 and also the dividend vesting that we had in 2024, which shows the company's ability to generate cash, invest in its own growth and also return its cash investments to its shareholders.

With that, I turn the conference back to Rafa.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Thank you, Kubota. So now moving on to Slide 21. This is the last slide before our Q&A. I mentioned some of our key takeaways for shareholders with regards to 2025, which ultimately have to do with our strategic agenda.

First and foremost, we have to talk about growth. As I said, 2024 showed significant growth signals, especially when we think about e-commerce soft but we have grown below our potential, considering how important we are to the market and the quality of our assets. So this is our most important strategic focus right now.

There's another relating topic, which is the expansion of our growth in accounting points when we think about the restructuring of Squid. As you saw, the growth with Squid is at about 20%. But naturally, we do and -- we do want and need to grow a little bit more.

In the last quarter of 2024, as a group, we experienced a very important process in terms of strategy with the support of an outside consulting firm to understand how we could grow. We have a tactical plan that's very detailed. We have over 170 points we have been working on diligently since the beginning of the year to obviously unlock the company's entire potential.

Growth doesn't take place overnight. There's a trend that has to be followed. But what I believe the great takeaway here is this is something we're focused on. It's not just a wish. We have a strategic plan that has unfolded into a tactic plan that's very precise and which we will follow to make this company reach its full potential.

This includes changes we've already made in structural and organizational sense, focusing precisely on some of our offerings, as I showed you before, to make the company more streamlined and organized so that they focus on the customer journey a lot more than in specific brands which is a very natural trend in which we saw with other brands, which were essentially stand-alone until their earn-outs.

The omnichannel strategy is another important topic. So if you've been looking at the company for some time, the fully integrated TPV strategy in our commerce operations are something that we fully believe in. Also our management and platform operations, which may also unlock our synergy cross-selling and monetization strategies.

Finance is another important source. We were authorized by the Brazilian Central Bank last year to be a payments institution, which allows us to unlock the IP and e-commerce platforms, journeys, especially including payments. So these are a few initiatives which, as I said, with these close to 22 fronts, will allow us to unlock the company's potential.

And I believe that 2025 is the year to put all of that to work and accelerate the company's growth journey. All of that always done by us with financial discipline, which is culturally for us. So this is a very important KPI for us.

One of the company's most important KPIs is still discipline and profitability. So this is still our focus. When we talk about accelerating growth, we do not mean there's any need for incremental investment and this trend will take place via a dynamic initiative. So using assets that we already have in-house.

Cash generation, as we showed you, we have been able to accelerate our cash generation consistently every year via discipline and capital payments discipline, which allowed us to deliver close to BRL 200 million in returns to our shareholders and most of that by repurchasing our own shares. Seeing as we truly believe this company's potential, the company's current shareholder value allows us to use our cash to purchase our assets a given.

And lastly, a topic that's been part of our conversations in the last 4 years because of our M&A strategy, our M&A plan has always been founded in our financial strategy. So earnouts were a full and integral part of this strategy, but obviously, over the last 3 years, this also brought some volatility and created some noise for the company's statements.

So obviously, this was part of something important, which was investment to make us a relevant player in the Brazilian market. And there's no question that we were very successful at that but now the result for 2024 is the hallmark of the end of this crop of investments. So December 2024 is the last time we sort of reassess our acquisitions and payable earn-outs. Andre has already shown you the time line for that.

So for 2025, two things that used to create noise in our financial statements no longer show -- are a part of this process. As I showed you, the earnout payments process has now come to an end. We now treat Squid as a regular part of our business. We will not be releasing anything excluding their operations and also earn-outs are no longer appearing in our results. So in 2025, we will already see a period of clearer and more -- and easier to understand income statement.

So with that, I turn it over to our operator to start our Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mr. Gustavo Farias with UBS.

[Gustavo Farias, analyst]

We have two actually, one about revenue and one about your cash position. So if you could start by talking a little bit more about your strategy to accelerate your revenue, Chamas has actually talked about the strategic plan that has unfolded into a tactic plan.

I wanted to understand a bit more about the timetable, maybe just an estimate of when we should see the effects of the deployment of this plan in 2025 or whether this is a longer-term plan? And how does this dovetail with the company's more recent strategy of providing higher returns to shareholders and of a more extensive buyback program?

Now I also understand that earnouts are an issue that will now be in the past, but I just wanted to understand how -- what do you expect in terms of cash generation, considering that later this year, in April, there will be this BRL 230 million payment in earnouts on schedule.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Gustavo, this is Chamas speaking. I think I added some context, but I'll try to give you a more strategic perspective in that sense, but also turn over to Otavio Dantas, this is our strategic plan and People Management Director, and he can add a little bit more color because ultimately planning is not all we live on. So he will be able to tell you how this will pervade the company culturally via incentives and so on and so forth.

But starting from a strategic standpoint, Gustavo, we are not looking at a strategy of achieving acceleration at any cost. We're looking at significant acceleration to bring sustainable and healthy growth and obviously delivering value to our shareholders. Every journey with products and brands need to be very well tied together and they have to fit really well.

And there's no question that it is possible to accelerate that way, especially considering the assets we have in-house. We have some very robust assets here. So the best commerce platforms in Brazil for small and medium enterprises. We've also had some success with Wake, which is a platform for larger customers. We have long-lasting experience with embedded finance, a very robust ERP. So we have the assets.

Now the way to unlock value, obviously, is to better leverage and finding synergies in this combined offerings within an ecosystem that's unprecedented in Brazil when you think about -- of end user offerings. So we want to use those assets in a more integrated way and most importantly, with clearer and simpler journeys to our customers, which obviously involves thinking about our offering, our integration and communication journey so there are these meanders which are essential for that to take place.

But I'll turn it over to Otavio now, who will be able to tell you more about that.

[Otavio de Carvalho, executive]

Perfect. Thank you, Rafa. Now a little bit more and very much in line with what Rafael just said. There's something that sometimes goes unnoticed, but today, our Executive Board has a very clear vision and everyone really bought into this vision about this strategy and also everyone is really excited about unlocking value with this strategy that's already taken place.

So over the year, we also strove to characterize very well all of these 21 fronts, especially with the first wave, we have metrics, we have dedicated teams, we have approvals. And alongside that, there's also an effort to define our metrics and targets very well based on incentives.

So I think we should also say that there is some maturity and there's some different levels of maturity according to those fronts. Some are already very forward. Others are still catching up. So these incentives also are very according to these fronts. Some may be connected to their bonus, and in some cases, it's just connected to a product launch. So that's also very well detailed in our plan.

Now diving a little bit more into the strategy of driving value, we have an effort that comes in waves that I would say comes first with the marketing strategy that's already underway. And we're very focused in integrating products and also guiding our customers, and then we start thinking about adjacent markets.

Right now I would say that we are starting to characterize our markets more focused in customer segments. And these customers will be served via a broader journey. So of course, we have several products and services within the group, but sometimes, they're not being offered to customers that are most likely to have an interest in them.

So we're bringing PDV and logistics to those segments, which are more interested to really be able to maximize their value. Yes, that's essentially it.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Thank you, Otavio. I hope it was clear. And I will now turn over to Kubota who'll be able to talk a little bit more about cash generation.

[Andre Kubota, executive]

Thank you, Rafa. Gustavo, thank you for your question. On the cash topic, I think it's very important to highlight, as you saw in our report, our cash position is very robust, of close to BRL 450 million in Q4. Our earn-outs which was revised by the last time in December, so BRL 270 million, considering that BRL 230 million will be paid in Q2 of this year. So regardless of that payment, our net cash position will remain robust.

Now secondly, this company is still a very scalable business with a lot of operational scalability and continues to generate a lot of cash. And our strategy is obviously to allocate that cash, understanding -- where we understand that is most profitable. We obviously reinvest in our own business. So we -- this is part of the strategic plan that Otavio has just detailed. This will plant the seeds for us to accelerate growth in the medium term.

And in addition to all of that, we also have enough discretionary cash for additional allocation. The opportunities we see today are with our own stocks. We've had the buyback program in the past. We shared dividends in total and we've ultimately consumed that in total last year, which is why we're starting a new program.

Now beyond that, there's another cash-related program for this year. We concluded the process of including the new -- of amalgamating the new companies, and we believe this will now also generate more efficiency in tax -- in financial terms, bearing in mind that last year, we had over BRL 275 million and this year, that should be much lower bearing in mind that this is a cash effect.

There's an accounting effect as well, but this cash effect will be very clear, not only in our cash results, but also in our top line. So this is essentially it, and we're available if you have any other questions.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Yes. Gustavo, just to Kubota's last point. Over 2025, we will be highlighting our tax situation because since there's a cash effect and an accounting effect, we need that to be very clear and keep all of that in mind.

[Gustavo Farias, analyst]

Perfect, guys. If I could maybe follow up on these two answers, just so that I make sure I understood it. The fact that you already have the assets in place for this acceleration strategy, we might see a decrease in investment requirements, maybe investments in new projects as opposed to this new return to our shareholders with the buyback program.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Well, actually, Gustavo, in practice, one does not affect the other. The fact that we have assets in-house means that we will not need any robust investment outside. The search for profitability within the company doesn't change that strategically. So one strategy does not spoil the other in any way.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Livea Mizobata with JPMorgan.

[Livea Mizobata, analyst]

I just wanted to hear from you the GMV trend in the market in Q4. We saw a slowdown in growth year-over-year. Do you expect an uptick in Q1 2025 and over the year? And is there any customer serving that's suffering in particular, maybe in any segment? And you could also talk about the improved LTV with your customers. Do you see an impact with -- on the churn? And what are the impacts expected for 2025?

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Livea, this is Rafael speaking. I will turn over to Willians, to my colleagues for them to talk on that. But one very important thing about the company's monetization trend regardless of that is we know the macroeconomic situation is a challenging one in Brazil right now.

In e-commerce, we see low penetration to the tune of 11% or 12%. So there's still a very resistant growth trend, which is why we invest in it so much. We have increased our omnichannel solutions strategy, which also goes to the GMV that we are capturing, which obviously is very significant. But I'll let my colleagues talk about SME and other clients, segments and what they see for the year.

But I just wanted to say in my first slide, I mentioned this when talking about revenue, it is very much based on revenue. So there's a large share of the company's monetization that relies on GMV, which is where we saw the company's most significant increase, we saw on the SaaS unit growth by over 20%. So despite the more challenging scenario, growth is not just connected to GMV, which I think is important to highlight.

But please Aline, and then Willians, if you could add to his response, that would be great.

[Aline Goldsztejn, executive]

This is Aline speaking. What we're feeling here is just basically slight slowdown in marketplaces. The stores have been suffering a little too many sellers trying to sell at the same time. So what I've been feeling in my side are some stores trying to boost sales in their -- on their own e-commerce websites, medium-sized retailers being hurt a little bit more in their margins, and brands that explore their omnichannel strategy a bit well or a little bit better, doing a little bit better in that sense.

So we have a mix in our GMV especially in client niches that suffer a little bit more. Marketplace within our -- the profile of our businesses slowing down a little bit. And those brands that are more omnichannel and improve the customer journey at large are still evolving.

So I'll turn to Willians, and he can talk a little bit more about GMV from his perspective.

[Willians Marques, executive]

Thank you, Rafa and Aline. Thank you for the question, Livea. I think very much in line with what Aline mentioned, the more traditional stores hurting a little bit more and as well as marketplaces. Now what we're seeing here is that small- and medium-sized businesses, which are digital natives created with active communities, especially in the embedded stores, are doing a little bit better.

So this has also offset the poor results with the more traditional stores. These are the stores that are very much based on their communities and social media. So in our case, GMV has grown a bit more slowly, but this is the mix that we're seeing.

Now to your second point with regards to LTV and churn. We're seeing more skilled customers coming to us. So the strategy of bringing in clients which are better prepared for online retail, they already have the product and some retail expertise and this has reduced our client acquisition in general, but we're bringing in customers that perform better.

So our LTV is much more connected to our customers' performance which are starting to sell. And in this case, the client pace part of their transaction share, so this is more connected to that than the increase in prices. So we're not manually increasing our LTV. This is due to the better performance of our clients.

Now what we're seeing is our churn has remained in slightly lower levels. So we're also seeing improvements in our churn. So these are more mature customers which often already rely on a physical operation and understand that they also need their own online channel, which is why they invest more and have greater capacity to grow.

So it's the opposite of your question. Our LTV has gone up and our churn is going down. As reported, we saw a 20% increase in our subscription revenue. And that's where this comes from. Clients are higher quality clients, and so they have higher LTV as well.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Livea, just to conclude, I think it's important to think about the quality of clients that Willians mentioned. It's a 20% increase in GMV, so close to 18.4% more than last year, and substantially more than for the market at large.

If we were to compare ourselves with the Brazilian market at large, our share has expanded by over 2 percentage points in the e-commerce GMV. So our successful client capturing -- client capture strategy is allowing us to bring customers with a more sophisticated approach, and that has allowed us to grow our share in the Brazilian market.

[Operator]

Next question, Thiago Kapulskis with Itau BBA.

[Thiago Kapulskis, analyst]

I have two questions as well and there's sort of follow-up -- they sort of follow up the last two questions. It was very clear to me and actually, congratulations for the call. Every message was crystal clear to us as was your execution timetable.

Now my question is more connected to the variables you have no control over. Unfortunately, the macro environment has been challenging in that sense over the last few years. We heard a previous question about your expectations and all of that, but I wanted to hear from you what do you expect from the more macroeconomic perspective for 2025.

In addition to your agenda, do you still expect this to be a more challenging year for e-commerce? If you could maybe talk about your verticals. We saw other players hurt a little bit in the categories where dollar is the primary currency or where their average ticket is higher. So if you could talk a little bit about these aspects that are not under your control, that would help a lot as well.

And maybe following up on another question. If you could talk a bit about your agenda to unlock value by using taxes and nonoperational aspects of the company. If you could give us more color about whether there's a possibility of us seeing more of that. I mean, of course, you've done a lot in that sense over the last 6 months. But if you have any prospects about unlocking more value with that vertical, that would be great.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Thank you, Kapulskis. Those are great questions. Obviously, we -- this is a challenging macroeconomic scenario, especially when we think about SMB, which is still the large -- larger part of the company. Of course, it's still significant.

We cannot dismiss the credit situation, for example. And there are a few things that allow us to perform well considering the situation. And when I talked about share in GMV, our figures sort of reflect that.

But first of all, there is no concentration in one single industry. So the fact that we are SaaS solutions and focused, in this case, on SMBs allows us to reach different segments in a very broad sense. There's also no concentration in high value-added products such as what we call the white line of electronics, which is another thing, I think, helps us to weather these difficult times well.

And there's also the fact that for the last 2, close to 3 years, when we define our strategy in growing via larger clients, what we had in mind was the trend, even looking outside of Brazil, where the e-commerce industry is beginning to grow, driven by larger customers, customers with greater financial capacity and a higher GMV. So in this sense, I'm confident that solutions such as Wake, which allow us to reach retailers with greater momentum than smaller customers, also allow us to weather the situation better.

And lastly, the fact that the company was able to invest from a horizontal standpoint in the e-commerce chain but not only in that because we also have a physical retail or brick-and-mortar retail component, allow us to bring aspects which are additional to -- are in addition to the transactions themselves, which relate to survival.

I mean, larger customers trying to lower costs help us in -- with discussions and ultimately bring in more customers with that. So the robustness of our solutions and the fact that we are not focusing on one single industry allow us to do a little bit better at a time when the economy at large is not doing that well.

And please, Kubota take it away.

[Andre Kubota, executive]

Thank you for your question, Kapulskis. Now with regards to what is more under our control, there are a few points, but I'll talk a little bit more about the tax operations. So we incorporated two important companies, which accounted for close to 60% of the taxes we paid in Q3. So starting in March, we see the full impact of that improvement.

There were three, but two of which were more representative. And obviously, this is public information. We had the general assembly in February, and those savings will be seen starting in February. And after those two, those that took place in August and September last year, much of those gains will be captured in full starting in the second half of 2025. So I think this is number one.

Number two is, obviously, there is the annualization of these benefits that were accrued over the course of last year. So just because of the basis of comparison effect, we are doing better, but obviously, we are a company that's always paying close attention to profitability and additional gains, and that remains unchanged. That's part of our daily operations.

There are still opportunities. There are still things we're looking into and I believe that, that is a lot more under our control, which I think is what you were asking about.

[Operator]

Our next question is by Lucca Brendim with Bank of America.

Our next question is by Mr. Daniel Federle with Bradesco BBI.

[Daniel Federle, analyst]

I wanted to follow up on two points and then I have a third question about CapEx. I wanted to understand, first of all, the GMV trend. You mentioned your own stores growing by 12%. But previously, it seemed that Black Friday had been strong. So 12% seems like an average, which would suggest that December was lower than that. So I just wanted to understand how are we going into 2025. What was your growth like in December '24?

And we heard about how important the subscription revenue is important. In the past, there were triggers in payment scales based on GMV and products. So I just wanted to understand whether subscription is totally tied to GMV or whether you need to grow your GMV to be able to grow your subscription revenues.

And my second question, that's about CapEx. Your CapEx was slightly higher. You explained that on the release, but it wasn't clear to me whether this was a trend, whether it was one-off and what we should expect in terms of CapEx moving forward.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Of course, well, let's go. So you're right about GMV. In December, it was weaker than we expected. I think we were able to anticipate purchases really well. And I think this is something that was the same for the entire industry. Everyone felt that it was slower than expected.

Now when we look at 2025, in January and in February, the trend would be similar to those of the fourth quarter. I see no significant change. Obviously, there is a significant difference from last year, which was the Carnival holiday which happened in a different month this year. So March was a significant year.

We had the Carnival holiday early in the month, but when it comes to trends, we're seeing the same things we saw in Q4. I can't tell you there's any behavior at this point that would lead us to different conclusions.

As for subscriptions, well, what do we have in the company? These are plans which are more tied to the features involved than GMV per se. But the fact that the success of a client requires specific behaviors in the platform that will allow subscription to be connected to GMV is undeniable. So it's not direct classification.

So if you look at any platform, pricing is not 100% variable, but obviously, the more any customer sells, they're obviously paying higher subscription where there's obviously some gain of scale for them. So ultimately, they pay less, which is a very important characteristic for us to see growth in any type of subscription, but pricing is not fully connected, Federle.

I don't know if I was clear. Otherwise, I can turn over to Kubota, and we can talk about CapEx.

[Daniel Federle, analyst]

No, that was perfectly clear. Of course, please, Kubota.

[Andre Kubota, executive]

Well, there are a few points that I think are worth mentioning with regards to CapEx. When we compare quarter with quarter, there's obviously some change in seasonal aspects. They're not necessarily recurring. These are projects with a start and middle and end with different products and so on and so forth. So there is some variation.

But when we look in a consolidated way to the entire year, the figure is very similar to what we expected. So over the year, we see there's nothing out of the ordinary. But obviously, as mentioned before, we want to accelerate our growth again, and we see great potential for that.

So much of the investment is to start seeing that, and the level we saw in Q4, should be similar to our investment sum in 2025, always obviously paying attention to how the company is growing. So the focus on growing while also generating cash will always stay on our radar. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's sort of where our mindset.

[Daniel Federle, analyst]

Perfect. I just wanted to understand one more thing. Of course, growth project includes CapEx. My question is whether the capital involved will now turn it into OpEx because it may be creating a new department or new people. Wouldn't that be the case?

[Andre Kubota, executive]

Yes, of course. Some people go into OpEx and substance, but we have several different innovation projects for the company at large. And obviously, unless there's a project, those employees are no longer part of those either. So of course, there is some R&D CapEx involved, but we will not be supporting any one that do not have a sustainable project.

[Operator]

With no further questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. And we will now turn the conference back to CEO, Rafael Chamas, for his final remarks.

[Rafael Chamas Alves, executive]

Well, thanks, everyone, for joining us for this conference, and thank you for the analysts for their questions. This allowed us to make a few points clearer, and we wish you all the best.

[Operator]

LWSA's Q4 2024 earnings conference has now concluded. We'd like to thank everyone for joining and wish you all a great day.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]