So we’re prepared. We believe that the company will continue to grow consistently based on our efforts, and we expect that these results will continue over the next quarters.
Operator: The next question will be asked by Nicolas. Nicolas is an analyst from JPMorgan.
Nicolas Larrain: We have two here. First, about your assortment revision process that you mentioned that you’ve done for both. When do you expect to conclude it in the Proximity brands? I know that you have a guidance for new stores in the next 2 or 3 years, but I know that the market has also changed in the last quarters. So what opportunities do you see for 2024? My last question is about to Éxito. If you could tell us about the main milestones that you hope to achieve on the short term for this negotiation to take place.
Marcelo Pimentel: Thank you, Nicolas. I’m going to answer the first two, and then I’ll pass it over to Rafael who will give you an update on Éxito. Considering the assortment review, we concluded the first stage on Pão de Açúcar, and this allowed us to deliver several things very successfully. We also saw — we saw some inventory improvements, improvements in sales, margins. And we also had good alignment with our suppliers, which is very important for us right now because it shows the duration of our business, and our impact will go far beyond what clients see on the shelf. They impact our supply chain and logistics strategies because we give our business more predictability, and it also reduces stock-out, as I mentioned before.
Concluding Pão de Açúcar, we’ve started the project for the Proximity brands and also Mercado Extra. We have practically concluded 50% of the sales equivalent. That has been reviewed. We’re complementing it, and we’re working intentionally on that first. We like to tackle the most relevant categories first, and we’ll conclude the second part with this for less representative categories. We hope to conclude this by 2024, so that we can enjoy these results for the last part of 2024. Considering opening stores, we are still committed towards expanding. We believe that, especially for the Minuto Pão de Açúcar model. Here in the city of Sao Paulo, what we’ve seen when it comes to performance is that despite the challenges we have in the current scenario, these are the stores that are performing very well.
Their maturity has reached before we expected. And again, it’s earlier than what we expect. So we continue to be committed to that. As you saw in our results, this is a segment of Brazilian retail that is growing fast. The convenience for clients to walk to these stores throughout the week for their shopping and then shopping in the largest stores during the weekend makes these strategies complementary — these brands complementary. The work that we’ve done with Pão de Açúcar also benefits Minuto Pão de Açúcar. So obviously, we have a very rigorous process. We have an expansion committee assessing each location. We’re not going to open — we’re not going to be opening stores without a reason. We want to ensure that it will have quality.
We’re not just being driven by the numbers. We’re not trying to reach these numbers quickly, neglecting quality. Our focus here is to continue to seek the best locations for Minuto Pão de Açúcar while looking occasionally at some opportunities for Pão de Açúcar. This year, as I’ve mentioned, we’ve opened 2 Pão de Açúcar stores. And in the fourth quarter, we expect to open 1 more. So despite these advances in Proximity, we will have opened 3 Pão de Açúcar stores. So this is our commitment. We hope to continue finding the best opportunities and locations for our business and for our expansion. I’ll pass it over to Rafael, who will talk about the process.
