StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kaio Da Prato: Okay. Thank you very much Lia as well. And those are questions I made which elicit to your funding source, if you can please detail a little bit more like what are the breakdowns or funding sources from prepayment operations this quarter? And if you can explain what you are seeing in terms of funding cost evolution since the beginning of the year in those lines please? Thank you very much.

Rafael Pereira: Hi Kaio Rafael here. So, the majority of our funding sources for prepayment is the sale of receivables that we do to fund that operation. We also have some debt, right, on our balance sheet. When we look at the cost and the spreads, they have both in debt and in the sale of receivable. They have even slightly decreased quarter-over-quarter. So, I think that we are not seeing big changes there. Of course as we generate more cash and bring additional cash from our operations, we have more flexibility to deploy that in our business. But still today is the minority part of our fundings being that own cash, right, from own capital. So — and that’s even important because when you have different capital structures and different players with more equity for example deployed in that operation, of course, you could have less financial expenses, right? So, — but in our case, I think that this has been the case given the growth of the company, right?

Kaio Da Prato: Okay. Thank you very much. Had fun chat with you.

Rafael Pereira: Thank you, Kaio.

Operator: The next question comes from William Barranjard with Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

William Barranjard: Good night everybody. Thanks for the opportunity. So, I have a question related to the MSMB volume growth and how it reflects into your SG&A. So, it seems selling expenses are growing above TPV growth even the MSMB growth okay. So, I’d like to understand how do you expect this dynamic to unfold in 2023? And if — as volumes growth are already healthy, so should we assume you will prioritize in 2023 controlling this — the selling expenses? And if this is not the case why is this your choice?

Rafael Pereira: Hi William, Rafael here. So I think that one of the dynamics in the selling expenses is when we think about the quality of merchants that Lia said for only is not only important to bring a client not only with a better TPV given the cohort of the client — the tier of the client, but also a profitable client with a good contribution margin. So that’s why when we look at selling expenses and compared to revenue we have seen an improvement quarter-over-quarter. This year we will continue to invest in our distribution because we do see profitable unit economics. So the way we look at selling expenses is whenever we see the new clients, the new vintages coming with healthy unit economics above the hurdles of return we have we continue to invest, right?

As it is public information we are — we have a marketing campaign in Brazil in the first quarter right with Big Brother. This has marketing expenses in there of course. A big part of that is non-cash because we have is non-cash. This is a part of our agreement with Global back in 2021-2020. And we believe that this is something that brings returns to the company. So the selling expenses is really aligned that when we have the opportunity to increase with good returns we are happy, right? So I think that’s the dynamics that we see in that line.