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

Thiago Piau: Hi. Thiago, here. William just to complement the picturing summary. Selling expenses as a percentage of revenues are gaining leverage there’s still space to continue that trend although we continue to invest on our growth. And as Rafa, I think, that the agreement we made with Global give us the ability to create a powerful brand in Brazil both in Stone and Ton and the differentiation of those brands are an important part of our strategy with a non-cash investment because of the agreement we did with Grupo Globo before. So I think that this is a positive and a good differentiation in terms of how we are building our brands.

William Barranjard: Okay. That’s clear. Thanks for the answer.

Rafael Martins:

William:

Operator: The next question comes from Antonio with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, guys. Congrats on the results. So two questions on my side. The first one, if you could help us to better understand the figures from Abaco disclosed the guidance for well their perspectives of 14% to 18% of TPV growth for the year. When you look at this number how to think about it we have some players considering number of not very conservative what will the main drivers to reach this number here? And also a second one on funding costs. Do you intend to keep using cash as a way to reduce your funding costs in the coming quarters? That’s it for my side. Thank you.

Rafael Martins: Hi, Antonio. Rafael here. So regarding your first question that’s right Abaco mentioned 14% to 18% growth in the industry this year. They do have a lot of data, right? So more data than we have. And I think, I would say that we are internally looking at the lower end of that range and — but at the same time we are looking at as Thiago said to grow more than the industry. So we are not very worried with that if it will be 14% or 18%. Regarding the second part of your question in funding, I think, that as I mentioned before we think that the financial expenses compared to the revenue they should be pretty much where they are. We all — we are always very conservative in the level of cash that we keep in our balance sheet.

We have a lot of flexibility, strong liquidity to be able to address opportunities for growth quickly. And I think that this will continue to be the case, right? So I think that we are pretty much stabilized now in terms of funding. We’ll always look to improve efficiency in funding, negotiation with our counterparties but I think we are at a more stable level right now.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thank you guys.

Rafael Martins: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Neha Agarwala with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Neha Agarwala: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted a clarification on the TPV growth. I understand the OpEx guidance. But I think you mentioned that the MSMB segment for you would grow north of 18%. Is that number right, or could the growth be stronger? My second question is on PIX. So I understand that you do not include the PIX volume in your TPV. But would it make sense to include that we’d be acquiring PIX TPV to the total volume base, because you can charge for the PIX TPV volume. And could you tell us what is the pricing for these PIX volumes — TPV volumes? Thanks so much.