XP Inc (XP) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to XP Inc.'s First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. I'm André Martins, Head of Investor Relations. And with me are our CEO, Thiago Maffra and our CFO, Bruno Constantino, who will be available for the Q&A section. I kindly ask you to refer to the legal disclaimer section on the beginning of our presentation about forward-looking statements. Additional information on forward-looking statements can be found on the SEC Filings section of our website. It's important to remind that this call has a translation option to Portuguese. And the participants who want to ask questions may raise their hands on the Zoom tool. Now I'll pass over to Thiago Maffra, who will deliver the opening remarks.

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. I want to begin today's call with a few comments about the first quarter, our outlook for 2023 and our longer-term positioning. Then I will turn it over to our CFO Bruno, who will present Q1 results in more detail.

So let's start with our quarterly performance. As you all know, the macro economy outlook remains challenging. In Brazil, we continue to face a high interest rate environment similar to other economies around the world. In addition, a large Brazilian corporate filed for bankruptcy in the quarter, causing important loss for its investors, creditors and bondholders. As a result, capital markets and corporate credit remain under pressure, which has impacted the financial adviser exchange since many investors are keeping their savings in liquid, low-risk products, while they wait for the scenario to improve.

While these headwinds is still impacting our core business in the first quarter, we keep advancing in our long-term journey and getting closer to the BRL 1 trillion client assets milestone, having ended Q1 with BRL 954 billion. Additionally, our ecosystem continued to grow with the net addition of 89,000 clients and 688 financial advertisers.

On the financials, excluding the onetime loss, our gross revenue expanded 7% year-over-year, while EBT and net income grew 14% and 8% year-over-year. While these adjusted numbers look better, these are still not the growth rates that we are used to and which we believe we will see again when the macro environment improves. However, when we look at our first quarter performance, I see positive signs of strength and resilience in our business model as well as efficiencies from our cost structure improvements. For example, in Q1, our new verticals revenues, which are less cyclical, were strong.

Revenue from retirement plans, cards, credit and insurance together grew 64% year-over-year, reaching BRL 405 million. Because of our focus on execution, our EBT margin increased nearly 300 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 26%. This was in line with the near-term expectations included in our guidance range of 26 to 32 through 2025. So I was pleased with our execution on the bottom line. XP remained the top-of-mind brand investment and was ranked as the 12th most valuable overall brand in Brazil in the annual Interbrand survey.

We also remain committed to returning excess cash to our shareholders. Over 2022, we have returned roughly BRL 1.8 billion through share buybacks, which was about 50% of our net income. I believe we will have a similar payout ratio in 2023 and reinforce that we have repurchased BRL 916 million worth of shares year-to-date. As a result, we should be able to maintain a conservative balance sheet with a strong liquid position and carry excess capital of around BRL 5 billion, positioning XP to navigate through any cycle.

As I look ahead to the rest of 2023, our guidance outlook remains unchanging. Despite the macro environment, XP remains a leading investing platform in Brazil, and we are getting stronger relative to competitors. We are working closely with our advisory channels to improve core revenues and net inflow opportunities, gaining share of wallet in more investment products and reinforcing our high-quality value proposition to clients.

As I look beyond 2023, I see our competitive position getting stronger. First, we will continue to leverage the advantage of our platform and ecosystem to expand our leadership investments. This is our core folks and where we excel the most. We have gained almost 400 basis points of market share since the beginning of 2020, including 80 basis points in 2022 despite a very challenging market environment. We currently have 11% market shares of individual investments and 8% if we include companies. With our top-of-mind brand best-in-class product platform and technology advantage, I believe, 20% to 25% is achievable. On the product side, we have the most complete and advanced platform in the market, and we continue to build upon this competitive advantage. I could go through many examples, but just a few to remind us. We are not only the leaders in the traditional products with 42% market share in the distribution of bonds and 50% on equity strategy but keep constantly innovating being the first player to offer private at funds for retail investors and having also quickly built an offshore platform where clients can easily invest in the U.S.

On the distribution side, we have the largest and most well prepared financial adviser network in Brazil. We were elected the best adviser platform in Brazil for 2022 according to Folha newspaper, and this is the 5th consecutive year in a row that we have been voted number one. I think our place as the leading player in the market is well established and this helps us attract the very best partners and clients.

Another relevant pillar of our strategy is to cross-sell additional products into our current base. We have a massive potential opportunity here to unlock value, and it's already starting to work. As I already mentioned, our new verticals are advancing at a fast pace. While this is in the early stage of our plan, we can already see that cross-selling new products such as our cards, digital accounts and insurance have helped us gain more share of wallet from our clients in investments and also improve our NPS. We will continue to focus on serving an increasing portion of our clients' financial lives and meet all of their financial needs.

And finally, our third pillar is to continue to differentiate ourselves in the market with premium quality and service levels in everything we do. We are the main platform in the market, and we want to make sure that we are always providing our clients with superior experience when they engage with XP.

I believe this is the glue that we used to bring everything together to deliver the best value proposition in the market. This doesn't just mean delivering a good app or web experience. It means that we are always focusing on improving every aspect of our service levels.

As an example, we are continuously improving the training we provide our advisers and innovating the tools we give them so they can perform and serve clients better. Our unique customer service level ensures that our advisers and clients always get fast and efficient support that makes them feel great about XP.

As most of you know, XP is already ahead of the traditional banks in terms of the investment experience we offer. This is well known in the market, and we can see it in our NPS, including a recent third-party study that reinforced XP's Edge. We remain focused on maintaining this competitive advantage and distancing ourselves from the banks.

So as I look at the near term and the long term, I saw progress in Q1 on our execution performance and cost management, which has enabled us to improve our profitability despite the difficult macro environment. We remain on plan for 2023. I see us getting better and stronger as a company, enabling us to fortify our position and continue returning cash to our shareholders. and our long-term strategy is working. We are making progress in all of our areas of focus, and I think we are going to come out of the cycle even better positioned to keep winning market share.

So now I will hand it over to Bruno, who will discuss the numbers of the quarter, and we will be available for Q&A. Thank you. Bruno, over to you.

Thank you, Maffra, and good evening, everyone.

I will walk through our financials in more detail and provide some additional commentary and perspectives on our revenue, expenses and earnings. But before I continue, I want to remind everyone that we are showing some adjusted metrics this quarter, which exclude the onetime impact of a nonrecurring loss related to the bonds of a large corporate issuer that filed for bankruptcy in January.

We held some of these bonds in our inventory for our clients to be able to trade and some of these bonds in our own investment portfolio. The value of these bonds dropped significantly when the corporate issuer filed for bankruptcy.

As a result, we incurred a onetime loss of BRL 164 million impacting our total gross revenue with BRL 95 million allocated in retail fixed income and BRL 69 million in other revenue. This event also had a negative impact to overall capital market activity in Brazil. This is not excluded in our numbers, obviously, but important to note that the event hurt overall DCM volumes and revenues in retail fixed income and insurer services.

Now let's move to Slide 12. As you can see, we have created a column highlighting the onetime loss I just mentioned.

So our gross revenue. Our total gross revenue in the quarter was BRL 3.3 billion, flat quarter-over-quarter and plus 2% year-over-year. If we exclude the onetime loss, our total gross revenue was closer to BRL 3.5 billion, 5% growth quarter-over-quarter and 7% year-over-year.

As Maffra mentioned, our total revenue growth is not where we would like it to be. But considering the weak macro and capital markets environment, we believe our top line numbers show the resilience of our business model. and the benefits of the diversification that we have been building over the last few years.

In terms of revenue mix, there was no major change at the beginning of this year compared to last quarter. Retail revenue represented 76% of total revenue, the same as fourth quarter '22. Institutional revenue, 10%, corporate and issuer service, 8% and our other revenue line was 6% of total revenue.

Now let's double-click on our retail revenue for a little more detail on Slide 13. Our core retail investments, meaning equities, fixed income and funds platform, total revenue grew 6% quarter-over-quarter and 1% year-over-year despite the weaker trading environment and capital markets activities.

In equities, revenues grew 7% quarter-over-quarter and declined 3% year-over-year as overall trading in the market decreased more than 10% versus the fourth quarter. One bright spot to mention in equities was our financial structure products, which linked derivatives with stocks. Sales of these products are driven by human interaction, which suffered in the fourth quarter due to the elections and the World Cup, but began to rebound in first quarter this year.

In fixed income, adjusted revenue grew 9% quarter-over-quarter and was flat year-over-year. As I mentioned earlier, we believe this revenue line was also impacted by an overall decline in capital markets activity in Q1. and would have been stronger in a more normalized environment. In our funds platform, revenues grew 1% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year. But comparing apples-to-apples, excluding performance fees, our quarter-over-quarter growth was 12%.

Moving down to our new verticals. Our revenues continue to grow at a strong pace with an overall increase of 60% year-over-year. As Maffra noted, our performance here remains strong, and I believe we remain on track to deliver annual growth of 50% to 60% in 2023, as stated in our last earnings call.

When we look at this on a quarter-over-quarter basis, I would note that the comparison is a little more difficult because of seasonal and onetime benefits in the fourth quarter of 2022. For example, in addition to Black Friday and the holidays, we had a change in the revenue recognition method of our cards business, which created a onetime benefit of BRL 53 million in the fourth quarter revenue. Despite this, our cards business remained strong with a BRL 400 million increase in TPV quarter-over-quarter to reach BRL 8.6 billion in first quarter '23.

And finally, our other retail revenues grew 10% quarter-over-quarter and 70% year-over-year. These revenues were driven by several positive trends such as the float in our broker-dealer business, which benefits from high interest rates and good growth in our international investment platform and FX.

Moving to Slide 14. On Slide 14, we show our retail revenues in 2020, 2021 and for the last 12 months as of first quarter 2023. I think this helps illustrate the negative impact of the macro environment in our revenues, but also the benefit we are getting from our diversification into new verticals. As you can see, our core retail investments revenue grew significantly in 2021, with an increase of nearly BRL 3 billion, but have decreased nearly BRL 1 billion since then due to the macro environment, not our competitive positioning.

Despite this, our total retail revenue has increased 64% over the same time period, given our more diversified revenue stream and XP's ability to scale new products really fast in its ecosystem. As you can see, revenue from our new verticals increased over 2x in 15 months, up BRL 750 million since 2021. This has helped our business to become more resilient and helped absorb some of the negative macro impact from the more cyclical parts of our business.

And when the macro cycle turns, which will at some point in time, this diversification could provide an incremental tailwinds for us.

Now let's shift to the expense side of our P&L where we had some strong performance in first quarter.

On Slide 15, you can begin to see some of the benefits of our cost structure adjustments is starting to capitalize. In first quarter '23, SG&A, excluding incentives decreased 24% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year to just over BRL 1 billion. Our headcount management plan resulted in a net reduction of 782 employees in the quarter to 6,143.

This impacted share-based compensation to reach BRL 53 million in this quarter, but we expect to return to normalized levels in the following quarters, similar to what we had in fourth quarter '22 share-based compensation expenses. Our efficiency ratios improved this quarter, breaking the pattern of past years in bringing the company structure where we want it to be.

For example, on the left side of the page, under the bar chart, you can see that our last 12-month efficiency ratio, which is SG&A, excluding incentives divided by net revenues decreased 161 basis points quarter-over-quarter to reach 40.4%, our lowest level since first quarter '22.

On the right side of the slide, you can see that our last 12-month comp ratio, which is people, SG&A, salaries, bonuses and share-based compensation expenses divided by net revenues, decreased 107 basis points quarter-over-quarter to reach 28.5%, our lowest level since fourth quarter '21. We expect to keep improving our efficiency ratios going forward. I believe we remain on plan to meet our annual 2023 guidance for SG&A, excluding incentives of BRL 5 billion to BRL 5.5 billion, and we will remain very focused here.

Now moving to Slide 16, EBT and net income. As a result of our strong cost management, our earnings before tax and net income margins were positively impact, as you can see in this slide. During the quarter, we generated BRL 870 million of EBT with a 26% margin or BRL 977 million, excluding the onetime loss with a 29.6% EBT margin.

I think the quality of EBT in the first quarter '23 compared to the fourth quarter '22 has also improved significantly and is sustainable. Recall that in the fourth quarter of 2022, seasonal incentives benefited our SG&A by BRL 242 million. Excluding this, our fourth quarter EBT would have been closer to BRL 500 million.

In the first quarter, we had only BRL 3 million of this benefit. I believe the operating leverage that we are realizing in the business is an important achievement and gives us a stronger position to face any macro headwinds going forward. As a result, we remain on plan to meet our EBT margin guidance range of 26% in the near term to 32% by 2025.

And finally, on the right side of the page, you can see that our net income in first quarter '23 was BRL 796 million or BRL 927 million, excluding the onetime nonrecurring loss of BRL 131 million net of taxes. As Maffra already mentioned, our annual guidance for net income between BRL 3.8 billion and BRL 4.4 billion stands.

And now, we will move to the Q&A session in which both Maffra and I will be available to answer your questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bruno.

So now we will move to the Q&A session. We have a lot of -- I ask you to be patient. We have a lot of hands raised, and we will as usual, do want to serve -- first-served basis. The first question is from Tito Labarta from Goldman Sachs.

Congratulations on the good results. A couple of questions. if I can. I guess, just first on the inflows, which we had already known before they came out today. But just help us think about sort of the rest of the year? Do you think those inflows can recover? And just along those lines, right, because your revenues were fairly stable, considering all the impact, the relatively weak inflows. Just to think about what can drive revenues up from here? And how dependent would that be on inflows increasing?

And then just a second question on the guidance. I know you kept the guidance and you also had some of the impacts here could potentially be on track, at least for that bottom end of the guidance. Do you think -- is it fair to think that this is like a seasonally weak quarter? And can earnings improve from here? I mean, you definitely delivered on the expenses. It goes back a little bit in revenues growth. To sum it all up kind of revenue growth outlook given the inflows that you have right now and if there's upside from here.

I will take the first part, and Bruno can take the second one. About the inflows being very honest and direct with you, it's hard to imagine that in an environment like we have today that our investors, they are afraid. They have high level of uncertainty. And with this high interest rates at 13.75, they prefer to keep their money in very liquid and very low-risk investments. So it's hard to imagine that we will have like the same levels of net inflows that we had in the past if the -- especially the level of uncertainty, okay, not much the interest rates, of course, it helps if it goes down.

But when you get the 2 things together, that's the difficult part, okay? And to give you some numbers, okay? When we look -- of course, we track all the inflows and outflows throughout the financial institutions. And all of them went down I would say, the same level, okay? So we don't see any player getting more efficiency against us than other, okay? So that, in our opinion, reflects that it's more important the liquid products like LCAs, CGs with tax-free at 13.75 than anything else.

And the second point is if you look the inflows, not the net new money, we are close to the all-time highs. What happened? We see higher outflows. And when we look the outflows, they are more concentrated on companies, okay? So it's not on the individuals, it's more companies that because they need the cash, okay? They have lower credits at the banks right now. They have a tough environment. So we see a lot of outflows of companies right now. So in our opinion, it's something that's cyclical. That's part of the investment business, okay? We have cycles, and we are in a bad cycle for investments. But at the other hand, we have all the new verticals, all the new business lines that are growing and more than compensating the decreasing investments.

Yes. And to answer your other part of the question, Tito, about the revenue part of net inflows being lower. It's less relevant today than it was in the bull market for sure. And also, what Maffra mentioned about net inflow, it's a component of 2 numbers, gross inflow and outflow. So if the net inflow is lower because the outflow is higher, for example, in the wholesale, especially for corporate companies. As Maffra mentioned, it doesn't mean that the revenue is going to be severely impacted by that number.

On the contrary, if we keep the level of inflows and outflows being higher, we can -- depending on the case, even making more revenue in the short term, okay?

Your second part of the question about the guidance and if there is a seasonality, I believe, yes. I believe that first quarter was really weak in terms of capital market activity especially after what happened in January. The corporate credit market was dysfunctional in the first quarter. We see it resuming right now, but it's still -- it's a very weak so far this year. When we look at a longer-term period for DCM, for example, the last 5 years, on average, there was a seasonality that favors the second semester compared to the first semester, around 40% of the revenue in the first semester compared to 60% in the second semester.

We do not know if it's going to be the case this year, but the beginning of the year was really weak regarding capital market.

Great. That's very helpful. And maybe if I can just 1 follow-up, Maffra, about the gross inflows. Any color you can give on how, I guess, the other flows with individuals have evolved over the last year? I mean have those decelerated as well? Any acceleration there? Just help us as you put that out there, just if you can put that into context just also given the market.

Pass it over to Bruno.

Tito, just to give you a few numbers. We do not disclose the gross inflow, but just for you to have the big picture. When we look at the first quarter this year and compared to the average quarters of last year, inflow was down around 5%, okay? That's the number. So considering the macro environment is not much in our view. But when we look at outflows, it was up 20%. So that's what has been hurting the most, the net inflow. When we break down between our -- I would call our core engine of retail investors and segregate the wholesale part, mostly companies. The core engine of our business, all the outflow related to the total client assets, it's been stable. It has not increased. So we don't see a problem there.

Of course, the level is not where we would like to be. But as Maffra mentioned, considering that investors are not investing, they are keeping their savings in daily liquid low-risk products. We understand it's a headwind for the investment business. But even with this environment, the core engine in terms of a percentage of outflow compared to total client assets, is not increasing.

Okay. No, that's very helpful, Bruno. And I do see the retail AUC went up and corporate AUC going down. So no, it's good context.

Next question is from Mario Pierry from Bank of America.

Let me ask 2 questions as well. First one on your cost reductions, if you're expecting to make any more changes to your employee base. Also, if you could be a little bit more specific in which areas were these reductions concentrated in. And you mentioned that you expect the stock-based compensation to go up in the second quarter back to the fourth quarter levels, also just trying to understand why. So that's on expenses.

And then my second question is related to your NPS score. And again, it still is a high NPS, but I think it's down to 70 and used to be a peak of 77. Can you be -- can you give us some color on why NPS is going down? What are you doing to improve that?

It's Thiago here. So about your first question about employees and areas. What happened is since I became the CEO of the company, we have been implementing what we call a digital transformation of the company. So last year, I would say we finished the reorganization of the business units of all -- the whole structure of the multidisciplinary teams in the company. And of course, you know that. But when you do a transformation, when you reorganize the company, you have some efficiency gains. You have some -- because imagine that you have 10 pieces of LEGO and when you put all together, you only need 8, okay? So part of the reduction is because of this transformation which is on the company in the past 2, 3 years, okay? And part is because we committed some excess during the pandemic, okay? We over-hired. We hired people not necessarily with our culture. So part i's because of efficiency and part is because of the excess, okay? So all the reductions they are done, okay?

So as Bruno mentioned, when you have a company with owners, with partners, we are very fast to correct the mistakes we did. So we already did the corrections. You guys can see in the numbers. And we don't have any specific areas.

Of course, we have intelligence like to say where to cut more, where to cut less, but we did cut all over the company. But of course, we preserve the business lines that are in early stage. Of course, we preserve like the risk areas of the company, credit and so on, compliance and so on, but the reductions they are done.

On your first question, I believe you asked about the SG&A. And as Bruno mentioned, the guidance still holds. Of course, right now, we are, I would say, more to the bottom of the guidance, okay but the reductions they are done.

Your second question about the NPS, what happened? As we mentioned on the presentation, we have our own NPS. That's the number that you see on the presentation, the 70 that you mentioned, but we have third-party consultant companies that do like an independent NPS survey. And when you look what happened with the NPS for affluent clients in investments for the 5 big banks, they -- all of them, they went up in the last 8 months, 35 points, okay? And when you go why?

When they ask the customers in the survey. Why? It's because of the level of the returns, 13.75 with no risk, okay? So -- that's the point we are right now. Of course, we sell -- we don't consider buying CG's investing because you are not buying a portfolio, you are not diversifying. And of course, when you have a more well-balanced portfolio in this scenario. It's hard to believe that you are beating the SELIC rate right now. So we believe that's an important factor right now that it's benefiting the 5 big banks, okay? And we are suffering a little bit on that scenario. But of course, the investment, the cycle at some point will change. And we believe we can go to more normalized levels, okay, of NPS of net inflows and so on.

And I can take the question about the share base compensation. We -- yes, we had cancellations of restricted stock units and performance stock units in this quarter and that resulted in a lower level then we expect to see in the next quarters to come. That's why I mentioned that we should come back without this impact that is only 1 time. We should come back to a normal level as of the fourth quarter, something between BRL 160 million to BRL 170 million and not the BRL 53 million that we saw in the first quarter.

And also, just to comment that we also had recently the new partners that we more than welcome in our partnership and the matching that is going to happen in the second quarter. So all of that together, we should have an increase in that expense line going forward.

Okay. No, that's clear. Let me just follow up then just to be clear, there were no one-off charges related to this headcount reduction. There were no severance charges taken this quarter?

It's in there. Everything is in there. I don't know if you heard me, sorry.

So everything is there. Can you quantify how much were the severance charges?

We are -- look, I would speak to the guide, annual guidance that we have. It's BRL 5 billion to BRL 5.5 billion SG&A ex incentives. That's the annual guidance. And as Maffra mentioned, considering what happened in the first quarter, we are leaning towards the low end of the guidance.

Next question, Geoffrey Elliott from Autonomous Research.

On capital, first of all, the buyback program has been completed. You talk about that 50% payout ratio in the slides, why not announce another buyback now? And what are you thinking in terms of options for deploying capital?

And then second, related to that Modal, it's been a while we heard much there, but we did see that F4 calculate a cancellation. Why was that issued? And when should we expect Modal to close?

So I will start with the second one. It's fast. We expect to close soon. Now the only pending part is Central Bank approval. As you mentioned, we have withdraw the F4 because we went in a different route to conclude the transaction. Everything happened as planned. So the general meeting of Modal was approved. So everything is on track and now it's only Central Bank approval. Hopefully, we're going to get it still in the first semester, but we cannot guarantee.

In terms of the capital allocation, share buyback, yes, we have completed the program of the BRL 2 billion. If you look at all the blocks that we have bought, including Itaú and Itaú's block last year in less than 12 months, we have bought back around BRL 2.7 billion, BRL 1.8 billion in 2022, BRL 916 million already this year.

As Maffra mentioned, we are going to probably keep a similar payout ratio, which is around 50%. We don't know what the net income for 2023 will be. We are still in the first semester. We have our guidance, BRL 3.8 billion to BRL 4.4 billion of net income and we are going to complete in the second semester, either through dividends or share buyback. We haven't decided yet.

Next in line, Olavo Arthuzo from UBS.

Actually, I have 2 questions basically related to the credit card business because the overall trend of credit cards continue to expand well, and I believe this is evolving according to the expectations of the company.

So my first question on this regard is that we noted the increased penetration of cards on active clients that stood at more than 20% this quarter. So my question is how much more could this figure increase? Like is there a target that you guys can share with us for this penetration like 40%, maybe 50% or even above that?

And my other question on credit cards is basically related to the monthly average spending because, as you can see here, it dropped to BRL 4,200 this quarter, which is below the average of the last year or even well below when compared to the first quarter of 2021. So could you just like clarify if this is solely related to stricter credit policies with lower limits or something like that? That were my 2 questions.

About the first question about penetration in credit cards. Remember that we started only at XP, okay, with clients above BRL 50,000, okay? So that was the segment that we started and there we stuck for like almost a year. Then we went to XP clients below BRL 50,000, okay? And I would say, in December, someone recall me here, but December or November last year, we started like to escalate the card Rico brand, okay? So when we look at the penetration that we can achieve, if you look at the 5 big banks, and if you look like the affluent brands for just banks, they have 90% penetration, okay? So out of 10 clients at one of these affluent brands in any of these banks, 9 out of 10 have credit cards. So that's our target.

Of course, it's going to take a while, but we believe we can increase the penetration a lot. So we don't have any specific target. Of course, 90%, it's very high. But we are improving, we are delivering, we have a lot of like new features, new benefits in the cards for the next months or quarters. So we are working on penetration and more than the penetration, we are -- we have been working a lot on high level of services to increase the share of wallet we have.

Of course, when you have the primary card of someone, you have 80% of the TPV. So that's our main focus right now. And again, we are going to deliver new features, new products, new benefits so we can increase the penetration. And about the spending that you mentioned as we start to move down the pyramid of our segmentation, for example, with clients below BRL 50,000 at XP and Rico clients, of course, we have lower spending per client at these segments because if you get the top clients, they have like a BRL 10,000 spending. If you go to the bottom, we have I would say, BRL 2,000, BRL 2,500 spending per customer. So that's why you're seeing the spending going down because we are increasing the number of clients at the low of our segmentation, okay?

And Maffra, can I just add one comment that I think it's pertinent to the question. You have to think about our strategy here, and our strategy is pretty clear. and it's a long-term journey, okay? So on a quarterly basis, it's hard to analyze. But if you extend the view to the long-term cards, we started with cards. We didn't have a digital bank account, which is essential for cards, but we didn't have it because we are moving brick-by-brick looking after our profitability as we go down this road and this long-term journey.

Now we have the digital bank accounts. So those things -- and of course, we need to evolve all of those new products and service, and we are going to do it listening to our clients. But our strategy is totally connected with the evolution of penetration and cross-selling in our ecosystem.

And the slide that I talked about in my part of the presentation, it makes clear how fast XP and our ecosystem can scale anything we put to say the BRL 750 million that we added on revenues in only 15 months of new verticals, not related to investment directly where we come from, it's something that tells about the potential of cross-sell and scaling those new business.

But it takes time. I wouldn't just focus on a quarter would extend the view and that's what we are going after is to be able to convince our clients to do everything in their financial life with XP. If we are able to do that, they are going to be also able to cut completely the link with the banks. It takes time, but we are going after it.

Okay. But just a quick follow-up on this. Can you just share with us how much of that BRL 4,200 monthly average spending like represents of the average credit limits that you guys give to your clients? Just first want to understand the potential here.

Now it's hard to make that math. For many of our clients, we have a dynamic limit, for example, so -- because it's related to the investments, okay?

We would have to segregate the portion that is a clean credit. And we do not give that type of disclosure. So I'm sorry, I cannot help you to make that math. I know where you're going, trying to see the potential. But yes, we expect all those new verticals, as I mentioned. When you add them together, this year, we expect the revenue to grow between 50% to 60%.

Yes. But just to complement Bruno here. You can assume that, of course, we have some opportunities, some room like to better manage the credit limits of the bottom segmentation of our customers. But I would say that the increase of TPV, the growth for the business, the biggest opportunity is not that, okay, because different from other players the limit constraint, it's not a big issue for our customers, okay? Of course, we have an opportunity. We can better manage it for some clients, but it's not a huge opportunity, okay?

Next question we have from HSBC, Neha Agarwala.

Congratulations on the results. Two quick questions. First, on the IFA business, could you shed some light about what is the sentiment with the IFAs right now, inflows or net inflows are a bit weak. There's more investment in fixed income securities, so plain vanilla. So are you seeing some mortality in terms of the number of new IFAs opening up. Your gross average is strong, but any color would be very helpful if there has been a change in the economics for the IFA network and also any change in the competitive dynamics regarding IFAs.

My second question is regarding your AUC market share. You mentioned that if I'm not -- if I didn't hear you incorrectly, you mentioned that about 20% to 25% market share could be achievable in the longer term. Is there a time horizon that you have in mind? And what are the main drivers for you almost doubling your market share?

This is Bruno. I'll take the first one, and Maffra can take the second one. So regarding the IFA. First thing to have in mind, the IFA business model is a very asset-light business model with not too big investment portfolio of clients you can break even when you compare to the bank manager salary, for example. And one of the reasons is not only because it is asset-light, but because it has tax benefits compared to the bank manager as well.

Of course, this tough environment for the investment business makes it harder to grow at an accelerated pace. So everybody is getting this headwind in terms of investments. But it doesn't mean people are below the water. That's not the case. For those biggest IFA offices that have during the especially during the boom market, have invested a lot, have maybe higher IFAs paying a lump sum.

There was too much considering the environment we are now they need to adjust exactly like XP and they have done, and we are together with them, helping them. But those biggest IFA offices are also the most capitalized one. So we do not see any problem in terms of financial health in our IFA network.

And to your point about attracting IFAs, I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves. In the first quarter, we added more -- on a net basis, more than 600 new IFAs. XP still is the main destination of new IFAs this market keeps growing even in a tough macro environment. And I believe, especially with the new regulation of CVM that it's really good for the IFA business. This will continue going forward. And XP is going to be there for all the new IFAs that want to join our platform.

I can take the second question. Okay. The way I like to see when we say that we have 11% market share, we are only talking about individuals, okay? If you look and if you include companies, we have only 8% market share, okay? But -- and when you break down going back to individuals, when you break down the segmentation, we have, I would say, 2% at the bottom, clients with 0 to 300,000 AUC. We have, let's say, about 20% on the middle, okay, 300 to -- 300,000 to 10 million, and we have 5% at the top of the pyramid, okay? So 2% at the bottom, 20% in the middle, 5% at the top. So we have been investing a lot, like, to go down, basically, is technology.

So a few years ago, it was very hard for us to go below 300,000. Today, we have internal advisers or IFAs focus on customers above 25,000. Why that's possible because we have much more technology. We have CRM, we have all the information, ways of having higher account loads and -- to serve these clients, okay?

In the middle, it's more of the same, how we keep increasing. And at the top, okay, it's how we create even better services for high net worth and ultra-high net worth customers, okay? So we have been investing a lot on the extremes, and we have been investing in the middle to continue to grow.

One way you mentioned, okay, how many years in what time horizon we could reach 20% or 25%. If you go back since 2020, we increased 400 basis points, our market share, okay? So in good years, we increased 160 bps. And last year, that was a very tough environment for investments. We increased 80 bps. So that's the plan. How we keep increasing 150, 200 bps per year. Of course, in tough years, we will grow less. In better years, we grew more. So that's how we see.

And how we do that, we like to say that we are the only house in Brazil that are 100% focused on investments, okay? So we don't sell products; we sell service. We sell allocation. We have a higher level of sales when you compare to the incumbents to the other players and that's how we differentiate ourselves. Of course, in a very tough environment like now that people are worried about the political environment, about the macro environment and you have 13.75% interest rate, people get very comfortable with low risk, very liquid products. So it's harder to convince them like to really invest to buy portfolios, to leave the banks and come here. but we know this macro environment is temporary. It's going to change at some point. And we believe we can go back to a faster pace of growth, okay?

Understood. If I can just follow up quickly on the market share question. So you mentioned that you are investing a lot in technology to be able to expand your share in the bottom of the pyramid. What strategy do you have for the top of the pyramid? You only have 5% share at the top of the pyramid. Where do you see you can go in the top of the pyramid.

Yes. When you go to the top of the pyramid is much more personalized it serves, okay? Because each client is different when you're talking about high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. So one point that was very important for us to be competitive was the I'm just trying to remember the word (foreign language), secured service, okay?

So we have been investing a lot because we have to do the custody of the funds. We have to do the administration of the funds. And so it's something that we have been building for the past 2 years, but it takes time, okay? I would say that we are close to having the same level of service of other house at the top. So we believe we can start to gain a lot of market share.

Perfect. If I can just -- one last thing on the IFAs. What is your current market share in terms of number of RFPs and in terms of the AUC, which is coming from the IFAs.

Yes. We have 70% market share in the IFA business. The AUC, we do not disclose. We just keep saying it's less than half of total, but we do not give a number. And to your question, when we think about channels, distribution channels, of course, IFA is an important one and one that we expect to keep growing. And as I mentioned, XP is going to be there with all the tools that we have to help them succeed. But we also have many more channels. We are agnostic about channels. We want to be an entrepreneurship hub where any entrepreneur in the investment business can connect in our platform. So for example, wealth service business that, if I'm not mistaken, we announced this new channel in the pandemic back in 2020. It's growing a lot, consultants and other channels in our ecosystem. So it's not only IFA. IFA Is important. We are going to keep growing but we have many more channels.

Next question, Marcelo Telles from Crédit Suisse.

I have 2 questions. Regarding the net inflow, which you already alluded to, BRL 16 billion in the quarter, the yield curve is implying a decline in interest rates. How do you think that impact your business, especially the willingness of your client to maybe start taking more risk again? I mean do you need to see just like inverted curve already would be enough to see perhaps a rebound on net inflows? Or we need to see perhaps interest rates going to single-digit levels to really start bring people back? So if you can comment on that, considering we are in a potentially monetary easy cycle. So that's my first question.

And the second question is with regards to your revenue performance in the quarter was quite resilient despite the very difficult macro environment. Looking at your accounting disclosure, we see, I think, the revenue from services, they were down quite meaningfully about 14% quarter-over-quarter. And we saw the net income from financial instruments, I think going from BRL 14 million to BRL 500 million. So I just want to know, is there any known recurrence or some extra revenues, maybe structured operations that might have helped to in the quarter? Or you think this is just more back to normality given that the fourth quarter was already, let's say, a very, very weak quarter from that standpoint. Just to understand how sustainable this level of revenues in the first quarter can be in the quarters to come.

So your -- I will start from the second question and then...

I'll take the first one.

Yes, I'll go back to the first one. So about the net income from financial instrument that you mentioned, quarter-over-quarter, it was a growth around 10%, if I'm not mistaken. So no, there -- I mean it's -- if you look on a longer-term view, net income from financial instruments have been growing in relevance in the accounting income statement compared to the net revenue from services rendered. And that has to do with 2 main things. Number one is the floating revenue that is a financial instrument. So it's embedded in that number. And number two, the brokerage commission part of the accounting income statement has been suffering because of the equity market. If you look at that number, for example, last year, brokerage commissions, we had a higher number of BRL 560 million, for example, in the first quarter of '22, that went down to BRL 494 million in the first quarter of this year. So this number has been decreasing because of the macro environment and net income, a lot of components in there, but I would highlight the floating part of it.

Well, about your first question, Telles, is, of course, if we have lower interest rate level, of course, is good for our business, okay? We have been through other cycles in the past, once we start to see the interest rates going down and the shape of the curve being upward slope, it's the best for the business, okay, because we see longer durations. We see more investments in equities, we see people moving back from fixed income funds that have much lower ROA to multi-market funds to VF funds, hedge funds, so we expect -- once we start to see interest rates going down, we expect people reallocating from low ROA fixed income products to more high-yield products, okay? So of course, we benefit from that.

Another aspect of that, once we start to see interest rates going down, it means that probably the level of confidence of our investors of the Brazilian investors, they are higher. So people are more willingness to move from the banks like to XP to invest in a more diversified portfolio. So it's, I would say, a win-win scenario. It's good for the business. And the third point is about capital markets, as we already mentioned many times here today, the capital markets for revenues for XP in the Q4, they were really low. In Q1, they are even lower, okay? So it was the lowest level for the past many quarters, okay? And of course, we -- you guys, of course, have the public information that you can see, we start to see capital markets going back again after the largest [Americans] event, light event. So we start to see things going back to normal. But so far from the peaks that we saw in the past, okay? But again, once we start to see interest rates going down, we expect net new money to go up. We expect revenues from higher yield products going up. We start to see capital markets getting better. So it's good for the business.

And just a follow-up on your last point. So if rate you think like -- even with rates, let's say, they stabilize at, let's say, low double-digit levels, let's say, 10% or so, you think that we could still see a positive impact on your business? They don't need to go to single digit levels right?

It's the level -- that's more than level. If it's 10 or 9 or 11, the problem is when you have a high level of uncertainty, okay? You see all the price around the globe going down, inflation very high the price of everything bonds going down and so on. The investors, they get afraid, okay? They buy low-risk products. And in Brazil, you know very well. We have tax-free products with daily liquidity with 13.75%, so it's hard to convince someone to move from that to any other product, okay?

If the macro environment, the level of confidence gets better, for me, it doesn't matter if it's 9% or 10%, okay? It's not that the point that will change how much money we will make or so on, but there is a mix of very high interest rates with high uncertainty. That's the biggest problem right now, okay? But again, for us, it's not when we had 2%, it's also not the best scenario for the business, something like high single digits. I would say that's the best scenario for the business, okay.

And just to add here, probably, we have many portfolio managers here in the call, investors that have funds. And it works pretty much the same. Right now, I bet a lot of portfolio managers look at many opportunities in the stock market, but still they are getting outflows and not inflows, risk aversion. So it's not only the level of interest rates, as Maffra mentioned, it's about risk aversion. Whenever people -- and that can change quickly. We don't know when or how, but it does happen because it's a cycle. And when that happens, then people will jump in. And we are going to start seeing inflows back in risk care funds and then you start a different type of cycle. So level of interest rates is important, but it's not key. Risk aversion, it's more important.

Thank you for your question. That is -- it was the last one. So we would like to thank you all for participating in the call. We will be available the IR team to discuss the results with you. And have a good night, everyone.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Well, thank you very much. See you guys next time.