A for Pague Less () reinforced, for the pharmacy network, the plan so far: focus on debt reduction, cash generation and value capture in the portfolio. “For now, we are completely focused on reducing leverage and increasing productivity,” the company’s CFO, Luiz Renato Novais, told Infomoney.
It seems to be working. Although leverage in the second quarter is 2.5 times the net debt by EBITDA (profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in English), higher than the standard for the sector, the reduction in the indicator was 0.8 times since the second quarter of the previous year.
“We didn’t give any official debt guidance to the end of the year, but he should continue to fall,” said Novais in an interview with Infomoney. To achieve the result, the company is holding its hand at the opening of new stores: in 2025 it will be 50. It’s not that much, considering the company’s history. In 2024, there were 30 new units.
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It turns out that the growth package of the last trimestres has been strong, driven mainly by the known indicator in English as Same Store Sales – or, in good Portuguese, as the sales of a store that already existed increased or fell from the previous quarter.
In the second half of 2025, this indicator pointed to an 18% growth compared to the same period of the previous year, also driven by price and volume. As it shows how much sales improved only in stores that already existed in the previous comparison period, it serves to strengthen the argument of more operational efficiency. Also because the balance of stores opened by Pague less did not grow dramatically in the last year. Among the second quarter of 2024 until the same period of 2025, with openings and closures, the number was 1,653 to 1,657.
Novais even attributes the result to the “small details” of the new administration. With a training in psychology, Marques managed to make a turnaround in the business. For Novais, success is linked to employee engagement in the operation: “There were several actions such as improvements in health plans, the workplace, more feedback, training and hierarchy review for those who had no leadership profile,” exemplifies Novais.
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Added to this, the company has reinforced commercial actions in this new cycle. As Novais explains, the name Pay Less is not for nothing and the company’s vocation has always been to reach the average family income audience around $ 5,000. More sensitive to price, this audience has been impacted by the group’s most aggressive promotional campaigns.
Finally, changes in the structure of executives and regional managers shaked the operation hierarchy, reflecting on stores. “There is no silver bullet, but all work, for example, pricing products in the store, customer service procedures, replacement or replenishment of gondolas.”
This mixture is, in the company’s view, responsible for capturing the current level of growth of the pharmacy network. Today there are 22 million active customers – those who bought at least once in the company – and continuous growth in the proportion of continuous care customers, the company’s great focus.
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“What we have done is to better serve these people so that if they need to buy a 12 -month product of the year, buy the 12 with us,” says Novais. These are cases of people who need to buy recurrence medicines, such as for diabetes or hypertension.
