The second phase of Operation Disclosure placed Americanas’ accounting fraud at the center of the news on Thursday, 25th. But, far from the police front, the retailer is trying to convince the market that it is already another company.
Almost three years after the accounting scandal, management is concentrating its efforts on a smaller, simpler operation guided by cash generation, operational efficiency and profitability. Adjusted EBITDA returned to positive territory, losses from continued operations shrank 24.8% in the first quarter and physical stores now account for 95% of the company’s net revenue.
While awaiting a court decision on the request to end the judicial recovery, filed in March, the company is trying to shift the narrative from financial survival to the reconstruction of the business. The challenge now is to prove that the operational transformation has started to produce results.
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New stage
The reconstruction began with the size of the company. Since the beginning of judicial recovery, in January 2023, Americanas has closed more than 400 stores and reduced its network from around 1,880 to approximately 1,448 units. The strategy was to streamline the operation, concentrate resources on assets considered strategic and abandon businesses that were not profitable.
The redesign also involved the sale of assets. In February, creditors approved the sale of a series of properties, with an estimated value of between R$346 million and R$468 million. According to the agreement, 60% of the net amount exceeding R$200 million must be allocated to the amortization or early redemption of debentures.
In May, the retailer announced the sale of 10 loss-making stores from the Hortifruti Natural da Terra chain in São Paulo to Oba Hortifruti for R$69.3 million. “The transaction should eliminate the cash burn of the network’s São Paulo operation”, stated the financial director (CFO), Sebastien Durchon.
The company also reported that it is holding advanced negotiations to sell the chain’s three remaining stores in the State, concentrating the Hortifruti operation in Rio de Janeiro.
According to Durchon, if the sales of Uni.Co and Natural da Terra stores were already reflected in the March balance sheet, Americanas’ net debt would be 29% lower, falling to R$535 million. More than raising funds, the divestments reflect the company’s attempt to operate a less capital-intensive structure.
Return to the center
The reconstruction also involves a profound change in the business model. Before the crisis, Americanas was betting on expanding the marketplace and offering a large number of sellers to expand scale in e-commerce. Now, the company has stopped pursuing this model and started using digital as an extension of its physical operation.
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In an interview with Broadcast (Grupo Estado’s real-time news system), in May, the company’s president, Fernando Soares, stated that Americanas will continue to operate a marketplace, but concentrated on a few large sellers, with its own logistics structure and high level of customer service. “It is not our strategy to have 200 thousand, 300 thousand sellers as others do”, he stated.
The priority became the O2O (online to offline) model, which connects digital sales to physical stores through in-store pickup and deliveries made from the units themselves. According to Soares, the margin of this operation is around three times higher than that of the traditional marketplace, reinforcing the decision to concentrate investments in this format.
In practice, the store returned to the center of the strategy. In addition to being a point of sale, it began to function as a logistical base to fulfill orders made through digital channels, bringing physical operations closer to e-commerce and reducing costs.
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This change also appears in the composition of the company’s revenue. In 2025, physical retail accounted for 95% of Americanas’ net revenue, compared to 91% a year earlier, while digital’s share fell from 7% to 4%.
First signs
The strategy began to appear in the results, although the reconstruction of Americanas is still far from complete. The first quarter showed an increase in sales and greater discipline in controlling expenses, at the same time that the company continues to record a net loss.
Net revenue grew 20.2% in the first quarter, to R$3.1 billion, while gross profit increased 16.6%, to R$834 million. Adjusted EBITDA returned to positive territory and totaled R$15 million, reversing the negative result of R$26 million recorded in the same period in 2025.
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Cost control also began to take effect. Although selling, general and administrative expenses increased by 3.9%, to R$851 million, they began to consume a smaller portion of net revenue, falling from 31.9% to 27.6%, reflecting gains in operational efficiency.
Part of this performance was favored by the Easter calendar. To reduce this distortion, Americanas released the same store sales indicator for the first four months of the year, which showed growth of 7.8% in the annual comparison.
The operational improvement, however, was still not enough to bring the company to profit. The company ended the quarter with a net loss of R$336 million in continuing operations, a reduction of 24.8% compared to the loss of R$447 million recorded in the same period of the previous year.
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For Soares, the performance reflects the advancement of integration between physical and digital stores, the evolution of relationships with suppliers, the expansion of the Customer A loyalty program and the strengthening of the financial services area. The company’s card handled more than R$1 billion in transactions in less than a year, issuing more than 100,000 cards per month.
Despite the operational evolution, the reconstruction of Americanas is still ongoing. The second phase of Operation Disclosure shows that the company’s past continues to produce new developments. The company informed the Broadcast that he was not the target of the search and seizure warrants carried out this Thursday and stated that he will continue to cooperate with the investigations. In a statement, she said she was “the most interested in clarifying the facts”.
The challenge for the current management is to conduct these two fronts simultaneously: to collaborate with the investigations into the accounting fraud that led the company into judicial recovery and, at the same time, to convince the market that Americanas, which is trying to exit this process, is already a different company from the one that entered it.
