SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazilian cash & carry operator Assai posted on Wednesday a 26.8% decrease in its fourth quarter net profit from the same period in the previous year, as interest over its debt pressured the results, even tough sales were up.
Still, the 297 million real ($60.17 million) net profit for the quarter came slightly above analysts polled by LSEG expectations of 286.2 million reais.
Assai slowed down its expected store openings this year, as its management works to financially deleverage the company after an aggressive expansion over recent years, which include the conversion of "Extra" hypermarkets bought from GPA.
It went from opening 60 stores in 2022 to a target of about 15 new ones in 2024.
Although its financial deleverage is smaller than a year ago, the company's gross debt rose, which helped its loss in net financial result line to rise 65.4% from a year earlier to 736 million reais, pressuring the firm's profit.
Assai's net revenues rose 15.5% in the fourth quarter year-on-year, to 18.4 billion reais.
Assai said the rise in revenues was helped by factors including stores openings in the last 12 months.
Its fourth quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 22.6% in the quarter from a year earlier, to 1.44 billion reais, almost in line with analysts forecast of 1.42 billion reais.
Adjusted EBITDA margin grew 0.5 percentage points to 7.8%.
($1 = 4.9358 reais)