Artificial intelligence has gone from being an experiment at C&A to a key part of the company's strategy. This change is evident in the fashion retailer's organizational chart: the CTO now reports directly to the CEO.

Technology has moved beyond being a support area and now occupies a seat at the table where strategic decisions are made – participating in committee meetings with key leaders and external advisors.

“The goal is to build artificial intelligence solutions to make the customer journey easier, more personalized, and more effective,” says Paulo Correa, CEO of C&A, to NeoFeed . “Because, at the end of the day, that’s what counts, conversions and increased sales.”

Correa's agenda reflects this shift in scale. He speaks of artificial intelligence agents that will be able to negotiate purchases with consumers' digital assistants, of assortment personalization by store profile, and of a future—which he places "in years, not decades"—in which buying clothes will be as fluid as ordering a pizza.

At the extreme end of this vision lies an even more radical ambition. Corrêa imagines a future in which fashion retail stops working with large, standardized collections and starts operating with increasingly individualized offerings.

“I can imagine that, in the next 50 years, C&A will have a collection for every person,” he says. “Today it seems like a pipe dream. But when you look at the level of personalization that already exists in the digital world, you can imagine that technology can take retail to that level.”

Part of this plan is already underway. On the company's website, logged-in users receive a different product showcase than anonymous visitors, filtered by purchase history, size, and style preferences (the company does not disclose specific figures).

This experience in physical stores is a little different. Salespeople are assisted by an app that cross-references the customer's history with available inventory and suggests product combinations in real time.

And when it comes to production and product development, designers work with a platform that analyzes the performance history of each piece to generate prototypes and variations at a much faster pace. A process that previously took between 60 and 90 days to produce a prototype can now be done in about a week.

This combination of factors has also changed the distribution of products within the network. Algorithms analyze the sales history and consumption profile of each store individually, adjusting the shipment of items to reflect the preferences of that specific community. "The more I understand the consumer of that particular store, the higher the conversion rate," says Corrêa.

Agents buying clothes

The most ambitious leap is yet to come. Corrêa describes a scenario in which the consumer's artificial intelligence agent converses directly with the C&A agent.

The customer tells their assistant what they need. A t-shirt, for example. The agent checks the purchase history, cross-references it with the available assortment, negotiates price and delivery time, and completes the order automatically.

This vision aligns with what the largest global retailers are pursuing. The difference that C&A believes it has lies in the volume of proprietary data accumulated – especially that of C&A Pay, the company's financial arm, which combines credit behavior with consumer behavior and has more than 9 million issued cards. “We want to do something relevant,” says Corrêa. “Because relevance gives you the reward of conversion.”

For a company that plans collections in advance, unpredictable weather has become an operational risk. The response has been to build greater agility with demand forecasting algorithms, real-time integration with suppliers, and a much shorter product development cycle.

But Corrêa says the challenge isn't just speed. He introduces a distinction between cost and value to explain how the company thinks about product assortment. A pair of shorts might have an optimized cost, but little perceived value on a cold day. Conversely, a lightweight jacket might cost more in the production chain, but generate much more value when the temperature changes.

Smaller investments

Part of this strategy involves physical stores. By 2026, the company plans to renovate between 20 and 25 units — about 10% of its existing stores — and open 8 to 10 new stores in cities where it is not yet present.

According to analysts at XP Investimentos and BTG Pactual, renovated stores have seen gains of 8% to 10% in sales per square meter. "That's very significant," says Corrêa.

With the heavy investment cycle in logistics infrastructure and technology already completed — which consumed around R$ 540 million in 2025 — the capital expenditure planned for 2026 should be directed mainly towards the expansion and modernization of the network.

Analysts estimate total investments will be between 15% and 20% higher than those made in 2025, a figure that C&A does not confirm. The market, in general, is long on C&A's history. Of the 12 analysts covering the stock, the consensus is a "strong buy," according to Investing.com .

XP Investimentos maintains its buy recommendation for the stock, with a target price of R$ 17 - on screen, the stock is trading in the range of R$ 11.

BTG Pactual cites "structural improvement of the operation" and the ability to monetize efficiency gains. Genial Investimentos, on the other hand, points to RFID, dynamic pricing, and the new supply system as technologies that are already beginning to appear in the numbers—with a direct impact on gross margin.

The company's net profit reached R$ 587 million in 2025, an increase of almost 30% over the previous year. And consolidated net revenue totaled R$ 7.98 billion - with apparel alone accounting for R$ 7.1 billion, an expansion of 9.2% over the previous year.

Last year, the company ended with net cash of R$ 84 million. In the same period last year, C&A had net debt of R$ 510 million for a leverage of 0.5 times.

However, not everything was perfect. The fourth quarter of 2025 fell short of revenue expectations, with a 3.2% year-over-year decrease and a 0.3% decline in same-store sales. This was the first interruption in more than two years of continuous productivity gains.

Analysts attribute the result to specific factors: assortment imbalance, adverse weather, aggressive promotional environment, and increasing pressure from Asian platforms.

Even so, Bradesco BBI maintains a constructive outlook for the medium term. The stock is currently trading at approximately 8.5 times its estimated 2026 earnings, a multiple considered attractive for the sector.