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The company was not going bankrupt, it was not in the red, and it continued opening new stores. Even so, almost 7,000 workers lost their jobs at once. Understand what is behind one of the largest mass layoffs in Brazilian retail in 2026.
The Grupo Mateus earned R$ 43.5 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, it recorded a gross profit of R$ 2.15 billion, a growth of 16.1% compared to the same period of the previous year. The company opened nine new stores in the first months of the year and remains the third largest retail chain in Brazil, behind only Carrefour and Assaí Atacadista.
In May 2026, it laid off 6,673 employees in six states.
The number represents 13.9% of the entire workforce of the company. In a few months, the number of employees dropped from 47.9 thousand to 41.2 thousand people. The layoffs affected workers in Maranhão, Pará, Piauí, Ceará, Sergipe, and Bahia, exactly the states where the company was founded and where it built its empire over 40 years.
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Supermarket giant has just closed 28 stores and left 6,673 people unemployed in the North and Northeast of Brazil.
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What the company said, and what remained unanswered
In a note sent to the market, Grupo Mateus stated that the cuts were “necessary for operational adjustments across the network” and that the process involved “historical analyses of operations and internal benchmarks among stores, formats, suppliers, and contracts, allowing the identification of distortions and optimization opportunities with measurable financial impact.”
During a conference call with investors, the chairman of the board, Ilson Mateus Rodrigues, was more direct. “If you cut too much, it’s a problem; if you cut too little, you have expenses,” said the company’s founder. He also stated that more expense reductions are planned, but they will not involve new staff cuts.
What the company did not clearly explain is how a company with a gross revenue of R$ 43.5 billion and a 16% growth in gross profit needs to lay off almost 7,000 people at the same time. The answer lies in the numbers that were left out of the official statement.
The two profits that confused the entire Brazil
One of the biggest confusions surrounding the layoffs at Grupo Mateus arose because of two numbers that circulated simultaneously on social media and in the press: the profit of R$ 2 billion and the profit of R$ 213 million.
Both are true. And they are completely different.
The gross profit of R$ 2.15 billion is what remains after deducting only the direct cost of goods sold. It is the number the company used in the market statement. The net profit of R$ 213 million is what was left after paying all operational, financial expenses, restructuring costs, and taxes. Compared to the same period in 2025, net profit fell by 22%. The Ebitda decreased by 18.2%, to R$ 400 million.
It is the net profit that shows the real pressure on the company. And it was this pressure that motivated the cuts.
The interest rates, the wholesale, and the inventory that didn’t exist
Behind the numbers, three factors explain why a company with billions in revenue reached a point where it needed to cut almost 7,000 jobs.
The first is the cost of money. With the Selic rate high, Grupo Mateus’s financial costs increased significantly. A company that operates with hundreds of stores, distribution centers, and gigantic inventories needs credit to function, and expensive credit erodes margins.
The second is the competition from wholesale. Assaí Atacadista, Atacadão, and Fort Atacadista have aggressively expanded in the North and Northeast regions in recent years, exactly the territory of Grupo Mateus. These chains operate with lower prices and margins that traditional supermarkets cannot replicate. The low-income consumer, who is the company’s main audience, partially migrated to this format. Sales in the same existing stores fell 1.1% in the first quarter of 2026.
The third factor is the most serious: the accounting error of R$ 1.1 billion. In November 2025, Grupo Mateus revealed to the market that its inventories recorded in the 2024 balance sheet were overvalued by R$ 1.1 billion. Inventories dropped from R$ 6 billion to R$ 4.9 billion. Equity shrank by R$ 695 million. The shares of GMAT3 plummeted more than 20% in five days, erasing R$ 2.5 billion in market value.
An internal investigation revealed that the problem had been ongoing for a long time. Since 2021, the audit had already warned of deficiencies in internal controls: goods disappearing in unloading areas, stores that had never been inventoried since opening, inventories that did not keep up with the network’s expansion speed. The error was not an accident of one quarter. It was accumulated for at least four years.
6,673 families, and the states that felt it the most
The cuts were not distributed evenly. The layoffs were concentrated in the six states where Grupo Mateus has the greatest historical presence and where the restructuring of operations was most intense.
Maranhão, the company’s home state and where its headquarters are located in São Luís, was the most affected in absolute volume. Pará and Piauí also recorded significant cuts. Ceará, Sergipe, and Bahia complete the list of affected states.
In many cities in the northeastern interior, Grupo Mateus is one of the largest local employers. The closure of a store, in this context, does not just mean the loss of a supermarket. It means the loss of dozens or hundreds of jobs in a region where the formal job market is already limited.
The company that was born in a mining site and became the third largest in the country
To understand the significance of what happened, it is necessary to remember where Grupo Mateus came from.
Ilson Mateus Rodrigues was born in Imperatriz, Maranhão, in the 1960s. He tried his luck as a miner in Serra Pelada in the 1980s, returned without gold, and opened a 50 square meter grocery store in Balsas, a city in southern Maranhão, in 1986. The main sale was cachaça. By 1988, the grocery store had already become a medium-sized supermarket.
In 2020, Grupo Mateus made the largest IPO of a northeastern company in history when it debuted on B3, raising R$ 4.63 billion. Demand exceeded supply fivefold. In 2026, Forbes estimates Ilson Mateus’s personal fortune at US$ 1.8 billion, about R$ 10 billion.
The company that went from a 50 square meter grocery store to R$ 43 billion in revenue is now laying off almost 7,000 employees. Not because it is going bankrupt. But because it grew faster than its ability to control what it had.
What analysts say about the future
Despite everything, the main analysis firms in the country maintain a positive outlook for the stock. BTG Pactual, XP, and Itaú BBA recommend buying or “outperform” for GMAT3. Only Santander maintains a neutral rating.
The central argument is that the market’s reaction to the accounting error was disproportionate to the real impact on operations. The company continues to generate cash, has controlled debt with a net debt/Ebitda ratio of only 0.41 times, and still leads the food retail sector in the North and Northeast with more than 300 units in operation.
The CEO indicated that the second quarter of 2026 remains “quite challenging.” The expansion schedule has not been canceled, but new investments are now subject to more rigorous analysis than at any previous time in the company’s history.
What has been left behind are 6,673 jobs. And the question Brazil is still asking: how did a company with R$ 43 billion in revenue and billion-dollar profits reach this point?
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