8.6% of voluntary CNPJ deregistrations in the measured franchise networks have another CNPJ of the same network opened at the same address, a sign of a change of operator without closing the location

The CNPJ (Brazilian company registry) records the company that operates a commercial location, not the location itself. When a franchise unit is transferred to another operator with a new company, the base records the deregistration of one CNPJ and the opening of another, even if the store has continued to operate under the same brand, so that, in the count of deregistrations, the closure of the store and the change of operator appear in the same way. The indicator separates the two cases by address. For each CNPJ deregistration in the measured networks, it checks whether another company opened a CNPJ of the same network at the same address between 12 months before and 24 months after the deregistration.

From 2015 to 2023, of the 14,291 voluntary deregistrations with a comparable address in 448 measured networks, 1,231 had such a successor, equivalent to 8.6%, with a 95% interval from 8.2% to 9.1%. In 72.4% of these cases the new CNPJ opened before the deregistration of the previous one, and the median interval is 2.2 months before the deregistration, which is consistent with the deregistration being recorded after the transfer. The share was 8.2% in 2015 and 10.1% in 2023, with a minimum of 5.7% in 2018, and ranges from 4.5% in services and other businesses to 11.4% in fashion and accessories. The CNPJ deregistered with a successor had been open 2.8 years at the median, compared with 4.4 years in deregistrations without a successor, and in 18.4% of the cases the successor company already had another CNPJ of the same network.

Most deregistrations, therefore, have no network successor at the address, but the change of operator alters the reading of the indicators that count CNPJs. In the cohort of head offices opened from 2015 to 2020, the share without deregistration at five years, the deregistration-only criterion of the survival of units, is 76.6% in this indicator's subset and rises to 78.6% when a deregistration followed by a new network CNPJ at the address counts as continuity of the location. In 2023, 8.8% of the 3,317 deregistrations and 4.0% of the 7,899 openings in the series of openings and deregistrations in the networks form change-of-operator pairs under the same rule, and, without these pairs, the ratio of openings per deregistration goes from 2.38 to 2.51. The median age at deregistration, which the deregistration calendar publishes as 3.6 years for voluntary deregistrations from 2021 to 2025, is 4.2 years in voluntary deregistrations from 2015 to 2023 with a comparable address, this indicator's subset, and becomes 4.4 years without changes of operator. The reverse case, in which the CNPJ remains and drops the brand, is measured in exits without deregistration, which follow the same CNPJ across registry snapshots and do not capture a change of CNPJ at the same location.

How we calculate

We started from the establishments that the observatory's census attributes to the 503 measured networks in the open CNPJ data of Receita Federal (the federal tax authority), reference month October 2026, by the trade name expression and the CNAE (national classification of economic activities) subclasses of the network profile, in any registration status. The calculation base is the CNPJs deregistered from 2015 to 2023 for a voluntary reason (01 and 54, as in the deregistration calendar), without the MEI (individual microentrepreneur regime) option at any date, a period for which the whole window after the deregistration has already been observed. From each establishment we read only the CEP (postal code), street, number and address complement. The successor is another CNPJ of the same network, with a different root, opened after the previous one and active beyond the deregistration date, at the same CEP and number. In a municipality-wide generic CEP, the street must also match, compared without type, title and accents, and, when both complements carry a store, room, kiosk, block or lot number, the codes must match. When there is more than one successor, the one whose opening is closest to the deregistration prevails.

An address with no number, with a mention of a shopping center, commercial gallery or similar, with a large-user CEP or with three or more networks active at the same time is treated as collective and requires the store number in both complements. For this reason, 1,018 deregistrations at a collective address without a store number and 241 deregistrations at an address where the same network came to have three or more compatible CNPJs active at the same time, a situation of a headquarters, office or administrative unit, are removed from the base. Thus, 91.9% of the deregistrations in the period have a comparable address. A successor with the same CNPJ root (13 cases) is the same company and is left out of the change of operator.

The window from 12 months before to 24 months after results from the distribution of intervals. Among the successors found up to five years before or after the deregistration, 73.1% fall within this window, and the frequency per month in the six months before the deregistration is 28 times the frequency of deregistrations with some compatible candidate between three and five years away, counting all of them and not only the closest, which the table of intervals shows in a separate row. This distant frequency, scaled to the length of the window, is equivalent to 1.0 percentage point of deregistrations, the order of magnitude of the address coincidences the rule may include. As a method control, the same rule applied to a CNPJ of another network in the universe finds a successor in 3.2% of deregistrations, and in this case the frequency in the six months before the deregistration is 2.3 times the distant one, counted the same way. Deregistrations due to merger into another company, a reason for which the change of CNPJ is recorded in the registry, have a successor of the same network in 37.5%, and none of the 276 ex officio deregistrations for persistent failure to file has a successor. The duration of units records 12.1% with a broader rule, which considers head offices opened since 2010, with deregistration in any year and for any reason, a window of 12 months before or after, no generic CEP and without requiring a compatible complement or a different CNPJ root. Without the requirement of a compatible complement and without the exclusion of concentration addresses, this indicator's share would be 11.0%. Here a CNPJ with the MEI option is excluded at any date, and not only at opening, so the 2015 to 2020 cohort has 18,434 CNPJs, compared with 18,527 in the survival of units, and the share without deregistration at five years, 76.6%, differs from the 76.5% published in that indicator under the same criterion.

Calculated on November 8, 2026. Method version 1.0. Sample: 14,291 deregistrations with a comparable address in 448 measured networks, reference month October 2026.

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