Anima Holding SA
BOVESPA:ANIM3
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Anima Holding SA
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Good morning to all of you and welcome to another conference call to these results for Ânima Educação. We are here to speak about the second quarter and more specifically about the first half of the year 2020. We have with us today, Marcelo Battistella Bueno, the company's CEO.
Good morning, Marina, André, and a good morning to all of you. It's an honor to be with you.
We also have with us André Tavares, the company's CFO. Good morning, André.
Good morning, Marina, Marcelo and all of those that are accompanying us have an excellent day.
Thank you, Andre. And to respect your time, we're going to begin.
And we would like to remind you that the general and summarized information offered here do not -- should not be construed as a share acquisition invitation offer or request. Our information contain statements that merely express the expectations of the company's management, and they refer to forecasts about the future and uncertain events. Such expectations and/or forecasts involve risks and uncertainties and should not be used to purchase company shares.
Very well. Having said that, I would now like to turn the floor over to Marcelo to begin with the management message.
Thank you, Marina. It is a great pleasure to be here with you. I hope that you are all safe and in good health in your homes. This is a very important moment. And our results now prove the choices that we made some years ago way back that of having a hybrid mix such as the omnichannel and the dichotomy between on-campus and distance learning online. So this is a unique hybrid proposal. And COVID has catalyzed this movement and has allowed us to intensify everything. In 5 days, we grew to 140,000 students, enabling them to study in safety in their homes with the help of the teachers, and we continue to offer quality education services. This is what happened during the quarter. We ended the semester with all of our students, and we are getting ready for the beginning of the next semester on August 17. It is an honor, therefore, and I would like to express my gratitude to all of our teachers, to all of our students, to all of you, to the investors, all of this marvelous group that has allowed this to happen.
It's also very important to focus on some specific points here. And I would like to state what a resilient company with good performance does in difficult moments such as this one. And I would like to highlight our hybrid model, as I mentioned, that adapted to this new scenario in a truly brilliant way. As I mentioned, in the past, we had perceived the need of having an omnichannel model and the strength and effectivity of this tool and digital tools has been essential. This is not something that you achieve overnight. We have been working focused on competencies on the qualification of teachers and much more as if all of this was something very fluid. And of course, this was set to test and was approved.
Marina, André and the team have separated a specific chapter on 2A, and I invite all of you to participate in this and read the details about this. And we also have companies caring for cash. We had an important movement at the beginning of the year. We raised BRL 1.1 million (sic) BRL 1.1 billion with a follow-on, and we entered this storm full of fuel with the company with sufficient reserves to be prepared to face any diversity.
I would also like to highlight that there were years of dedication and digital transformation. It's not a simple change. It's a long path of digital transformation that we have been trading for years. And our students no longer compare our services rendered with Mackenzie, [ PUCC ], UniCuritiba and others in Minas Gerais. What they are comparing this with is with Uber, iFood, Amazon. And these people work in a distinctive way. For many years, they have been leaders in digital transformation, and we have been undergoing this path with 19 squads, several students. And during the pandemic, we intensified investments despite the CapEx reduction for digital transformation. This represented 45% of our CapEx between digital transformation. Last year, we had invested 30%. We invested in our talent, our new talent, which is a great opportunity to bring in reinforcement to allow our people to shine ever more. And all of this has placed us in a position that sets us aside as a totally digital company that delivers quality education, and that has this purpose that moves us in terms of education. So the results you see are the -- thanks to this work, congratulations to everybody. Andre will speak about this further.
The student base continues to grow, and we have a stable retention rate. Despite the adverse scenario, the ticket follows its trajectory. We have quality tickets, and all of the books had an evolution in revenues and operating performance. And this allows us to feel proud, and everything has evolved as planned in terms of capital raising for the second semester.
Having said this, I would like to underscore the following: we always operate in vertical way with regional brands that have been in the market for 50 and 100 years. And those vertical institutions of knowledge, hospitality vertical segments, one in law with EBRADI and [ SPEDALI ] for medicine. We have intensified our acquisitions. Our profit at UniScience shows that the higher the ticket, the more resilient we are. So we have ventured into health and law. This is strategic. We did this in Belo Horizonte and UniFG. These are true gems institutions that make us proud, besides the co-management we have with Unisul.
The health and medicine vertical institution, therefore, is something that will make the difference ever more in terms of our value proposal. It is highly differentiated, and it focuses on life on learning. And to give you an idea, we had a strong ramp-up in Unisul. We reported results of BRL 7.3 million vis-à-vis BRL 3.4 million for the first quarter of 2019. So you can observe a very strong growth in results, showing that this is a trend that has truly broken a paradigm.
To conclude here, I would like to turn the floor over to André. These results once again are not the goal that we are pursuing. There's something that emanate from focused work working with humility, simplicity with a truly brilliant team. And this is what sets us aside. I will give the floor to André, and we will continue on with our conversation.
Thank you very much, Marcelo. And congratulations, of course, for your opening [ tremendous ]. These are very inspiring words and very motivating ones. I would like to continue quite quickly so that we can move on to the Q&A session. Marina, if you could help me project some of the support slides with the main highlights of our results for the second quarter. Thank you.
Yesterday, we -- of course, disseminated the release and the DFP. And the idea here is to give you an idea of the main aspects of these results. Marcelo, in his introduction, has already referred to how challenging this present-day moment is. It poses enormous challenges, but also allow us the opportunity to set ourselves aside. And I believe that the results obtained in the second quarter make it very clear that our strategic choices in the last few years have been the right ones, especially our option for the hybrid model.
The main highlights here that we would like to share is the growth of net revenue. We reached almost BRL 700 million of net revenue in this first semester, presenting a growth of more than 22% vis-à-vis the first semester of 2019. And doubtlessly, our acquisitions play an important role in this. But it is important to state that we had a robust revenue growth, even if we do not consider acquisitions, as you can read in the release, the growth in the student base taking into account not a growth of more than 11% in this period.
And I would especially like to highlight this third bullet point. Despite the current scenario, the main metrics that show the strength and resiliency of our hybrid model and the continuity of the good academic experience of our students is the dropout rate where we report stability and perhaps some minor improvement, very minor, but this is important in these unprecedented times. And once again, this allows us to have confidence and a great deal of motivation in terms of our actions in the academic model and in the J2A model and improvement of the service quality for students. They show how strong and resilient they are.
We also continued the trajectory for the growth of tickets with or without the acquisitions, and the consolidated figure is of almost a 15% growth. All of these actions contributed to this with the strategy focused on strong brands, especially in the verticals of medicine and health and very renowned brands such as the UniCuritiba. Because of this, our adjusted EBITDA reached BRL 210 million, plus 36% vis-à-vis the semester in 2019, and the EBITDA margin went below -- beyond 30% of net revenues, 3% points. And we do have the hybrid model. And as a challenge, of course, the provisions for doubtful debts. Of course, the PDD was impacted. The resiliency of our hybrid model shows that our students are highly satisfied with their academic experience. This is reflected in the dropout rate.
But our students, of course, are not totally shielded when it comes to the impacts of the economic crisis that were undergoing, not only in the country but worldwide. And I believe that this had a greater impact on our doubtful accounts that had a growth of 3% to 5.8% in terms of our net revenues. And the delinquency rate, I think, adequately captures the scenario that we are involved in, and it captures the risk of our accounts receivable. We are deeply engaged in the re-enrollment and intake processes for the second semester now, especially engaged to make sure that these default levels will not be reflected in an increase of dropout rates, and we are fully prepared to continue on with our academic activities, of course, with a great deal of caution and extremely attentive to the present-day effects and the future effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now simply to refer to a few highlights of some of these messages. Marina, if you could go on to the next slide, please? Some of the main highlights. We look at the growth of our net revenue, and we observe the following. I'm referring to 2 cycles teaching itself, which is our core. Net revenue grew almost 23% arising from a growth in the student base and a growth in the average ticket and a proportionate growth, thanks to the acquisitions that were carried out beginning in the second semester of 2019.
Now our operating result for education. We had an evolution that is higher than the consolidated amount of 3.7 percentage points, and we can observe that the gain that made up this 3.7 relates to gross margin. And of course -- I'm sorry, this is the wrong slide. Very well. Thank you. And G&A gain and especially a loss of margin in SG&A totally impacted by the default rate, as mentioned in the previous slide.
We now go on to the next slide, where we speak about our student base. And I would like to reinforce how important this indicator is for us. It is an indicator of the solidity, the robustness of our academic model and dropout with a slight decrease, pointing to a scenario that is quite long that has gone on for 4 quarters of stability. This has allowed us to grow our graduation base by 13% and more than 2% in terms of acquisitions, and as I mentioned, we're extremely devoted towards supporting our students, offering sustainable solutions, such as an insurance. We have a program for renegotiation, Decola, and a partnership in insurance, ensuring our students can surpass this difficult moment.
We go on to the next slide. We once again highlight the trajectory of our net average ticket. In the first semester, the growth was 14.5%. Not taking into acquisitions, the result is more than 6%. And the second quarter was even more intense with a growth that is greater than what we had already observed in the first quarter, and of course, the first quarter was more impacted by the commercial strategies for fundraising. Now this is a very important moment for us, and we are on the right path towards a sustainable trajectory for growth, not only for our base but with our acquisitions that have also strongly contributed to these figures.
We go on to the next slide. And we do like to separate education in 3 blocks, given the difference of movement in each of these blocks and because of their very specific characteristics. This semester, we can observe that all 3 blocks had a very good performance in accordance to what had been planned for each block. In the base block, a growth of the top line which is something that had not happened. This is the first time this happens in the last 7 quarters. We had already inverted this trend but had not observed any growth for 6 quarters. And this is good news. And the base block continues its trajectory towards margin gains and enhancement in the operational margin.
Acquisitions was a very strong gain as well. And in margin, because of the new acquisitions, AGES, UniCuritiba and FASEH, and also because of the evolution itself of the institutions that are part of this block. And in the organic expansion block, we see strong growth, highly aligned with our business plans for the blocks. And to remind you, this block concentrates units opened in 2017, '18 and '19. And we have the ramp-up of revenues and also more than 17 percentage points of evolution in the organic expansion block. And this block is gaining ever more representativity. It represents somewhat more than 15% of the revenues as a whole and of our operating results. And of course, this proves that our organic expansion strategy was the right one.
In terms of cash flow for the semester, we had a strong, robust generation. We reached BRL 100 million. And this is an EBITDA conversion for operating cash. That is quite significant, a cash generation very close to the EBITDA. And because of the pressure of PDDs, we had a greater pressure in working capital. And we were able to decrease our CapEx somewhat. And more importantly than decreasing the CapEx is observing that there has been more CapEx devoted to our digital transformation process, as mentioned by Marcelo in the initial address and generating a free cash flow of BRL 57 million.
We also had our follow-on this semester, quite successful process, and we continue to invest in the growth of the company. Of course, paying off our debt, our financing, investing ever more in acquisitions and, in this case, investing more than BRL 100 million in our buyback program, which has enabled us to generate a great deal of value for our shareholders. We would like to remind you that the follow-on was on January 29 with a share at BRL 29. With the onset of COVID and a downward adjustment in all of our shares, we believed that we had a great solidity in this hybrid model, and our management model back us up in this, and we understood how important it would be to buy back part of our shares to give a good return to the shareholders. That is why we had the share buyback program at BRL 100 million at an average price of BRL 19, close to BRL 19. The follow-on was in January at BRL 0.365. And of course, you can observe how much value we added to our shareholders through this buyback program.
And finally, we get to the last slide. Reaching the end of the semester with a cash position with BRL 800 million approximately. We still do not have the BRL 450 million that we contracted with the IFC in market conditions still previous to the pandemic and the increase of the interest rates that we observe in the credit market at present. And those BRL 450 million are a reinforcement of our cash. As you can see here on this slide, we have a net debt of practically 0 of BRL 7 million. And we still have not included the impact of this BRL 450 million taken from the IFC.
And this is a very important movement for us, we bought a -- with a 3-year grace period, and it allows our cash position to be very robust going forward, enabling us to be prepared to continue on with our acquisition strategy for strong and resilient brands in the future. These were the main highlights that I wanted to share with you. I would like to return the floor to either Marcelo or Marina.
I believe it is to me, so we can go on to the Q&A.
At the beginning, and I apologize for this, I did not mention that the questions should be included in the Q&A. I see that everybody has already done that. We do have some questions, and I will begin to address. The first question is from [ Rodrigo Rabo from Studio ]. Thank you, Rodrigo, for being with us and posing a question. This question will be geared to André. I would like to know if there was a positive impact because of the Provisional Measure 963 on labor contracts and in SG&A costs and expenses and if you could give us greater details regarding this.
Thank you, Rodrigo, for the question. The impact was minor. It was a marginal impact and totally concentrated on G&A. We did not have an impact on costs practically because of the Provisional Measure 963. What I would like to highlight that for the case of Anima and because of Marcelo's inspiration, we adopted the Provisional Measure 963 as a strategy for the management of people. We have the freedom for people to choose if they want to have a reduction in their working hours. And we did this with the people that did opt for this choice with a reduction of 1 working day. So in most of the cases, people took Friday off, and we made the commitment, and this is what we did of recomposing their salary. So they would not have any salary losses, especially in these very difficult moments. There was an impact, a minor one and highly concentrated on G&A.
What is important, André and Marina, to state is that what we want to do is continue on rendering quality educational services. We don't want to spend a single minute interrupting classes. Quite the contrary, on Thursday, we went to the São Judas campus with the [indiscernible] protocol. And on Friday, we had announced the schools was closed, but we did resume everything with six hundred and some thousand students. So most of our schools remained in operation with faculty. Everybody received their wages. And the government of São Paulo, the city of São Paulo anticipated some of the national holidays. And this was geared towards increasing the amount of people remaining in quarantine. And even during this period, we maintained our classes to offer quality education to our students. As Andre mentioned, we use this Provisional Measure 963 to offer more comfort, especially to people in the administrative area and to have 1 day to remain with their families. Of course, it's not easy to work at home during this period of isolation with the family next door. And this is what we allowed them to do.
The next question is from Thiago Bortoluci from Goldman Sachs. Thank you, Thiago, for posing a question.
Congratulations for your results. We have 2 questions. What is happening with the new students in graduation for the second semester? And what is your plan for the business unit of other businesses, especially HSM for the short term?
Thank you, Thiago, for the questions. Marcelo, I think you can speak to this.
Thank you, Thiago. Thank you for the questions and for the brilliant work. My personal reading and that is the company, of course, is that differently from other sectors such as aviation that practically closed down during the pandemic, they're just resuming now, we have 3 types of situation in graduation or higher education. We were able to adapt our model and quickly migrate to the digital world very expeditiously. A minority was able to do this and some schools were facing difficulties, and they proposed low prices instead and they're facing difficulties, and there's our schools that closed down and remain closed down up till present. This is a theme that we were faced with.
We very speedily migrated, and we also migrated the intake process. And we perceived that in this scenario, first of all, it would be important to help other schools offer tools to these schools and intensifying the transfers. There were students running the risk of losing the semester remaining without studying, and we extended our selection process until April 13. And we immediately began the selection process for the second semester through a process that is fully digital. We did the pre-med tests for medicine in Brazil, and we're operating at full steam in this process, now reaching the final stage. I can't tell you much more than that, but the feeling that we had is that we see that there were discounts being given. Market shares were being still in creating difficulties for everybody at large. Now the game has changed. There are those that are prepared, those that are not prepared, and we're working arduously to be prepared and become strengthened in this process.
Regarding the business units, I have asked André and Marina to deal with these no longer as other businesses, but as vertical institutions with greater visibility for HSM, for EBRADI and others. This is my first message. The second message regarding HSM, and I give you an example this week, we held our beginning of the semester [ symposium ] for teachers. And well, formerly, my team and I had to travel throughout all of the cities during the week. Speaking with 500 or 600 teachers a night to begin the semester in the school. We did this with 3,200 teachers, everybody online, everybody with technology, and it was highly successful. They changed environment. They experimented with them. And more importantly, they felt that feeling of belonging to Anima, not to AGES or UniCuritiba, but belonging to our Anima ecosystem, and this is what is happening with HSM. Presently, HSM is opening up. It was the largest event at the Transamerica Expo Center. Nowadays, what we have is an open digital platform open to everybody practically, and this is the way of looking upon a full glass. And this is how we're working.
Thank you, Marcelo. I believe Marina had a minor problem with Internet. I'm going to continue on for her. The next question is from Leandro Bastos. Thank you, Leandro. And it says the following. Congratulations for the results. We have 3 questions. Update on the re-enrollment and intake processes. I think Marcelo has remarked on this. Speak about the receptiveness and adaptation of the faculty to the digital universe and if this is going to change the matrix of curricula and to speak about the main adjustments made in Decola vis-à-vis previous years. Marcelo, if you could speak about how our faculty has reacted, and I will then speak about the Decola program.
I'm extremely proud of our teaching corp, such a fantastic faculty. We have been training them in the -- according to the methodologies of Finland and Stanford for years. And the training of faculty is something that has been done for a very long time. Now to migrate to the digital world is not so easy. But the training mostly covers this. Our teachers, professors have been fantastic in this process. Daniel, along with several large companies was the leader of this, and this set us aside in the country, and we would also begin working very rigorously with our turnover in the coming semester. We're being very careful, very cautious for the people in our ecosystem. But in fact, the work of our faculty was heroic. And all I can say is thank you very much for that.
Leandro, to speak about Decola specifically, the main adjustments made were to grant greater flexibility when it comes to the collection of interest rates and signs for delays, and I think you will see this in our [ DSP ], a lower level of interest rates. As we understand that many students were in a situation of default because this was not within their control and an increase in flexibility in the terms to equal out the debt of the students, always with a preference for payments through installments in the credit card, which reduces the risk of not receiving the tuition.
And the third point was that we improved the experience of the students through a more transparent process in the squad. Nowadays, the students that comes into contact or that is contacted by our relationship center and -- well, we improved this process. We worked jointly. It is a more fluid process, and we are able to gear the students faster to the PraValer team. Now these are the changes we implemented in Decola. Marina, have you been able to come back?
Yes. But unfortunately, I have lost the Q&A chat.
No problem. I will continue. So we will now go on to the question of Samuel Alves from BTG Pactual. I will read the question. I have 3 questions, please. First, if you could give us an idea of the average ticket of like-for-like, excluding your acquisition. Two, the margin evolution for the acquisition block. Is this due to the ramp-up of the medical courses? And three, after the 2 acquisitions this year, is the M&A pipeline still very active?
Samuel, thank you for the questions. Now the question on the ticket evolution. Yes, it does remain on a positive trajectory, even if we exclude the mix variation of the courses, especially because of that movement where we carry on our student base as the different intakes take place. Doubtlessly, the acquisitions do represent an important aspect of this ticket as well as the course mix.
We do know that in graduation, there are cycles, cost cycles. 5 or 6 years ago, we had a very strong cycle for the expansion in engineering. Presently, we see a stronger cycle of expansion and health. So the mix is important. But if we withdraw that mix effect, we still observe a very strong evolution of our ticket, thanks to our digital transformation process and the evolution of our pricing strategies with greater granularity and respecting the competitive nature of each course in each different site.
Regarding the acquisition block the medicine ramp up, especially at AGES. Now in the second semester, it is important. And they present an important part of evolution, but not the main part. AGES and its other medicine courses and UniSociesc and other institutions in that block have also had a significant expansion in margin. Medicine is important but is not accountable alone for our evolution. This is a block evolution. Marcelo, if you could speak about our M&A pipeline.
I had the honor of working in this area for 12 years. Began in 2003, and it is part of our strategy. And if we look in the rear-view mirror, we grew basically 50% via M&A, 50% through organic growth. In our data center, we carried out a study at the beginning of the pandemic. What we observed is that the higher the take-up, the better the resiliency of the course. So we have intensified conversations in terms of these new scenarios. Courses in health and medicine, we strengthened our [indiscernible] vertical institution, 2 highly strategic movements. And of course, we're prepared for other movements.
We have to be ready to capture opportunities that will come about because of COVID, and we're attentive to those who need help. And we have been an alternative for several families, several schools, foundations that are concerned with the legacy with the continuity of the brands the day after in their operations, and we have been an alternative for these institutions and families. We are prepared and always attentive to the pipeline. Another important point is that in terms of operations, we are also prepared. We began to operate with an operations vice presidency with Ricardo, a senior person with a fantastic team. And this gives us comfort, cash comfort, leverage comfort, and financial ability.
Well, very well I will try to take over the Q&A again. The next question is from Susana Salaru from Itaú. Thank you, Susana, for the question. In terms of the digital universe, Susana says that they observe a cost reduction in the results. If you could give more detail, you or André, more detail on the main gains and implications that this digitation process can still bring about. A second question about the insurance, and I ask you for help here, André. Why have students use this more broadly if we have used this as an instrument to contain default?
Susana, thank you for the question. I'm going to separate the digitation question in 2. Now the rendering of educational services is no longer compared with other schools, but with other industries, especially digital companies like Uber, iFood, Amazon, MercadoLibre and Magalu. So for some years, already, we have been working on this digital transformation. It is a very long path we wanted to have 10 squads. We now have 19 with the student at the center of this journey. We have a mixed situations, and we want to ensure that the student has an efficient, simple and quick journey, which is how these other companies work. And this increases revenues, decreases dropout. It allows student satisfaction. Leads the student to purchasing other products. The students remain longer on our platform and so on and so forth. This is one of the avenues.
Another avenue is that hybrid matrix with education becoming something fluid and no longer polarized with [ in presence or ad ], something depending on the ticket that you pay. It is something fluid with greater or lesser digitization, and the COVID-19 has made this possible. Now this digital approach along with the lifelong learning that we have intensified with the help of a consultancy, and we're ensuring the company will lean more to lifelong learning. All of this has increased the company revenues and significantly.
For years, the educational sector was dealt with through compartments. We have the higher education compartment, the middle education, the graduation, lot of for instance structure, for instance graduation, and there is no communication between these compartments. Nowadays, we no longer have this. People join Anima. They never leave. They study until they become older.
And if the organization is not prepared for this, it will once again have to deal with the compartments. And this is a break of paradigm that we have to be very attentive to. We're deploying quite a bit of efforts as we did in the past. Few people perceive this. And now you see the results of this hybrid digital learning, and Anima will be hybrid with lifelong learning. And all of this will lead to greater profitability. People will continue to study and consume good educational products.
In terms of the insurance, and thank you for the question, Susana. Of course, it is important to underscore here that, as with other insurance, we contracted educational insurance to allow all of our students to know that they would have this support in moments of difficulty or unemployment. And we have observed a growth in the use of this insurance. There are 2 reasons, main reasons that would explain why there hasn't been a solid use of the insurance. The first is that the success of the Provisional Measure 963. Many students where the person responsible had a reduction in wages or a suspension of the labor contract making it difficult to pay for tuitions, as this is not considered unemployment, it is still not covered by insurance in cases of a reduction of working days and the suspension of the contract.
And the second reason is that some of the people responsible for paying tuition have informal jobs. This is not considered to be unemployment per se. And those are the 2 reasons. Another aspect that is not reflected in the figures is that this insurance offers security confidence to a growing number of students ensuring that they continue on with their studies that they can re-enroll. And in the case of a problem, unemployment in the family, for example, they will have the insurance as an important tool of assistance. And this is what we are serving in-house. And there is that impact of the insurance on our dropout rate on the stability of our dropout rate and on our re-enrollment rates.
The next question is from Caio Moscardini from Morgan Stanley which is the intake and reenrollment process. As I was out for some time, I don't know if this question has already been responded. If you think the question has been answered, we can go on to the next one.
I believe that Marcelo already answered this question. There's not very much that we can say now. 60% of the process has already been gone through. And I think Marcelo spoke about re-enrollment and intake at the beginning.
We have 2 questions from [ Gabriel Menezes ]. With the pandemic, do you believe you will have more room for more premiums that could take you back to that segment? And if there is any room to continue growing your average ticket in the second semester. Thank you, Gabriel. And André will answer the second question.
Gabriel, I want to be extremely cautious because what has happened in Brazil is that this issue has lost its relevant. I think that the hybrid model with 100% use of technology will take place. It has been taking place in Anima with more than 10,000 students. And the use of 100% technology with quality, we'll have to have an adequate ticket for that. We're doing this at São Judas with a value proposition with 100% of technology. And those that want to continue using the technology, we're very close to resuming face-to-face teaching as soon as the authorities allow for this.
For municipality, of course, we can go back to the face-to-face or in-campus activities. Now if this happens quickly, the risk groups will still have to remain at home choosing 100% of technology. So this will become a unique reality. And in-campus teaching will end up disappearing. We will have 100% digital courses. And we're already doing this. This is what we're delivering in graduation courses, especially, and we will adopt this at São Judas to learn, to get it right and then scale up this method. This is our response.
In terms of the ticket for the second semester, yes, there is room to continue this trajectory. It is not a short-term trajectory or a one-off trajectory. It is a long-term trajectory. Our education cycle is in the long-term students that entered in 2017, 2018, still have an impact on that ticket. And we see continuity and the improvement of the ticket for these reasons and not only because of our acquisitions, all of the acquisitions had a higher average ticket than the previous days and also because of the course mix that we mentioned. So there is room to continue this growing trajectory in the second semester, despite the very challenging macroeconomic scenario.
The next question is from Isabella Lamas. Congratulations for the excellent results. Which are the outlooks of continuing your expansion in health and medicine as you did through acquisitions? And if you could remark on the M&A environment, considering the environment is more difficult for this.
Thank you, Isabella, yes, we are making strides in the medicine vertical. And as always, what we say is we have specialized on continuing the history and the legacy of families of professors, institutions that were founded 40 or 50 years ago. And well, many of them have their surname as the name of the institution. And by continuing the legacy, they make the difference. Now in medicine, our reading is that this is ever more important. If you carry out a simplistic analysis, there are 2 types of M&A opportunities in medicine. One, in the traditional institutions that came about 50 or 60 years as isolated institutions. And after achieving a great deal of quality, they were able to obtain license to teach medicine. This is a typical case. This is typical Unisul, UniBH. So for these families, it makes sense to continue on with their legacy. And we are having very respectful conversations with them.
Another case refers to the -- those who won the tenders of the [ MIG ] medical process, more doctors. Now many have a very regional characteristic because of the tender and many of the winners are regional leaders. They're either professors or doctors that are very influential in the region. It's the case of Mr. Wilson, a very special case -- person in AGES and another person due to similar reasons of UniFG, Morumbi; the family of UFMT, Mr. Ricardo Guimarães. These are regional leaders, physicians, highly renowned physicians in their regions. And the financial situation is not what thrusts them forward. It's the results that move them finding of projects that will take quality to the region. And this makes the entire difference, especially in the medical world. And we have put ourselves at the disposal of these families as a solution to help them in this new scenario.
We have a question for you, Marcelo, from [ Renato Braga ]. Congratulations for the excellent results. I would like to know if this sector, especially Anima is evaluating a partnership with state governments due to the high technological capacity that you have developed your time. Perhaps you could contribute to the great lag that we see in the field of education, public education.
A very good question made as a Brazilian, yes, we have perceived the need and the difficulties of several institutions that have not gotten prepared, and we're offering our technological tools free of charge. We have 2 parallel actions: One based on institutions to help them, and another with a focus on students that are at risk of losing their semesters to make the difference. Now secondly, we have Anima with the purpose of transforming the country through education. And Daniel, our founding member, brilliant person, has the mission of transforming education in the elementary education. We're working both in private and public education. We're working with city halls, with states, and we have put ourselves at their disposal to offer them what exists as cutting edge in the world. Once again, we train based on the methodologies of Finland and Stanford.
We train all of our teachers, and we're now offering this training to the teachers of the public network. Because this is what we're dreaming for our children and grandchildren, a truly worthwhile education. During the pandemic, many of us were forced to remain at home for months with our families. Of course, this was a very intense experience. We observed our children with difficulties at school and how important education is in our day-to-day. And we truly believe in this. We are speaking with some municipalities on the possibility of technical education. We would like to do this more. And the government should ensure that no student has to stop studying. And that is why we have the insurance, and the government should have the same perception and help students and make this moment an opportunity for growth and not an opportunity to drop out from studies.
We're somewhat beyond our time, and I think we will only answer one more question. If we do have additional questions, we will respond them personally. And once again, we're at your entire disposal, should you have any additional doubts. This question, André, perhaps you can help us. It's from Richard. Congratulations on your results. I simply have one question. What is your opinion of the impact on the employment situation in terms of the students' capacity to pay? I see that this has been increasing.
Richard, this is a very interesting question, quite provocative indeed. And I would say that we still don't have a ready-made answer for that. But we do know that our internal figures show that despite that stability that we are reporting in the dropout rate. The dropout rate was proportionally higher in the course of the lower tickets. And several of our figures show, and I think Marcelo has already referred to this that we have several surveys showing us that we have a lower dropout, especially in the course with a higher average ticket, which points to the fact that the students that are in the courses with a higher average ticket have greater economic stability and greater resiliency during this period of the pandemic.
We continue very attentive to this following up very closely on the effect of this potential unemployment. Now if there is an increase in unemployment, we have come up with this countermeasure, the educational insurance as well as other measures that were mentioned. So we are prepared to take on this challenge and take on a possible exacerbation of this environment, but we're very attentive and perhaps we will have to come up with new initiatives to avoid having a big impact. But we haven't seen a strong impact on dropout because of the higher resiliency of these courses with a higher average ticket. And we want to continue on with that positive educational experience for our students.
Now because of the time, it is already 11:10. I would like to return the floor to Marcelo for his closing remarks. Marcelo, please?
Thank you, Marina. Thank you, André. Thank you all. I simply wanted to thank you, thank our entire Anima ecosystem, thank the teachers, the students who have devoted themselves tirelessly, always putting education in the first place, reinventing themselves so that the educational experience could continue on with high levels of engagement and interest. Thank you to all of our employees, our shareholders, to all of our stakeholders. Thank you for the confidence, for the time, for the dedication and for the investments in this very important project. Have a good day and a very good weekend. Thank you, and until we meet again.