Anima Holding SA

BOVESPA:ANIM3

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q3

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Good morning. Today, we have with us Marcelo Bueno, our CEO; Andre Tavares, our Financial Director; and myself, Marina Gelman, IR Director.

I would like to remind you that if you have any questions, feel free to contact us. This presentation is being recorded and will be made available on our website later.

[André Tavares, executive]

Good morning, Marina. Good morning, Marcelo. This is yet another earnings conference call in which I am participating. Good morning, everyone. It's an honor to be taking part in this earnings conference call with you. Okay. Let's start.

We're gathered here today to talk about our third quarter 2020 earnings. We have been counting on you, on our investors trail. And tomorrow, we have the Inspirali station that we'll be talking about our medical school vertical, and then we're going to talk about the hybrid academic model. You'll find information about this on our website. These stations are great opportunities for us to share with you what we've been doing.

So going back to our results. Just a reminder, the information that we are putting forward here are forward-looking statements, and they are based on beliefs and assumptions of our management on information that are currently available.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Hello, everyone. Good morning. I'm Marcelo Battistella. We're very glad to publish our results for the third quarter of 2020. We're very proud of our results, and they show that the decisions we made were right. When we founded Anima with Daniel, Mauricio and all the original founders and partners, we always believed that we wanted to offer lifelong learning to students, and we have quality in our DNA. So the choice for a hybrid model that was made 3 to 4 years ago was leaving behind the dichotomy of distance learning and offering a more adequate value proposition for our average ticket. So we always believed in this mission.

We started a digital transformation. And we stopped comparing our delivery to other schools, but started comparing ourselves to other digital companies like Amazon, for example, and this has been the right choice. And this has been made even more clear after the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a great team of educators and employees, people who are fully committed during these very difficult times, but we're feeling very strong. So we'd like to thank the Board of Directors who has always supported us. We'd like to thank Daniel and all the shareholders for their support.

Well, this slide mentions robust and solid numbers, which shows our focus on our results, but I'd like to emphasize item number 6. The educational operating EBITDA achieved 40.5%, up 2.9 percentage points compared to the first 9 months of 2019. So that shows an important point here that we have gained margins in our mature operations, in our greenfield operations, as well as in our teaching operations. That shows how focused we are, how committed we are and how we are able to achieve these margins in all of our segments.

Now I'd like to give -- turn the floor over to André. André, you have the floor.

[André Tavares, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo, and thank you, Marina. Marina, I think that we should have a more informal conversation today. What do you think about that? Can you hear me?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Hi, André. Sure. I was just turning on my camera.

[André Tavares, executive]

All right. So I think this is going to be a very dynamic presentation in which both of us will take turns. So this will be a more interesting and interactive call for all participants.

Okay. Well, on this slide, you saw the main messages of the presentation with Marcelo. But here, you can see that we continue with a strong growth in our net revenue. This is mainly due to the positive evolution of our student base, especially due to the acquisitions made in 2019 and 2020. An important point is our ticket, our ticket trajectory is quite interesting. We are reinforcing our ticket evolution positioning, which has led to this net revenue growth in spite of this very challenging scenario.

Our net revenue growth was above 20%. That's mainly coming from education, but also from other businesses, especially units of lifelong learning, at EBRADI and HSMu.

When it comes to margins, we've had a very positive evolution of our gross margin, especially due to the efficiency gains coming from our new academic model, E2A, the Anima learning ecosystem, as you know. We've had pressure on commercial expenses, especially PDA, provision for doubtful accounts, and also -- and in fact, on corporate expenses, with an increase in the centralization movement of some activities and more robustness in the holding so that we could offer margin gains in our operations, especially in the new acquisitions.

Having said that, it's important to highlight that our margins grew 2.7 percentage points and a considerable growth of EBITDA. Over 33% growth of our EBITDA, going from BRL 232 million to BRL 310 million. As Marcelo said, we're very proud of this performance, especially considering the challenging scenario that we've been facing this year.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Marina, can you tell us a little bit about academic quality?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Sure. Thank you, Marcelo. In October, we saw the results of ENADE and IDD. CPC and IGC have not been released yet, but these first 2 indicators have been published. And as Marcelo said in the beginning, we're very much focused on academic quality. This is part of our DNA. This is a premise and an end in itself. So here, you can see that we are outperforming the market as a whole.

When it comes to ENADE, we are much better than the other publicly traded institutions as well as the privately held institutions as well. We usually compare ourselves to the public universities because they receive students with a better academic achievement. And when we look at IDD, which is where we see the added value of higher education, then we can see that our added value is superior to those of public higher education institutions.

Going back to ENADE. ENADE cannot be compared to the previous triennium because for the first time in 2019, the engineering courses were added to the health care courses. So we cannot compare one triennium to another unless we do that by course. But when we look at the consolidated, the bases are different. So now from now on, this is going to be a group that includes engineering courses as well as health care courses into one single group.

Marcelo, back to you.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Marina. Going back to our main business of education. Our net revenue grew over 21% in this business coming primarily from acquisitions. 16% of this growth comes from acquisitions and 5.5% comes from our bases. And you can see here the evolution of our net ticket.

[André Tavares, executive]

When it comes to operating results, I'd like to go back to what Marcelo said in the beginning. We were able to advance 2.9 percentage points in our growth -- gross margin. But this gross margin is still impacted by recent acquisitions. So you saw that when I talked about the increase in corporate expenses. So we had to make such investment in corporate expenses in order to capture in a safe and definitive way the margin gains of our recent acquisitions.

So if we exclude the factor of recent acquisitions, our gross margin has advanced 6.9 percentage points with the operating results advancing 4.1 percentage points. And we know that we have felt pressures under our commercial expenses by the provision for doubtful accounts, or PDA. So this is a strong result, and it paves the way for us to continue growing our results coming from margin gains of recent acquisitions, and that's what we are preparing for.

In our next slide, Marina, can you tell us a bit about our student base and dropout rates?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Sure. Thanks, André. So this is a very important point that we'd like to emphasize. During this year of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic growing, our student base is something that is quite important and not trivial at all. And that is something that we see going on here in our student base as well as our ticket growth. So we're very glad and proud of the work we've done. Our student base grew 6.8% when it comes to undergraduate students, we have achieved a number of 113,000 undergraduate students. The students are retained. They are still studying and pursuing their dreams with us. We've had a 0.8 percentage points over the year 2019, which was not a year of crisis. So it shows how important this has been.

We have attracted almost 15,000 new students in 2020, students who decided not to postpone their dream of having an undergraduate education. So we're still offering solutions for students to keep on studying. We offer them financial loans, technological solutions and delivering a very high-quality education that has made our students very satisfied with our services, and that's the result.

Now André, would you like to talk about the second part of this beautiful story? You're muted.

[André Tavares, executive]

Thank you for letting me know. So yes, the second part of this beautiful story is that in the third quarter of 2020, in spite of this very challenging scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic, we followed our strategy and continue in our trajectory of improving our net average ticket. This shows how we have been able to reinforce our positioning. And by doing so, we've had an increase on our net average ticket. And this has an effect on this virtuous cycle of reinforcing our positioning.

And here, acquisitions are of great help because their average ticket was higher than in our base. Even so, we had a significant growth in the third quarter of 6.3% in our base. So we have achieved around BRL 900 of average ticket in our base operations. If we add the acquisitions, then the growth of our average ticket surpasses 10%. So this is aligned with our strategies, and that shows how we have been assertive in our internal projects to improve our pricing as well as the strategic options of acquisitions that had a higher average ticket.

Now in the next slide, you can see a key point. As we usually do, we have broken down education into 3 different blocks: the base block, the acquisitions and the organic expansion block. In all of the 3 blocks, we can see margin evolutions in our base block, as we usually do. We can see a difficulty in growth, but we've been flat in the first 9 months of 2020 when it comes to the net revenue because of more competitiveness in the locations where we operate and because of the maturity of our institutions. But the efficiency gains brought by our academic model made this block grow over 2 percentage points, achieving almost 45% of operating margins.

Acquisitions have taken a leap. They almost doubled in size with the entrance, of course, of our new acquisitions. But the new acquisitions that had an initial lower base when it comes to margins. But even so, we see an evolution of almost 3 percentage points in the first 9 months of the year.

It's important to highlight that the acquisitions have increased their representativeness, and that dilutes the margin because the base block has had 45% of operating results. The organic expansion has already surpassed that mark. And the acquisitions block has just surpassed the mark of 30%. So it is diluting our margins, but that was expected because that was our strategy, to acquire high-quality brands of great reputation, but that still need to evolve when it comes to margin growth.

In the third quarter, we reported a slight retraction in this acquisition block, but this slight reduction comes from the most recent acquisitions that took place in the year of 2020. So if we look at the acquisitions made a little bit earlier, you can see that all of them have had a margin evolution. So all of the acquisitions that were made before 2020 had a positive margin evolution. So that shows the strong performance that we had.

And finally, going to our organic expansion block. We continue with our trajectory in growth -- revenue growth and more representativeness of our educational block with over BRL 160 million in revenue and also a great expansion of margins, surpassing the mark of 40%. And we should remember that the organic expansion block has a structure that is lighter than the base block. So we consider these results positive and expected and we are paving the way here in the acquisition block to capture even higher gains in the coming years.

Now in the next slide. We're going to talk about our medical schools. We started the quarter with more disclosure over our medical school vertical, Inspirali, with all of our medical courses, and we will provide even more disclosure because of the importance of this block here for us.

Marina, would you like to comment on that?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Yes, André. Thank you. Up until 2019, we had 1 single medical course. In 2 years, we added another 6 courses, not considering the other 2 courses of Unisul, which will be added to our numbers in January. So we have some courses, which have already been authorized. These are courses that are ongoing and that are already part of our consolidated results.

We have around 2,447 students enrolled in these authorized courses, but we can get up to 3,852 students. That's our potential. The net revenue of these 2,447 students achieved BRL 125.4 million and an average monthly ticket of BRL 7,287. Now Unisul has 2 courses that are already authorized and ongoing, but they have not been added to our numbers yet. But once we do that, we are going to achieve a number of around 6,000 medical students. We still have some courses that are waiting for the final authorization in Brumado. We have actually received the authorization, but we are still concluding the construction, and we intend to start next year. And there are courses that are still pending approval.

We have some also extension seats related to the more doctors program that might increase the number of seats offered. So we are not talking about the maximum number of seats, but the number of seats that we believe will be added to our numbers, considering the public network, the number of beds available in hospitals in each region and the number of seats already offered in medical schools in those locations.

André, now, I turn the floor over to you to talk about our cash flow generation.

[André Tavares, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Marina. So to conclude and before we turn the floor over to Marcelo for the final remarks, let's talk about cash flow generation.

We had a strong cash flow generation. The first 9 months of 2020, the operating cash flow achieved BRL 289 million. And that's very much related to our EBITDA. The operating cash flow is very close to the EBITDA calculation with a difference of only BRL 20 million. So EBITDA of BRL 310 million and operating cash flow generation of BRL 289 million. Working capital has been under pressure because of the default rates and provision for doubtful accounts. But our strategic decision made to have students that have not taken any loans reinforces our idea that we have a PDA level and default level that is significantly better than all of our market peers.

We continue on this strong cash flow generation trajectory. This year, we were positively impacted by the follow-on offering that took place in January. Now cash flow and our cash position is pretty much the same as the second quarter of 2020 because our cash flow generation was directed to pay for our new acquisitions.

And finally, CapEx. CapEx is gaining scale. In the first 9 months of 2019, our CapEx was of almost BRL 94 million, accounting for almost 11%. And this year, we have BRL 98 million in CapEx almost, and that accounts for 9% of our revenue only. So we've been investing a lot in our digital transformation, and you can clearly see how much we have increased our investments in the digital transformation, going from BRL 30 million to BRL 42 million, our CapEx in systems and technology because of this very intense digital transformation process. And this CapEx has also been impacted by the organic expansion units, especially those that were opened in 2018 and 2019.

If we exclude the effect of those units, which is what we are probably going to do in 2021, our CapEx would be around 6.6% of our net revenue. So a level that is much closer to what we consider normal. But you can see that we continue with a very strong cash flow generation.

Having said that, I'd like to turn the floor over to Marcelo for his final remarks.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Andre and Marina. So we are going through a pandemic, and this is not a time to celebrate, but to focus. But we've been able to show that our high-quality offer has been able to bring us very significant results, and we're very proud of that.

Since I founded Anima, together with Daniel and Mauricio, on May 6, 2003, I had the honor of leading our organic and inorganic expansion. And I've always said that the transaction that would bring us more value in the higher education industry would be the merger of Anima and Laureate. So after CADE's approval, we've had the honor to announce that we'll have the honor of continuing this family legacy of the Laureate Group. We have just acquired the operations of Laureate Brazil, and we're going to create the largest, high-quality education network in Brazil. It's like the Catholic universities all over the country joining forces, which would be something impossible. But that shows the power of our network to take high-quality education to thousands of Brazilians. We're very proud of that.

We've been working really hard to gain scale, and we're going to cover over 75% of the Brazilian territory with this acquisition. And as Marina and André said, this quarter, we are giving more emphasis to our medical courses. With CADE's approval, the Laureate Group will bring to our medical courses presence in important cities like São Paulo, Salvador and Natal. So we would like to thank Laureate for the amazing job they've done. And we're going to work closely together from now on, and transforming lives through education is our mission since our foundation. And we think that we can come out of this pandemic even stronger than we entered. So that's all. I'd like to close this presentation and open our Q&A session now.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you so much, Marcelo. [Operator Instructions] We have already received a few. Let me try to access them.

So the first question is by Leandro Bastos from Citi. Thank you, Leandro.

He says, "Good morning, everyone. I have 2 questions. Can you please comment on the DNA direction in the coming quarters? Can we expect a dilution as the integrations evolve? Now can you also give us an update of the Unisul operations? What is the enrollment number? And how have they been evolving?"

André, can you help us?

[André Tavares, executive]

Sure, Marina. Thank you. Thank you, Leandro, for your questions. And the answer is, yes. It's part of our DNA to perform these integrations in a responsible manner so that we do not have a feeling of loss of quality for our students, especially in the acquired brands. We are known for giving continuity to the legacy of families and institutions. So our integration process is increasingly robust and increasingly prepared to capture the synergy gains quicker. And of course, we needed to reinforce the corporate area in order to capture that gain robustly, quickly and definitively. So there's no doubt we should see a dilution of the DNA as we integrate these new units quicker and quicker.

Now with regards to Unisul, I'd like to greet all of the team, [ Marie Cacia, Rodrigo Alves ]. We have a very competent team at Unisul. And Leandro, we've been very happy with Unisul's performance in the year of 2020. We know that they've been working on a co-management process with the team at the foundation. They've been working really hard and in a competent way to place Unisul at a level of performance with great agility. We've seen growth in medical courses. And the number of students enrolled in the second semester, the second half of the year was really good.

We're very happy to see the results of this work that is being performed together with the foundation. And Unisul will likely enter a level of results that is better than we expected in the beginning when we settled the agreement that gave us the option of acquiring it in January 2021. So we're very happy with Unisul's performance.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Andre, it is important to mention that we've been delivering high-quality education for 50 years now. And this is a win-win situation in which Unisul and the community of Santa Catarina will also win with this transaction. We're very happy with the results they've been achieving with their performance. This is a unique institution just as the other brands that are part of the Anima ecosystem. We're very proud of all of them.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Okay. Great. Our next question is by Fred Mendes. Thank you, Fred, from BBI. And I'm going to ask actually another question by Samuel Alves from BTG together because they're very similar. They want to have more visibility if the change of 80-20 to 60-40 has had a positive impact on this quarter results and whether we can give them an idea of this value. And Samuel is also asking whether within this hybrid model, we expect 40% of online content post-COVID-19 in most of our courses in 2021.

Andre, can you help us with that?

[André Tavares, executive]

Sure. As I said in the beginning of the presentation, we've prepared for this joystick model for over 4 years. That is students can decide how much technology they can use to improve their educational process. But then COVID-19 arrived and in 5 days, we had to go to 100% use of technology so that students could receive high-quality education in their homes safely. So we were ready for that model, but we've been conducting tests with E2A 2.0. The tests were very successful. Two of those units then were able to take this new curricular matrix with more technology to more students. So this semester has been a very remarkable change in all of our courses, but we're ready for that. Right, Marina?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

That's right. And we were already preparing. If you remember, in 2017, we already started launching courses that made more use of technology so we are definitely ready for this. If we were in an in-person world, we would say that all the courses would already be 60-40, waiting for students to make their choice.

Now when it comes to impact, Andre, can you add something about the impact this has had in our numbers?

[André Tavares, executive]

Well, I think your answer was great. I'm sure that the gains will come. But they're actually intertwined since we are going towards this joystick hybrid model. So if students are at a point in their course in which they have to be present in person for a greater amount of the time, then we can offer that. And if they cannot be there in person, then we can also offer digital teaching to them. As the regulatory authorities evolve and accept this new joystick model, this is going to become even more present.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Andre. Now next question by Samuel. Thank you once again, Samuel, for your presence here today. "The acquisitions block had a margin reduction in the third quarter of 2020, which was not the case in the second quarter. Was that UniFG effect -- a UniFG effect?

Well, I talked a little bit about that. We did have a small retraction of margins in this block, but that was expected because of the acquisitions made in 2020. We did not break down the margins by acquisition -- per acquisition. So we just showed you the numbers for the whole block of acquisitions, but I just want to emphasize that was accepted and -- actually expected and they are already evolving when it comes to their margins.

We have another question here about what the acquisition block refers to.

The slide has a footnote mentioning all of the units. But just to clarify, the acquisitions block includes the 2016 acquisitions, AGES, which was acquired in 2019, and this year's acquisitions, UniCuritiba, FASEH and UniFG. So these are the components of the acquisitions block.

Now there is a question here about our retention -- student retention actions and also about the dropout rates.

Well, we talked during our presentation, all the activities that we've been implementing to retain students, academic excellence and also the services delivered to students are 2 important points. We've always focused on high quality and good academic service. These 2 factors are part of our DNA. We've been investing a lot in our digital transformation.

And as Marcelo said, when it comes to services, our students don't compare us to other educational institutions, but to Amazon and Uber, like very quick and nimble, agile service provision companies. During this pandemic, the support of Decola, which is our program that tries to find funding alternatives for students, has had an important impact on our dropout rates, which were below 1 percentage point, in spite of this very challenging scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And different from other industries like aviation and hotels that simply shut down, in the higher education industry, we saw 3 different situations. Some institutions had been investing for years in hybrid education like we were. And in 5 days, they were able to provide high-quality education for 5,000 students in their homes, and there were institutions that were not preparing for this digital transformation and that were not able to provide this high-quality education quickly. And there were other institutions that started offering distance learning for about BRL 80 or BRL 90 per student. And there was also institutions that simply shut down for good. So 3 completely different situations.

In our case, we did not stop our service provision at all. So there was no discussion about whether students would have to pay for tuition or not. We continued providing educational services throughout the whole time during this pandemic, but we knew that we had to prepare for a possible crisis or recession. So we prepared to provide support to our students, offering them insurance because whether they lost their jobs or something else happened to them, they could continue studying. We offered them funding and other loan alternatives. So we approached students to provide them with support when facing such uncertain times so that they could continue studying with us.

And also, for the institutions that were facing difficulties, we -- I mean, for schools that were facing difficulties, we offered them to use our technological platform for free. And students that could lose their dream because other universities were shutting down, we offered them the choice of transferring and start studying with us. So these were important activities or measures implemented.

Okay. We now have a question by Thiago Bortoluci. He says, "Congratulations on your results. We'd like to understand the short-term outlook when it comes to attracting students in the first semester of 2021 and the delays in the high school exam in Brazil. You had a controlled impact on the provision for doubtful accounts. Can you tell us a bit more about that?"

Okay. I'll start talking about student attraction in 2021. So first of all, the impact of the Brazilian National High School exam refers more to how the public universities will react to that because a great part of our students wait for the final results coming from the public universities to decide whether to study with us or to go to the public universities. So it's more related to the results of the public institutions than of ENEM. So 2 public universities already announced that they will delay their calendar in a month. So it's okay. We know about that. So we are going to use that. And there are other public universities that said that they're going to use the results of this high school exam of previous years.

So this is still the beginning of the process to attract new students, but we're working really hard, and we are ready to continue working to attract students in the best possible way as independently as possible of this Brazilian National High School Exam or ENEM.

Right. We want to look at the glass as half full. We see this as a growth opportunity. Up until the pandemic, we were competing for prices in relevant locations, and that was a dangerous process. With the COVID-19 pandemic, then we started to see this new rules of the game. Many players were no longer competing and our quality prevailed. So we see this as an opportunity, and we're being humble and responsible to advance with our value proposition in these challenging times.

Okay. Marcelo, would you like to comment on that? Or André?

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Sure. Sure. Thank you for your question. So you're talking about this second quarter PDA. That's when we saw great impact of PDA, especially because of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. When it comes to the higher education industry, odd quarters usually have a lower PDA when compared to even quarters because in odd quarters, that's when you have reenrollment and you can renegotiate. And even quarters, usually students who are not able to pay for their tuition fees have an accumulated amount. So I think that's pretty much the fact.

Now since only 3% of our student base has -- is making use of student loans, and we're now delivering services in a hybrid model, and our dropout rates show that, then we can clearly see how satisfied our students are with the services we are providing and how much they are working hard to continue studying, favoring education when compared to other items in their budget. Of course, in the reenrollment process we have been more flexible in renegotiating with them because if we looked at students with a good academic performance and a positive history in terms of tuition payment, then we were more flexible in negotiating with those students and our accounts payable increased.

And we also reinforced the PDA, the provision for doubtful accounts, especially for tuition payments that would be paid in the future. So it's actually a cyclic movement that is very typical to this industry. If you look at the third quarter and compare it with the first quarter of 2020 or with the third quarter of 2019, then you'll see that our PDA is significantly higher than the numbers in the third quarter of 2019 or the first quarter of 2020. So we're very aware of that, and we are looking at possible alternatives so that our students don't have to drop out and leave their dreams aside because of financial difficulties.

We know that when we can help students to reenroll, the long-term value of those students is extremely positive. We have several internal statistics that show that. So we are going through challenging moments, and we have to be very sensitive to help our students to continue pursuing their dreams and graduating. But of course, this is all data-driven. All the decisions are data-driven.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Marcelo, can you talk a little bit about the distance learning strategy after CADE approves our -- the merger with the Laureate Group.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Sure. That's a great question, Marina. Some people do not understand our option in the past, which was to use the hybrid model. We were no longer offering low-ticket and low-quality distance education, and we decided to adopt a completely hybrid proposal. And when we started negotiating with Laureate, we saw that the proposal was quite interesting. We have a lot to learn from Marcelo Cardoso, Guilherme and their team. They're doing a great job. They have over 50,000 students. They use their brands, and their proposal is to use 100% of technology.

And we'd like to learn from them. As André said, we are always humble when it comes to acquisitions because these are brands that have been offering high-quality services for decades. So we have a lot to learn from them, and they have a lot of value to add to our operations as well.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Great Marcelo. Thank you very much. André, we have one final question by Caio Moscardini from Morgan Stanley. "Good morning. How this new distance learning education model can affect prices. Can we expect lower prices for new students or new institutions?"

[André Tavares, executive]

Thank you, Caio. That's a great question. I think that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us or has brought us many lessons learned, which is we need to be able to separate the use of technology in education from the business model which was implemented in Brazil as distance learning.

So when it comes to Anima, I don't think this will impact our tickets. If you look at our results, you'll see that our ticket has increased because of the acquisitions and also in our base block. But I think that students in the past related in-person learning to high-quality education and distance learning to low-quality education. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, these students realized that our hybrid model did not lead to a loss of quality. On the contrary, our hybrid model was actually able to increase the quality of the education provided as we added technology with our commitment to quality, which has always been our DNA. So technology was not being used to replace professors, but technology was being used to empower professors and help them to teach a better lesson since professors and students have always been in the center of our teaching and value propositions.

So why would I have a lower-value ticket if I am able to show students that when I add technology to the educational process, they have access to higher-quality education, right? It doesn't make sense to believe that this would lead to a decrease in our ticket prices. So we don't see any signs that this is going to happen. Our strategic scenarios also don't show a movement towards decrease in ticket prices.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

So thank you for that question. I think there was a great opportunity to talk about the resilience and the strength of our hybrid model as a higher-quality model that is, therefore, consistent with our positioning of higher-value tickets.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Right. With information from Daniel and from our Board, we can say that this is not about distance learning after the COVID-19 pandemic. What we have to think about is how we can go back to in-person learning. Students have been forced to stay at home. Many of them did not have access to lessons for a very long time. And they will go back to in-person learning, but that will be a different in-person learning, right? That's the main provocation right now, right?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

That's right.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Daniel says that more important than in-person learning or distance learning is about talking of synchronous and asynchronous learning. Synchronous learning is something that brings experience and interaction. And asynchronous learning is what enables the students to watch whenever they want. Our hybrid model already joins these 2 types of activities, synchronous and asynchronous activities.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

That's great, everyone. We have answered all of the questions sent via chat. So once again, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. And I'd like to say once again that we have are now week happening right now during the expo now with interesting talks. Please join us. These events and workshops are very interesting. We also have our investors trail, as I said in the beginning, with 2 intentions -- stations, the Inspirali station, focusing on our medical course vertical, and then the day after tomorrow, the academic model station.

You can find all the information on our website, and we are available for any other questions that you may have. Thank you once again for joining. I'd like to thank Anima's connectivity team for all the support as well as Jessica for her help. Thank you, Andre. Thank you, Marcelo.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Marina. Thank you, Andre. Through the use of technology you can see that HSM is also using technology to offer this content to the largest possible number of people in Brazil and around the world. So you're all invited to participate in this very special week. Let's always look at the glass half full. This is a great opportunity. So thank you very much, and have a great day.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you. Have a great day.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]