Anima Holding SA

BOVESPA:ANIM3

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Apologies for our 3-minute delay for our earnings results conference call. We have our CEO -- we're facing a few connection problems here. Our CFO...

[Technical Difficulty]

Can you hear me now? Now it seems it's back to normal, apologies. Thank you. I just was saying, welcome to everyone. So we are here for another earnings results conference, this fourth quarter 2020, practically the whole year. We have Marcelo Bueno, our CEO; André Tavares, our CFO, ready to serve you and to make this presentation here, the questions, and we'll be available. [Operator Instructions]

Well, Marcelo, please, it's up to you.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Marina. Thank you, André. Thank you for the IT team, supporting our webinar. Good morning, everyone. A year and 5 days ago, Friday, 13th March 2020, we were waking up after starting our protocol of COVID-19 with all the students at the São Judas marker unit at home. We started putting all the students at home to study that. We did it in 5 days and the same Friday evening, the São Paulo government announced a lockdown of schools, and we started a unique moment in the history of humanity, the history of each one of us. We certainly had never been through a pandemic. And today, I would like to ask you to excuse me and break the protocol because the situation is very serious. Still very serious. We have the vaccine, but the short-term situation is quite important, and I'd like to start our webinar with a video. So if you can show the video now, please.

[Presentation]

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you very much. So we have almost 200 connections. So we're doing our part. So I thank everyone for this time, and I urge you to keep safe and keep your family safe. So let's start the presentation. Thank you very much for the COVID-19 committee that has been saving a lot of lives over this past year.

So we have our earnings result call. As I said, it's been a very challenging and different year in which sectors and industries have shut down. We, in education, we visualize situations in which institutions like Anima that prepared and made choices. In the past, we're able to migrate the students, as I said, put them safe, and they're like that until today. Other clusters of education were not able to do that. We do not turn hybrid overnight. They tried and they followed distance learning to other students. The third type were institutions that shut, and many are like this until now. So it's not a time to celebrate, but a time that we can reinstate our choices. And yes, believe that we made the right choices, reaffirming our values, our principles and especially our choice of quality education that we made over 16 years ago.

So I would summarize 6 major points that we have made and try to follow to the letter of this year. One of them, as I mentioned, was to focus on our core values, our principles with quality, our 8 principles, as we have started from now on with Dr. Evaldo's message. We started with contingency rebudget plans so that the company could be prepared for diversity and future scenarios.

Thirdly, agility. Working with an agile methodology and to have agility in the decision-making process, agility and discipline. Cash management. I think this is very important to say that what we did -- over 2020, we did 2 follow-ons. I know few companies that had 2 follow-ons last year. Only Anima probably, especially the follow-on in January allowed us to face at the time unfoldings from that Friday, 13th, we had almost BRL 1 billion in cash and fuel for any kind of adversities that could be presented to us.

And crisis times, our Board of Directors, our committee, our digital committee encouraged us to invest, to keep the investments, even intensify the investments, as you can see in digital transformation and growth. So we had this M&A movement. And I always said, the greatest value generation move in Brazilian education. Very humbly, I say -- as I say, it's not a time to celebrate anything very humbly. We celebrate this time in COVID so that we could reinvent ourselves and prepare for the future, whatever future it is. We think about our practices, our traveling practices, physical spaces, laboratories, implement use of technology and so on and so forth.

With this, I believe, we've managed to have robust results. We have managed to make accomplishments that in my view, are quite valuable to grow, at least not to lose base of students in a mature operation. To grow the mature operations, we had a ticket gain in such situation, increase our revenue and intensify and improve our operating conditions. And this led us to a situation to have great outlook for 2021.

With this, I'd like to give the floor or hand over. So I'm going to go to another slide, and I'd like to hand over to André. André, you can go into details on the numbers, and then we'll proceed with the presentation. Thank you very much.

[André Tavares, executive]

Okay, Marcelo. Thank you very much for the introduction for this message to all of us, to our educators, to our students, investors, to all our stakeholders as to how much we need to keep safe, be careful. At this time, that is so delicate in the history of mankind, especially in our country. And I'd say that all this scenario, as Marcelo said, does not authorize us to celebrate anything, but it fills us with confidence from the result. And even in this environment and with this scenario, we were able to attain. It fills us with a lot of confidence to also yield good results in the forthcoming quarters in 2021, and may God help us free from such difficult scenario of the pandemic.

Our adjusted EBITDA in 2020 had quite significant growth of over 28%, as you can see and moving also 1.7% points in terms of margin. We moved from BRL 292 million to BRL 376 million EBITDA in 2020. And the margin, and we completed the year with a 26.5% margin -- of EBITDA margin.

Three items that I would say are a significant highlight to us was the behavior of our net revenue. We had an increase in the base of students via acquisitions, quite significant growth. Even if we do not consider acquisitions, we had a light increase in the student base when we see the industry with great difficulties of growth. And even more so, we had a highlight, which was the growth of our average ticket. This is very well explained on the release, result of discipline, coherence in our positioning and result of very data-driven and granular work that we had implemented since the beginning of 2019.

And also a third point is gains with efficiency derived from our academic model, E2A. That has become actually a benchmark in the market. A hybrid model has become the reference, the dominating paradigm. As you remember, we've been talking about the hybrid model for quite some time. It is the core of our E2A.

And lastly, I'd like to stress that we've been making great efforts of retention. Our dropout rates are still the lowest in the market. And obviously, the -- considering the economic scenario, actually reflects upon our PDA. Most of our students have no kind of funding. We see very healthy rates if we compare ourselves to the market and the industry as a whole. No doubt, our 2020 results has a major pressure on PDA, although our retention numbers are quite positive.

On the next slide, we talk a bit about educational results and reinforcing what we said. So the student base dropped a bit, minus 1%. But when we consider all the graduate studies, technical education, some lines -- well, some lines that we are discontinuing and some lines with the -- just as the graduate studies, face certain difficulty.

When we look at undergraduation, our base of students evolved 0.3%. You can see on the next slide. Base as a whole, evolved 6.7% from 2019 to 2020. But when we disregard acquisitions, we had a small evolution of 0.3%. We reported a dropout rate of 4.8%, higher to the fourth quarter of 2019, but fourth quarter 2019 was our best historical results. So I'd say that the 2020 results, although slightly higher, still a result that makes us very proud as to the feedback of our students is showing how much they are happy and how much they want to continue studying in our hybrid model and the value differential in the educational sector that we have been offering.

And obviously, we've continued supporting our students with sustainable solutions with partnerships with PraValer, with our program of installments of our fees with Decola. We are paying attention to our students, supporting them so that they can continue with their dreams and their education.

On the next slide, we can see our average net ticket, as I said, especially in this context. I think this indicator is extremely important. And it's an indicator that has an effect with the forthcoming years. As we know, you have this carry-on effect on the base of the average net ticket. We had this effect actually down over 2018 and somewhat in 2019. We worked intensely, and we've seen that 2020. Throughout the quarters, we reached significant advances in average ticket, both through our acquisitions, showing the correctness of our M&A strategy.

And also when we disconsider acquisitions, we also had significant growth in our net -- average net ticket, which shows the results of our initiatives here, as I've mentioned, of intensive use of technological tools, granular analysis of the ticket in each course, in each marketplace. And this actually led us to have an almost 20% growth curve. So we had average net ticket. And when we exclude acquisitions, we had an evolution of practically 7%. I believe this figure to me is a figure that not only makes us proud but fills us with confidence because it is actually something that has an impact in the forthcoming years.

On the next slide, we still see the evolution -- the positive evolution of all our blocks. Of course, with their own specific features, but the basic block where we have more mature units with a slight revenue growth and also operational results growth and this block that is acting on a higher operational margin in all our units. The organic expansion block strongly and growth still maturing, practically 38% and gaining more relevance in our financial statements. And margin moving from 23% to 38%. Margin that is practically close to the base block and we see potential of organic expansion in this block, even greater because they have administrative and G&A structure that is lighter than the base block.

And acquisitions also in the process of evolution expected in the business plan of acquisitions. And from all the turnaround, all the evolution process that we have had in our acquisitions, Unisul is not even yet in these numbers, as you know, but we're going to open a chapter on Unisul. Marcelo is going to talk about it, showing how much Unisul is above or is exceeding our initial expectations. In all blocks, we have had good performance. Acquisitions, it has almost 30% margin and certainly will follow a scenario of evolution.

But we should not fail to highlight the evolution of Inspirali, our medical vertical. That is included in all these numbers, but the contracted growth, especially for this year, 2021, that has especially growth rate expectations that is quite high. And I'd like Marcelo to talk about the outlook for Inspirali.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, André. As you know, we have this vertical strategy for some time. And the movement of our competitor led us to inspire ourselves and show us that we had in-house great value generation through Inspirali, through our medical vertical. So we have been giving more stress to this investment. So we are analyzing possibilities to increase value to our shareholders and stakeholders. On this slide, you can see this and give more visibility.

So you can see the leap that we're going to have from '20 to '21 already contracted with medical studies with the approval of Laureate. We're going to have a network, in our opinion, chain of schools of quality and the best and largest in Brazil. And to me, for medical schools, will very unlikely be able to be compared to anyone or we're going to have medical schools in the main marketplaces in Brazil. Marketplace like São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Florianópolis, Salvador, Natal, Piracicaba, [ Social Service Campus ], and so on and so forth. You can see that in the maturity in 2018, we're going to have a very -- we're going to have to -- by 2028, we're going to have 16,236 medical students, so a great ramp-up. So we have 6 medical courses. So 3 of them are in the [ MICE Medicals Program ]. So we have our net revenue 4.095, considering Unisul. Net revenue of BRL 174.7 million in the year, vis-à-vis BRL 89 million in 2019, with a ramp-up, quite strong with robust ticket of BRL 7,233 (sic) [ BRL 7,236 ].

[André Tavares, executive]

Marcelo, just important to highlight that in this net revenue of BRL 174 million, 0 Unisul. So we have all the limited effect of acquisitions, UniFG and effect were not in here. So all of this will be leveraged in 2021.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Precisely, André. Showing that in the maturity, we're going -- it's already approved by CADE. So the assets of Laureate Brazil, we're going to have 2,260 seats and 16,236 students in maturity. This accounts for 12.6% of our net income of the education and with a ramp-up of 27%. So we are actually moving towards life on learning.

In Anima, we made a choice 4 years ago for hybrid education and the joystick model, thinking that the future student would chose as joystick technology as it happened on the Friday, 13th of March, we moved 100% to technology. And a few days, everybody had access to technology. We think that from nine -- from now on, well, this will keep on growing. So it's a classical case. With students that are full time, there will be studying with us all the time. You're going to see increasingly are giving more visibility to our medical vertical, more energy to health care and to the health of our system.

André, I give you the floor to talk about CapEx, cash, indebtedness, and then we'll be back.

[André Tavares, executive]

Perfect, Marcelo. With regards to CapEx, I'd like to highlight that we followed in 2020 with a decreasing trend, in terms of CapEx, percent of our revenue, reduction was 9.8% to move down to 8.5% of our net revenue. And what is important here is that we intentionally made very strong investment in technology, in our digital transformation process. So you can see on the first bar, we've grown practically BRL 15 million in this area of digital transformation, and we still have some CapEx because of the organic expansion units.

If we remove the units from organic expansion, our CapEx would be around BRL 91 million or 6.4% of net revenue. And this reduction will come with a great increase in the area of digital transformation, which I'd say has prepared the company increasingly more for this future that is already here. The future that is here of a hybrid world, of an improvement of services from our initiatives from squads, all our transformation or digital transformation initiatives.

Another slide on cash and debt. We ended the year with a net position of cash when we disconsider IFRS effect. This calculation method is the base of all our covenants with banks and debenture holders. We closed the year of net availability, almost BRL 300 million -- BRL 340 million pro forma end of February 2021 to show you that actually to make evident that cash generation of the company in these 2 first months allowed us to actually exercise the acquisition of Unisul without this representing relevant impact to our cash. So February, we're practically in the same net position of December, about BRL 330 million.

And obviously, we are moving ahead and anticipating our -- the acquisition of the Laureate group. Marcelo will talk a bit more about that. And we started some actions that are structure of deleveraging to keep the company even after the acquisition of Laureate in the near future to lead the company to a leverage level that is in line with our historical indices. We're very committed to this theme and very confident with our cash generation ability and the initiatives we're bringing of deleveraging in the combined company.

I think a great sample of this ability of cash generation and this collective competence of ours in the integration may be seen from the time we look at the 2020 results of Unisul, a result that makes us proud, not yet on our financial statements because we exercised the option on the 4th of January, but we worked intensely in comanagement with the Unisul Foundation. And we understand that it's quite important for the market to have some visibility of this move. And how much the performance of Unisul over 2020, although it's not in our results or earnings, they anticipate positive results of Unisul for 2021.

And we feel proud showing that joint work with Unisul Foundation, managed everyone to reap the fruit for the foundation as a whole, for the Santa Catarina students, for the educators, for Anima, for the whole Anima ecosystem. Marcelo, you as our leader, and leader of this specific movement of integrating Unisul, that is going to be -- it is a preview of what I believe will be the integration movement of Laureate. I'd like to invite you to talk to all of us about the Unisul 2020 results and also what we expect or foresee in terms of the integration of Laureate group.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, André. I'd like to congratulate people from the M&A [indiscernible] and greet all the Unisul team, brilliant team, wonderful institution with their wonderful President, Mr. Mauri. So people that worked with us over 2020 were very ethical, very competent, [ Professor Salacio Valdez ]. I'd like to greet each and every one of you.

As you've said, André, Unisul is a wonderful institution. It's a tool -- the model adopted in partnership along with the foundation, with vision as support of the General Attorney's Office of Santa Catarina. So we -- a successful model followed from Belo Horizonte. Then it was replicated here. We're innovating here to give more visibility. So we're making a small comparison of what we presented on the day, our modeling that were presented in our M&A committees and to our Board of Directors compared to what we've completed. 2020 numbers have not been audited yet after the exercise of the option on the 4th of January 2021. This will be part of our balance sheet.

I think it is important -- is the slide back? Is this the first or the second slide of Unisul? So this is the second slide. Could you go back to the first? Because I'm talking about this. So it's a company that is a leader in medical medicine in Florianópolis and also Tubarão, where it started. They have 287 authorized seats. We had efficient use of ticket and medical studies. Total of 1,700 students enrolled in 2020 vis-à-vis 1,300 students in 2019.

So we started comanagement, great support in the fundraising process, taking our fundraising process to them. And we had a great support from our team, and we had a very good product. We had 662 new students vis-à-vis 513 students they had in the second term of 2019. Restructuring was something that happened when we announced it. We had actually plan agreed with the Santa Catarina Public Attorney's or Prosecutor's Office. And they had -- we had all the support. We had a reduction of expenses. Everything was ready, made to be a more robust institution, be prepared for the next 50 years as well as university.

In other words, everybody wins. It's a win-win situation. We started to learn a bit about distance learning a bit different of low ticket, and unfortunately, the Brazilian market has had in a general way. So Unisul is a reference for people that know distance learning from the 2020s. So it's maintained at the level of BRL 527 in terms of net tickets. So we started learning with Laureate. We're going to actually potentialize that.

So we have a more detailed slide. The next one. So I've already talked about Unisul. So exercising the option on the 4th of January, and we have our methodology. Our business plan in the base scenario was approved, and our M&A was actually approved by our Board of Directors. We had the expectation of bringing this operation to our balance sheet. In 2021, the balance was close of 2020 with operating results of BRL 56 million. So congratulations to everyone. And it shows the success of the choice and the success of the partnership with the foundation and the university.

With this, I think we have made a -- we gave more visibility trying to compare to what was presented to you when we announced this negotiation and we compare to what happened from then until nine -- to now. And the idea is to do the same thing about the Laureate group as soon as we have the approval of CADE, and then we're going to invite all of you to a webinar, and we try to make comparison as to what we had in our M&A committee with a base scenario and compare it to what was found after the period of preparation and planning of the integration.

So we've announced the acquisition as the largest and most robust from our viewpoint in terms of value generation in higher education in Brazil. This has been announced. Since then, we have filed at CADE, and we set up an integration office. So it's actually an office of integration and planning. We're counting on the support of 2 very high-level consulting firms, international consulting firms. I'd like to congratulate the Laureate team and greetings to Laureate CEO, Marcelo Cardoso, and we've been conducting this integration planning in a very high ethical level, efficiency level. And we've been finding things that actually reassure us that we are on the right track.

So this is showing a bit of where we are in terms of planning the integration of Laureate, focused quite strongly in having this integration as soon as we get the approval from CADE. So setting up the most relevant quality education company, the most relevant quality education chain in Brazil. Profoundly contributing to our purpose of improving education in the country.

With this, I close my presentation. I open to Marina for -- to start the Q&A. And then we'll have the final remarks.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you very much, Marcelo. Thank you, André. We actually have an audience of almost 200 people. It's cool, and to see the interest of everyone. We have some questions on our Q&A that I'm going to start with you.

First question that we have is from Caio Moscardini from Morgan Stanley. Thank you, Caio. "Can you talk about the fundraising cycle and enrollment of the first quarter, even just if it's just qualitatively?" André?

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Marina, I can start speaking? As I said in the beginning, well, until COVID or the pandemic, we were experiencing a cycle fighting for price in some marketplaces. We know where that leads us. And we have been experiencing that in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, et cetera. With the pandemic, as I said, we envisaged 3 different situations in the same sector, and we realized there was a great opportunity. So I have been intensifying the teams and actually provoking them in a good sense that perhaps we're playing a game in which not everyone is playing or active. People have different conditions. We've been testing and our methodologies postponing our [ schools ] and having university entrance examination on the digital platform. So -- and the pandemic led us to escalate that.

We had the first medical school entrance examination on our platform. Imagine an institution that had no possibility of doing that. What happened there? In light of that, I have been intensifying the fact that we are before a great opportunity of another time, be it for what I've mentioned. Be it for the pandemic forcing us as Brazilians, human beings, I hope we get out of it with some reflections amongst them on the importance of education and the importance of quality education. So I have been intensifying it.

I cannot disclose things. We are at the final phase of fundraising. We're going to stretch it as much as possible so that we can actually have the possibility of people to study, to have access to quality education. So I have been intensifying the teams to work with this outlook.

[André Tavares, executive]

I'd just like to add that this year, as Marcelo said, we should postpone or extend the enrollment period, especially due to the delay in the calendar of our Brazilian SAT and NIM and everything people know. And I'd like to give you a qualitative view as to how confident we've been with the work of our retention, our reenrollment team. I think the work has been conducted in a brilliant way by the reenrollment teams, and we see great outlook up on this front.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

The next question is from Lucca Brendim from Bradesco BBI. Thank you, Lucca. "In 2020, you've managed to increase tickets in a considerable way despite difficult scenario. Have you been able to maintain this trend of increase year against year in 2021 until now, despite the difficult funding process?"

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Lucca, thank you for the question. So well, you're saying it's a difficult process. I'm saying that we have very adverse scenarios, and we have great opportunities to intensify our beliefs. And one of them is to actually not think about students -- number of students, how many students, but actually revenue. And revenue goes through students and tickets. And this is not easy, even if I say the reason is simple, this is not the practice in this industry. Fortunately, we have been expanding this and systematically putting our brands where they deserve to be, the correct branding or positioning. This is the exact positioning of ticket. Trend of recovering ticket is a mantra in our company. I think about this every day. I talk about this every day to the teams. We don't have a silver bullet, and they are what allow us to reposition our bases to where they are. It's a long way. It's a fight, but that's a commitment we have.

We have always thought about revenue and always putting our ticket where it deserves to be, where our companies deserve to be and the quality education proposal deserves to be. Since the ticket is well positioned. We can get good results, we can make investments, pay better salaries to our teachers and get to the next cycle. So this is the rationale behind our day-to-day.

[André Tavares, executive]

I would just like to add, Marina, one point. Actually, the ticket issue is not a specific point of 1 year, 1 specific quarter. It's an extremely strong commitment of our management. And we have been talking about this, especially since late 2018. And even though in 2019, we've seen some results by year-end 2020. I believe those results were very evident, as I mentioned during the presentation. This process is a process that has continuity. The process, we've continued to improve our tools and strategies. And again, at a time when you can improve the ticket, this has an effect on the base.

Just as when there was -- there were reductions of ticket that were more aggressive in the past, there was an effect on the base that takes time to be reverted. This is an effect that is actually going beyond 2020. In addition to being a mantra here under the leadership of Marcelo that never leaves no team -- leaves us to forget about that. So I'm a bit disciplined, yes. I'm a bit of a pain.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

No. No, not at all. Just disciplined.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo and André. Now we have a question from Marcelo Santos, JPMorgan. Thank you, Marcelo. Always with us too. Marcelo is thanking us for taking his question and is asking whether we could please comment on the strategy for distance learning. The company is very large, which is a reasonable size. In addition, Anima launched new courses at São Judas at -- in the second semester after several periods with no take in the segment. If you could talk about -- a bit about that.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. Beautiful question. Actually, as I mentioned previously, especially Unisul, we acquired with Unisul an operation, distance learning that is traditional, quite interesting one. With the pandemic, we -- as I said, we took the joystick to 100%, 100% of technology use. 3, 4 years ago, the market did not understand our decision of having this hybrid backbone with digital, and we now have proven that with the pandemic, we can deliver technology. And through technology, we can deliver education quality. So you're seeing 100% technology.

So within this scenario, thinking about the students that perhaps erroneously thought that quality was directly linked to live -- being live or presential. This is not necessarily is true. And students of the pandemic, they had 2 alternatives. Either they had stopped studying because schools were shut down or use technology. It was they started using technology, they will continue doing that. So we had São Judas life project with 100% digital teaching with the same positioning, thinking that we'll have a market for students that want quality and want to pay for this. We've at a trial and error period.

And we're now with the acquisition of Laureate. We put on the day we announced it. We have synergies that we had detected in our due diligence, 2 avenues of synergies that were not there. One is distance learning. And our idea is to continue to consolidate these initiatives in a pathway of 100% use of technology with correct positioning, with multi-brand hubs as they already use there. This is a bit of the strategic line that we have. This is a relevant business, and we actually have to generate value from here and learn quite humbly so.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. The next question from Yan Cesquim from BTG.

"I'd like to ask a few questions first. Could you give us better flavor of what dropped -- what caused the drop of margin in the Anima blocks? I believe that as seen in the consolidated levels, higher levels of PDA and marketing expenses could cause this effect. How do you see evolution of margins in these blocks in the next month?" André, if you can answer the first question, then we can move to the next.

[André Tavares, executive]

Sure, Marina. Thank you, Yan, for your question. Although in the fourth quarter, the base block had a margin drop over the year, the base block had some evolution. In the fourth quarter, actually, as you speak, we have an effect of PDD and marketing. But this effect is an effect that is distributed throughout the blocks. And in fact, that was relevant in terms of impact. And our base block in the fourth quarter was the provisioning or risk provision contingencies as well from processes. We'll talk about this in more detail in our release. Processes, especially concentrated in the mature units in Mina Gerais state. They had an impact that was a bit higher than BRL 10 million in the fourth quarter. And you will see that this is the main impact in the fourth quarter.

And clearly, we have great discipline with the nonrecurrent items, we -- at Anima. And although this is an item that will not occur, should not happen in the next year, but it is an item that is directly related to our operations. So yes, we did have a PDA, a marketing effect in the fourth quarter, but the effect on the base block was this effect of provisioning for risks and contingencies. We do not believe at all that it will be repeated in the next years, and we understand that the base block will follow this line of evolution of margin and a small revenue evolution has happened in 2020, considering that the revenue growth in our case comes mostly from the organic expansion blocks and acquisitions.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, André. Yan's second question, Marcelo, is what is the expected time line for approval and integration of Laureate? If you could talk a bit about that. Reminding you that time line is CADE's, not ours, but we have our expectation.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Thank you, Yan. We are working with the approval that should be -- take place next month. This is our base scenario. As you know, the CADE enables us to set up a committee of integration planning. I've invited our partner, [ Ricardo ] that leads with great mastery, the operations to lead with [ Gale ] and my executives from Anima to lead this project, integration team. We are counting on 2 state-of-the-art consulting firms. So we hope that as soon as we have it, next month, so the possibility of starting working there and starting our integration with a lot of things to add in with all the planning ready.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. We have 2 more questions. And then we will move on to final remarks. We have a question from [ Eduardo Lopez ] from Santa Fe. Thank you, Eduardo, for your question. Actually, I think André has already answered it. He can reinforce it. He'd like to understand better if the factors that affected the EBITDA margin of the quarter PDA, marketing, provisions are more related to short term? Or can we consider them as permanent?

[André Tavares, executive]

I think we've already talked about this now. But provisions, labor provisions, I'd say that they are clearly specific located and not permanent marketing expenses, I'd say they also have a nature that is specific, not the increase in the cost of acquisition. But we need right, Marina, to better communicate what our hybrid model is, how much the hybrid model had become a benchmark in the education sector. I see the increase in marketing expenses. I see it as a partial and almost totally localized, this increase.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

And I also think -- André, sorry, just to add to what you said, we had a mismatch of named calendars to Unisul. Yes, we actually tried to seize the opportunity early on in knowing about the postponement to have heavy campaigns on 2 ways. So that people would not postpone their decisions.

[André Tavares, executive]

Precisely. So this has a certain displacement effect. Actually, anticipation or our marketing expense in addition to the efforts we made to communicate resilience and how much the hybrid model became dominant protagonist in our educational sector. And I'd say we have these 2 combined effects, leading our Q4 to have a very specific impact.

In the case of PDA, I think it depends -- it doesn't depend so much on our efforts. We've been making great efforts, the level of the provision for doubtful accounts or PDA, well, the levels are quite comfortable, and it accounts for well, significantly, in the forward-looking growth and increase in the risk of our portfolio of accounts receivable in the year, we moved from PDA from 4% to 6%, an increase of 50% in PDA.

Fundamentally, this also depends on the macroeconomic scenario. As our students do not drop out, we have a good dropout rate. I'm happy with the service. I want to keep on studying, but part of our students actually show certain difficulties to pay. So when we look at PDA in a yearly perspective, I'd say there are no great needs for increase. But we also need to wait for a stronger reaction or response of the economy so that we have significant drop in this number.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, André. Last question before final remarks from Leandro Bastos from Citi. Thank you, Leandro. He'd like to know a bit more, André, to talk about deleverage mechanism of Laureate. So if we expect some limit of deleveraging today.

[André Tavares, executive]

Thank you, Leandro, for your question. Yes. We have some initiatives underway, sale leaseback operations that we have been assessing the sale of some assets, not related to our core business. So there are a series of initiatives that we are developing here. And Leandro, what we intend to do is to give great visibility to these initiatives, especially at the time when we talk more. When we going out the webinar, Marcelo mentioned about Laureate.

I'd like to stress how confident we have been not only on this deleveraging initiative, but also in the capacity of cash generation, not only of Anima, but what we've seen in terms of planning of our integration, the ability of cash generation of this combined company. So we are very confident that we're going to have a deleveraging rate that it will be very fast. And we see in 2022, the company going back over the year of 2022. At the end of 2022, the company going to its historical levels of deleveraging.

So this is leading us to feel very confident. Good news on this front, and we intend to give more visibility. We had the acquisition of Unisul. We showed this in the release, and we're going to give increasingly more visibility of these initiatives.

It's breaking up a little bit. Can you hear me?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Now, yes.

[André Tavares, executive]

I thought it was me. Were you able to hear me until the end?

[Marina Gelman, executive]

So just -- you just dropped towards the end.

[André Tavares, executive]

To get to normal levels over 2022, we're going to get to normal historical levels of the company. And as these initiatives are materializing, we're going to give more visibility, and they are at a very fast pace in terms of execution.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, André. I think now we can close our Q&A, and I have the honor, invite Marcelo to the tribute call.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Hold on. Hold on, Marina. Okay, hold on. Hold on. As you all know, last Monday, was Women's Day and all of Anima, we're about 10,446 educators, male and female, amongst them, [ 5,653 ] women, of almost 54%. And amongst those women, 545 have leadership roles. So no doubt, this is a very significant number, shows that our efforts of development of hiring more women for higher hierarchical levels are being effective. We have to maintain this evolution continuously. This is what we expect in all our society, more equity, more respect. I think that each one should make a difference and women need to have equal opportunities.

With this inspiration, I'd like to invite and pay tribute to one of our brilliant leaders, Marina Gelman, an example of female leadership at Anima for -- to make our final remarks.

[Marina Gelman, executive]

Thank you, Marcelo. I wasn't expecting such a significant introduction. Thank you. It is an honor, pleasure. I love to be here to do this work with all of you and very special to me to have this invitation and the trust to actually make our final remarks.

In these final remarks, I'd like to talk about the viewpoint towards 2020. As many people have said, is a year that has not yet ended since the phase in the world that we moved into 2020, we have the light at the end of the tunnel as Professor Evaldo mentioned on the video in the beginning. Vaccination has started, but we have not yet overcome the moment to be an education company at this time in the world is a very significant and representative thing.

And when we look at Anima and see that we went through 2020, maintaining the base of our students in the undergraduate courses in the same camp and growing with our acquisitions, this makes us feel very strong to have played a relevant role in the world that needs this role. The world needs services and companies that are looking towards making a better world, to build, to transform, to improve people's lives, to take dreams to help people to evolve and to have the space in society that Marcelo mentioned, and women in this month of March, that is being a tribute to women. As he said, it applies to all ethnicities and all pluralities, all human beings. Everybody deserves to have the same chance and opportunities as an educational company. We are very proud that throughout the difficult year of 2020, we managed to do that.

And all of this, growing the ticket. It's not that we put the company at risk because of that. So resilience was the word of 2020. How a company in 2020, like ours was able to be resilient? We focused on our core. We're talking about E2A, our academic model, our verticals, our Inspirali. We dove into what was strategic for the company more than ever. Our contingency plans were executed fastly so that we can keep on fulfilling people's dreams and keep all our students, educators and teachers and professors safe.

We were nimble in the decisions we made. Our Board with this new format, the governance or committees was able to act the necessary speed for the time. We were tied. We continued paying attention to our cash. We made 2 public offerings. We were taking care of our cash at the same time as we do not discontinue the investments that made all the difference. We made 2 medical acquisitions over these years. Throughout the pandemic, you can see that we had a great investment in technology. We were courageous enough to acquire Laureate to care for our cash without -- well, actually giving continuity to well-structured businesses.

And as Marcelo said, we learn from the crisis quite humbly. So -- and we start moving towards decisions that are going to put us in a sustainable future, long-term one, of a company that actually became public to be perpetual to continue fulfilling this dream. And what is behind all of this necessarily is the collective of people that make up the company. The plurality of people Marcelo mentioned, women, the role of women. But here, we are a company of people for people.

And at this time, we need to thank, we need to be grateful because we know what everyone is going through. We know it hasn't been easy to have social distancing, the uncertainties, little by little, restarting. But for example, we're going through a time of stepping back. This is the final sprint of winning this battle against the pandemic. And we know of the passion, the love, the dedication of everyone here and people every day and how they choose every day of being at Anima and be part of this project.

And just to close, I'd like to say that to all this Anima community, all this community that has been with us for many years from Una and UniBH, Unimonte São Judas, up to Unisul that has just joined us, and Laureate, that is about to come to us, and all these people, thank you very much for having done everything that we were able to show here in Anima 2020. Filled with energy for 2021 with a lot of lessons learned. This is it. Thank you very much. Bye, everyone, stay safe, take care of yourselves and your families.

[Marcelo Bueno, executive]

Bye-bye, Marina, André. Bye, everyone. Have a good day.

[André Tavares, executive]

Good day, and have a nice week.

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