Vitru Limited

Q3 2020 Earnings Conference Call

11/23/2020

spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the VTru Education third quarter results conference call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, this call will be recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Carlos Freitas, Vitru's CFO. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
spk00: Carlos Freitas Thank you, Pedro. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you all for our first release after our IPO. Here with me are Pedro Graça, the CEO of Vitru, Maria Karina Gonçalves, the Head of Investor Relations, and Paulo Pandini, also from the Investor Relations Department. Before we begin, I'd like to make note that, as detailed on slide two, during today's presentation, our executives will make forward-looking statements. In addition, measurements may reference non-IFRS financial measures on this call. These non-IFRS measures are not intended to be considered in the isolation or as a reconciliation of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. In our early release, as well as in the end of this presentation. A slide presentation will be part of today's webcast, which is available in our Investor Relations website at investor.vitru.com.br. I trust you all have the presentation in front of you, and now I invite you to move to page three. So, as you remember, we executed our IPO in the US two months ago, more or less, and we are very proud of this achievement, which was only our first step in our life as a liquid company. We raised a gross amount of $96 million and the net proceeds of this primary offering will be used, as we discussed throughout the IPO process, basically for M&A purposes. And as you know, this strong growth we have delivered so far has been purely on an organic basis, but we are truly convinced that it can also create value for shareholders through M&A and the deployment of our digital education skills. So, today we have active discussions with 10 position targets and we hope we'll be able to announce our first deals soon. Now, moving to page five. Actually, for here, the main highlight for this quarter. First one is that in the last census released by the Ministry of Education in Brazil, We were confirmed, again, as the number one peer player in digital education in post-secondary market in Brazil. We have been growing much faster than the market. This makes us very proud, and I'll get back to this a bit later. The second point here on the slide is that also in October, the Ministry of Education released the latest results of the NIDD of the last evaluation cycle. Our average IED was 27% above the market and the highest among the listed players in Brazil. As a reminder, as you know, the evolution of the student throughout the whole secondary education is measured by the IED. And that's why we believe the IED is the best indicator to show the real added value we have on the life of a student. Third one here on this page, and that's about intake. our intake in the current cycle grew 40% versus the same period of last year. And as a reminder, in the first semester of this year, our intake grew 30% versus the same period of last year. And also important on fourth point is that this increase in intake did not come at the expense of average ticket. That's very important. Our average ticket increased by 2%, so more or less close to the IPCA variation in the period. And this despite the sizable number of new students. I mean, as you know, we have a modular academic approach through which a new student can join us throughout the first semester, or the semester in fact. So most of them do not provide us with a full semester of readiness. So it confirms that we have been saying, we have a different market position and we deliver a different product. The fifth point here is about natural revenue. So with this increase in intake, days, and tickets, our natural revenue in digital education undergraduate, which is our main segment, our main business, increased by 32% this quarter. And again, this purely on an organic basis, which shows the compelling strength of our business model. Finally, adjusted BDA increased in the period as well. And would have increased even further, would not for the low PDA basis in the third quarter of last year, before we implemented a stricter PDA policy in the fourth quarter of last year. And I'll come back to this a bit later as well. So now on page six. As you can see, according to the data that I just mentioned, released by the Ministry of Education, the private digital education undergrad market in Brazil grew by roughly 19% per year since 2016, while we grew by 42% in the same period. Once again, purely on organic basis. So this is a market that has been expanding a lot. And in our opinion, it will expand even further in a post-COVID scenario. And within this growing and appealing market, we have grown even faster in the market. Our current market share in the latest census increased by 1.5%, so it went from 10.8% in 2018 to 12.3% last year. And this gain of 1.5 points was the strongest gain in share among all players in Brazil. And also important to mention that we gained share throughout the country. You can see here in the slide, in the chart, or in the map, that we expanded our market share throughout five regions in Brazil. And also important to highlight here, the growth in the Southeast. In the Southeast, we expanded a lot between 18 and 19. It's from 1.4% to 2.3%. This 1% increase is a lot because the whole Southeast, as you know, represents around 40% of the whole market. And here on the right, about IDD and quality. Not only we grew a lot, but also expanded our average IDD. which is now 27% above the market. One year before it was 11% above the market, now it is 27%. And again, the highest among listed players in the country. So it basically means that we improved the added value for our clients, which are the more than 240,000 post-secondary digital education students who trust their higher education to UNESL. Now on page seven, We provide here a glimpse of the growth in our student base. We have almost 300,000 students, 97% of them enrolled in digital education courses. If we focus on the student base of digital education undergraduate, which is our main business as I mentioned, you can see that we have a CAGR of 34% since 2016. And we shall maintain this substantial growth in student base of our visual education on the grad basis as our 578 expansion hubs mature over time. Finally, as I have shown before, our intake in the 2020.2 cycle, the second cycle of the year, was 40% higher than the intake in the same period of last year. The growth in the first half of this year was 30%. And this process in the last intake cycle was pretty interesting to see. On one hand, it is true that the current economic crisis does affect the willingness of some of our prospects to effectively enroll in one of our quarters. But on the other hand, we have seen a lot of the students who in principle would go for the on-campus quarters, but now are deciding more and more to go to digital education. particularly a hybrid model such as the one offered by us. This trend has just been confirmed by the recent surveys conducted by the insights about increased interest among prospects in digital education. So this fact, together with the cultural changes brought by the pandemic about working from home and buying from home and of course, studying from home, this represents a huge market potential going forward for us. And finally, just as a reminder, the latest census, last year already there were more new students and newcomers joining digital education courses than on campus. So it is poised to outpace the whole basis of students in post-secondary education in Brazil in two years from now. Now moving to page eight, we show the increase in our digital education base and in the number of hubs between September 19 and September 20. Again, throughout the country, we have grown a lot. Even in the South region, which is the first region where we were based and created, growing 12% in the South region, and then growing a lot throughout the country. Again, particularly in the Southeast, which we grew 130%, from 12,000 to 28,000. It is poised to become quite soon our second most important region in the country. The number of hubs also expanded over time. We expanded a lot in the last year. Even in the last 12 months, we expanded by almost 40% the number of hubs. On page nine, we focus on, in our opinion, the most important driver for our organic growth, which is the maturation of our expansion hubs. As I said, we have now 578 expansion hubs, which are still ramping up. And to illustrate this growth potential, we calculated this so-called theoretical maturation index, which is basically the number of students currently enrolled in the hubs divided by the future number of students in the same hubs once they reach maturity, which is usually after seven or eight years of operations. So the overall index is curved at 30%, which means that those expansion hubs have the capacity to increase their student base threefold. And also important to highlight here that this index takes into account all expansion hubs open at a given point in time. But for example, if we take only the 2018 cohort, which as you can see here in the chart, went from 34,000 in September 19 to 46,000 students, this cohort, the maturation index of this cohort, went from 36% last year to now 48%. So this is the beauty of the model. The maturation curve of this cohort is quite consistent and quite predictable, and it represents a important growth avenue at a limited execution risk. Because all those hubs are already open, all those hubs We have already the partner, the contact with the partner, the hubs are there in place. The brand equity of Unia itself is already working in our favor there in a given region or city. So this potential growth will come from the expansion of these hubs. So on page 10, We show here the expansion in the digital education undergraduate despite the changes of this year. First, substantial growth in tuition and net revenue, not only in the quarter, but also in the nine-month period throughout the year. And on the right part of the slide, we show again the increase in every ticket, reaching 263 reais per month for students, and it's important to bear in mind that there is a substantial seasonality in the dynamics of the average ticket throughout the year. So we should always make year-on-year comparisons about tickets and not compare with the previous quarters. Finally, as you can see about retention rates, this was virtually stable this quarter, despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had affected our retention rate in the previous quarters, in the previous two quarters, in fact. Here, I think, it's important to highlight two things. First, we have been growing a lot, as we know. And the dropout rate is, as we all know, much higher among new students than among seniors. So because we increased a lot the intake in the last year, and especially this year as well, we have a huge frontage of newcomers in our base. And the second important remark here is that we do not provide discounts to senior students as they renew their enrollment with us. So in the balance between student base, retention rates, and average ticket, we usually prefer to maintain our discipline in the management of our average ticket. Now moving to page 11, we can see growth in our business in every perspective. First, growth in net revenue. led by the expansion in digital education under graduate, as we have just discussed. Second, an important increase in gross margin and gross profit, led by the end of scale, a constant focus on personal cost, as well as increased digitalization throughout the three segments. And third, expansion in our just-a-BDA, although margins were temporarily affected by changes in the PDA policy, which I will explain in a few minutes. But before that, on page 12, we provide the bridge with the main variations in the net revenue between 19 and 20. As you can see, the growth in the consolidated net revenue was driven by the strong increase in our digital education undergrad segment. Such growth was diluted a bit by the reductions in both continuing education and on-campus segments as detailed on the next page. So on page 13, There was a nice growth in graduate courses, both in the quarter and the nine-month period, despite the pandemic. But there were some revenues in continuing education last year that we didn't have this year. So, for example, last year, especially in the first half of last year, we benefited from some public building contracts, which in Portuguese are licitasões. This year, with the pandemic, this type of revenue source basically disappeared, as the governments refocused their budgets. Regarding our legacy on campus segments, it has been declining over time, in line with our view for the whole sector. And it's now basically limited to courses not offered, in our case, through digital education, such as law, dental care, and psychology, for example. And we do believe that its relevance For us, we reduced even further. So now, on page 14, finally the bridge about the main variations in the JustFBA between 19 and 20. I believe there are three highlights in this slide. First one, the continuous increase in our operational leverage and the expansion of our growth margins. As you can see, the cost of service and the G&A were basically flat both in the third quarter and in the 90-month period of this year compared to the specific period of last year. And we will shed more light on this issue in the next slide. The second point here to highlight on this page are the selling expenses. As a reminder, most of these expenses are related to the taking process, which means that they are incurred to attract new students. In both third quarter of this year and the nine-month period of this year, there was an increase in selling expenses of roughly 2% of natural revenue in the period. Two reasons for that. First, this year we are at the peak of that ratio that I mentioned between intake and renewed seniors. And the second point is that the hubs do play an important role in the selling process. And some students used to go to the hub, for example, to conclude their enrollments or the basic vendor to enroll themselves. So now with the pandemic, we had to rely a bit more on digital media and increase the cost in digital media. Finally, the PDA. Last year, as a preparation for our IPO, we adopted in the fourth quarter of last year, a stricter policy for the calculation of PDA. As you can see in the chart in the bottom right, there was a substantial PDA charge in the fourth quarter of last year, which compensated the very low PDA charge in the third quarter of last year. So it means that we have a very low PDA compared from basis this quarter, but it's simply a temporary issue. And for example, if we were to normalize the PDA in the third quarter of last year by using, for example, the average PDA of 19, which was 12.6% of net revenue, As you can see here in the chart, our adjusted BGA would have grown this quarter by 31%. That's why we are providing guidance of a huge increase in the adjusted BGA for the fourth quarter of this year. Now, on page 15, we come back to the gains brought by operational leverage. The cost of services, as reported in our adjusted BGA calculation, reduced slightly, reflecting Gain of scale, optimization in personal cost, and increased effort in digitalization throughout the company, throughout the four segments, the three segments that we operate. G&A expenses, as reported in our GDP calculation, were basically flat year on year. Importantly, we were able to leverage our linear structure. And at the presentation of revenue, G&A expenses were 140 basis points lower than the same period of last year. This performance illustrates our continuous focus on maintaining a lean admin structure, which is important for our digital and agile strategic orientation. That's very important. That's a key differentiator of digital and self. On page 16, to talk a bit more about net income and cash flow. First, net income. This temporary increase in PDA that I just explained, coupled with a one-time income tax effect of 11.7 million Reais, which was related to the restructuring of our first stock options plan, impacted our Just Net Income in the quarter. By contrast, when we look at the full year, the year-to-date figures, our Just Net Income was up 47% driven by the significant expansion in our digital education undergrad segment. Cash flow from operations on the right improved substantially in the third quarter, 57% to R$52.4 million, and a substantial growth as well in the nine-month period of this year. Once again, this increase was driven by the outstanding performance of our digital education on the right segment, backed by a continued discipline in receivables management. And finally, regarding the huge improvement in cash flow conversion from operations is explained not only by this increase, this higher cash flow from operations that I just mentioned, but also the higher level of PDA in the third quarter versus the third quarter of last year, as previously explained, which is a non-cash expense. So now let's move to page 17 to talk more about the seasonality, which matters a lot. I'm going to provide you with more background info in order to help you to build your model going forward. Revenues and intakes are not distributed equally among courses. So first, starting with intake. Our courses are structured around separate monthly modules, which, as I said, enables students to enroll at any time throughout the semester. Still, we usually experience a higher number of enrollments in the first and third quarters of each year, which corresponds to the beginning of the cadenza semester in Brazil. On top of that, we typically have a higher number of enrollments in the first semester of the year than in the second semester. And this trend can be seen on the right side of the slide. As a result of what I just mentioned, we usually record higher revenue in the second and fourth quarters of each year. However, this year specifically, especially in the second quarter of this year, seasonality was not as apparent, reflecting the impact of COVID-19. I mean, our net revenue should have been slightly higher in the second quarter of this year. You can see this trend more clearly on the chart at the left of the slide. Finally, also important to highlight that a relevant portion of our expenses are also seasonal. For example, we see higher selling and marketing expenses related to the first semester, which has a higher intake, especially in December, January, and February. Finally, about guidance on page 18. Since this is the first release after our IPO, we exceptionally provide guidance in these slides on the net revenue and adjusted BDA margins for the full year of 2020. As you can see, our guidance for net revenue and annual net revenue shall be between R$210 and R$220 million, while the annual adjusted BDA margin shall be between R$26.8 and R$27.2, which represent an important growth for the last year. This is shown here on the chart on the left. Here in the chart on the right, we show again the impact of the changes in our PDA policy in the quarterly adjusted BDA numbers. Again, we had a very low PDA comparison basis in the third quarter of last year, but on the other hand, a very high PDA basis in the fourth quarter. So we still have a huge increase in our adjusted BDA numbers in the fourth quarter of this year compared to the fourth quarter of last year. And therefore, these numbers, The numbers regarding the second semesters of 2019 and 2020, here on the right, in the chart on the right, provide a more normalized vision of the just ability growth. Before we conclude this presentation, some highlights on ESG issues on page 19. I'm very happy to report that this year, in fact, two weeks ago, or last week, in fact, we knew the results. of our employee satisfaction survey, and we reached the highest rate since we started to be measured by Great Space to Work. We improved 10 points in the last four years, and this is very important for us, and we truly believe that as an education company, the satisfaction of our employees is a key driver and a real competitive advantage for us. Also, we are very engaged with corporate social responsibility. Some highlights are, first, the first National Autism Symposium in Brazil, which was sponsored by us, which discussed, among other things, the importance of including autistic people in the education process, and the How to Teach at Distance project, which was created after the outbreak of the pandemic, through which we offered free online training for public school teachers, reaching more than 84,000 features nationwide. So this ends the first part of this meeting, and we're now ready to take your questions. Operator, please open the line, please.
spk01: As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Mauricio Cepeda with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
spk00: Hello, good morning. Thank you for the good presentation and for the space for making these questions. So I think the presentation is very clear, but just two remaining questions on very small items. So we saw that there was kind of a... a depreciation that was above last year, not only in the quarter, but also in the year, if you can explain a little bit why there is this kind of change in the level of depreciation in general. And secondly, about receivables, we saw that there was a kind of, it seems to us, at least in our estimate, there was kind of an increase in circa 10 days in the receivables. If it's something related to how difficult are the collectibles, if there was any relation to the COVID crisis or anything like that. Thank you. Thank you, Cepeda, for your questions. First, regarding depreciation, there are two things here about depreciation and amortization these year insects. The first one is that there was a reduction in amortization this year because there are some good real items in our intangibles. that are finishing to be amortized. Some are even finishing this year. That's one thing. The other thing is that we have been increasing over time as well our investment, our capex and intangibles as well because we are a tech-enabled company so we do invest a lot in technology, in our platforms, our systems, for our students, for our partners, for our tutors, et cetera. So this increased over time in the last one, two years. and now these are starting to be amortized as well. Regarding depreciation a little bit, we also increased the amount of capex in the first semester of this year, not this quarter, but in the first semester of this year, because we opened several own hubs in the beginning of this year, and as a reminder, we opened a hub belonging to ourselves. When we want to establish our presence in a new market, or to really have a flagship hub to be used as a reference in that given region. So we opened more hubs than normal in the beginning of this year, and they consumed higher capex, which are now depreciating as well. Regarding receivables, we do have a controlled It is true that there was an increase in receivables a little bit compared to last year, but at the end, this was quite well controlled compared to what we could have been. At the end, I think that we have been able to deliver a different management of receivables, which reflected in our cash flow from operations. Great. Thank you for the response. Thank you so much. Thank you, Pedro.
spk01: Our next question comes from Pedro Mariani with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
spk00: Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats for the results. Thanks for the opportunity here. I have two questions. First, I was wondering if you could please provide some additional color on how the average tuition, specifically for the freshmen, in the end of that is the education performed during the intake cycle, right? So any follow will be great here, if possible. And the second question is regarding the personal cost. I mean, do you expect this cost line to continue to dilute as a percentage of revenues next year? And if yes, what should be the main drivers for these expected performance, okay? So these are the two questions, thank you. Thank you, Pedro. If I got correct in your question, your first question was tuition in the intake process, right? Yeah, it's specifically for depression, okay? Okay, so the intake process, what we have seen is that indeed the average ticket for the intake was more or less slightly higher than what we saw one year ago. So it was an increase of around 1.72% the average ticket for the newcomers as they go over time. So it is important to highlight here that the contribution of a New Zealand is not full for the full semester. So what we do measure here as well is what will be the ticket of those guys in the second semester. So what will be the recurrent average ticket that he or she will have. And this recurrent average ticket grew this semester compared to the one year ago by, again, around 2%. So this is just to show that the overall increase in tickets was not only a matter of increase in tickets for the seniors, but also a slight increase in the intake tickets as well. The second question was about cost reductions. You're right. expect further reductions or further improvements in margins coming from reduction in costs. And this will come, I think, the most important reason, or two reasons. First one is that the continued gain of scale that we will have. This is a business of scale. We do have benefits of scale as we grow bigger. and this is going to keep taking place throughout the next months or years. The second important thing, which is sometimes taken for granted, is the mix between new students and seniors. Again, as I mentioned before, this year we are at the peak of this ratio between the intake and the renewed senior base. And from next year, this ratio will start to go down, which means that we will have a natural expansion in adjusted day margins coming from that for a number of reasons. The first one is that selling expenses, as I said, are concentrated to attract new students. So over time, the amount of money divided by the net revenue will go down in this line. The second one is PDA, because PDA and dropouts are more concentrated, much higher among newcomers than among seniors. So because we are at the peak of this risk, we shall experience on a normal basis a reduction in PDA and dropout over time. And the third one is that we typically increase tickets above inflation for seniors over time. So as the percentage, the relative weight of seniors increase as well, we also shall have an increase in net revenue. So, with all these factors taken into account, we shall expect, indeed, a continued increase in equity margin in the next year. Yeah, very clear, Carlos. Thank you very much. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from Susana Solaro with Itao. Your line is now open.
spk03: Hi, guys. Good morning. We have two questions looking ahead. The first we would like to know how it's evolving the initiatives on continuing education. What should we expect going forward in terms of our selling and so from the students that are about to graduate this year and what to expect for next year and what revenue generation. That would be our first question. The second question is related to the development or the ramp-up of the new hub. We just would like to know if it's in line with the business plan or it's going above or below what we were expecting for the ramp-up for the new hub to be. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you, Adriana. So first, I want to talk about the ramp-up of the hub. The same question. The ramp-up of the hubs was very interesting this year. What we saw is that there was an acceleration in the ramp-up of the 2019 and 2018, for example, cohorts. But the 2020 cohorts, it was slower than what we thought, basically because those hubs were open, and then after one or two months, they had to shut down because of the pandemic. Okay. So, and that's why we had to increase our investments in marketing with digital media. But it is true that the pandemic affected more the new hubs than the other expansion hubs. Susana, could you please repeat your first question because I could hardly hear what you were saying.
spk03: Sorry about that. Our question in the first one was related to the continuing education development. What should we expect for next year if it's evolving as expected, and what kind of learning generation should we see for next year in terms of versus this year in terms of growth?
spk00: Okay, so continued education. So continued education is here at UNICEF is split in two main sub-seconds. And the first one, the bigger one by far, is graduate courses. but there are also other businesses such as that I said. The graduate courses grew this year, but it was impacted just after COVID because the whole selling process of the graduate courses was heavily reliant on, let's say, us. offline media and people and salespeople within the hubs selling this type of ready-reported. There was an important reduction in the intake in the second quarter of this year after the pandemic, but this trend was already reverted. The runway now is very positive and growing a lot in the last month, in fact, now in October, September. The prospect for that is very positive. changed a little bit the in-taking process for the graduate courses, which are now much more closer to what we do in the undergrad courses, so heavily reliant on digital media. So now graduate courses are again attracting a lot of new people, so we shall see an increase in the segments for next year, a huge increase for next year. The other businesses, It will depend on the government because from time to time we do participate in some public meetings last year in 2018. This year it was basically disappeared. But the trend that we see is that again, now that I say that the government realized the benefits of digital education that's gonna be much cheaper than on-campus courses. So we do believe that as for next year, there will be increased interest of these clients in promoting more digital courses in computing education. Does that answer your question, Susana?
spk01: Again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star then one. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, Our next question comes from Irma Scars with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
spk02: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could comment a little bit about the dropout rate specifically for undergraduate distance learning courses, what happened to it this quarter, and how you expect it to shape up into year end and the new year. Thanks.
spk00: Thank you, Irma. In fact, the dropout rate this quarter was virtually in line with what we had one year before, which made us very happy because we are, again, in the middle of the largest sanitation crisis in 100 years. We had an impact, an increase in dropout in the second quarter and even in the fourth quarter as well, just as a result of COVID, because it is true that A number of our students, they lost their income and lost their jobs, so they dropped out. Now, in the third quarter, what we have seen is that the level of retention rate was stable compared to last year. I guess that this is very important. The retention rate is again affected by the number of new students that we are increasingly attracting more and more over time. So it's also important to bear in mind that we have a retention rate that if we stop growing now, our retention rate will naturally increase. It's going to be very easy to increase retention rate, but we prefer to keep growing and maintaining a controlled retention rate, which again, as I said, we could have had an even better retention rate if we offer discounts in the renewal process of seniors. which you prefer not to do. And that's why our average ticket increased this score. Otherwise, it could have decreased.
spk02: Great. That's helpful. Thank you. And then a follow-up question. To the extent that you're able to get any data on that or you're seeing actual trends for students, Do you have any information on how much of your growth was being helped by students even switching from on-campus, maybe even at competitors? Obviously, where it's within your company, you can see it, but I guess these are called transfer requests. Was that relevant at all or not yet?
spk00: I guess it is beginning to be more relevant. We don't have, let's say, perfect data on that, but we do have interactions with the students and we do feel that the interest has increased among a certain population that could have thought about going to their own campus. And now, first because of reduction in income and second because of changing mindsets or elimination of prejudice against distance learning. we do see that there is increased parts of the population, of our population prospects, that are moving their decision from on campus to digital. And this was just confirmed the last week, the site released their sign of the 50 ways report that they released to the whole market, confirming that there is more and more higher and higher increase in the interest for digital education much more than the interest about on campus. So it is, I'd say, nice to assume that there is a big part of the population that will, over time, change their decision or their particular decision from on campus and then enroll with us in digital education, especially because we offer this hybrid model. Especially because we offer this model which provides a sense of community, the sense of belonging that the person, that he or she would like to get when going for an on-campus option. Now we do offer this sense of belonging, but instead of meeting five days a week, you meet with your colleague, your class, your tutor, once a week. So it's the best of both worlds, combining the flexibility and affordability of the online with the sense of belonging of the on-campus.
spk02: Great. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you, Irma.
spk01: I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Carlos Freitas, for closing remarks.
spk00: So now to wrap up with some key takeaways on page 20, please. So we had a very solid quarter and a very good nine-month number, which have positioned us well for future growth. I mean, our strategy is based on this disruptive model, a student-centric hybrid model, which emphasizes flexibility, affordability, and a strong relationship with all stakeholders engaged in our platforms. So this is proving to be efficient over time. This is proving to deliver consistent growth across all key metrics. We delivered the growth prospects that we discussed in the IPO process, and we remain focused on delivering more long-term value for shareholders by keep expanding top and bottom line. Enrollments and student base have increased a lot. Modern trends are improving, sustained by this operational leverage that I just explained. And we believe that we can build further on the momentum of the hubs as they mature and we continue to expand our base. And see this shift that Irma mentioned from on-campus to digital location. So we're very excited about the future, and we believe that we are on the right path to maximize our growth potential. Thank you very much for being here with us. A real pleasure. We look forward to meeting you all over the next months when the pandemic allows, and to provide more financial and business updates in the next quarter. Meanwhile, our investigations team is available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you again.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.
Disclaimer

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