Cogna Educação S.A. (COGN3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the teleconference to disclose the Results of the third quarter of '23 of Cogna Educação. [Operator Instructions] We inform that this teleconference is being recorded and will be available in the RI site of the company, www.ri.cogna.br. Where the complex material of our results is available. You can download the presentation also in the chat icons, even in English. [Operator Instructions] Before going on, I would like to clear that event of statements that happened during this conference regarding the perspective -- business perspectives of Cogna projections, operational targets and financial targets are the beliefs and premises of the company Board as well as information that are currently available for Cogna. Future considerations are not a guarantee of performance and involve risks, uncertainty and premises, as they refer to future events. Therefore, they depend on circumstances that may or not happen. Investors and analysts should understand that the general conditions, the factor conditions and other operational factors may affect the result -- the future results of Cogna and may lead to results that are materially different from the ones printed for the future conditions. Now I pass on the floor to Mr. Roberto Valerio, the CEO of Cogna. Who will start his presentation. Please, Dr. Roberto, the floor is yours.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being part of this conference to discuss our results of the third quarter of '23. I have here in this call, Frederico Villa, our Financial Vice President; Guilherme Melega, CEO of Vasta and Eduardo Honzák, our Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. As we generally do this call is supposed to last 1 hour. We'll give you an overview during the 40 minutes of presentation and we'll have 2 minutes from the Q&A. So I would like to invite you to see Slide #3, so that I give an overview of the quarter. We are quite happy with the results of this quarter. It's one more great quarter from the point of view of increase in revenue, EBITDA, margin EBITDA and cash generation. So all the main result lines are quite positive. And I think an important highlight here is that all lines in the 3 business units were very positive. I mean Kroton, Vasta and Saber had a consistent growth in the revenue and EBITDA and margin EBITDA and cash generation, which shows our operational capacities and the organizations with the consistency of our work. Specifically talking about Kroton. Kroton keeps growing, pushed by the strategy that we've been discussing for the last 3 years that are the hybrid and long-distance courses. This is a quarter that was quite positive in the growth of all indicators with a cycle of growth in the sales with the fifth quarter consecutive in terms of caption. And in our view, it is interesting to have consistence growth period after period because the compound growth brings positive results. We see that in numbers. So for the fifth quarter, we grew the volume of enrollment and it's consistent in the revenue of the company with a 6.5%, with an impact of growth, one after what other growing this has, between 5% and 10% a year. So this is quite relevant. So it brings impact to our revenue. So it's one more cycle that is quite good. Despite having growth cycles in the volume of fundraising and revenues, which obviously pressure drop out, even though we have increased our operations, the NPS of the students have increased cycle after cycle, and we reflect that showing the quality of the work and the reduction of the dropout rates, as you show in the future, but we are growing in fundraising for the last 3 years and we are now reducing dropout even with this growth. And it's reflected in the students basis. So it grew almost 7% over coming, BRL 1 million in the second semester. That is seasonally smaller in terms of students. We have more than 1 million students. If we include the postgraduation students, we now have more than 1 million -- 130,000 students in higher education. And obviously, it is reflecting the revenue. The revenue has growth 3.4% in this quarter. It's the fifth consecutive running the revenue growth. It's quite consistent. From the point of view of results, we've been showing efficiency gains quarter after quarter with gain efficiency in the primary margin and reduction of administrative courses and general ones with the net revenue, one more quarter with the PCLD reduced. I'll talk about it later, but it also shows the financial quality of our client base. And everything allowed us to grow 2.3% in the recurrent margin, the recurring EBITDA in Kroton. And as the last emphasis here, KrotonMed keeps growing strongly, both in revenue and EBITDA in the 9 months, as we grew 24% in revenue and 34% in EBITDA. We will explore a little bit more the impact of GBS in KrotonMed in the next slide. But I can tell you right now, that the best way to analyze the KrotonMed performance is in 9 months because we launched the special PCLD in the third quarter. I will explain it later on. So it makes the numbers in KrotonMed, a little different in the third quarter. So that's why I suggest you analyze the 9 months as the first 3 quarters in this answer. We'll talk about it later. Well, Vasta. Vasta has a wonderful growth in -- with a wonderful third quarter, pushed by the subscription products that have always been our strategy, both the course products and especially the premium ones keep growing with an emphasis to the complementary products, that in the cycle have grown 42% and our new growth is the B2G with very positive results. So we finished the cycle in '23 with this 18% versus '22. So the solution revenue is growing 42%. As I said, B2G in the quarter brought almost BRL 41 million, with the sum of the 2 quarters since we started with this new product line, it almost BRL 80 million in revenue. So it's a clear opportunity of growth. The revenue in the cycle of '23 grew 24%. And despite having pressure in Vasta and in Saber, the paper and graph courses, especially after the pandemic, a lot of the publishing houses were reduced on the market, so the price is raised. But despite this increase in prices due to costs, we can grow in EBITDA, which grew almost 26% versus '22. And the margin specifically in this semester is 3.9% better, so it's quite healthy, with a very robust growth, especially in these new product lines. Before talking about Cogna, I have to emphasize, it's a big year because President will talk about it. It had a wonderful third quarter. That was pushed by PNLD, which also shows the importance of this business and the quality of having a company with a very complete portfolio, from the basic education and to higher education, even with the publishing house. Specifically, Cogna, the result of the third quarter was the same quarter consecutive, and I'd like to emphasize the number of consecutive quarters because it shows the consistence. We want to do it simple, but well done and always and forever. So this is the attempt with the growth and the net revenue grew 19%, which is quite robust with an EBITDA growing 32% in the accumulated -- I mean, 32% in the quarter and almost 32% in the year. I would like to emphasize and we repeat that currently that our main focus is cash generation. Cash generation, after CapEx in the accumulated overcomes in BRL 113 million, the total cash generation of last year. So in 9 months, as we have the cash generation that is higher, and we know the fourth quarter is positive, especially because Saber has an important revenue in P&LD. So we are quite optimistic in the quality of the generation and the growth in the cash generation. So you see that always in the conversion from EBITDA to cash, we improve this indicator. The adjusted net profit is almost BRL 85 million, reaching a net margin of 2.1%. And now talking about leverage that is the point of interest of our investors. The leverage is reducing once again, we were below 2x the EBITDA in the previous quarter. We decreased a little bit more. Now it's 1.88x, it came from 1.98x to 1.88x with a reduction even in the net debt due to the free cash that we have. Going on to Slide 5, now talking about the fundraising, as I said, it grew 5.3% in high and low presence. And I would like to talk about the consistency of growth from the point of view of growing year after year. So the CAGR in 2020, after the pandemic and today, 3 years afterwards, we have 19% in these 3 years, which is a very consistent growth and important. And this fundraising cycle is 65% higher than our volume in the period pre-pandemic. I don't know if you know these numbers, but we had overcame the pandemic numbers in 2021, in 2023, it's 65% above the pandemic. So it's a real growth and consistent growth, but we generally say that was -- the most important is the revenue growth. So the revenue grew 6.5% above the volume. We privilege growth with the quality, the growth of the revenue. So maybe if we had more offers, more aggressive from the point of view of prices, we would have brought more volume, but I reinforce that our strategy here is to bring quality revenue that is reflected in the PCLD, especially in the cash generation to have the same comparison basis with the 3 years of 15% of CAGR. So this is also a relevant growth. From the point of view of volume per segment and revenue per segment, we have as more decrease in the ticket of a high On-Site attendance. So we see that it's due to the mix. We have a strong growth in, then in On-Site. So it affects a little ticket of On-Site attendance, but all the products, premium, online attendance have growth except On-Site attendance. And you know that our strategy is to focus on the higher On-Site attendance like medicine, veterinary, odontology. So these are courses that have less growth than other courses, courses that have migrated to distance education. So I think here, we have wonderful results quite consistent. We are quite happy with the results in this ticket. Now going to Slide 6. I'm only emphasizing the evolution of dropout, we could reduce in 1.1 point percentage, the low On-Site presence and 1.4 point percentage in high On-Site attendance. So it's not a factor of one segment or the other. It's the consistence of process system operation in the aggregated, we are decreasing from 17.9% to 16.5% compared to the previous year, showing that even with the consistent growth and the CAGR of 20% a year over the last 3 years in volume, we could reduce the dropout. And I emphasize here that this is the effect of a greater fundraising with good contracts and payments, solving voices and activities in the virtual environment of activities before recording the revenue of the students and consider them as students. And a better operation with a better client experience and even the NPS has improved consistently and the NPS and all the improvements are reflected in dropouts. Obviously, with the growth fundraising and decreasing dropout, we grew almost 7%. I emphasize that this is the tenth consecutive quarter that our student base growth. So once again, it shows health and consistency in our work. Now going to Slide 7. As a consequence of all that, the revenue is growing 8.4% in the quarter and 11.6% in the year. We like to show this slide because it has the horizon since the beginning in the first quarter of '21, when we use it to say that we would pass through restructuring process and the revenue would grow consistently. So this is the fifth one of revenue growth. The growth in the third quarter has a slight impact of [indiscernible]. But other than that, our revenue would be closer to 10% increase. Now going to Slide 8, talking about costs and expenses. It's one more quarter of growth in the gross margin. So it shows the margin with the leverage and the average leverage in Medicine, also the operational expenses improved 1.0% that is efficient gain and cost reduction. PCLD improved a lot in the quarter. I repeat that this is the quality of the revenue, focusing on cash generation. Dropout is better. Therefore, it's reflected in the PCLD. PCLD decreased a lot the quarter. We have this understanding that is more for 11%, 11.5%, then the 9.5% on the quarter, but we'll keep working to improve the results. Therefore, anyhow, the PCLD is quite positive, marketing expenses is increased consciously due to 2 reasons, one that I've been saying that is the consolidation of the national brands happen. And there is another important factor in the competition market, just like higher education, we believe that market investment is more valuable than ticket discount to bring students, both to fundraising and the long run to create and build the image of the organization and the brand. So it makes more sense to invest in market other than giving discounts. That's why we have more expenses in market. But other than that, the EBITDA margin improved 2.3 points percent, which shows healthy contribution of the other lines. Now going to Slide 9. The average term period is reduced, it's quite low. It's 47 days, about 1.5 months to receive. We improved 1 day versus '22, 8 days versus '21, but we have it under control, in terms of payables and receivables, it's quite solved, healthy, we trust the work being carried out. The coverage rate is 65%. And as I said, the percentage of net revenue, this quarter is 9.5%. But we understand that considering the macroeconomic context maybe the point of stability would be 10.5% or 11% other than 9.5%, but we'll keep working to keep this percentage of net revenue to the next quarters. The result of all that is that an EBITDA growing 17.6%, when compared to the last year, with EBITDA margin growing and in the 9 months is also growing 15.7%, reaching almost 35% of margin with an improvement in the 9 months, and I would like to emphasize the improvement in the gross margin and 1.9%, contributing to this growth of the EBITDA margin. In Slide 11, just to bring a recurrent question of our investors about the productivity per campus, we have a lot of space in the campaign already, especially if there's something new in CS or some incentive for On-Site courses, we have space to grow, but consider the optimization of our comp over the last years and the greater fundraising of high On-Site courses, especially an education premium with the labs of the campus being used like engineering and health courses. Our practices are present in the labs. Therefore, they use the campus labs. Then we have the gain productivity, since the beginning of the restructuring in 2020 and now more than 55% in productivity gain per campus. Now in Slide 12, about KrotonMed, specifically, it grew 11.5% in the third quarter. This third quarter is already affected, let's say, with the revenue reduced due to the new level of retention of FGTS. I emphasize here, the retention that we have in FGTS was 25%. That was some legal approval that we had to do that, and we know that according to the law, that was approved it will be 27.5%. So in the fourth quarter, we will have this 27.5% of retention in Texas. Therefore, it's growing 11.5%, but it's quite relevant in a business unit that still has opportunity to mature, we have about 550 spots. Our park here from the organic point of view is about 820 spots. We just received the visit of our unit in Ponta Porã that is of [indiscernible] we were graded 5 in the assessment of the college and we have a visit to authorize the maintain course. It will be in December, and it's not a course that is underlying, [indiscernible] So we understand this process will keep going on and in '24, we will have one more college, receiving students besides they are the ones that Stu can grow organically. So we mature in about 820 spots in 2027. So from the EBITDA point of view, the third quarter, just to make it clear, its decrease specifically because between February and July, I mean, yes, yes, in February and July, the delta between what we provisioned and the 25.5% that we used as the basis, we launched in the PDD in this quarter. So it's impacting the quarter specifically, it should be distributed over all month, as I mean, from February to July, but we couldn't know. We couldn't have the final definition. So we adjusted that in the third quarter. That's why I said the best way of analyzing the performance of KrotonMed is to analyze the accumulated of the year because we can see clearly that the EBITDA growth is relevant to almost 34%, even with a margin gain of 44% in the 9 months of '22 to 47% in '23. Therefore, proving that this is a vertical with a potential for growth that is quite relevant to our future. Having that said, now I pass on the floor to Guilherme Melega, that is the CEO of Vasta, for his comment about it.

Thank you, Roberto. I'll start with Slide 14, talking about the net revenue of Vasta. So the third quarter, we had BRL 258 million of net revenue. It's a growth of 36.6%, over the same quarter of last year. So the third quarter, historically is weak, is improving a lot with the continuous growth. And with the new business segment, that is the B2G that in this quarter, we have BRL 41 million extra in this front. In the revenue of the cycle and remembering that the third quarter is the end of our commercial cycle, it starts in the fourth quarter of the previous year and finished in the third quarter of the current year. So this is the best quarter for us to analyze the performance of our business. And our net revenue in total of the commercial cycle is finishing BRL 1.437 billion, 24.2% over the previous cycle. In Slide 15, we have the details of this revenue, starting with the first graph with the subscription products that represent basically 85% of our revenue. So in the Subscription revenue, we reached BRL 1 billion -- more than BRL 1 billion with 18% growth, emphasizing the complementary solutions, that's Stu growing, penetrating the basis of schools. And also penetrating schools that are not in Somos basis. So they have their own life and not only there. So we reached 42.5%. The systems are still performing well with a 19% growth. I would like to emphasize here that this growth of 18% is some into the historical growth in this level. So over the last 4 years, I mean the previous in the 3 years after IPO, we have a CAGR of 22%. So it's quite robust in our growth in the subscription model. In the total revenue, I would like to emphasize the growth in the B2G, and in this cycle, it brought BRL 81 million, and the non-subscription model also grew 11.5% with emphasis here to [indiscernible], that has a new unit in Serino Paulo with an increase in the ticket. Now going to Slide 16, I'll get into details of the costs of Vasta. Please remember that we grew 24.2% in the revenue and the cost total is 23%. There is a margin gain in the company, with costs growing slower than the revenue. I'll analyze here with the table on the right, that analyzes the cost as a percentage of revenue. So we mitigate the impact in the volume increase of costs. So we had an increase in the percentage -- cost percentage in our CMV, that we mentioned a lot over the last quarters. It's an increase in paper, publishing house and freight, and it -- it is 2.6% growth -- increment. Additional to that, we have more acknowledgment in the PCLD of 1.5 points percent. Over that 0.8 points percent is a nonrecurrent event of acknowledging of the judicial recovery of a big client and 0.7 points percent remaining is the increase considering the macroeconomic condition in the country. So we did an increase in PCLD. Therefore, analyzing the rent of this PCLD. We believe it will be about 3%, which is a very low PCLD and one of the lowest of the industry. Offsetting the impact, we have the rationalization of the operational expenses with our revenue resulting in a reduction of 4.5 points percent of the operational expenses. That's why the total costs of -- in expenses of the company reduced 0.7 points percent. Now going to EBITDA in Slide 17. More revenue growth with less cost reduction means a margin gain. So as I said, the increase in seasonality and the revenue in the third quarter made our EBITDA in the third quarter, leave 11.5% to 25.8% with an increase of 6.1% to 10%, a 123% growth in our EBITDA of the quarter. And in the cycle, which means the end of the commercial cycle of '23, we reached BRL 380 million, almost 26% of growth in our EBITDA. And I would like to emphasize here that the cycle that is finishing makes us very proud to deliver growth in revenue, EBITDA and cash and open 2 new possibilities of growth, 1 that is the B2G with BRL 80 billion and they are the ones that will come here that is the start of our bilingual franchise, that is quite good and will represent a high level of growth in the future. And in the cycle that is starting, we keep our trust team, maintain the growth that we are having in the level of 20%, and we believe this is the pace of our company in terms of growth, increasing the margin so that we don't -- because we don't see the same impact in cost that we have for the next year. Now I pass on the floor to Fred to continue the presentation.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Melega. Good morning, everyone. I'll start the presentation here about Saber. Please remember that Saber means the national plan of diabetic material red balloon and other business. Now going to Slide 19, about the financial highlights. The main one is the wonderful quarter in '23 from the point of view of revenue and EBITDA. In the third quarter, we had a growth in the revenue of 62%, we reached BRL 186.6 million in revenues in the third quarter. And in the accumulated 9 months from September -- until September '23, we reached almost BRL 406 million, with a significant growth of almost 57%. Now leaving the revenue, the main fact that we had in our business and go into the recurring EBITDA and margin, please note the best way to see that is the accumulated in 9 months. So we reached an EBITDA of BRL 68 million, with a growth compared to the same period last year of 94%, which shows -- then in terms of numbers, the result is strong and we demonstrate this result strongly in the third quarter, and we are here prepared for the fourth quarter. And please remember that we had again market share of 7.7 points percent, in the P&LD. And the purchase program of elementary school 2, which became the best one and our publishing houses, [indiscernible] there. And it's important to mention to you that this impact in the market share gains is translated into revenue and EBITDA, mainly here or almost totally here in the fourth quarter of '23, which shows that our business Saber going to be quite positive in the next quarter. Finishing Saber and now going to Cogna. Starting in Slide 21, Cogna is, let's say, the consolidator of the growth of our 3 main business units. As Roberto mentioned, he said KrotonMed, Somos and Vasta and I mentioned Saber. So we had growth in the revenue in the quarter of 19.3%, reaching BRL 1.217 billion, the cumulative of the year, we had a growth of the revenue of 17.4%, reaching BRL 3.986 billion and going to the EBITDA in the quarter. We had a growth of about 32%, reaching BRL 306 million in EBITDA, with an EBITDA margin of 24.1% in the accumulated of the year. An EBITDA growth of about 20% with the margin gain of 0.6 points percent. Now moving on to Slide 22. This is the focus of the company to generate operational cash. This is our homework and it shows not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of cash because the interest is money, how we generated cash in the quarter. So we finished the operational generated in the third quarter of '23, with BRL 254 million, a growth of 37% in the same period last year. We had a growth and we reached BRL 187 million, and in the period of 9 million -- 9 months. We reached BRL 653 million with the same growth of 36%. And it's worth mentioning that in the 12 months, I mean, the 12 months of last year, we had a cash generation of BRL 540 million. So we overcame that in about 21% operational cash of the whole year last year, which reinforces our commitment in having operational cash generation for the fourth quarter in a strong way and our commitment to deliver the guidance for '24 of BRL 1 million, as we said in 2020. Now going to Slide 23, about the net profit and the adjusted net profit. We had the adjusted one positive of BRL 85 million versus a loss in the 9 months that lasted in '22. And the net profit we had last year, in the 9 months of last year, losses of BRL 325 million. And now by the end of this year, we had -- we reduced this loss to BRL 95 million. And this difference between the net profit is basically the amortization of tangibles that is BRL 180 million. Now going to the final part of the presentation, talking about leverage and debt. This is a topic that we are paying a lot of attention, especially due to the macroeconomic situation of the Brazilian market and the international markets with high interest rates. But the important message is that we reduced the net debt of the second quarter -- from the second quarter to the third quarter, we reduced BRL 55 million. And our leverage reduction, we reached in the net debt EBITDA 1.88x, an improvement regarding the second quarter of '23 and a recurrent improvement since '21. And I'll go to Slide 25 to have my final part here. I'll show you that we keep committed. And more than that, we are delivering results in expenses reduction. We have a debt of BRL 4.4 million minus the cash amount in September 30 of BRL 1.3 million, a debt of BRL 1.3 million. We rebought in debt [indiscernible] about BRL 1 million with a positive impact in 9 months of about BRL 11 million. We reduced the net debt BRL 35 million or 1.7%. And the company keeps its ability to generate operational cash. And we don't need to have fundraising -- new fundraising unless the ones that we've been having in our pipeline to pay our future debt. With that, I finish the wonderful results that we present here in our business units and which even include Cogna. And I pass on the floor to Roberto Valerio.

Thank you, Fred. Well, as final considerations in Slide 26, in Kroton, it was the 5th consecutive cycle of growth in revenue and volume. And we believe that with all that we are doing, we'll keep growing in a consistent way. We have a lot of initiatives being implemented, the relaunch of Anhanguera brand, new distribution channels, the launch of new courses. We have a lot of interesting points here in this funnel of digital market. So we still believe that the initiatives and opportunities that we see ahead of us will support the growth in the revenue and volume of fundraising cycle-after-cycle. You also see in the gross margin, the thesis that we've been defending for 3 years that hybrid and digital courses as domains and course improved the gross margin due to the important leverage and the quality of the fundraising is reflected in dropout and PCLD, we have no reason not to believe that we'll keep delivering this result. So being assertive in fundraising and enrollment and dealing with students will make us improving the results in terms of margin. And obviously, as I mentioned in other moments, today, we have 112 companies, many of them with long-term contracts. As the contracts are finishing, we change the addresses, reduce the size and gain in efficiency and reducing costs. And it doesn't impact EBITDA directly, but it helps the cash generation, and we'll keep doing that over the years. So from the point of view of Kroton, we are very sure that we'll deliver the growth that we've been having over the last 3 years. Vasta, as Guilherme mentioned, the net revenue is still growing with wonderful initiatives and good opportunities for growth, increase in the penetration of the premium and complementary systems. B2G, we have a lot of new things being appearing. So we are quite sure that we'll grow in this business unit. And if this year that we had a lot of pressure in terms of cost we could gain in March, then we understand that the margin gain will be relevant again next year when the main costs will be recomposed. Saber, as Fred mentioned, is also very positive in this market share gain that we have in [indiscernible] will allow consistent purchase for the next year. So the revenue we'll be receiving a lot. And obviously, it makes us very aware of the growth capacity and the value generation with Cogna with 90% of growth in the semester, which shows the potential of the company assets. And if well coordinator and complementary, they can generate a lot in the year with a growth in EBITDA and cash generation, bringing a lot of value to the company. We are reducing the leverage, which generates even more cash so that we can reinvest or if we have a net profit, then we will start distributing that to our shareholders. And from the point of view of liability and management, the team is constantly having a lot of liability and management actions to reduce the cost, and we'll keep doing that with quality. So I reinforce here my optimism regarding the company, it's not only in my words, but the results are here to show the quality of the team and the asset and how much we can deliver in terms of value to society, having quality products for education and helping many Brazilians to grow. With that, I finish my presentation. And I invite you for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] So now let's go to the first question from Lucca Marquezini from Itau BBA.

We have 2 questions. First, we have heard that in the competitive scenario, it's more aggressive in the second quarter for fundraising. Please tell me how you see that and is it high or low? And the second question regarding the PCLD in Kroton. With a big drop that may be is not recurrent, but I would like you to comment on sustainability and PCLD and what would be the recurrent level, it would help a lot?

Lucca, thank you for the question. So I'll answer the one about the competitive scenario and Fred will respond the PCLD. I think the higher education market is competitive by natural -- by nature with many players that are structured big and with resources. I wouldn't say that it's more aggressive. I would say that the aggressiveness is the same as the last 2 or 3 years if we compare with the first cycle, maybe a little bit more aggressive, but I wouldn't say that we are back to the high aggressive scenario. My direct answer would be that from the point of view of competitive scenario, it's stable, but it has always been quite competitive. I reinforce that we try not to enter in the price wars mainly in terms of offer because it disturbs the ticket and end up bringing poor quality students, and we focus on revenue growth. So obviously, if we were more aggressive from the point of view of offer, we would bring more volume, but we are very focused on growing the revenue. Fred?

Thank you, Lucca, for the question. About the coverage rate, historically and analyzing what would be PCLD overall, we've always been saying about 2% this quarter would have the seasonality effect. And what is this effect? Well, it happens in the third quarter because this is a period of renegotiation of the students, re-enrollment of students. And we had a positive effect in the cash, which takes into consideration and reflects the PCLD, and our PCLD reached 9.5%. What I understand that is the most correct way to analyze the future is think about 10.5%, 11%, Roberto mentioned that before. But in fact, if in the fourth quarter, we have the positive cash effect, then PCLD will have a reduction in this behavior. But today, analyzing and adding plans and what happened in October, I believe it will be in 10.5% and 11%. This is the best way to look at it.

The next question is from Jessica Mehler from JPMorgan.

Sorry, my mic was off. We have 2. First, how do you see the regulatory environment in online education? Are there relevant restrictions in this segment? And what would be the impact to Cogna? And the second question would be related to the marketing line. How do you see this line in '24? I mean, will we see a high level or a reduction in this line?

Jessica, thank you for the questions. I'll answer the first one about the regulatory environment in online education and then I pass on the floor to Fred. Regarding online education, we've been following the discussions that are made, especially some ideas of the minister. I would divide my answer in 2 parts. Well, Brazil has 5,500 cities, less than 1,001. I guess, not even 700 cities have the courses being discussed in the public consultation that are especially in the health courses. Just a few cities offer the courses on site, which means that if we include online education, we would consider about 2,000 seats a little bit more maybe. So try to give a simple explanation. We have 5,500 cities and a little bit more than 2,000 offering the courses. If there is a restriction, the courses are forbidden, maybe we would have 600 cities offering the same course on site and I think it's very bad for society and for Brazil. We need these professionals, especially in the countryside where the healthcare system and even the open companies are building hospitals and clinics. And in my understanding, and this is how we believe, the discussion should be much more related to how to carry out that. I mean, if the Ministry of Education understands that we have -- we need to have more quality and not only Cogna, but the system as a whole. So we need to discuss the rules, I mean, more presential labs or other things than simply blocking the courses. And to the Brazilian considering that the courses, when the student is graduated, they have a good payment above the average. So I think it has a social impact in terms of healthcare and in terms of payment and even tax for government that is quite relevant. So it should be taken into consideration. I think this is the point that we have to present as an argument. And in the end, I believe that we should go towards the regulation in a different way from the point of view of having the courses instead of forbidding them. This is my belief, what I defend and what we've been defending here. But I think the public consultation is open, people are giving their opinions and we'll keep participating in this discussion. And then to respond from the point of view of impact, I would separate that in 2 parts. I mean, online education is part of our strategy. So it deals with an important item to us, but our company is diverse. So we've been a company 100% in higher education. Today, 65% of our business is higher education. And part of it is distance education and part is the healthcare courses. So it obviously has an impact, but it's less relevant than in the past. But I'll reinforce, Jessica, that society and associations and even the ministry should think about how to regulate the courses and how they can have quality instead of simply preventing them. I mean, maybe they can be a little bit more expensive, but they don't make the business unviable. I guess, my answer took too long because the topic is complex. But I would like to pass on to Fred.

Okay. Jessica, thank you for your question that is about what would be the predictability of expenses in marketing. Well, in the third quarter, we printed sales in BRL 256 million with a growth of 45%. This growth happens mainly due to the investments that we are having in market -- brand consolidation and the investment to bring better students to our base. So I don't believe that this is how we model our business to '24. We believe in new growth. We modeled a lot in line with expenses in marketing '24 and '25 in our forecast. And what we are showing what we have in '23. And as Roberto mentioned, we prefer to invest in market to have good students instead of giving discounts. And I think the strategy is quite correct because we delivered that in EBITDA and in operational cash. So it shows that the strategy in fact is the correct one.

The next question is from Lucas Nagano from Morgan Stanley.

We also have 2. The first one regards the fact that has a concentrated impact in the third quarter with BRL 8 million in revenue reduction and BRL 14.5 million in [indiscernible]. And looking ahead with the 27.5, what would be the recurrent impact from now on? Would it be BRL 18 million? And the second question is regarding a more strategic topic, but regarding the spread of technologies of artificial intelligence. If you -- I mean, what is your approach regarding that? Did you map where it can be used to improve internal productivity or improve the product? Did you quantify the potential of this technology in terms of cost and revenue?

Lucas, I'll start responding and then I'll pass on to Fred for him to continue the answer. Well, I can say that we are very engaged in understanding, studying and applying not only regeneration, but artificial intelligence and machine learning and automation in many of our processes, not only the administrative ones, but also the educational ones. We have constant meetings in the agenda. We also have an agenda of education with our leadership to discuss the opportunities of using artificial intelligence and the tools that are being developed for the leaders to use so that they can learn how to use and implement to their processes so that we don't have a centralized AI team, but the competence and the interest is used by every leader in every part of our business and every stage and every system and every capability that we have. We like to allocate project manager. When we have a project, we have a project manager to lead the initiative and we believe this is very important. And I tend to say that I am the business manager of this topic in the company. I dedicated a good part of this -- of my time to talk about it and discuss with the teams. I have regular meetings with the group of work here. I wouldn't like to talk about the initiatives to strategic topic, but we have back office initiatives and also an automation processing and also initiatives in studies about how to apply that to education to generate more engagement, higher rates of performance and better training of the students and even greater competence on how to teach the content and produce content because a company -- education company just like us produce a lot of content. We have publishing houses. We have opportunities for that and to use content for images and texts and objects of learning. So without giving strategic information, this is a topic that we are very well engaged, and I participate on that personally. Fred, FGTS, now you can talk about it.

Yes. Regarding that, we made it quite clear in the release, the impact on the revenue, the net revenue in Kroton that happened of BRL 8 million in the quarter. This way, the same impact of BRL 8 million will also happen in the fourth quarter. That's it, fewer and simple.

And it reflects the limit of 27.5 or not?

I'm sorry, I had a problem -- an operational problem here. Yes, with the limit of 27.5 to the same BRL 8 million.

The next question is from Yan Cesquim from BTG Pactual.

I would like to make 2 questions, one about Vasta and one about Saber. About Vasta, I imagine that maybe you talk a little bit deeper on the perspectives of the new cycle during the Cogna Day, but I would like to know if you can share some perspective, even a qualitative one about how the sales process was in this new cycle when a little bit of the process of what you have in perspective to B2G as it is a new initiative and we are still trying to understand a little bit of the revenue dynamics of this initiative. This is about Vasta. And about Saber, I would like to understand a little bit of your perspective on the impact of paper costs for the fourth quarter and to next year? What do you have in terms of perspective?

Well, Yan, thank you for your question. I'll let Guilherme answer and then Fred can answer too.

Well, Yan, let me give you the perspective. We are quite happy with the commercial situation for '24. Remember that the last 4 cycles our CAGR was 20.5%. So I think 20% is always our growth boom. We still see the same possibilities of keeping this growth and complementaries that are quite fast also have a very low penetration at school. So the main growth vectors still has a lot of penetration space. And in Cogna Day next month, we'll give the guidance, but November is still a very important month. And we don't expect any change in this trend that we have in performance of the last 4 cycles. And regarding B2G, in fact, it is new to everyone, even to us. We are quite happy with the beginning of this new segment. But it is a segment that we hope to have great news next year, but the contracts with the public area are in the year, they are performed differently from the private sector that we celebrate the contracts the previous year. In the public sector, we signed the contract as we won the bidding and it is for the same year. So it's very difficult to have this in advance with this visibility. But we hope that what we built this year are renewable in the new baseline so that we can grow next year. So as we have the news and new contracts, we'll tell you that.

Okay. Fred here. I'll talk about the paper costs, but it's important to remember that it reflects in Saber, but it also reflects in Somos in terms of books. We are negotiating over the last 2 months about the paper costs. And today, our perspective is a reduction in the paper costs. It's still a single-digit, but different from last year in which we had the growth in the paper cost of about 20%. And so here we are foreseeing cost reduction in both companies, Saber and Somos.

Our last question is from Mirela Rodrigues de Oliveira from Bank of America.

I would like you to talk a little bit about the receivables because it's an indicator that was improving in the last quarters, but this one was flat. So we would like to understand better if there is something special in this dynamic. And the second question that is a little bit more about '24. How you believe the opportunities of growth may come from considering this is a stronger year in '23, specifically for the Kroton demand?

Well, Mirela, thank you for the questions. Regarding the receivables, I think we have a very efficient level of receivables. We are adding 47 days -- this is basically 45 days from the due date, especially for the high education audience that deals with Kroton. I guess, we potentially are able to keep receiving and improving. But this drop is lower because we are at a good level, especially if we compare to the other players on the market. When we talk about a business that we have in many schools, maybe the due date, the deadline is shorter, but we don't have the schools, especially the premium ones, we have parents paying well, but we believe that this indicator is quite healthy and having 1 day less is quite positive. Regarding Kroton, I think the market of higher education is a market that grows in not so big rates and Kroton is gaining efficiency and productivity in the polls and the units and being able to have new distribution channels, bringing new students, not only digitally, but also in channels like [indiscernible] that is our affiliate program that is quite similar to what [ Natura ] does and [ Avon ] do in Brazil. And we have an autonomous team of people knowing the families they are close to the families and they end up having new enrollments and we have a better portfolio, not only because we have graduation, post-graduation and professional courses and technical courses, but we believe that the increase in the portfolio, the diversity of the distribution channels, they gain inefficiency in the posts that are still maturing. I would say that 50%, not even mature yet. So we see an opportunity for growth despite the sector as a whole doesn't have so big increased raises. We see a lot of opportunities. That's why we trust our ability to grow in the fundraising for the next years.

So the Q&A session is over. And now, I would like to pass on the floor to Mr. Roberto Valerio, CEO, for his final words.

Well, I thank you all for your participation in this meeting. I would like to congratulate our whole team for the hard work for us to take quality education to all Brazilians. Congratulations to you with wonderful results that are a reflection of our effort. We are a big team, congratulation to us. Our IR team is available for anything that you need. Bye, bye.

So the teleconference of results regarding the third quarter of '23 of Cogna Education is over. The Department of Relations with Investors is available to answer any other questions or doubts that you might have. Thank you all participants, and have a good afternoon. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]