Ânima Holding S.A. ($ANIM3)

Good morning, everyone. We're just waiting for everybody to join. So, we're going to wait a few minutes so that we can start our call. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Anima's S.A. First Quarter 2026 Results. [Operator Instructions] I'm Carina Carreira, Investor Relations at Anima. And presenting today, we have Paula Harraca, our President; our CEO, Atila da Cunha; our Chief Financial Officer; Tiago Moraes, Chief Financial Officer at Inspirali. This presentation is being recorded and will be made available later today on the company's Investor Relations website where all the materials for the earnings release can be found at the end of the presentation. And before passing the word or giving the word to Paula, we want to share how -- well, we have Paula to make the presentation.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here with us. It is with great eye that we share the results of the first quarter of 2026. The results that, as you know, we make a point about setting the context is the result of collective effort of 15,000 educators, and I'd like to thank for their delivery, their commitment to the service of our students. We had a first quarter that was very solid, consistent and very good. And those figures that we are sharing with you confirm our strategy of sustainable growth and that it is successful. The growth in our revenue is the main highlight of this quarter. We generated BRL 1.12 billion in consolidated net revenue with a growth of 7.7% regarding previous year, great highlight to our intake in course undergraduate that allowed us to grow at the same level and attain for the first time, the stability in the student base. This is a very relevant fact to us. And we've done this being able to get increase in the ticket in all segments. This is a very important highlight for our core segment where we were able to get this intake process with a ticket growth of 11%. We also highlight that this revenue growth is translated into profitability that grows 4.3%, reaching BRL 376 million in the first quarter. Net income that has grown 11%, reaching BRL 106 million in this quarter. Also, cash generation that is solid that allows us to deleverage once again, our company and allows us to continue consolidating the results strategy and sustainable growth based on sound results, and it makes us confident that we are on the right track to go into details on the numbers and our results. I call here our dear Copilot, our CFO, and I'll come back for our final remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Paula. Good morning, everyone. I'd also like to thank and congratulate all our educators for the consistency of such results. They have been built by millions of heart and minds that daily dedicate themselves to our main purpose, which is transforming the country through education. Moving on to our numbers. I think to start, Paula, and everyone, all the guests that we have here, it's important to highlight the intake growth and ticket growth, growing one or the other is already an accomplishment to grow on both sides this way. I'd say it's very powerful. We delivered growth in the on-campus and also robust growth in the semi on-campus, very sound ticket growth. And this is the result of a lot of work on strengthening the brand commitment to our students, investing in technology, enhancing the enrollment processes, better conversion of candidates to enrollment. More efficient use of our structure of marketing and publicity, leading us to get great results. These results led us to grow our revenue 10% revenue, and we have a stability in the core student base. We had certain drops in the previous quarters, so we stopped that, and we come back to creating a positive scenario for this indicator. This revenue growth with margin stability that we have been working with for some time, we seek to have top line growth and that drives operating results in a robust 10%. The results show greatness in our core segment that has been adapting over the past years and more recently so from the regulatory framework materialized the hypothesis we always believed in, which is there would be the migration of demand that was quite important from the distance to digital to on-campus and hybrid. And this is materializing. As we can see on the next slide, we see a drop in the student base from distance learning that is actually having a ticket growth, 6.4% above inflation, important in this challenging scenario of change with the regulatory framework, we delivered growth -- actually a drop of 5.5% in net revenue on digital distance learning. I'd like to draw your attention to something that is in important. So if you see, we have a drop of BRL 4 million and the growth in on-campus and hybrid is BRL 60 million. This shows in equivocally all the work in our expectation that the regulatory framework would actually match and meet our strategy. And lastly, these results, the impact our operating results in a negative way, especially in terms of publicity and marketing, leading to a drop in the segment of about BRL 6 million, which is totally offset in our core segment. I'd like to turn over to Tiago so that he can talk a bit about Inspirali.

Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you once again sharing the results of first quarter of our Inspirali. Starting with the ticket in academic education. We have a growth of 1.8% influenced by greater volume of FS in our student base and student base that grew 7.3% in the quarter with academic education growing 4.3% result of an excellent process of intake leading to a very high rate of occupation and continuous education keeps growing by 2 digits, great discipline in the execution of this business unit. The result of this ticket and the base in the net revenue is 6.1%. When we look at the operating result, we had specifically a reduction of 2.2%. And here, we have an effect of greater investment in partnerships and agreements, the result of what we have been talking about of greater investment in the quality of our courses and phasing some early payments of some investments in the marketing we made leading to the specific reduction of 2.2%. It's worth mentioning that we are very disciplined and consistent in the Inspirali project. And over the year, we keep working hard to resume this margins and deliver quite consistently as we've always done. I turn back to you, Atila. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Tiago. Congratulations to all the Inspirali team for the consistency, quality of results that once again, they delivered to our ecosystem. And lastly, consolidating all our business segments, we delivered a solid number of net revenue growth, 7.7%, showing real consistent growth. The EBITDA growth slightly lower, pressured by some specific issues in the quarter related to publicity and advertising, we have a slight drop in margin, major EBITDA growth, nevertheless. And as a result of that, we see also growth in the net income attributable to controlling shareholders driven by the acquisitions we made of minority shares in the past 2 quarters in the UFG and SASE driving the growth of net income higher than EBITDA because we consolidated a greater part of our results. This shows consistency, quality, robustness of our ecosystem. Next, we still see our results very much pressured by financial expenses. We see -- I always say that it hurts to see these numbers as Brazilians. We work hard so that we can have better conditions to allow this reduction. But as executives, we have to do our part. We do it with great respect to the money of students and shareholders seeking efficiency, trying to improve our operating indicators so that we can attend despite high Selic rate -- our interest rate, we want to grow our cash to have a business that is increasingly more robust. If we can be really robust with the Selic at this level, imagine when it drops. I think it's important to highlight that we've had over this quarter a higher impact of expenses -- so Praval, well, displacement between quarters. We have enhanced certain processes, and we've been able to anticipate the contract renewals. And with that, we have higher financial expense in this quarter than the first quarter of last year. This should be offset as we put it on the release when we make our semester evaluation. On the next slide, we move on with our philosophy of keeping CapEx, some of the net revenue. We keep investing in technology as our main focus of enhancement, both to drive top line and several measures have been made within our Matolamis project with enrollment through WhatsApp, AI for campaigns, performance panels with lots of technologies. We have several resources, new resources that we added to our ecosystem that enable us to reap such results of improving intake, efficiency and the results of very intelligent use of technology as a business lever. I think it's important to highlight on this next slide, as it's been said, even with a higher Selic interest rate quarter-over-quarter, we deliver cash generation that is higher. This is a very simple chart. You can do it on a piece of paper. Quarter-over-quarter, we removed how much we've done in terms of investments in a minor share at FAE, and this is the result of what we have generated cash of BRL 134 million, 15% higher than we generated last year. This is not a negligible number. Shows great robustness to our business, soundness and the ability of the company to generate cash, which has been objective of many reports of analysts. And once again, it is confirmed. It's a very strong company in this dimension. Moving on. This strength is translated into our liquidity. We closed the quarter with robust cash position, more than enough for our payments that are short-term, certainly reassured and confident. We, as you know, the sales of this operation, we have to reassure everyone so that we have our operations focused on what matters, the students. The financial backstage is sustainable, sound and our educators to do what is best for our students. This gives us great confidence, solidity to our associates, students and also our investors and creditors. We follow our consistent trajectory of reducing leverage. And we see in the yearly view, we see this indicator showing how healthy it is. It shows our ability to follow our trajectory of reducing or deleveraging and also making investments. We made investments in the past quarters in acquisition of minor shares or stakes, and we are working on shareholder remuneration, our capital structure, as we say, aims at balance these 3 dimensions: paying debt, making investments and remunerating our shareholders. This is how we have been following on. I turn back to you, Paula, so that we can have our final remarks.

Thank you, Atila. Perhaps the main view that I should share with you here is that the history, those numbers are telling the story of a team that is back to growing in a consistent way that has defined the strategy in the past and you know the front and we can go into detail. There are clear strategic choices, a commitment and great confidence in carrying out what we have committed to deliver and an ability to learn fast to adjusting our route to being a learning organization, a living system that learns all the time. We are on the growth route. We celebrate a process of success of intake as well has shown in numbers, 7.7%, 11% ticket growth -- the number makes it tangible and shows that we are on the right track, prioritizing the revenue growth as a consistent direction. We keep wide open eyes with reducing expenses, putting the money of students investors where it generates value to the company, having the experience of students as the main north. This is where we have our value virtuous circle. That's where it's born. We want to have increasingly incredible experiences. It's not just marketing. It depends on the whole of Anima. This commitment with quality education is something we don't let go. This is nonnegotiable. It's translated to have the 3 words. Yesterday, we celebrated 23 years of Anima and adding the 25 brand institutions that make up our ecosystem, we have 977 years of history in the Brazilian territory. It's almost a millennium. The size of our legacy and responsibility we take care of every day, and we take care of this legacy with the mentality of a learner. Every day is a day 1. We enterprise, we learn, we give our best. And Mauricio, one of the founding partners taking care of medical schools is doing a great job. He said there are 3 elements we cannot let go, which are the essence of Anima, intention with intention and integrity. Intent, intention and integrity. So, purpose that takes us or gets us out of our beds every day, intention or intention, intentiveness. This is what we deliver every day, every day, I guess the price, shining or bright eyes, unique dedication to the team. And this integrity perhaps is the most important and tangible asset of Anima that I take care most. This is what I believe most in my life. My personal and professional life is to keep -- seek the maximum coherence in terms of what we feel, speak and do this builds confidence and trust. Our value delivery is trust with students, professors, investors and society. So, thank you very much for being here with us. And now I turn back to Atila and Carina for the Q&A session that we're going to have the opportunity to listen to you. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] The first one is from Marcelo from JPMorgan.

I have 2. First, if you could comment a bit more, you mentioned some operating issues linked to return to classes. Can you expand that when we should expect some normalization if it's already happened? Second question, you mentioned there is room to recover margin at Inspirali. What are the main levers? And how should this take place?

Thank you for your question Marcelo, we wanted to bring this explicitly to you in a paragraph in the management message, this is part. The challenges are part of growth. We found the route, and we implemented many changes simultaneously. And we started observing in the first quarter an increase in intake. We have fresh men in the base, more mix in the semi person, and we had certain challenges as we found them. We heard. We tried to understand what was happening. And as I said, many changes happening simultaneously systems challenge, people that take care of systems. So, we started to adjust our route and corrected it. So, we understand Marcelo, that we are on the right track that we're going to have some impact in the second semester, but nothing that does not allow us to deliver solid and major growth as we are achieving this first quarter. So, we've had -- well, to sum up, in a nutshell. As important as intake to us is the retention. So it's important. We had operating challenges sing and several elements in-house. They are our problems, and we found the internal solutions that allowed us to act fast in our fixes. And what is important here, well, people make mistakes, but what is important as a go-keeper that does not tolerate to make mistakes is to learn from mistakes. We need to deal with important challenges that we are more mature, more robust bringing AI to some internal process planning offerings that allows us to go back to this growth strategy to be even better. And having said that, we corrected the mistake, we are in the recovery route, and we'll keep on growing from now on. And I bring Tiago to go into more details, Marcelo.

Thank you, Marcelo. If we look at quarter-over-quarter, if we normalize the effect that benefited us first quarter last year and also somehow we normalize the curve of our investment in margin as we had initially planned, we this signal of margin. So what we have for the year, and we always reinforce that here, better use of our resources to the benefit of students. This is what Inspirali has been doing and will continue doing is linked to great discipline with all the other expenses and investments. Once we make those adjustments and we follow our pace of discipline and student focus, we tend obviously to deliver a year that is close to the margin that we have been mentioning. We have all the levers mapped out. We are clear as to what we have to carry out by year-end, and we're very confident in this delivery.

Just a follow-up. When you talk about delivery of year, the margin, can you give us an idea? Would it be similar to last year? What have you been -- what do you mean? The idea is to keep the same consistency. We'll certainly work to resume this percentage, but to deliver closer there number keeping. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Tiago.

Marcelo, well, I think we have this license in the Portuguese. Let me clarify since speaking on the first quarter, we saw this increase in dropout. We'll see some in the second quarter, but not second semester. Speaking of first semester, first semester, we're growing more than last year, more the growth that we had last year. So, we had an excellent intake challenge, return classes. We put our energy correct to the root. We have still no impact of that in second quarter, but closing the first semester very good. This is our outlook, and this is what we are aiming at.

Second question is from Flavio Yoshida from Bank of America.

Two questions. The first is regarding smart campus, semi on-campuses. You had some difficulties this year. What is the process? I'd like to the ramp-up process of the campuses. And my second question is the marketing expenses for the year. We see everyone spending a bit more. We understand with all the regulatory changes. So, I'd like to understand what we should expect from now on.

Thanks, Flavio. Expansion with the semi campuses is very important to us. We started with 14 academic units. As I've mentioned, in Marcelo's question, all the changes that we made simultaneously in new semi on-campus, new products, a short time window got messages on partners. We went through Macau. We heard the main challenges, the challenges we were facing. We had some different fronts, academic product, commercial pricing, et cetera. Everyone working together. So, it's been important to contribute to this improvement in our intake process, but the contribution is still small. It could be very big. At the beginning, looking towards the second quarter, we want to speed up that will be an important acceleration of this expansion in the second quarter. It's a great opportunity for us to creating this new concept, this new way of operating, challenging the traditional one going to an academic unit. It's a value proposal that is different, and this to us has been a living lab of this new avenue that opens to have parity and also strengthening our partners. We are on track and with a lot of learnings. And on the marketing amount, answering your question, we're aiming at reaching our budget. We actually had a great investment in this market with the challenges with our ambition and this clear strategy of repositioning ourselves. I actually mentioned it, more inroad to get closer to our students, super personalized with AI and our bar -- well, the trend looking super long-term, investing less in marketing because our effort has to be building reputation, goodwill, prestigious image that is -- that should be an object of desire institutionally for people to join and enroll in our stores. This is what we aim at. And once you start -- what we start seeing this better choice, we have stopped dropping the student base. So, we retain students, they are delighted, they stay with us. This effort of marketing will be smaller looking long summer. But this year, we aim at reaching our budget.

Next question is from Mauricio Cepeda from Morgan Stanley.

We have 2 questions as well. The first, in terms of regulatory adaptation, if you can give us a perspective as how you are doing in terms of regulations, if you have more cost to add, if you have any CapEx, how prepared are you? What should we expect from now on? And I'd like to insist on market share because it's not the first year, in terms of this industry, not only regarding you in terms of the industry, it seems that every year, you need to spend more to have more -- to have student intake. Do you see a pressure or greater competition, pressure for more costs, this could actually be something more long-term or even signal to some market saturation perhaps?

Thank you, Mauricio. I'm going to start with the first on actually complying with the legal and regulatory framework. We are totally compliant and adherent. We have no pressures of need to increase costs in this front. We're working on our own units, which is the main lever of growth, semi on-campus or hybrid education. So, we have installed capacities, 0 CapEx and looking at partners smart campus campuses is something. So marketing, if you look at our results and proportions, we have been dealing in the marketing funds regarding our revenue, it's maintained. There's a balance there. What we are changing as a great reading, we are very attentive and keeping on our radar seeing the market reports we get from the market, the most reliable sources we get. The market is challenged. In the category of on-campus category. We're growing not only intake, but also our ticket significantly. And we're doing that with the strategy. Remember, we talk a lot about AI-driven power today. We're working a lot with AI. So, we compete with attention. The attention of future not competition or its attention is directing increasing more with more intelligence and working this much better with brands and a number of campaigns we have that are being hyper personalized with AI. It's body building. It's not expenses, just opening up. It's intelligent use of allocating resources where it has revenue. This is what we are looking into in terms of our results.

Our next question is from Eduardo Resende from UBS.

I have 2 questions on our side. First, I'd like to dive into ticket growth in core is quite strong. I'd like to understand if you've had any relevant changes in the profile of intake compared to what you had planned initially. And my second question is a follow-up on the regulatory. I'd like to explore what was the main friction you had with students on the very front, some aspects or impacts on-campus, higher costs? Anything you can share with us would be certainly helpful.

Eduardo, the answer on pricing, again, yet another layer of granularity in our strategy. Today, well, in the past until last year, a while ago, we looked at our goals as more generic goals. Today, we're super snipers. In concrete elements, we've been making important changes in our academic project. We implemented various new matrices that are changing students' experience. It's not increasing price without adding value. This differentiation strategy of our brands where we have a lot of work behind optimizing KOL. In the past, we sold everything everywhere. So, everything is data-driven. This has been proven very successful to us, but it's building. It's not a quarter's work. We have been working quarter after quarter and taking steps towards this path that we're building, looking more with more assess to our planning, pricing that is part everybody knows that our pricing everyone. It's great work of our team. And again, it's no use setting a price and not supporting it. We have to have better delivery, better service, better student experience as a whole on the friction that I mentioned a bit with Marcelo. We had our challenges. And this is what's interesting when we talk about well, we have the problems in-house and the solutions in-house. When we made all those challenges, we changed the system and offerings. We had the challenges of systems of information. We had students that didn't know when things would happen. So, we have very basic things that were a bit something when we adjusted everything at the same time. So, change management was the point. On the students, what we do notice, we mentioned that, that we were following in the reading of the structural change in the market. The students on campus are very different from distance learning. So, we were going to premium. And this we're going to -- this hybrid features what students want. They want to have experience, they want to have interaction exchange and also flexibility. This is something we were offering. We're improving that. We're moving on. We have lots of learnings on the way. It's not completed. We're on the right track. I heard students -- just to share with you, I got videos from students that were unhappy. We went there with the executive committee. We heard them. They brought up the point that they were not happy with. Sometimes what we plan is not what students expect. So, this is our ability being super customer-driven, doing this more systematically with information. So, measuring everything, listening to students and professors, this is key to us. This gives us a chance to be powered to the edge to improve this experience and be more demanding more and adding quality because good students want that. So, this is very good to us. And actually is what we believe in. We had internal learning, great opportunities. We become even better and feel that we are on the right track, Eduardo.

Our next question comes from Luca Marquezini from Itaú BBA.

We have 2 here. First regarding Inspirali. Obviously, you mentioned that the ticket is very impacted because of more representativeness of, if you exclude these effects and regarding the competitive dynamics, if you see more difficulty of intake and need to increase the count -- if you could give us some flavor on that? Second question is complying with the new regulatory framework, we see SG&A regarding investments of the teams and the campuses, et cetera, despite the fact that Paula mentioned that you're 100% comply with the new rules is a higher level of G&A should continue over 2026, please?

Thank you. I'm going to start with the Inspirali to tell you that we don't feel very competitive scenario would be lying to you. What we have here is a strategy going back to what I mentioned previously regarding our discipline. We have very clear view as to where we want to be positioned, our ticket. If we remove this greater penetration of that with the increase of the ceiling last year resulted in great engagement in our student base, we would move on with this strategy of solid positioning of our ticket. So, we do have this pressure, but this is a place we don't want to be. This is why we talk about investment in quality and students, taking out this effect, we would have a very good ticket positioning regarding our strategy. Atila?

Luca, thank you for your question. As to investment in personnel, it does not have anything to do with our regulatory framework, but actually to our strengthening our edges and take operating leverage and reinvesting in things that generate more revenue in the future. So basically, what we have are investments in teams that we've made over 2025, both in coordinated teams, commercial teams. And if you look at the last quarter of 2025, we were at levels very close to this first quarter this year. So that's what we have is actually materialize what we've been talking about. We are at healthy margin levels. What we want to do now is to invest in things that generate more quality and revenue for the future. So, this level of quarter of 2026 should follow along the year.

We have a question from Samuel Alves from BTG Pactual.

We have 2 questions. First, on FGTS that you mentioned. Could you comment on its percentage on the base and how much it is in intake to understand how much of the product has been used in the max? Second question is on the sanctions of -- what do you expect in terms of impact if you have gone to court because of that? This is just a curiosity.

Samuel, thank you for your question. We don't share this percentage. What we can certainly share with you is that -- and I reinstate this applies to all the use of loans for all CS and the private one are within a strategy, we have a conscious use on the balance sheet and the other levers that we have. Everything aims at our strategy of actually filling the seat. We had a high intake level and CS is one of the tools that we have to fill that. So to have a percentage and to say that this is our strategy with the shallow. We use it within a whole framework of tools that we have to fill our seats looking at the financial profile and also students' academic profile. When we go to Anima, the national examination is quite new. We recently have some news coming up or being published on the government positioning or interpretation. What I reinstate here is that we move on. We talked a bit about that in the earnings results. Last quarter, we keep improving the quality of our courses of schools that had scores 1 and 2, we are not happy with that. Well, this is positive because we intend to improving all the actions that have been outlined. We are at full speed in implementing them. And we expect to have obviously better results at the next round not to keep on the base on possible sanctions and look ahead where we understand our schools need to be.

But just a follow-up, if you allow me, what is the status today of the sanctions regarding the company new intake. The company understands that we'll have on those campuses, when or not, what would be the impact?

We work, Samuel on understanding that we're going to be able to go over the intake, we are certainly subject to any new measure. We're following this very closely. But we don't assume anything relevant that will impact our intake process.

Our next question is from Renan Prata from Citibank.

One that is on the hybrid or semi campus areas. I'd like to step into comments and try to understand the nursing dynamics. I don't know if you're offering this course or not. What is the dynamic in the fast track? If you can give a taste to that. And the other question is on Inspirali, relatively close to maturing the number of students. I'd like to get the number -- the strategy perhaps for the future years of Inspirali, if it involves M&A, expansion. What are you thinking in terms of the business plan?

Thank you for your question. Regarding nursing fast track, actually, it's a regulatory measure. We've seen something similar in the past, which were previous accreditation. We understand the regulatory measure is welcome and healthy. We had a recent report of an analyst that put not so fast. We are following it. We have certain cases, but I don't see something that would change the offering of those courses. I think they should follow the normal pace. Courses should continue to be on campus and following their normal pace, not on the fast track, we will follow on and we're diligent. And I'm not optimistic regarding this ordinance. Regarding medical school, we had great growth of new school, especially several things that you have been following. But naturally, this market is very dynamic. Our industry is where operating leverage delivers results, size returns, great margins, and synergies are very objective, very clear. So I do believe in the possibility of M&A comes back, not only in medicine, but also on campus as the great lever for growth in the past years, which has been business learning, not necessarily will be present in the future, considering the changes of the regulatory framework and then we see schools reporting growth like us in on-campus and semi-on-campus or hybrid. So, I assume that in the mid-term horizon, M&A should be a growth lever in the industry. Of course, all the companies are deleveraging. We have a more benign scenario of interest rates. This may be driven. But I do see Inspirali being very well driven and well positioned to capture value on those avenues.

We close our Q&A session. Thank you for participating in our results webinar. Our Investor Relations team will be available, myself and Atila, if you have any additional questions. Have a good day, and see you next time. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call]