Good morning everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the conference call of the third quarter results of 2021 of Blau Farmacêutica. Today, we have with us Marcelo Hahn, CEO, Douglas Rodrigues, CFO, and Melissa Angelini, IR. I would like to remind you that we will have a Q&A session at the end of the call, and everyone is welcome to ask their questions through the chat at the webcast. Also, the webcast is being recorded and it will be available in our IR website. Now, I would like to turn the floor to Marcelo Hahn, CEO, to begin his presentation. Marcelo, please go ahead.
Thank you, Melissa. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter of 2021 results call. Today, you are learning about the results and you will see that we are in a resilient and constantly growing market. I will start talking about our main highlights on slide two. We continue to have a consistent growth with a 27% upside in the last twelve months and 20% growth in the year to date. Looking only at the quarter, we have a 6% growth year-over-year. The result wasn't higher because of the postponement of the Ministry of Health's bidding for epoetin alfa and the fact that this year we have a lower offer of immunoglobulin compared to the previous year. With these two drugs alone, we did not sell BRL 35 million this quarter compared to the third quarter of 2020.
In this quarter, we had a decrease in public sales and reached our top line with 89% of the revenue coming from the private channel. If you look at the accumulated revenue for the first nine months of 2021 in the private market, it has already surpassed all the revenue from the private market for the entirety of 2020. When we look at growth in terms of volume and price, around 90% of the quarter's growth came from volume. We started to see some price pressure due to the return of some competitors that were not producing, but we are well-positioned in the market.
In the third quarter, there was a typical movement in the market. Hospitals in general are experiencing a dilemma between balancing COVID bed demobilization and a resumption of normal pre-COVID care, such as elective surgeries and other procedures, which is still being recomposed and has led to a retraction of the purchase appetite. It is very important that we monitor this scenario to understand the trends for the coming months, and that is exactly what we are doing. For us again, the market demand was higher than we could sell due to the production capacity constraints, which we continue to address. During this quarter, our market share moved from 30% to 26%, impacted by IgG and alfaepoetina that I just mentioned.
In the IQVIA Hospital segment ranking, we are in the top 12 of the entire market, and we are the second-largest national pharmaceutical industry in the ranking. This quarter, we increased our investment in research development and innovation, investing 8% of our net revenue. This was the largest single quarter investment in this area. Year to date, we double investment in RD&I compared to the nine months of 2020. We are very excited about the total focus on developing sustainable growth for the company's future. We had eight new products submitted to registration in Latin America, four in Brazil and four in South America, in addition to three approved products registration in Latin America. Moving to slide three, we have a robust pipeline between products that had already been submitted for registration and that are under development in different stages.
With an addressable market only in Brazil of approximately BRL 7.6 billion, being BRL 5 billion in partnership projects that we are negotiating and BRL 2.6 billion in projects under development internally. The COVID-19 vaccine opportunity is not priced in this calculation. Also, we are very confident of obtaining the registration as we are complying with all regulatory requirements. Now, going to slide four, you can see our operational initiatives. The first one I would like to comment is about the new expansion of Blau Inventta. To accelerate these new Blau Inventta facilities, we took the strategic decision to use the space currently used by the administrative area for this expansion.
With this, the administrative area, which already had a renovation plans, gains a new, more modern space in São Paulo, meeting the main needs due to the new corporate structure and comply with the main ESG guidelines and the organization's growth projections. Inventta new area will provide a new growth leap in the number of projects under development simultaneously. Here in Cotia, we are focused in the completion and start of operations of the new two lines in the specialty area in building P-210. It is expected to be ready by the end of this year and operational during the second half of 2022, which will allow us to increase our specialty capacity to around 20% in units. We are also regularly making improvements to our current facilities and process in line with operational excellence, increasing production capacity in all of the company's units.
On the P-1000, the new plant project in Pernambuco, we have already delivered the protocol invitation, and we are waiting for feedback for approval. The team responsible for this project is already advancing with analysis of the implementation of the new manufacturing unit, and simultaneously, we are prospecting opportunities to anticipate the start of operations in the state as soon as possible in order to capture benefits and synergies from 2023. Moving to slide five about Hemarus. The first plasma collection center in the U.S. in Lauderhill is now operational, generating revenue. The volume of donors is growing day by day. In the last days of the first quarter of operation, we reached about 15% of daily donations expected at the center's maturity.
We have recently expanded the opening hours to serve daily from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., and Saturdays from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. We are in the final process of contracting the renovation for the second Hemarus unit. The location chosen was the Northside Shopping Center in Miami, and this unit is expected to be ready in the first half of 2022. At the same time, we are already prospecting the locations of the next two new centers. We are very excited about the results and intend to accelerate the development of new units in order to arrive at the necessary collection to support our needs. Still talking about innovation, going to slide six. We will be launching a new program soon.
The goal is to get closer to startups, health techs, and reinforce our open innovation strategy, improving our process or investing in startup focused on health in general, both products and services. Going to slide seven, you can see our ESG initiatives or achievements. Considering the relevance of the topic for the organization, the board of directors define the strategy of creating the ESG committee in order to reinforce the dissemination of ESG culture with the company and to review the materiality metrics. All employees are engaged with this new project to take ESG into day-to-day of the company and its operations. In the first half of 2022, we will publish the main KPIs and detail all initiatives. Now to summarize. At the start of the last quarter of 2021, we remain enthusiastic and committed to bring results in line with our 2021 planning.
Now, I would like to hand the floor over to Melissa Angelini to comment on our operating performance. Melissa, please.
Thank you, Marcelo. Moving now to slide eight. As Marcelo just mentioned, we are in a transition period in the hospitals. This rebalancing between the mobilization of COVID beds and the eventual resumption of pre-COVID care is something that we are closely monitoring. Hospitals have not yet returned to pre-COVID levels and are still somewhat stocked and are making very targeted purchase to maintain the inventory KPI. Even with this scenario, when we look at our net revenues, we grew 6% in the quarter and 20% in the nine months of the year. When we look at the LTM, we are growing 27% with a CAGR of 18% between 2019 and the third quarter of this year LTM. In the graph in this slide, you can see the company's quarterly historical results.
When looking at the LTM numbers, our growth evolution is very clear. It grows year by year. When we look at the different quarters, we can see some variations. Hence, it's best to analyze a longer period of time than the quarter itself. Now moving to slide nine, we show the breakdown of revenues by business units. We had revenue growth in all business units except biologicals. The specialty lines continues to perform a solid growth. The lines of antibiotics, cephalosporins, and anesthetics were the highlights of the quarter. On the oncology line, we continue to gain traction with a 56% growth year-over-year, totaling 6% of total revenues in the quarter. We continue to evolve with the operation and all our products are performing well. The others line also is performing well with the positive performance of Botulim.
The biologicals line is still impacted by the decrease in the supply of IgG and the phasing of epoetin alfa bid, as Marcelo just mentioned. The other biologicals in this business unit are performing well. If we were to match the revenue of these two products, IgG and EPO, in this quarter with the same sales we had in the third quarter of last year, the growth in the quarter would have been approximately 17%, and the growth in the nine months of the year would have been 25%. IgG and plasma supply is a topic known to you and also explored by Marcelo just now. As he was saying, plasma collection is already being resumed in the U.S. and in the other countries as well.
Our expectation is that in the second half of 2022, we will be able to have a higher volume of IgG for sale. Regarding our epoetin, as we mentioned earlier, for the third quarter, we only had the amendment of the contract, but we are still waiting for the ministry's new bid. To make the bidding process and deliveries easier to understand, on slide 10, we show the evolution of the bids and the respective deliveries. With this, it's clear that the product performance can be volatile between quarters. Here you can see that the tender that we won in 2017, we delivered throughout 2018, and we finished delivery in 2019 as it was also amended. The bid we won in 2019, we delivered throughout the whole year of 2019.
The tender we won in 2020, we finished delivery now in September 2021 with the amendment that we just mentioned. The volume is erratic throughout the quarters, but the volume, when we look, year- by- year, has been growing in these last three years. Deliveries are in accordance with contracts. As you can see, they do not always fall in the same quarter or in the same year. Going to slide 11 before moving on to Douglas. We see here the gross profit and the gross margin. It is important to say here, and something that Marcelo mentioned, that the product mix is very important for us. Our COGS is impacted by the sales mix in this quarter. The mix that we sold is a bit different than what we sold in the last quarter.
With that, the growth margin came to 48% in the quarter and 51% year to date, impacted by the portfolio mix and some pricing pressure, as Marcelo mentioned. It's also important to highlight that, as we always said in the previous quarters, that the margin expansion that we presented in the last three quarters were not necessarily something recurrent because it really depends on the channel and on the product that we sell. In this quarter, we see the margin returning to the historical levels presented by the company. With that, I will pass it over to Douglas to comment on our financial performance.
Thank you, Melissa. Moving to slide 12, the highlights of operational expenses. As mentioned during the presentation, this quarter is a lower growth in terms of our top line and a high level in terms of operational expense. The main driver is our RD&I investments. As you can see in the quarter and also in the year to date figures, it represents more than 50% of the total increase of our operational expenses. Of course, there's impact in the results of this year, but this is to aid the future of the company. Excluding this effect and also excluding the effect of non-recurring IPO expenses, the company keeps the trend to dilute dilution of our SG&A more than 1 point.
It means that we are focusing the operational leverage, keep the business model and also accelerating the pace of investments in R&D that reached a new level, 5% of our net revenues. Moving to the next slide, EBITDA. Due to the effects in terms of the gross profit of the quarter and also the R&D and SG&A expenses, this quarter, in comparison with the third quarter of 2020, that was our best performance last year, is a lower performance. It's important to mention that in the year to date figures, our EBITDA, there's a growth of 30% and the margin is 38%, is a positive evolution in terms of the company keeps to grow and improve profitability. Slide 14, the financial expenses and the net income.
The net financial expenses for the quarter and the year to date, there's a favorable impact in terms of the effects due to the hedge contracts. In the September end, the company had a position of $44 million in hedge contracts. Also the interest of the cash. In addition to that, to the net income performance, also there's a reduction of our income tax rate, mainly because we are paying the interest on capital and also due to the investments in R&D and I. Those types of expenses are deductible for the income rates. We can see the evolution in the quarter, 25% in the net income, and the last twelve months, almost 50%. Again, the capacity of the company to deliver results improve profitability.
Well, moving from results to the balance position, you can see the CapEx and the working capital. In terms of CapEx, we are in a new cycle of investments. You can see the trend, the increase in terms of the investments, more than a double in comparison with the previous years. For PPE and intangible, the PPE, we are addressing the increase on production capacity in our plants. In terms of PPE, as mentioned during the presentation, the pipeline are to increase our addressable markets. In terms of working capital, we keep the same level in the previous quarter. This is a little higher than the historical level of the company. There are some changes between DPO and DSO, but the main driver, the main impact is still the inventory levels.
That there's some impacts relate to the phasing of alfaepoetina and also some increase in terms of biological products due to strategic negotiations. Next slide. Last but not least, our cash position. Company has a strong position in terms of cash, net cash, and our debt is related to the operation of the facilities that we have here, the timeline for debt and also the interest rate. In fact, company is very well positioned to address the new cycle of investments, and now we are available. Let's start our Q&A section. Thank you.
Thanks, Douglas. Just to remind you all, you can ask your questions through the chat of the webcast. The first question comes from Joseph Giordano from JP Morgan. It's actually like two or three questions. The first question is about the IgG. How do you see the evolution of the IgG offering? When do you expect the supply to normalize?
Hi, Joseph. Thank you for your question. We see that the evolution of the offering is to start from now to grow. For the coming years, we see that we will have more products available in the market as the collection starts to become normal. The idea is to have the products like six to nine months after this collection become normal. We think in the second semester of 2022, we will see the coming to the normalization.
The second question is, looking at the product mix, what were the main drivers behind the year-over-year growth margin contraction?
In my point of view, there is no, like, contraction of the margin. We always assess that the margin that we had in last year was very over the expectations and we are coming back to the normal situation prior to the COVID. I think we will stabilize the margins at the level that we are having in 2019. This is something that we need to consider for the future as well.
The other question is, how is the competition behaving on specialty products as COVID-19 demand wanes?
The competition will become as prior to the COVID-19. We are very well-positioned. We have a very robust portfolio. We don't have any competitor with the same portfolio as Blau in the market. We know how to manage and to keep getting more market share. As we informed before, we still have more demand than we can offer, so we have space to grow. We see that with this new capacities that the company are investing. We will have in the next coming years more offering of products, and we will have more sales coming from these products that we have today, less offer.
Thank you. With that, it appears to not have any more questions, so I'll pass it over again to Marcelo for final consideration.
Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Joseph, for your question. Guys, as everyone could see, and for those who have been with us for a long time, it is very gratifying to see the success of the results of the transformation that the company has been doing. Our revenue continues to grow and our dependency on immunoglobulin and alfaepoetina has decreased over the course of the years. For you to have an idea, we had a reduction of around BRL 80 million in revenue in these two items in the first nine months of this year. Our portfolio mix remains robust. We have improved our access to the private channel, and we have a diversified and promising future pipeline. Imagine when these sales of these two products normalize too.
As we said, we are working on all of Blau's growth fronts, and we continue to be very active in prospecting for possible M&As, partnerships, and others. All Blauers are focused on delivering the expected results and creating value for all shareholders. Thank you for your time and have a nice day.