Hi, everyone. Good morning. Let's start another one of Bemobi's earnings conference calls. We're going to discuss the first quarter of 2025 results. This presentation is being recorded. You'll be able to hear the speakers and see our presentation. I'm Nicholas, Investor Relations Officer at Bemobi, and joining me today are Pedro Ripper, our CEO, and Andrea Veloso, our CFO. For those of you who need simultaneous translation, I'm going to give you instructions on how to access it now. There is a button on the bottom toolbar called Interpretation. Please click on it and select English. I'd like to remind you that after the company's presentation, there will be a Q&A session for investors and analysts, and we will give you further instructions when the Q&A session starts.
Before we proceed, I'd like to remind you that any forward-looking statements that may be made during this call regarding our financial and operational forecasts, projections, and goals reflect the current beliefs of our management team and are based on information currently available. They involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events that may or may not occur. Investors should be aware that broader economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors could materially impact our future performance, potentially leading to results that differ significantly from those discussed today. With that, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Pedro Ripper.
Thank you, Nicholas. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here to discuss our first quarter 2025 results. As usual, I'll start by giving you a macro view and talk about geography and clients. We onboarded another two countries.
We continue going into Europe, so we started now operations in the Czech Republic and also in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. We have attracted 39 new customers. Six of them are major enterprises, and the rest are medium-sized companies. We continue focused on service provision, and we're trying to get the greatest service providers of telecom in Brazil. We already have 11 of the top 15, and if we look at private companies, we're actually at 12 among the top 15. What do we do? We offer digital services, microfinance, a combination of SaaS, and payments. We are present in four industries: telecom, utilities, education, and the financial market, particularly to offer microcredit. The focus of our company has been more and more on this combination of SaaS and payments.
Okay, now let's dive into each one of the business lines and how we've been evolving with our clients. There are some interesting facts here. As I said earlier, we've been operating in four industries with payments, and we are at different maturity levels. Telecom, more mature, followed by utilities, and then education. We're just starting with insurers. This quarter, we have two qualitative highlights, both connected to payments. We have taken an important step in the payment vertical, connected to the segment of education. In addition to the Salta Group, which is the largest group for basic education in Brazil, who are already our clients, we have onboarded them in the first quarter. We have onboarded in the first quarter the Inspira Group, the largest group for private basic education in Brazil.
We also started with Farias Brito, the third or fourth largest in Brazil, and another highlight of education that we have here is that we're going into higher education. They have similar dynamics in payments and this relationship with clients, although it has some specificities, and it's great to have one of the leaders in the segment coming to Bemobi. Another highlight in payments, and this is something we've been working on for a while now, is on the model that we work in Brazil. We didn't know whether it would apply to other geographies, either because of behavior or because of our payment arrangements here in Brazil. We've been working with Enel in Chile for almost a year now, and we did a launch recently that was quite successful.
That is a landmark, a milestone that opens up and paves the way in the rest of Latin America to expand our verticalized operations. We have new accounts also in other sectors and digital subscriptions. We continue going into new countries. As I said earlier, in the Czech Republic, we started to launch the digital subscription model with Vodafone and O2, two of the main telecom companies there. We also onboarded the United Arab Emirates. A good evolution in this business, which is more mature here at Bemobi. When we look at the B2C metrics and focus a bit more on volume, we would say that payments continue to progress fast. TPV is one of the ways to see the growth of this segment, and we have had a 26% growth year- over- year, as well as quarter- on- quarter, as you can see.
Our SaaS business is combined with our payment business, and we also had good growth of 12%. Now, our weakest point in the quarter was our microfinance business, and we have actually two types of business within this umbrella. One of them is cell phone top-up, which has struggled a bit more in the last 12 months. We have another business of microcredit to help fintechs to better assess the credit potential in countries where the business is not that mature. This is going well. The first quarter was not that strong, but we have great expectations for the remainder of the year. We think this business line will stabilize and resume growth. We have also included here revenue per transaction. There was a 30% increase year- over- year, which is quite substantial because of this mix. Top-up product has a lower mix.
The scoring product has a higher ticket. As the mix changes, the arch goes up. We had a mild reduction quarter- on- quarter from $0.32- $0.29, and that was mainly due to the slow microcredit quarter. In terms of digital subscriptions, we had robust growth in subscriptions, but when we look at the base, we had a 5% growth quarter- on- quarter. This mismatch between revenue and volume is due to an increase in average ticket and partly due also to the mix changes. We are now working more in postpaid countries, unlike our tradition, which was to operate in prepaid countries, and this has changed our mix, and therefore our revenue has grown more than our subscriber base.
Revenue, we had an 18% increase year- over- year, but in a fairer comparison, and if we exclude the FX effect in many of the countries that we operate because the Brazilian real appreciated against the basket of currencies, we had a 10% increase if we exclude the FX effect. The combined effect was 18%. When we zoom in and look at the revenue breakdown, I would like to highlight two things related to the 18%. Payments grew 23%, so more than the average of the company, and we also have part of this related to physical top-up. Another interesting point that I would like to highlight is the breakdown between international and Brazil. Brazil has grown more than the international area. Actually, the opposite. Brazil is a bit below 60% of our total revenue, and the international area has gained 41%.
Once again, I'd like to highlight that the FX effect had an impact here, but even if we exclude that, the international area has grown. Both Latin America and Europe, with the new countries there, have been gaining momentum in the last three quarters. Before we talk about profitability, let's look at the breakdown per business line. We continue with a great momentum in both segments that are complementary somehow: payments and software as a service. Together, they account for about 60% of the company's revenue. The subscription business is growing a bit due to the strong results in the last two to three quarters, and the microfinance segment, which is the smallest, is losing weight, relatively speaking, staying now at 10%. Now, I'd like to turn the floor over to our CFO, Andrea Veloso, who will give you further details about profitability, cash, and so on.
Let me mute here my microphone. Andrea, over to you.
Good morning, Pedro. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you for our earnings conference call. Let's talk about the other lines of business. As Pedro said, we had yet another quarter with great financial results delivered by Bemobi. In gross income, we kept sustainable growth with profitability at about 72.5% of the revenue, delivering BRL 121 million of gross margin, an 18% growth year- over- year. In the OpEx line, we grew by 14% year- over- year, and that was basically due to a greater relevance of the dollar revenue, both for personnel and technology. Our personnel line in Brazilian reals also grew because of the bargaining agreement applied at the end of last year.
In addition to that, now in 2025, we had an acceleration of the travel expenses in order to face the expansion we have delivered on our revenue. As a consequence, when we look at the adjusted EBITDA, we see an acceleration of this indicator. It grew 22% year- over- year, and at the end of the first quarter of 2025, we have delivered almost BRL 57 million of EBITDA, with margin expansions to almost 34%. Once again, I'd like to highlight that we've been saying that operating leverage would be present throughout Bemobi's history, so we're not denying that, but this is just a reminder. This growth is not going to happen always linearly. Okay, next slide, please. Here on the left-hand side, you can see our adjusted net income, excluding swap effects.
In addition to the beautiful operational results that we delivered, we also achieved greater tax efficiency in 2025. These items were partially offset by a higher level of amortization and depreciation expenses, and also a negative FX effect that basically maintained profit at around 17% of revenue, with a net margin of 16.8%, a 20% growth year- over- year. We closed the first quarter at BRL 28 million of net income. When we look at operational cash flow generation against our internal metric, which is adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx, because of this lower CapEx growth in the quarter, we see an acceleration in this indicator, up 28% year- over- year, reaching BRL 43 million, with an increase in our conversion rate of almost 77%, one of the highest levels in our history. Finally, let me show you our cash position variation.
Operating cash generation is EBITDA minus cash of BRL 43 million, which were partially offset by a greater use of working capital in the quarter because of our payments installments that consumed almost half of the figure. In addition to that, because of our international expansion, we have postponed the term to receive some of the resources, so that's why we have used more working capital. Financial results of BRL 12 million offset by increased taxes of BRL 12 million. It's important to highlight that throughout the first quarter of 2025, we had almost BRL 83 million in cash outflow, but it was not on a recurring basis. We approved the dividend in the end of 2024, and we paid in the beginning of January, worth BRL 21 million, combined with the repurchase or the buyback of shares, worth BRL 23 million. This accounts for almost the whole balance.
Within the other line, we saw a decrease in our cash position in U.S. dollars because of the appreciation of the Brazilian real between the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025. Once again, I'd like to highlight that we've been continuing with our new dividend policy. In our shareholders' meeting in the end of April, we approved new dividends of BRL 58 million, which will be included in our second quarter results. We keep on focused and engaged in M&A opportunities, and we hope we'll be able to share news with you in that area soon. Now, I turn the floor back to Pedro and thank you once again for joining us in our earnings conference call.
Thank you, Andrea. Okay, to wrap up our call, let me give you a summary of our remarks.
This has been another strong quarter that was quite consistent with what we've been sharing with you in the last 18 months. Back in 2023, our results were a bit more polluted, so to speak, and we tried to isolate external effects. As those effects were dissipated, we were able to look at our underlying business. We had greater results this quarter as compared to previous years. We think that this is the new momentum for Bemobi. This is what we expect from now on, maybe a bit faster or a bit slower, but pretty much at this level. Our digital subscription business has been proven to be quite resilient. We don't think this is going to continue growing at this pace. We think it's going to be slower. On the other hand, we think payments can grow faster.
As Andrea has emphasized, our goal is to keep on focusing on operational leverage. Whenever we find good opportunities to accelerate growth, we're going to make the necessary investments. Payments, if we exclude the quantitative part, as I said, it's great to see large clients that are leaders in their segments approving our vertical payment strategy. That was not something obvious three to four years ago. Now, as we attract large clients and include them in our portfolio, this hypothesis becomes more concrete. From the perspective of cash generation, this has been a very good quarter, and that emphasizes something that Andrea has just mentioned. We believe that we can continue with a payout of dividends at a high level. As Andrea said, we have a guidance of BRL 200 million in dividends. The first BRL 50 million of the BRL 200 million were paid out last week, if I'm not mistaken.
At the same time, in a very accurate and calculated manner, we are also able to continue making acquisitions to complement our business and to accelerate this virtuous cycle. We are going to have a better balance between dividends and a little bit less of buybacks to preserve the liquidity of our shares. Nicolas, now I turn the floor over to you to open the Q&A session.
Thank you, Pedro. Okay, in order to submit a question, you can either raise your hand, and we will enable your microphone so that you can ask your question, or you can send your questions in writing via chat. We have a question from Bernardo at XP. I am going to enable your microphone, Bernardo. Go ahead.
Good morning, Andrea, Stricker, Nicolas, and Bemobi team. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on your results. I have two questions.
The first is about the payment industry. I saw an article yesterday on the Brazil Journal highlighting Bemobi's payment solutions. You continue to escalate that business quite well here in Brazil, but I'd like to understand the size and magnitude of this opportunity and the focus that you have been putting on your international initiatives. What is the structure that you're putting in place to capture these opportunities and the pace of growth that we can expect? My second question is about the microfinance segment. As Pedro said, that was the low light this quarter. Can we recap this topic? Do you have any expectations to accelerate growth here and go back to double-digit growth? What do you expect for this segment?
Great, Bernardo. Thank you for your questions. It's great to be here with you once again.
About your first question, I would like to emphasize that the internationalization model of our digital subscription and payment businesses are quite different. For digital services, you adapt the currency, you adapt the language, and you may need to adapt a bit of the catalog of apps and games. After that, we have this low cost of integration model. It's quite easy for you to test new countries, and that's why we've been going into so many new countries. Now, when it comes to payments, the reality is a bit different. You have this whole ecosystem, which is materially different from one country to another, not only in the types of payments, but also in the players and sometimes even payment penetration and consumer habits.
My first caveat is we do not believe that we're going to have an open sea international expansion like to 50 or 60 countries. However, it seems to me that some countries do have points in common for areas that we operate in which we operate really well. We have a small project with great potential of telco payments in Colombia. We already operate in Colombia, but that's a small project. We're still trying to fine-tune it, but we think it has great potential. We also have this project in Chile, and that can open up at least two avenues for us. In Colombia, after we learn a bit more about the payment market, we want to attract other utilities, and we also want to replicate this in Chile.
A third country, which is even more complex because it has a completely different mix from Brazil, is Mexico. Having said that, we're going to put a lot of effort on these three countries initially, but I'll be careful with the timing. I think that Chile has greater opportunities to see that growth earlier. It's a smaller country, but with a higher ticket, so it can be quite relevant in the whole. I'll be cautious because it doesn't mean that if it's working well in Chile, it's going to work well in Colombia and Mexico. If they do work, I mean, these countries together can account for 60% of the volume we have in Brazil. We have to be careful because I don't think this is going to bring material changes to our figures in 2025, but it can help.
I think that this can be accelerated in 2026 because the life cycles are long and the implementations are long, but that could be a great growth engine. If that's true, our addressable market will be largely increased. Now, in this topic, we have an advantage because in the countries where I highlighted, we have local senior teams. Although it's an international expansion and we'd have to look into new integrations and new ecosystems, we're not going to start from scratch. We have great relationships with large companies in this segment, and we have senior teams present there, which helps a lot. Now, let's talk about microfinances. We've been a bit more optimistic about the top-up growth in this segment. When the customer is out of balance, you offer top-up for them. The prepaid market in Brazil is, you know, right, Bernardo?
You know this quite well because of your background, but this segment has shrunk here in Brazil. Has shrunk. We are also present in Asia with a segment where this has also been happening. I think that the top-up segment can grow, but we do not know exactly how much it will grow because it has been a bit volatile. Something that makes us excited when we look at the combined business is the credit scoring business, which has been proven to be quite good. Although I said this was not a very strong quarter, we have two to three customers that decreased the pace. When we look at the year-over-year numbers, this is actually growing quite strongly. For the coming quarter, we think we have great expectations.
Although I was not very optimistic about the top-up market, I think when we combine both businesses, we will see double-digit growth, especially boosted by the second business I mentioned, which is now concentrated in Mexico and a bit also in Colombia. We still do not know whether we can take this business to 10 countries or not. The banking level in Mexico is quite low, and they have great access to credit there, so that is a great opportunity. So is Colombia. Once consolidated, these operations, we can select other countries where we already operate to see if it makes sense to expand that offer to those countries as well. I would be cautious in including that in any of our projections. I am not sure I answered your questions, Bernardo.
Yes, you have. Thank you so much and congratulations once again on your results. Thank you.
Now, we have a question via chat by an Ita`u analyst, and he has two questions, which I believe will be long. The first is, payments achieve 37% of share in your revenue. Where do you expect this to get? The second question is about M&A potential. What is your pipeline and what are the proposals you have in hand right now?
Okay, the share of revenue question is quite complicated because I would say we would be higher in payments, but the subscription business grew more than we imagined. It is a good problem, right? Payments gain relevance as a whole. I look at payments and SaaS in a combined way. It is quite common that the projects that we implement have both components, and part of the amount generated comes to software as a service and part comes to payment.
Both of them together now account for 60% of our revenue. I expect this to keep on gaining share up to 70%, maybe 80%, but of course, that will depend on the growth of digital subscriptions. We are very accurate when choosing the words, right? I do not think this is a legacy offer, but a mature offer. We do not think this is going to be the future of the company when we think about a 10-year horizon. There are many geographies where we are not present, and we are learning how to operate in those geographies, and we are gaining growth and gaining clarity as well, which is something we did not have one to two years ago. I think payments will keep on gaining momentum.
Not only organically, but if we look at the segments that we have explicitly decided to operate in when it comes to recurring services, I'd say we're still irrelevant in the healthcare and insurance sector. We're very small here, but we'll soon share the new contracts with you. We have a great footprint in basic education, and we're now going into higher education, and there are many large clients with great potential there. It's not because of a lack of addressable market that we're not going to grow. We also believe there are other sub-niches and interesting segments for M&A transactions that can help us grow there.
We look at the big picture when it comes to M&A, but usually we focus a bit more on software companies that bring along payment opportunities or companies from the payment segment with new functionalities that can also help us. We mix engagement software and payment. The M&As we've been considering are either related to client engagement and software or other sub-segments. M&A is a binary deal, right? We've been on a good momentum. There are companies that did not know exactly how Bemobi could help, but we now see greater acceptance of entrepreneurs that now want to become our partners.
Since we like to have those deals, and you saw that we have deals that are not that usual, we like to have a majority stake in those companies, but we want to keep those entrepreneurs with a material stake as well, and sometimes in the front line. That idea of bringing in entrepreneurs that are strong and that can complement our presence in the market, I mean, we've had two or three deals like that recently, and we believe that our next deals will be similar to that. We see a lot of echo of other entrepreneurs that feel encouraged with the deals we made in the past, and this has accelerated our acquisitions. Of course, we'll only be able to communicate that when these opportunities materialize. Nicolas, should we wrap up or do we have other questions?
No, I think that we can wrap up because we're running out of time. Thank you once again, and see you next quarter. Thank you. Bye-bye.