Hospital Mater Dei S.A. (BVMF:MATD3)
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At close: Sep 17, 2026
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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Nov 9, 2022

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the earnings release for the third quarter of 2022. We have Dr. Henrique Salvador, our CEO, and Dr. Rafael Cordeiro, our CFO and investor relations director. This earnings call is being recorded and will be available on the company's IR website. To activate the translations, please select the icon with the globe on the bottom. The presentation will be also available on the IR website of Mater Dei. Before we proceed, I'd like to let you know that any possible statements regarding future events are subject to risks and uncertainties that could make certain expectations not be complete or maybe be different than what is expected. These forecasts just represent opinions of the day they are performed, and the company is not forced to deliver them.

After this presentation, we'll begin the Q&A session. If you have any questions, please raise your hand and we'll open up your mic soon after. Or if you'd rather, you can also send your question through the chat, the Q&A icon, and you can just submit your name and company as well. Well, I'll pass the floor on to Dr. Henrique.

Henrique Salvador
CEO, Hospital Mater Dei

Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you once again, and we are reporting the earnings for the Rede Mater Dei de Saúde related to the third quarter of 2022. An important highlight that we could mention with this opening of this call is certainly the entry of the Hospital Santa Clara in Uberlândia for the Mater Dei network. We took over the operations on the 1st of September. Hospital Santa Clara is a very relevant hospital in the Triângulo Mineiro region in Minas.

Its area of influence goes beyond the city of Uberlândia. As we know, it's one of the regions that's most prosperous in the state of Minas Gerais. Uberlândia is one of the cities that most growing in the interior of Brazil. In our perspective, the operation of Hospital Santa Clara and the Hospital Santa Genoveva and the CDI, which is an image diagnostic center, all three of them were acquired in the last few months, integrated to the Mater Dei network, and they represent a wonderful opportunity for generating synergies so we can position this chain and network better in that region. Hospital Santa Clara is a general hospital for high complexity with over 40 medical specialties. It's very traditional in certain regions, such as obstetrics and surgery, and there's a broad scope of certifications and quality awards. It also allows for the expansion to 163 beds.

It's certainly an opportunity at the Mater Dei network, and it starts integrating our platform from the 1st of September onwards. In the same line, the medical center in Salvador, when it was conceived based on the construction and incorporation of two buildings. One was a hospital building with 62,000 square meters of constructed area. It's a high complexity hospital, multi-specialty, and at the same time, approximately 60 m away in another plot of land, you have 10,000 sq m of constructed area. We have this medical center, which is a center for specialties and medical offices, but also it'll have the administrative structure of the Mater Dei network.

The construction of this medical center is in line with the schedule and timeline we presented, and it should be open by December this year, where we will start the operation with the medical offices gradually, and we could reach 73 offices with multi-specialties. Setting up the integrated health center, where we can, from the entry door to the medical center, create opportunities for the hospital. As I have already mentioned, the administrative area should also be operating in this building, at this medical center building to support the operation. Besides this, we will also have an area for human reproduction and a dialysis center, which should start being operated by next year. Next slide. Just as we saw some other opportunities from some hospitalizations we have been working on. The first one was a technical partnership for technical cooperation with the Rede Américas.

This group is a system for service provision that is very different, focused on advanced care, quality care. We have two hospitals, three units that are outpatient units, nine oncological centers, 20 medical clinics, and labs as well. There is its integrated care concept. Most of the units are certified as well, just as with Mater Dei. One thing that is very interesting is the complementarity in some areas of regional performance that actually exist with Mater Dei and the Rede Américas, which is present in five Brazilian states in a very relevant way with hospital assets that are very qualified and very well-positioned. In São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Ceará, and Rio Grande do Norte, and the Federal District as well, adding up to 1,800 beds.

If we understand that the Mater Dei network is not in these locations and the Rede Américas is not where the Mater Dei should be, then we start understanding that it is almost like a complementarity between both of these chains. Mater Dei is currently in Minas, Goiás, Pará, and Bahia, in a more relevant way in Minas Gerais, in the larger metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte and the Triângulo Mineiro region. This complementarity will allow for some positioning, as well as other partnerships internationally. Some processes with benchmarks as well, related to supplies and procurement, and many other possibilities as well in the commercial front with the health plan operators, and the possibility of structuring products that could consider this a joint network, 12 on one side and 10 on the other. Soon we should also be opening Nova Lima unit.

It is really an opportunity to generate synergies and results for both institutions. At the moment, there is no type of economic or financial integration. But what we see is there is no other prediction beyond this cooperation, operationally, that was worked on with a committee that has members from both institutions. Throughout the next month, we are going to really build a common interest agenda so we can position ourselves better as institutions. Ever since the IPO, we have always really invested in people. We have been mentioning this clearly. We have our internship program. We have our Centro de Treinamento Institucional as well, which also supports the growth of the Hospital Mater Dei Betim-Contagem.

Another characteristic of Mater Dei was always setting up the clinical team and physicians that are really focused on the development of some skills, behavioral skills, that can really be in line with the culture of the Rede Mater Dei de Saúde. This program has been completing 40 years of existence, and we have over 120 physicians that are doing their medical residency at the Rede Mater Dei de Saúde. We also have a certification program for robotics, with an internship involving some medical schools, which really makes medical students understand the differential relationship with these very important stakeholders, which are the physicians that the Rede Mater Dei de Saúde presents. This is a major differential, which is an important differential, and it also helps increment this process with a more structured and well-prepared clinical team. Just in the same way, we can get back a bit.

We have also been taking advantage of some potentials in these units, and we have this integration program. We identify areas where there is a gap in the level of service in that market or where the hospitals are installed, and where there is a tradition from the Rede Mater Dei de Saúde. Also taking advantage of our installed capacity for resources, not only beds, but resources, such as the activities in the surgical center, quick turnover of the beds, for example, maternity, and et cetera. With this vision of really taking advantage of the resources that are already engaged and allocated, we recently opened a day hospital for the Mater Dei Santo Agostinho hospital, which makes patients' journey be more agile and comfortable following some university famous protocols, which has certainly leveraged our volumes of surgeries. Patients also have to fulfill some processes that are less bureaucratic.

With all of this, we can have a greater turnover of our structures in the surgical center, and we can also attract physicians from other specialties that sometimes operate in clinics or less complex structures. When you bring these guys in-house, they start performing their medical activities with a lot more security because they have a complex and complete hospital structure that can really support their patients if there is any complications. We also identified at Porto Dias, for example, a gap related to the maternity. We inaugurated the maternity a few months later, and the volumes in this maternity have been growing constantly.

We have also been able to build another two floors in our premium hospital in Goiânia, and with this, we will be able to increase our multi-specialty structure, attracting procedures that are more complex and procedures with specialties that are really going to make this hospital really take on greater complexity. We inaugurated another maternity, and we reinforced our positioning of the EMEC Hospital in Feira de Santana with a new area there. We also performed an adjustment in people at the Hospital Santa Genoveva. We opened up more beds in this period in the Hospital Mater Dei Betim-Contagem, and we also worked on the ramp-up in Salvador, attracting physicians, certifying these operators.

It was a moment in the last quarter that was very dynamic in our units that we noticed that there is a huge potential considering the relevance that each of these hospitals have in the markets where they are present. I will pass the floor on to Rafael Cordeiro, and he is going to cover a bit of the numbers.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Henrique, for this introduction. Now we are in this process with the operational highlight, and I am going to highlight this with a lot of satisfaction. We are really happy to be able to have this graph demonstrating consistent growth in the number of operational beds in this network. We were a company with 574 beds in the third quarter of 2021, and now we have 1,500 beds approximately in the third quarter. So it is growth of about 160% in this period.

This is the capacity that the company demonstrated to work on these M&As. We have a lot of trust with the delivery of these integrations. This is a growth of 150% compared to the third quarter of 2021. We also bring in this highlight, which is, we always have questions from you guys about Belo Horizonte, and I think we have been able to bring in consistent numbers for growth. If you look at this, compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, this year, we have already grown 16.5% in the total beds. We went from 522 - 680. Considering that last year, we were still carrying on a bit of the COVID effect, now COVID is within our operation already. So there is a growth of 23.5% of non-COVID beds, which is the green bar. We have been working on this strongly.

We have different initiatives, and we are segmenting these hospitals with very well-defined strategies that are diversified for Contorno, Bemge, and Comparim. Behind all of this growth that we have been having inorganically, we are also having organic growth in our operation in Belo Horizonte. Moving on to the numbers here, a quick reflection on this operational work. It has this growth in nine months of 70%. We reached BRL 1 251 billion in revenue in the nine months, and with growth of 9% in the revenue quarter-over-quarter. We reached almost half a billion BRL in one quarter, and we grew at every quarter with the entrance of these new operations and the ramp-up also of the greenfields. When it comes to the average ticket, we have a drop in the operation in nine months, which is basically due to the consolidation of these new operations.

They have a lower ticket, which is characteristic in this region. But even so, we have been growing quarter-over-quarter. We started the year close to two, we are almost at 2.1. These operations, besides having a strategy to transfer prices, they have especially a strategy for complexity mix, new procedures, so we can bring in this new clinical team, new procedures, and all of this is in line with the investments in these units. So this number has sustainability in our model in the next quarters. When it comes to costs and expenses, we had a small worsening from the second to the third quarter. In regards to the costs, it is a bit of the mix in the procedures.

We had Santa Clara, and then that comes in with a bit of the profile of what we buy from, with a higher cost base, medical costs, and the hospital in Salvador is also doing pretty well with the revenue, but there is still that period of 12 to 18 months that we always consider to be the EBITDA turnaround. We carry on a bit of the costs in this consolidated result. But we have our eyes open towards these points and these discussions with all of the different internal analysis, so that we can improve this over time and get back to the levels of costs we have already had in the past. Going back to general SG&A, we have these adjusted per M&A. We do not have the stock option adjustment anymore, because we do not understand that this is part of the operation.

We always really value a clean balance sheet with financial income statement that is really easy to be analyzed to help you with your comparisons with other players and even the results in the chain in other quarters. When it comes to expenses, we had about 1% worsening in the size of the expenses, reaching BRL 68 million. This expense is mainly from personnel. We still have some repeated activities in the controller and consolidated numbers in the units we acquired. We are still in this very strong integration phase, and our objective is that we will be lowering this quarter over quarter. We had our last operation, and now we are really thinking about this for the next year, where we can lower this number to be able to improve our margins for EBITDA over 2023. Moving on to the EBITDA numbers.

We had, in nine months, a drop of approximately 27% margin. This is a margin that is probably the best in the sector. It is very healthy. Even in a year where we consolidate many operations, as we mentioned, we are tripling the size of the operation with activities that have less profit, less margin. But in the consolidated results, we have 27%, and we are going to continue to handle the revenue to be able to grow so that we can have numbers that are even better for 2023. In the quarter especially, we have a growth of greenfield in Salvador, which is going to be super important for the size of the chain and network in the next years. There is a bit of weight in the beginning, and that lowers the margin a bit in the period when you go into the full quarter.

The same thing applies to Santa Clara, where this month it came in and it was basically zero margins by September 2022. These two assets are the main causes of the fact that we had a slight worsening in our margins in this quarter. But the expectations are that over time, we will be able to recover the margins we have already had in the past. Now, moving on to the net income. We have an additional adjustment towards the M&A we have in the EBITDA. We have an adjustment in the goodwill for Porto Dias. With this adjustment, in nine months, we will reach 14.5% of net margin, BRL 181 million net income in nine months. And in the quarter, BRL 59 million of profit, that is pretty much stable, with a margin of 12.5%.

In the cash flow, we have a variation that is pretty big from the end of the year to now about the cash position. Most of this, about BRL 878 million, is due to these investments. Here I have some CapEx for equipment to improve the operations, and the biggest is really the acquisitions with all of the M&As we performed, plus the construction project in Salvador, which were the main offending factors of this number. But they are really what is going to make the network in the future have even more growth in those 1,500 beds and reach our capacity of 2,700 beds approximately. Our cash position was BRL 482 million consolidated by September 2022. Taking this to the debt level, we saw that there was a gradual increase of our indicator.

We had the purchase of Santa Clara with about BRL 160 million in our cash in Santa Clara, where we have zero EBITDA for this number. We worsen our indicator just a little bit, which is still very healthy, but with all of the purchases that are already performed and the cash generation that the network has, our objective is now to really deflect this downwards and reduce the step position quickly with our cash generation. The schedule for these BRL 1 billion in 2022 is really healthy. 79% of our debt is above five years. The average term is 6.5 years. With the swap, we have a debt cost that is below CDI. We have 93% of our debt is CDI - 1% approximately. We apply this cash better than our debt.

Today we have a position that besides being extended, it is a low leverage, and we have a cost of debt that is very low also. This is a super controlled situation, and we always look at this very carefully, especially in this economic moment we are going through with the inflation, interest rates, and political instability. We were very careful to not enter into a dangerous situation in the company. But we do have room to perform new operations for equity and debt as well, to be able to increase our operations even more. Here we officially complete this part of my presentation, and now we will open up to Q&A.

Operator

Thank you all so much for your participation today. The first question will be with Samuel at BTG.

Samuel Alves
Analyst, BTG

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Dr. Henrique and Rafael. We have two questions here on our side.

First, would you be able to disclose the number of COVID beds during the third quarter in the Belo Horizonte operation? You did mention COVID was already in the operation, but just to give us an idea of the magnitude of this, if you have this number. The second question is about the partnership with the Rede Américas. Dr. Henrique mentioned that throughout the next months, you would build an agenda of common interest. But just if you could maybe give us some ideas about if you plan to concentrate the purchases of inputs between both of the chains.

Henrique Salvador
CEO, Hospital Mater Dei

Samuel, good afternoon. Thank you so much for your question. You are always very interested and active in our thesis here. Let's start. About COVID.

COVID, especially after vaccination and the last movement that took place about a year ago, it started being part of our integration in our day-to-day activities. With different flows for patients that have flu symptoms or those that don't. There is an observation that there's an increase in surgeries in our units, especially the biggest units, and especially when it comes to a bigger flow than what we were noticing in 2019, before the COVID crisis. It really is now able to see some stability in the operations, and COVID just becomes part of our day-to-day activities in the hospital organizations around the world. We created this structure, and this structure has been working very well as it needs to for more severe cases, for example, and pneumonia or other complications that we know, such as coagulation factors, et cetera.

About Rede Américas, Samuel, we can't really announce at this moment because we are going deeper in different opportunities that exist and also because we would like to communicate to the market together as things progress. We don't have, at this moment, anything to anticipate towards you. What I could say is that we have two private hospital chains that are complementary in their activities, and there's none of our hospitals that are in the same market from both chains, whether it's the 12 of theirs or our almost 10 of ours. This is considering the creation of a product or a chain in these markets where we're present. Mater Dei, for example, as I've already mentioned, we're in Minas Gerais, in Bahia, Pará, and Goiás, for example, in the Minas region and in four states.

Now we start having the possibility to really structure products with operators with a presence in another five states, which is another attractive point. There are other important agendas and topics related to our core business, which is really managing the clinical team, training people, exchanging experience related to certain lines of care that Mater Dei handles differently or that the Rede Américas handle differently. Benchmark of health professionals. We are really building a full agenda with this committee that was created involving managers and directors working hand in hand to be able to really take advantage as much as possible of this partnership. The creation of joint procurement processes has some other issues related to the antitrust bodies that we'd have to see how this could be done.

This would increase the volumes of these purchases, which could also be a differential, but we're going to follow what the laws and authority foresees. Certainly, we'll be advancing with the necessary security towards what we can perform jointly.

Samuel Alves
Analyst, BTG

Okay. Thank you, Dr. Henrique, and have a good afternoon, everyone.

Henrique Salvador
CEO, Hospital Mater Dei

Good afternoon.

Operator

Now, Felipe Amancio from Itaú BBA. You can open up your mic, Felipe, please. We will pass it on to. Oh, Felipe joined. Okay. Felipe, we still do not hear you. It seems your mic is off. But I will pass the phone to Miele. Miele, you can submit your question after we will get back to Felipe, and he is probably having some difficulty.

Gustavo Miele
Analyst, JPMorgan

Oh, hi, Dr. Henrique and Rafael. Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. I have two questions here from my side. In line with the highlight that Rafael mentioned in the presentation, another quarter of quite interesting performance with hospital bed openings in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. But I wanted to know if you could maybe share a bit of the economics on these new organic beds that are entering the base.

Have you been able to preserve the tickets in these new beds? Is this bigger flow of patients in the hospital really coming from agreement processes that are similar to the legacy process? How these new beds interact with the consolidated margins in the company. A second question here is just to consider an update of the synergy gain plan, especially from MatMed, which is considering the seasonal mix effect, as you mentioned. I wanted to notice if you are looking into some room for renegotiating these terms, or if we should consider synergies more towards personnel. That is it, guys. Thank you.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

Sorry, Miele. Okay, great. Thank you. First of all, we are really trying to have a more consolidated network than a specific network in Belo Horizonte due to the geographic footprint. But I am going to mention this to be collaborative with your process.

We had the growth of the ticket in Belaga and Belo Horizonte compared to the last quarter, and we have a healthy margin in the controller level with the standards we were having. You can be sure. It is a growth that is very responsible. We have not disclosed this yet because we have to have a perception from you guys about the company's ticket as a whole, because if not, we are always going to be getting back to the same aspects and stuck in the same aspects, and that will make it difficult for us to become a consolidated network. It is more towards this than an actual concern with the numbers. But about medical materials, MatMed. Behind the negotiations with suppliers, we also have some strategies for medical materials and OPME and the units.

Specifically, this was a quarter that had a peak of 1%, but this is already being repeated now in the month of April. It was something with the adjustments in the new units entering. We do imagine that this number will get back to the levels of the second quarter you saw and a trend that you've seen with an improvement in margins. This unit in Hospital Santa Clara has a lot of opportunities, and we also have a perception of the improvement in the mix in the hospitals, okay?

Gustavo Miele
Analyst, JPMorgan

Very clear, Rafael. Thank you.

Operator

Okay. Figueiredo, Itaú BBA, please.

Vinicius Figueiredo
Analyst, Itaú BBA

Good afternoon, everyone. I think Felipe Amancio had a problem with his Zoom account, but I think that the first question is maybe more related to how to model this. You had mentioned the expenses.

Part of the acquisitions you worked on, they consider in their accounting. Should we imagine this is going to be converging in the same way as Mater Dei in Belo Horizonte? That's the first question. That's a little more specific. Another point I wanted to mention is about the ticket. Once again, you demonstrated growth in the tickets. That's very healthy. I wanted to try to explore this a bit because you showed this growth in the ticket level, even in the scenario where you have more operations out of Belo Horizonte, increasing their share. But I wanted to understand a bit more about how much you've seen in the organic operation of the ticket increment. I think those are the main questions.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

Well, about the first question. I think that we have a new normal in this Rede Mater Dei de Saúde network.

This percentage of 10% when you use those five that we had in the third quarter of 2021, which is that operation just in Belo Horizonte with this new reality. These numbers are here to stay, really, and I think that we can't perform. It would be too radical, this change, and it could happen over time, but we don't have this on our pipeline right now with a drastic shift in the compensation method for physicians and how this is done with the units. You could consider from modeling perspective this number. But what we need to do is try to search for a reduction in the cost of the total revenue. This is if we're considering this number of 64% in nine months. We had 6% in nine months of 2021.

These four percentage points are a challenge for the company, so we can see how over time this will take place. It's not going to happen in the next quarter or 100% next year, but this is some work where we gradually can reduce this. When it comes to expenses, I think it's some work that we have to search for a little quicker, which is really the success of this integration. Being able to eliminate different positions that sometimes exist as duplicity, which initially are important for the sustainability of local operations. We don't have a rupture of some procedures, but that we are really keeping our eyes open to be able to bring this margin to numbers that are more historical. As we've mentioned, approximating them from those 30%, although we already have a margin with all of these operations.

We still don't have the consolidation entirely in 12 months, but we have a super healthy margin of 27%. About the tickets in this region, it's pretty much the answer I gave to Miele. We had a real growth in the ticket level in the region. We had an increase, which is a fruit of especially of these new competition models, which now in the fourth quarter is not reflected. Now we've migrated these plans to the global daily rate, and we're increasing the size of the global daily rate with these new compensation models and our costs. Then this is another task that we really like, which is the operational challenge of really being able to take advantage of this split of the risks with the operators.

Considering an upside on our side, if we're able to operate very well, to be able to improve margins. I think this is the objective we have, really servicing, meeting the needs and requests of the operators of the health and the payers, right? That's our role, and that's how we've reached the point we've reached, and we were able to create this model in Belo Horizonte that we had never seen before, which is due to this long-term relationship with the payers.

Operator

Now we're going to call Estela from JP Morgan.

Estela Strano
Analyst, JPMorgan

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to explore a little bit more of the occupation rate. Just as in the last quarter, we had the rate impacted by the operations in Salvador and other expansion projects in the company.

Having said that, if we take a look at the operations that are mature, what would be occupation rate excluding these effects of the ramp-ups. Besides this, when would this occupation rate, that's current consolidated rate, when would it converge to the levels of occupation of the mature operations? Thank you very much.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

Well. Okay. Thank you, Estela, for that question. I think the best way for us to answer this question is really saying that we are operating above 70% in the month of October. We did have some events in September, especially what we call the point that we really notice that there's a trend of a peak in the hospital, and when this happens, we don't really know. The operations really don't know when they're making the decision to notice if it's one quarter or not.

They're doing this as they need to be able to have this efficiency. We had the opening of the beds affecting this growth a bit. Now with the opening of the beds and hiring new people, this affects results initially, but October has already gone over 70% in the consolidated number, which demonstrates that we won't lose or create bottlenecks in the operation overall. This is a sustainable hospital bed opening, and this growth is significant. This drop was more of a strategic matter than an actual drop in the overall volumes in our hospitals. Another point, Estela, that we should mention also is how Mater Dei calculates the occupancy rates.

Henrique Salvador
CEO, Hospital Mater Dei

Increasing, for example, as I mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, the number of procedures in day hospital rates, and some of these numbers are not considered towards the occupancy rates, but they do engage and generate more volumes for the surgical centers, diagnosis units. They contribute to an improvement in results without necessarily increasing the occupancy rates of that unit.

Estela Strano
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay, guys. Thank you so much.

Operator

Next question. Gustavo Tiseo from Bank of America.

Gustavo Tiseo
Analyst, Bank of America

Good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon, Bruno. Good afternoon, Dr. Henrique and Rafael. Thank you for your time and availability. We just have one quick question here about Mater Dei at Salvador to try to understand how this is moving along. I think it's been operationalized in a quicker manner, actually, considering that.

Is there any perspectives towards accelerating this to have more operationalization in the beds, just so we can have a yield and an overview of what the operation's like there? If you could also mention the EBITDA situation and margins there as well, that would be great. Thank you.

Henrique Salvador
CEO, Hospital Mater Dei

Gustavo, I'm going to start off here, and I'll pass the floor then to Rafael Cordeiro. The accreditation from Salvador with most of the operators is already signed, but we have certified with Bradesco Saúde, Amil, Petrobras, CASSI, and some other hospitals also, and payers from the Unimed Group, et cetera. Many of the operators, just to give you an idea of the numbers, it's almost like 400,000 lives at the base of potential users in our hospital in Salvador. What happens is that whenever we open up the hospital, there's always this maturity period, right?

The patients, the physicians, and people need to get used to the structure. They need to experiment the structure and really like what they experimented. Our emergency room, for example, in a few days, will already be servicing over 100 patients per day. The surgical center also has a growing production, and the units and diagnostic units also. Physicians already have the Hospital Mater Dei in Salvador, for example. Although it's only five months of operation, they already have this reference to be able to operate in. We have almost 100 robotic surgeries in just five months of operation. It starts really taking place and becoming a reality considering some factors. First of all, a structure that's very unique for physical aspects, and secondly, the embedded technology, and third place, the location. The hospital is very well located.

Now with the entrance of the medical center, we believe that the ramp-up will really accelerate. But I'm going to mention this to Rafael Cordeiro, and he will complement your question.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

I think the main point is that it's within our business plan, and the number of accreditations are above our business plan. This perspective is even above what we have for the next month. We would be optimistic, if we would like to increase a bit of this margin turnaround there. We're noticing a pretty good frequency growing in all those processes and specialties, the accreditation processes. We're having pretty good feedback from the operators. It's really in line with what we expect, with very positive perspectives of growth over time. I think one comment. This is the first hospital we're ramping up on.

We ramped up the Santo Agostinho ramp-up, and now this unit in Contorno, Betim-Contagem, and Salvador. We really understand the curve for maturity of some development like this, and this ramp-up is actually above what happened in the other units. No doubt, this makes us very optimistic that the opportunity should be consolidated quickly.

Gustavo Tiseo
Analyst, Bank of America

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Rafael Cordeiro
CFO and Investor Relations Director, Hospital Mater Dei

We have a written question on the evolution of the unit there in Nova Lima. As Dr. Henrique mentioned, in regards to Nova Lima, we are completing this project in the last details, and we will have this, as we disclosed back then, the passage through all of our governance and our committee and our board as well.

As soon as we have this, we will provide more details on this matter with all of the rental contracts, and we are going to provide 100% disclosure, as we have always done, with all of the related parties. The next question is about Rede Américas. I think we have already addressed it. It is the beginning of a relationship with some practical things and other things that can be evolving, and we will provide more details as soon as things advance. Any other questions? We would like to just thank you all for your presence. We are permanently available with our investor relations department to clarify any questions or go deeper in any points you believe would be important for your understanding and awareness towards the Mater Dei thesis. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon and a wonderful week.