Good morning, everyone. We're here to talk to you about the results we had for the first quarter. We're very happy with the results. It's a unique moment for the company, where all of our businesses have become quite significant. Despite all of the problems we're facing today in the area of parts and supplies, especially of integrated circuits, the results are very good. They crown the efforts of the past few years. You can see our numbers and the highlights. Our revenue was quite high, 85% higher than the first quarter of last year, BRL 89 billion.
Our EBITDA was BRL 61 million with a margin of 9.1%. The net income was BRL 55 million in the first quarter and exceeds the first quarter of 2020 by 175%. At the end of March last year, we were affected by the pandemic and have had very good performance. We're very happy to say that we have concluded our portfolio of computers. Positivo had a very strong computer portfolio for the end consumer. Now, Positivo is very strong with a significant share demanded by the Brazilian middle class.
We had VAIO. It was increasing in mid-high. We're talking of prices of up to BRL 2,500, BRL 3,500 to BRL 3,800 today. But there was an area where we didn't have a significant share. It was below 6%. We had been negotiating with HP for a while, and now we come in with a Compaq brand. With that, we have concluded our computer portfolio. We're more and more a portfolio-based company. We do the same with smartphones. We have one additional brand. We're doing quite well with this strategy, just as we're doing well with our strategy in different avenues of growth.
Our growth is centered on consumption, but other areas have also grown. 162% is what we have had of increase in direct sales. We have also had an increase in public stations, public institutions. This market has grown a lot. We had an increase of 162%, and companies are reacting to the pandemic, are buying again, and we have had an increase of almost 13% in the corporate market. PaaS has also done quite well. Digital transformation. It is doing really well. We have online channel sales, both for our own and third-party online channels.
They have maintained their expansion trajectory, and by means of our retailers marketplace, we're doing really well. We have reacted, modernized all of our platforms, have reinforced our channels. Right now, we only have online sales or mostly online sales. 70% used to be on-site and 30% digital, and this has now been inverted. I have already talked about the brand portfolio. With the addition of Compaq, VAIO is doing really well at an increase of 92% and has become a very important brand. Sales have exceeded our expectations of growth. It is strong and a demanded brand for the A and B classes in Brazil.
In terms of our mix, we have an improved product mix. And despite the prices of pieces going up so significantly, we have a gross margin of 23.2%, which is greater than what we had in the first quarter of 2020. The demand is still high. If we look at the demand. We see that it's very high. Hybrid work is here to stay. I have no doubts about this. Everybody can see this. We're no longer going to live the same kind of lifestyle, and the demand is going to continue high. The market is very heated.
Perspective is that we will have 360 million computers per year according to the IDC, and it might be even higher than that. We are going back to the peak of computer sales we had in 2011, and this combined to the demand of other sectors which fight for the same integrated systems. Smartphones, tablets, televisions, they are all competing for the same integrated circuits. There are unbalances throughout the world with the prohibition of some Chinese companies to operate with American technology, and therefore they have anticipated their purchases.
We have had some events of plants burning products. With that, we are lacking integrated circuits. The difficulty to buy a computer plaque is very high and integrated circuits for LCD, because LCD is something demanded by the whole chain, all of the electronics. That makes everything very expensive, and it is very difficult to buy. We could be selling a lot more than we are if it were not for the restrictions of supply. We have been able to deliver the minimum that we would like to deliver.
You can see very good sales numbers for the first quarter. We have been able to deliver the minimum required so that we can grow well this year in all of our channels. Next slide. I would like to repeat the graph here just to consolidate this moment. We start explaining what happens with our three large division. We have a vice presidency for the different areas. We have corporate public institutions. We are pursuing all of the opportunities coming from the market. Computers is something that we sell for all of them, tablets for all of them, peripherals as well.
We have the electronic ballots, which is something that we are discussing publicly. We have the service, which do really well with corporate and public institutions, small retail. Our sales in the first quarter last year were to 160 retailer. This year we had over 700. So this project where we permeate the whole Brazilian retail has worked out really well. Smart house continues growing significantly. The demand for residential automation products remains high.
We are also exploring the corporate market with that, with intelligent offices. Also sales for construction companies. Educational technology is not doing so well. The schools are still closed. The priorities are other. Digitalization of education has become necessary, and we believe that this area will grow a lot. Rental continues growing. This is true for corporate and public institutions. Payment solutions, where we are selling to other clients. Just to talk to you about our revenue and how they were broken down.
You can see 55% for consumer, 15% for corporate, 21% for public institutions. When we break down according to the different projects, our main projects are computers and then mobiles, tablets almost 14%, mobiles 24%, servers 3%, services 4%, and other 9%. We continue investing in startups. We have just closed a deal with Eunerd for maintenance and services. We already used Eunerd services in the past. It is a very interesting company. We have made an investment in this company and now have 11 startups in our portfolio.
Next slide, please. Now talking more specifically about the consumer market. I have already talked to you about the computer market. We have 357 million units in 2021. A computer has become personal and essential in our lives. We can all see that. Historic levels at retailers are still low, even lower than in 2020, demonstrating that we still have a lot of opportunity to grow. We have sales opportunities. This market will balance out eventually, but we have supply issues as well. Brazil has had, in Brazil, 20% more sales than in 2020, and this was limited by supply, otherwise it would have been much higher.
Our gross revenue reaches BRL 500 million, indicating a growth of 152% when compared to the previous year, to 2020. We have merged with Compaq. Our purpose is to provide technology to leverage lives in Brazilian families, Brazilian lives, and Compaq completes our product portfolio. In corporate, we're happy with the growth when compared to the first quarter, almost before the pandemic. The market was almost to normal in the beginning of last year. Even so, we've grown.
Companies are buying again after a very strong V curve last year with the pandemic, where companies closed their doors, reduced investments. Companies already show their budgets. They're ready. Employees need to have computers. Companies are providing infrastructure to their employees. Notebooks are the major trend because of the mobility required by hybrid work. Everything is done by notebooks and not desktops. We're ready to grow this portfolio for the corporate market. Public institution, we've already shared this graph.
Our backlog for the delivery of computers used to be 690, and it is now 932, with a significant growth. We grew 43% in the first quarter. This market is very seasonal. We have a lot of requests, and basically this is true for the whole year, indicating a stronger growth when compared to last year in the public institution market. Just to review the results of the first quarter, we had some large bids in the Ministry of Finance. We had large tablet tender processes, and that really leveraged the public market. We are still observing the same strong growth.
Right now, we have a very high delivery backlog because of our supply bottleneck. We also have the electronic ballots. It's not included in this figure of 932. We have already been hired for 225,000 urns and a sales of approximately BRL 925 million. This is what we imagined, but we have some supply limitations. The project is doing really well, and most of the deliveries will take place next year for the 2022 elections. Next slide. Financial highlights. I turn over to Caio, our CFO. He will talk a little bit about this.
Thank you very much, Hélio. Financial highlights for the first quarter. Gross revenue, as Hélio mentioned, we have had robust growth of 85%. We have really gone to a different level. In the fourth quarter, we had a gross revenue that has led us to a differentiated level when compared to the past. When we analyze the gross revenue for the business, we can see growth in the consumer segment mainly, but public institution has reacted.
In the fourth quarter last year, it was 21%, and it is now 23%. Corporate has also reacted, but it's still lower than what it was last year. When we analyze gross revenue per product, we can see notebooks growing a lot because of the mobility, and desktops are going down. We have an interesting mix here. We have had an increase when we look at tablets and mobiles. Servers was a little lower. We also had an increase in HaaS.
Because our revenue volume has grown a lot. We had an increase of 26% in our gross revenue, even though the percentage results are similar. Now we are going to talk a little bit about our operating expenses. We have had an increase. We have more expenses with marketing, freight. However, we can see that there has been a very good control. We went from 14.7% in 2020 to 12.9% in the first quarter of 2021. For G&A, we see a stability demonstrating a very good control of the fixed costs of the company and the company will keep doing so.
Next slide. I will talk a little bit about the financial result. Even though we had larger gains because of the changes in the currency rate, the dollar rate went up and it closed at BRL 5.7 last year when compared to the BRL. Our financial operations are very well controlled. We are financing a higher operation and even so, our results are quite aligned to the first quarter of 2020. In the next slide I will talk a little bit about our profitability net income. Here we can see the EBITDA.
We went from losses of approximately BRL 3 million in 2020 and our results were positive this year quite significantly, 61.4%. We have had a strong management of fixed costs trying to control the adjustments of the currency rate. Went from BRL 4 million- BRL 55.8 million in net income. EBITDA and net income are quite aligned, demonstrating that in the first quarter when we did not have recurring events and they are comparable for this year and last year, we can see that the company has had very good operating results. The EBIT was BRL 40 million.
All of the operational figures are aligned at very high levels. In the next slide we are talking about cash and indebtedness. We have a very comfortable position. It is better than it was in the first quarter of 2020. Also, our indebtedness is very comfortable and very well controlled. It changes a little bit. We went up to a higher level. We are financing a larger operation, but when we compare our performance we can see that it is very good. We went from 1.6x- 1.1x, which is a very comfortable number demonstrating a very good control of our debt.
In addition to that, we are doing our homework in terms of the management of our liabilities and profile and we can see that in the end of the first quarter of 2021, we can revert the proportion of short and long-term debt. We go from 53%- 46% in the short term. This is different from what we had in 2020 and we have a mean duration of 23 months, which was used to re-profile our liabilities. We exchanged a short-term debt to long-term debt with a very interesting result and we are also able to maintain a very well-controlled cost of our debt.
We are now going to try to give you a perspective of what is happening and what is going to happen. In the consumer segment, the pandemic will extend, home office will expand and we cannot think that even after the pandemic this will leave no traces. Home office, hybrid work in the future all demonstrate that this segment will continue very high. The computer segment. With the high exchange rate we have this year added to the high price of components indicates that we will have an average ticket of 15%-20% higher than that of 2020.
The demand remains high. When we have high demand, this is good news for the company. We have a lot of consumers, of course, but the costs incurred by the increase in the exchange rate and also the increase in the part of components has to be taken to the client. Our average ticket will be 15%-20%. We have complete portfolio with three brands that are well-positioned. The home automation category should continue to grow. The demand is very high for remote controls. We have just launched a light switch . You change it and you control the whole room using your smartphones.
If you change the light switch in one room, you can turn lights on and off or schedule them at any time. It's very nice and simple. Also electronic gates, locks, where doors are opened by smartphones. We have a very complete portfolio and are very excited with it. This expansion of small retail. We have different sales points since first quarter, and a project that is doing really well throughout Brazil. We are spreading throughout Brazil. We used to be very strong within the largest 100 retailers, but we are now spreading to smaller ones and working really well with the smaller retailers.
In corporate, the renovation of the park and the exchange for notebooks to obtain more mobility for hybrid work leads to more optimistic projections. Banks are still buying for their employees. They have this concern. Not every company provides computer to their employees, but they allow their employees to use their own computers. This combination of consumer and corporate is very large, even though the growth in corporate has been smaller, in the order of 12.5% year-over-year. The trend of increase in 2021 average ticket is in a range of 15%-20%.
We have had also a switch from purchase to leasing. The demand for servers and storage also remains high, and therefore we have a very good performance here too. Public institutions. We have a scenario of tender processes of large volumes of notebooks, tablets. So we have Ceará, Fortaleza, with tender processes. They have required tablets in large amounts. In São Paulo also, we have had some notebooks. We have had, actually, we still have a lot of other tenders coming our way.
This will continue growing this year and in the upcoming years. Also, we have already mentioned the Ministry of Finance. They have had their largest bid in the last three years. We won a few lots. We are beginning to deliver the computers. PRODESP is another example. They had a large tender process. There are different ongoing processes and some that have already taken place. We have higher number of sales this year and have an order guarantee of BRL 932 million . This is a pre-election year, meaning that we will have more bids, we will have more in the second quarter for deliveries in 2022.
Then during the elections next year, it will be more difficult because it's not possible to buy or to have tender processes according to the law. The government is anticipating purchases. This is a very optimistic market. Computers are personal. The demand is high. We have increases in electronic ballots, intelligent or smart homes, educational technology. We think that that is also going to improve. All of these segments are doing well. This is a unique moment for the company. We are very happy to disseminate these results today. I thank you all for your attention, and I now open for Q&A.
Very good. First question we have here, Hélio, is from Marcos Nascimento. The capacity to expand. Can you expand the current activities, and how can you expand your manufacturing plant?
Well, thus far we do not need to expand. We used to work with one shift, sometimes with two shifts. We are now working with two shifts, and we still have a third shift to work if we need to. Most of the lines are current or at peak production in 2002- 2013. We have a lot of production capacity for smartphones, tablets. We are doing quite well in terms of our production capacity, and we do not need to expand right now.
Of course, we must make some investments, and this is something that we are anticipating. Some BRL 10-BRL 12 million in investments because the technique to test computers has changed. We are buying some things, but in terms of our park, we are doing really well. We are doing really well with Boreo in Manaus . We have a computer plant in Manaus, another one in Curitiba, and this footprint we already have is enough to meet the demand.
Very well. Second question from [Volmert] Schmidt. Do you have any M&A consolidation strategy, or are you going to develop startups and have organic growth?
We do not have any good example on our growth. We have servers that were purchased in the end of 2018. We bought a server company. We have nothing against organic growth. We have nothing against inorganic growth. We always look at the different opportunities. Our avenues for growth are well-consolidated. We know that our strategy has been defined. We will always try to analyze what is best, organic or inorganic growth. This means that, yes, we are looking at opportunities. We have not closed anything, but we are looking at opportunities.
Very good. A third question from Carlos Herrera, Condor Insider . Two questions, actually. We are in the middle of the second quarter. Thus far, what are the trends you see for this quarter, and how do you see the rest of the year? Will we have any recovery of the activities?
The second quarter, we are one and a half months into the second quarter, and I can tell you that it is very strong as well. The perspective is to keep it strong with robust numbers. We also see the third and fourth quarter, we have had requests from the government. We have closed some deals with the retail, and I believe that this is going to be a very strong year.
Very good. We have Ricardo Peixinho from Tagus Investment . Do you still have worsening? Is the worst gone? How do you see the second half of the year with normalized supply?
I think we are at the peak of the worst moment in terms of supply. I don't think that it will be much worse than it is right now, but I don't think that it will improve fast. Some components will get better only in the beginning of next year, and some in the second half of next year. I believe that we are at the peak right now. Perhaps prices are a little bit higher for some components in the upcoming months. Not as much as it was in the past, but the amount that is produced and allocated will not change.
Next question, Hélio, from Henrique Veloso from Polo Capital . He asks the following: The revenue growth in tablets was significant. Can you sustain this level of sales?
I would say that we had a one-timer that will be expanded to the second half. We had sales for the government, deliveries to a retailer that sold units to the government. That may have changed it a little bit. I do not know whether that will be maintained for the second half. I do not have the exact figures right now. But yes, it will remain strong. I do not know whether it will be exactly like it was in the first quarter. I cannot guarantee that.
We have no further questions. Let's wait a little to see if any other question comes up. We have no further questions. Would you like to make any final considerations?
I think we've already talked about our optimism. Sales have been good. We have had a strong year and will continue at a high level. We hope that we will always be able to share such good news as we did now. Thank you all for your attention.