Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Ser Educacional's video conference to discuss the results for the second quarter 2023. This video conference is being recorded and the replay can be accessed on the company's website, ri.sereducacional.com. The presentation is also available for download. We inform you that all participants will only be watching the video conference during the presentation, and then we will start the question- and- answer session when further instructions will be provided. But before, I would like to reinforce that the forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Ser Educacional's management and the current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors, analysts, and journalists should be aware that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the industry, and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. The following are present at this video conference. Mr. Jânyo Diniz, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. João Aguiar, CFO, and Rodrigo Alves, IRO. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Jânyo Diniz, the company's CEO, who will begin the presentation. Please, Mr. Jânyo, you may proceed.
Hello everyone, and thank you very much for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On slide four, we present the quarter's highlights. We are fortunate to say there was a significant improvement in practically all operating and financial lines.
We had solid growth in the student base in every ticket, with emphasis on blended learning, which is growing again in a healthy way due to the progress of the winter intake process so far, which we should maintain it until the end of the year. This positive dynamic provided us a 9% growth in net revenue in the quarter, supported by the execution of the operational optimization plan we started at the end of last year, which helped us to present solid growth in all operating and financial margins. Showing we are on the right track to regain our operational leverage and thereby provide better returns to our shareholders. On slide five, we detail the main practical results of this plan so far.
The best news from the quarter's results is that we've been initiating the increase in the margin cycle, as we had positive effects first semester, generated almost solely by our portfolio repositioning activities regarding the offer of blended learning courses for the health area and finalizing the integration of UNIFAEL in our digital learning, which we publicized in the last quarter's earning call. On the other hand, the activities to generate synergies done in parallel are just showing their first results in the second quarter, as we only concluded the first review of our real estate park in May and June, which, as you can see in the corner at bottom in the left, generated savings for BRL 2.3 million in rental costs comparing this quarter with the first quarter 2023.
This occurred because we extensively reviewed operation units that were generating negative results, as well as our capacity to occupy properties in the cities where we operate. As a result, we reduced the number of units in operation, and for the remaining units, we returned the buildings we did not need anymore and renegotiating rents. We also rebuilt our cost and expense structure and optimized the room distribution using the increased penetration of Ubíqua, our curricular matrix, which is in its third year of implementation, associating this project with greater operational versatility generated by reviewing our course portfolio. This initiative, associated with a more favorable market scenario, allowed us to grow margins again, marking the beginning of a return cycle of increased profitability that we hope will be consistent as the optimization plan will happen again in the coming quarters as we show at next slide.
On slide six, we show the execution schedule demonstrating what has already been completed, next steps to be taken. On the left side, we show the steps we took this semester in line with what I mentioned on the previous slide, which is the basis that provided the first improvements in the results to date, and which will gain momentum in the second semester as they will be effective from now on. In addition, we will have a new generation of synergies that will be done the third and fourth quarters 2023, which will also continue in 2024 with the two new periods of real estate optimization and the completion of an important project we started that year to review and robotize back office processes.
This important project, initiating in February and currently being developed, will help us improve the quality of our services provided to students at a lower cost than we have today. As a result, we expect our margins to return to a positive cycle of resumption of operational leverage for the second half and next year as well, especially if this more positive macro scenario for higher education is maintained compared to previous year. We will now go to slide eight, where we show intake for the first half of 2023, which has already observed in the first quarter was positive for blended and digital learning. The pace of growth in hybrid learning enrollment was slightly reduced in both segments compared to 1Q 2023. But this is because of a decision we took to start winter enrollment early than in previous year by around 15 days.
This meant part of the new students enrolled in the second quarter was redirected to the second semester, which will help us with the winter enrollment volume itself and an improvement in the students' academic and also room distribution. On slide nine, we have the total student base, which in practice has not changed much compared to 1Q 2023 for blended learning. We had the seasonal impact of student dropouts in digital education that was traditionally something that happened in even-numbered quarters, due to our policy of removing from the base and revenue culmination, the students that have not accessed the platform and paid fees more than 90 days. This semester, we had a slightly higher intake through discount campaigns, and we also had a slightly higher dropout rate in the semester due to profile of students recruited. On slide 10, we presented the average ticket.
As you can see, it was very positive in the quarter, mainly determined by blended learning due to the conditions I mentioned early and allowed us to grow the general average tickets of the company's regulated education on about 8% in the quarter. To conclude the comments on the operating data, on slide 11, we present the evolution of our mixed courses, which as you can see, will have another quarter growing our base of students in the health area, in the hybrid and digital education as a result of our strategy of reorganization, which as you can see from the financial results to be presented by CFO João Aguiar. Thank you so much.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for your introduction, Jânyo. Please, let's go to slide 13, where we present the summary of the quarter's results, which I believe was very positive because of the combined effect of improvement in revenues, especially from blended learnings, associated with the generation of the first real synergies [habitation] by the readjustment plan. Highlights of the optimizations achieved in the quarter are certainly the greater efficiency of marketing, as we were able to increase enrollment and retention and the improvement in the amount paid in rent. As a result, we could resume growth in gross, adjusted in net EBITDA margins, which denotes that the company is taking the right steps to resume its operational leveraging, which will be fundamental for increasing cash generation and remuneration for shareholder more adequate. On slide 14, we see the evolution of blended learning contribution in the quarter's results, proving the thesis that we have defended here.
Focusing our action plan to improve results with a special focus on increasing the occupancy of our leased properties and adapting the course portfolio, it would be possible to generate a change relatively quickly in the trend of our results towards a more promising scenario, which we started to materialize from that quarter onwards. Another factor is the results in the medical courses and the growth of 48 vacancies we had in Vienna compared to last year. In the digital education segment, we continue to show solid margins, preparing for a new growth stage that we have completed with the integration with UNIFAEL concluded. We are back to increase this year's student enrollment without neglecting our value proposition to students focusing on improving our average ticket.
On slide 15, we show the average collection period, which improved compared to last year, mainly because of part of the Educred portfolio sold to Pravaler, which so far has resulted in an increase of our cash by around BRL 69 million and was reflected in a substantial reduction of 13 days in our PMR, which turned out to be a positive event to improve our financial position. On slide 16, we analyze the net operation cash generation that year, pre and post CapEx. The sale of the portfolio reasonably offset the impact of interest payments on the year's cash generation. After this period of higher interest rates efficiently, and now with the evolution of optimization plan and a more positive scenario in Brazil regarding interest rates, we will improve our cash generation and start a more consistent process of debt reduction.
On slide 17, this year, we had already started the reduction of our net debt, EBITDA from 2.68x in December to now 2.35x. Wrapping up my comments on the results, on slide 18, we have the accumulated CapEx for the year that follows. According to the schedule, with investments made in the accreditation of new courses, especially medicine, labs for distance learning centers, and digital content. As a result, CapEx dropped compared to last year, increased from 5.8% to 3.8% of net revenue. Thank you. I turn the floor over to Jânyo to make his final remarks.
Thank you, João. On slide 19, from the numbers presented, you can see we are fulfilling our plans for the year. We are successfully executing our plan to resume our operating leverage, aiming to improve our capital allocation, streamlining the processes, and greater operational efficiency. With this, we expect to reduce our financial indebtedness regardless of the interest rate scenario, focusing on offering courses that allow us to optimize the use of physical and digital spaces with an increasingly omni-channel operation that can continue to develop an ecosystem of continuing education. These initiatives will allow us to have generate avenues of growth that will allow us to perpetuate our activities in the education market with consistent rates of growth. Thank you very much. Now let's go to our Q&A session.
Thank you so much. Now we are going to start our Q&A. If you wish to make a question, please press the raise your hand. If your question is answered, then you can leave the queue. Please wait while we collect all the questions. Our first question is from Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan . Please, Marcelo, go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity of asking questions. First of all, I would like to know about your perspective for the second half of the year, how the entrance examination is. The second question is more about the opening opportunities for medical courses. Because right now we had the federal court talking about medical courses. Now we have new things that we need, and we have more medical programs, and I would like to know about the potential use fee for medicine courses. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. As I said at the beginning, we are having a really good intake both for blending and digital, and this makes us improve. Right now, the scenario is different than in the past. The average ticket is different because now the scenario is more aggressive. This is powerful for us. We are not at the end of the intake, but we understand that average ticket is positive. As for medicine, we have some research that is being done on this, and we think that this is about different decisions. Some decisions are in a really advanced process, and this could make us have more positions open for the medicine courses. Of course, we need to understand more about the different decisions, but we understand and we believe that some of them are covered and some decisions are in an advanced process, and that is positive for us.
Okay. Thank you so much.
The next question is from Pedro Caravina from Credit Suisse. Pedro, your mic is open.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I want to understand more about FIES. First of all, I want to understand more about FIES and the different adjustments on the funding for students and how the impact is on your operations, and if this is going to have an impact on your courses. I wanted to understand more about the medicine courses as well, and I would like to know the expectations for the government plan, if you have an update about it. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. First of all, as for FIES, the government funding for students, we've had information about this, and we understand that throughout the history, what we do is we do our maintenance, and this is something really specific for FIES. Every six months, we assess it, and we follow the rules. Every two quarters, we assess FIES in our coverage.
We received FIES under the average in the market. When this rule started in the past with the new FIES, we made a decision here of using funds based on the different fundings, and not only the rule of 3%. This number started to get bigger, and we started to consider that number as part of our PDB . We don't have that impact. This is because of our standard, because this is what we were doing from the beginning of the new FIES. We don't see that as an impact in our results.
Just to add to what he said, the improvement on FIES in the general scenario is related to the schedule of FIES, and it's not directly related to the medicine courses. It's because there they don't have a huge number of medicine students compared to the rest. Some years ago, we started making this space bigger with more acquisitions. In our case, with these adjustments that are being done in FIES and an improvement for the positions we have, they won't have a huge impact in our results because of what [João] said before. As for the new FIES, we are in the same page as you are. The last announcement was made by the ministry, and they said that they are going to make an adjustment this month.
We are waiting for the new steps, and we understand that this may be helpful for the area and to having adjustments in high school in Brazil, and that is going to be something really important for the society.
Okay, thank you so much.
Remember that if you want to make questions, you just need to click on raise your hand. Please wait until we collect all the questions. The Q&A stage has been closed. We would like to give the floor to Jânyo Diniz to make the company's final remarks.
Thank you everyone for participating in another conference of results. This presentation is going to be available to help you if you have more questions. Have a nice day.
The Ser Educacional video conference is closed. We appreciate everyone's participation, and have a nice day.