Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Valid's Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin the presentation, I have a few announcements to make. This event is being recorded, and some attendants will be in listen-only mode during the presentation. For those interested, the presentation is also available with simultaneous translation into English. The supporting slides that we'll be presenting are available on our IR website, and shortly after the event, the replay will also be available on our website. As soon as the presentation is over, we will begin the Q&A session. Questions can be submitted now or any time during the broadcast. It's important to mention that any forward-looking statements that may be made during this video conference regarding the company's business outlook, projections, operation and financial goals constitute beliefs and assumptions of our management, as well as information currently available to the company.
Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. These involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, since they depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors could affect the company's future performance and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Today, we have Ilson Bressan, CEO of Valid, and Olavo Vaz, CFO and IRO. I will invite them to start the presentation. Il Bressan and Olavo, over to you.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon everyone who's attending the call, earnings call of 2026. On behalf of all employees of Valid and all shareholders, I would like to greet you. Our first quarter was marked by temporary revenue pressure offset by operational discipline and development capabilities that reinforce the company's long-term resilience and sustainability.
This quarter, in spite of all the pressure, is an excellent example of how we can combine our capacities and maintain a capital discipline, preserving cash so as to fund the digital transformation of our company. Before discussing the results, of which we'll provide details on the next slides, I would like to provide you a framework that has already been presented in our earnings results call of last year. From now on, you're gonna see us repeat how we fit the behavior of each business within this framework of our business, both of the material businesses as well as the new digital businesses on which we are working. On the one hand, we have one engine, Engine 1, that we refer to as the source of revenues that represent our foundation, and they fund our cash. What's the role of this Engine 1?
Here we have products such as issuance of documents, where we are leaders in Brazil. We have bank cards. We are leaders in Brazil and in Argentina. Also, SIM cards, where we are the top four of all global players. The Engine 1 that represents our foundation and cash generation has a role of sustaining the margin and fund the growth by means of Engine 2, which is the business front of product portfolio that would bring a digital base of resources and for growth. The Engine 2 are represented as digital government, integrated platform of digital security and mobile digital. What is its role? To grow recurring revenue, changing the one-off that we have in Engine 1 to the recurrence that we have in Engine 2, and thus we can expand the multiples of the company in the long run.
That's why when we look the short and long terms, this balance and this investment in different horizons is what our management is looking at. How do Engine 1 and Engine 2 work together? We understand that the group of those two engines of revenue generation, in addition to generating cash, in addition to the role in the financial terms, of course, all that's important because it means that we can expand the revenues without diluting shareholders. That's the main source that would fund the growth of our Engine 2, of digital growth. It also transfers, in addition to the financial part, several capabilities of knowhow of execution excellence that we have developed along the years. Biometrics, by issuing documents, hyper-personalization, such as the credit cards, or even in safe connectivity elements that we see in Mobile.
Our geographic presence in 17 countries and also our operation scale and also our institutional relationships with telco, with governments, with banks, with retail, with wholesale and e-commerce. All this in a critical compliance culture that keeps us at a level of excellence which is very high. All those competencies put together are transferred to Engine 2, where we have a client business, we have a global geographical presence, and our role is to adapt the portfolio so that in the combination of all those competencies, we can implement an integrated architecture in our portfolio. We can make a new product be created global by design, and we can bring a lot of data intelligence to the product and to the platform that we develop.
We can also connect a unique position that we have in the market, in the private market with the competencies we developed in the public market in such a way that we can have all those data that can be scalable on a combined platform with digital security for all our clients. When we look at all those competencies, no startup, no fintech, and no other companies that are created from scratch would be able to combine all this. We have this flywheel. It's the infinite flywheel, and one round after the round refeeds our competencies so that we can have different foundations of revenues, sources of revenues operating combined so that we can generate the future growth of our company.
We are now going to discuss the results, and then we are going to talk about the outlines that we have, the highlights that we had for the period. Important information, whenever we disclose the results, we are going to refer to this combined functioning of Engine 1 and 2, whose dynamics are specific, but they are combined in this infinite flywheel that make up the big defense barrier in our value proposition to the market. Let's go to the highlights of 2026. The first highlight is that CIN, the C-I-N, accelerated the results. As we have noticed the effect of the result in our quarterly results. When we compare only the volumes of this quarter of 2026 compared to the first, the third quarter of 2025, we can see that we grew by 30% in the CIN.
There are two elements that makes us believe that those results will continue very strong, growing very strong in the quarters to come. Not only do we have the law 15007 that establishes that for the concession of benefit, the user will need to have a new CIN and also register the biometrics, but also the fact that more than 70% of the Brazilian population have not issued their document. This is going to accelerate our results. Another highlight of the first quarter of 2026 is that we consolidated the business of digital stamps or seals considering the opening that we have in São Paulo.
Quarter-on-quarter 2025 and 2026, the revenue nearly tripled. This is going to go on like this in the year to come as a result of this innovation of the digital watermark stamp that was implemented in the state of São Paulo, where the volumes are higher. Something very important is the launch of the integrated digital security platform. In previous calls, we said we had the obligation to do the closing of a gap of digital products. This quarter, we managed to remove from documents and also materialize in clients who have already started generating recurring revenues.
We have identity as the pillar, which is the most important, but it will register the person in environmental, digital environment, but we are also going to monitor the credentials, the privileges, and it's going to be an effective tool to protect from fraud, to ensure safe transaction, secure transactions. The market will understand the concept that only Valid can offer with all those elements combined in such a way that it will represent our competitive edge when compared to other players that have been established in this market previously. Going to the consolidated result of this first quarter of 2026. We can see there was a drop in revenue year-on-year of 11% driven by the regulatory impact and some divestments that we made as well, and also the FX effect.
The regulatory impact, which is the most important one when we look at the dynamics of the consolidated revenue, it has to be distributed in each of those vertical's segments. When we look at the behavior of the BRL 501 million of 2025 versus BRL 447 million of this quarter of 2026, when we distribute all this into the three ecosystems of operational Valid, it shows that, at ID, we moved from BRL 244 million - BRL 249 million. Therefore, a growth, a small growth, but consistent growth however, in spite of the fact of the important regulatory impact on Engine 1 related to the driver's license and also the Engine 2 related to the revenues from the Vsoft, which are digital revenues. What is the effect? What's the regulatory impact?
The impact of the provisional measure 1327 that establishes new rules for the issuance of the driver's license, and it made us lose some revenues because the driving classes were reduced and our portfolio were adapted to do the monitoring of those practical tests in the driver's training. The provisional measure establishes that this market completely changed its dynamics. We had a very important effect on Vsoft as a result of the provisional measure, and the same source caused an impact on the revenue generation in the document of the driver's license. Because of the new format and the automatic renewal, it stopped following the regular process.
Even so, we see that the behavior of this market moved from BRL 244 million - BRL 249 million when we compare the first quarter of 2026 to the first quarter of 2025. Looking at Pay. This is where we have the highest behavior on, allocated on Argentinian market, and we have a higher pressure, making the pressures of those markets and the margins to deteriorate. We have a FX effect, and when we compare dollar-real and dollar-real in the first quarter of 2025, we can see that there was a very important FX effect. It's important to mention that in the first quarter of 2025, we still had the questions of Colombia.
This drop accounts for the effect of the combination of these three elements, minus Colombia, Argentina effect, FX effect, and lower demand and the competitive pressure in that market. We made adjustments in Argentina, and we resized the operation where we dimensioned minimum capacity to meet that local market. As of this quarter, we are going to deliver any additional capacity by means of our plant here in Brazil. In Mobile, we had a similar effect of what we saw in Pay as related to FX fluctuations, we can compare the currencies, but we also have the element of sustainability. The first half of the year is usually weaker in the result of Mobile. We made a decision for this year. We decided to recover market share.
There we wanted to expand our presence in some markets, then we offered more competitive prices. If SIM cards are sold at more competitive prices, we open the room for more revenue with. All those effects combined are represented here in this drop of revenues of 11% of 2026 when compared to the previous year. When we look at our mix, digital mix, we also noticed in the first quarter more pressure in the new businesses. They open the way to new opportunities, however. I would repeat the same rationale that made us to have some drops, some drop in the drive license. We had Vsoft revenue to reduce because of the number of classes, and our revenue revenues in digital government were as well.
The characteristics of Engine 2 and all the digital revenues where we have all the new businesses. I said it's just normal to have some fluctuation in our revenues because the characteristics of the products, the maturity of each of those portfolios have a startup characteristic. Sometimes they move forward very strongly, sometimes they go backwards, then we recombine everything. We analyze why we had some effect on the revenues, we reorganize our strengths in commercial terms, in portfolio terms, we go back to growing.
This lower number in relation to the previous quarters was driven by the provisional measure, affecting Vsoft, and also considering that the main client in the digital onboarding had less demand of digital onboarding, and it had more demand of physical onboarding because it had a specific problem with its other suppliers, and this affected our business directly. We believe that for both businesses, digital onboarding with our main client and for Vsoft, we understand that the opportunities that open up will make us to be more optimistic, and we are going to recompose the revenues most likely in the next quarters. When we discuss EBITDA, I will turn the floor to Olavo so that he can provide a context of all the effects.
When we look at the operation, they were a bit lower when compared to last year, but some non-operational effects will help us to have a higher EBITDA in the first quarter of 2026. We are gonna close the first quarter of 2026 with EBITDA of BRL 140 million. That means an increase of 10% when compared to 2025 and a margin of 26%. In our release, we provided more details about this. We were favored in the first quarter by some items, one-off and non-recurring items that amounted to BRL 29 million. This breakdown of verticals would be 13 in ID, 12 for Pay, and 4% for Mobile. This was driven by what happened in previous years related to Sistema S.
We had a favorable decision in the first quarter. We made those adjustments in the pro- operational dimension. When we exclude this and we look at comparable basis, we see that what generated the EBITDA of this quarter was what Bressan mentioned. As for ID, there was a reflect of Vsoft and the Flexdoc revenues because fixed costs were decreased. We also had a reduction of two percentage points year on year here, and there were some adjustments that we have to make in the operation as a result of the lower volume. In Pay, we continue to see in Argentina a very weak volume and very low prices. The margin continues to be under pressure. We continue working to have the right size of the operation in Argentina, as Bressan mentioned.
Brazil is a lung for that should there be any excess of demand in the country in the future. As for Mobile, we adopted a strategy to increase volumes with lower prices. Of course, this is going to affect the margin and as well as the FX fluctuations impact. When you do the conversion of the currencies, since the real is lower, we can see that it's going to affect the EBITDA. When we look at the income in the first quarter, from BRL 114 million in EBITDA, we get to BRL 56 million of income for the quarter. How can we explain that? We had a positive financial result of BRL 5 million, BRL 11 negative, BRL 17, a positive non-cash effect, BRL 26 million of depreciation amortization.
It's a level which in line with what we have been doing quarter and quarter. We go to taxes. I think this is a big differential when we compare the first quarter of this year with the first quarter of last year. Last year, along the year, we were favored by the interest on equity. This also happened in the first quarter. We didn't have this benefit now. The effective tax rate is higher. The rate is higher. We get to BRL 56 million as income for the quarter, which accounts for a margin of 12% with BRL 0.71 per share. With deliveries of the result of the first quarter, we also approved the payment of BRL 40 million, which accounts for 25% of the result of the quarter.
The payment will be made still in May, on the 29th of May. The cut-off date is 11th. Moving on. When we look at our cash, we ended 2025 with a cash of about BRL 850 million. That was a very robust position. Before the closing of 2025, we had issued some debentures. We ended the year with a cash at a higher level, and we said that 2026 would be a year where we would be working in refinancing and paying more expensive debts. This is what we have already started doing. When we see that cash coming from BRL 850 to BRL 750, a variation about BRL 100 million.
We see, when we look at the last block of the slide, we see that in this quarter we had amortization of expensive debt of, in the amount of BRL 60 million and BRL 38 million in interest on equity, the payment of interest on equity, as well as BRL 6 million of share buyback. After this, our cash would be at the same level when we closed 2025. When we look at the operational generation in this quarter, we had an operational of a generation of BRL 41 million, 35% conversion on the EBITDA. We reinforce in calls that if we look just one quarter, does not say much about the company, so we like to consider a longer window.
When we see the conversion, we see that the conversion is very high. We believe that this level will continue along the year. We invested BRL 4 million in CapEx. 6% of this CapEx is gonna be implemented in new businesses. As Bressan mentioned, the company is moving to digital, moving to new businesses. Only to wrap up, speaking about the three major components, when we look, when we consider the working capital, I'm going to start with the accounts payable. The level has been stable with the suppliers, very little variation. When we look at inventories, this is very important element for us 'cause the main item of our inventory are the chips to the area of cards. During the month, we work to find the best level.
When we look at today, it's BRL 226 million. We see that we have improved a lot in the management. The last element is accounts receivables. The level is a bit higher that we reported in 2025, but a major reduction in accounts receivable when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2025. Along the quarters, we are going to have higher conversions, lower conversions, but our focus is to look in the long term and keep the cash conversion very high. Along the next months, we have the expectation to have new finance, a cheaper financing from FINEP and BNDES that will be used for the prepayment of more expensive debts. I turn over to you, Bressan, for you to make the closing remarks.
In the previous call, in the closing moments, we provided some directions for 2026, we'll come back to those directions so that we can provide some updates for you to understand how the priorities are behaving along the quarters. First, about capital allocation. What was the first quarter like? We allocated in expansion CapEx. 60% of the total was CapEx for expansion in first quarter. Maintenance CapEx is ever lower, and expansion CapEx, which is supposed to finance the Engine 2 of digital growth. This is the place where we are allocating our capital and making the organic investments for the growth and supercharging Engine 2. We maintained a net cash. It's robust so that we can make acquisitions along the quarters, especially in the areas of fraud prevention and biometrics check and digital identity.
We have a very important pipeline. Our cash reinforces our position to complete all this in the next quarters. As Olavo said, in we have the direction of doing distribution of dividends, and we are going to continue buying back shares because we understand that the current share price does not reflect the value of the company. In relation to strategy to growth, considering this long-term vision. In the item of consolidating Valid as the main identity company, it has to do with the integrated platform. We had some recurring sales. We are very proud of it. We can celebrate this. It's gonna be bigger in the next quarters because the portfolio is becoming more mature.
The task of expanding it to our clients is our priority as of now. In item two, to accelerate sales to the private sector, we are reinforcing our commercial team. We are specializing the teams, preparing them to sell the products using this platform concept. They also use the clients that we already have on the basis. They use the existing channels. This is something that we're going to continue doing in the next quarters. Lastly, we are eternally searching for higher efficiency in our businesses, especially those of Engine 1.
We made important changes in Vsoft, we also made some changes in Flexdoc, Valid as a whole and especially in Argentina by reducing the shifts and finding the right size, the ideal operation, so that they can use Brazil as a backup. This is what is on our radar. We are gonna continue reporting all the updates. I would like to reinforce that a quarter where we have a higher pressure on the revenues and on the margins, such as the first quarter, it's not going to shake our conviction in the sense that we are going to continue building permanent capacities, looking at the long term, providing resilience in our business. We remain firmly committed to executing our strategy.
A quarter such as this tells us that it's not the moment to have any exaggerated reaction in any direction. This is a moment for us to have a clearer strategy and looking at recurrency and digital lines so that we can bring long-term resilience to the company. This is what the management focus is. We are going to address positive cycles, and we are also going to manage some worse cycles when they come. It happened in some quarters. It happened in this quarter. We are confident that our strategic pathway is perfectly right. With this final remark, I would like to thank you all. I would like you to bear with us so that we can get organized with the questions that were received, and we'll be back soon.
We are back for the Q&A session. The first question comes from Luciana Tuberson. Congratulations on the results. Same revenues. Valid holds 75% of the national volume. With 23% of the population, is there any possibility that you're gonna lose this share?
Thank you, Luciana, for the question. We believe that CIN is going to continue at this pace in Engine 1, and it represents supercharge of expansion, which is very strong. As you said, 75% of the population has not issued the document, but we have a very important characteristic. We are the leader in this market in the most populous states in Brazil, especially now that we have some agreements where we have already renewed with the new law that is likely to last 10 years and no longer five that we had previously.
With a longer term contract, and we are the players who are issuing the documents, so we are in advantageous position when the contract will be renewed. Minas Gerais and São Paulo were the most recent ones, and we use this advantage of being operating there now because the entry cost is lower for those who are operating. We do believe that this is going to be a very important condition for us to keep our share. Without a doubt, we are going to continue at this pace of issuing the documents of CIN that will offset the negative effects that we have in the driver's license, which is now a marginal business in the company that is not so representative as it used to be in the past. This is going to be a very important growth point.
There's another important point. In addition to this case that the population has to issue the document, but we have to consider there is validity. The CIN has a validity term, so if they started being issued in 2022, in 2032, we have documents that will need to be renewed. The second item is that as of 2032, there will be no longer a paper document, physical documents that we see today. The polycarbonate that has a very high, a much higher added value will be obligatory as of 2032. This is going to be a growth driver as of 2032, and this can be something that will drive our sales up.
Thank you, Bressan. The next question from Lucho. Good afternoon. The release mentions the commercial results and the B2B results of the platform. What are the markets that are growing, and what are the products? In digital mobile, front grew a lot driven by OEM. What were the drivers that led to that result? Do you think those products will present a ramp-up in the next periods?
Thank you, Lucho. As to B2B, we have a very important presence in the telcos and banks. Telcos, banks, sorry, retail, and some e-commerce has. The concept of integrated platform was launched in the market this year. Onboarding digital document authentication of validations and biometrics checks were the main product features that were successful. They are very small considering the size of the platform, but they start to, they try to represent recurrent revenues in the client bases because we are already present in the market, and this has been for a long time now.
This is going to continue to be a growth driver. The first revenues are small. Quarter on quarter will have more significant values. As to digital Mobile, here we comprise some sources of revenues. One is the transition from the CIN, which is growing traction because the devices have the slot for eSIM natively. But the main element is the OEM that we report in the release. OEM is the capacity that we developed in the past few years in this ecosystem to offer a connectivity technology to the suppliers that can connect to any available network by any supplier and any eSIM supplier. We have a stronger presence in Asia. We adopted a strategy in the past few years to be a provider to multiple brands.
Today we have Huawei, Xiaomi, Poco, Vivo, and Motorola that are part of our growth strategy 2026 is a very important year for OEM and for digital Mobile. The results that we have reported in the first quarter when we look at what was realized and when compared to 2025, and when we look at the forecast against the budget, we can see that the growth is bigger than we were expecting within this item, especially OEM. We have positive prospects in those two fronts, digital Mobile and the platform.
Thank you, Bressan. Our next question comes from Paulo, Johnson, which are very similar. I'm going to direct the question to Olavo. Could you provide clarity of the one-off that you had for this quarter?
The complete details, there are two explanatory notes, five and 18. Basically we had a favorable decision. In very simple terms, in the past, in prior years, we paid in excess to a system. We paid above the limit. Since we received this favorable decision, we are going to receive the credits of those results. We had the entry in the EBITDA, so we reduced the costs. Since this was entered years before, we have a financial update that is below the EBITDA. There is a tax credit that is going to be reflected in the result. This tax credit will be used. We are talking about BRL 69 million, and our expectation is to use BRL 30 million in 2026 and BRL 40 million in 2027.
When we look at EBITDA and cash, we see that the number would affect the accounting number, but it does not affect the cash at this moment. We are going to be favored by a reduction of PIS and COFINS taxes in the next years. This is something that's gonna play out along the time. BRL 30 million in 2025, 2026, and BRL 40 million in 2027.
Thank you, Olavo. Our next question comes from Eduardo to Bressan. Do you have any M&A pipeline for the year? Is there a specific sector that you would like to operate in?
Hello, Eduardo. Yes, we have a pipeline, a very important pipeline. Of course, we cannot disclose the targets. They fit in the concept of the platform.
As of the last year, we adopted criteria related to the multiples. We're looking at a fit for the integrated digital security platform where we define the targets related to anti-fraud products or anti-fraud companies and biometric checks and digital identity. These are the priorities we are after. Within the integrated platform, we have four pillars. We can provide details. We have already provided details about those pillars in previous calls. Those pillars include anti-fraud transactions, onboarding, identity perimeter, which has to do with cybersecurity, especially in the identity security. Also include decentralized intelligence data. Whatever is inside the concept, whatever is adjusted or aligned with the culture of a founder, it also can be applicable in the channel or in the project is where the M&As are gonna be.
The next one is from Mateus. What is the strategy in Mobile and Pay verticals?
In Pay, the margin is already pressured again. In Mobile, we decided to gain share to the detriment of margins.
What can we expect for the future?
You can start. Okay. I'm gonna approach Pay, where we have the margin under pressure in the bank cards area. Our strategy is to address this business as much as possible. When we compare 2024 and 2025, you can look at our previous results. We can see the drop that we reported because of the performance of Argentinian market. The global market is very competitive at large. Whatever item of Engine 1 has to generate cash and has to fund the growth of Engine 2.
A strategy for Pay is to generate cash. We are going to continue operating at a cost level that can be ever lower. Our negotiation with suppliers have to represent the market reality. Our operating structure has to be appropriate for what the market would pay for that product so that we can generate cash at all times. If any business of our Engine 1 stops generating cash, we are gonna put it aside and we are going to divest it as we have done in the past few years, according to some announcements that we have made about divestments that are no longer important. In terms of Pay, this is the strategy that we have established for bank cards. We want to continue having excellent relationship with them because they open the way to Engine 2 possibilities.
As for Pay, talking about Pay, specifically about Argentina. We are trying to find the right size for Argentina. We have reduced the Argentinians operation. If the market absorbs a higher volume, we are going to provide the service, and the product is from Brazil. As we do with other global players, exporting to Argentina. As to Mobile, we have a strong presence in important clients, tier one, especially in Latin America countries, European and American countries, Africa as well. The competitive has been fierce, very fierce in the Asian market. We have a 10% of the global share. We want to continue defending the share, that's why we want to be more aggressive, especially to SIM card in this first period of the year.
SIM card has the same functioning of the MNOs; the operators purchase from the same supplier. Recently in Brazil, we had some bids that were made, not only in Brazil, but also in Latin America. They were made for SIM card and also a SIM platform. We've been very aggressive in all those regards so that we can ensure the market share of 10% and we are looking for growing in this market share. In terms of expectations of recurring revenue for the year, I would say that historically, this business unit has a volume close to $100 million in terms of sales and EBITDA between 15%, 18%, 20% of EBITDA, and sometimes it reaches 25%, sometimes it drops to 12% or 14%. We do not want this business to be lower than $ 100 million.
It has a characteristic that as of this year, it seems that the digital curve adoption is more significant considering that we have seen this in the OEM product.
Thank you, Bressan. The last question to wrap up by Nishio, what are the growth levers without losing margin, what are the biggest potential products?
Hi. Hello, Nishio. How are you? Here we go. I'm going to go back to the frame of the engines. Engine 1, without a doubt, yes, this is an important growth lever without losing margin because we have long-term contract and the prices have already been established. This is very important for Engine 1. For Engine 2, a very nice example would be the digital stamp, which has 3x more revenues than we reported in the third quarter of last year.
This is something that's gonna repeat along the year. The platform is another important growth lever. It was launched in the first quarter. Some clients are already purchasing. Evermore, we are gonna expand this portfolio to all our client base. There is a challenge for the integrated platform, so that we can compete with long-term competitors. Also to offer this to our client base. We have clients, but now what we're doing is to adapt the portfolio, and we have to invest in the commercial team so that we can convert those products. Water stamp for Engine 2, platform also in Engine 2. Digital Mobile, considering the OEM characteristic, will continue to be very strong in this year.
Digital, digital government, even though we had a setback in this quarter that will likely continue for the next quarter related to Vsoft. There are other items such as the benefit card, traffic solutions, because there are fewer classes, the criticality has to be higher. The tests, the theoretical and the in-person testers have to be more stringent. That is an opportunity for us to open the portfolio. As of now, we are going to look at the digital side. We see very clearly in the summary, Engine 1, CIN is a very important lever, and Engine 2 important elements are the platform, the stamps, digital government and OEM, making us to have higher expectations for the company.
This is where we are founding our strategy when we are not only going to manage what is being happening in the first quarter, but we're also going to implement long-term measures so that we can have recurring revenues in Valid.
Thank you, Bressan. Thank you, Olavo. We came to an end to another earnings call. We would like to thank everyone for attending this event. The IR team is available should you have any questions. Thank you.