Good evening, everyone. Thank you for waiting, and welcome to Vitru's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. We advise you that the video conference is being recorded and will be available on Vitru's IR website, where the complete material of our earnings call can be found. You can also download the presentation from the chat icon. During the company's presentation, all participants will have their microphones disabled. Then we will start the Q&A session, and at this point you'll be able to use your microphone. To ask questions, click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen to join the queue. If you prefer to write a question, please follow the same steps and you'll be joining the queue as well.
When your name is announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must activate your microphone to ask questions. It is recommended that you ask all questions at once. We emphasize that information contained in this presentation and any statements that may be made during the earnings call regarding Vitru's business prospects, projections, and operation and financial growth constitute the beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information currently available. Forward considerations are not performance guarantees. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors may affect Vitru's future performance and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.
Today we have the presence of the company's executives, William Matos, Vitru's CEO, Carlos Freitas, Vitru's CFO and IRO, and Maria Carolina Gonçalves, Investor Relations. I'll now give the floor to Mr. Carlos Freitas. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us again. It's a pleasure to be here with you all for the release of our fourth quarter 2023 numbers, as well as the numbers for the full year of 2023. A slide presentation will be part of today's call, which is also available in our Investor Relations website at investors.vitru.com.br. Before we begin, I'd like to make note that as detailed in slide two of this presentation, Safe Harbor is in effect for this call. Now let's start and invite you to go to page 4, which I'm going to show you right now. Here we show the few key operational highlights for the period. The first one is that we had more than 808,000 students as of December of last year, which was a 15.4% increase in our core digital education undergrad business.
That was a major growth, and I'm going to talk about it a bit more later. Also, we had an important increase of around 10% in the average ticket in the digital education undergrad segment in the second semester of last year compared to the second semester of 2022. Just as a reminder, we always think in terms of semesters here at Vitru because it replicates the academic calendar. And this is another, let's say, reaffirmation of our approach to pricing. Also, we closed the third debentures issues in early December of last year, through which we extended the average debt duration and also reduced our financing cost. The debentures was issued at a rate of CDI plus 2.45, while our previous average cost of debt was CDI plus 3. And finally, we had important advancements in the migration process of Vitru from Nasdaq to B3.
So we already called the shareholders' meetings that we will approve the transaction, the reverse merger through which Vitru Brasil will incorporate Vitru Limited. These meetings will take place on April 19, so four weeks from now. And I'm going to give more details about the process in a few minutes. On page 5, we have the main financial indicators for the year of 2023. So net revenue in our core segment of digital education undergrad, up 42% in the year, with the overall consolidated net revenue increasing 49% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA increased even further, about 60% in the year. And then with that, the margin was up from 33.9%-36.6% in the full year number. The cash flow from operations was also up even more, 71% in the full year, which led to an adjusted cash flow conversion rate of 96%.
So that's an important piece of our financing approach, is to generate cash and take profit of our scale. And finally, even with our debt that is decreasing, we managed to have a consolidated adjusted net income increasing around 24% in the year, reaching BRL 253 million. So on page 5, sorry, on page 6. As you know, this is a slide that I like a lot because it shows our execution over last years. So growing several aspects in number of students, EBITDA margin, EBITDA as a whole, cash flow from operations. So we have been, I would say, over-delivering on what we intended to do and what we said that we would do during the IPO. On page 7, growth throughout the company. So apart from the 15.4% growth in the digital education undergrad segment, we also grew in graduate business and the on-campus business.
So it all led to a total students' base of 884,000 students, of which 97.5% are in digital courses. We are clearly focused on the digital business. And here we can also see that we managed to grow 15%, as I said, even coming from tough comps. We already grew roughly 25% throughout 2022, taking into account the performing students' base of UNIASSELVI plus UniCesumar in December 2021. As we can see here in the bar chart at the bottom right of the slide, our CAGR, our annual growth rate, was around 20% between December 2021 and December 2023. On page eight, we keep maturing the hubs. This is the most important driver for growth and expansion of revenues throughout Brazil. On page nine, we grew throughout the country in terms of hubs and students' base.
So even here in the South of the country, we grew by 9% year-on-year, important growth of 20% in the Southeast, 22% in the Northeast. And now the number of hubs also increasing by more than 300 hubs year-on-year, with an important increase also in the Southeast. On page 10, we show the geographical footprint of our hubs, which is quite complementary, as you can see here in the table at the left of the page that you know already. So as I said, throughout last year, we opened more than 200 hubs, and a lot of them were opened by partners who used to offer only one brand and now are working with both brands. And this can be seen here in the table in the bottom right part of the page.
You can see here that we increased by 20.6% the number of cities in which we operate with both brands. So the overall number of cities went up by 5.7%, but the overall number of cities in which we already operate now with both brands went up by more than 20%. So this is synergies. This is part of our commercial synergies that we showed to you two years ago, and then now we are delivering on that. And I'm going to show you more details about the execution of the integration a bit later. On page 11, another important slide to show our client orientation, our focus on quality. So here on the left, another confirmation that our average app ratings, taking into account Play Store and App Store, is 4.8 in both UniCesumar and UNIASSELVI, which are the best in the market.
And here on the right, you can see the Reclame Aqui grades as well. As you know, Reclame Aqui is a site that kind of states and confirms the client orientation and client service in the last six months. We have a reputation 8.0 in UNIASSELVI and 7.7 at UniCesumar. Those are the highest numbers among the listed players in the country. Page 12, this is a new slide. This illustrates that we are top positioned regarding quality of our courses. In the chart at the left, we show the distribution of the institutional concepts, the CIs, as you know, of the six institutions of the Vitru Group, as well as the other listed players. We have five institutions in the Vitru Group with the maximum score of CI five, and only one with a CI four, which, by the way, has few students.
This is important even more now than ever because, as you know, one of the possible regulatory changes that have been discussed is to increase the bar, to raise the bar from CI 3 to CI 4 for an institution to be allowed to offer distance learning courses. And in the chart at the right, we show an indicator that is not usually mentioned, but it is public information. It is part of MEC's evaluation. It is at INEP, which is the CC, which is the course concept. As most of you know, every 3 years, usually, the Ministry of Education makes an in loco evaluation about the quality of a course, taking into account different aspects such as the academic model, the technological infrastructure, and the level of teachers.
So as you can see in the chart, 61% of the Vitru courses that were evaluated over the last three evaluation cycles, meaning all courses, have a CC 5, which is two times the average of the market, which is the first bar here at the left. And by the way, regarding regulation, we don't know what will change. We don't know if anything will change. We don't know when it will change. But we do believe that there will be a stricter focus on quality, which is good, as well as a need for more hybridism in several courses. So in this scenario, we're showing here that Vitru would be quite well positioned, and the changes in regulations may even benefit us. So for us, the higher the bar, the better. Slide 13 is also new, and it mentions Rede Enem.
So Rede Enem, most of you probably don't know that we acquired Rede Enem two years ago in September 2022. Rede Enem has different products, including Blog do Enem, which is one of the leading sites with content for the Enem preparation, which had 17 million views and 1.3 million followers on Facebook. And also, Curso Enem Gratuito is part of the group with 3.1 million users and almost 1 million followers at YouTube and 12 million views. So this is a major source of leads for us and a very nice piece of our digital education platform. Page 14, in this slide, we show details of the intake and the average tickets for each of the brands in the digital education undergrad business during the second half of last year compared to the second half of 2022.
So for intake, the intake in the second half of last year was 27% higher than the previous year, especially due to the performance of UniCesumar. And as I mentioned in the previous call, last year, we worked in the repositioning of UniCesumar and achieved a more balanced split between the first and the second semesters of the year. We saw an untapped opportunity to increase the intake of these brands in the second intake cycle of the year. And then we grew 59% over the previous year. In the case of UNIASSELVI, intake grew by 13%, which is a strong performance considering the quite high comparison base, the quite tough comp, knowing that the intake of UNIASSELVI grew at an annual rate of almost 30% between 2019 and 2022.
For tickets, in the case of Uniasselvi, every ticket grew slightly above inflation, about 7%. This is mostly due to this pricing discipline that I mentioned before, our marketing intelligence, and the tools and the procedures, the systems that we have in place to set our prices, to adjust our prices. This is the kind of discipline that we have been using and mentioning to you over the last years. When we see the evolution of the average ticket of Uniasselvi in the last four years, the CAGR of the increase is virtually the same as the annual inflation rate in Brazil over the period. In the case of UniCesumar, we have noticed a clear improvement in the pricing throughout last year, so a 13% increase semester-on-semester.
These are the first results of the implementation of best practices between the two brands that we started in 2022, and we are reaping now the results in 2023. So these changes had to do with several improvements, including the commercial approach to attract new students, the annual increase of tuition for senior students, and a more granular and data-oriented use as we used to do at UNIASSELVI. And by the way, regarding the current intake cycle, until today, today, 21st of March, we are growing at a level of low double digits in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of previous year. So page 15, the big numbers, the big financial numbers, net revenue, as I mentioned, growing by 49% year-on-year, gross profit increasing 59%. So margin went up by four points from 61.9 to 65.9 in the year.
And the EBITDA margin went up by 2.7%, reaching, as I mentioned before, 36.6% in the year. Now, let's talk about each of these segments. On page 18, first, the digital education undergrad business, which is our core business. We grew by 42% in the segment in the year. Quarter on quarter was a 17% increase, also important. And we kept and keep on gaining market share in the segment. So here on the right, you can see that, as you know, we have been gaining market share throughout the last years in a booming business. On page 19, some remarks above our medical business. As you know, a quite high-quality business, the fifth best private school in Brazil, the largest medical campus in the south of Brazil. With tickets now over BRL 12,000, increasing above inflation given this higher quality, and seats still maturing.
So we expect promising results for this business over the next years. So with this combination of seats maturing and tickets growing above inflation, the net revenue of our medical business grew 31% in the quarter. On page 20, the on-campus ex-medical business, which grew by 6% in the quarter, but an important growth year-over-year given the relevancy of this business within UniCesumar, especially the health-related courses. And continuing education on the right, a strong growth here in the continuing education course, a segment, sorry. This comprises not only our graduate courses, but also a growing business of technical courses and professional courses. This segment is our smallest today, so far with only 5% of our net revenue. But it is the one that is presenting the fastest growth. So this is also a very promising area.
We do believe that we can offer complementary products to our students throughout their adult life. To illustrate this potential, to illustrate this prospect, we created slide 21 to show the prospects of the continued education segment. Just a few numbers here. We have in Brazil today around 1.2 million college graduates, which is an important flow for our postgraduate courses, and 7.7 million graduates in high school in Brazil, which is an important flow for our technical and professional courses as well, besides the undergrad business. Also important to highlight here that we have around 58,000 students in this segment, most of them still in graduate courses. The fastest growing business is the technical courses. This is a new business that, until two years ago, more or less, was regulated only at state level in Brazil.
Two years ago, the Ministry of Education, the MEC, authorized distance learning players such as Vitru and others to offer this type of courses at federal level based on the quality rates of the digital education undergrad courses. Because we offer high-quality undergrad courses, we were allowed to offer, and there is a specific accreditation process for each course to offer these technical courses. Given our quality, we were granted so far 42.8% of the seats authorized by the MEC. This can be a nice contributor for our numbers over the next years. Now about EBITDA, EBITDA margin growing, as I mentioned, is 2.7%, sorry, over the year. Let me show you now where it comes from. Regarding cost of service, we had a slight increase in the quarterly numbers because of intra-year some variations.
But the yearly numbers, they were declined at 2.3 percentage points year-over-year, which is basically due to operational synergies that I have been mentioning to you over the last quarters. For GNA, it's the same. We had a slight increase in the quarter, but basically because we had a strong decrease in the third quarter. So when you analyze these numbers, even for cost of service and for GNA, we had, in case of cost of service, a decrease. In the case of GNA, a stable number of around 6% of net revenue, which is, by the way, the lowest in the industry. So we are quite lean and quite focused on maintaining a lower level of GNA. For selling expenses on page 24, the quarterly expenses, as a percentage of net revenue, were basically flat at 16.6%.
If you look at the yearly numbers, there was a slight reduction in such expenses as a percentage of net revenue, which, given certain gains of scale and especially a more optimized mix between digital and offline marketing for the whole group. For PDA at the right, as it was the case in the third quarter of last year, the fourth quarter of 2023 was very positive for us in terms of cash collection. With that, the PDA is starting to go down. So PDA in the year amounted to 13.4%, so a reduction of 0.8 points over the number of 2022, even despite the strong intake results of last year. This is not yet the ideal level, but I do believe that we are going in the right direction. On page 25, adjusted net income.
This quarter, we had a reduction in this net income for the quarter, which was impacted by two effects, two things. One was higher financial expenses, given that we prepaid the sale of financing this in December. When we issued the ventures, we prepaid the sale of financing in the same day, which was associated with the acquisition of UniCesumar. And this prepayment generated an accounting increase in expenses. The other effect was due to lower deferred income taxes in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. So the positive impact was roughly BRL 30 million lower in the fourth quarter of 2023 versus the fourth quarter of 2022. So this deferred income taxes, as you know, is generated as we have taxable losses over time, which is our case.
But the positive contribution of this was more important, were stronger in the fourth quarter of 2022, in BRL 30 million than it was in the fourth quarter of 2023. Anyway, we're presenting an important growth in the adjustment income in the yearly numbers, even with the UniCesumar acquisition that's in our balance sheet throughout the year. So as you do remember, we acquired UniCesumar in May of 2022. That's when we issued our BRL 1.9 billion, the first ventures of the company. And here you can see on the right part of the slide, the increase in expenses, in financial expenses that I mentioned. So even with the increase in expenses of about BRL 100 million last year compared to 2023 with 2022, we had an increase of about 24% in the net income adjusted of last year. Page 26.
So an important cash flow generation and a reducing level of CapEx. So first, CapEx. CapEx went down throughout the year. So in the fourth quarter, reaching 7.1% of net revenue, reaching 6.2% throughout the year on average last year in 2023, going down from 7.4% in 2022. So this is relatively low given our asset light operation. And by the way, around two-thirds of our CapEx is related to investments in learning and IT systems and technology. So most of our CapEx is focused on technology, and very few of it, very little of it, is focused on hard assets. On the right part of the slide, cash flow. So we had a slight decrease in the cash flow in the quarter. This was because of certain the same way that we had in cost.
We had very strong performance in the third quarter, smaller performance in the fourth quarter. So that's why we showed here as well the semester numbers in the middle of the chart, the second half of 2022 and the second half of 2023. We had a 36% increase in the operational cash flow between these two years. And by the way, as I mentioned, we acquired UniCesumar in May 2022. So here we are doing comparing apples to apples. So this is just to illustrate the positive, I would say, working capital environment that we managed to have in the second half of last year. For example, we are now in December. We were at the lowest level ever in receivables days with 44 days compared to 57 days that we had, for example, in June of 2023.
If we take, for example, our net revenue in 2023 and compare this net revenue to the net revenue accumulated in the previous quarter, I mean, between October 2022 and September 2023, there was an increase of 4.1%, more or less, which is more or less what we've been growing on a yearly basis. But there was a decrease of around 10.8% in our short-term accounts receivables position in December 2023 compared to September 2023. So we managed to grow revenues by 4.1% in one quarter and reduce in almost 11% the accounts receivables. So this is cash flow in itself. So page 27, the integration, which is called here Project Ilumina. Integration with UniCesumar is advanced and is advancing faster than expected.
So here on the right, you can see the impact on EBITDA through cost and expenses. The cost and expense reductions we had that we overachieved what we said that we were going to do. These levers are not only personnel optimization, but also gains of scale in contracts and better retention practices at UniCesumar. Also on the commercial side, as I mentioned before, through the expansion with other brands in the same city, through different new products and courses, we also managed to beat our estimations for commercial synergies. Now the next step will be the harmonization of the criteria for recognition of the students' engagement, meaning that from this year, UniCesumar will use the same criteria of UniCesumar for the activation of students. This will result over time in higher retention rates, lower PDA, and higher EBITDA margins as well.
So on page 28, our debt level. Our debt level was BRL 1.94 billion in net debt. This without leases. This is the way banks use to look at debt levels. So BRL 1.9 billion of net debt, which meant a ratio of net debt over adjusted EBITDA of 2.9 in December. So it was 3.3 in June, then 3.1 in September of last year, and then 2.9 in December. So we are not only deleveraging, but also delivering fast. And of course, this was all aligned with our financing plan that we drew, that we designed when we had the combination with UniCesumar. And also with the vendors that I mentioned before, we also extended the average duration and amortization schedule of our debts. Finally, on page 29, the status of the migration from Nasdaq to B3.
So what we have been able to do in the last months. We launched the transaction in September of last year. As you know, we got the green light from CVM to convert Vitru Brasil SA from B category to A category in Brazil on December 4th of last year. And then just after Christmas, we got the green light from B3 for the Novo Mercado listing. And finally, we got the green light from the SEC. The S-4 form was declared effective by the SEC two weeks ago, March 6th, finally. It was a long, long process, but we managed to accomplish it. And then we were able to call the shareholder meeting, which was done last week, last Friday.
Then the next step will be the shareholder meetings of both Vitru Brasil and Vitru Limited will take place, as I mentioned before, on April 19th, in one month from now. Then there will be an election period of about one month as well, during which the shareholders of Vitru Limited will be able to choose whether to receive Vitru Brasil shares or Vitru Brasil ADRs. So some of them will choose to receive directly shares, which would be easier to trade here at B3. Some of them, for example, some small shareholders in the U.S., for example, they will choose to receive ADRs. So we do expect that the delivery of the securities, ADRs, and shares will take place potentially early June, and then we will be able to start trading at B3 at Novo Mercado. So that was it.
I think it was a good set of results, and now I would like to open for questions.
We will now begin the Q&A session. Remember that to ask questions, you must click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of the screen to join the queue. If you prefer to write your question, please follow the same steps, and you'll be joined to queue as well. Upon being announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must activate your microphone to ask questions. We kindly request that all questions be asked at once. Let's proceed to our first question. It's from Lucas Nagano, Morgan Stanley. Lucas, we will now open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please proceed.
Hi, Carlos. Good evening. Thanks for taking our questions. We have two. The first one is related to average ticket. The increase last year was particularly high, and for 2024, should both tickets move more aligned with inflation? And in the case of UniCesumar, are you seeing any impact with attrition due to this new pricing policy? And the second question is related to regulation. If MEC goes in the direction of increasing the percentage of in-person hours to something from like 30%-50%, let's say, how do you see an impact in your operations, both for UniCesumar and UniCesumar? Thanks.
Great, Lucas. Thanks for your questions. So regarding tickets, let's indeed return there to the slide about tickets, which is here. So indeed, we had an important growth last year in the first semester, also in the second semester. Now looking forward, I mean, we have the intention, and we have been working to deliver it, to increase tickets more or less in line with inflation. So there are quarters in which we'll be able to deliver more inflation and some quarters less inflation. I think it's still a bit premature to mention how this will evolve over time. What we are seeing that is that so far we have been able to have intakes, for example, more or less at the same level of last year. So we were able last year to grow intake tickets quite well. This year, we have already a higher price.
So year-over-year, our intake price is more or less at the same level of last year. But this will mean that our average ticket, we increase more than zero. But I don't know yet if this will be in line with inflation or slightly less than inflation. Let's see. Over time, I mean, last year, we grew by 7% UniCesumar and 13% UniCesumar. So this is way more than inflation. So I mean, it's not feasible to keep growing more than inflation forever. So let's see how this evolves for the year. And for regulation regarding in-person hours, I mean, we will adapt. When we see our hubs on a comparable basis, I mean, we have, in the case of UniCesumar, the academic model is hybrid.
In the case of UniCesumar, the hubs are also way better and bigger than the ones of the peers. And so we will adapt. So let's see what that comes. We do believe that we are better prepared than anybody else to adapt to this type of requirement for more in-person hours or percentage for these courses.
Okay, Carlos. Thanks.
Thanks, Lucas.
The next question is from Mirela Oliveira, Bank of America. Mirela, we'll open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please proceed.
Good evening, Carlos. Sorry. Good evening, Carlos, William, and Carol. I have one question here on cost. What do you think on cost opportunities, cost-cutting opportunities, what do you think are the main lines that could bring gross margin expansions in 2024? And secondly, you mentioned on the release, on the cash flow from operations, that there wasn't one-off effect for the semester. Which effect was that, if you could give more details on the impacts for the semester? Thank you.
Great. So for cost opportunities, I mean, we are quite well advanced in the integration. So I would say the most of the gains and synergies, they are already incorporated in the numbers of last year. But there will still be some more gains for 2024. And one of the lines that we do expect gains is, for example, contracts. So this impacts both costs and G&A. So when you renew a contract, a service contract, for example, or an IT contract, now we have a much bigger scale. And so our contracts, which are 2 years, 3 years, or 1 year in duration, so when you renew it, you have only the full-year effect of this better rate only the following year. So we're still going to have more impact for this year. We are also integrating our academic ERP.
So our academic ERP is still separate, the one for UniCesumar and UniCesumar. The one of UniCesumar is proprietary. The one of UniCesumar is not. So we are now integrating and moving to the one of UniCesumar, which also means some costs and savings in costs for this year. But I will tell you, Mirela, to be frank, that I mean, most of the gains coming from the integration, they are already in-house. We do expect, of course, some more gains of scale with the dilution of fixed costs, which is normal given our business, our size. But gains from integration, they are mostly in-house done. And I mean, the one-off effect in cash that we mentioned, we have a very strong collection in the third quarter of last year.
We had also some postponements of payments in the third quarter. And then we had to, I mean, pay this cost or to have a higher comparable basis in the fourth quarter of this year. So basically, that's why we mentioned here that the normalized number for the semester is much more important to show, which grew 36%, if I'm not mistaken, which is here, 36% semester-on-semester. So my point is that the basis for this year is what we have here. So BRL 225 million in cash flow from operations in the semester is a very nice level and a very important cash conversion as well.
Thank you. That's super clear.
The next question is from Luca Marchesini,unia . Luca, we'll open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please proceed.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking our question. We've been hearing from other players that intake volume has been flattish so far in the first half intake cycle for this year, mainly due to not only a strong comparison base, but also to the top-down scenario as a whole. So can you provide us with some color on the intake so far and if you have been seeing the same trend for Vitru? Thank you.
Thanks, Luca, for the question. In our case, what we have been seeing so far is a growth in intake. So until now, until today, 24th of March, we have a low double-digit growth in the intake compared to the first semester of last year, the same period of last year, in fact, about low double-digit growth in intake and more or less flattish tickets for intake. That's what we've been seeing. So it seems that we are growing more than the market again, given the quality of our offerings.
That's very clear. Thank you, Carlos.
Thanks, Luca.
The next question is from Caio Moscardini, Santander. Caio, we'll open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please let me proceed.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions here. One in regards to regulation, right? One of the discussions that we have been hearing is that the Ministry of Education could implement a minimum number of professors per student, right? So I would like to ask, how can you protect yourself if something goes in that direction, right? And you have to increase the number of professors that you have, right, to achieve a certain minimum. We don't know, right? And the other question is in regards to leverage, right? What is your expectation in terms of net debt to EBITDA during 2024? What level could you achieve in the end of 2024, thinking just purely organically here? So thank you for the opportunity.
Thank you, Caio. So regarding the second question about leverage, we keep on expanding EBITDA and also reducing net debt given that we generate more free cash flow than accrued interest. So our net debt will go down over time. So the net debt will be lower in December of this year than it was in December last year. So our expectation that this ratio of net debt over adjusted EBITDA will be at around 2, around 2 by the end of December of this year. And again, not taking into account leasing expenses in the debt, but taking into account leasing expenses as an expense in the EBITDA, so the way banks usually calculate the covenants. So around 2, today we are 2.9, and it will go down at around more or less 0.2 points per quarter, more or less.
For regulation, I mean, regarding the number of professors or students per professor, this is not a requirement from the Ministry of Education. When the requirements were defined a few years ago, there was no indication, there was no requirement about having a minimum number or maximum number, sorry, of professors or, sorry, a maximum number of teachers, of students per professor, sorry. What we have been doing is that we are quite, I'd say, at ease with this issue. We have the academic agents, which are also tutors. The regulation mentions academic agents, which are professors and tutors. We have today more than 3,500 tutors throughout Brazil. This is what is required to have academic agents. There is no such requirement such as you cannot have more than X students per professor. Otherwise, we will not be complying with the law.
So how can I not comply with the law if there's no law? There's no maximum ratio. So we are quite, I'd say, comfortable with that. And that's why we showed that anyway, when we see the CC, the course concepts, that the Ministry of Education itself gives to every institution and to every course, in fact, that I'm putting here as well in the screen on page 12, you see that 61% of our courses have a CC of 5, and 99% of our courses have a CC of 4 or 5, sorry. So this is just an illustration that, I mean, we are not very worried about it.
That's very clear, Carlos. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.
You too.
We remind you that to ask questions, you must click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of the screen and write your question to join the queue. The next question is from Bruno Giovanetti, Tarpon Capital. Bruno, we'll open your audio so you can ask your question. Please proceed.
Hi all. Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the results. I have a specific question. I know it was not part of the discussion here, but it's related to churn. If there is any change in churn in 2024, and if you could give us some information on that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bruno, for your question. Regarding churn and retention rates, that's an important issue. When you compare the fourth quarter of last year with the fourth quarter of 2022, there was a slight improvement in this ratio, in this retention rate, both at Itaú BBA and UniCesumar. And so this is, I think, the start of this recovery process. We had a deterioration of this retention rate in the last years given the economic situation, etc., given also our growth.
And now even, I mean, despite the fact that we are growing a lot and we had important intake also last year, we managed to decrease it slightly, but the trend is positive, the churn. I mean, I mentioned the intake because most of the churn is related to newcomers, to new students. So we could have a very low churn, low overall average churn if we have no intake, for example. But we don't want it. So we have to have a balance between churn and intake and tickets. So this three-piece equilibrium must be reached. And I guess that now we are closer to reaching this balance. Thank you.
This Q&A session is now closed. I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Freitas for the company's closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody, for following us throughout last year. We are available for any further questions you may have over the next days. Thanks and good evening.
The video conference of results referring to Vitru's fourth quarter and full year 2023 is closed. The investor relations department is available to address further questions and concerns. Thank you so much to all participants and have a good evening.