Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Vitru's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode now. Later on, we will conduct a question- and- answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available on Vitru's IR website. Now I would like to introduce the host for today's conference call, Mr. Carlos Freitas, Vitru's CFO. You may begin.
Thank you, Patricia. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for joining us. It is a real pleasure to be here with you all for the release of our third quarter 2021 numbers, as well as the numbers for the first nine months of this year. Hope all of you are doing well and healthy. Here with me, I have Pedro Graça, the CEO of Vitru, Maria Carolina Gonçalves, the Head of our Investor Relations department, as well as Raquel Suzaki, all from our IR team. A slide presentation will be part of today's webcast, which is available in our investor relations website at investors.vitru.com.br.
I trust you all have this presentation in front of you. As usual, before we begin, I would like to make note that as detailed on page two and three of the presentation, Safe Harbor is in effect for this call. Now I invite you to go to page five, the first page of our presentation with the highlights for this quarter. The first highlight is not new. It is the announcement of our agreement with Unicesumar for the business combination with them that went off three months ago.
We are never tired of reinforcing the bigger view of this deal. They are the leading institution in Brazil in terms of quality indicators for digital learning in the Brazilian segment. Besides having a sizable and growing business of medicine and other health-related courses. Later on, I am going to go back to this information and to show you more figures about Unicesumar. We also had this quarter, as expected in the past, we launched new courses, specifically the course of nursing, was started to be offered in August of this year.
In a couple of months, in two months, already became the number one course in our current intaking cycle in our portfolio of undergrad courses. It is a huge success, and it reinforces our speech and our belief that the digital education segment is going to increase even further throughout the country. We have reached almost 360,000 digital education students with a 27% increase in intake in the current intake cycle compared to the same cycle, same period of last year, with a relevant growth in the Southeast region, which is, as you know, our new growth frontier.
The net revenue in our core digital education undergrad segment increased by around 20% this quarter with a consolidated net revenue growth of around 17%. The EBITDA increased 26% in the first nine months of this year. It's always better to show the EBITDA numbers on a year-to-date basis because of seasonality we have in our business. The nine-month EBITDA growth is 26%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 29%, growing as well one point compared to the same period of last year.
Finally, last but not least, cash flow from operations reaching BRL 130 million in nine months with adjusted cash flow conversion from operations of 92%. We not only grew our revenues and EBITDA but also generated a lot of cash from our operations. Now, before we move forward to show what were the main figures of this quarter, let me show to you on page six a brief reminder, a refresh of what we have been delivering over the last 12 months. We had the first anniversary of our IPO in September of this year.
At that time, one year ago, when we were going through the IPO discussions with you guys, we said that we would grow in four growth avenues, three of which organic and one inorganic. We have been delivering what we promised over the last year. The first one was the ramp-up of our current hubs. We said that this was going to be the main organic growth driver in our revenues, which is being delivered. We have now more than 2/3 of our student base in new hubs, expansion hubs, the hubs that were opened in the last four years.
While one year ago, this number was 59%. Today, we have more than 90% of the hubs still in ramp-up phase, still maturing over time. We increased our student base also by around 25% in these 12 months. We opened more than 240 hubs, of which 100 hubs in the Southeast, of which has 50 in São Paulo. We are growing in the Southeast as we were announcing before. Also, we expanded the course offering. As I said, first, a new big course was nursing.
Nursing already, again, the number one course in the current intaking cycle. It is a premium course. It is a course with a ticket that is 50% higher than our normal ticket. Hopefully soon we will have offerings also in law and psychology. For example, in law, we have already the authorization, the grade evaluation, sorry, from the Ministry of Education, with a grade five, the highest grade possible, and the possibility to offer 22,000 seats per year. In the case of nursing and psychology, it's 11,000 seats per year.
This will be important growth avenue going forward as well, and important lever to sustain tickets as well. Finally, inorganically speaking, we announced, as I said, the deal with Unicesumar, which is the best deal we could ever consider. We always considered them to be the reference, the benchmark company in Brazil when you think about quality indicators in digital learning and digital education in the country.
With this transaction, once it is allowed to be concluded and closed by the antitrust authority in Brazil, we will become the number two, the second-largest digital learning player in Brazil, with the best quality indicators. Now on page seven, some more information about Unicesumar before we come back to Vitru. This combination will create this disruptive player, a reference player when you think about high-growth business in the higher education segment in Brazil.
Unicesumar has a size, which is close to ours. As of June of this year, this is before June, they had a bit less than 800 hubs. Today, they have around 900 hubs, such as us. To combine, we will have around, today, 1,800 hubs. More than 700,000 students combined with us. They had in the last four years a CAGR of 49%, and last year a net revenue of BRL 610 million with a 40% adjusted EBITDA margin. It is higher than our margin, with around 30%. The main driver for that, the main reason for that, is the business of medicine.
Here on the bottom left part of the slide, you can see some information about their medical business. They are the fifth-best medical course in Brazil among private institutions, which is the high-demand course, as you all know. It is an 11: 1 ratio of applicants per seat, with every ticket of more than BRL 9,000 per month. On top of that, here on the right, I show some quality indicators from Unicesumar . They have an IDD of 3.75, which is 43% above the average of the market, even above ours. Our IDD is 3.3 in the last cycle, which is the highest IDD in distance learning among all listed players in Brazil.
We have, we are still have the highest IDD in distance learning among all listed players in Brazil. Unicesumar has an even higher IDD ratio. This is satisfaction. This is contribution. This is value added that you bring to the student when you compare the ENEM grade with the ENADE grade. They are, as ranked by the Ministry of Education, when you see the IGC courses rank, they are among the 2% best educational institutions in Brazil. It is really a reference player, and together with them, we are going to be, I believe, a reference player.
On page eight, we have more information about the profile of students and why we believe that we are going to keep growing hand-in-hand once the deal is approved. Here on the left, you see that the student profile is slightly different. That is why we intend to maintain, to keep both brands, because they tap different markets. The students that usually go to Uniasselvi have a lower income, and someone who appreciates the local tutor, the human touch, and need the local, say, presence of a person who is going to provide the hand-holding for the students.
This local support from a tutor is also very important for this project. Unicesumar, on the other hand, they have a higher average income students, slightly higher, and also a more, say, tech-oriented and tech-savvy students because they have a much more, say, tech-oriented learning experience than the peers. It is a different product to attract different people. In the middle, we have a huge potential for commercial synergies.
Today, we have more than 600 cities today, or sorry, in June, that have either a hub of Uniasselvi, but not Unicesumar, or vice versa. Here we have a huge potential to quickly deploy and offer both brands throughout the country. On the right part of the slide, the whole market has been growing at around 19% in the last year. These are the current information coming from the census made by the MEC. Together, Uniasselvi and Unicesumar gained eight points in market share between 2016 and 2019. 2019, as a reminder, is the latest available information we have.
We went from 10.5 combined with them to 18.5 in 2019. Why was that, on page nine? Because we have intrinsic competitive advantages. On page nine, we compare the models that we have in Brazil for digital learning. Uniasselvi is the sole player who focus on this hybrid model with a local tutor, so a tutor-centered hybrid model with those weekly meetings lectured by the local tutors, someone who provides the handholding, someone who is also playing a role model for the class. You have this sense of belonging with our model.
This is our competitive advantage. It is the model, which is complex to create, but we know how to play it. Unicesumar, on their hand, offer a 100% online product, but they are, as I mentioned before, they are the reference player in terms of quality. They have a much more tech-based methodology, with nice hubs as well as we have. That is why they are the reference player when you think about digital learning in Brazil.
That is why both companies, with those intrinsic competitive advantages, are growing faster than competition. On page 10, I have here some public information to confirm this reputation and to confirm our, I would say, competitive advantage. Here on the left, this is public information coming from the Apple Store and Play Store. If you go now with your cell phone at Apple Store, for example, you will see that the app of Unicesumar has the highest ranking, highest rate among all listed players in Brazil, 4.7 out of 5.
The second highest rank is Uniasselvi with 4.3. The other 5 listed players are between 3.7 and 1.8. This is public information to show, to reinforce our tech-oriented approach, our culture, our mindset, much more oriented, much more concerned, delivering a much better technological experience for our customers, our students. On the right, you see Reclame Aqui, also public information. If you go now to Reclame Aqui to see Uniasselvi, you will see that we have a 7.6 rating, which is the highest score among all Brazilian listed players, period.
Unicesumar has an 8.2 ranking, even higher than ours. They have the best in Brazil. This is public information. This is official information from Reclame Aqui and from Google and Apple Store. This is on which we are leveraging our reputation to build a further business, to create value for shareholders, and to grow faster than competition. On page 11, now talk back to Vitru and Uniasselvi. Again, we are offering new premium courses to expand the markets and improve ticket. Nursing already with 11,000 seats covered in three months, which represented 8% of the current intake cycle.
Our intake cycle was 138,000 students, of which 11,000 in nursing. Hopefully, we will be allowed to offer soon law and psychology. Those three courses, as a reminder, represent around 1/3 of the private on-campus market in Brazil. It is a huge opportunity for a player as us, which has a hybrid model. This was on page 11, sorry. On page 12, the growth in our base was led by digital education segments. We grew 20% year-on-year, decision base. This growth was, I think, also important to highlight that this was coming from a very high comparable base.
We grew last year in the second cycle of intake, we grew 40%, and now we grew on top of this base, 27%. That important growth of 27% in the intake year-over-year, even though that comparison base is higher. And 138.6 new students in the second semester of this year, of which almost 113,000 only in the third quarter of this year. On page 13, growth was spread throughout Brazil. Even here in our- [inaudible] original base, original region in the south of the country, we grew 13% year-on-year. Again, even knowing that the comparison rate was high last year.
And in the southeast, 50%. Here on the left. On the right, the spectral hubs, as I said, 242 new hubs in the last 12 months. On page 14, the focus on the southeast region of Brazil. We opened there almost 100 hubs in the last 12 months and increased the student base by 50%. We opened very recently a lot of new hubs in the last, I would say, three months, in fact. We are preparing the base to accelerate even further the growth there in the region, which represents 40% of the total market in Brazil.
On page 15, the maturation of our hubs. Again, the most important or gain driver for growth, which is growth with limited execution risk. We keep expanding our maturation of hubs. If you see all the new hubs that we opened the last four years, we are still around 31.1% of the potential of those hubs. And also important to highlight here on the bottom left part of the slide, the share of newcomers and the share of intake in the overall student base.
This is something I mentioned already a few times in the past, but now we're showing here the numbers. If you see that we reach now in the first half of this year, what we believe to be the peak ratio between intake and overall base. And why is that important? First, because the slight decrease over time of this ratio as we mature more hubs, as more and more hubs get filled up, and we increase faster the percentage of seniors compared to the percentage of newcomers, we are going to increase margins over time.
We're going to decrease dropout ratios. We're going to decrease PDA ratios. Why? Because, as you know, newcomers, freshmen, dilute margin. Most of our selling expenses is aimed at attracting new students. Newcomers, they drop more than seniors, and hence, PDA ratios are also higher among newcomers. Over the last four years, we have been increasing that ratio. But now, according to our forecast, as from the first half already of next year, we are going to slowly but steadily increase more the percentage of seniors compared to newcomers.
This is an important driver of margin going forward. On page 16, before talking about margins, net revenue growing at around 20%, 25%, 20% in quarter, 25% in the nine month period of this year, driven by the expansion of base as I showed before, 20% year-on-year, plus a 2% increase in ticket. This is also, okay, something that differentiates Vitru from the competition. Because we offer a different product, because we differentiate ourselves from the competition, we have been able to more or less maintain tickets over time.
So, there was an increase last year, there was a decrease in the first half of this year, now an increase again. So more or less, we are maintaining our tickets, and in fact, increasing 2% year-on-year if you see the third quarter numbers, and this is confirming the resilience of our model. Now on page 17, some more financials. So the consolidated revenue growing at around 22% on a nine-month period, EBITDA growing at 26%, and gross margin growing 31%. I am going to show each of them now in detail.
So page 18, if you see the cumulative number for nine months, for example, the growth of 22% driven by the Digital Education business on the graduation and graduation, namely continuing education. Both segments growing quite a lot over the last year, as was the case already last year. And On-Campus segment decreasing over time, 17%, which is here on page 19. So page 19, you have more details about the Continuing Education segment and On-Campus segment.
So in Continuing Education, the growth was driven by our digital graduation courses, which expanded a lot this year with more offerings and also levered on digital marketing. On the other hand, On-Campus segment is declining over time, in line with our view for the sector, because slowly but steadily, there is this decline in the interest of On-Campus education and the correspondent increase in the interest of Digital Education, which we don't believe will reverse once the pandemic is over. We have a lot of questions about it, whether there will be a decline in interest in digital education once the pandemic is over, hopefully next year.
We don't believe in that. We do believe that there was a shift in mindset in the paradigm about buying from home, working from home, and also studying from home. Nobody believes that e-commerce will go down once the pandemic is over, because people now have experienced this type of, let's say, experience. And the mindset, the interest of digital education has also grown a lot and will continue to grow, I think, in the future. So margins, EBITDA on page 20. Again, let's focus here on the nine-month period, an increase of 28%- 29% of margin, one point.
This increase was mostly driven by a reduction in the cost of services as a percentage of revenues, which I am going to show in the following slide. So page 21. Cost of service. There was an important increase in efficiency over time. Four points increase, so 35%- 31% decrease in the cost of service as a percentage of net revenue. This was driven mostly by two reasons. First, the overall optimization of the personnel costs as we optimize the ratio between students per tutor, and the overall growth of the business.
As we go further, it is easier for us to optimize also the ratio of students per ratio, and besides the implementation of these Flex Courses that we mentioned in the beginning of this year, that we created this also with new concept of Flex Courses, through which we gathered non-optimized classes that we were offering in small cities, for example. We have a much more optimized ratio now with students per tutor, and hence, this is driving as well this expansion in growth margin.
On the right, you see G&A, also an increased efficiency, reflecting our focus in maintaining to be a lean company, a digital-oriented company. We have now less than 8% of our net revenue in G&A. This is a reflection of how we operate. This is a consequence of how we drive the business. We are much more, how to say, agile and lean than competition. That is why we react faster to change in the market, and that is why we have been growing faster than competition as well. On page 22, selling expenses and PDA. Net impairment losses on financial assets is what we call here the PDA.
Selling expenses increased. If you see again, the nine month period, there was an increase of 36% this year, and again, of two points from 16.8%- 18.8% of net revenue. This was caused by first, as we said before, overall throughout this year, an increase in online media as a result of the pandemic. Last year, a big chunk of our intake in the first semester of last year was made before the pandemic. So when our hubs were opened, and the hubs are an important piece in our selling machine.
Because we have this hybrid model, the student sometimes. Not sometimes, usually goes to the hub to understand how will be his or her experience. Then there, in the hub, he or she decides to enroll. Now hubs are closed, so we had to invest more in online media. The second reason was the strong intake cycle, which is natural, and also the commercial efforts in new premium courses such as nursing.
There is still a ramp-up now in the efficiency curve for new courses such as nursing. There was this increase of 36%, but if you see the CAC, the customer acquisition cost, it increased only 3.6% in nine months of this year compared to the first nine months of last year. PDA, on the right. There was a decrease in PDA this quarter if you compare to the third quarter of last year of 0.9 points. Despite the mix of students, despite the strong presence of freshmen and newcomers, as I said before, again, we have reached the peak in this ratio now in the first half of this year.
Also despite the current crisis in Brazil, which does not help at all the delinquency ratios. Now on page 23, to finish. Net income. We have an increase when you see the quarterly numbers and a decrease when you see the nine month numbers. This was due to two things. The first one was a couple of non-recurring items we had last year. The first one was in the first quarter of last year, we recognized for the first time deferred tax assets.
This was an amount of around BRL 18 million. That was the first time we recognized deferred tax assets last year. Which improved our net results last year. Also, in the third quarter of last year, we had as well FX gains related to the IPO. We raised funds in dollars last year, and we brought dollars to Brazil, so bought reais at a higher rate. We gained BRL 13 million last year. These two events represent BRL 31 million.
Together with the increase in financial expenses this year, due to the increase of the CDI and IPCA, we have a reduction on a yearly basis of our net results. To finish on page 24, cash flow. Cash flow here, also a bit, let's say, impacted by extraordinary events of last year. First one was, again, this BRL 13 million FX gain. For accounting reasons, this FX gain is accounted as part of course, our net results, and as well as part of our cash flow from operations. Don't ask me why, but it is the way the rules are. We recognized last year this BRL 13 million FX gain as part of our cash flow from operations.
On top of that, we had as well, in the third quarter of last year, a reclassification of some prepaid expenses, BRL 6 million that we had already prepaid in preparation of our IPO, that when we executed the IPO in September, this was reclassified to transaction cost of the IPO. When you see the cash flow from operations, they increased as well. We improved the cash flow operations last year in BRL 6 million. Here on the right, we put a table trying to reconcile these numbers.
When you reconcile, when you normalize this cash flow from operations, you see that we have, when you see, for example, the third quarter numbers, an increase of 28% in cash flow from operations, and 31% increase in cash flow from operations in the nine months. When you see the cash flow from conversion, we went from 98% last year to 112% this year in the quarter, and from 66%- 92% in the nine-month period of this year.
A very important, let's say, result as well from a cash flow generation perspective. That was it. Page 25, just to wrap up. We are the leading pure player in digital education in Brazil. Before Unicesumar, with Unicesumar, we are going to consolidate as, let's say, the reference player in digital education in the country. Delivering what we had promised in the IPO, which was expansion of markets, continued organic growth, and now with the best M&A deal we could ever dream of, which is the transaction with Unicesumar. Thank you very much, and now I'd like to open for questions.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, please press the star, then the number one on your telephone. Your first question is from Vitor Tomita of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hello. Good evening, all, and thanks for taking our questions. Two questions from our side. The first is if you could give an update on how you see your strategy for medical and healthcare programs following the Unicesumar combination and following the approval of the digital nursing program, and if this strategy could include potentially further acquisitions on the medical front. Second question from our side is if you could give us some more detail on how you saw drop-offs and non-renewal rates evolve in the third quarter, and on how you expect those metrics to trend going forward. Thank you very much.
Hi, Vitor. Thanks for your questions. The first one about medicine with Unicesumar . We are going to wait for the closing of the transaction so that we can have further conversation with them about how to deploy this business in the future. Because right now, as you can imagine, we cannot have this type of conversation with them.
What we know now is that they have this, let us say, very healthy and growing and high-margin business, which is medicine. And we, Vitru, we are not a player today in medicine education, but they are. And they know quite well how to play this segment. That is why they are the fifth-best medicine school in Brazil among the private institutions. So this is still open for discussion. We are going to have these definitions together with them, but only after the deal is closed. But on your second question about dropouts.
In fact, we had a slight increase in dropouts this quarter when compared to our expected numbers. And the reason for that, we have two reasons for that, in fact. The first one was the intake profile of the first half of this year. Because the intake in the first half of this year was much more back-ended, a big part of our new students joined us in the second quarter of this year instead of the first quarter of this year. And that is why, by the way, our drop-out rates in the second quarter of this year was much better than the drop-out rate in the second quarter of last year. Because most of them arrived late in the intake cycle.
Those guys that drop out, instead of dropping out during the semester, during the second quarter, for example, some of them dropped now only in the third quarter. So the intake profile improve the dropout ratio in the second quarter, but deteriorated the dropout rate in third quarter. That is the first reason. And the second one was, as I mentioned before, the ratio between intake and seniors, the intake in students as a whole.
As I showed before now on the presentation, we believe we have reached the peak in the ratio between intake and base. So we have a lot of newcomers, a lot of students that are joining us for the first time this first half of this year. This translates into a slight higher also drop-out, because as you know, freshmen and newcomers drop more than seniors.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Going forward, Vitor, we expect a normalization of this ratio. First, because we expect to have a more, say, normal intake curve in the next years. Second one, also just important to bear in mind, that part of our user experience is built around the presence in a hub. Because today, we are still not in our full capacity because of user experience. That is what I want to say. Once we are allowed to have, again, live classes in our hubs, we believe we are going to also improve the retention rate because the user experience will be fulfilled.
That is a lot of sense. Thank you.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone. Your next question is from Mauricio Cepeda of Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hello, guys. Thank you for the space for the questions. I have just one question. It is motivated by one of the statements in the release that says that the cost has improved because the penetration of the Flex Courses. It calls attention to the point that if you consider this as a way going forward exactly to, let us say, optimize costs. If you consider this as a way to do so, and if the Flex Course itself was able, apart from the cost, to also increase the demand, so increase the student base for this modality specifically. Thank you.
Hi, Cepeda. About Flex Course, just as a reminder, I invite you to go to page 31 of our presentation. Just as a reminder, the Flex Course was thought after the pandemic. The idea of the Flex Course appeared to us after the pandemic, because we realized that we had the opportunity to optimize the ratio and to offer new courses for new cities in Brazil with a Flex Course. Why was that? Before, until, let us say, until last year, until one and a half ago, we had a group of students, a number of students, that were not, let us say, optimized in terms of students per tutor.
Because it was either in a small or medium city in a course that you did not have enough demand. Instead of having, let us say, 40 people per tutor, you had 20 for them. And now, once we started to have the weekly meeting in a virtual way, because of pandemic, we had the idea of why not instead of offering these Flex Courses that are not optimized, and sometimes even not with the tutor that is specialized in your own field.
Because sometimes we didn't have enough, let's say, scale to have a tutor, for example, that teaches in accounting for an accounting class. You have a generic tutor that was teaching for people who are from different courses. This was not ideal. The idea of the Flex Course was to optimize it. So those classes that were not optimized with a tutor, for example, that was not someone specialized in your field, instead of offering this configuration, why not offer them in a Flex Course with a tutor that was giving a class to 40 people, but online.
But still an online class with a live class from someone from your region. Instead of being from your city, from your region, for example. This was an optimization that we made in the first quarter of this year, which had two effects. The first immediate effect was improvement in efficiency, which is here to stay. The fact that we reorganized those non-optimized classes around some Flex Courses is efficiency that is here to stay.
This is not something that's going to change after the pandemic. Once the pandemic is over, the normal Uniasselvi class will return to weekly live meetings in the hub, but the Flex Course will continue to be provided in virtual meetings, but with a tutor from your region. That was the first immediate consequence. It was improvement of efficiency through this optimization in this ratio between students and tutor.
The second consequence of Flex Course, and this is more medium-term, is the possibility to enter into smaller cities. Cities that did not have the scale for a full-fledged normal Uniasselvi hub. But you can have there a smaller hub, basically for you to go there to have your monthly exam, for example. So it is a possibility to accelerate penetration throughout Brazil, within smaller cities. That was the consequence of Flex Course.
First one, immediate consequence in terms of courses, of cost of courses, sorry, and that was executed without any, let's say, impact in satisfaction. Because before that, you had a tutor that was not from your specific area, for example. If you are studying accounting, you could have someone that was someone from business administration, for example, providing classes to people that were not from business administration.
So here now with the Flex Course, you have someone from your field. And we have made researches and surveys on that to see whether the student is happier with this Flex Course, and they are happier with this course. So it is an opportunity to increase efficiency, to penetrate further throughout Brazil, and to improve the overall user experience.
Okay. Now I see. So, it was something that was designed for the pandemics, right? But a part of it will continue, right? Part of it will continue, and this is allowing you to address the cities that are, let's say, subscale, right? For the tutor model, right? So it's both a cost and revenue combination, if understood correctly.
Exactly. Both a cost and revenue combination. So after the pandemic, the normal Uniasselvi product, which is a hybrid tutor-centered live meetings in a hub, will return to be live meetings. So physical encounters in a hub, without any impact in terms of cost, because now we already have the same tutors online now. Next year, they will be again meeting students face-to-face. The same will be with the Flex Courses. So today they are virtual meetings. Next year, they will continue to be virtual meetings with the same tutors.
Is there a risk that the cost increases when you get back to the physical one, to the physical model, the tutoring model?
Not in our case. So in the digital education segment, you won't see this issue because today we don't have specific temporary savings when you think about tutors. We already have today the tutors that are meeting his or her students online instead of physically. But the ratio is the same. What we will have next year, but it is a minor effect, is in our own campus segment. We, as anybody else, once the classes return, there will be an expected increase in cost there. But in our case, because it is a smaller piece of our overall results, it won't be a major amount.
No, very clear. Very clear, Carlos. Thank you.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press the star then the number one on your telephone. Your next question is from Lucca Marquezini of Itaú BBA. Your line is open.
Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking our questions. We have two questions from our side. The first is regarding average ticket. The average ticket increased 2% on the digital education undergrad segment. Could you please comment on how the breakdown was for freshmen and veterans? The second question would be regarding PDA. The PDA increased in the nine month period due to the change in the mix of students. Could you please comment on how this should evolve going forward? Thank you.
Hello, Lucca . I am going to answer your first question first. Regarding tickets, we had this 2% increase in the overall average tickets. When you see the intake tickets and the tickets that we are now getting with newcomers, this is more or less in line with what we had last year. That was on average, the same number that we had last year when you see the apples-to-apples comparisons. When you include nursing, for example, and then these ticket increases.
When you see the overall intake in the current tech cycle, we had a slight increase in tickets when you compare to the last year, and that was driven by new courses, which we expect in the future. In the future, we expect to increase over time the percentage of premium courses such as nursing. Again, we have only today around 11,000 students enrolled in nursing, and which today is 80% of the intake. But when you see that we had 300,000 students in digital education, it is nothing.
It is 3%, 3%- 4%. It is natural that the percentage of premium courses such as nursing, and in the future, hopefully law and psychology, for example, and others that we already offer today in health courses such as nutrition and biomedicine that start to be offered more recently, those are going to be important drivers over time to sustain the tickets over time. I am sorry, what was your second question? I did not get it.
The second question is regarding PDA. The increase was due to the change in mix of students. Could you please comment on how this should evolve going forward? Should we see an increase in PDA level?
Okay, great. Yes. The PDA is impacted by a number of things. Some will certainly change, or hopefully change next year. Some will not. The first thing is that PDA is a function of a mix of students. Again, because we had in the first half of this year, when you see the overall intake we had in the first intake cycle this year, and you compare it to the overall base we had in the first half of this year, we reached this peak in attrition. We had, in the first half of this year, a higher than ever percentage of newcomers in our base.
And those newcomers, they have a higher dropout rate and hence a higher PDA. They are contributing to higher PDA on a consolidated basis. Over time, as we mature the hubs, as we fill up the hubs, and hence, as we increase further and faster the percentage of seniors compared to newcomers, the weighted average PDA will tend to go down. That's the first thing. The second thing about PDA is the fact that we are still not in our full user experience mode, which is the fact that we have the hubs closed.
So part of the user experience is the fact that you meet your colleagues in-hub. The fact that we have a hub closed, and hence we are still not in full potential to exploit our model and to benefit students with our full user experience, is not helping the PDA. Hopefully next year, once we are allowed to open again the hubs, we shall have a decrease in PDA because the overall engagement will tend to increase.
Because the satisfaction level and overall engagement will tend to increase, and this has a high correlation with dropouts and hence PDA. The third reason, and we are all on the same page here, is the current economic crisis, which does not help at all about delinquency rates. Hopefully, it is going to improve next year. But what we see throughout this year and last year was a clear impact of delinquency driven by the current crisis.
Very clear, Carlos. Thank you.
Thank you, Lucca.
No questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to Carlos.
Thank you, Patricia. I wanted to read now a couple of questions that came through web. First one from Pedro Lima from BTG. Hello, everyone. Just two quick questions here. "Vitru posted a resilient average ticket in digital education undergrad courses this quarter. Should we expect this trend to continue over the next year?" That was the first question that we just answered, that we expect to see a positive contribution of premium courses. We expect to see a, let's say, a stable ticket as we have been delivering in the last years.
Second question from Pedro was, "The new PDA policy should continue to provide improvements as seen this quarter. What should we expect as an ideal PDA level when we relate to net revenues considering the 16% in third quarter?" Pedro, ideal is a complicated word. What we see is that 16% is not ideal, that is clear, because we are not in an ideal context. What we see that going forward, we shall expect improvement PDA with the mix of students, with the improvement in the overall user experience, and the economic crisis. The second question now from Javier from Morgan Stanley. "Quite consistent price growth one more time.
Average degree and undergrad ticket up 2% since last year. I get that part of that has to do with the mix and part with your current model. But on the other side, hub maturation reduced, so in fact, mix was not a positive price driver." Javier, no, I think there is a confusion here about the maturation index. The maturation index is basically the ratio between the total number of students we have in the new hubs divided by the potential, the number of students in maturity.
This is for the overall portfolio of hubs. For example, if we open tomorrow, let's say 1,000 hubs, the maturation of hubs will drop a lot, basically because we have a lot of new hubs. Because we opened 240 hubs over the last 12 months and a big chunk of them in the last three or six months, our maturation index is more or less the same. It was 32%, 33% a few months ago. Now it is 31%, but not because we are not growing, but because we are opening a lot of new hubs, that is why.
The final question from Javier is, "How much have you increased net prices in intake and re-enrolling students?" I just answered. The intake price there was a slight increase as well this quarter compared to previous quarter, when you see the overall intake, including nursing, for example. For re-enrolling, what we applied was basically a minor increase this quarter, but nothing meaningful. The re-enrolling increasing price is usually executed in January of each year. Those were the questions we had from the web. Thank you all for your interest. Anyway, myself, Carlos, and Raquel, we are fully available for any further questions. Thank you and good night.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.