Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Vitru Educação Third Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. As a reminder, this call will be recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Carlos Freitas, Vitru CFO. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Claire. Good morning, everyone. A pleasure to be here with you all for our first release after our IPO. Here with me are Pedro Graça, the CEO of Vitru, Maria Carolina Gonçalves, the Head of Investor Relations, and Pallu Pandini, also from the Investor Relations department. Before we begin, I would like to make note that as detailed on slide two, during today's presentation, our executives will make forward-looking statements. In addition, management may reference non-IFRS financial measures on this call. These non-IFRS measures are not intended to be considered in the isolation or as a reconciliation of these non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures in our earnings release, as well as in the end of this presentation. A slide presentation will be part of today's webcast, which is available in our Investor Relations website at investor.vitru.com.br.
I trust you all have the presentation in front of you, and now I invite you to move to page three. As you remember, we executed our IPO in the U.S. two months ago, more or less, and we are very proud of this achievement, which was only our first step in our life as a listed company. We raised a gross amount of $96 million, and the net proceeds of this primary offering will be used, as we discussed throughout the IPO process, basically for M&A purposes. As you know, this strong growth we have delivered so far has been purely on organic basis, but we are truly convinced that we can also create value for shareholders through M&A and the deployment of our digital education skills.
Today we have active discussions with 10 potential targets, and we hope we will be able to announce our first deals soon. Now moving to page five. I will actually start here the main highlights for this quarter. First one is that in the last census released by the Ministry of Education in Brazil, we were confirmed again as the number one pure player in digital education post-secondary market in Brazil. We have been growing much faster than the market. This makes us very proud, and I will get back to this a bit later. The second point here on the slide is that also in October, the Ministry of Education released the latest results of the ENADE and IDD of the last evaluation cycle. Our average IDD was 27% above the market and the highest among the listed players in Brazil.
As a reminder, as you know, the evolution of the students throughout the post secondary education is measured by the IDD, and that's why we believe the IDD is the best indicator to show the real added value we have on the lives of students. Third one here on page, that's about intake. Our intake in the current cycle grew 40% versus the same period of last year. As a reminder, in the first semester of this year, our intake grew 30% versus the same period of last year. Also important on fourth point is that this increase in intake did not come at the expense of average ticket. That's very important. Our average ticket increased by 2%, so more or less close to the IPCA variation in the period. This despite the sizable number of new students.
As you know, we have a modular academic approach through which a new student can join us throughout the first semester or the semester in fact. Most of them do not provide us with a full semester of revenues. It confirms what we have been saying. We have a different market positioning, and we deliver a different product. Sixth point here about net revenue. With this increase in intake days and tickets, our net revenue in digital education undergraduates, which is our main segment, our main business, increased by 32% this quarter. Again, this purely on an organic basis, which shows the compelling strength of our business model.
Finally, adjusted PDD increased in the period as well and would have increased even further were it not for the low PDD base in the third quarter of last year before we implemented a stricter PDD policy in the fourth quarter of last year. I will come back to this a bit later as well. Now on page six. As you can see, according to the data that I just mentioned, released by the Ministry of Education, the private digital education undergrad market in Brazil grew by roughly 19% CAGR since 2016, while we grew by 42% in the same period. Once again, purely on organic basis. This is a market that has been expanding a lot, and in our opinion, it will expand even further in a post-COVID scenario.
Within this growing and appealing market, we have grown even faster than the market. Our current market share in this latest census increased by 1.5%. It went from 10.8% in 2018 to 12.3% last year. This gain of 1.5 points was the strongest gain in share among all players in Brazil. Also important to mention that we gained share throughout the country. You can see here in the slide, in the chart or in the map, that we expanded our market share throughout five regions in Brazil. Also important to highlight here that growth in the Southeast. In the Southeast, we expanded a lot between 2018 and 2019. It's from 1.4% to 2.3%. This 1% increase is a lot because the whole Southeast, as you know, represents around 40% of the whole market.
And here on the right about EBITDA and quality, not only we grew a lot, but also expanded our average EBITDA, which is now 27% above the market. One year before, it was 11% above the market, now it is 27%. The highest among listed players in country. It basically means that we improved the added value for our clients, which are the more than 240,000 post-secondary digital education students who trust their higher education to UNIASSELVI. Now on page seven, we provide here a glimpse of the growth in our student base. We have almost 300,000 students, and 97% of them enrolled in digital education courses. If we focus on the student base of digital education undergraduate, which is our main business, as I mentioned, you can see that we have a CAGR of 34% since 2016.
We shall maintain this substantial growth in the student base of our digital education undergrad basis as our 578 extension hubs mature over time. Finally, as I have shown before, our intake in the 2020.2 cycle, in the second semester, second cycle of the year, was 40% higher than the intake in the same period of last year. The growth in the first half of this year was 30%. This process in the last, I'll say, intake cycle was pretty interesting to see. On one hand, it is true that the current economic crisis does affect the willingness of some of our prospects to effectively enroll in one of our courses. But on the other hand, we have seen a lot of the students who in principle would go for the on-campus courses, but now are deciding more and more to go to digital education.
Particularly a hybrid model such as the one offered by us. This trend has just been confirmed by the recent survey conducted by Educa Insights about increased interest among prospects in digital education. So this fact, together with the cultural changes brought by the pandemic, about working from home and buying from home and of course, studying from home, this represents a huge market potential going forward for us. Finally, just as a reminder that the latest census, last year already, there were more new students and newcomers joining digital education courses than on- campus. So it is poised to overtake the whole basis of students in post-secondary education in Brazil in two years from now. Now move to page eight. We show the increase in our digital education base and the number of hubs between September 2019 and September 2020.
Throughout the country, we have grown a lot, even in the South region, which is the first region where we were based and created. Growing 12% in the South region and then growing a lot throughout the country. Particularly in the Southeast, which we grew 130%, from 12,000 to 28,000. It is poised to become quite soon our second most important region in the country. The number of hubs also expanding over time. We expanded a lot in the last years. Even in the last 12 months, we expanded by almost 40% the number of hubs. On page nine, we focus on, in our opinion, the most important driver for our organic growth, which is the maturation of our expansion hubs. As I said, we have now 578 expansion hubs, which are still ramping up.
To illustrate this growth potential, we calculated this so-called theoretical maturation index. Which is basically the number of students currently enrolled in the hubs divided by the future number of students in the same hubs once they reach maturity, which is usually after seven or eight years of operations. The overall index is currently at 30%-odd, which means that those expansion hubs have the capacity to increase their student base threefold. Also important to highlight here that this index takes into account all expansion hubs open at a given point in time. But for example, if you take only the 2018 cohort, which, as you can see here in the chart, went from 34,000 in September 2019 to 46,000 students. This cohort, the maturation index of this cohort, went from 36% last year to now 48%. This is the beauty of the model.
The maturation curve of this cohort is quite consistent and quite predictable, and it represents an important growth avenue at a limited execution risk because all the hubs are already open. All the hubs, we have already the partner, the contract with the partner, the hubs are there in place. I would say, the brand equity of UNIASSELVI is already working in our favor there in the given region or city. This potential growth will come from the expansion of these hubs. On page 10, we show here the expansion in the digital education undergrad rate, despite the changes of this year. First, substantial growth in tuition and net revenue, not only in the quarter, but also in the nine-month period throughout the year. On the right part of the slide, we show again the increase in average ticket, reaching BRL 263 per month for students.
It is important to bear in mind that there is a substantial seasonality in the dynamics of the average ticket throughout the year. We should always make year-on-year comparisons about tickets and not compare with the previous quarters. Finally, as you can see about the retention rates, this was virtually stable this quarter, despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had affected our retention rate in the previous quarters. In the previous two quarters, in fact. Here, I think it is important to highlight two things. First, we have been growing a lot, as we know, and the dropout rate is, as we all know, much higher among new students than among seniors. Because we increased a lot the intake in the last years, and especially this year as well, we have a huge frontage of newcomers in our base.
The second important remark here is that we do not provide discounts to senior students as they renew their enrollment with us. In the balance between student wave, retention rates, and average ticket, we usually prefer to maintain our discipline in the management of our average ticket. Moving to page 11, we can see growth in our business in every perspective. First, growth in net revenue led by the expansion in digital education undergrad rate, as we have just discussed. Second, an important increase in gross margin and gross profit, led by gains of scale, a constant focus on personal costs, as well as increased digitalization throughout the three segments. Third, expansion in our adjusted EBITDA, although margins were temporarily affected by changes in the PDD policy, which I will explain in a few minutes.
But before that, on page 12, we provide the bridge with the main variations of the net revenue between 2019 and 2020. As you can see, the growth in the consolidated net revenue was driven by the strong increase in our digital education undergrad segment. Such growth was diluted a bit by the reductions in both continuing education and on-campus segments, as detailed on the next page. On page 13, there was a nice growth in grad rate quarters, both in the quarter and the nine -month period, despite the pandemic. But there were some revenues in continuing education last year that we did not have this year. For example, last year, especially in the first half of last year, we benefited from some public bidding contracts, which in Portuguese are licitações.
This year, with the pandemic, this type of revenue source basically disappeared as the government will focus their budgets. Regarding our legacy on-campus segment, it has been declining over time, in line with our view for the whole sector. And it is now basically limited to courses not offered, in our case, through digital education, such as law, dental care, and psychology, for example. And we do believe that its relevance for us will reduce even further. Now, on page 14, finally the bridge about the main variations in the adjusted EBITDA between 2019 and 2020. I believe there are three highlights in this slide. First one, the continuous increase in our operational leverage and the expansion of our growth margins.
As you can see, the cost of service and the G&A were basically flat both in the third quarter and in the nine-month period of this year compared to the same periods of last year, and we will shed more light on these issues in next slide. The second point here to highlight on this page are the selling expenses. As a reminder, most of these expenses are related to the intaking process, which means that they are incurred to attract new students. In both third quarter of this year and the nine-month period of this year, there was an increase in selling expenses of roughly 2% of net revenue in the period. Two reasons for that. First, this year we are at the peak of that ratio that I mentioned between intake and renewed students.
And the second point is that the hubs do play an important role in the selling process. And some students used to go to hub, for example, to conclude their enrollment, or they visit later to enroll themselves. Now with the pandemic, we had to rely a bit more on digital media and increase the cost in digital media. Finally, the PDD. Last year, as a preparation for our IPO, we adopted in the fourth quarter of last year a stricter policy for the calculation of PDD. As you can see in the chart in the bottom right, there was a substantial PDD charge in the fourth quarter of last year, which compensated the very low PDD charge in the third quarter of last year. So it means that we had a very low PDD comparison basis this quarter, but it is simply a temporary issue.
And for example, if we were to normalize the PDD in the third quarter of last year by using, for example, the average PDD of 2019, which was 12.6% of net revenue, as you can see here in the chart, our adjusted EBITDA would have grown this quarter by 31%. And that is why we are providing guidance of a huge increase in the adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of this year. So now, on page 15, we come back to the gains brought by operational leverage. The cost of services, as reported in our adjusted EBITDA calculation, reduced slightly reflecting gains of scale, optimizations in personal cost, and an increased effort in digitalization throughout the company, throughout the three segments that we operate. G&A expenses as reported in our adjusted EBITDA calculation, were basically flat year-on-year.
Importantly, we were able to leverage our leaner structure and at the presentation of revenue G&A expense were 140 basis points lower than the same period of last year. This performance illustrates our continuous focus on maintaining a lean admin structure, which is important for our digital and agile strategic orientation. That is very important. That is a key differentiator of digital and online sales. On page 16, to talk a bit about net income and cash flow. So first, net income. This temporary increase in PDD that I just explained coupled with a one-time income tax effect of BRL 11.7 billion, which was related to the restructuring of our first stock options plan, impacted our net income, in the quarter. By contrast, when we look at the full year, the year-to-date figures, adjusted net income was up 47%, driven by the significant expansion in our digital education undergrad segment.
Cash flow from operations on the right improved substantially in the third quarter, 57% to BRL 52.4 million, and a substantial growth as well in the nine-month period of this year. Once again, this increase was driven by the outstanding performance of our digital education undergrad segment, backed by a continued discipline in receivables management. And finally, regarding the huge improvement in cash flow conversion from operations. This explained not only by this increase with higher cash flow from operations that I just mentioned, but also the higher level of PDD in the third quarter versus the third quarter of last year, as previously explained, which is a non-cash expense. So now, let us move to page 17 to talk more about the seasonality, which matters a lot. I am going to provide you with more background info in order to help you to build your model going forward.
Revenues and intakes are not distributed equally among quarters. So first starting with intake. Our courses are structured around separate monthly modules, which as I said, enable students to enroll at any time throughout the semester. Still, we usually experience a higher number of enrollments in the first and third quarters of each year, which corresponds to the beginning of the academic semester in Brazil. On top of that, we typically have a higher number of enrollments in the first semester of the year than in the second semester. And this trend can be seen on the right side of the slide. And results of what I just mentioned, we usually record higher revenue in the second and fourth quarters of each year. However, this year specifically, especially in the second quarter of this year, seasonality was not as apparent, reflecting the impact of COVID-19.
I mean, our net revenue should have been slightly higher in the second quarter of this year. You can see this trend more clearly on the chart at the left of the slide. Finally, also important to highlight that a relevant portion of our expenses are also seasonal. For example, we see higher selling and marketing expenses related to the first semester, which had the higher intake, especially in December, January, and February. So finally, about guidance on page 18. Since this is the first release after our IPO, we exceptionally provide guidance in this light on net revenue and adjusted EBITDA margins for the full year of 2020. As you can see, our guidance for annual net revenue shall be between BRL 510 million and BRL 520 million. While the annual adjusted EBITDA margin shall be between 26.8% and 27.2%, which represent an important growth versus last year.
That is shown here on the chart on the left. Here on the chart on the right, we show again the impact of the changes in our PDD policy in the quarterly adjusted EBITDA numbers. Again, we had a very low PDD comparison basis in third quarter of last year. But on the other hand, a very high PDD basis in the fourth quarter. So we still have a huge increase in our adjusted EBITDA numbers in the fourth quarter of this year, compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Therefore, the numbers regarding the second semester of 2019 and 2020 here on the chart on the right, provide a more normalized vision of the adjusted EBITDA growth. So before we conclude this presentation, some highlights on ESG issues on page 19.
I am very happy to report that this year, in fact, last week, we knew the results of our employee satisfaction survey, and we reached the highest rate since we started to be measured by Great Place to Work. We improved 10 points in the last four years, and this is very important for us. We truly believe that as an education company, the satisfaction of our employees is a key driver and a real competitive advantage for us. Also, we are very engaged with corporate social responsibility. Some highlights are: first, the first national autism symposium in Brazil. It was sponsored by us, which discussed, among other things, the importance of including autistic people in the education process.
The How to Teach at a Distance product, which was created after the outbreak of the pandemic, through which we offered free online training for public school teachers, and reaching more than 84,000 teachers nationwide. So this ends the first part of the meeting, and we are now ready to take your questions. Operator, please open the line, please.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Mauricio Cepeda with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Hello, good morning. Thank you for the good presentation and for the space for making these questions. I think the presentation is very clear, but just two remaining questions on very small items. We saw that there was a kind of a depreciation that was above last year, not only in the quarter but also in the year. If you can explain a little bit why there is this kind of change in the level of depreciation in general. Secondly, about receivables. We saw that there was kind of a, seems to us at least in our estimate, that it was kind of an increase in circa 10 days in the receivables. If it's something related to how difficult are the collectibles, if there is any relation to the COVID-19 crisis or anything like that. Thank you.
Thank you, Cepeda, for your questions. First regarding depreciation. There are two things here about depreciation and amortization this year, in fact. The first one is that there was a reduction in fact, in amortization this year because there are some goodwill items in our intangibles that are finishing to be amortized. Some are even finishing this year. That's one thing. The other thing is that we have been increasing over time as well, our investment, our CapEx in intangibles as well, because we are a tech-enabled company, so we do invest a lot in technology, in our platforms, our systems for our students, for hub partners, for tutors, et cetera. So this increased over time, in the last one, two years, and now these are starting to be amortized as well.
Regarding depreciation a little bit, we also increased the amount of CapEx in the first semester of this year. Not this quarter, but in the first semester of this year, because we opened several own hubs in the beginning of this year. As a reminder, we open a hub belonging to ourselves when we want to establish our presence in a new market, or to really have a flagship hub, to be used as a reference in that given region. So we opened more hubs than normal in the beginning of this year, and they consume higher CapEx, which are now depreciating as well. Regarding receivables, we do have a controlled receivables environment here. It is true that there was an increase in receivables, a little bit compared to last year. But at the end, this was quite well controlled compared to what it could have been.
At the end, I think that we have been able to deliver a different management of receivables, which reflected in our cash flow from operations.
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for the response. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Cepeda.
Our next question comes from Pedro Mariani with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats for the results. Thanks for the opportunity here. I have two questions. The first, I was wondering if you could please provide some additional color on how the average tuition, specifically for the freshmen in the undergrad is the education performed during the intake cycle. Any color would be great here, if possible. The second question is regarding the personal cost. Do you expect this cost line to continue to dilute as a percentage of revenues next year? If yes, what should be the main drivers for this expected performance? These are the two questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Pedro. If I got correct, your first question is about tuition in the intake process, right?
Yeah, specifically for the freshmen, okay?
Okay. The intake process, what we have seen is that indeed the average ticket for the intake was more or less slightly higher than what we saw one year ago. It was an increase of around 1.7% or 2%, the average ticket for the newcomers as they go over time. It is important to highlight here that the contribution of a new student is not for the full semester. What we do measure here as well is what will be the ticket of those guys in the second semester. What would be the recurrent average ticket that he or she will have. This recurrent average ticket grew this semester compared to the one year ago by, again, around 2%.
This is just to show that the overall increase in tickets was not only a matter of increase in tickets for the seniors, but also a slight increase in the intake tickets as well. The second question was about cost reductions. You are right, we do expect further reductions or further improvement in margins coming from a reduction in costs. This will come. I think the most important reason, or two reasons. First one is that the continued gain of scale that we will have. This is a business of scale. We do have benefits of scale as we grow bigger, and this is going to keep taking place throughout the next months or years. The second important thing, which is sometimes taken for granted, is the mix between new students and seniors.
Again, as I mentioned before, this year we are at the peak of this ratio between the intake and the renewed senior base. As from next year, this ratio will start to go down, which means that we will have a natural expansion in adjusted EBITDA margins coming from that for a number of reasons. The first one is that selling expenses, as I said, are concentrated to attract new students. So over time, the amount of money divided by the net revenue will go down in this line. The second one is PDD, because PDD and dropout are more concentrated, much higher among newcomers than among seniors. Because we are at the peak of this ratio, we shall experience on a normal basis a reduction in PDD and dropout over time. The third one is that we typically increase tickets above inflation for seniors over time.
As the percentage, the relative weight of seniors increase as well, we also shall have an increase in net revenue. With all these factors taken into account, we shall expect indeed a continued increase in EBITDA margins in the next years.
Yeah. Very clear, Carlos. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Susana Salaru with Itaú BBA. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. Good morning. We have two questions. Looking ahead, the first, we would like to know how it's evolving the initiatives on continual education. What you'd expect going forward in terms of upselling and from the students that are about to graduate this year, and what to expect for next year in terms of revenue generation? That would be our first question. The second question is related to the development or the ramp-up of the new hubs. We'd like to know if it's in line with the business plan, or it's going above or below what you were expecting for the ramp-up for the new hubs this year. Thank you.
Thanks, Susana. First, I'm going to talk about the ramp-up of the hubs. The second question. The ramp-up of the hubs was very interesting this year. What we saw is that there was an acceleration in the ramp-up of the 2019 and 2018, for example, cohorts. But the 2020 cohorts, it was slower than what we thought, basically because those hubs were opened, and then after one or two months, they had to shut down because of the pandemic. That's why we had to increase our investment in marketing with digital media. But it is true that the pandemic affected more the new hubs than the other extension hubs. Susana, could you please repeat your first question because I could hardly hear what you were saying?
Sorry about that. Our question, the first one, was related to the continuing education development. What should we expect for next year? If it is evolving as expected, and what kind of revenue generation should we see for next year versus this in terms of growth?
Okay, so continuing education. Continuing education here at UNIASSELVI is split in two main sub-segments. The first one, the bigger one by far, is graduate courses. But there are also other business, such as public bidding contracts that I said. The graduate courses grew this year, but it was impacted just after COVID because the whole selling process of the graduate courses was heavily reliant on, let us say, offline media and salespeople within the hub selling this type of graduate courses. There was an important reduction in the intake in the second quarter of this year after the pandemic, but this trend was already reverted. The runway now is very positive and growing a lot in the last month, in fact, now in October, September.
The prospect for that is very positive, and we changed a little bit the intaking process for the graduate courses, which are now much more closer to what we do in the undergrad courses, so heavily reliant on digital media. Now graduate courses are again attracting a lot of new people. We shall see an increase in this segment for next year, a huge increase for next year. The other businesses, it will depend basically on the government because from time to time, we do participate in some public biddings last year, in 2018. This year, it was basically disappeared. But the trend that we see is that, again, now that the governments realize the benefit of this education, that is going to be much cheaper than on-campus courses.
We do believe that as from next year, there will be increased interest of these clients in promoting more digital courses in continuing education. Does that answer your question, Susana?
Again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star, then one if you would like to ask a question at this time. Our next question comes from Irma Sgarz with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could comment a little about the dropout rate, specifically for undergraduate distance learning courses, what happened to it this quarter, and how you expect it to shape up into year-end and the new year. Thanks.
Thank you, Irma. In fact, the dropout rate this quarter was virtually in line with what we had one year before, which made us very happy because we are, again, in the middle of the largest sanitation crisis in 100 years. We had an impact, an increase in dropout in the second quarter and even in the first quarter as well, just as a result of COVID, because it is true that a number of our students, they lost their income and lost their jobs, so they dropped out. Now, in the third quarter, what we have seen, that the level of retention rate was stable compared to last year. I guess that this is very important. The retention rate is again accepted by the number of new students that we are attracting more and more over time.
It is also important to bear in mind that we have a retention rate that if we stop growing now, our retention rate will naturally increase. It is going to be very easy to increase retention rate, but we prefer to keep growing, and maintaining a, let us say, controlled retention rate, which again, as I said, we could have had an even better retention rate if we offer discounts in the renewal process of students, which we prefer not to do. And that is why our average ticket increased this quarter. Otherwise, it could have decreased.
Great. That is helpful. Thank you. A follow-up question. To the extent that you are able to get any data on that or you are seeing actual trends for students, do you have any information on how much of your growth was being helped by students even switching from on-campus, maybe even at competitors. Obviously, where it is within your company, you can see it. I guess these are call transfer requests. Was it relevant at all or not yet at this point?
I guess it is beginning to be more relevant. We do not have, I would say, perfect data on that, but we do have interactions with the students, and we do feel that the interest has increased among a certain population that could have thought about going to the on-campus. Now, first, because of, I would say, reduction in income, and second because of change in mindsets or elimination of prejudice against distance learning. We do see that there is increased part of the population of our potential prospects that are moving their decision from on-campus to digital. This was just confirmed last week, looking site release, their final, the 50 wave report they released to the whole market confirming that there is more and more, a higher increase in the interest for digital education, much more than the interest about on-campus.
It is, I would say, nice to assume that there is a big part of the population that will, over time, change their decision or their potential decision from on-campus and then enroll with us in digital education, especially because we offer this hybrid model. Especially because we offer this model which provides the sense of community, the sense of belonging that the person, that he or she would like to get when going for an on-campus option. Now we do offer this sense of belonging, but instead of meeting five days a week, you meet with your colleagues, your class, your tutor once a week. It is the best of both worlds, combining the flexibility and affordability of the online with the sense of belonging of the on-campus.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Irma.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Carlos Freitas, for closing remarks.
Now to wrap up with some key takeaways on page 20, please. We had a very solid quarter and very good nine months numbers, which have positioned us well for future growth. Our strategy is based on this disruptive model, a student-centric hybrid model, which emphasizes flexibility, affordability, and builds a strong relationship with all stakeholders engaged in our platforms. This is proving to be efficient over time. This is proving to deliver consistent growth across all key metrics. We delivered the growth prospects that we discussed in the IPO process, and we remain focused on delivering more long-term value for shareholders by keep expanding top and bottom line. Enrollments and student base have increased a lot. Margin trends are improving, sustained by this operational leverage that I just explained.
We believe that we can build further on the momentum of the hubs as they mature, and we continue to expand our base and see this shift that Irma mentioned from on-campus to digital education. We are very excited about the future, and we believe that we are on the right path to maximize our growth potential. Thank you very much for being here with us. A real pleasure. We look forward to meeting with you all over the next months when the pandemic allow us, and to provide more financial and business updates in the next quarter. Meanwhile, our Investor Relations team is available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you again. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.