Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to YDUQS Video Conference to discuss the results for the second quarter of 2024. This video conference is being recorded, and the replay can be accessed on the company's website, www.yduqs.com.br. The presentation is also available for download. Please be advised that all participants will only be watching the video conference during the presentation, and then we will start the Q&A session, when further instructions will be provided. Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this conference call regarding the company's business prospects, projections, and operating and financial goals, are beliefs and assumptions of YDUQS management and the current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors, analysts, and journalists should take into account that events related to the macroeconomic environment, industry and other factors could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. That for the better view of the presentation, it is recommended to enable full screen mode. Present at this video conference are Mr. Eduardo Parente, CEO of YDUQS, and Mr. Rossano Marques Leandro, CFO and Investor Relations Director. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Eduardo Parente, who will begin the presentation. Please, Mr. Parente, you may proceed
Good morning, everyone. I hope you are all well. Thank you very much for the time you are dedicating here to us. Thank you very much for your trust. We are here today to present to you the results of the first half of 2024, the second quarter of 2024.
Second quarter, a quarter very much in line with what we told you was going to happen, very much in line with what we had planned. A quarter that reinforces the strength of the portfolio that we have developed, reinforces the importance of operating discipline, the importance of our—what we have built financially to get to this moment. At a time when we have a relevant market difficulty for Classes C and D, we continue our growth trajectory with a lot of things ahead. On the highlights page, we—what we see here is a quarter very much in line with what we had planned, and a path for the second half. Where do we see that? On the left-hand side of the chart, the single-digit growth that we mentioned to you, both in terms of NOR and EBITDA. This is down stronger.
We have average cost of debt falling, and we see very strong cash position with leverage, with a very positive trajectory. This allowed us to even anticipate dividends, which usually pay only in December. We paid a first installment now, recently, within this quarter. Adjusted net income, what did we tell you? That there were not going to be major variations versus last year. In fact, there was not. We are 9% above, more, four million plus above last year. I think it's important, Rossano will comment later with you, this number would have been much higher if it were not for the negative effects of Swap, if it were not the fine for anticipating the payments of debentures. Now, the fact is that the result is totally within the plan, with very similar to what it was last year.
Still, on the positive side, Premium is a major highlight in these more difficult times. Classes A and B suffer much less, and here we have a growth of 27% versus last year. The highlight within Digital is that we had a margin loss versus last year. In the first quarter, that was very relevant because of several effects that I will discuss with you. This effect will be diluted, will arrive in the second half, with numbers similar to last year. In the second quarter, we already see this. The highlight of On-campus, a higher count, higher intake than last year.
Again, despite the difficult moment, with the second quarter in a row of growth in the student base, which we did not see before last semester for the last 10 years, 40 quarters in a row of organic loss of base in the on-campus. All of this, what we have to conclude here, we'll reach the end of the presentation and show you a bit why we are excited about this. We are reinforcing our guidance for the year. Again, with a difficult year, much closer to the low range, the bottom of the guidance than the top part, but we are confident that we'll get there. As always, following our order here, we start with the Premium. Premium is a chart that is full of joy. We have a very important revenue growth in the semester of 18%, EBITDA growth of 27% in the semester.
Be a little careful with this comparison. Last year, we had a relevant FG-Fies impact here, so the growth of, you know, apples to apples is not 27, it's much closer to 20% here on the table, at 19%. Same thing with the margin. We are returning to the margin that we had already practiced, which has been regular within this business. The student base growing, both at Ibmec and Medicine. We highlight IDOMED in Medicine exceeding 9,000 students. Also, price evolving in a very positive way. As always, in the two businesses, both IDOMED and Ibmec, renewal here is never an issue. We are always 90 high, varies a bit up and down. This percent point is a variation on the same theme. Changing here to page five-...
E-learning, we have distance learning, both with revenue, EBITDA, and student base, very similar to what we presented a year ago. I think it's been a difficult year, especially for Classes C and D. We're moving sideways here. There's a drop in EBITDA here. We've talked a lot about the reasons in the first quarter. I wanted to draw your attention to this table that we've added here on the right top side. When we showed you the results of first quarter, we said that this, margin drop is a one-off issue, that you will look here at line by line. You see here, especially in bad debt, in the transfer, is a large variation versus previous years, which is a phenomenon, very large intake that leads us to have transfer to partners, partnering hubs. That is different.
What happened within the second and third quarter, you know, the 7 becomes 2.2, and when we look at the second half of the year, we see numbers resuming what we had last year. So the message here at the top is a difficult year, numbers moving sideways. EBITDA is falling, but a positive trajectory at margin that we see as even better in the second half. As to price, here, too, no surprise. We had already mentioned to you many times, 2022 was a year of little elasticity. We pushed the price up in 2023, elasticity returned. We were much more aggressive. This year, again, is the price with more than one year, so that we are not affected by the discounts we make in the first half of the year and have a discussion apples to apples.
So the 7% drop was expected. We talked a lot about it, and it's a reflection of actions that we took a year ago. The bill is coming now. The trajectory, probably for the second half, is very similar in terms of ticket to what we see now. As for renewal, as I told you, after a very strong year, you had a slightly higher dropout. This is within expectations. At the moment, we are experiencing, especially in the even-numbered quarter, because the dropout rate is higher than the odd-numbered ones, and we have not yet reached the same level. As in terms of intake, as we said in the first quarter, we are seeing lower numbers than we saw last year. Because of this difficult situation, we see classes C and D going through. Let's move on to on-campus.
We have here both EBITDA and revenue going sideways. We have some variations between quarters, but when we look at the semester itself, that's how we are. An important message here is the maintenance of the margin that we have had versus the same semester last year. I think there's a very important message that the base is growing again, especially with the Semi On -campus t his is important thing for our efficiency, and this total base, growing by 2%, also grew last quarter. It is a base that had not grown for many years. On the right-hand side, we have ticket moving sideways. I think that we had been showing an increase above inflation every quarter in a sequence.
We brought here a chart to explain a little bit to you, those who follow more closely what is happening. We broke down into three classes, seasons, or terms, or shifts, or whatever you want to call it. The darkest one, the darkest green, is a ticket to pre-pandemic classes. Those that have been with us for four or five years with us, so the size of this box is the size of this class. Then in the middle, on the right, you have people that joined us during the pandemic, so they have... they're not yet graduating, the people in the pandemic, here in person or on campus, so at the top in blue are the people who joined post-pandemic. So why this number is lower?
So it's because here, the, there are students who have been for one year with us, and we take the effect for the first semester discount. So what's important here? So the 964, the dark green bottom, it, it shrank the class a lot versus 952. So we have a relevant mix change that happened here within the semester. On the other hand, the positive side, we have 722, people who, who joined a year later. They're paying 10% more than the people who joined during the pandemic, and the 722 of the pandemic has an increased rate percent. So we're not only bringing people into our base with a larger tickets or higher tickets than the previous classes, then we are also increasing the ticket of the people who are in here. So what's going on?
We are having a moment of mix that is likely to be replicated in the next two quarters. We are building things that will generate, when this pandemic group begins to graduate, a very positive effect onto the system. About renewal, a bit what we've been talking about, the number is always around 82, 83, 84, so no major variations here. In terms of intake, despite the difficulties of Class C and a bit of B as well, we had a much higher intake than last year in this first semester. I'm going to call Rossano here to talk to you about our financial part. To proceed with our presentation, we see the revenue side. You know, we see the strengths of our diversity of our portfolio.
Business units show a year-on-year growth, and we highlight, as always, the greater penetration of premium and digital. Our two businesses that have highest margin, increasing their share of revenue. This advance brings a very positive effect to the mix, improving the margin of the organization as a whole. In view of expense cost, we main highlight is that we have, you know, slower to factors that were negative in the first quarter, mainly for the digital margin, reducing its impact in this quarter. So we bring this picture comparing second quarter against the second quarter of last year. We also see the first half of the year against, you know, half of last year, which shows a reduction in impact of both bad debt and in the line, of course, you saw the last year that we had big impact.
Last quarter had great impact due to the growth and the pressure of transfer to the centers, which is reducing a lot. This quarter will be great lever for margin. In the second half of the year, we had an even positive result, this line. Looking ahead, sales and marketing follow our strategy. We had been commenting this year that we would be operating one percentage point above last year as a strategy to strengthen our brand, strengthen our firm, our intake. We adapt to market realities, demand elasticity, which should return in the second half to the levels close to what was previous one, bringing another margin recovery lever to from now on. A great highlight, G&A reduction here, showing the strength of our expense management and costing, in general, being the big factor here, maintaining the money that we bring this quarter.
We see this line continuing to be one of the great levers. Now, we continue to work on this rental line. Once again, stable, coming from post-pandemic period, we saw strong negotiation. We had some expansion of campuses in the Premium structures, and even so, we managed to keep, again, this rent line, stable once again, as a percentage of revenue, right. On the next slide, it's a summary slide. Eduardo has already brought the details of each of the segments. We see how they're playing out in terms of dynamics of each one of our P&Ls. Obviously, the great highlight is for Premium, the big factor that leads us to maintain margin quarter-over-quarter, Premium expanding almost 7 percentage points, year-over-year. We go to the adjusted net income slide.
We have been commenting that quarter-over-quarter, we would bring a similar adjusted net income result. And this quarter, even with the very strongest ordinary potential impact, that we had BRL 15 million in the quarter of impact of our lines that are hedged, more impact of the dollar fluctuation, variation of the yield curves or interest curves, bringing BRL 15 million of negative impact on the quarter. This is not a cash effect. It will be offset over the time, thanks to our hedge, but it brings a very relevant impact on the quarter's result. And also the impact of liability management, there is an anticipation. Six issuance with the debentures that we made now in April, also bringing the impact of BRL 2 million negative in this quarter. Even so, we expanded our profit 9%.
We have been saying that expansion of profit is something that we are envisioning. This is part of our guidance that we're giving to the market. The only thing that you see negative, the depreciation line. It is a line that giving our growth in CapEx curve until 2022, it has been bringing depreciation results to date, but this curve is turning. We already see at the end of this year, certainly in the fourth quarter, a turn in this curve, depreciation, it's it will start to act positively, as it has been the CapEx curve been falling. It takes a little longer. Now, you know that although it is reducing to the CapEx, the CapEx is more redirected to technology. Depreciation of technology is much faster than depreciation of general investment. So you're investing less, but in items that depreciate faster.
So the transfer of this CapEx reduction to depreciation takes a little longer. That would be natural, but we're getting the final jump or leap, the still negative depreciation against previous periods. Coming to the cash generation slide, we bring another quarter operationally. It was really strong in cash generation, operationally, but it was impacted by extraordinary factors. We had a concentration this quarter, payment of variable compensation regarding 2023, which you know, was a strong year. We had already been advising that there would be a relevant cash outflow this quarter. Cash outflow of BRL 100 million, here, a variable compensation of all the company's administrative staff that take place this quarter. And we already expect this cash outflow, and it is specific outflow for this quarter.
This quarter was also impacted by the transaction of the prepayment of the debentures, so it indicates positive results going forward, but it brings this negative cash impact in the second quarter. Adjusting for these two extraordinary impacts, we had an excellent quarter of cash, again, showing this trajectory that we follow, becoming a company that is increasingly a strong cash generator. Positive news here, very positive, in fact, is the reduction of average receivables period, even in a challenging quarter in renewal, following very strong intake in the past with an increase of this penetration. Even so, we reduced our average collection period. We were very careful management of receivables, which brings the reduction impact against the previous years, and we hope to continue on this path. As you see, over the years, is stable.
In fact, actually, our average payment period, thanks to the very disciplined management of this line. CapEx is also within what we had been forecasting, moving towards our guidance of reaching BRL 470 million this year. It is representing 7.5% of revenue... Which is within the medium-term guidance that we had been giving. We had been saying that we were going to stay between 7%-8% of revenue. We're already running within this level. It may rise a little bit by the end of the year, but we already see next year that we'll be within this guidance, which was medium-term guidance, now reaching below 8%, as I said. This starting to convert into depreciation, also helping the net income. And we see strong concentration on digital transformation and IT, which are items that generate shorter depreciation. Important to look at this.
Despite having reduced our total CapEx, we're not reducing our contributions to the future. We continue to invest in growth levers. We've continued to invest in tools that will improve both student experience and our intake process. We have been investing in innovation, in several artificial intelligence initiatives within the organization, which continue to be funded by this CapEx from YDUQS. Moving on to our debt and net debt slide. The main highlight here is the reduction of our spread. We have been reducing constantly, quarter after quarter, is a reduction of over 7 percentage points, reaching the level 126 of our spread over CDI. The leverage adjustments for the payment of dividends happen now this quarter, also BRL 80 million.
It would have fallen once again, so even this one-off, in part, you can see that the curve is very positive, standing towards our long-term guidance of reaching net debt, EBITDA. Once again, we are going in that direction. We continue with a super comfortable cash position, a very favorable amortization schedule, which allows us to take advantage of good market moments, to have a good positioning in opportunities, which allows us to achieve this low cost of funding. We have very low CapEx or investments in the coming years. We have increased the average debt term from 2.1 to 3.1 in this period. So only very favorable results in this scenario. Moving on. I turn back the presentation to Eduardo, who's going to talk about our ESG initiatives. Thank you very much, Rossano.
As you have seen with Rossano, revenue grew, EBITDA grew, net income grew a bit, as we said, but it would have been much more if it weren't for those extraordinary effects, which will, will help us later on. We have a cash situation, though we had some extraordinary effects, totally within expectations, and a lot of people wrote about them. But a strong cash generation once again, and the debt situation and the cost of debt, that reflects the confidence that the market has at the moment we are here. On ESG, we have become a national reference in ESG. It's very difficult, well, or very unlikely, for a week to go that Cláudia's team or myself, not to get some company, usually from different sectors, and even sometimes people from the government, to understand what we do.
But sometimes we have to choose what fits on a page, what we want to share with you here. I think the message is always that we are one of the world leaders in ESG, according to MSCI, and I think that's a plus. I think that if you want to know more, we have specific presentations about it. If we brought here good news, I think there is something that is very cool, that we're very proud of, our career transition program. We have a partnership with COB, the CPB, and several other sports confederations throughout Brazil. We have over 2,000 student-athletes with us. Of those 2,000 student-athletes, 35 are in the Olympics, 42 are going to the Paralympics. This is almost 15% of all athletes that Brazil is taking to the Olympics.
Either they are or have been our students or are supported by us. We have, in sport, a very strong move of our social action, a very strong move and intent of what we do in our daily lives and what we believe in. Another cool piece of news, the Value Network, or so the students, our Heritage , which is a program that supports low-income and high-performance students, which is the ProUni student, chosen by the government, who comes to study medicine with us, and when they cannot work in the first year, so we give extra scholarships to those guys that are to be able to live there until the third year, where they start to earn and do monitoring, do internships, that we start to have money. We had these three units in Rio de Janeiro.
We have already taken it into 8 more in the Northeast. We have partnerships with Santander, Zurich Re, supporting this important program. For the first time, we have a National Solidarity Fund, and we, they and we actually managed to collect over 3,000 blood bags. In our ESG goals, we have a vote to our board of 11% diverse people, a board of 22, which was our goal for 2024. I end this picture by inviting you to watch on our ESG forum on YouTube, which had more than 1,000 people present, and we already had more than 11,000 views in the first 2 days. A great success for the people, for companies, government, people from the third sector, coming to listen, coming to tell. I think this is a forum that has particularly, or a particularity versus previous ones.
We talked a lot about what we did. Now, the third has become a big one, and an open scene where people are using us to tell their projects, to debate, to come up with the new ideas. A very nice trajectory. Moving on to our final remarks, we had a second quarter, very much in line with what we had planned, with what we had thought was going to happen. Well, as in any market, we have things that we control, things that we don't, and we have been working hard on things that we can control. But that has allowed us, despite the difficult months for Class C, despite the swap that Rossano mentioned, despite the prepayment with a fine of the debentures, deliver a semester, a quarter of growth.
The highlights here are the student base growing across all businesses, so the well, revenue and both highlighting the premium, EBITDA growing. It's just like net income versus last year, this CapEx season, when we were back there at 12%, we said we would reach 7%-8%, and that's where we are, 7.5%. We have next year running below 8%. All of this leads us to have a cost of debt being reduced over time. Very competitive cost of debt in the group of resilient companies, especially in the world of education. This quarter, we also acquired Newton Paiva, probably the main private label in Minas Gerais, a brand with a lot of history, with a lot of tradition and academic strength, a brand that has a higher ticket than our average ticket, Estácio-wide.
One more step towards our making our more premium operations less sensitive to market variations. A place in Brazil that we want to grow with an operation that has a mix of courses that is also very interesting for us. It's similar to what we seek in our daily lives, an operation that does not hinder our trajectory to reduce leverage, as Rossano mentioned pre-earlier. But in addition, it generates a very interesting short-term return in 2025, with a beta below this multiple of ours that is so depreciated today. And we decided to add a chart here, last page, 15.
Because when you do the math, you're good at math, you see that for us to deliver our guidance, even if it is the 1.6, which is the growth of 30%, more than 30% of the previous year in terms of net profit, we have a very strong second half. The number comes close to almost doubling net profit of second half last year. People wonder: where does this come from? How does it come? How does it happen? A difficult moment came in the market. It is not trivial. It is a difficult task, but we're excited about it, and we wanted to share with you why we're excited. First, transfers. We came with a fantastic intake in 2023. This increases the percentage of transfers that we have to our partnering centers.
This happened last year, second half of last year, in the past, and the first half of this year. So we see a second half of this year as a level of transfers, percentage of revenue below what we had last year. That is similar, so the similar situation, a very strong capture, and ends up generating in the end of year, considering last effect. So we see the net debt heading towards levels close to in the second half to what was second half of last year. S&M, we see little market elasticity, so it's no use spending a lot. So we made an extra conscious expenditure in the first semester. When we look at the second semester, we're also planning to return to levels of the previous year. Financial results, then here, there's also a relevant blow.
We had a lower CDI reduction in the debt spread, reduction and leverage also underway. All of this has a relevant impact on the second half of the year. Finally, cost and expenses. We have an efficiency program that has been carried out over the years. We have already started working on it, March, April, throughout the second half of this year. It also has the lower result or relevant reduction as a percentage of revenue versus last year. So all of this leads us to believe, again, it's not easy, it is a difficult task, and we have our sleeves rolled up for that. We'll deliver this year's guidance as a whole, and we maintain the guidances we have given on YDUQS today for the following years as well, guys. That's it. Let's move on to our Q&A session. Thank you very much for your attention and trust.
We will now start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please click on Raise Hand. If your question has been. You may proceed. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I'd like to have the guidance that they have shared in some rivals that you told, said that you were going to change this guidance. I'd like to understand the evolution of this profit in the third and fourth quarter, if we should weigh the seasonality of profit that we know. It's much stronger, the third quarter, vis-à-vis fourth quarter. I'd like to understand if there is a discussion of launching a buy back, a share buyback program. Well, we see the share prices. If we look at the bottom of the guidance, these are the two questions on my side. Thank you. Thank you, Caio.
Okay, thank you for your questions. Regarding guidance, last year, let me try to remember everything. Third quarter, about BRL 120 net profit, and fourth, about BRL 10. Obviously, the fourth is what we have most on to vis-à-vis the previous one and the net profit issue. Well, a lot of what happens below EBITDA, sometimes it's positive, sometimes negative, a bit outside control, especially when we talk about quarter. When we talk about the year, we are quite comfortable. You see the effect of the swap revert somewhere ahead in a broader horizon. It's easier. Within the quarter, it's more difficult, so we came here, as Rossano mentioned, we came here to this result.
We felt that we were going to have profit at about 80, 85, and then we had the swap effect and the final prepayment of the debt, things that we were not expecting there. It was similar to last year then, and we felt that we would have it more there. So what do we expect ahead? Again, 1.6, we're going to do it. And the third quarter, which is 120 in comparison, tends to be a bit better than last year. Well, how much better, but certainly better, and the fourth quarter will be much better than last year. With regards to the buyback, I think Rossano has it on the tip of his tongue. I will allow him to share it with you. Hi, Caio. Thank you for your question.
As we've been saying, our priority of cash generating, generation and strategically is, deleveraging and, and being a strong dividend, payment. Well, we mentioned on our Investor day that we'll be open to opportunities, so the share buyback seems to be interesting as, we've been discussing that in-house, along with other opportunities that, again, that we are keeping on our radar. Strategically, we are looking at the opportunities, understanding which are the best moves to take in the short term, and buyback is certainly one of the things that is on the table and is part of our strategic view, in the short mid, midterm. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Caio.
Our next question-
It's from Mr. Samuel Alves, from BTG Pactual. You may proceed. Good morning, Parente, Rossano. Good morning, everyone. Two questions on our side. The first is a bit on distance learning. Could you talk about cycle of intake in the segment for the second quarter, second semester, actually? Another question we have heard from players in the market, competition dynamic is very strong in this cycle of intake, especially in distance learning. The question is more whether you intend to use a bit more DIS or calibrate marketing spaces to face this intake cycle that apparently is a bit more difficult. This is it. Thank you. Excellent, Samuel. I'm going to hit them both. Well, intake cycle is not good, both on campus and in distance learning.
When I tell you about the guidance of this year and what we have to do in the second half, everything we can do, we're considering lower intake than previous year. For on-campus is a bit smaller, distance learning is a bit more, a bit worse than on-campus year-over-year. What do we see in the market? We see slight differences from what you heard there. We see a poor market. When the market is not doing well, it's no use, you're certainly being super aggressive, et cetera. So much on the contrary, we're raising prices, taking a bit our good from this, okay, slowing down this. So it's a bit similar to 2022. 2022 is a bit different than today. We had a product portfolio that had a gap regarding the rest of the market.
If you look at 2022, there were people that grew, and we moved sideways. It's not the reality today. We had a big catch-up of product portfolio regarding competition, but we see a market that is difficult. So- Don't see elasticity. Moments that we see no elasticity, we spend more on marketing. I think I mentioned that on the last chart. In the first half, on purpose, aware our A plus was more than competition. We are much more aggressive in marketing than us, where we had planned to spend more this year. Second half, we actually reviewed that. We haven't reviewed what we're looking for next year. We'll follow the same pace as November, December. This is non-negotiable. We cannot sacrifice next year because of, of what we see this year. But what we see now, August, September, great months of spending.
July has been like this and very similar to last year. So a bit of controlling what we control, take a deep breath. We have to slow down people coming into education. These cycles happen. Sometimes we have great leaps, as last year. Sometimes we have more stable moments, as this year. So we are not concerned, and we control what we can control. Much on the contrary, I see less aggressiveness on part of the competition. Every Tuesday morning, we look at everyone's website, people enrolling to see what's happening. We see a moment that is wait and see, not so much aggressiveness. Thank you, Parente. Thank you, Samuel.
Our next question is from Mr. Marcelo Santos, from JP Morgan. You may proceed, please.
Thank you, Parente. Thank you, Rossano. I have one question. You've shown a slide of evolution of accounts with different tickets, pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic. If you project that ahead, how do you project the phase out of those tunes? When do you change the, the turn the ticket? Because now it's hindering, because there will be a time when it will start helping. When will you have this point? Thank you, Marcelo. Can somebody put it on the screen? Well, inside first I'll give you. Thank you, Rossano. Vamos lá, excellent question. Excellent question. I think this is a very important point. I'm going to revisit it. I don't know if I've been very fortunate in my explanation. So I'm talking about this part here on the bottom right, so these two colored bars. So what do we have?
The size of these bars is the number of students we have. So what is this moment that we moved sideways? So this great graduation of 952 to 964 students that joined 2020 before. Students that are in their fifth, sixth, seventh year with us. Whilst the 722 and 779 are 2021, 2022 students. You observed it quite well, Marcelo, that we're getting hit by the mix, so people paying 964, and we have people going or paying 777, 796. We should be getting hit, both people that are joining are paying higher prices than those that are leaving. What happened? Those people are actually graduating. The dropout after first year, we're talking about 2, 3, 4% numbers. These are graduation. You see the green are very similar.
People have not graduated yet, the light green in the middle. So we still have this 964 to graduate that will worsen our mix. The trend is that this should be very fast. When we look at second half, we look at the move that is sideways as it's been second quarter, and we have the contrary effect when you see those students graduating. You have 8-10% growth. 779 is the increase we gave to the 722 class. So they had 8% price increase above inflation. And 796 is the guy that is at the same stage as the 777, 722, 2023. One or two years later, we're putting 10% of increases for the people that are joining.
This is reorganization of margin that is happening in the industries of all, not only ours. We provide discounts and this attracting students for the first semester, so that they realize the quality we have here. And these features that are discount, a way of attracting when you evolve, then we have higher prices than the competition, and we can note a low dropout rate that we mention the second year of students. When they're here, they see the value on it. Very long answer to your question, but I think the second, well, 964, you have a lot of people, students graduating, not second half. Well, actually, what happened in July, the third, fourth quarter will be a similar effect to this, but for next year, we have already contracted or increases that are much higher than inflation.
It's going to be a bit now, a bit further ahead. At some point, we believe that we have to do the math, but that's the first half. We have contrary effect that will be quite strong here. Have I answered your question? Yes, you have. Thank you. Sorry, too long. Our next question is from Ms. Mirela Oliveira from Bank of America. You may proceed. Good morning, Parente, Rossano. Two questions actually. First, regarding the semi on-campus ticket, if you could comment on it. Of the drop that we've seen is, you know, a difference in mix or competitive environment, how you see this moving ahead? A follow-up regarding distance learning.
If you think this reduction of volume of intake is more a reflection of regulatory environment, a macro impact that has been impacting on-campus, if you could comment on the reasons that you think have been keeping the volumes from growing more? Thank you, Mirela. Tickets on semi on-campus. Well, last year we were more aggressive, so, so this is something that we look at with very positive eyes. So we have less than our fair share on the semi. Our semi, till recently, was exclusively a part in our units. Students are having classes with the on-campus students, and we have a reduction of fixed costs. That says something. Unlike semi on-campus, it is for those that cannot afford it. It's a campus experience of class, you know, you know, the beer after class and networking, et cetera.
So we sped up last year, we became more aggressive in terms of price, so we had a market repositioning, yes. And now we're starting semi product, more similar, a bit more similar to competition with semi in our centers, and there's a trend of bringing this price a bit down. Your second question, actually, I have no answer. I don't know the answer for that. We have several hypotheses here, from-
High cost
Moments, competition, what applies to us or applies to the whole market. You know, strong year, last year. This year, more difficult. So we do surveys here, and the answers have not been very different from other years. So there are things that, well, people say, "I'd rather wait a bit. I have, cannot afford. I have no money now. I have no money." It was very strong in 2022, less strong in 2024, but still present. But it has been very much around financial issues. So this point that you mentioned of regulation government, I think this has not impacted, this is not present in any of the surveys we conduct. Why people have no money? When you look at the market, Brazil, retail has suffered a bit, but a bit less than us.
People from retail markets talk about, sometimes we communicate with them, sometimes they're better, doing better than us, and sometimes the opposite. Why people have no money at the moment? It's still a question mark in our heads.
Thank you, Parente.
Thank you.
Next question, Mauricio Cepeda, Morgan Stanley.
Oi, Eduardo, Rossano. Bon dia, thank you for this space. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the time, and let me add to what you're mentioning. The fact that it's not time to be aggressive, to have more marketing, more deals. My question is a bit, what indicators that you monitor to make this decision? I understand that in the past, the answer would have been contrary to the industry. The industry would have responded more aggressively. At some point, it was doing worse, more funding, they did more marketing, and this conclusion that it's not worth even trying this. What do you monitor to see that you have this, you know, turn in the decision? The first question. The second question is more regarding numbers.
The ticket that you've explored quite a bit, why was this only observed now in the second quarter, and this effect of worsening mix and portfolio being observed in the first quarter? Thank you. Excellent, Mauricio. I believe that the market has learned about aggressiveness. You know, I'm talking a lot about distance learning. There are two very different market strategy. On campus, the competition is very local. We see a move towards the price increase, so we don't see any aggressive answer or response. Everybody has very low margins. We are super efficient. We have low margin. Imagine those that do not have the efficiency we have, the scale we have. So price dynamics in on-campus is quite different from distance learning, and it is very responsible and careful.
Many people should be telling you this, and well, we were unable to see the other calls, but well, distance learning is a bit different. So what do we have? We've always done a lot of AB tests. We did that in the past, so taking one place, another place. So when we implement it here, we can have one person next to the art going into the website, showing them different things, from price to message, types of offers, not only the person, the reaction of the person, the order. So we test things all the time. It's real-time. It's not something that, well, I'm going to run a test here. Sometimes you have to wait for a certain volume.
It takes a week for you to have relevant, statistically relevant or significant response, and not what's going to generate. You don't, don't get the answer as to what's going to generate revenue this semester. It's reality. It's not what's happening to IPCA indicator. We test things all the time, so we have lots of tools. We started working with this company last year, November, and so we have great tools to work with this within a very similar audience or quite homogeneous. Regarding ticket, your question is very good. We have something here that we haven't mentioned, and I think it's worth mentioning because of your question. We worked much better in renewal. It's an important part there, understanding who's who, what kind of discount to apply. From the second quarter last year, we have been giving much less discount compared to what we gave, previously.
We created four quarters of an increase in prices for upperclassmen that is based on non-discount for renewal. And then we had a stronger M7. We had a stronger M7, long-term prices that were strong, that were offsetting the exit. We had students leaving, they're paying more, and those coming in were paying higher prices. That was offsetting that additional, that was comparability of a healthier year-over-year, yeah, this quarter, that was good. Quarter comparable to last year when we had these new tools applied here. This delta is not seen. What will happen, that Marcelo was saying to the previous question, we have a semester that will move someplace because of this leaving pre-pandemic students, and then we have post-pandemic students, then we have the post-pandemic offsetting well, and we're going to get back to levels that you saw previously. Is it clear or not?
I think so. I think the second part is about renewal, but there's also a question that the students who would graduate, they could have graduated before. We don't see that in the first quarter. Right. You're right. This delta last- Are you talking? No, but what happens, the mix, if you take out the effect of a more sophisticated renewal in the first quarter, you see something very similar to second quarter. This is the point. Renewal ends up getting, you know, making the average. The renewal is every semester, if you see 96.2-95.2 to 96.4. Yeah, so second quarter, things are more similar, because the previous one, things were different. Thank you.
Our next question is from Mr. Vinicius Figueiredo, from Itaú BBA. You may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. If you can talk a bit about the - well, I have two follow-ups regarding the stronger margin recovery that you mentioned for the second half, that reinforces the guidance. I'd like to understand if you have any comments that end up hindering, some that end up helping. And I'd like to understand the effect of this sort of reduction in speed, and this, as Rossano mentioned, second half, this point may have some kind of additional impact regarding ticket. And then another point would be in the bad debt within this, the acceleration, if we can imagine, you know, margin and cost as a percentage of revenue speeding, you know, accelerating second half and helping margins when we look year-over-year. Thank you. Thank you, Vinicius. Let's have a look here.
Margin recovery for the second semester, nothing is getting worse. Everything is improving. Do I remind you once, Rossano, has the transfer much smaller than last year. Intake in the first half increased the level of transfers, and this last year that has ended now, we're going to have lower transfer levels in the next 12 months with the lower intake. Bad debt, considering first semester improves, and it goes to similar levels to last year. S&M, little elasticity, so what we did to increase the first semester did not yield the results, so we're going to go to the last year's levels. Financial results, lower CDI, and reduction in debt spread and significant will have an impact. Quite significant than last year. Costs and expenses, same thing.
We have an effect of cost and expenses that we've been working on our day-to-day, and we have an effective bonus. In 2023, we had provisioned a strong number that was paid in the second quarter, 2024. We're not provisioning the same numbers as last year. Smaller number that you're going to see in the cash flow of 2024, positive number vis-a-vis what was 2023. Again, these are the things that we control, so this is quite important. To deliver the guidance for the year, we count on a second half of intake that is worse than last year, but working very much on what we can control. This has no relevant effect here. You will see no relevant dis-effect here in the second half vis-a-vis what was in previous years.
As bad debt is a percentage of the debt, I don't know if it's going to get the same numbers as last year, but not the same distance that you saw in the first semester. Anything else? Excellent. Thank you, Parente. Have a good day. No, nothing to add. So I think Rossano has approved me in his test. Nothing to be added. Thank you.
Our next question is from Leandro Bastos, from Citi. You may proceed.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thank you. I have two questions. The first, get a message of cash flow for the second half. You mentioned some efficiency levers that you've been working on. On the other hand, so we have intake and ticket should follow that in the part of revenue, especially on-campus and distance learning. In this NOR, how would you expect the cash flow? You won't have the effective bonus. So there is, you know, what kind of message for the first semester? That's the first question. The second question, considering the expectation of lower transfers to partners, I'd like you to talk about the, the financial health of partners. So, you know, difference in on-campus, if this lower transfer at some point could concern the return of people or not. Thank you. Thank you, Leandro.
I'm going to give the first one of cash flow to Rossano and the other one about the hubs to Haroldo. Tell us about the net profit. I think it's important to talk about it. Sure. Thank you for the question, Leandro. Well, you've already mentioned the important factors for cash generation in the second half. The main impact of NOR from intake. NOR, well, we have intake that is important from this, converting more long-term cash, and the impact to cash is less relevant in terms of NOR. As we see, the levers that we have are spending, and cash conversion is faster. We also are positive in terms of cash generation for the second half, as Eduardo asked. So for the swap, we've been very impacted by this market to market in this hedge two in the second quarter.
This year, opening of curve, for future curve of interests is we have a hedge of debt protecting us, according to CDI. Plus, we have debt that for the market are prefixed, and we do the hedge, protecting us according to CDI. Plus, the risk that we decide to run as an industry and once this interest curve opens and increase, the future curve and CDI in the mark-to-market, you have negative impact in the second quarter. The impact of a negative BRL 50 million rise in second quarter for the when you have stable interest curve, you see zero impact in the second half, reverting that. Well, if there's a reversion in the interest curve, we may have positive results. Any measurement flow, there is impact to the cash decline.
The cash will reflect the CDI at the moment, so we have our debts, well, the payment is CDI plus our spread. I turn over to Haroldo for the second.
... So I'm gonna thank you. Just a second. I wrote this trying to open the mic. Can you hear me now? Okay.
Thank you for the question. Thank you, Gustavo. We have been commenting for some time that all our partner management is not on transfer, but actually on profitability. We have that very well controlled. Perhaps we follow our partners' profitability more than themselves. We simulate, we made the communication of all the percentage of transfer for second half. We see that, that is super granular, and we don't see that as a major problem. This happened in the past, and we will see a minimum in history with a historical peak of efficiency that we have in our partners. So this is under control. This has been communicated. No crisis, and this new transfer is reviewed quarterly according to the intake of previous half, and we know that we have to hit the goals to get to the transfers. So it's not a super issue.
Everything has been communicated. We've been following the profitability monthly for each half.
Perfect. Thank you. Is there anything else?
Thank you. Great. Have a good day.
Thank you, Leandro. Our next question is from Márcio Osako from Bradesco BBI. You may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. One would be on guidance. The first actually is guidance for profit of 2025. Well, what do you see in terms of levers to deliver the guidance of 2025, considering the context is, you know, intake scenario that is more difficult, and, you have a more streamlined cost base if you should, reduce variable, expenses, bad debt is more under control, a drop in it. What do you see if, levers, to deliver the guidance for 2025, the part of cost and expenses, considering that the base is leaner? If you have more space for cost reduction, if you count on some readjustments of upper cost and prices to offset a bit less space for a reduction that you are making to deliver the guidance of 2024.
The second question is on the cash generation guidance. Cash flow for shareholders that it gave of BRL 8 billion within next years. If it makes sense for us to think about an FCO for next year, the guidance you gave of BRL 1.4 billion. If it is that, why perhaps 2024 should be much different in terms of operating cash flow of BRL 25 million? In 12 months, you're running at BRL 950 million of operating cash flow, quite distance from this BRL 1.4 billion next year. These are my questions. Thank you. Thank you, Márcio. Look, when we look at 2025, what have we been telling you? We have this trajectory of distance learning, M&A, medicine, five years, and then technology, five years following that. And I think we delivered all the story very well of distance learning, medicine.
We have 70-some% of our EBITDA, something that hardly existed in 2017. So what we've seen, something interesting, let me, you know, start philosophizing a bit. I know you have to the other call. When we look at the education industry, education should grow with the population, should go with the GDP, whatever it is. But indicators that grow little. We have moves to, towards one side and the other, should to never decrease. They are movements of regulatory anomalies. So if FIES comes up, you know, it grows a lot, and then it removes that. So you open, you know, hub, it grows a lot, then you release medical or medicine seats that we had a reinvention. It's not ours. It goes to the industry as a whole. Each one follow their own track. Half has been particularly fortunate.
We came to a moment of stability. When we look ahead, both in terms of revenue, especially in revenue, we see growth of one digit. We have, we sat down last year, we looked at what was going to happen organically. That was what was going to happen with a possible margin increase because of our having, our businesses of higher margin growing more. Then we have a dilution of fixed costs coming in. So this is the reality, and this has a great impact in net income for several reasons. So what you have an increase in revenue goes directly to the net income, so you have sometimes the interest or transfer, bad debt, what comes from EBITDA, goes to net income. And in fact, financial effect of, of interest, we had depreciation, we had, you know, some CapEx, now it's 7.5.
These things have net income that is depreciated. The way of looking at our business is that when we look into 2025, the point you've raised is fair. What do we see in terms of revenue growth? One digit. Margin growth. Then we have a bit of our great growth driver, medicine and Ibmec of high, very high margins that have, you know, this contracted growth. And another that I haven't seen any of you making is the age of our medical courses. If you take the number of students and the number of seats over a number of seats, you have to see we have a number of 4.5. In other words, there's a contracted growth regardless of the increase in seats, and we have a trajectory of great success and increase in seats.
So there is a very healthy growth that is contracted for next year within the universe of our premium, as we have been always showing you. We have a price growth on campus, that comes in, as we commented on Marcelo's previous question, that at this moment there is a reversion and it will be stronger. And we have a new scale increase in this business. So we tend to have a 1-digit growth in revenue, positive pressure of margin for next year, and all of this convert into very strong net income. All of this happening, and in addition, deleveraging, reduction of depreciation, several things that happen below the EBITDA line that are very positive to us. So we are confident to what we promised to you for next year. We're being very conservative to what we're doing this year.
Somebody asked me: "Well, are you going to anticipate expense, you know, pay expenses later?" So what happens within the year, stays within the year, and this is how we work. As to cash generation, Márcio, I am not very comfortable to discuss this now. We have migrated guidance of EBITDA through the quarter to guidance of net income for the year. It's a way people should look at our business. We did the math, and we had this conversation previously. Our calculation is somewhat conservative. If you look to the math, you have the projection growth of one digit revenue, maintaining margins, that this generates those numbers that you've seen. And obviously, there are things that we believe years that do better than one digit that we told you.
There are, yes, well, there are things that are inorganic that are always on our agenda, and you know that we're being very careful regarding that. So we have no concern regarding the guidance we gave everyone ahead. We're going to talk much more about cash ahead. Let us conclude the deliveries with this half, and reconfirm the confidence you have in us, and we'll talk about that. Sure, Parente. Thank you. Thank you, Márcio. The Q&A session is concluded. We'd like to turn over to Mr. Eduardo Parente for the final remarks of the company. Well, we've delivered a quarter as we told you we would do, despite having had negative news below the EBITDA line, negative news. The market is worse than we had expected. We have been very disciplined regarding that. We are delivering results with cleaner cash.
As regarding last year, trajectory has been good for us to do that over the second half as well. We are confident regarding second half, again, with the things that are in our hands. Any positive move of the market effected this year will be quite small for 2025. Possibly yes, but not for this year. And this is it. Let us keep on... Well, we have organized ourselves. The, you know, the reward we get of being well organized, having a good portfolio is proven now when we are going through difficult times and what we're delivering to you, okay? Thank you very much for your trust, for your time. I wish you all good day. The YDUQS video conference is ended. We thank you all for your participation, and wish you all a very good day.