Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Yduqs' video conference to discuss the results of the third quarter of 2024. This video conference is being recorded, and the replay can be accessed on the company's website at www.yduqs.com.br. The presentation is also available for download. Let me inform that all participants will only be watching the video conference during the presentation. 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' board of directors and the current information available to the company.
Those statements may involve risks and uncertainties, since 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, the industry, and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. It is important to stress that for a better viewing 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 Officer. I would now like to turn the floor over to Mr. Eduardo Parente, who will start the presentation. Please, Mr. Parente, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all fine. Welcome to Yduqs' presentation of the third quarter for the first nine months of 2024. I'd like to start with the highlights of the presentation. The year has been going in line with everything we said. We have one-digit growth on revenue and EBITDA. Very strong growth. I think so far we had, nine months, 26%, was the same period last year of growth. We have a very important evolution within the third quarter.
The growth of BRL 600 million net income, the highest adjusted net income since the world before the pandemic here for us. This with a very important evolution in the cash flow for our shareholders, roughly BRL 300 million in the quarter, three times the equivalent of the same period last year. Obviously, we have several highlights here. Rossano will share more with you. The evolution of the cost of the debt is one highlight, an important part of this evolution, both in net income and cash flow.
An important highlight for our premium unit, reinforcing the strength of our portfolio. Those of you who are here with us, remember that the great highlight was the evolution of distance learning, resumption of on-campus, the portfolio composing here with an important evolution, over 20% base evolution versus a year ago. An important evolution ticket both at Ibmec and Medicine, and evolution in the EBITDA margin that we practice here. People start asking us about capital allocation. I think when we look, Rossano talks a lot about this, we see the opportunities we have. It is very difficult for us to find any opportunity that is so evident to our eyes as our own shares. We firmly entered the buyback program. We bought 13 m illion shares. We canceled 20 million shares. Some of this program and other programs, the program is underway, ongoing.
Still to go for 279 million shares currently. You can see here why we are delivering this result that is so good. We have been working a lot on the things we control in-house and reinforcing probably the reaction we expect is to become more evident that we are going and how we are going to get to the guidance we gave from BRL 1.6 to BRL 1.9 EPS for 2024. Important highlight is the 6.9. We are using the number of shares that we had at the time, not the 279 that we have. It is probably going to be smaller at the end of the year, which would give a higher number than this 6.9. Starting with the premium unit, which is our highlight of the quarter and the year. We had an important evolution of net revenue, 16% versus the same period last year.
An important evolution, both in Medicine and Ibmec. A greater evolution in EBITDA, 24% vis-à-vis last year's same period. We have the green balloon highlight of Ibmec that is within the premium unit, but we have relevant impact here. People think about premium and Medicine. Ibmec has practically a bit less, 1/5 of the EBITDA that we practiced this year. That evolved 120% in the past three years. We had an important margin recovery of the year, 48% to 50%, 2.5 percentage points, and an important evolution in the student base. Total student base growing 32%. Medicine has gone beyond 9,000 students. Ibmec, 6,000. Great success that we have at Ibmec Faria Lima. Important driver for growth here. Then a highlight to the increase of vacancies in Castanhal. It is one of the Mais Médicos II unit.
We had great discipline there since the beginning, choosing the markets where we had greater capability of growth for us to fulfill what was actually complying with the legislation. Ibmec has the same number of residency vacancies as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. We are contributing to society, contributing to the local health system, working along with city halls to ensure that there was space in bed so that our students had a good learning experience. All of this leads us to have this great success, much higher than the market average, much higher or practically double the market average of expanding vacancies or seats in Mais Médicos II, which makes us excited for the process of Mais Médicos III that we have already the document we had. Hope the results will come out early next year.
In terms of ticket, we are very much in line of what we have been practicing, importantly at Ibmec and Ibmec. Renew that is always about 95%, 96%, 97%, as we have seen. Moving to distance learning, we see revenue of student base goes in line with the loss of undergraduate student base. On the right side below, we see ticket reduction, something we had already mentioned to you before. 2023 was the year we saw strong elasticity in market. We work with tickets of midterm that were smaller than we had been working previously. These two things added lead to a loss of EBITDA, the operating leverage we talked about last year. You grow, you have an increase in margin. This happened the other way around this year. We had a difficult market.
Added to this, a drop in tickets we have for offers that we made consciously in the year of 2023, which brought us an important base. But they bring this issue of the average or midterm ticket. When we look to the corner of the right, we have a renewal similar to what was last year, but intake was a bit worse. It is important to go in detail here. Many of you talk to us regularly.
We know that every week we measure elasticities. We see what happens in market. In greater times of elasticity, we tend to be more aggressive in price. The times now, like now that we see market, it is worse than conditions than before. We see little elasticity. We prefer to work higher prices, which will give us results over next year, and then suffer a bit more than the market in this part of intake.
Our intake was 20% than last year. We had prices in seven. We see impact last year, 17% above previous years. The good news here is that what we see here in Q4, still a lot to complete. We see very similar numbers to what was Q4 last year, keeping these prices higher than what we practiced in Q3. Moving to on-campus, revenue moving sideways vis-a-vis same period last year. The base growing 2%. This is very important. We had many quarters of decline. We see 2024 showing base growth versus the same period previous year. This is due a lot to our semi on-campus strategy, right? It helps us dilute fixed costs on our campuses and better price our on-campus. We bring on-campus higher up, offering a person an alternative for those who cannot pay full price of our on-campus, and this has been very successful.
We have a share below our fair share in this universe of semi on-campus, where we are very excited ahead. When we look at the ticket here on the bottom right, last quarter, this number was negative. We prefer to present the ticket of upperclassmen, those people who have been with us for over a year, who have gone through the whole period of discounts, et cetera. This becomes a fair comparison, apples to apples. What has been happening, we have been training people pre-pandemic who have a history of tickets of many readjustments. So this pre-pandemic base is leaving, with people entering with higher tickets than the previous classes, but still below the pre-pandemic period. So there is an effect that cancels out people before the pandemic, forming people that we have the average of pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, and this together, it kind of levels off.
This number was negative last quarter and is being positive now. Our projections show in this part, looking ahead until the moment that this group before the pandemic is graduated, we have a very strong leverage. Well, this leads to an EBITDA moving sideways compared to last year. But we have this margin of 2023 is much higher. If you look a short time away, we look at 2019, when we look at on-campus, there is a unit of ours that has idle capacity, operational leverage that is relevant, and little by little we improve margin, managing to work on the base, optimizing our units. That allows us to have this margin in line with the nine months of last year, but much higher than it was recently. Well, renewal and intake, very much in line with last year.
Renewal is always 81%-83%, varies with the economic moment we are experiencing. Intake, 1.6 below last year with higher prices, very much in line with what we expected for this year. I'm going to turn over to Rossano, who will tell you about the financial indicators.
Thank you, Eduardo. Good morning, everyone. Moving to the revenue side, we see the power of our portfolio with all the business growing. Obviously, premium, very strong quarter, with greater part or stake in our mix. It's very positive for our profitability, showing the resilience of our portfolio as a whole. We have been talking about our efforts to reduce expenses overall, and we see this reflected very clearly in this slide.
When we look at the part of G&A, a very relevant reduction, falling 1 percentage point of revenue, result of all the work that has been carried out throughout the year. When you look at bad debt and also other delights, we see the slide where we see this, what we said we were going to happen in this cost structure or expense structure over the semester. Happened very much in line of what we see reinforcing our guidance delivery for 2024. Everything we talked about cost leads to the next slide. We're going to talk about EBITDA. You see the expansion of our EBITDA year-over-year, very much on premium, 3 percentage point year-over-year. This greater participation of premium is helping our mix.
Profitability of the business as a whole is getting higher due to participation of our business of greater profitability within the total budget. I should mention also on campus, stable margin year-over-year. Margin is better in terms of the markets Eduardo mentioned, in specific on-campus site levers that we have ahead. Tickets positioning forward at a higher level. We take up more space, reducing idleness, fixed costs and on campus, looking ahead, makes us feel very confident about the future of this business. On the next, this is a very important slide. We've been highlighting our guidance was very much focused on the expected profit results for the year as a whole. We are still very confident. I think the third quarter brings great strengths, increasing the confidence of the market as a whole in our ability to deliver.
Very strong growth, net profit 53% year-over-year, and it has been supported by EBITDA and very strong growth of financial results. Eduardo said we had been following our guidance. We had very relevant growth in terms of profit. This has been represented here on this slide. The financial results are my items here that are specific of the third quarter. A great part of this will continue at the end of the year, still in 2025, reinforcing our belief in the guidance of 2024 and the forthcoming years. Our slide with the historical view, it's important to expand our time horizon when we look at 2019 up to now. It's the CAGR of 8% of revenue. Eduardo talks about the number of prices we had, but we still have an increase.
Our revenue growth is impressive with a margin above 33% this year, being helped by this multiplicity of our portfolio, the resistance that shows at different times and continue to return for shareholders. Since the IPO in 2007, every year we pay dividends. This year, as in some others, with a buyback program, so ensuring return for shareholders of the value generated by the business. Now we come to another super important slide in this presentation. Very strong generation of cash flow for shareholders, BRL 300 million, showing a very important turning point for the business. Since the pandemic, this is a business that was reduced in capacity for cash generation. We pointed that the turning point was getting close. Second semester was important to show this turnaround. This is a strong cash generator. It's clear in our long-term guidance, we're going to reduce our leverage from here.
It's an important cornerstone of our strategy. This turnaround, our cash generation, close to BRL 300 million, is a very positive sign for us to strengthen our strategic view. It comes from two lines that are super relevant. One of receivables, even continuing to use DIS as a strong intake. We know this is a long-term revenue tool, so even if we continue to use it in strong levels, we have reduced our average time from 103 to 96 days. All this improvement comes from a better collection capacity or intake from collection, management of our receivables, the way in which this is done with our students, privileging the ability of retaining our students to renewing students, has been greatly increasing our conversion rate. This is reflected here in the business. Another important line is the financial results.
Because of all the results I have already talked about and also benefited by these actions to improve our collection and collection capacity. When we look at the right, we see CapEx heading towards guidance for BRL 470 million in the year. Still continuous CapEx focused on digital transformation and IT. We had our CapEx reach 12% in the middle of our transformation, but now we are close to our midterm guidance, dedicating great part of our investment in technology and digital transformation. Moving on, we see our debt structure of our average cost of debt. In the long run, we have reducing our cost of debt. This shows the strength of the company, the recognition of the market, our capacity to generate cash, our capacity to generate value in the long term.
We are AAA recognized by the market, and we have been capitalizing and generating opportunities to be able to capitalize on this situation in the current market moment. Once again, average cost falling sequentially. We're reducing our leverage, even with the buyback program happening with the early payment of dividends we made in the second quarter. This is a super important topic. We reduced our leverage 1.56, even with this process of buyback. If it hadn't happened, we would have reached 1.51x . Moving to our long-term guidance, which is attain 1x of net debt of which, as we said, Yduqs Day in the second quarter. Looking to the right. The robust position, BRL 170 million.
Our net debt is very balanced, and our amortization program is, as I said, makes us able to benefit from the market, a super diluted motion program, few towers, and almost nothing in the short term, debts maturing at very low amount in 2025. Our spread is dropping, especially our leverage moving to our long-term guidance. This is a slide I mentioned in the past. Before I bring it, the phrases we used in the second quarter and now. We wanted to make the main levers we would use to generate the necessary value to reach the guidance of profit for the year. Let's see how each one performed. In transfer, we said that reduction of intake that happened in the first quarter 2024 was reduction in the weight of transfer in second semester.
First semester, it was one of the funders of our results, and we said that in second semester, this would reverse. Our view is that it would be even below as percentage of last year's revenue. It was the same, which is already a reduction of previous years. If at full on, it's an excellent news because of the renew or reason that was excellent collection or intake that we had. It's part of the transfers focus on the amount collected and not the amount invoiced. So when you have strong collection, you increase transfers as percentage of revenue, which is excellent news to our business. In bad debt, as we said, it was an offender in the result this month given the profile of intake that happened the first month last year. We saw the percentage moving to a percentage similar to what was last year.
This quarter, getting close to last year's percentage. We see this result improving even more in the fourth quarter to reach final result of second half with a percentage of revenue very similar to previous year. M&S, we gave clear guidance to market that we would get close to the percentage of revenue with what was the previous year. We'll perform the first half, 1 percentage point above last year. This quarter, we're getting close to previous year with our positioning the market and understanding the market conditions, elasticity of intake. We decided strategically to position ourselves once again close to what was last year's percentage of revenue. G&A, as we said, we still have results of space management, almost 1 percentage point in financial results, as we said, one of the great levers to achieve the results of the year as a whole. What's missing?
We see what we have reached, BRL 1.44 or BRL 1.6 that we had promised to deliver to the market. Eduardo highlighted on the first slide that I continue using the number of shares that was the basis for the guidance of the disclosure, 291 million shares. Despite doing the buyback program, the resulting price will be higher, but as compared for guidance, I will use the same base, so we have BRL 0.16 to be attained at fourth quarter number that once again, we're very confident that we will be able to deliver. The lever of the fourth quarter are not very different from what we had been pointing out second quarter. We continue with transfers, the trend of reduction of previous year. At bad debt, we identify improvement movements, and we see the clear third quarter, while it follows the same model as last year.
G&A represents the benefits of reducing expenses that we had been collecting and financial results on the same positive wave, reduction of the interest rate and spread in our leverage that we mentioned in the previous slides. Moving on, I turn over to Eduardo, who is going to talk about our ESG results in the third quarter.
Thank you, Rossano. Talking about ESG, which is a very dear topic to me. Last quarter, we brought here a photo of the Olympics, and we show the important participation we had in the Olympics and Paralympics. We are bringing photos of our leaders today. We entered at TEVA, which is an index of companies that have many women in their leadership. We are a company recognized for our diversity, which is not for nothing. We are the mirror of our students. We have 80% of our employees.
They have been our students at some point, and we have a bit of that. Well, come with us, because I have already been there. The commitment, this atmosphere, this sense of purpose and belonging, very strong here. In addition, what do we have as news here? Conclusion of the CDP report on the environmental side, the gold seal in the GHG Protocol, the renewal of our rating AA and MSCI, very important recognition. Very few companies in the world have, especially in the world of education, have this recognition as leading companies in the thought of ESG, and Yduqs is one of them. Our program of black trainees, a fourth group class, 11,000 people registered for a training program is a high number and for exclusive program, a great success. Kids are in the fourth group spread throughout the company as a whole.
We had over 300,000 people impacted by the community services and social projects of our units. There is something I am particularly proud, and Exame magazine gave us a prize for our people. It is very difficult. Well, you do not have consultity, you do not have support, you do not have help. It is a measure that is very difficult between what you say and what people perceive. Our employees, many have been interviewed, many questionnaires filled out, and the main topic here is the legitimacy and cohesive between what we do and what we say every day here in the company, walking our talk. It is a source of great pride for us to have been recognized with this award. Well, for final remarks, much of what Rossano said, we are at a clear moment of recovery.
2023, we had an operating recovery, very evident evolution in our EBITDA portfolio, showing strengths. People say premium is resilient. We had a moment of improvement economy. We had business learning on campus, great growth in 2023, revenue and EBITDA. Now recovery of net income and cash flow for our shareholders, going back to that business that has always been, as Rossano said, structurally strong cash generator and a strong net profit. Our highlights here, revenue growing in all businesses, EBITDA evolving, its EBITDA margin evolving. As Rossano mentioned, our main growth driver is the highest margin, and that helps us push looking forward too. The net profit cost of debt, important level, only one of them that we have in the evolution that we have below the EBITDA line, an important evolution.
CapEx, as Rossano said, getting close to the guidance that we said we are going to get to the number here, 8.1 in the first nine months of the year. Cash flow, as I have mentioned to you, and the concern, especially for foreign investors, they keep us asking on capital allocation. We will be a great dividend generator, as we pointed in our guidance that we gave you at Yduqs Day in the first half.
We look ahead, and we see this guidance with great optimism. We are going to get there. And the question that remains from foreign investors is, what about capital allocation? Today, we see no better way of allocating capital rather than our own shares announced BRL 300 million of buyback, and we are strong with that. There is a lot to come over the year. And the cancellation that Rossano mentioned in line with that.
Thank you very much for your time, and I thank you very much for your trust. Let us move on to the questions. Wait a second. We are going to have something different today. We always have two conference calls, one in Portuguese at 9:00 AM and another one in English at 11:00 AM. Rossano and I, we talk very fast, and it may be difficult to follow everything. People ask us to do a call at 11:00 AM, and we have very high attendance.
Today, we are going to do something different. We are going to go to our computers, sit down to answer your questions, and in parallel, the studio staff will play this presentation with artificial intelligence. And myself and Rossano will be here in front of those who want to watch at 11:00 AM, speaking English, Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin, the same presentation that we had now.
Artificial intelligence is something we use every day here. On one hand, it is to work on our productivity, our efficiency, even though on the other hand, to work on hyper-personalization for each one of our students. And we are confident that the studio staff will work on this, and we will be back at 11:00 AM on our website in the language you wish. Thank you very much, and let us move on to questions now.
Thank you. We are going to start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask any questions, please press the Raise Hand button. If your question is then answered, you can leave the queue clicking on Lower Hand. Please wait while we collect our questions. Our first question comes from Mr. Caio Moscardini from Santander. Your mic is open.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Two on my side, the first on distance learning. I would like to understand the main initiatives that you are taking to resume growth in intake for distance learning, and that was pressure this year. And a question for Parente. I would like to understand a bit his vision on this new movement of M&A that we have. We had Galileo Global Education coming to Brazil by Multivix. [audio distortion] made a new acquisition late in October. I would like to take a bit of your view on the new market players and if there is potential of a new cycle of consolidation of the industry should be concentrated in the mid-size, small players, or you expect more transforming consolidations. Thank you.
Thank you, Caio. Well, I am going to turn over to Aroldo to answer the question whilst I prepare for the second, because it is long.
Hi, Caio. Good morning. Thank you for your question. We have several actions taken. Eduardo mentioned some. While we didn't see very much elasticity, we benefited through increased price, 17% up. There are seven actions we're doing to actually increase the base, reflecting in the fourth quarter as it's being shown in the presentation coming in Q4, in line with last year. What we've seen in the past weeks is we're running a bit above. This has had an effect. We capture price in line above actually last year and the base recovering above the previous year.
Another relevant point, in our case in [audio distortion], it's on campus when we compare to some competitors, sometimes it's on digital. We also had a great expansion of semi on campus. We are going to other places. We start having positive results, an important expansion of portfolio of semi on campus for new cities where we had not been before. We have these two points starting to have effects on the pure digital, the modality that we call online, and semi on campus with an important portfolio expansion. I don't know if I've answered your question, Caio.
Okay. Good. Caio, I think it's very positive for you to see foreigners coming into the market strongly as Galileo Global Education, as I forgot their name. This is a symptom that there are people looking towards Brazil and checking on the opportunities. This applies to us as well. I don't think we are the only ones. Many others are in buyback programs, looking at the opportunity that we have within our own portfolio. The consolidation, I think it has two levels. It has a very important role of growth, inorganic growth.
When you look at Newton Paiva, that is an acquisition in terms of cash, little money that we put on this acquisition, an interesting plan for those that sold it to us, the model is a very successful one. When you look at the money we invested, that brings 1 percentage point of growth in EBITDA next year. This is a bit symptomatic of what tends to happen, not only to us, but to others. You have organic growth that is smaller than previous years. If you bring three or four acquisitions that are small, that bring 3 or 4 percentage points above for growth, then this tends to channel to the last line in an important way.
I assume that when you see what we gave of guidance, the growth we had this year, over 30% net profit and 25% next year and 25% the other guidance we gave in the first half. This is not news. This is growth based on organic growth. I'm not talking about inorganic. You see what you have on top of that, what we can build on top of this. Reminding you that the different in tax rates, so we have differentiation curve change. We see from 12 to 10 packs, this depreciation curve changes. There are several factors that are contracted for a strong increase of net profit. Any growth of top line drops with that and with small acquisitions you were able to have. We're able to get to two digit.
If we can get to two digits, then we have even faster growth than what we had ventured to you, supported by the buyback. I think we are going to move on. You see on campus, especially, tools that in the hands of more efficient companies or that can lead much more quality technology to those students, it kind of heated. We are very disciplined here. We have this broad market recognition of discipline and capital allocation. It is a phase we see in this leverage process, having much more ability to do small businesses. For the big businesses, you must laugh at me, I have been talking about this for a long time. They make total sense. I have been talking about this for two years. They are not obvious to happen. We have to align the stars.
We have conversations that are heated up, boiled up, in a horizon of two, three years. Very unlikely they should happen. Concentration in education, compare with any other. You must follow healthcare. Look at ours in healthcare. Take any other industry, there is very low concentration, giving little efficiency to the industry that ends up in reflecting on quality, low cost, so that we can attract more people to the industry. Things are aligning to small businesses. Things are aligned for large businesses. What we lack is that final lack of the sprint. I said I was going to talk a lot. Sorry. I hope I have answered your question, Caio.
Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Andre Salles from UBS. Your mic is open.
Thanks for the time for questions. I have two on my side. First off, when you talked about the initial company, the distance you have of the fair share of the company, how you see. I would like to understand the size of this modality on campus and if we have the dimension of operating or operational leverage you see. Second question is on ticket growth in medical growth. So it should have an impact on the base, considering higher ticket at some campuses, et cetera. When we look ahead, this growth in medical schools should come from the student base ticket growth at these levels that we are seeing? Thank you.
Starting. Got confused here. Thank you, Andre. I know you should not actually congratulate the sell-side. You came up with a report that actually surprised us. You made a very deep analysis. Of course, there are several points that we still disagree with you, and that is part of the game.
Your arrival is really cool for us here and as with the industry as a whole, to have a different viewpoint, fresh view. Congratulations to you and your team for your arrival. You came very well equipped. On the numbers, I will not remember. You have on the presentation. Semi has two roles here. I think the question is really good. The first is when you have semi on campus, on campus that we have, we have always had. Well, actually, since 2020, we brought this back. Semi on campus, it has an important role on campus because the great point that we had was to start having semi on campus managed by on campus. Previously, it was managed by distance learning. When I taught in 2019, when I started teaching, I saw the students looking kind of lost. They had no class, no engagement.
As we managed that on semi on campus, they have the same coordinator. Aroldo has a phrase that I like very much. Semi on campus is the on campus for those that cannot afford it. There is a complete integration. This helps us in many dimensions, a very important one. You are going to see, yesterday we were talking about one of our board members with the evolution that we had on pricing. We have difficulty. In Rio de Janeiro, we had a course at BRL 600, a competitor at BRL 500. You had to go to BRL 500 or you had nothing to offer to that student, and you would lose a bit of competitive capacity. Talking, giving you a hypothetical. When you bring a semi on campus, BRL 300, BRL 400, you have space for the student that has less money.
That allows you to get to BRL 600, BRL 650 at a different level. This has important effect on our positioning. I have recently been with Professor Ada. I said, "One day we are going to get that the guy studies business administration at Estácio." They will be part, they will be working more, having less time to study, to go to campus. They will be on semi on campus. They will make more money and will want to work harder on campus. They will be back. There will be final phase because they have to be on distance learning. You have an ensemble at this portfolio. If you want to study business administration at Estácio, you have on campus, semi on campus, in person or distance learning, adjusting to your reality and your moment in life.
It has this role of first helping diluting fixed cost on campus, second to help us price our courses. You have a different positioning. You can get, or you can fit at different times and different pockets in the life of students. What we are expanding very much now, that we are starting to offer semi on campus at our centers.
Our competition has done this for a long time. We have the fair share. We are far from the fair share precisely because we have much less capillarity, we project when we look at our budget next year and our strategic plan. When I was your age, we made 10-year strategic plans. Today, we have a horizon of three to five. Semi on campus has a very important role. There is a line that you have never seen before. You are going to have the line of transfer within the on campus.
That's an interesting modality from the service standpoint. Students, they like this modality, and it has an economic financial role that is very important in our portfolio. I'm going to turn over to Silvio to talk about medicine ticket.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Andre, for your question. Actually, in your question, you bring a great part of the answer. Is it precisely the mix today when we observe the set of schools that we have, we have some markets that are more distant places with the lower ticket compared to the big centers, so they are maturing and naturally the increase of relevance of those courses in the basis of all ends up generating this effect that you've mentioned.
Especially when we look at the global average ticket, we've observed, as you see, upperclassmen, when the course is consolidating, we are able to have better conditions to correct the ticket during the maturing of the course. We've been able to transfer the ticket that is more above inflation to upperclassmen more consistently over the past years, and this kind of balances off. You've asked about our view looking forward. We've observed this. We have seen an impact for this year, our ticket on medicine in the 17 markets where we operate. If this impact will arrive, it won't be linear. It should not be applied in all regions on an equal basis. It should happen more specifically depending on the region, the institution. There's an ensemble of variables that are going to determine who's going to suffer more or less.
We've been preparing this with several actions that offset and mitigate possible pressure on tickets, be it on cost structure and other lines of fundraising. This is our view. There's not yet a perception of market effect impacting our ticket here.
Let me add something to Silvio. Silvio is quite modest here. I think in these years he's been leading medical schools. We have had great differentiation, repositioning of the brand. Not repositioning, but a strengthening in an academic area that is very strong, that leads, especially if you take Rio de Janeiro, the main doctors of Rio de Janeiro have their students, have their children study with us, and that allows us to have this differentiation and to be in medical schools to charge a premium in Rio de Janeiro. When you charge a premium, it applies to Rio de Janeiro and other markets.
When you charge premium in a region, you're less impacted by greater competition. We are at this stage. We see very clearly at IDOMED an important evolution of Ibmec. Work being carried out here. We're keeping it on our radar, but it hasn't knocked on our door yet. That's it.
Perfect. Super clear. Thank you, Parente, Silvio. Parente, thank you for your words.
Thank you, Andre.
Our next question is from Samuel Alves, from BTG Pactual.
Good morning, Parente, Rossano, and other directors. Two questions on our side. First is more specifically on this Q3 and the line of receivables is seeing major improvement in this quarter. Just to understand whether there has been some extemporaneous factor, some early receivable, some one-off factor, or the improvement has been all organic. First question. The second question, more specifically on Q4.
Company is reinstating guidance of 2024, and it ends up being very important for this equation, the premise of cash flow for Q4, especially the one-offs. Q4 2023 was very much impacted by some extemporaneous factors. I just want to hear from you whether you believe the fourth quarter should be less polluted, and if you assume that the cash generation should be perhaps not so negative as it was Q4 2023. This is it. Thank you very much, and congratulations on the improvements shown on this quarter.
Samuel, thank you. Very important coming from you. Let me turn over to Rossano first so he can start.
Thank you. Great question. It gives us some opportunity to talk about this point that is very relevant to us. In addition to having strong cash generation in the quarter, being supported with great improvement in receivables. There's no one-off, no early payment.
We generally do not operate with the early receivable. Our capital is very low. We don't use this tool of early payments in any way I can recall. Nothing in this quarter. Three main factors for this improvement in receivable. One is the operational improvement in our process of collection happening since the beginning. Everything we launched in terms of cost from the first quarter, we dedicated great energy to improve this process of payment and collection. This has been in several fields, from inactive students who started having a performance that was very positive. It's using [audio distortion], government program, many actions focusing on recovering inactive students, not only recovering the credit that was due, but bringing them back to our student base. Sometimes we managed to get the students back. They were in debt.
We renegotiated, brought them to the student base and to the current base, improving payment cards and installments. They have improved our recovery overall. Tapping into this moment that was positive for credit, especially for inactive students. Second point, good side of not having great intake for the basics when you don't have such strong intake growth linked to this. This improves our working capital more faster growth. This actually is the working capital. We had less intake and this increases the receivable. We have a mix, a greater presence of our premium, both Ibmec and medicine, shorter receiving terms. The increase in general part of the revenue helps to this point. For Q4, I'll let Eduardo talk about that.
On your topic, we expect results are increasingly, you used the term polluted or something like this. We have been reducing year- over- year our spending classified as non-recurring. This will continue in the Q4. The predictable ones, something that has been different from what we usually do was solidarity with Rio Grande do Sul, offering relevant discounts in the tuition fees and re-enrollment for our students in Rio Grande do Sul. Apart from that, we've been dropping main items of non-recurring. We do expect, as you mentioned, a quarter of cash generation higher than Q4 last year. Very negative in terms of cash generation. We're going to improve a lot regarding last year. I'll turn over to Edu to complete the answer.
Before I continue, I'd like to highlight the quality of the question, because I think we had last year. Well, this year, the insight saying, "Well, this is the history. It's not our of the industry." If you take everyone's results, the strong cash generation we've seen.
But that's the story of recomposing our capability generation of net income. Before the pandemic, we had a very strong, and we were the first to draw the internal debt and this is where we differentiate the guide. As an analyst, they can see below the EBITDA, all this landslide that is being hired in here. So for receivables, after all, everything is cash generation. Well, cash flow is important of that. As well as Q4, as Rossano said, our Q4 last year was not a difficult one to be overcome. It was very bad cash generation. But we have a much better number from that and we see net income, we're going to have a much better number. So we're reinforcing the guidance. It's going to be a better number than what we call the pollution or something like that of the results.
In these three points, and I think all the rest that we see in the Q4, I think it will be very positive when we look at Q4 last year. Once again, it will reinforce what we're going to bring to you when we present you for the confirmation of delivering our guidance, reinforcing our belief. Our belief is here, your belief that we're going to have the delivery of our guidance. So you're going to push that further. Well, looking at buyback, we're going to have a result that is cleaner in terms of non-recurring, much more relevant in this way compared to last year. Thank you for your questions. I think we've answered them.
Thank you. Good day.
Our next question is from Mr. Marcelo Santos from JP Morgan.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity of asking questions. The first question would be to Silvio. You've mentioned your performance in Mais Médicos as very good as an indicator of future performance. I'd like to better understand your evaluation in your current rules of Mais Médicos III. Do you think we're going to have such great concentration in the great groups, or we're going to see Mais Médicos more diluted? How do you consider these rules that we have today? Several rules for Mais Médicos or doctors.
Second question perhaps for Parente or Aroldo. You talked a bit about distance learning and macro, how you see price elasticity. If you could make a few comments on the competitive environment, a view outwards would be very useful for investors. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcelo. Silvio, go ahead. Give us a class.
Thank you for your question. It's very recurring question, doubts regarding applying the criteria of Mais Médicos. This would drive consolidation. Actually, after the government made them isolated institutions, local, regional, will have the opportunity of having your proposal being chosen as the best. But what happens with the groups is less being a group, but more on the previous strategy as to how you dealt with Mais Médicos I and II in the choice of municipalities, how many resident students were able to get an accreditation.
So it's important to have accreditation and maintain in the offer despite being at a deficit. The regulatory indicators issue, I'd say that a group higher number of schools, of course, ends up having greater strength regarding their capillarity. In our case, for example, we have medical schools in various regions of the country, in addition to the medicine having health courses, keeping a high quality, having medical schools in the portfolio. You're having the obligation of having residency because of the previous notices.
It puts you at a differentiated competitive advantage. In several places, you are going to have isolated institutions, universities, and higher education schools that can have a good score. People who did their homework well in the previous notices have the opportunity of gathering more variables to get highest scores and be ahead. In our case, this is what we usually observe. Today, we have very favorable positioning in various regions, not only because of our medical schools, but for the healthcare courses that are in those maintaining schools for the notice.
This is more on that than being a group brings more a chance. It is more on the quality, on the history, and the capillarity, of course, we have on campus that is well penetrated with great positioning in various places with academic excellence that will give us a favorable score. Certainly, the expectation is that we are able to present the best proposal in various marketplaces where we are competing based on those public notices.
Perfect. Thank you.
On distance learning, what do we see? Price dynamics through the industry has suffered a lot because of the Fundo de Financiamento Estudantil boom in 2013, 2014, and actually, the undermining on campus. We had 10 years that have not been enough for us to reorganize ourselves. Well, to reorganize ourselves is get to a profitability level that allows us long-term sustainability of the business. We are very efficient. We have a level that was 90%. We are getting to 23 of profitability, and the less efficient suffering even more. So there is something of you are not getting to the level. So the whole industry understands that, basics of microeconomics of cost curve, et cetera. But we see this movement.
Since it is a very diluted industry, you have very low concentration. One of the largest on campus, and we should not have 12%, 11% of share. It is very difficult. This movement evolves according to the rest or capacity of markets. Well, a challenge that you have on campus is to compete with somewhere we very likely have competition with Cogna or Ânima in some market. This is happening in a less accelerated way rather than a natural cost curve would indicate. We have not gotten to the marginal cost curve.
So when we look at distance learning, this is different to market comparing to healthcare or medical. Very little concentrated, but more concentrated. We had the release of opening more centers. Everybody is going to go into distance learning. Now, I would like to mention that it is not that. It is a game. You have to have great scale, great technology, great capillarity.
The centers have a key role for you to be competitive on distance learning, so it is not something easy to enter. So great players in distance learning had the difficulty of getting their fair share to the market because of the size of necessary investments for you to be competitive. You have to fit in the student's pocket. Typical audience of distance learning, not exclusive people in distance learning are working. They can afford it, but the typical distance learning are people that have less money. What we see? Well, we see healthy margin on distance learning. As we have become more sophisticated with elasticity and pricing, we see the competition. We have a slight advantage in this aspect. We have these new students every quarter, whilst most competitors have a biannual. Well, students join twice a year, so we see competitors.
Elasticity award applies to all our businesses, and we see price increases in this change of cycle of competitors. I think there's a thing of measuring elasticity, and we're charging more than what we charged six months ago, a year ago, much more than a year ago. This move is that of what we joked here with these numbers starting with 200, 230 that we see on the website. As Aroldo said, we are at a time that is similar to last year when you take the accumulated past weeks. We have weeks of 8%, 10% above last year with prices that are much higher. We see very interesting moment when we look at 2025. What do we see? A year that may be similar to 2023. That was fantastic for us because I'm not saying that it's going to be, it may be.
What we have contracted for 2025, a major growth for IDOMED and Ibmec, both in student base and price. We run that twice compared to 2023. We have higher prices and distance learning and on-campus contracted, and it's too early to say that to make any kind of evaluation. But we have this sort of image of recovery of distance learning with over 50% intake coming. All right, with the base compared to 2024, that is pretty bad. But we are quite excited about 2025. Marcelo . It's the two teachers, two professors here. We give you long answers. Sorry.
It's good. It's good to have your long answers. Thank you.
Our next question is from Mr. Flavio Yoshida from Bank of America.
Good morning, everyone. Parente, Rossano, et cetera. Thanks for the opportunity of asking questions. Congratulations on your results. I have two questions on my side. First is on the premium segment of medicine. You've made some comments. I'd like to understand a bit better regarding Ibmec. The expansion potentials in São Paulo, other regions, do you see any potential? I think this brand is strong, has been showing very good numbers of growth. Just to understand the dynamics that potentially we should expect. My other question is regarding DIS. I'd like to understand your mindset regarding DIS. If there is any effort to reduce the dependence on this DIS on intake. Thank you.
Thank you, Flavio. I'm going to turn over to Marina and Rossano to answer your question.
Hi, Flavio. Thank you for your question. On Ibmec, we see a very positive trend of future growth. I think our main trends, in addition to maturing our current campuses, we see great space for growth in São Paulo. Our main priority in terms of growth of on-campus footprint would be in the São Paulo market. We study out the market. We look positively at the market that is very consolidated. We have more immediate spaces for São Paulo. We have some strategies that impact all our operations in parallel while we are positioning ourselves here. We've been focusing in positioning of businesses.
We are thinking about expanding that both for law and technology. This tends to contribute to growth in all markets. We've seen that quite strongly. Brasília, Rio, Belo Horizonte. In addition, Ibmec Online is certainly a great opportunity. It's a product we have handled a lot in past years. We're reaping very positive fruits of this, strengthening more national operations, and we have a very optimistic avenue ahead. We still see great growth potential and consolidation in this premium segment.
Flavio, thank you for your question. Another new analyst coming to the industry. This is becoming increasingly stronger on the sell side of education. On your point on DIS, we had a growth in DIS with total revenue. We do not see this expanding next year, most possible scenarios that it should be reduced in 2025, considering our pricing and positioning strategy, evolution of ticket that is more stable, and the trend is to lose relevance slowly. We like the tool. I think it is important and strong to attract students. Students need to experiment what it is to be a higher education student. It is very strong. They can do that without spending so much money. In terms of price potential, it is very likely we have reached the top of just penetration and that should be reduced in the forthcoming years.
Thank you. Very clear.
Our next question is from Mr. Mauricio Cepeda from Morgan Stanley.
Hi, Eduardo, Rossano. Good morning. Thank you for the time. Two questions. Going to review receivables here. From another viewpoint, you can clearly see that you had a big cash generation that was very strong and strong evolution in this generation, very much related to operations and in turn, it has to do with receivables. Quite abrupt variation in the term of receivables that was very positive. Every time this happens, obviously you have a great contribution to the cash flow. My question would be the following.
If you still see this possibility of reducing the cycle of receivables and hence this could be for some time contributor to the cash flow, or if you think that in these levels that you are at receivables, you would have a regime status, you would not have this help in the cash flow in the same magnitude. Second question is a bit on the debate on the student base, more sectorial. You see that in terms of sectors, although there has been less intake, there has been an improvement in dropout rates, in payments, tickets adjustment. If you could comment on whether this is actually what is been happening in the market. Why are you a bit away from these levels of retention and bad debt? And the strategy ahead, if it is more qualified with fewer students, better price, and less delinquency.
We had this debate at previous quarters on lack of elasticity in the market. The comment of Rossano, how this fits in the scenario if the M7 ticket of distance learning has to do with the party. Just putting together the puzzle pieces of quality of the base in your positioning. Thank you.
Thank you, Cepeda. I am going to turn over to Rossano for the first, and I will answer the second.
Good questions. You are going to have fun. Be prepared. On receivables, we, no doubt, great part of this evolution of the UC here is captured as second half. So we have greater share of enrollment, so we have more space to see that in the second half. Also, a result of the maturity of the actions, we started designing this last wave of improvement payment of collection at the turn of 2023 to 2024.
It is the maturing of this business happening now. We see possibility to improve. We have a plan for 2025 in which we can have improvements on this line. Obviously, this will depend on several economic conditions, external factors. We have room for improvement compared to the level we have attained. Turning back to Edu.
Okay. This is something, the briefness in Rossano's answer is not what you are going to find in my answer. Plus, you said something that drew my attention. We are after retention and the bad debt. When you look at bad debt, there is structural thing of the GDS itself, the way we have our intake, it is conscious and managed. What we look are very much at here is the receivables. We have a stability, and this quarter we had a drop, and we have much less than receivables than people that have GDS.
Well, we have receivables from people with no GDS. It shows that the thing has a model of intake that is aggressive, that works. When you take any NOR per student, and you see we stand out with players that have a similar student base. Well, quality of the base is maybe is slightly dangerous, because one thing is for you to think, well, I want this guy that pays me more. Well, quality of base from financial standpoint, well, we want to include more people in higher education. This is a very strong feeling of purpose that we have here. We have over 30,000 Brazilian students that do not attend or have higher education, only middle school. Well, the impact is relevant to their lives.
If they stop at some point, if they incorporate in their activities at some point, study and the tool of distance learning is very relevant. A Brazilian person usually has worse basic education than on campus or even the average of distance learning. Well, this is a fallacy we see. Well, public education was much better in the past. Well, today we have many more people. Well, public schools of excellence continue. You brought more people and obviously, the average drops. The great effort that the minister has been doing, the whole government and all the administrations, is to heighten the educational attainment levels. Same happens to distance learning. You bring more people to the base and essentially people on average with lower school educational attainment and with less payment capabilities. So here we have this movement of M7 is tapping into a market moment.
I assure you that if we see a strong return of elasticity next year, we will not be working on price increase. We will be working on bringing more people. Then the debate will be, people say, "Well, the base is going up." The base is not the endpoint of the business. The endpoint of the business is combination of base price and margin reflected in the intake, especially when we talk about M&S. Where we make decisions here is not having more or less base. The question is that the additional person is bringing to me. So the test is that the LTV that I am going to get. So how much can I lose in terms of base? So with that, we build a stronger LTV. When you look at our revenue, it is very close to the competitor that has much bigger base than ours.
Then we have more profitability in the market in percent terms and absolute terms, looking at distance learning as a whole. So the set of decisions has been historically very good. Having said that, I think that overall, the educational industry is coming back. As I've answered in Marcelo Santos' question, on-campus coming up, having better prices, semi on-campus finding its space and distance learning had this balance. Distance learning cycle is very short. On-campus students usually remain four years and a half, some. And distance learning students stay with us for a shorter period of time. Overall, we have been able to charge more in the market as a whole, and I think this is very positive for us to resume profitability over the past that is not yet so healthy today.
Perfect. Thank you very much for your answer.
Thank you, Cepeda.
Our next question is from Mr. Leandro Bastos from Citi.
I'd like to go to the topic of financial results, important lever improving result. You've highlighted several structural points being worked on discount, new intakes, and there are some lines here that a bit more levers, swap contingencies. Just take a few things, what is heavy or not. Can you give me, shed some light on what's your viewing from now on?
Thank you for your question. Well, good question. Financial results has been one of the levers as we had expected, we had been communicating. It was an important lever. It was going to be stronger second quarter, the liability management that was future results. They give a kind of a blur in the result of Q2 and Q3, we start benefiting from this improvement process that we saw on the bottom. The most obvious line is the line of interest payment.
Three blocks as is improvement. We are capturing the improvement of interest rates at Selic, although it seems to be transitional, we cannot expect that very well-captured result in two, three expected last longer than the market expects from now on. The other two blocks and our control strong spread reduction, we have been reducing sequentially for a long time, and a reduction of gross debt. Second block of this improvement of the processes of collection and penalties and interest that will go under EBITDA amongst players. It is another block that helps a lot on this line, and that is recurring. We see results happening from now onwards. Let us classify that the improvement that we see in the quarter, close to half of it are consistent and recurring improvements.
What is left, half of it is linked to Selic or the official interest rate and the last quarter of specific actions, we had a negative effect of the market of our soft. Then we had 15 as Q4 is touching positive and in Q3, they kind of offset, and that is why we saw that Q2 did not show those improvements. So these kinds of things are specific. We are migrating to a hedge accounting model. We tend to see a great reduction getting close to zero on these variations of swap models from now on. Closer to what we see in the results that will be actually disbursed in terms of cash. Another action that puts financial results of cash output at the end closer. So I hope I have answered your question.
Thank you, Rossano. Have a good day.
Thank you, Leandro.
Our Q&A session is closed. We would like to turn over to Mr. Eduardo Parente to make the company's final remarks.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your time, your trust, and I believe we are clearly showing you that after an operational recovery in 2023, we are recovering cash generation 2024. This applies to the industry as a whole. That will enable us to pay dividends and pay out our dividends, resume our trajectory of higher dividends. We had a trajectory since 2017, BRL 80 million plus to BRL 130 million for the buyback and positioning ourselves in a different way. We need consolidation. The consolidator at appropriate price tends to generate a lot of value and this growth comes down fully. We have a company today, if you think five years ago, it is a company that was analog with touches of premium.
Today, we have an essentially digital company with a lot of premium, with a lot of premium things helping the portfolio as a whole, and with a lot of CapEx allocation discipline, which will enable us to pay out dividends and higher growth points that will generate great joy to our bottom line. Once again, thanks for your trust, for your time. In parallel, we have [audio distortion]. Well, you could go there and there are some good news. Lots of good things happening in the industry. Thank you very much.
The Yduqs video conference is now closed. We thank everyone for their participation and wish you a good day.