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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welco me to Yduqs video conference to discuss the results for the fourth quarter of 2023. This video conference is being recorded, and the replay will be available at the company's website at www.yduqs.com.br. The presentation will also be available for download. We would like to inform that all attendees will only be watching the video conference during the presentation. Then we will start the questions and answers section 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, operational and financial projections and goals are the beliefs and assumptions of Yduqs executive board 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 be aware that events related to the macroeconomic scenario of the industry and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Present at this video conference, we have Mr. Eduardo Parente, CEO of Yduqs, and Mr. Rossano Marques Leandro, CFO and Investor Relations Officer. I would like now to hand the floor over to Mr. Eduardo Parente, who will begin the presentation. Please, Mr. Parente, you may proceed.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I hope you are all well. We will share a presentation with you of the 2022 results and talk a bit about 2023. We are quite happy with what happened in 2022. We always want more, but considering the difficult year, we have reached very good results. We brought four highlights in the first slide. First, discipline of price and cost average ticket going up, stable costs. Second, portfolio that has ensured growth of EBITDA absolute and margin, despite the difficult year for classes C and D, a relevant segment of our students here.
Our main point is cash generation. First CapEx, BRL 500 million, over BRL 5 million, over twice as much as the previous year. The last point is that we do not have a debt pressure in 2023. We have extended prepayment, and we have our maturity in 2024. Over the presentation, you are going to see everything.
Just giving you a summary over the presentation, you are going to see that we are coming out of this single, unique crisis sequence and very well. We are going to talk about short-term outlook, how we see the continuity of the trajectory of premium, recovery and distance learning. That gives us great comfort to have EBITDA growth quite comfortably in the first quarter. Let me go over it from the top left to the right. When you see here on the left, we talk about price, adjusted cost and expenses. Our average ticket grew. We talk about over a year students, those that have gone through all discounts. We are comparing apples to apples here because this is one year over the other. We had more this and that, the offer was this, and that was exceptional.
When we look at that, the three segments, medical schools with 80% digital with seven and then digital and on-campus five. This is a trend indicator that is quite important. We talk about our discipline, our price discipline. When we look at also adjusted cost and expenses, we are actually different from the previous year in a year of inflation, a difficult market or a lot of bargaining, and there has been an important effect. Our ROE has grown and our NOR has grown, and this causes a reduction in the total results. Going to the top right, we have the EBITDA evolution, and you see on the left a 9% growth in the year, which is a figure that is quite important, over BRL 120 million in growth in the year that was full of turmoil.
Most important is the bottom part, our margin evolution from 30%- 32%, reflecting the portfolio. When we look at the portfolio, our portfolios in times of crisis, they are well supported, and this shows that the centership premium is totally better from 30%- 35% last year, and more moments of growth, of improvement in the economy, in which classes C and D are defined. We have a portfolio for that. This portfolio has shown great resilience during the crisis moments that we have experienced. We are going to talk a bit more towards the end, but it shows a sign of playing a different role, providing growth at this hard or this moment of growth from now onwards.
On the fourth quarter, it is important, we had mentioned to you previously that we had two digit growth for the fourth quarter, and it is here. We have delivered 19%, two digit with some actually improvement, and it shows the price discipline. We talked a lot about that previous. Master results of second and third quarter. Second quarter, we said we would have a single digit smaller than previous year, and it was even higher. Two digit became 19%, very much because we have been working since early last year on price, and this has been helping us to have this very important recovery moment. To the bottom right, on cash, we almost reached BRL 1 billion. We reached BRL 1 billion in our FCO , 12% points, and this is all the grill CF, actually.
A lot of work and a lot of details, but I think the most important from the right, talking about the operating cash flow and the free cash flow, moved from BRL 9 million to over BRL 500 million, from almost BRL 2 per share, considering what we have on free flow today. On the bottom, this is quite important, the market moment of contraction in terms of the session of new debt. We have no pressure for 2023. Rossano will talk a bit about this further on. What we had, we have prepaid, and what we had in terms of renegotiation has been made in three years in very good conditions. Little year in which we have not only reduced the gross debt and the total debt cost. This is percent cost of the debt.
I think we look at this, and we have this optimism looking ahead that things are going to be improved. If you look at our second half, we have the intake. It looks much better than the first half last year, and we look to this first half positively from now onwards. At the left bottom, we have the highlight for our medical students, our great operating highlight. Some numbers here that are important for me to share with you. Late last year, we talked about 7,200- 7,400 students. We wanted to increase this guidance, and we've reached the upper range of 7,500 students in 2022. For this year, we are estimating over 8,000 students in medical students. We have 4,900 students per seat, shows the certainty that we have. What is that? The medical school is six years long.
Each seat should generate six students, but this does not count what we have in terms of additional fees and priority. A mature medical school will get to seven students per seat, which is a bit less stress of most of the competitors. Here we have a potential to have two students per seat, more than 40% of what we have. Only 100% organic, plus 100 additional seats. What we have here in the evolution of medical schools is an expectation of over 130 additional seats being authorized over this year. Since we've talked about the highlight of medical schools, let's move on to page four, talk about premium. In premium, we have, again, another fantastic year. Rossano will show further ahead that it has grown 10 times in the past five years, quite relevant in our portfolio, in our growth trajectory.
On the left, we have our net revenue. IDOMED had a major growth trajectory. EBITDA on the right has grown 27%. The margin in the fourth quarter, 44%- 41%. I don't think anyone should be concerned about this. Much on the contrary, once you have smaller businesses, when we break this down into smaller businesses, there is quite a lot of sensitivity would arise before or later in a quarter. In the previous quarter, we reported great increase in margin. Next one, this is not what's going to happen. I think what matters is what we have below, from 46%- 47%, a major margin growth of 1% point a year. When we look ahead, we don't expect to have great changes. This is a level ship meeting. Quarter by quarter, we have some variations, sometimes more, sometimes less, and we try to share this with you.
The opposite should not happen. I can share certain things. The previous quarter, we had a margin reduction, but don't worry, because the next one, it's going to go up, and we're going to get to the same level this year that we had last year. We expect this to continue happening. To the bottom left, we have the growth in the total student base, 17% growth in the medical students growth. It's quite important. IDOMED. We had this growth of 1% in the student base. We have a positive improvement, 16%. São Paulo has been growing to the top right. We have a photo of the IDOMED Faria Lima, our second unit in São Paulo, considering how successful we have been there. It's beautiful. You're all invited to visit it. Many of you work nearby. We have had the first class.
We have had. First group has four classes. All of them are full. We have very positive trajectory, which helps this recovery that you see at the top. On the bottom right, it is talking about average ticket over year. The graduates, so we do not have so many discounts or entrance. The fact is that all these numbers are growing above what we have had in terms of inflation recently. Renewal is about 90 plus. Let us move on to digital learning. As to digital learning, we have the following. We had an atypical year. I think those of you that follow us closely, you remember that in the previous quarter, we talked about seasonality of digital learning, and we have actually privileged the price of intake. We are going to talk about this again in 2026.
We had 2018, 2022, challenging years for intake, perhaps related to elections, I do not know. The fact is that we did not see elasticity in prices. When we calculate the volumes, those are tests we run every day here. When we calculate what we have a volume in terms of what we had, what we would need in terms of price lowering for that, the math would not close, and we worked throughout the year with higher prices than we were used to, unlike everything that we have been talking about in terms of competitiveness that is much more fierce than just in learning. We had this year without moving sideways, different from previous years when we talked a lot about a student base that was growing and prices following or even below the inflation period. We had an atypical year. That is not what we see in 2023.
2023 is already a recovery of a stronger competition for price and a student base growth of two digits as we had seen in previous years. Again, a bit of what I mentioned in the prima price margin to the right, 23 to 27 in the fourth quarter is something of false allocation, expenses of variations that happen from one quarter to the other. From 22 to 27, the previous quarter, we had 62 in what we see in the gray. The fourth quarter, do not worry that in fourth quarter, we are going to have a high level of growth of EBITDA in digital learning. That became 23%. I think what matters here in terms of margin message is the 39% favorable considering vis-à-vis previous year. We also see this in this way for 2023. Not having major changes.
The changes may occur in margin for some effect that we may have that, but we do not see great changes here. What becomes quite interesting, in the previous page, we saw the margin of 47. Now here we see 39. Those are the businesses that grow the most. They have greater margin than our average. When we look at the total effect of from 30%- 32% of EBITDA margin, we have a relevant component of a very favorable mix for us at this moment. Down here, very much of what I said. The graduate moving sideways in terms of student base with prices going up, leading us to having a higher EBITDA. This renewal, 8% point in the Q4 2021 compared to the fourth quarter this. You will remember that previous year, this number was negative.
Very much with comparison base based on 2021, which we had an atypical effect of a lot of intake with discounts coming in the second quarter, less in the first quarter, more intake of students that was more solid, let's say. That impacted the comparison base for the third and fourth quarter and the previous quarter that you shouldn't worry regarding smaller intake than we had in the previous year compared to the previous one. We should not be too excited about what's happening here. What we have in terms here is in terms of on-campus is smaller, again, with this great leap of 8 points that we see here. All in all, what we see here is a year in which we made decisions that were counterintuitive of higher prices, maintaining the student base.
Further ahead, we're going to talk a bit of what we expect for 2023, an expectation of a year, quote-unquote, "normal." We are going to see more competition in terms of price, but a strong student-based edge offsets more than usually. We have great, actually, great expectation for growth and student base. For on-campus, if we take the title of the chart with some markings here, you're going to have difficulty of seeing what's the third quarter, fourth quarter. Overall, they're quite similar. I think we have here, those despite negative numbers, the message is quite positive. When we look down here to the left, we came from phases dropping two digit from the end of the change of years in 2014, late 2014, early 2015, prices dropping.
Here we see a student base, a low single digit of variation year-over-year and prices going up. So it looks quite good. What we have from now onwards is a view as to when is this going to be reverted. When are we going to see this end going up again? We don't see in the first half of the year yet, we have an intake that is, I mean we need to look ahead. It's quite challenging. Challenging in terms of student base. When we look at price, we have numbers that are doing quite well, and numbers doing quite well in the first quarter or in the first half, more aggressive than what we call price, long-term price that generates the space. One, two, three. Actually, we have students with a lot of discount from the pandemic, and very stable.
This stable renewal is a great effect. We had an intake in the first half last year that was very good, and in this phase we have a lot of freshmen. They make much more than students that are upperclassmen. So we talked about the class that we're bringing, and the average ticket coming up, and it's very important for us. We're creating the basis that this should be recurring looking ahead. Another important thing is this from 13- 16. These are variations. So the ticket, so EBITDA margin for fourth quarter. These are variations, adjusted, quote, unquote, or natural. When we look at distance learning, when we see from 19- 20, EBITDA margin for us is a great victory, a great highlight for us in the presentation as a whole. Moving on. Rossano.
Good morning, everyone. I'm going to talk about revenue. As Eduardo mentioned, another highlight quarter for our premium segment of 26% growth year-over-year in the quarter. Business as a whole growing 3% in the quarter, showing once again the resilience of our portfolio, even in a macro environment that was quite challenging. Showing the expansion of premium digital potential of margin expansion that we have within our business. The sum of digital with premium reached 52% total in the year. When we look at the long-term view or outlook, it is important to see the behavior of our businesses regardless of the reduction of fees.
Even having gone through economic crises, the pandemic that everyb ody has experienced, the business doubled in terms of size from 2017- 2022. Even considering the reduction in fees, the business as a whole, the growth of 34%, as we have mentioned, in this very challenging macro environment. Moving on.
The costs and expenses. We have this environment where we have high inflation, recovery of on-câmpus. Cost base is very stressed with renegotiations made intensely in the past few years. We have stability in terms of expenses, ex PDD or bad debt. Which is important for our business. As expected, bad debt in this period was negatively impacted by the important intake of digital. The impact was reduced due to some of our factors. Most of them have been due to internal performance. We had a renewal that was above expected, as you have seen in the slide regard profit. Renewal is the great factor of receivables for us. Reduction of recurrent. We have mentioned reduction of bad debt, and considering our technological expansion that we have had. We had renegotiation of medical students that are being benefited by laws and ordinances in previous years.
This has been performed quite well over the period. Going to cost base. We have here the G&A and also S&M keeping below the previous year, reflecting better media management, better technology structures, infrastructure in our area of sales and marketing, and also considering the operations around the world. In the part of leasing, in that part you see the accumulation of the inflation line in the leasing, influenced by our IGP-M. During the pandemic period, we have been working on this phase, not only in negotiation, meticulous negotiation optimizes base reduction of campi, et cetera. We have a reduction that has ended in January of 98 sq m in our on-campus units. Moving on, we get this result to an adjusted EBITDA that was considered 19% in the quarter, reaching our two-digit guidance. This shows a relevant expansion of the group, 4 percentage points in total.
Highlighting the expansion of digital margin and on-campus, even considering the operational leverage. We have the more conservative price and also the cost reduction that we mentioned previously. Premium with a specific margin reduction in the quarter, displacement and expenses between the quarters, and also extraordinary effect that we had in 2021. In the annual vision that we see in the next slide. We get to the premium business with a level of 47%, which is a level that we believe is quite healthy and stable for the next periods. In the individual EBITDA, growing 9%, margin expansion, getting to the whole business, 32% of adjusted EBITDA margin. As you can see, in a very challenging year for intake, the results of the company shows the soundness of our portfolio and our management strategy.
On campus and premium, with margin expansion, we have excellent operational results and a price strategy that is quite correct. Moving to the adjusted net income, as expected, very much impacted by the financial results due to considering the increase in basic interest rates, getting to adjusted net income of BRL 139 million in the period. For the accounting vision, we had non-recurrent effects, EBITDA, we adjust amortization of goodwill that was BRL 65 million in 2022. We may move on. Here, we have a great highlight. Once again, as Eduardo mentioned in the beginning, the robust management of free cash flow. We have BRL 500 million in the year, quite improving from previous years. The great conversion of EBITDA to cash. We believe this high capacity of generation cash in our business is fundamental, differentiating us from all the uncertainties in the market scenario. We see a reduction here.
In reduction, well, we have our ATR, the average term receivable, so we have a good reduction. People were worried about this. It indicates, shows the strength of our management. All this process in terms of CapEx. Free cash flow on the slide, supported by CapEx that has been reducing since 2021. We are either below BRL 500 million, 10% year-over-year. This movement validates our indication of consistent reduction. We have reached the peak of investment. It's been following along the next year, getting to our guidance of long term of 7%-8% in a few more years. For 2023, we are presenting a guidance of BRL 450 million. Again, a reduction based on previous year of 8% year-over-year. In this reduction, we have been maintaining the investment in our digital transformation and actually development of the technological platforms of the company.
We have been consistent in investing as well, closing the year, 51% in digital transformation and IT. We may move on. This slide is very relevant to us. We have no maturity of debt over 2023, so we can actually sail the market with attacking credit over the year. The only maturity we had was early this year that we have amortized in February. 2022, we closed the year with a very comfortable position to BRL 1.2 billion cash. The net debt of this number that you see there are BRL 2.9 billion and debt level below 1.96, very much below the levels that we usually have. A relationship of cash and net debt, quite comfortable for 2022. Over 2022, we made several operations so that this scenario will happen to have new issuance of spending debt and reducing our spread.
We closed the year with 30 years of average term with our debt and reduction in the cost of the debt. Spread moving from 2.2%- 1.91% in terms of CDI. Two subsequent events that we have. One is the term extension of the debt, considering, well, we actually made a new issuance in December, a new one in January, so extending the term for three years. Debt amortization, as I mentioned, of the fifth issuance of debenture in February 2023 and accounted for BRL 135 million. With this, I turn back to Eduardo to talk about our strategy and also sustainability.
Thank you, Rossano. I think there's no news to you that we've always been a reference in terms of social and governance. We made a great leap to adjust to the way of communicating best market practices. We created a risk matrix. We created for ESG.
We actually had a second group of trainees. I think I should mention that one of our trainees of the first group of students was awarded the best trainee of all the companies that we invest in Brazil last year. This is a reason for great pride to all of us, Gabriel. We move forward in the carbon area. That is very important to move into that, it is. Something that is a great reason for us to be proud. We had our rating A from MSCI, confirmed that few companies in Brazil have it, the only one in the educational industry or area. Sustainability, we have been in the GRI standard. We have actually integrated report. PwC is actually our external consulting. Our auditor served to confirm that, and we had several indicators. We had a very successful forum, over 400,000 people attended it.
We are going to have a second edition on April 28 for our ESG forum. It would be good to have all of you, it is important. You can see it on YouTube. It is an hour and a half, and I think it has this reference of a lot of great things that we have been doing here that we found, I think, the way that is correct for people that are used to communicating that. Moving on to page 16, our final remarks. I think it has been a good year with EBITDA growth, cash generation, despite a difficult macroeconomic scenario.
They are generating challenging intake, especially in the second half. Average ticket for upperclassmen growing in all units. Expenses moving sideways, EBITDA growing 9%, year-over-year margin growing 2 percentage points. The amount of reais that we generated in terms of free cash flow or operating cash, post CapEx.
The advances in terms of ESG. Rossano showing CapEx, we had 1.5%, and NOR, 2%. We are expecting to have greater CapEx. We are moving to 7%, 8% points for the average or midterm. 2023, we have over 130 new or to 160 new medicine seats. Medicine undergraduate student base expected for 8,000- 8,200. Our premium are growing a lot, two digits. Average ticket, well, on-campus greater than 2021 and below 2022. We had extraordinary intake with a great evolution above the market, a great leap considering previous year. We are going to be below that, but without major concern because the average ticket is doing quite well. When we look at the first quarter 2023, all business units growing in terms of average ticket overall based on the student base.
This gives us comfort to project an EBITDA, so this is the 16th amount, adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter expected to have a growth of two digits vis-à-vis previous year. As for our CapEx, I have mentioned reducing from 9.2- 450 that we expect to close the year, leading to our long-term CapEx of 7%, 8% that we have been mentioning of our net revenue. This is it. It has been a good year despite difficult scenario second half that despite intake was difficult, better than the first half. The first half now that points towards a great advance considering everything we have been through in the past few years, that leads us to be quite optimistic regarding our future. Thank you all very much.
Thank you. We are going to start now the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask questions, please press the button, raise hand, and wait until we collect the questions. Our first question comes from Pedro Lima from BTG Pactual. Your microphone is open.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, Rossano, Parente of the Yduqs team. I have two questions on our side. The first of them is related to your level of bad debt with the percentage of revenue. We see the volumes are still a bit higher there, especially considering the pre-pandemic. We would like to hear from you what is the optimum level that you see, in the sense, in terms of how far can you go in this bad debt reduction, if you have any initiative that you have been putting into practice. The second question is related to the optimum level of receivables. You presented a major improvement in this quarter. We would like to understand whether you are happy with this level of receivables or if you believe that you can seek more improvement.
Thank you. Good morning, Pedro. Thank you for the question. Well, as to bad debt, it was a bit before the previous year, especially because of the mismatch of quarterly intake in terms of distance learning that had this negative impact, but it was offset by other positive effects that I mentioned in the slide, intellectual, new students, et cetera. Our expectation for next year is that should be stable from 2021, 2022. We may be positively surprised if we have an improvement in our renewal processes and also the profile of delinquency. We have had positive impact over the quarters.
Our expectation is to have stability in bad debt. In terms of receivables, we are still working on that internally to improve that. Yes, we have room for that, for improvement there. This is impacted by the speed of growth, considering intake. If we have an intake is growing quite relevantly. So we have an increase in receivable. When you have a more stable year, you have an improvement in the profile receivable. So we have the tools in our hands and we have the possibility of improvement, of course.
Thank you.
Welcome. Thank you, Pedro.
Our next question is from Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Your mic is open.
Good morning, everyone. Parente, José, all the IR team. Thank you for the opportunity of asking questions. I would like to ask a bit about the on-campus margin. Parente was very clear in the outlook that digital margin should be in this level, and the premium should be this level. How do you see on-campus from now on? What would be possible levers to actually put this margin up?
Thank you, Marcelo. The on-campus margin is not a margin that we consider comfortable. If you look at this 20%, then after that, you still have leasing, campus, et cetera. We understand that midterm, we should have different numbers and with a positive evolution. What happens today is that we had an imbalanced system, ourselves and the rest of the market. There was a drop in demand in the on-campus as a whole. We had 120 campuses, and now we have 87. We had great optimization of space, and that you see in our non-recurrent reduction, reduce and decrease.
Today, we have a much more comfortable situation in terms of student base. We have the capacity to absorb recovery of demand. That would be a good positive lever. We are more comfortable too. That allows us to work on price quite strongly. For two years, 2021, the price, especially short and midterm, was less seen.
This is the first lever for you to have classes, getting a degree with the lower prices, and now we have higher price. This is an important lever. The other one would be increase in demand, both in terms because of the economic scenario. People are postponing certain measures. We run surveys, price surveys are almost daily. Demand surveys vary from weekly to monthly, depending on. People are postponing decisions. People we want to have on campus, we are waiting for better numbers to do it, and it's possible government programs. We see the president talking a lot about that. We see a task force being set up for that. A recovery of greater demand would be a second great lever. A third lever that we see our competitors using quite effectively is the semi on-campus.
We've always worked on-campus being a bit below the digital. That's not what we see in the market. We have on-campus prices quite similar to the competition, higher in some places, lower in others. For the semi on-campus, we have prices that are much stronger and products supply or offer that is smaller than competitors. We see three major levers for recovery. Some depend on us, others depend on the market, but we see this margin evolving. It will depend a bit on what will happen. When we look at the three, our internal budget, we don't have margin variations in none of the three business units that are relevant vis-à-vis what we've seen in 2022 and 2021. But they may occur, but I don't think actually, again, on-campus had in the past margin of over 30%. We don't see that in the long term.
We see recovery, 4%, 5%, 6% percentage point in the midterm. For the year, for the 3 percentages. These are marginal variations of generation that we've seen compared to what we've seen in the past two years.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Parente. Very clear.
Thank you, Marcelo.
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Our next question is from Vinicius Ribeiro from UBS. Your mic is open.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking our question too, as usual. You mentioned a bit about price changes in distance learning. I'd like to understand in math, in the margin, what do you expect in terms of competition? Is it reasonable for us to expect a recovery to that competitive level that is more aggressive, what we see in 2021, first half of 2022? Second question, similar to the previous question, is a bit about premium. We've seen a robust growth with a stable margin.
I'd like to understand, as the new campuses mature and reach more advanced stage, should we expect some operating margin level or margin expansion, or are you happy with the level of margin that you have that generates the net effect in your margin? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Vinicius. Price elasticity and competition. I think competition will be a bit fiercer. We're seeing a lot of price elasticity that leads to an increase in demand. You have a demand that is kind of flat, or the guy only goes to you if you lower the price. This is an increase, as we've seen. We may credit a lot of things. We had more people during the pandemic, and we have the chunk of people. We don't know.
The fact is that when we look at the start in November 2022, we see that clearly great elasticity and a growing demand. In the long term, we have this outlook that prices. At this moment, what we are seeing, we are seeing again. Our students, well, it would be hard to follow inflation, but the market is growing. So whilst the market grows, and I can take an hour explaining to you the stock of people that have high school, do not have higher education, the impact this lack of education has on them, so that we have a great interest. Digital learning is the inclusion tool people recover from a frail high school they had access to, and they have new prospects in their lives.
Even though the market has been quite aggressive at the moment, we don't see a price drop, and we see prices evolving similarly or a bit below inflation in the short mid-term. With regards to Premium, we don't understand that there is operating leverage coming. It happens in two moments. When you set up a medical school campus, you have great spending in the first year, second, third, are very good. From the fourth onwards, you spend much more. Fourth, fifth, sixth, when people start having internships, then the cost per student grows a lot. So whilst we have probably one, two good years, as we had this year, the increase in one point, we were benefiting from the base that we had already built. You noticed that was going to show CapEx. The expansion CapEx was smaller than previous years.
The previous year, we had spent a lot of money setting up the new medical campuses. So in 2022, we had a reduction vis-à-vis the previous year. As we're probably going to see in 2023. So we don't view great operating leverages. Again, our projection for 2023 and 2024, our margins from businesses. As we see here, considering the mixed effect it tends to have in the long term, a great positive effect on our margin. So this effect that we see here for the on-campus has a great effect on average margin, as Marcelo mentioned, and we have some leverage for some additional points as each student is a very large absolute margin or number only, but it may have a relevant effect on the total result. For Premium, we don't see great changes in terms of margin.
Perfect, Parente. Thank you.
Thank you, Vinicius.
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Our next question comes from Fred Mendes from Bank of America. Your mic is open.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the call. I have two questions here. The first of them, [Rangel] has just talked about CapEx level to be a bit more compared to 2022. I'd like to talk that and see how you communicate with the distant learning platform level you think you are. What would be the main focus for 2023? You've talked a lot about price, a lot, but I'd like to know whether you have a way of having a differentiation in terms of credit. How do you see your level today?
What would be the main focus for 2023, where you want to get to? That's the first question. The second, just to understand, I don't know if I got it. When we talk about on-câmpus, you talk about intake growing year-over-year, but you have a discount that is quite relevant for freshmen. I'd like to know whether this reasoning is correct. Thank you.
I'm going to start with the second, then I'll answer the first, and I'll ask Aroldo to help me. Well, for on-campus. Thank you, Fred. What happens here in terms of what we see. Freshmen. We're going to have intake that's within 2022 and on campus compared to last year. This is not something that has to do with the 2022 intake was a point out of the curve that was quite strong, and we're bringing the intake of these who were coming in 2022 with a higher ticket than in 2021. This is shown both in the ticket for the first half. We had an offer in the past of BRL 299, and we had a great part of this intake with BRL 1,499.
We got to BRL 299, and this brings a good mass of revenue, both for the freshmen. We have a higher addition to this that brings the important increase in the first half. It's not gigantically higher, but it's higher. In addition, the recurring ticket of students. We've been bringing higher values than we had in the past, and this tends to create a comfort for the following intakes. When we see the dynamics of on-campus price dynamics are quite different from the other businesses on campus and most part of our competitors are small educational institutions and mid-size, that we have very few places where we clash against the other companies you're used to talking to. What we see is that people, when we move prices, the market moves along. Everybody is doing market service, enrolling others, and following that.
We see, for example, the numbers on campus market is positively in terms of price. What we had two, three years ago, much many more seats than we had in the market. There was an adjustment from 80 to 87. We had a reduction to a number of campuses, the size of campuses, many small and mid-sized could not. There was an adjustment in terms of market offer that we see being reflected in the price of everyone at the moment. We will have smaller intake, but possibly the revenue of on campus for the first quarter as a whole will have a variation of low single digit up or down vis-à-vis previous year. We're not worried about revenue as a whole, not even margin regarding this point. The first question regarding CapEx, we had very intense years of CapEx.
Our average CapEx in the past years is not very different from our competitors. Market as a whole is about 8%, 9%. What have we had? Two, three years that were quite intense because first we came from some years, 2017, 2018, that you followed our trajectory of very low numbers, 4%, 5%. We had a whole recovery from physical things in our campuses. Today, you can see in our campuses, you very unlikely look and see something that is not according to what students deserve in terms of infrastructure. Also all the technological revolution part. We have this side of software and apps that you can see very much, and we had a great advance. We positioned very much. We were pioneers. We got in the market, so we have new things coming up. Our challenge here is to be always leading.
But on the other hand, there are several things you do not see from putting things in the cloud and data centers that support all of it. I remember there was a report, I cannot recall whether it was GNOME or another core institution that in 2019, we got the report, and we were checking item by item what we had, what was still to be done, very much focused on hardware. People sometimes forget and ignore this part of the equation. Aroldo, would you like to talk a bit more about 2023, what we expect from now onwards?
Okay, Eduardo. Fred, thank you for the question. With regards to what we have in terms of improvement in investments in platforms, let me go back here. We focused a lot in terms of the improvement in teaching. Eduardo has talked about this, how we have moved ahead in building content and topics, and we believe this has the maintenance, but great part of the step has been taken. Second step is the platform that you asked about. Our platform, we have been working over the platform with third party. But also last year, I just wanted to mention this because this is very short period of time that we have had our own platform.
We have invested two and a half years in our own platform for distance learning. And last year, we have all our undergraduate student base on our new platform. We see our NPS growing. We see journey by journey engagement and learning that have been improving, and NPS has been improving as a whole. We are at certain points, and notably the first step, the beginning of access over the student journey.
This business is not noticeable over time, but there is some moment in the beginning of the journey, and this is maybe an important point when we talk about engagement, especially early engagement. There are other points as to how do we improve in the student evaluation, how we reach our data in our own platform, allowing us to have a vision and to use much more the behavior students in our decision-making process. And we have been learning what we have seen with our platform that our new possibilities are born every day in terms of improvement. So the painful point is how we bring early engagement, especially in the first week of interaction with us. I am being almost generic.
This is what we learn on day to day, but we have less of a year of our own platform, and we see this being reflected in the average NPS of our students who expect this will impact in the retention and engagement. So we can already see changes in NPS spread in the midterm. This is a huge competitive advantage for you to have your own platform, investing quality, having a hybrid of on-campus leading distance learning and in the on-câmpus, a lot of digital, not only percentage allowed in terms of classes. This percentage is mixed with the on-campus classes, and we are creating a platform that in two, three years will have a strong differentiation with those that are not able to follow in terms of technology. If you look at the distance learning world, you see few companies with many students.
And the technology cost is high, lots of costs are high. That's pointed in that when you look at on-campus, the market awareness is low, but with this technology aspect of you are being able to have a digital conversation. I think professors, not only on our side, we see that from competitors as well, understanding technology as a support technology and not competing or competing technology, then that's something that adds. If we look at the cost curve of distance learning is very inclined in medical schools especially, very clearly because you have few players that can have lower prices. The on-campus curve that was very flat, it starts sort of sloping. Those that can evolve in technology are more to the left in the curve. The natural in every market happens.
We see, again, an investment that is huge for us to move out of inertia to have products in our apps. They have ratings similar to Spotify, to iFood in the App Store and in the Google Play Store. So move from a level that is quite different.
Now it's a matter of our keeping on evolving, and everyone, Aroldo and his team, is looking at that constantly. Our renewal had a great focus on that, are having a person that is senior level always looking at new business, new opportunities and future. This, I'm sure, will reflect very fast for us to take yet another step. We took a great step to be ahead of our competition. People have not reached us. Apologies for my lack of modesty here, but we're working here to take yet another major step and actually be at the avant-garde.
Apologies for the long answer, but we were excited about your question. You have a projection. This is important for our margin strategy. This digital education engagement that is digital allows our margin to be above the competition precisely.
Thank you. Sensational. Thank you, Parente. Thank you, Aroldo.
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Our next question is from Caio Moscardini from Santander. Your mic is open.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I would like to understand a bit about the intake of on-campus. If you can break down into on-campus performance and semi on-campus performance, it will help our analysis and get more flavor on the one-digit ticket increase. I assume that premium should have a growth above inflation or on-campus, perhaps 0.75 of inflation and distance learning half of inflation. Does it make sense or not? Are there other values? Lastly, get your view on performance of QConcursos to understand this business, a more mature, see the number of students moving sideways, or if you have great opportunity, what we should expect in terms of QConcursos.
Thank you, Caio. On-campus, semi intake. Semi has been growing quite importantly, considering the number we have given you, the higher number of this rate we gave you from between 2021 and 2022. It is quite likely we have still 20% a month ahead. Quite likely that the mix of semi may increase a bit, not yet at the level we would like to have. We had great opportunities in semi that we are again a bit below behind competition to capture. We want to close the gap over this year, but our semi is coming in a quite important way, growing again. Numbers are still small, considering our total numbers if you look, but most of our competitors have half-half semi and on-campus.
Here we are going to make a wild guess, 80/20, 85/15 between on-campus and semi. It is a number in the midterm that we want to change without losing on-campus, but growing at semi. So the mix should be a bit more than semi and vis-à-vis on-campus. In terms of digital, as well, we gave you the number. We are comfortable.
Digital, we are talking about the ticket and the list of first year. All you divide by number of students, that is not a trend indicator. Last year, these numbers dropped. We had a great drop in terms of this. That is not a trend indicator. We have last lap of intake. I would like to keep the information that we have at the moment. The reasoning overall to you that you made is in terms of market trend, makes sense, but I do not know if this is what is going to happen in this all number students in the first quarter. As to QConcursos, we are immensely happy with the investment. It is a company that is financially super healthy. So we have a cash generation that is strong there, low CAC and low cost.
We had a year of side or improvement in terms of students, so it is in line with the business plan and presenting relevant growth in the first quarter. QConcursos, our eyes to them are not a bit generating more and having a quite low ticket, but it is not of generating more great mass of cash and EBITDA. It is find our protecting relevant growth in our projections in the midterm. We expect the expectation we have of them, of they are having a transformation towards our business. They are absolutely independent. I am part of the board with Sena, Rodomina too. We are there every month, but their lives is in a different office, separate office, their own governance and great fertility.
We thought about doing something here, and we called them to see what we were doing, and they proposed a path at 10% of what we had thought originally. There's a side of challenging them a lot. There's a side of our. We in any large company are the dream of a startup. When the guy thinks about serving over a million students, the CAC can implement that. We have great scalability in everything we think about. The expectation we have of them is they're coming up as something big. We've seen great plans here and at the appropriate time when we are sure that it's going to be successful, we don't like fireworks. We're going to tell you.
Thank you very much, Parente. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Caio.
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Our next question comes from Mauricio Cepeda from Credit Suisse. Your mic is open.
Thank you, Eduardo. Rossano. Thank you for the space. I have some questions here. The first is a question I usually ask. Of course, [sapinda] on this provocation, the premium, you have very good performance. It's contributing increasingly more to the results. Wouldn't this be the case of moving forward this trend as you've done the even MEC brands, other traditional brands that can be higher tickets than great part of your businesses? This is the first question. The second question is on distance learning. You have an elasticity effect. Last year, you kept a bit more of ticket, but intake was not so high. The base did not grow so much. But you now have a ticket that is a bit lower, and you see a bit of elasticity.
My question is, couldn't we experiment a bit of saturation in growth in distance learning so that it would not grow so much overall, and this intake may be less sustainable or simply foul play. My second question is on the economic scenario, having certain encouragement for intake in the first year. You've tested several models regarding subsidies, considering more funding, lowering prices, tuition prices, based on so many lessons learned. What do you think would be sustainable economically in this subsidy of freshmen? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mauricio. Okay. As to the premium brands and other brands, it's maths. We almost made an acquisition last year. We are the only company that has. Well, let's see what acquisition we didn't make last year. Last year, we almost made an acquisition that was a very attractive business.
We were very excited about it, and it was April, and we looked and looked. We do not know what is coming up. It is a time to be very disciplined in terms of cash, and we did not make the acquisition. It was a math that with the interest rate "normal" made sense. With the interest rate that we live today, it did not make sense. Although it is quite good brand, very good quality. We are very excited by the business itself and the influence it could have to the rest of the other businesses here. We ended up looking, and they said, "No, it is a bit crazy." I have learned that. The measure is how much cash this generates in two years, how much interest I pay in two years, and this calculation was difficult in the previous business. Yes, it would have been interesting.
We made an organic evolution that was important in the MEC. We have a great differentiation in the market where we operate, especially here in Rio de Janeiro. We had similar prices to the competitors some time ago, and today we are talking about 30%, 40% more, and students queuing up to join. Compared to the investments we made, it was a cheap way of doing business that you were mentioning. Then, yes Premium is a more resilient type of business in times of crisis. They tend to be more expensive at times of crisis. When we look at some point in the next two, three years, we are going to have momentum of growth in classes C and D, and then resilience will be less important.
It is important to see those that are going to be prepared to absorb demand, and we will have quality to offer good products to classes C and D, and we are ready for that. We are going to have that with lower interest rates, we have more ability to discuss this kind of investment. With regards to distance learning, I do not really think we are talking about saturation of growth, not at all. We had a year of 2022 that was different, as I mentioned previously.
I do not know if it is because 2021 was too good and then you have a different curve, or if it is because it was a difficult year. But 2023, we see a behavior that is quite similar to what we had at pre-pandemic levels, the beginning of the pandemic in terms of market coming in. Again, we have inventory of thousands of millions of revenue.
On our website, we have the presentation. I do not have the number by heart. There is a chart I published on Cruzado talking about the stock of people that have completed high school with no higher education and how much more they make. Our stock is very large, and it does not stop growing because we train more people in middle school or high school than in higher education. So distance learning has still many years of growth ahead. If there is saturation, it will not happen in 2023, considering everything we see here. In terms of freshmen, we see everybody copying us. We are always seeing people coming with this, discount, things that are more aggressive than what we do. Students enrolling without any kind of payment, something that we do not have here. To enroll here, students have to pay something upfront.
The market trend for a more aggressive world, this applies for all kinds of scenarios and areas, on-campus, distance, et cetera. We are quite comfortable as you are going to see. 2021, we had it paid half. It was cheap for them to start. Yduqs actually disbursed under BRL 50. Last year, we had BRL 299 for on-campus and minimum disbursement for BRL 1,000 for the first half. What we see now is the average disbursement of BRL 1,000 and a lot for the first half. We are sort of gauging according to what we have as we feel comfortable looking at our student base and our operating leverage. With this gauging, it has led us to price points that are higher than we had. Always with this rationale of discounts in the first half.
We have analyzed this a lot. We are not the only ones in education. In several other segments and services for class C and D, and product that work based on this rationale. This is a bit of the behavior of resilience that we believe is quite a winning one.
Okay, cool. Thank you, Eduardo.
Thank you, Mauricio.
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Reminding you once again that if you wish to ask a question, push the button raise hand. Wait while we collect questions. Our next question comes from Vinicius Figueiredo from Itaú BBA. Your mic is open.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Many of the topics I was going to address ended up being explored. Just following up on the kind of intake of 2023. You mentioned that you have a ratio between 2021 and 2022 that leads us to have a dynamic that may be a flat number or drop of almost 30%.
I would like to understand, I think you have mentioned a bit in terms of ticket size, how your base case of ticket, along with this expectation of intake, how does it communicate with the expectation of cash generation over 2023? Another point, another more direct question regarding the guidance of EBITDA growth that you put for the first quarter, if you can explore whether you have great impacts coming from G&A and also non-recurrent that ended up happening in the fourth quarter, if they continue. Thank you.
Thank you, Vinicius. On on-campus intake, this is it. On the base of 250,000 students, intake of about 10,000. Again, that has a great dropout in the first half. It should not have such great impact on its model. I think, again, that intake issues, when you talk about distance learning, having a two-digit growth, you have impact in the model, et cetera. We are seeing that the range is between 72 and 100, which is last year and the previous year, and then it is where we are in this range. Again, possibly may have a very short-term impact of more days, less days.
When we look at the business context, it should not have such great impact on the projections that you make on us. Cash generation. Again, we are playing with guidance of two digits on our EBITDA and with margins that I am sharing with you by business that should be stable, with a net operating revenue growing, and our well to off-campus with this vision that is asymptotic good news expected for the second half.
The nature of this is more cash generation looking ahead. We have our numbers, and we prefer to move ahead in the year. The EBITDA guidance that we see since the second quarter last year and looking forward has good direction for those that follow us. Well, asking about this in terms of effects on EBITDA. This has an effect in the first quarter. It will have an effect on our EBITDA. I do not think it is necessary for us to get to the two digits. Two digits comes naturally, quote-unquote, a bit coming from this as well. It is natural. Yes. But I do not think it is so relevant within what we have been estimating here.
Thank you, Parente.
Thank you, Vinicius.
Since there are no more questions, the Q&A session is closed. I would now like to turn the floor back to Mr. Eduardo Parente for the company's final remarks. You may proceed.
I would like to thank you very much for your trust. Once again, we have been, since 2015, a sequence of hard years, crisis after crisis. Yes, economic crisis, COVID-19 one, COVID-19 two, inflation, interest rates. But I think what we have seen here in the fourth quarter/second half and outlook for first half of 2023 is quite positive. We are very optimistic. I talk about optimism, growth. I like to share reality with you, and I bring scenarios that are a bit harder. Well, unlike competitors, unlike the previous discussion, I see what is coming up with great optimism. I do not usually do that. I thank you all for being with us. I think we are going to have better days ahead of us. Thank you very much, and I wish you all a good day.
The Yduqs video conference is now closed. We thank you for your participation and wish you a very good day.