From specialized consulting companies of the sectors, analysts, they are se eing the be h avior of the students looking for a delay. This is a very important number to highlight. We have 40% of our students, when they get into our courses, our universities. They have two years already that have studied in the higher education, and many of our students also come from the public sector, and we understand that there is bureaucratic delays. We see that we have ways. We have two, usually one good intake, one poor intake.
The trend now is that it is going to be a positive intake, and then at one point you will see the numbers. Let us go to page four. What do we have as quarterly highlights? Within premium, as we commented, we expected to get to 7,500 students. We already got to 6,000 students, undergraduate medical students. So 6.2, 6.6.
6,200, 6,600 students, medicine students. The average ticket increase of 5%, an EBITDA margin 53%, a renewal rate higher than the experience, and a very strong movement. If you have seen it, there was a good report in Valor Econômico, which is a specialized publication. We are taking medicine to a higher level, brand that is differentiated, that speaks about medicine to medicine for those that do medicine. Demand. When we look at digital learning, it looks like premium. We have the doubling of the net revenue. We have the undergraduate student base that is still good, and we are still accelerating in the centers. We are going to the interior of the states. It shows our intake. We have new centers. We grew there for 58%, comparing to first quarter 2020, regardless of the period of the pandemic itself.
Therefore, we should get to 2,000 centers expected for 2021 year. Now on campus, the big issue. The average ticket increased by 4%. If you compare it to first quarter 2020, we would think that there is a higher intake, there is more competition. This is what actually happened in the market. You will see this up ahead after the competition announced the results. We actually have stability in price. It does not come from this quarter, but the first quarter of 2020. This is a good news. When we look at the on-campus average ticket with or without the FIES financing, it is a marginal influence, let us just say. It does not really affect us. We have an intake level that is very good. There is a great increase.
We got a small loss in last year, but remember that we also invested, and we now have a renewal that is normal. The students are working with that, and we think that AURA has a great influence in that. We finish with 43% of the students. We already mentioned the scholarships. This is reflected in the NPS, the renewals. Therefore, we have this very good renewal rate, even in the context of the pandemic. Still on campus, we are really always working and seeking, as you can see, an increase in productivity, profitability, having a more sustainable business. We have worked for many years in healthcare, of course, and the result, which was 1/3 of our base, we got to 42%, rising from 30%. We are doing very well in those healthcare-focused courses. They are more profitable.
This is a market trend, and it is very resilient, even in the context of the pandemic. This is very special in the context of the pandemic and the post-FIES world. Remember, we had a lot of mandatory discounts. This really affected the accounting results. We had the adjustments of cash flow. What we see is a residual, really, of these mandatory discounts. in the fourth quarter, we had orders of magnitude of BRL 80 million. Now it is less than BRL 10 million. It really shows that the world is going to a post-pandemic world. About that PDD in Portuguese, we have 11% comparing to the first quarter of last year, which was 12%. It is a great advancement. A number that was lower than what we had in the pre-pandemic, the NPS advancing very well.
The digital learning, we are growing in the digital learning. We are increasing the payment renewals. When we work with the digital world in the core business, this really is, we see the reflection in the NPS, and here we can see 17 points. Even though 80% are still having classes via Microsoft Teams, only 20%, on Campus Estácio 17 points, plus 17 points, and digital learning 21 points plus. You can see that we have a capital structure that is solid. I think that we should highlight this point. This is generating cash, low leverage. Every quarter we tell you. There has never been actually a quarter where we say that the cash flow has not been solid. Every quarter is solid. Acquisitions and integrations, we have more than BRL 95 million captured in synergies, BRL 95 million.
Once you implement the M&A, it starts running, and then the results are down the line, the total results 12 months down the line. It is a long-term investment. BRL 95 million is the 12 months that was already captured. One thing that is important to highlight is that we have the premium and digital totaling 46% of the net revenue, and we should get to 50% in the first quarter. As I told you, 46%. Now, let us talk about EnsineMe. The new backbone of digital learning and how we are using technology to get to our students. We have a great NPS. The experience of the student, this number is reflected in NPS, but also in the result of the tests that we are doing. The increase of the base, the student base. We had a 17-point increase in NPS and 21% in on-campus.
So 17% is for the digital learning. We do one statistics for statisticians and one statistics for those people that. We optimize the base that we use and everything is white label. So we acquired Athenas Grupo Educacional and a series of others, and immediately we have the content of EnsineMe. This really helps us capture the synergies. Today, we have 100% of the first-year students are digital. Now we are taking AURA to several courses, 100% digital. You can see the investment here. We are going to the post-graduate courses that we believe that there is still a lot of things that we can do. This has been great successful. A lot of success. So let us talk about prem ium. Here, the big message that you can see on premium is the revenue, and based on the student base, growing strongly in regards to last year.
The revenue, in comparison to the first quarter of 2019, it was fr om BRL 86 million- BRL 110 million. I do not know if it really showed the organic growth. That was really good. There is just a dark green, which is Medicina Estácio. We went through first quarter 2021, BRL 144 million. So almost two times the first quarter of 2019. Three years, the student base growing 50%. So there is a growth. There is a little clock that has been working very close to our plan. Here, when we get to the quarter, BRL 112 million. We have a better number than last year for the EBITDA when we are locating the cost per business unit. We have something that when you have a slide from one quarter to the other, we have to see their year-on-year.
Here we had the late intake. We preferred for the first time and only time. Because of the time, we had a guidance for the quarter. You can see the math, and of course, we look at the semester here. The premium is not going to have a margin of 53%. It will be a number close to 50%, maybe a little bit below that. What do we have for news? We launched the IDOMED brand, Instituto de Educação Médica. We already have the undergraduates from 6,200- 6,600 students. That is what we expect for the second semester, the base. The adjusted average ticket growing year-on-year at 25%. This quarter, we had BRL 8 million in losses of the mandatory discounts by court orders. But this quarter, this discount will not be enforced anymore, and therefore we will have new numbers and new trends.
Ibmec, we really launched a new logo, and we had good numbers for intake. Ibmec, as well as IDOMED. The intakes closing much earlier. We had late intake. On premium, we closed much earlier than the premium. Well, on the premium we closed much earlier than the regular. So today, premium is 1/3 of our EBITDA of Yduqs, and we have a renewal rate that is very strong, but now it will be very strong. You can see the 96.5%. Now digital, page seven. What do we have? It looks like medicine.
The student base is doubling. If you look at the first quarter of 2019 to first quarter of 2021, as well as revenue. Here we have an effect on EBITDA of this late intake. So you can see the numbers of intake in the first box are referring from October to April. We got students getting into the system in April.
The numbers would have been higher should we have. Well, take into consideration the numbers of late April. But we decided just to show you this reference, this guidance for the quarter. Here the effect that is, on the contrary to medicine, you can see drop. Well, we can see not like medicine, we had 40% EBITDA, last year is 45%. As we close the semester, it will be closer to 45% on the EBITDA, as I just commented. Also, this EBITDA is 1/3 , digital learning is 1/3 of the total adjusted EBITDA. We can see the number of centers growing. We had 1,500, and now at the first of this quarter, we had 1,600 centers, and we are strong to finish this year with 2,500 centers. Once again, this is a great number of centers. Many of them have not gotten to their fourth year.
They are still maturing. Average ticket, as I have told you several times. There was a slight decrease of 1.8% year-on-year. Decrease, it is expected, is BRL 240 million a month on average for the first quarter of 2021 on digital learning, and we are very satisfied. It is still a strength and a good bet that was done many years on the cell phone in the cheapest model of teaching of centers. I believe that this has been expanding. If you get the margin, the corporate and the salaries, it is above 50%. This has manifested itself many times. Let us talk about page eight, on-campus. We have a drop in the revenue, 2% in comparison to last year. Nonetheless, in this number, we have all the M&As, all the acquisitions that we have done on campus, and this year is Wyden plus Athenas.
This number, if we just got the universe that we had, Estácio UniToledo from the first quarter of last year, this drop would have been 19%, which is this orange number on the left, ex acquisitions. The numbers without FIES, the number is stable. You can see there is a little bit of FIES right there. An adjusted EBITDA of 17%. For the quarter, for the adjusted margin of EBITDA, you can remember that last year was 24%, and now we are very impressed with the resilience of this operation when we see that we had the end of FIES. We have the financial crisis regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, but we still got the 17% EBITDA margin down below. Undergraduate average ticket, there is an increase of 4%. If we remove FIES, it is 6%.
It is the last time that we are going to talk about the loss of FIES. It is not making sense anymore. If you look at the student base, we have the variation for the first quarter of 2019, 2020, 2021, a variation of 2% from last year. But we can see the base of what we had and what we have. The drop is higher than the 2% that we can see. It is important that we show you on the next page nine , what we are building on campus and why we are so positive with the future.
At the top at the left is the distribution of, well, the structural evolution of the views. We have the mix of courses on campus. We have an evolution here. Of course, dark blue is healthcare. We are working with that. We really like to work and show you the results.
We can see up ahead the expectations, and we can see the direction that we are undergoing. We have been doing this for many years with a lot of success. When we look at the renewal rate on the right, it went up in regards to 2020 year-on-year in this year-to-date. Once again, a very difficult moment here, a very difficult year. Without big courses, big costs. In the middle, we had the cost of Estácio com Você, but that is it. Down below, at the left, we can see a very important number, very impressive. When we see the student-per-class ratio and occupancy rate, we can see from 35- 46 on semester in comparison to 2018 and 2021. There is a growth up to 73%. A lot of spreadsheets, a lot of science to get you this number, and a lot of logical analysis.
Well, of course, this is very important for business, and we have the analysts understanding that. We have from, really, during the pandemic, we can see how the teachers are committed, and the numbers during the pandemic, well, actually showing that there is a growth. This is very good. There is a lot of work for people to understand, and now they understand clearly the beauty and the importance of having done our homework in 2018, 2019 with a lot of effort in health. This number on the left that we came from 35-4 6, when you look at the number of N, which is the NPS, you get more people in the classroom, and then the evolution of the NPS variation. Here you can see the options per semester. It is more flexible, and we can increase the NPS year-on-year in the on-campus.
Especially in this year of the pandemic, as I told you on the right, we finish, well, with 37% of the students with at or the expectations to close 2021 with 61%. We are doing a great work with technology that engages the student. We have a content, a short video, a podcast, and it is a content that before we needed to get the info, and it is already strong with Fortnite and the digital content has been very didactic. The students are coming much prepared to the classroom. I will have the statistics of, well, it is like 65% of the students are ready to watch, for example, my class.
That transforms completely the dynamic. It helps with the preparation, and it really helps us to have that standardization, that guarantee of quality with all the campuses that we have. Page 10. Eduardo Haiama will talk about the revenue boosted by digital learning premium and M&A.
Thank you, Parente. Let us talk about the numbers. Our total net revenue grew year-on-year, almost 20%. As you can see, as Parente has said, this is the last quarter that we are going to show you the Delta FIES. As we have seen and have been telling you for a few quarters, the FIES, the impact will be minimum. It would be BRL 100 million, BRL 150 million, maybe on this year, and this quarter really shows this. A reduction of BRL 28 million. The intake really had an impact on the on-campus. We can see the three levers of growth that we have commented. Digital, BRL 44 million premium with a delta of BRL 20 million, and the acquisitions, BRL 200 million. We can see the revenue year-on-year.
We have 17%, and then you have that adjustment by court orders. We can see the numbers. Now consolidating the guidance for the quarter, and remember the issue of the quarter because, in fact, the late intake, it generated a distortion of seasonality. We rather show you the number as we are expecting for the quarter, the adjusted revenue, given that the intake and renewal basically are done. We are expecting a growth of 16% adjusted numbers. If you compare it to the reported numbers, it is higher. Last but not least, in the graph below, we can see how these levers of growth are per segment, the digital and premium. We can get the space that they are gaining all throughout the year 2018. They represented 21%, 7% plus 14%, and now they finished this first digital learning and premium with 46% of our revenue.
Now, slide 11, adjusted costs and expenses. I am going to do the breakdown and just highlighting three items. We have bad debt, PDD in Portuguese, advertising, and G&A, depreciation. Actually, this is when we do an acquisition. We acquired Adtalem, but all the other three, what is the important thing? Bad debt. In the graph down below on the left, even though we are growing year-on-year 12%, when we look at percentage-wise of the net revenue, the bad debt plus discount drops from 12%- 11% of the percentage of net revenue. Remember that the first quarter of last year, we did not have the pandemic. The pandemic really started to impact us around March of 2020. This is something that we have commented that since June, July, the numbers have been improving. Second item. In the graph above, which is advertising, marketing.
Advertising, basically, in this quarter, we had an expectation, which was the market expectation. We did market research in November, December last year that it seemed that we would have a normal year or normal scenario for the on-campus. When it was in January, we saw that actually the scenario was more difficult than what was projected. We had spent money with that. February, we realized that the trend was changing. We might have more digital. That is why we had the campaign, Estácio com Você? Tá Pago! It was a success. We had an indication that our intake year-on-year digital might have been 10%, 15%, but it was 31%. Our strategy, in fact, we changed very quickly. This is a market that is changing, and it is paying for itself. The last cost item that I wanted to mention, D&A, depreciation and amortization.
There is a delta of BRL 29 million, as you can see on the graph, but half of that delta is related to the amortizations of acquisitions. These are non-cash effects. We will see this in the revenue up ahead that impacted here. The rest is just regarding the assets that we acquired. Slide 12. If you take a look at the EBITDA, now let us look at the adjusted. Year-on-year, adjusted, it is dropping about 7%. As it was mentioned before in the previous presentation, on-campus suffered a lot because of the intake, the pandemic. Our levers of growth and the acquisitions that we have made have in fact kept us at the same level of last year. The highlight, the real highlight, besides the one on the right.
It is basically an. When we see the revenue comparing the Qs, it is zero on zero, but the non-recurring, it is BRL 160 million that was last year, non-recurring items. Now, the non-recurring effects, we are at BRL 13 million, and BRL 8 million of these non-recurring effects are just individual causes that impacted the court orders, BRL 8 million, if you remember. If you look at a very clean number, we have not shown them for a few quarters. Anyway, the next slide, talking about the adjusted net income. The income that impacted the EBITDA, we are doing an adjustment for the cash profits. Basically the amortization here of the acquisitions, and here the adjusted net income was BRL 73 million, almost 60% in comparison to last year.
Remember that last year, now with the acquisition, is the financial result was impacted in BRL 13 million, and here the impact on income. If you have EBITDA and the D&A, we are amortizing the assets that have come from the depreciation and the reported income. You can see it reported. In cash generation, next slide, we can see that the cash flow and generation, first, it would have been a drop. If you look at the CapEx, we had an operational cash of BRL 409 million against the operating cash flow, which is BRL 189 million , which is on the table on the left. This does not really reflect the reality of the recurring cash flow. Why?
Because on the first quarter of last year, which is the last line in the table, we had a delay in the FIES receivables that should have, we only got it in January of 2020. We should have received it by December 2019. So BRL 136 million, that would really get a good approximation to the reported year, quarter on quarter revenue. By the IFRS 16, I have to show the interest rates as an operational expense. I did not have that, but now I have that. That delta impacted another BRL 30 million. Last but not least, the big item that was completely launched on the liabilities was the contract termination fee. It was an old discussion for rent, and now we have the payment of BRL 45 million, but this is one-off. There will be no further payments.
Looking at the adjusted cash, we are aligned with last year and still keeping a cash conversion that is very high. The cash position, BRL 2 billion. That is the accounting, the high liquidity, cash generation, ability to raise funding, BRL 1.3 billion in cash position. We can see the next quarter we will have everything together. For CapEx, the graph on the right. There is a reduction of 20%. Nonetheless, we need to highlight that we have documented for the previous quarter, the expectation for CapEx for this year is a similar level to the standard of CapEx that we had all throughout 2020. The opening of this CapEx still will be based on everything that we have called digital transformation plus IT. That is the important part that will keep the company updated for the changes that we believe will improve on the quality even more.
In terms of indebtedness, we finished here with the EBITDA that was very healthy. The low debt net over the adjusted EBITDA at 1.3x . This is one of the strong bases for growth in the future. With that, I will give the floor back to Parente. Thank you.
If you look at the recent acquisitions, we did three over the last two years. Un iToledo is concluded. The integration was a landmark for the first time in our history that we kept the brand of teaching of the acquired higher education company. This has been very differentiated in the region, and it was the first time that we launched the brand. We did that in 90 days. Adtalem, still has not been one year since we had the inception of the integration. It should be one year soon, and the process is doing very well.
We have a great deal of the synergies captured. We can see the integration of this system, and we concluded the integration of over 60 systems. This gives us a great relief that most of the problems are gone. Now in 2021.1, we have the teaching matrix implemented in the first post-closing intake cycle of 2021. These are synergies that will appear all throughout 12 months. It is not the 88 that appears in the first quarter that was captured. Athenas is a very nice case. We acquired. We are looking at regions that we are less present. This has a very big impact in our remote learning. Athenas, we did all the analysis at Wyden. We have a lot of brands, and we wanted to keep the local brand, except UniToledo, we kept it. Now we have Estácio.
Just with that, we opened 46 centers. 46 Estácio centers in this region, Mato Grosso, Acre, that are doing very well. We had 50 medicine seats anticipated, and there are good things happen. There is a record intake, historic, in 2020.2, 2021.1, 2x the all-time high of pre-closing intake, and you can see the great success in the acquisition on NPS, very high, teachers, very satisfied. This capture of synergies is a little bit slower. There is the maturing of the medicine seats. Therefore, from the standpoint of integration, we are doing very well. Now we are going to go to page 16. I thought it was very interesting to show you. On the left, we have what was discussed three months ago. What do we expect for the future? I believe we have a really precise expectation.
In premium, we were talking about the base and medicine, the expansion is happening, the capturing is working. When we look at digital, we are saying: Look, there will be a strong base increase. This is what is happening. The intake would be relevant growth, and that took place. We are moving along to the 2,000 centers and 2,500 in 2022. This is taking place. On campus, we are saying the loss of FIES will be a fraction of what it was last year. We are talking about a challenging H1 intake. H2 is going to be a better perspective. Stable prices. The perspective of the margin recomposition starting in 2022. Synergies of recent acquisitions impacting the results of 2021, 2022. In general, marginal effect of the laws and court decisions orders for Q1, good M&A perspectives with robust financial situation.
This is what we have, and M&As might have good, interesting things up ahead. Positive re-enrollment, digital transformation impacting NPS, digital and premium reaching 50% of NOR in 2021, and lifelong gaining traction in all the Us. People were asking about 2021. The first quarter, many of you remember, is the one that is the most uncertain. But even in this world of uncertainties, we are doing well, and we have the conviction that in the future, life will be better. As for this quarter, we can go to the next slide.
On the side of what we see in the world of the pandemic, if we look at this quarter comparing to the previous ones, this one is much better on the side of the results, the adjustments that was mandatory to do, well, that debt was dropping in this quarter when we compare it to this world in the pandemic, and it's a different reality. Second point, look at our strategy. Medicine, M&A, it's paying for itself. From three years, we're building on a very strong base, very efficient base. We have been building that in 2018, 2019. When you look at that, all the c ash generation, the margin of EBITDA. We are a reference in the market, and this shows resilience, a very strong one. This is very important. Today, w e have a very difficult transition moment. When we look, we can deliver the EBITDA, of course.
When we look up ahead, we can see in the third point all the growth that we have in d igital and premium. The growth, while it's stable, and a financial situation with a generation of cash and EBITDA and a cash position of. We can see the assets that are, well, the BRL 1.3 billion net debt over the adjusted EBITDA and a cash position, BRL 1.3 billion. These are strategies that are paying for itself. Good perspectives. Thank you for your trust, for your attention, and of all the messages that we've received this morning, we know about the on-site, but thank you for your solidity, your resilience, and everything that is up ahead. Thank you. Now let's go to the questions.
Thank you. Now we will start with the Q&A. If you want to ask a question, please type asterisk one, and to remove the question, type asterisk two. First question from BTG Pactual.
Good morning. I wanted to ask you a quick question here about the on-site ticket. You commented on-c ampus ticket, you commented that this quarter we had something more residual in the terms of discounts, which impacted positively the average ticket of the on-campus. Can we use, therefore, the standard to annualize our numbers and consider this as the new base level of passing the prices, like you say, on the on-campus?
Thank you, Jan. I hope that everybody is healthy there. I believe yes. You can see this resilience that has been shown on the ticket since 2020.1. We are looking at this universe. I think that this was a question that we got in the fourth quarter.
We came from the world of discounts, mandatory or not, taxes, and the question was: How is it going to be on the next quarter once these discounts will be removed? What we've seen is that we removed the discounts, we increased the price for the students that have been studying for some time, and we saw the resilience of renewal and the base. I believe that the demonstration that we have here and the moment, a very difficult moment here, then we will see the big ones. When we are looking at these small ones, well, the price is going to be stable, so it's probable. We are very efficient in that, as I told you. We have a big size, we have a lot of technology involved, and we have our online and on-site at 40%, and we have 17% of margin at the moment.
You can imagine. What is happening with the small one, and I am telling you about the diligence, very difficult to find a positive beta in a small competition. We see that we have reached a breaking point. There is a moment of dropping the price, and we think that we got to that level. Of course, this is our expectation for the market. Nonetheless, there are no guarantees that this trend will be kept. We can see that the market is restructuring itself, as we told you in the consideration of the fourth quarter of 2020. We can see a recovery from the second semester and the beginning of next year, 2022.
Thank you.
Next question, Marcelo Santos, JP Morgan.
Thank you. I wanted to talk about the premium. If you can talk about the difference between margins of Ibmec and medicine. Since medicine has an expansion that has been procured, should we see a margin changing because of this mix over the next few years? Discussing the marketing advertising this year, as you commented, it was a bit different. What should we expect on that line?
I am going to start, and then I am going to call Marcelo. I think that you are right. The trend of expanding medicine is stronger than Ibmec, remembering that we have a lot of things starting. You have an operation that has 50 students. It is not different than the operation that has 150. We see a trend in increasing the margins in the recovery of tickets. We can see some differentiation here in some classes this is happening. We can see a lot of the competition keeping the 30% discounts from last year, and we can see a clear differentiation.
This train of thought of the premium margin up ahead is completely valid. In regards to the marketing here, I am going to let Marcelo complement. We started the year, it was a very interesting year. We had a lot of insights in this. In the same take and also operations, I wanted to say that everybody worked very diligently. We thought that we were going to have ENEM, and we said, Let us hold on, because we have to wait for the results of the ENEM test. On the other hand, we start to test. We tested campaigns, and it was not working. We invested the money in January that did not reflect in enrollment, and this is money that is gone, and that is it.
Looking at the past is very difficult to say, Oh, we shouldn't have done that. On the other hand, there is a lot of research, and the consulting companies are talking about this. There is the insight that, we shouldn't wait just for the ENEM if we were just waiting here. We have a campaign that is very brilliant, and we had results, and we had a peak for this quarter that is not normal for this quarter. Once again, I wanted for Marcelo to give us a little bit more details.
Thank you, Marcelo, and just to complement what Eduardo said. What is happening? We have learned with the story of January and February. For the rest of the year, we will repeat what we believe was a success.
Following up on the tracking of the market that we had very important insights in the market, for example, the campaign Tá Pago, and reinforcing the media actions for a message that is very strong with a financial offering that for the company was very positive. Therefore, the expectation for the rest of the year, we are fighting to be aligned with last year, to keep the numbers of last year. But once again, we reinforce it on our side. It is very important to follow up on the market and we are ready. We have a machine that is formatted to capture the values here. We can have a flexibility and agility that is much quicker to readjust the positions and the investments depending on the rhythm here of the capture.
What happened in January was bad, was a bad scenario for investments without intake, and then the launching of Tá Pago was positive in the way that we are replicating this for the rest of the year, and it should be aligned with last year.
Just to clarify, when you say aligned with last year, is the percentage of revenue in the financial volume, is that it?
Well, yes. In the financial aspect, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcelo.
Next question, Leandro Bastos from Citibank.
Good morning. First, about intake. You are talking about the intake. We are following up on the evolution of the numbers. What can we expect for the middle year cycle in the different units? That is the first question. Second, the drop in value that Parente commented in the beginning. How do you see the strategic alternatives of this operation? Can you comment a little bit more on that? And medicine. That is it. Thank you.
Leandro, I am going to answer the first one, and then I am going to let Marina answer the second. The intake in the second semester in medicine, Ibmec, and the expectation is that it is going to be good. Medicine is doing very well, and as I mentioned, digital is also doing well. Ibmec, things are doing well. And digital, the expectation is to continue to grow. The on-campus, there is the point here, it is very early to speculate. The numbers are better than last year. And what happens? The difference with last year, it is not the same difference. We had an intake that was record on the first semester, and there was a drop in the second semester. So it would be a surprise if there would be a new drop.
This is not what we are expecting, but here the curves of COVID is what will show the curves of vaccination, because at the end, the behavior of on-site is this. Well, and the expectation of going back to Campus, on campus, is what will make this number grow again. At one point, we think that this is going to work. But Marina, we think that it is going to go back to the numbers of last year. But yeah, if you can help me.
Well, we did this movement of separation of the operations of medicine, and of course, we have the launching of IDOMED that wants us to connect more and more to the public with the students of medicine and having a value proposition that is differentiated.
Everything that we are doing, not only the physical separation, but also giving more transparency of the numbers and doing the internal movement, looking at this in a separate way. Medicine, as we have seen, it has a very focused growth, and we can see the multiplication of the student base 2.5x just with the operations that we have. More and more, we can see the universe here for what we are building the products and acquisitions, and we are very optimistic. We have always given preference for medicine, and we believe that there is a great story, and we will be connected and segmented with the student.
Thank you, Marina.
You were talking about the premium in Ibmec, right?
Yes, it has been separated. Yes, internally, we have premium that involves both things in Ibmec.
Thank you.
Let me just talk about that. Just to clarify, we separated here the operation of medicine, which is on the Campus Estácio, because we did a great investment here that was very. We increased the ticket very much. The other operation, which are the two more important things, we will have the Campus Estácio here at the center of Rio de Janeiro, and then we will do an exclusive IDOMED. These are things that are not only symbolic. We have something that has a different segment, everybody with their expectations and needs. There is a lot of things happening, and you can see just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of good things that will happen up ahead.
Thank you.
Think about it.
Well, next question is from Itaú BBA.
Thank you for accepting my question. Well, I just wanted to understand how will you continue with the bad debt and discounts? Will this impact the student base? Thank you.
Thank you, Lucca. Hi, Haiama. Well, I am going to let these interesting questions to you, Haiama .
What we wanted to show you with the premium and everything. Yes, the trend on the medium term, and as time goes by, is helping in a very positive way in terms of slide. Let me get the presentation here. Slide nine. When we look at the mix per course, we noticed an improvement in the revenue in regards to what we have seen, for example, a year before. This is because of the mix of the courses, and with that, we have the ticket, and by the ticket is different. Since we are capturing more in this area that are growing, the trend is to improve.
Now, on the very short term, I cannot affirm because this year we had the pandemic, so very short term is very difficult. I think that the first quarter, yes, there is not a whole lot of oscillations here, but we hope that it will improve. It will improve on the factors, the NPS, the EnsineMe, IT, and the quality that the student is perceiving the engagement. Every single time that we improve on these factors, we improve the dropout, and we improve renewal, which are the big points, the heavy-duty points on PDD. Everything that we are doing to improve the student engagement and for a student, in fact, to have that quality in teaching, we believe that it will help to improve on the numbers. I do not know if I answered your question, but.
Yes, it was very clear. Thank you.
Next question comes from Lucca Brendim from Bradesco BBI.
Hello, good morning, everyone. First of all, I wanted to talk about the court orders, and I wanted to understand up until when will you see an impact in the premium side. Second, M&A, if you can talk a little bit more about the window of opportunities that you believe that we should start getting, and also if you can talk about the quality, if we can focus on those processes as well.
Let me just understand. You are talking about the mandatory discounts? Okay. I believe that, well, we have seen that in the second quarter, but not the third. The second M&A, you can notice that we have discipline. We do not do things out of hand. I think that the three businesses that we have done are clearly very good.
You can look at the EBITDA taking a variation between three and six and the synergy. These are smaller numbers. Well, to pay more expensive, we rather rebuy our shares, and we have the opportunities that are very good, and we need to seize the moment. Well, this plan is really migrating, and besides that, we can see this working. We are thinking that this is a fair access looking at the market perspectives, but there are other things that are going to come up in the radar of things that are not necessarily Undergraduate, and there are some premium things that might lead us to Ibmec. There are digital things that we look at. When we look at our digital world, not only on-site. Our digital world, it is not just of the. We have EnsineMe. It is not just digital.
We have quality, and this will be distributed through several channels. In the middle, we have teams. We have digital with a visit on campus. There is the semi on-campus that we just relaunched the product with a lot of success. There are many things here that when we look, we can see people that are copying our centers, our model of teaching at the cellphone, and copying this flight to quality in the system as a whole. We understand that there are many things that are part of the digital experience. Then we see smaller companies that can help us skip a few steps. Incorporating tools and even people and things that it would take too long to do. We found absolutely fantastic people here, and we should not destroy their business, really. Everything is very strong here. The trend in these companies is not to incorporate them.
We can see the startups that are fighting with us today. Everything that they say is, Well, I want your market. Then we are having the conversations that are evolving in a very interesting way, and there are things that we are very excited to do. It is a very nice question. We come from a universe that has had a lot of success with UniToledo, and the environment that we did not have before. Adtalem is bringing us fantastic operations. Plus Ibmec that has generated content for the entire mass of students that we are working. Athenas that has really increased our strength in a world where Brazil has never stopped growing. Now we are looking at things down this direction, a little bit different.
Looking to accelerate or gaining some space in this big advantage that we have in having a very good content that is being distributed all throughout different channels, and a model that shows that our margin or EBITDA, if you get all the rating, is very superior. Our rate of growth in the centers, well, people cannot follow up with us. We have a very efficient model for this. Lucca, once again, thank you very much. It's a little bit different than what we commented. As I said, medicine, digital, and M&A, we are always evolving to be ahead of the market.
It's very clear. Thank you.
Next question from Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.
Good morning. Thank you for accepting my question. Two questions. Actually, the first is, do you still see a space given the substantial improvement that we've seen? The second question on our side is in terms of digital learning, there's a lot of initial investments. In that context, could you reevaluate a little bit more on the strategies? Also, if you can talk about this part of the M&A.
I'm going to let Adriano really answer your question. Thank you.
Well, good morning. In regards to this, we see the space, and the first point is that if we look at the occupancy, we can see 73% occupancy. It's a very high percentage, but there is a possibility for improvement. The second factor is that our model of teaching has a greater integration, and we can see today we hope to close the year with 61% of everything that is presented to our students. We are expecting an improvement here. Eduardo.
Well, good question. About our whole strategy, lifelong learning. Well, talking a little bit in a broader way, we have advanced with our strategy to increase our portfolio, and we have restructured our entire portfolio from Estácio. We have the cost more attractive. EnsineMe is in a post-graduate world in the graduate world. So we can see the results of EnsineMe in the postgraduate courses and student satisfaction. This is very important. Well, dealing with the partnerships, we also have had partnerships with a few institutions for courses, and we start to look at technology. We have two courses of MBA in partnership, and this business continues. Specifically for free courses, we have grown the portfolio, and we are understanding more and more this market, and we are getting into this market stronger.
Specifically about your question about how we would impact and how would we grow with this material, we can see in the first quarter the 43 new courses that have been done fully with materials that have been produced with EnsineMe. Well, the marginal cost of production is zero. That's it. So we are starting to have an impact of this production of white label, and that is more scalable also in the free world courses. Now I'm going to comment on the strategy. Well, I don't want to give you a spoiler of something that will happen up ahead, but we are really thinking. A great deal of our time is thinking about this. How do we get very strongly capturing a big chunk of this market? Well, a little bit of this world and M&A is a very relevant part of our strategy.
Can you tell us a little bit more about medicine?
This has been a pillar that is very important, and we have invested strongly. The concept really brings a lot of strength. On the one hand, we are leveraging all the capacities of IDOMED and thinking about new products. We have spent a lot of time understanding the market and identifying the trends that are very important. Not only we launch 18 graduate courses, well, postgraduates and specialization of medicine in the last six months, but we are also planning new products to support residency and all the trends that we are seeing. Well, I think that the inheritance that we got from Adtalem, we are doing a complete reformulation of the portfolio and repositioning. This is another vertical that we think that is a lot of space for evolving, but we are looking at M&As.
Understand that there is a universe and skills that we are bringing players from outside, and this might strengthen. We have lifelong learning in medicine, and this is something that we are very actively taking a look at and might accelerate our curve. We are working organically but also looking at the future.
Thank you.
Next question, Caio Moscardini from Morgan Stanley.
Hello, Parente. Hello, Haiama. I have two questions. In regards to Ibmec, I wanted to understand how scalable is Ibmec. What is the size that this brand has? Do you have a specific number of cities that you want to have? I was very impressed with the average receiving performance, and there is a small decrease worsening with the M&As. I wanted to understand, what can we expect from the future, and what are the main initiatives that you actually delivered this great performance in the semester, the first quarter?
Well, thank you, Caio. I am going to call Marina Fontour a.
Hi, Caio. Thank you for the question. In regards to Ibmec, I believe that we have operations in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and São Paulo. We have the year that we are opening in Brasília, undergraduate. This is a niche product, and it will continue to be a niche product. But yes, we see opportunities for opening new operations. I do not believe that there will be more than six, seven, maybe max, all throughout next year. One thing that we have seen that might be a very interesting strategy will be through the acquisition of a local player that has a very strong brand, and it is centered in one of these segments of Ibmec. Might be we start from this platform.
This is something that we are looking at the future. I believe that the post-graduate lifelong learning of Ibmec is very fertile. This is a very relevant platform. Whether if it is content, we are not going to go to online on. We can do post-graduate and free, and well, we have corporate solutions, and we are servicing the B2B market. Even though we see that this is a player, a niche, we are not going to have the hundreds of thousands of students that we can see in Estácio. We can see fertile opportunities for growth for undergraduate as well as the lifelong learning operations that are using Ibmec as a platform.
Caio, in regards to your accounts receivable question, I would just like to add one more point. We had the bad debt that is dropping. It was a good quarter, and remember that the previous year we did not have the pandemic. It was very concentrated in the period that we did not have the pandemic from that quarter. What is behind this? First of all, the first quarter of last year, we had reformulated our process, and if we had not taken into consideration the pandemic, the bad debt would have dropped. We are improving the processes. They are more precise. This continues. From the first quarter to the second quarter, we suffered.
However, since the first quarter, this has improved, and it will continue to improve. Therefore, one part of this, once again our products of financing is something that I am not commenting on anymore because it is very small. It is dropping. It is just a little bit of our base, so we have deadlines and products. The third point that I had answered about bad debt and discounts, we can see that the mix. Remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people were calling us saying, Oh, you are going to suffer. You are going to have a lot of students in the digital segment. It is the most difficult one. At that moment, it was the best revenue. The mix, in fact, when you look at digital, the more premium, and the mix has also helped on the on-site, this really helped a lot.
I cannot affirm that this trend is of dropping in the accounts receivable because I believe that we are going to start growing again. Here when there is an increase in revenue until you normalize. Our expectation is improving the accounts receivable, bad debt, and the process is. The loss of students is improving. Let me add one thing. This is a very important point. When the person does not know the sector, and you do some analysis of EBITDA, and you have to look at the accounts receivable to look at what is happening. What we are seeing is our accounting conservatism is paying for itself.
We have had a series of laws, and in fact, legally it was viable to charge for that student retroactively, and we knew that this was going to be difficult as it was, so we rather not have accounted for this. If we had accounted for the revenue nine months ago, then we would say that the accounts receivable was growing, and now EBITDA is very different. We have very rigid criteria for when the student is 100% provisioned once they have a dropout. This is stable throughout the pandemic. This is for the board of directors. It gives us the safety that what is here is here, and the trend is for improving on the evasion.
Thank you.
Since we do not have any further questions, we have Eduardo Parente for the final considerations.
Once again, I would like to thank you for your trustworthiness, your attention. Once again, we had three difficult quarters. This one will be better than the previous ones. We have a quarter comparing to the previous one with similar numbers, the revenue higher, the EBITDA a little bit lower, but showing the resilience that we have in our portfolio that we built. We are looking up ahead. Something that is very interesting that we notice, eventually, we had people that had more resilience in this on-campus world because we had a set of students that maybe were more middle class. Here, the growth that is going to be in the C and B social stratas. We are very well-positioned, and we are very excited for this in the future. It's an issue. It's a matter of timing.
The second quarter has been defined, and we have had comfort to work with the needs of the moment. That issue of separating the EBITDA of the business, the numbers are smaller from one quarter to the other. There is one thing that in the premium that we want to change. In the digital, the quarter has been improving, and the big highlight is on campus. 37% margin with the CAT intake at 30% in the moment of regrowth. It will happen. This growth will be in the Cs and B classes, and we are ready to receive all these students and without having to deal with the FIES.
Let's just talk about 2021 and 2022 as the loss of FIES and COVID not affecting us anymore. This is th good positive reality for 2021 and 2022. Thank you very much. Please keep healthy, use your mask. Have a wonderful day.