Yduqs Participações S.A. (BVMF:YDUQ3)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2020

Nov 9, 2020

Speaker 1

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Third Quarter Call of YDUQS. The presentation will be done by our CEO, Eduardo Parente, and by the CFO, Eduardo Haiama, with the presentation of all the other members of the board of directors. We are transmitting this through the RI of the company website, www.yduqs.ri, and we are translating it simultaneously into English. Should you need any assistance, please let us know by typing asterisk nine. This might contain forward-looking statements that are subjected to risks and uncertainties that lead to such expectations to not materialize or substantially differ from expectations. These forecasts express the opinion only of the date they were made, and the company does not undertake to update them in the light of new information. The word is with Eduardo Parente, the CEO of YDUQS. Please, the floor is yours.

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Thank you, [Georgiana].

Once again, I would like to thank you all for being here. I would like to thank you for being here at our earnings call. I would like to thank all of our employees that allow us to continue with our very strong year for results. I will start on page three with our opening remarks, talking about the four main key issues here. The solid operations with robust performance in digital learning and medicine. We have levels of growth that we have planned a lot in the pre-pandemic period. The operation is obviously different. A great deal of the students are still in the remote learning, in the digital learning. We have had a lot of success by using our digital content to bring digital content and elite content to all of our students. On site, on campus, we have seen very big stabilization signs.

The ticket is asynchronous, and we are oscillating around what we think is the baseline. It seems that it is reasonable and it is still being implemented in the on-campus world. In this quarter, we still had an impact in the revenue. This is very important. I am talking about the relevant impact with invoices. It is BRL 79 million, the effect on revenue that determines that we lower the price. We talked about this in the last quarter. Even though we recognize that there is a possibility that we are going to try and find it up ahead, we think that the most transparent way that we can work with this is to not treat this as a litigious thing. So, we are not accounting these future receivables, these discounts. Fourth, we have a consistent collection and strong cash generation.

We have had an update last night, and we are getting your feedback. This is very important for us. So we are looking at the cash generation and our receivables once again. We believe that at the end of the day, it is important for the health of our business. Things are taking place, of course. We have a communication room, and I thank you if in the end, we can talk to all of you. It is a harsh quarter, but it has good numbers if we think about the very challenging environment. Let us go to page four. So let us talk about the intake. This is our reality that will translate from the previous page to this page. So let us talk about the digital learning. We captured over 50% more students than last year. This is very consistent. There is an impact in the digital learning.

While the impact in on-campus is the first line that you can see on the table. We had worse numbers than last year, but we need to look at the year-on-year number. It is very much like last year. It is a strong sign that the market has a trend towards stability. Once the pandemic allows us to go back to "normal medicine", we grew, we can see here on the table, 21% in regards to year-on-year. We have had over 10% more students. Now let us go to page five. Page five, on the left, we have the student base and the distance learning centers. It is important to see this growth that has not happened out of the blue right now. When we express, and when we grow more than 30% since 2016, this actually shows the consistency of what we do.

Up until now, we have two things that are very important. The first thing, at the bottom on the left, we have an acceleration in the distance learning centers, and we can see the growth, 241 from 3Q 2018 to 2019, and 636 from 2019 to 2020. It is a very simple model for the tickets, very easy to be replicated with a good profitability. We have talked about the stability of last year, and we have invested in quality. We have teachers and professors that are very aligned with a new generation of students and provide quality learning in the digital environment. It is also teaching for the on-site and also digital learning. We did not project a retention rate in any scenario.

We have had several analysis showing that there is a boost that is very interesting when we see the quality of life and the quality of learning for the students. There is an increase of two percentage points in this quarter in regards to the previous quarter. Here on the right, we can see the growth here in the CAGR from 2016 to 2020 of 38%. We have a growth in regards to the previous quarter of over 5%, 176 to 274. Now, I am going to go back to the number of the 38% very shortly, and I have here on page six, medicine. I do not want to repeat myself, but we have a leverage on organic growth. It is our second-biggest growth lever. We have had a lot of growth from the third quarter of 2019 to 2020 in the student base from 4,000 to over 5,000 students.

We have to look at the expected intake. We have to look at the units that are not so mature. For example, Canindé, we are going to start this year, and we are going to have another 50 by the beginning of next year. So that generates next year of a growth of 10% in the number of seats. When I look here at the bottom, the 250 seats that I mentioned, these are the ones that we are going to earn next year, besides the 134 seats in the third quarter of 2020. We hope that next year we will show you the same level of growth or even better in our student base. It is important to remember that we have two units that we have just opened, but the rest is organic growth. We have to invest in laboratory, we have to invest in teachers and everything.

But it's not the BRL 1.2 million per seat. While using our growth, it is working. Here on the left, we can see a little bit of that. Medicine has been impacted by the discounts that are related to law and court decisions. The 12% here in total revenues is the digital learning. So if you add the 26% in the distance learning, we have 26%, and medicine 12%, we've had over 40% of our revenue, actually, in two businesses that have rates of growth that are very strong and are completely stable regardless of the pandemic. Let's change to page seven. I believe that now we are continuing the ideas when we look at the graphs on the left. We have in dark green, these are the on-campus former FIES students.

And we are getting to 21,000 FIES students and a base that will of acquisitions that grows year by year. Here we have a very clear overview that we did three acquisitions over the last 12 months, all with the results that are 5x the EBITDA, and this is what we are trying to find. We have to see the potential, and whenever we do M&As, we always take that into account. This is what we show. We have the 55,000 students that have come to our base from acquisitions over the last 12 months. Some of you did an analysis. I don't remember who submitted this, but the number of students per campus. It's showing how this is healthy. 95% of our time, we have an EBITDA level that is very good, very satisfactory, as well as the revenue.

But this is a very solid operation. We see that we're getting into new operations through mergers and acquisitions. Here are the things that make sense, really. Here in the middle, we have our renewable base, the former FIES undergraduate students, the number of students that are renewable, on the other side, without taking into account FIES. It dropped 3 percentage points, but the fact that we have more students that are former FIES is something good. It's over 7%, and it shows that we've done something good. Here, that number that I just mentioned, that was just last year. We have the former laws and the court decisions. We have an increase in tickets, and then there is a reduction once again. I don't think that we have to celebrate, but this is an indication that everything that we mentioned makes sense.

We're looking at this with care. We saw that pre-pandemic, and we see the market working as a whole, and there is an effect. A lot of people that cannot reproduce this. I'm going to tell you, Haiama is going to talk to you about the financial data now.

Eduardo Haiama
CFO, YDUQS Participações

Thank you, Parente. Well, good morning, everyone. Let's go to slide nine. Let's talk about revenue. As Parente has commented in the first slide, we suffered throughout the quarter because of the court decisions. Except for that, our revenue has grown almost 30%- 27% year-on-year. Even so, if we remove the acquisitions, we would have grown anyway. One important point showing in the graph is the drop in FIES students, not only compensated by the digital learning, but as well, we can see the adjustment of the revenue adjustments.

We have the court decisions and the medicine as well as the on-campus, which is stable. On the former slide. On the next slide, 10. We have the costs and expenses that are under control. In terms of costs, former acquisitions, we have dropped 2% from BRL 633 million to BRL 618 million year-on-year. If we had included acquisitions, this would have grown 26%. Here is an important point. On the contrary of the second quarter, where we have had a lot of issues with PDD, and we have the financial discount that is proportional to revenue, it is very stable year-on-year. This is very important data that has been highlighted in such a way. When we look at slide 11, the EBITDA.

Our EBITDA, adjusted by the laws, the court decisions, it would have grown 20% without acquisitions, 3% growth. This EBITDA, an important point that maybe was not clear, and this is a point that we have to highlight. When Parente commented the issue of the opening of the revenue and the importance that medicine and digital learning has in the proportion of the revenue in the big sectors that are growing after M&A, the EBITDA reported would have been higher. The adjusted EBITDA was being higher. Here we have a growth that if we just consider the EBITDA, is higher throughout the years. Let us go to slide 12 in terms of net income and CapEx. Adjusted net income, also adjusted, it is stable.

Here it is important to mention the issue of the difference between the revenue that we report today versus the revenue that we had the IFRS 16. IFRS 16 is a mechanic that you have to bring the rentals. The way that we are working with it is not perfect. It ends up in the first years of the flow, it brings a penalty to the revenue. The difference of the rent that we have had in the quarter and what we actually reported as an expense between depreciation and financial expenses just in the quarter is BRL 32 million. It worsened our income in IFRS. On the table on the right, CapEx. Here, more than taking a look at CapEx and what was really the basis.

One point that we have already mentioned for some revenues, for some earnings calls, it is the investment that we are doing for the digital transformation of the company. Just this year, we have had over BRL 70 million invested without taking into consideration the digital content that we are creating. This is a transformation that is very important, that has taken place since last year, and it will last for another two to three years, this investment phase. Slide 13. The collection and cash generation as a whole. As it was mentioned, we understand that our level of provisions is very adequate. When you see it dropped nominally in 3% if we consider acquisitions, but two big assets that you are acquiring, it is normal that this decreases. In regards to the number of days of invoicing, very stable year-on-year. Because of the acquisitions, the average receivable days.

Here we've generated more operational cash flow before CapEx. In the last year or the first nine months, we generated BRL 751 million. Here, nine months on 2020, BRL 909 million. Without acquisitions, we have over BRL 1.031 billion. Very healthy cash position with the net EBITDA that is at 1.41 billion. Last but not least, on my part on the acquisitions, just to show you the evolution, the synergies. Up until now in Adtalem, we have captured in an annualized way. When we see the annual rate, we will see here the BRL 170 million, which is against the expected, which is BRL 230 million.

We will incorporate BRL 70 million, and the big generation will be when we receive the authorization for medicine, and we will make sure that by May of 2020, we capture BRL 60 million. By the end of the year, we will capture BRL 70 million.

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Thank you, Haiama. Let's go to page 16. This is something that we've always knew, and I've never written it down. It shows a little bit more of what I've shown before. Here in 2015, half of our revenue was FIES. Here in 2020 it's only 10%. When we look at the business as a whole, we have in our revenue in the first nine months of 2020, 35% of medicine, which is something that is very good and it's been growing 20% per year. Our onsite grows as we expect.

What we have here, we have, of course, the court decisions, but we still will have the impact in 2021, and it shows that we have a business here, a set of activities and economic activities that are growing 18% per year from 2015 to 2019, the net revenue former FIES. These are different messages. I think that people made good decisions in the past in 2015 to choose when they chose what would be the business that would substitute FIES. I think that distance learning and medicine have been the two things that are generating cash flow revenues that are favorable to allow us to keep capturing synergy so we can continue following up on our business plan. The situation wouldn't be so favorable if we hadn't had chosen these two paths.

We see with everything that Haiama has shown, the cash flow that we have, we will start next year without that thing that was still dragging us down. This is good. On page 17, we have here the perspectives on the short term. It's still a challenging scenario. There is an impact of the laws and court decisions that are not ending now, and that's regarding the PDD in Portuguese, which is a bad debt pressuring the results. We've done a lot of voluntary actions here. A lot of things are taxed. This is not over, as I've told you. It's something that we will still see in the future, but with digital learning and medicine and strong expansion pace, this is the last year of the impact of IFRS. It's a scenario that is challenging, but since the beginning, the situation has imposed itself.

We were very scared last year. That was going to be the year that we would advance very quickly. We are not launching this as we expected, but the base has grown. We are getting next year in a very solid base. We have gone over 6,000 students that study medicine. We have 250 seats that are completely new. We are taking the elite content to the masses. We have a positive perspective for 2021. In long term, it changes a little bit more. We continue with the three levers. M&A, capturing the synergies and value generation from recent acquisitions. We need to grow on that. The poles are still growing, the impact of our new poles.

We had older poles that are going towards the third, fourth, fifth year, and we are always trying to find good opportunities that make sense and that will add value to our business as a whole. Well, again, we have money. We have a stable financial situation. The robustness of the business, the cash, and the organic growth is very strong. This is what we have for the future. I wanted to do something very different. We have a team here that we are very proud of our team. You do not have the opportunity of interacting with them. We did that last year. I would like to say that it was very nice. This year we could not do it because of the pandemic. Maybe we are going to do it next year. Then you will have the opportunity of talking to everyone.

I wanted Adriano to talk to you a little bit more. He is the onsite operations and also digital operations. Well, about the perspectives of the businesses and what they think for the future.

Adriano Pistore
Executive Officer of On-Campus Operations, YDUQS Participações

Thanks, Eduardo. Oh, good morning. Let me start talking to you about something that Eduardo has already talked about, that has to do about the new business model. Aura is, in essence, is born with completely optimized CGs. Aura has a proposal for the increasing our KPIs for the quality of medicine, not only internal but also external. We also believe in that, because the new teaching model joins the system. Digital content that is excellent quality, as it was said before, is the in-house content, as Haiama has said. The methodology of the teaching that is a national standard for all of our units and also teachers that are ready for distance learning.

We are capturing now almost 8,000 teachers in this new teaching methodology. This is the new model that is great. Today, over 6,000 classes being offered completely in this model that service more than 100,000 students. Basically, all of our students that started in 2020, and not only with the brand Estácio, but also the brands that were acquired. As we verified it, there is an increase in the satisfaction of our students. We are still not able to measure because we have just implemented this model for improving teaching, but the indicators of satisfaction have been considerable. Obviously, it was a series of initiatives that we have taken in the company as a whole, but our indicator of quality, NPS, has reached the best historical data in the history of the company.

The most important thing is that the big impact of these indicators are from the first-year students, where we improved over 40% the indicator of NPS over these years, which increases the durability and the time that the students remain with us, and it shows that we are going down the right path. On my part, this is it. Thank you very much. Now [Eduardo].

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Good morning. Thank you. Let me talk about a project where we've taken a very important step. It's our project for the partner polls, but it's a standardization that seeks to have an operation that is healthy for the polls and a better service for the students. It's a project that has a reduction in cost, but it's much more than that.

We start to have a full control of the planning, of the profitability of these polls, and we have an internal consultancy area that we've just created with these polls or distance learning centers. Here we want them to have a healthy financial life throughout our expansion. This has two main objectives. Now we have an increase in data. Here we have the number of centers, and that we keep expanding faster and faster. With this model for the centers, we have a lighter operation and we help our partners more and more. In a different situation, maybe we couldn't work with the distance learning center. This is continuous and we've taken a very good step this year.

We've left the operations more streamlined, and we believe that we are going to get to the 2,000 distance learning centers that we projected in the past, in the next year even. This is a very important project for us, for the continuity of our growth. I believe that was it.

Adriano Pistore
Executive Officer of On-Campus Operations, YDUQS Participações

Thank you, Eduardo. Now I'm going to talk about the perspectives for medicine and IDOMED. We can see that there is a very important impact, as Eduardo had said. We've had a big potential for the growth, for the base in an organic growth. A lot of our operations are still taking place. If we consider the 1,400 seats that we have authorized, throughout the year, we can almost double this with the authorizations for the medicals. We can also increase the space.

We have a very experienced team with the operation of medicine for enabling these seats, and we've had a lot of success with the new operations, and it brings us a lot of trust. We are really on track and we will deliver the program that we're presenting to you, and we will make the revenue grow a lot in the next years. Medicine is very resilient throughout the pandemic. We've had a good commercial. We've fulfilled 600 seats. It was performance that was above what we expected. Renewal was slightly higher than the previous quarter. As a whole, it was a very strong performance. All of that creation of a new area, new operations, is very aligned with the focus on the student, and we've talked about that, with the commitment, with the experience of the students. We can have a higher education solution for all audiences.

You saw that we had the court orders. I think that medicine was a segment that was very impacted, and we had a lot of proximity with the students. We want to treat the students in a differentiated way, taking care of them and strengthening our position, not only for medicine, but others. For example, IDOMED. In the case of IDOMED, we've had a very positive result. São Paulo is an operation that runs very well. That is maturing, and it's growing strong. Belo Horizonte is very strong. Rio de Janeiro is a place that we have to take care, and we are strengthening the operation so we can finally start to work with the operations. We've brought people that have experience to make this happen. In general, these are very positive results, and we believe that these will be fundamental for the future growth.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, we will start now with the Q&A session. Should you have any questions, please type asterisk nine. If you want to remove your question, type asterisk nine once again. Please wait while we are collecting the questions. Our first question is from [Carlos Santos], from JP Morgan.

Speaker 5

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for accepting my question. First, I want you to talk about the point that Adriano has said about the new academic model that was completely optimized. You have the 40% of distance learning that is allowed for the campus. I know that we are in a pandemic, so people are not spending a lot of time in the classes. As you are gaining margins and people are going back to class, would you review the tickets? Can you comment that 40% with the distance learning? This is the first question.

Second question is the admission exam, given the pandemic, and how would you work with the ENEM exam here as well?

Adriano Pistore
Executive Officer of On-Campus Operations, YDUQS Participações

[inaudible], thank you. In regards to the Aura CG, we've had the 40% that is allowed, 40% is distance. Not only that, we have the optimization for the minimum time and practical activities and the context as a whole. It's important, in Estácio, we've operated in a very optimized way. In the acquired units, no. This becomes a very big lever for capturing synergies. We can, in the middle of the year, at the third of the quarter, all the units that are widened, we would lead to the capturing of the synergies. We expect that the operations, we will have an improvement in the imaging with the advancement in the student base.

In regards to the second point, which is vestibular and the ENEM exam, the admission exam in Portuguese is vestibular. The test is something that we are taking a lot of attention, and we've had a lot of initiatives to see what would be the delay in the ENEM exam. So we can capture the enrollment before the process of the ENEM test, and we hope that this is going to be. We're expecting this to be a little bit later than the previous years.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Our next question comes from [Mr. Leandro] from Citibank.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you. Well, the first, if you can talk a little bit more about the strategy of questioning the legality of the discounts, how it's progressing, and what do you expect as an impact for the next years, for the next months, actually. Will this decrease with time?

That would be the first question. The second one, and here is the comment with the new CG. Do you see an opportunity of doing an adjustment with the structure at the end of the year, mainly for teachers? If you can tell us a little bit more how you met this. I think that would be it. Thank you.

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Well, do you want to work with the first one?

Eduardo Haiama
CFO, YDUQS Participações

[Sure Parente] Good morning. The main impact has been in Rio de Janeiro by PROCON and the public defensorship. We are working with PROCON to try and find an agreement. We are expecting to resolve this at the short term and closing this dispute in the judicial context. We have talked about competencies at the regional and federal level, and we hope that we have a better direction in regards to this issue.

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Well, I am going to go to the second part.

I think that the phase of the big adjustments was left behind. We still have some big adjustments in regards to performance. Everything that is better for the student, for teachers. Obviously, when we look at the past, we will have the synergies that we need to capture. Well, we are always talking about SKUs. We see the margins of operations of our partners. We will take the actions in regards to all the evaluations that will take place in that sense. If at any time we realize that there is any specific drop in our course or the capture of the student base, well, in a structural way, we do not see a lot of changes. But if we have any type of offerings, any type of SKUs, we will see a drop in the base of students. I do not know if I am answering the question correctly.

Speaker 6

No, yes. Just one more point in regards to the discount. When the student comes back, when a court order is dropped, well, that might be a point of friction. How are you preparing the return of the judicial disputes in the future?

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

Well, we do not believe. Well, we will try and discuss the profiles once again. We will analyze on a case by case. These are very specific points. Up ahead, there is a big impact in medicine. We have a relevant discount in a very high ticket. It is a very big impact for us. We do not see a point of friction up in the future.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Eduardo.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Mr. Samuel from BTG Pactual. You may proceed. Mr. Samuel, please verify your telephone.

Speaker 7

Can you hear me? Well, good morning, everyone. These are two very important points. First, a very detailed question.

Well, we have the analysis of the pro forma. We see here, I wanted to understand a little bit more, and just to have a little bit more granularity on the numbers. The question is about the price of the distance learning. You have a strong strategy for growth in the distance learning, and you commented that we are going to get to 2,000 centers. Almost 1,500 centers. Well, do you think that the distance learning, have we reached the bottom in the price of the monthly ticket?

Eduardo Haiama
CFO, YDUQS Participações

Thank you, Samuel. Haiama. If you see the main line that we have here, it is in the part of contingency, which is normal. It is just that, in general, it was stable. We look at expenses in the company in regards to the year-on-year, the year before. The issue of pandemic, in terms of cost, it is almost nothing.

The main cost that we've had was on the increase of the bad debt. But all of them are oscillating very little. There isn't any specific effect. But we can talk about this later. Also here, you talked about the prices. What we see is that we saw the competition dropping the price. In the previous periods, we didn't see a lot of changes, but we can see a drop that is slight right here. What we do is in the trade-off in the base of the ticket. We maximize the revenue, given that the capturing cost is not that high. We signal the trade-off, and we have to take into consideration that our margin is much higher than a big deal of the competition for a non-listed company. Given our margin, we can work with the drop in prices that the competition is doing.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Our next question is from Fred Mendes from Bradesco.

Fred Mendes
Analyst, Bradesco

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the call. I believe that this is more specific in the cost part. In working with the centers, it tripled. I understand that with the distance learning, this is increasing. Is there anything else that we didn't capture here? The second thing also working with the discounts and the core decisions, the value for the discounts has increased more than the net revenue. So I just wanted to understand how is the strategy from the future. Of course, this is a specific moment, but how is the strategy of the company in regards to this?

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

I'm going to answer this very good. Talking about the page four, we've seen the growth with the partner centers.

Remember, we started with our own centers, and now we're working in the smaller and medium cities with the partner centers. This growth is coming from a partner, and you have sharing the profits, of course. Just to complement here, we haven't increased those numbers. There is an issue of mix, and what we worked with about the operational model is that we are trying to reduce the cost of the center so that we don't increase the values that we are working. Working with a core structure is important.

Haiama?

Eduardo Haiama
CFO, YDUQS Participações

C an you repeat the second question?

Fred Mendes
Analyst, Bradesco

Sure. I think that the second one is more understanding when I look at the discounts and the scholarships with the core decisions. Yes.

Eduardo Haiama
CFO, YDUQS Participações

This, what happens here, we were analyzing the quarter, and when we looked at our ticket increasing, I think it's very nice.

We're finally getting to what would be at the bottom of the well or the on-site, and we are expecting. Here, the details of the results to our big capture. We had an intake that was very interesting of SKUs of higher tickets, as well as in the capture, which is where we can get the biggest value of scholarship in the first semester. When you look at the average scholarship, it gets diluted, but it was a good surprise. We capture students from courses that, in fact, we had higher tickets. The scholarship is a little bit higher in the first semester.

Fred Mendes
Analyst, Bradesco

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Mr. Vinicius Ribeiro from UBS.

Vinicius Ribeiro
Analyst, UBS

Good morning. Two questions, a little bit simpler. You commented about the investments in medicine, so we can improve the experience of the student.

I wanted to know if in the margins, have you seen an improvement in the ticket for the incoming students, or this is going to be something for the future? A little bit about the consolidation process that we are discussing. Obviously, you followed up on that, but the capital allocation, does it make sense for us to see an expressive change when we think about your M&A strategy? Do you have a position that is more privileged in the on-site and also distance learning? If you can comment on those two points and does that change how do you see these two dynamics, the opportunities for M&A with the bankruptcy that we see in the market?

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

With regards to medicine, in fact, we see that, and we are really focusing in the students and the experience of the students.

We've had the opportunity of readjustment the ticket for the first year. Once again, that happened in the middle of the year. I think that there is a journey for the improvement of that experience, and we will continue to get the profits in the future. Let me continue. Sorry, I was on mute. The issue of medicine, we had an increase in the ticket that is very relevant. Obviously, we had to open, we launched the campus on Tuesday, and three days later, we had the lockdown decreed here in Rio de Janeiro. We have to be close to the students in medicine. We have to hear the students so we can have a protected environment. We clearly see that there is a movement for the increase of the ticket, and this is completely within the projections that we've done.

The M&A strategy, just to be very clear, we would like to keep expanding. We did offerings. Then we didn't find that it was very aggressive. That was done very responsibly. We want to work to get to an EBITDA that is good and that we think that is responsible. The offering that was done was based on that. We lost to the competition. It was very aggressive. We didn't want to lose that, but it happens. Obviously, it's a bad feeling because it's a very traditional company, very good, and we had the opportunity to do a good growth. We talked about, well, this wouldn't be an easy acquisition, but we would have liked to have done it.

Vinicius Ribeiro
Analyst, UBS

Okay. There's four or five M&As in the pipeline, and the idea is to return. You talk about the bankruptcy. There are companies that are difficult.

There is the increase in the working hours, and these will show up ahead. Would you like to add anything else? Just to complement.

Adriano Pistore
Executive Officer of On-Campus Operations, YDUQS Participações

Well, talking a little bit more broadly about M&A, what is important? What Parente was commenting about the process, all the processes that will take place. Of course, you price with all of our levers. Well, this growth that you see in the distance learning that is growing organically 40%, we grow with what makes sense. As well as with the operational proficiency, our, and everything that we are developing. From the competitive standpoint, to take a look at M&A, we're still going strong. We have levers that are very strong in the part of the value. Obviously, it will be a case-by-case scenario.

These are markets that probably given the liabilities. We will absorb these students, and we will have to generate the liability that cannot be managed. We believe that we are very competitive. Everything that we have to add.

Vinicius Ribeiro
Analyst, UBS

Thank you for your answer.

Speaker 1

Because of the time, we are closing the Q&A, and I would like to give the word to Mr. Eduardo Parente for the final considerations.

Eduardo Parente
CEO, YDUQS Participações

We have a fantastic team that has a lot of discipline. Sometimes we seem to repeat ourselves with medicine and distance learning and M&A, but this is it. We have a plan. We are sticking to the plan. We have a lot of organic growth. We are really working, and the operation is growing a lot. It is a very challenging year. Next year.

Maybe this is not what we have dreamed about, but certainly, this is a year that we still look in a very positive perspective. Of course, we have learned a lot with the pandemic. I think that the learnings remain. New products and new ways of taking teaching to our students. Thank you for your trust, and I bid you farewell.

Speaker 1

The teleconference of YDUQS is closed. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful evening.