Earnings call transcript: Anima Education exceeds Q3 2025 forecasts, stock rises

Anima Education (ANMA3) reported a stronger-than-expected financial performance for Q3 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) of 0.07 USD, surpassing analyst expectations of 0.0496 USD. The company also reported revenue of 1.01 billion USD, beating the forecast of 995.59 million USD. These results led to a 5.42% increase in Anima Holding SA’s stock price, reflecting investor optimism.

Key Takeaways

• Anima Education reported a 41.13% positive EPS surprise.
• Revenue exceeded forecasts by 1.45%, reaching 1.01 billion USD.
• Stock price rose by 5.42% following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Anima Education demonstrated robust performance in Q3 2025, with significant growth in key financial metrics. The company’s revenue grew by 7% year-over-year, while net income surged by 88%. These results underscore Anima’s successful implementation of new educational models and its focus on digital transformation.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 1.01 billion USD, 7% growth year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: 0.07 USD, exceeding forecasts by 41.13%.
• EBITDA: 303 million USD, a 14% increase, with a 30% margin.
• Net Income: 38.5 million USD, up 88%.
• Net Debt Reduction: From 2.888 billion USD to 2.809 billion USD.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Anima Education’s Q3 2025 results beat expectations, with EPS and revenue exceeding forecasts by 41.13% and 1.45%, respectively. This performance is a significant improvement over previous quarters, reflecting the company’s effective strategies and market positioning.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Anima Holding SA’s stock price increased by 5.42%, highlighting investor confidence. The stock’s performance is particularly notable given its 52-week range, suggesting a strong market reception to the positive earnings surprise.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Anima Education plans to expand its hybrid education model and continue investing in digital learning. The company is also exploring opportunities for continuous education and potential mergers and acquisitions, while maintaining a 25% dividend distribution policy.

Executive Commentary

CEO Paula emphasized the company’s strategic focus: "Our main competitor is what we were yesterday." CFO Átila Simões highlighted the intrinsic value of education, stating, "Education has no price. It has value." These statements reflect Anima’s commitment to growth and innovation.

Risks and Challenges

• Macroeconomic pressures could impact future performance.
• Intense competition within the education sector may pose challenges.
• Expansion and new initiatives carry inherent risks.
• Regulatory changes could affect operational strategies.
• Dependence on technological advancements requires continuous adaptation.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Anima’s competitive environment and margin optimization strategies. The company highlighted its strong brand and quality improvements as key differentiators, while also discussing potential for strategic partnerships and expansion.

Full transcript - Anima Holding SA (ANIM3) Q3 2025:

Moderator: Good morning, everyone.

Karina Carreira, Investor Relations Officer, Anima Education: Pessoal, tá conectando? Vou dar uns minutinhos antes da gente iniciar.

We’re going to wait a little while before everybody joins to start.

Muito bem, bom dia, bom dia a todos e todas, bem-vindos.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Q3 webinar result of Anima Education.

Result webinar for the third quarter 2025 of Anima Education. If you choose to listen to this presentation in English, please click on the interpretation button in the bottom side of the window. Eu sou Karina Carreira, relações com.

I am Karina Carreira, our officer of Anima, and we are going to have Paula Hack, our CEO, Átila Simões, our CFO, and Guilherme Soares, CEO of Inspirandi. This presentation is being recorded, and it will be made available today on our investors’ website, where you can find all the other materials of these earning results. At the end of the presentation, we’re going to have a Q&A time, and if you wish to ask a question, just click on raise hand. Paula, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Karina. Good morning, everyone.

Estamos muito felizes.

We are very happy to be sharing with you today the results of our third quarter and the accumulated results of the first nine months of 2025. You have the numbers in your hands, so perhaps the most important is to understand the story that those numbers tell. We’ve reached in this third quarter revenue above BRL 1 million, growing more than 7% regarding Q3 last year, accumulated over BRL 3 billion revenue in the first nine months of the year. Very significant result, very consistent, robust with ticket growth in all the segments of the company. Looking at our profitability, we were able to deliver growth of over 14% of our EBITDA, reaching BRL 303 million, and also representing a significant margin. Historical record, the best third quarter that we have delivering over 30% profitability, generating net income growing almost 88%, reaching BRL 38.5 million.

Looking at our cash generation, that is so important to our business and our deleveraging, this cash generation grows 26%. It’s a great highlight we call here to our deleveraging that for the first time since the integration of Laureate, we reached the best deleveraging of the company constantly in an organic fashion over the past 11 quarters, reaching to 2.4. To deepen on these numbers and to bring more details to you, I’m going to call my co-pilot, our dear CFO, Átila Simões. Up to you. Thank you, Paula. Good morning, all investors following us, the Anima Educators, and all of you following Anima in this journey. Moving on to the next slide where we can see more some of the numbers we’ve been able to.

Moving into the core segment, a great message here or takeaway message is the growth of the ticket, another cycle of intake, smaller cycle. We know it is not so important as the beginning of the year. Even so, we were able to grow intake 5.4% in the nine months. We have 7.1%, very important, reflecting our strategic choices, the assertiveness of our brands, the improvement of our offerings and services, because without going into price reduction debate, we have been growing our new student base. We grow the base as well as the ticket, and we see significant ticket growth again, and this reflects the quality of our revenue that is shown at the bottom of the growth of 4%, as we have been saying every quarter. We keep changing or turning the curve, so we see this quarter showing this again.

In this mix between better intake, better ticket, we sustain the continuity of the revenue growth. This is what Paula keeps saying about our third wave and sustainable revenue growth, and we in our core segment are able to increase operating results and sustaining margins. We’ve always said that what we’re able to get in terms of operating results in the core segment will return with margin, and we can sustain those margins. There’s been a slight drop, but totally aligned to our strategy, which to us shows consistency in the results. The core segment has had very good performance in this quarter, very solid, but much more important than performance in this quarter is what it means to the future quarters. In the distance learning segment, we had a significant quarter.

Despite all regulatory changes, we kept our strategies and our choices, and we did not go into any kind of debate that could involve price reduction because we recognize the value of our brands. We understand the quality of the product we deliver, so we have kept our ticket and we have been able to grow even a bit more. Moving on as to ticket, we had a good performance in the quarter that has driven net revenue on distance learning growth for another reason that to us is very important as well. It grows because we have resumed the growth of our graduate studies. I’d like to thank and congratulate all the team of our graduate studies.

They have worked hard in the past quarters improving our product, our offerings, our processes so that we could resume growth also in this segment that is so important to us, which is long life learning. With that, we also reap important results of margin growth that have been driven due to our better use of our publicity funds. Since the beginning of the year, we have had several projects aiming at optimizing and alignment of our segments, and this has actually driven great productivity to our marketing investment in distance learning. We expand margin, we grow, and we keep very consistent in a segment that is impacted by the regulatory changes. What is most important is that this growth is not something that derives in an unsustainable way, much on the contrary. It is very much based on our graduate studies, which provides sustainability to this growth.

I would like to call my colleague Guilherme and turn the floor over to him. Please, Guilherme. Good morning, Átila, Karina, Paula, everyone. Once again, we are here to share the earnings results of the quarter and the past nine months of Inspirandi. We continue firm in our strategy of growth, sustainability, and efficiency, fulfilling our role within the Anima ecosystem, contributing with about 50% of growth presented in the past nine months, also 50% of the results presented. I would like to highlight here the growth of continuous medical education, which is an important front of our growth with the arrival of UniEU Medical Residente that has performed very important work to prepare for residency, but also prep courses and helping education organizations. We had it happening about three weeks ago.

In addition to UniEU Medical Residente, we also have the opening of some campuses specifically dedicated to continuous education. In October, we opened in Recife and São Paulo, two campuses that are very impacting, that reflect our positioning, the quality of our offerings, not only for education, but serving the local communities as well. I’d like to highlight our student base growth in undergraduate and the continuous ticket growth that leads us to this revenue. I turn back to Átila and I’ll be available for the Q&A session at the end. Thank you very much, Guilherme. Congratulations to the whole Inspirandi team. Very sound results, very consistent that showed the strength of medical education in our ecosystem. All those results together contributed to a growth that is quite important of our EBITDA of 14.4%, driven both by the revenue growth as well as by greater efficiency.

It’s on our top line. We’ve grown 7%. Here we grow 14%. That shows that our business is important. The scale is important. Scale gains are important. Operating leverage is important. We have been able to reap the benefits of such greater operating leverage. This is very clear in the progress of such results. Naturally, we have even greater results in net income. With this, we expand in a significant way our net income, which shows the health of our results, shows, as we will see in the next slide, even having greater financial impact because of the increase of our CDI rate, our interest rates, that we can offset this macroeconomic factor that we cannot interfere on. To highlight that our business, even in a scenario of higher financial cost, has been presenting cash generation, results growth, and net income that is growing every quarter.

What we can see on the next slide is that we maintain this slide is very important because it shows that our ability to generate cash is actually given in a scenario where we invest more in our schools. We have been investing in technology. We have been growing our services and our offerings. Technology has been supporting growth in operating efficiency. We are very happy with our choices. I would like to congratulate all the digital transformation team, as you have seen in the management message. We have been recognized in a very important award, the Innovation Award in the use of AI in our business, a very important award that reflects the work, commitment, and competence of the digital transformation teams and also the vice presidency that has been working hard on these results. We have been working on new campuses.

Guilherme talked about the opening of a new campus. If you live in São Paulo, you can see it in Belacin. We have a great campus. We keep on investing in our operations and maintaining CapEx, 25% of net revenue, which is our historical performance. We believe we have conditions to have appropriate facilities to our premium profile and also technology, always driven our services. I think this is a new chart that we share with you so that you can understand the soundness of the cash generation of the company. To understand this chart, it shows the development of net debt in the past 12 months. It compares net debt on the 30th of September 2023 to the 30th of September 2024. We moved from BRL 2,888 million to BRL 2,809 million. It is a net reduction of BRL 82 million.

It is cash, free cash generation after all financial charges that you have seen that have grown a lot. Even with financial charges that have grown, we generate cash, free cash of BRL 209 million and BRL 19 million. We had a level before that was quite below in terms of the interest rate or CDI rate. Even with the increase of our interest rates, even investing more in our business with CapEx growth, we generate an important volume of cash. This is quite gratifying to see the soundness or solidity of our cash generation. How have we used it? You can see that we have invested in Continuous Medical Education of Inspirandi, BRL 54 million, and they are delivering results. You can see in the results release that the net revenue of Continuous Medical Education is growing.

We had the acquisition of minority stake at the Medical School of Guanambi-Brumado, the UniFG. We invested BRL 30 million in the acquisition of 45% remaining. We also invested in the new. We have explored new boundaries of education at a university that is totally pioneer and innovative, showing our DNA with the opening of community. At the end, Karina, once again, I’d like to invite you to our investor’s day. This chart is very important to show the soundness of our results and our ability to generate cash, considering a very challenging macroeconomic scenario. Once it improves, this green bar has the ability of becoming even bigger. Our operations will certainly lead us to reap even better and growing results from now onwards. With this, we maintain a very solid cash position, very comfortable liquidity to face such a volatile world we live in today.

We have, after the works of debt management carried out in the past few times, we have very little commitments for the forthcoming years. We have a very comfortable cash position, making us reassured to focus on our end activity. This is our purpose. This is what will drive results from now on, cash management of the company, providing total tranquility in this dimension. Those results show to us a very important achievement. We lower leverage to 2.40. It is below 2.50, the lowest leverage since the acquisition of the Laureate assets in Brazil. Quite impressive result, which is a consequence of the EBITDA growth and cash generation. Even investing in our business, even our facing wind against us coming from the Selic rate, we reduce in a significant way the leverage of the company.

I would like now to thank all the educators of our group, those educators that bring the soundness and the consistency of such results. Over 15,000 people whose hearts and minds are dedicated to our greater purpose, transforming lives and the country through education. Moving on to the next and last slide, I’d like to turn back to you, Paula. Thank you all very much, and I wish you all a great Friday. Thank you very much, Átila. Thank you, Guilherme, Karina. Guys, our strategy is yielding results. Those numbers of consistent growth, quarter after quarter, show that we are on the right track. This is simplified and is explained in the following way. We are making the right strategic choices.

Those choices are being carried out with a lot of discipline, consistency, commitment by a great team, incredible, competent, committed to making it happen so that we can have our third wave. We keep on committed to excellency, student experience, academic quality of what we deliver every day, providing this great experience between students and professors. We have very high levels. This is beautiful to live, all this feeling and this delivery that is behind that generates those numbers, keeping the focus on efficiency. Students’ money is going where there is value generation to them, to the company in this experience.

We’re taking very good care of these funds, and we’re prepared at full speed with the strategy being carried out to capture all the opportunities that are coming up since we have our regulatory framework in effect, reinforcing the commitment with education, this pioneer DNA that Anima has always had, thinking about the future of education. We have this major role. If I had to sum up in a word this whole story, the word is trust. It is the trust the students have in our value proposal that is increasingly more coherent and consistent, and the trust of our educators, the trust of our senior management team. I am totally and I fully admire all of them, our board of directors, Daniel Castanho, Maurício Coelho, Maurício Escude, Marina Galvão, Ana Paula Gomes, Eduardo Varenne, Gabriel Rendon, and Marcelo Cardoso. All of them.

It’s a huge team, a great team. Think about mentors that are every day challenging us, provoking us, supporting, and helping us. I’d like to tell you that Anima has certainly moved on into a new phase. Karina, just to wrap up, we’d like to leave you with this invitation. As Átila said, we’d like to invite you all, as we did last year for the Anima Investors Day, for you to get to know in much more detail all our strategies. All our executive team will be there telling you what we have been doing every day and what we have been doing to build the future of our third wave at Anima. Karina, I turn back to you. Thank you very much. This is it, Paula. We want to see everyone at our Investors Day.

Now, let us start our Q&A session, reminding you that if you wish to ask a question, just click on the raise hand button. The first question today comes from Flávio Yoshida from Bank of America. You just have to open your mic. Olá, bom dia. Me escutam? Good morning. Bom dia, Paula. Paula, Átila, Karina, congratulations on your results. Aqui do meu lado, né? I have two questions on my side. First is the competitive environment. We know that it is never smooth. I’d like to understand whether you have felt any greater pressure in the past few months, both in general terms or some more specific segment. When we think about, you know, price transfers, if you have felt more difficulties to transfer prices. My other question is on growth margin of Ânima. You have given us a good catch-up. You’ve had a good catch-up.

I’d like to understand whether you see more room for improvement from now on. Thank you. Flávio, I’m going to start with the last question. We have been very vocal that we’re going to continue with our efforts seeking administrative efficiency to invest in quality and delivery to students. We understand that we already have in Anima Corps a level of growth margin that is very healthy, and we’re going to try to gain on expenses to invest in more quality so that we can drive revenue. As Paula said, leverage even more the third wave of Anima. This is our philosophy. This is what we do on our day-to-day. We work relentlessly seeking efficiency and expenses in things that do not add value to students so that we can deliver increasingly better services. This is our commitment.

From the standpoint of macroeconomic environment, I’m going to start the answer, but just, well, you know, I’ll turn over to Paula to complement. We have this philosophy that education has no price. It has value. And we are improving what we do. So what we do starts having more value, and we have to charge for that. This is what we seek on our day-to-day, and this is what we have been doing on our day-to-day, and this is what is reflected on our financial statements. We affirm on our strategy, confident in what we deliver to students that choose the universities of our ecosystem. Paula, feel free to complement. Thank you, Átila. Flávio, the competitive environment has different challenges, but our strategy of having given power to the France, they’re working with Granology, competitive analysis of courses of campuses.

We’re not just looking at the 18, the IAs. You know, we have campuses. Each one has their competitive challenge. Some have to recover share. Another one is growing a lot. Each one of our business units is actually driven by its competitive environment. We have turned the game. We’ve opened this virtuous circle where value generation, you know, virtuous cycle, it goes in this positive cycle. You improve your experience with listening to students. You know, we listen to students regularly. In our executive committee, we listen to students and professors. We learn from them, so we adjust the route, and this has created this virtuous circle. Our focus is the main competitive. Our main competitor is what we were yesterday. This is our great focus. Thank you for your question. Thank you for the answers.

Marcelo Santos, do JP Morgan. Marcelo, só tirar do mundo. Next question is from Marcelo Santos, JP Morgan. Pela oportunidade de fazer perguntas. A primeira pergunta eu queria. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for allowing me to ask a question. I’d like to ask Átila. First, so you say you were saying that while you gain in core margin, you should return on the growth. I’d like to ask, what about the other divisions? This is more specific to core. How do you see this dynamic, both at Inspirali and distance learning? This is the first question. And the second question is more for Inspirali. What is your situation in terms of M&A appetite, and how do you see opportunities in the space of, you know, making acquisitions since you have some cash, and so you have the possibility of doing or having some M&As?

Marcelo, thank you very much for your questions. In the other segments, we continue with the same philosophy of gaining efficiency and expenses to invest in cost. However, we have more significant opportunities there of operating leverage. You see the growth in the graduate studies, the results that we have delivered for distance learning. You can see the growth in gross margin that is significant. It does not mean that we are not investing in quality, but that is where we have operating leverage, delivering a lot of margin gains. Likewise, at Inspirali, we had 10% growth of revenue in the quarter, very consistent and robust growth. We have ahead of it this avenue that even investing in better quality every quarter, the revenue growth enables operating leverage, bringing significant margin growth, although it is at a very consistent margin.

At Inspirali, you see growth margin follows a consistent level for many quarters, so we’re very consistent in the delivery of what we have been doing at Inspirali. On the M&A agenda, we should be always attentive to opportunities. You’ve seen on the chart that we’ve presented our reducing net debt, that we have invested our funds in M&A. We brought a very important operation of medical residency to drive continuous medical education at Inspirali. We’ve acquired the remaining stake of UniFG, so we are always keeping things on our radar. The company keeps with its cash position. We keep deleveraging. M&A is an avenue that should be observed, as we have been observing in recent times, and we will move on like that. Thanks, Átila. Thank you, Marcelo. Next question comes from Lucas Nagano from Morgan Stanley. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking our questions.

First, on core revenue. In the past Anima Day, you talked about some administrative commercial strategies to resume growth that is materializing. We’re looking at 2026. How should this change or continue? Should you continue what you have implemented, or are you expecting to have an improvement in processes, you know, new students, retention, pricing? The second question is on Inspirali ticket, if you can explore the components that influence those 4% growth items. In the first semester, you had seasonality issues. In these past nine months, you have 4%. If you could comment, what was this balance of readjustment or in terms of the mix as well? Thank you. Thank you, Lucas. On the first question, we continue with the same strategy and news, new things. This is Kaizen, continuous improvement. As we speak, things intake is happening. We work with those continuous time dynamics.

We have, you know, matrícula mais is a continuous thing. The journey end to end of our students before intake, during, and so that we have a leap in the experience with technology, all the areas involved, and we have very short-term actions, quick wins, a movement that we believe that we’ve had. We’ve always had the experimente seu futuro, experiment your future. You know, with a two-fold increase of numbers in the number of students. We have a consistency in our strategy, and it, you know, it keeps constant. We have the strength of the brand. Now we’re looking at campuses where we communicate. One campus is different from the other. The audience is different, you know.

The flagship items or courses are different, so we redouble our bets on the core, and we work that increasingly more with more granularity, data, and this continuous improvement of our experience and novelties. We always seek new growth items ahead in core, and I’m going to turn over to Guilherme to answer your second question on Inspirali prices. Lucas, thanks for the question. Thank you, Lucas, for your question. I think you have actually answered your question as you asked it. In 2024, if you remember, we had several calendar challenges because of, well, the federal government for the students that had adhered to FIES. That impacted intake of FIES in 2024 that was normalized in 2025.

Considering the inherent discounts to the program, this mixed effect ended up having this impact that was marginal to the ticket, but there was a positive impact to the student base when we were able to normalize those new students or new entrants. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, Guilherme and Paula. Our next question is from André Salles from UBS. Good morning. Bom dia, Paula, Átila, Guilherme, Karina, obrigado pelo espaço aqui. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the time. I’d like to ask a question. I think we’ve addressed a bit the M&A topic. If you could explore it a bit more. Speaking of cash generation of the company, if it continues at good levels, as you’ve highlighted, you’re reaching a leverage level that you consider more comfortable to possibly accelerate a bit more M&A, seek opportunities that are more relevant.

If I could also ask, where do you see the short, mid-term opportunities for the company in terms of capital allocation, M&A, receivables, capital distribution? My second question is regarding the regulatory changes. You have been highlighting it as an opportunity, so we understand that Anima is well positioned to capture that. The question is actually considering how you see that translating into growth, core, distance learning, or in margin. Thank you. Thank you, André. Good morning. Thank you for the question. We go back. We feel that the company’s generating cash is being consistent, has delivered very significant results over the past quarters. We are very confident in our ability to generate cash. We have been able to face the challenge of resuming growth in revenue in all segments, which is also a very important challenge, as Paula and Anima.

As Paula said, Anima is ready, prepared for this third wave. Having said that, our business is naturally a business in which operating leverage delivers results. In the business where we have evident synergies and very clear ones, it is a business in which we had, in the segment of medicine, several small-sized schools opening undergraduate studies. They will not act isolatedly. We have the regulatory framework that will drive the resumption of hybrid teaching and also on-campus teaching and less distance learning. We have the macroeconomic scenario, and at some point, we should see the beginning of a cycle in decrease in interest rates. These things bring to the education market, not only for Anima, but the whole education market as an enabling market for M&As. We should see from now on such things happening more frequently.

In our specific case, we are very confident and consistent in cash generation at the company. We keep deleveraging. We had a trajectory reducing leverage from 4.10 to 2.4 in an environment of high interest rates. We keep very confident and consistent, and we should assess opportunities all the time. We will keep on assessing opportunities. Our duty is to deliver value to our shareholders, and we will move on like that, obviously aware of all the issues that involve both the economy, the industry, the company, but this is protected by great confidence that we have in our business and the potentials that we have ahead. As to the macro changes, I will turn over to Paulo. Thank you, André. Still on this point, Átila, as to our financial health, it prepares to this new growth agenda.

As to the regulatory framework, which is one of the few things we’ve lost, Paula, I’m afraid. It’s one of the great fronts of the market. Is it back? It’s a structuring change of the market, André. It actually says what Anima has always believed in, the strength of an equality educational proposal to this hybrid, more flexibility, providing greater access to people without losing quality. We see this as a great opportunity of taking our hybrid education. Anima has always navigated very well in hybrid education. This is a very big competitive advantage of Anima, and we’re going to take this increasingly more to new places in Brazil. We have strategies through partners that have been selected, carefully selected. We have shared our strategy with them at full speed. We’ll give you more details on that on the Anima Investor Day.

Rogério, who’s our Expansion Officer, will share with you some of our strategies. The intake is happening. We’re doing that for the first semester of 2026. We are offering hybrid courses at all units, at all partnering centers that have been criteriously chosen in strategic locations with the analysis of our competitive intelligence team and market strategy. That’s it, André. Thank you for your question. Thank you for the explanation. Our next question is from Luca Marchesini from Itaú BBA. Good morning. Pessoal, tudo bem? Obrigado por pegarem as nossas perguntas. Aqui são duas. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. We have two. In the Ânima core student base, we see good intake evolution of average take. So reduction year over year. My question is, when do you think stability in the student base in this segment? This is the first question.

Second question is regarding distance learning ticket and the digital learning. We see a good evolution of ticket too. I’d like to understand how much was price transfer or was there a mix that helped attain that? Please. Luca, thank you. Thank you for your question. We naturally cannot provide you guidance. I cannot tell you when or on what day we’re going to start growing our base. We work on this every day so that it happens. We have numerous work fronts that are happening simultaneously, both in strengthening the brands, strengthening what we deliver in the classroom, improvements for students, strengthening our processes, our tools of intelligence and marketing operations. Several fronts have enabled us to resume growth in intake.

Once we resume this growth and we are able to sustain such growth as we’ve seen happening again in mid-year, at some point we should resume the base growth. When this is going to happen, unfortunately, we cannot tell. We have our assumptions here, and we work so that it happens before you expect, before we expect that it should happen at the first moment, and certainly will be the result of the work of all the Anima educators. On the ticket, especially at distance learning, it’s the substantially price improvement that has driven that. We have a bit of a mix, but the bulk of it is actually we’re increasing prices. Indeed, both for upperclassmen and freshmen, because we’re improving the product. It’s consistent to our strategy. We understand that there is a value there, and we understand that it has to be appropriately priced.

Paula, I turn over to you to add to it. This is a thank you, Átila. This improvement, Luca, nobody pays more for the same thing. We are taking a major leap in the quality of the delivery. What is it? Átila talked about product. Our academic department has made a quantic leap in our matrix with neuroscience, with major classes. The students have enhanced experiences. We have on campus with the brands that we did not have. We have people doing a great job in various fronts. We see the margin increasing because there has been major synergy of the teams, but also the delivery of a much better product that is the result of the effort of the various fronts. We did Pareto analysis. We want, you know, unlock 80% of value.

We knew that in distance learning, that had to be at the level that Anima delivers. It took a major leap this year. There was very agile, very fast opening of virtuous local in this distance learning experience. It is not. It is an experience of digital learning, and we have another value delivery that is being recognized and acknowledged with this ticket, with a price and reflecting this higher value delivery. Thank you. A nossa próxima pergunta vem do Samuel Alves, do BTG Pactual. Next question from Samuel Alves from BTG Pactual. Good morning. Good morning, Karina, Paula, Átila, Guilherme. Good morning, everyone. We have two questions on our slide. The first is on capital allocation. You have talked a lot about M&A. I would like to hear you a bit on dividends. The company is generating cash, is able to deleverage.

What are you thinking about the agenda of dividends, having this new legislation that could actually have some taxes on controllers? Just to understand what you have in mind, if it is going to be a bit the compulsory or mandatory minimum, or if you should have changes for 2025 or 2026. Second question is, I would like to hear you a bit on greenfields. What do you think about greenfield growth agenda? How do you think AMPEX should behave for next year because of this? If you can have some dilution, if you do not follow this agenda of organic growth. Thank you. Thank you, Samuel, for the question. We have as the policy, the distribution of dividends equivalent to 25% of the net income of the fiscal year. This is in effect. There is no other decision that is different from that.

We keep on working on this scenario as to expansion greenfields. Paula talked quite a bit about the opportunities that arise from the regulatory framework. Our choice has been to find partners in strategic locations that have been carefully selected, that already operated with us as partners in distance learning, and that could devote to acting in the new scenario that is hybrid. As Paula said, I’ll turn to Paula to add to that. We are focusing on those partnerships. This is an asset light expansion. This is it, Átila. You’ve answered quite well. Samuel. This possibility with the legal regulatory framework to take our hybrid model to various corners of Brazil is by strategy, strategic partners. They know the territories very well, much better than Anima. They will be much more competent. We work together.

We offer what we can do well, our academic project, our experience. When you combine the best of both worlds, it creates what you see. This asset line allows you to grow in a lighter way, more efficiently. This leads to this movement that is structuring change in the market. We will give you details with all the analysis made by our strategy team on Investor’s Day. This is a very important growth that is light, agile, and powerful, that will lead to growth that is quite important that we are aiming at for the first semester of 2026. Thank you, Samuel. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Átila. Our next question is from Renan Prata from Citi. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the time. Very briefly, I’d like to understand.

I think we talked a lot about the regulatory framework, expansion of hybrid and on campus. What are you thinking for digital in essence? Pure distance learning, but the courses that can still be offered as distance learning. I’d like to understand a bit how it fits in the strategy combined with this new regulatory framework and hear a bit of the continuous education. You mentioned on the release that you see some opportunities there. I’d like to hear a bit on those two fronts. Thank you. Renan, you’ve asked about digital and continuous education. Digital, the movement that we carried out is coherent with our strategy, with what we believe in and against strengths with the regulatory framework. What is our strategy based on what we believe in, in an educational experience that is of quality? This on-campus digital, it is not considering the modality.

Go through the experience you deliver to students. Sometimes it can be distance, it can be enriched. We may have synchronous activities, moderation. We have worked on our digital product. When you see this improvement, this increase in the ticket, it is a consequence of the improvement in the experience. This offer is valid, and we see that there is this area that we do not, where we do not play. You know, this very super low tier is not our game. Ânima is not low tier. We are working on the premium sectors, and it is coherent with our positioning strategy of each one of the brands and, of course, improving our product so that we can work on differentiation of the experience also in the digital modality. Continuous education is where we have huge opportunity.

We know there is a market potential that is huge, that grows, that has this dynamic that happens with the strength of the institution, all the strength of people that are referenced in that field, that specialty or expertise. We are working very clearly where our brands have power, have a reputation, where we have strategic partners. We have the continuous education team launching courses that we know have a demand and that have people that are references in those courses. We are combining that so that we enable this growth curve that you see and actually aim at even greater growth. Thank you, Renan, for your question. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Karina. Não tem. We have some questions on our chat. I’ll read what we have time to close our call. There are two questions that are related. I’m going to read them together.

One is from Lujulica Valcanti. The others are Luca Bellucci. Congratulations on the results team. Strong cash generation, reducing debt. Should we expect dividends for the end of year? Lucas is similar. What is the strategy looking ahead of capital allocation, considering dividends, repurchase or buyback investments and deleveraging? Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your question. Actually, we have a company that is generating cash in a consistent way, which gives us confidence to see the future that is very promising regarding this indicator. Having said that, on dividends, as I said previously, the decision of the company today is that we have 25% of net income of every fiscal year is distributed to shareholders. There is no decision that is different from that. On capital allocation from now on, I believe it is a bit of the previous question.

We have to keep on observing the segment as a whole. It should view an environment as a whole that is more enabling to growth through M&As because the drop in distance learning that is to come and resuming on-campus teaching generates an enabling scenario for that. In addition, small-sized institutions that open medical courses and naturally our business, since we have very big operating leverage, it delivers M&A, delivers value. M&As, synergies are very evident. We are concerned about the returns to shareholders should look into all those dimensions and diligently follow all the opportunities we’ve had. M&As in previous levels of higher levels of leverage. We had a major M&A BC Med in 2023, Magicus Hesitance 2024, buying the minority stake or UniFG.

Now, now we move on in a very diligent way looking at what the structure is that adds more value in the long term to our shareholders. Nice. We have another question on the Q&A of Indiga. Guys, from Elo, how are you inserting the ESG and sustainability context of high level for the distance learning for one learning? Do you expect this work line to grow? Thank you for the question. I am suspicious to talk about this topic because we have a very strong strategy on ESG. I wrote a book on the topic, how to turn our businesses better for the world. Today, how do we work with that within Anima? Our academic project in the core work curriculum, as we call it. We have a curriculum unit, ESG, SDGs with sustainable growth. We have, you know, signs of happiness.

We’re bringing well-being, happiness, not as a goal, but as a basis because we believe that a student, a young person that has a good base can be fulfilled, can grow. We have neuroscience, behavior, et cetera. This base starts in the curriculum for all the careers precisely because we believe this is building value and principles and anchor regardless of the area. These things are present in all the curriculums and all syllabus, both in distance learning, the learning experience that is digital or in the on-campus and hybrid, all of them. The second part of your question, which you talk about SMEs, we recently announced Anima Empresas, it’s our Anima business. It grows based on a great expertise that we have, which HSM, this is really cool. I’m going to go back there.

We have our students, Professor HSM has learned to help companies resolve their challenges, contemporary ESG being one of them that is very important. Now we have created in this place of Anima Empresas, solutions for small and medium enterprises in all universities with capillarity throughout Brazil, putting all our researchers to the service of companies with funds because we have the Anima Institute. The companies can use that incentive law that they have to the possibility of investing, bringing solutions, bringing problems for students to resolve and practice this work of consulting and assistance to SMEs through this power of our ecosystem is already taking place in a structured way in this area. It is an important avenue not only for contributing to revenue, but also real impact generation.

I see Anima not only as with a learning ecosystem, but as an impact ecosystem or transforming society of the businesses, of the work environment and Brazil. Thank you for your question. Thanks, Paula. We have one more question from Frederico Xavier. Good morning, everyone. I’d like to understand better the strategy of early receivables of credit card considering the robust cash level and the cash generation of the company. Thank you, Frederico. Thank you for your question. Over the past years, we’ve been introducing changes in our policies of receivables. Everything we receive on installments, we receive with higher financial care charges compared to our intake cost. In addition, since we have credit cards, we have discounts made with the companies that are the acquirers. We have very low rates or fees that actually lower of what we can have in terms of investing our funds.

This is a system that produces some financial result that is positive. What can be observed in our financial results is that we’ve been growing in financial results from that has also helped in this cash generation so that we can understand this is the system of credit card receivables. Great, Átila. Thank you. Our next question on the Q&A is Igor Kaliman. Good morning. With this deleveraging in Q3, I’d like to know how much you see the leverage for the Q4. I know there’s no guidance, but just to give me an idea. I know there is no guidance, but to have an idea here. Good. I love it. You know, thanks for adding that as well. There is no guidance. Just to give you an idea here, we move on.

Our natural seasonality of the business, it’s a business in which odd number quarters are cash generation rather than the even numbers. They are worse than the odd numbers. The last one is a bit worse because we have vacations and the 13th wage, and we have the payroll, which are our highest costs. This will lead us to a small growth of net debt by year-end. We should still have a growth of EBITDA LTM. One will not offset the other, but we should have a slight increase in leverage. Nothing much different from what we saw last year. Last year, it’s important to remind you that we had in the last quarter the acquisition of UniEU Medical Residente. This impacted BRL 54 million in net debt. When you look at last year, take this into consideration. We should not see anything very different this year.

Átila, perhaps just to add, the question is looking at the next quarter, and it’s important to look at the snapshot and the movie. As Átila showed previously, a chart that was very significant shows the continuous reduction, consistent reduction of leverage in an organic way, even under adverse conditions. We know conditions are given. We cannot change them. We put energy or effort to what we can control. We’re looking at this context. When we have a change in the wind, we know it will change. We don’t count on that. We’re focusing on our strategy. When this changes, we know that for every 100 basis points for generation of CDI, we unlock BRL 30 million of profit to the company. It’s important to say. We look at the journey ahead. Thank you for your question. Paula, Átila, Guilherme, thank you.

Thank you all for taking part of our earnings results call. We end our Q&A session, and our team is available for additional questions. Have a good day and see you next time.

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