Virgilio Gibbon
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open
Thank you, Renata, and thanks everyone, for joining us today for Afya fourth quarter and full-year 2019 earnings conference call. I'll begin with a discussion of the highlights of the year, followed by an overview of the key short and medium-term perspectives for the company. Luciano will then discuss our financial results and our 2020 guidance. To begin, we could not be more proud and pleased with Afya’s performance throughout its first year as a public company. In 2019, we delivered strong topline growth, profitability and cash generation towards the higher end of second half 2019 guidance range. We have made significant progress on our strategic objectives, creating the foundations for Afya's highly predictable and sustainable growth. Moreover, synergies from our first round of acquisitions are starting to materialize; support an attractive first half 2020 as we'll be indicating our new guidance. We have executed meaningful M&A transactions after IPO, including the acquisition of IPEC and UniRedentor in 2019, and the recent agreement to acquire UniSL and São Lucas, which combined contributed 414 additional seats to our network. Important to mention that with these two acquisitions, we have strengthened our presence in both business units. And in less than one year, we have reached more than 40% of our target to acquire at least 1,000 medical school seats up to three years after IPO. Our strong operational performance was also driven by organic growth and our ability to successfully integrate recent acquisitions, extracting synergies and cost efficiencies. Out of the 11 companies acquired over the last two years, six of them have already been fully integrated in terms of process, systems, and curriculum, showing our strong capacity to grow inorganically and extract synergies fastly. As can be seen on the Slide number 4, in 2019, we had a strong operational performance across all key metrics. We have more than tripled our medical students base since 2017, through a combination of organic and M&A. And as a result, we have delivered strong top and bottom-line growth coming above the midpoint of the second half 2019 guidance. Our reported net revenue for the full year was up 125% year-on-year, reflecting our medical school maturation, the consolidation of our acquisition completed since 2018, and strong growth in the Business Unit 2. The strong topline growth, combined with the cost efficiency and synergies from acquisitions was reflected in our adjusted EBITDA increasing 145% with 320 percentage points of margin improvement in 2019. Our pro forma adjusted EBITDA totaled BRL 322 million in 2019, with a margin of 38.8%. Improving profitability is also coming with a strong cash conversion, which showed a ratio of 97% much above from the level in 2018, but [indiscernible] excess capacity to deliver strong topline growth with high margin and cash generation. On February 11, we raised approximately $87 million from a follow-on public offering before the unexpected coronavirus pandemic impacted the global markets. During this period of crisis, having a strong balance sheet and cash position are a competitive advantage to maintain our costs, leverage our operations, and enabling us to continue execute our growth strategy. On Page 5, I would like to highlight our acquisition track record. We have already concluded 11 acquisitions since 2018. These acquisitions reinforce our strategy to increase our medical education seats as well as to enter into new markets. Additionally, and equally important, as we continue to spread our ecosystem and our presence throughout through additional seats, new geographic regions and new products, we are building strong brand recognition and a long-term relationship with our students and alumni. In February of this year, we announced the acquisition of Centro Universitário São Lucas, entering another Brazilian state in North region. This operation, when approved by the undistressed agency, we will add 182 medical school seats and potentially 100 additional seats. Out of the 11 companies acquired, six of them have already been fully integrated in terms of process, product, and systems, with a very positive student feedback about the new environment and the curriculum already implemented. These results are the requirements for a sustainable growth that enable us to extract synergies in a short time after an acquisition. Now let's take a look on the Slide number 6, where we show the track record of our three first acquisitions concluded in 2018. First, FMit in Minas Gerais state, where we were able to increase revenues by 32% year-over-year, with an [indiscernible] impact on EBITDA that was up by 65%, a similar trend was noted at the other two companies. ISEP and FADEP located in Parana state, revenues grew 23%, while EBITDA jumped 75%. And last, at UNINOVAFAPI in Piauí state,revenues went up by 18%, with EBITDA going up 42%. So not only we were able to increase revenues by improving occupancy and average ticket, but we also increased the efficiency of these operations, integrating to our Afya's shared services and academic model. As a result, we saw margin improvements of these companies in 2019. Now moving on Page 7. You can see our initiatives to drive sustainable long-term growth and product differentiate. First, number of students. Driven by maturation of the seats, we expect 11% CAGR until 2026, a highly predictable volume growth as we fill all seats available every semester. Second, along with the acquisitions, we also received authorization under the Mais Médicos Federal Program, which we were awarded 350 seats, which translates into seven new campuses. We expect to begin operations of the first two units in the first half of 2020. We plan a total of four for the current year, but the situation of coronavirus might impact our timeline. The additional three are expected to open in 2021. Third, in terms of products and services, we have also developed new improvements such as tutoring, mentoring platform, and the second season for our medical residents to web series. The main objective is to help students with their study plans and their goals. Using the data we collected from each student, the tutoring institution is built to motivate and help students to engage and have the best learning experience, depending on the stage they are on their career. Number four, acquisitions. Acquisitions are a key component of our growth strategy. This is an ongoing process, and to date, we currently have approximately 500 seats covered under MoU contracts. We will keep the same discipline in terms of pricing, analyzing the market conditions and our capacity to continue to integrate new companies in order to move into new acquisitions. Fifth, margin improvement, as we still have maturation of medical seats by 2026 and synergies to capture in our operation, we will see long-term value creation through margin improvement as a result of scale, cost efficiency and synergies. Now let me spend some time discussing on more immediate issue the COVID-19 global crisis. Like everyone else, our first and main concern is the health and well-being of our employees, professors and students. We are closely monitoring the situation and have formed a special executive committee to ensure that Afya complies the guidelines for both Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education. And this is working very hard to minimizing back to our students and to our business. At this point, we have successfully concluded most of our admission cycle of first half 2020 until halted all on-campus activities on March 17. We are currently operating our education activities through our all aspects, for all students and reorganized the schedule of practicalities in order to avoid any significant impact on the academic calendar for the first semester of this year. If this situation continues for a longer period, we have some flexibility as we may anticipate the mid-year vacation in order to replace practical classes when on-campus classes restriction is over. In addition, mindful of all medical students in Brazil, we allow access to Afya digital platform, free of charge for medical education institutions over the next few months, extendable for the duration of the pandemic. We already have more than 40 medical institutions interested and have already 18 medical schools using our platform and helping their students to maintain their learning process and minimizing the impact of this crisis. Before turning the call over to Luciano to present our financial results, as you know, Luciano has decided to move on. I want to thank him for all his work during this past year, and wish him good luck on the next steps. At the same time, I'm pleased to welcome Luis André Blanco as our new CFO. Luis brings over 20 years of financial management expertise to the role. He has already started at the company. In fact, he's here with us today, and he will officially assume the CFO position on April 20. Now I'll turn this presentation to Luciano.