Earnings Labs

Afya Limited (AFYA)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 12, 2026

$14.24

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Transcript

Renata Couto

Management

Thank you for joining us for Afya's conference call. I'm here today with Afya's CEO, Virgilio Gibbon; and our CFO, Luis Andre Blanco. During today's presentation, our executives will make forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be related to future events, future financial or operating performance, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Afya's actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this presentation include, but that are not limited to, statements related to the business and financial performance; expectations and guidance for future periods or expectations regarding the company's strategic product initiatives, it's related benefits. These risks include those more fully described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this presentation are based on the information available to us as the date hereof. You should not rely on them as predictions of future events, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, management may reference non-IFRS financial measures on this call. These measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute of the results prepared in accordance with IFRS. This presentation has reconciled these non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures. Now let me turn the call over to Virgilio Gibbon, Afya's CEO.

Virgilio Deloy Gibbon

Management

Thank you, Renata, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today for our final conference call of 2025. The last quarter reflects more than financial performance. It demonstrates how our strategy continues to position Afya for sustainable growth as it continues to transform medical education across Brazil. We achieved our seventh consecutive year of meeting or exceeding guidance since second half of 2018. This track record reinforces the strength of our business model, the quality of our execution and the commitment of our teams. Today, I will cover key strategic developments and operational highlights that drove these results. Then, Luis Blanco will provide a detailed review of our operational and financial performance. Starting with Slide #3. Let's highlight our performance achievements in 2025. Our revenue for the 12-month period grew 12% year-over-year, reaching BRL 3.697 billion, followed by adjusted EBITDA growth of over 50% year-over-year, reaching BRL 1.680 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the same period reached 45.4%, an increase of 130 bps over last year. We also reported a solid cash flow from operating activities ending the 12-month period with BRL 1.548 billion, over 6% higher than last year, with a cash conversion of 93.7%. Net income followed the same positive trend as the last quarter and reached BRL 768.4 million, a growth of 18% year-over-year, with the basic EPS reaching BRL 8.32, 19% higher than last year, reflecting strong operational performance. This achievement underscores our disciplined capital allocation on buyback programs, M&A and an efficient capital structure. Turning to our operational updates. We maintain our leadership position in medical education, supported by 3,755 approved medical seats. Our number of underground medical students has reached more than 25,000 students, representing a 5% growth compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, our medical school's net average ticket excluding acquisition increased…

Luis Andre Blanco

Management

Thank you, Virgilio, and good evening, everyone. Starting with Slide #9 for discussions of key operational metrics by business unit. Starting with the undergraduate programs. Our number of medical students grew 5% year-over-year, reaching more than 25,000 students, while approved medical seats increased by 5% in the fourth quarter of 2025. Our medical school net average ticket, excluding acquisitions, increased by 3% for the 12 months, reaching BRL 9,060. We have also achieved BRL 2,789 million in revenue, up from BRL 2,478 million from the prior year, an increase of 13% due to higher tickets in medicine courses, the maturation of medical school seats, the beginning of the operations of FUNIC and the full year results, consolidations of UNIDOM that was acquired in July 2024. Regarding the revenue mix, 86% was delivered for medical school students and 94% from health-related courses. On the next page, I will present our continuing educational metrics. We approach continuing education through 3 main journeys. Starting with the Residency Journey, we saw contractions in the student base after 2024, but the most recent quarters already show a clear recovery. In the current quarter, the number of the Residency Journey students is 21% lower than 2024, but over 30% higher than it was in the third quarter of 2025, indicating that the portfolio is rebuilding. In the Graduate Journey, we continue to see a consistent and healthy growth. Since 2024, the student base has expanded every quarter, and in the current quarter is 20% higher than it was in 2024 and over 11% higher than in the third quarter of 2025, confirming the strength of its growth trend. Overall, due to a higher participation of the Graduate Journey products, the continued education and revenue reached BRL 284 million in the 12-month period of 2025, up from…

Renata Couto

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan.

Marcelo Santos

Analyst

I wanted to focus a bit on the transformation that you're planning from continuing education and medical practice solutions. First question is, could you please give some tangible examples of improvements you're planning to make? Just for -- to be more clear, what we are talking, where these investments will be done? And the second question is like the B2B revenues in the medical practice solutions, they were soft over last year. What is needed? How these investments are going to drive those revenues? Like what's missing? Is Brazil not ready yet for the kind of solutions you're offering or like some technology improvement that would unlock those revenues? Just wanted to understand the outlook for that line.

Virgilio Deloy Gibbon

Management

Thank you, Marcelo. I'm Virgilio. So the investment under the continuing education and also the medical practice solutions is much more how can we integrate all of the products and services that we are offering for the same persona on the medical journey. So imagine that we are serving most of the time, the same physician with different products with different experience under the same Afya umbrella. So all the investments is how can we integrate not only in terms of products and services, creating a platform that can have like a membership concept behind that, but also unifying the experience of that physician at Afya journey. So it's a lot of product enhancement, a lot of technology, creating a platform that can tie the physician not only for our continuing medical education program or an updated type of program, but also to all systems and applications that they are running into their clinics. So this is where we will be investing for the next 3 years integrating this platform, improving the experience, aiming the name of the game here is audience improving our audience into the physician base for the entire -- in the entire country. On the B2B, when you compare the B2B mostly for the last quarter in 2024 against 2025, we had a very big chunk of revenues recognized in the fourth quarter that we didn't have but also B2B is struggling how can we use all of our or part of our solution without a unified platform to serve all the contracts that we have. So also this investment will help us not only to leverage the B2B experience, but also having much more channels where we can monetize into our B2B offerings inside Afya ecosystem.

Renata Couto

Operator

Next question comes from Mauricio Cepeda from Morgan Stanley.

Mauricio Cepeda

Analyst

My first question is about the progression of the discussions on ENAMED and ProFMed . If you could update us on how the sector -- how are the sector discussions there, the possibilities of litigation in that sense, and if you do foresee potential impacts from the sanctions in your schools that underperformed in ENAMED and how are you preparing for the schools that were not tested yet because they are relatively new, how are you preparing there? And my second question is about how now you foresee M&A as a way to continue growing, given that the undergrad schools that you have seem to be getting closer to maturation?

Virgilio Deloy Gibbon

Management

I'm sorry, on 2026...

Renata Couto

Operator

Can you start again? It was mute.

Virgilio Deloy Gibbon

Management

I'm sorry. So starting again here, Mauricio. Regarding ENAMED, we are not foreseeing any impact on 2026 because our intake is almost 100% gone with a great occupancy. We didn't finish it yet just because the FIES/ProUni schedule that goes to 10th of April. So as most of our campuses will offer almost 100% of their seats on the first half, so we only have remaining seats for the second half. So the impact for those campuses that have some kind of penalty under the ENAMED rule, it will be close to 0. Having said that, what we expect is that the new ENAMED is expecting to happen in September. So now with a completely different preparation for the entire sector, now we know the rules, at least in Afya what we are doing here in terms of preparation, not only for the new campus that we entered this year on the ENAMED, but we are running 12 simulations to our mock test for all of our students. We had the first one 2 weeks ago, and we have the next one next week. So it's a strong action plan here based on the new procedure, the new evaluation system that we are going to be prepared. And for sure, we have a much -- we expect a much better result for the second half of 2026 and that we could revert not only the grades, but all of these penalties that we have over our -- for some of our campuses for 2027.

Renata Couto

Operator

Regarding the ProFMed that you asked, Mauricio, it's under discussion under the Senate. There is nothing approved yet, and we are waiting for the next steps.

Luis Andre Blanco

Management

Cepeda, Blanco speaking. I'll take the second question regarding the M&A. We keep seeing our view of adding -- of expanding ourselves through inorganic movements through M&A. We keep seeing that we can add 200 seats capacity per year through M&A, targeting the -- targeting business, educational institutions that have more than 60% of the revenue coming from the medicine programs and delivering unleveraged IRR of at least 20% nominal. So we keep saying that as a target, and we're very straight in terms of capital allocations regarding targets and returns that these targets will generate for Afya. So nothing changes in our view regarding inorganic expansion.

Renata Couto

Operator

Next question comes from Flavio Yoshida from Bank of America.

Flavio Yoshida

Analyst

The first one is if you guys could help us to understand what happened on the operational expenses? We saw that it increased only 1% year-over-year. It wasn't a much higher running rate in the previous quarters, roughly a 10% increase year-over-year. So how much of that can we consider going forward? And then also on CapEx, we saw a very significant increase on intangible assets on the CapEx. So it would be very good if you could share the reason for that. And then my second question is on the guidance. So when we see the guidance, we see that there is an implied EBITDA margin for this year that is lower than 2025, right? So the midpoint of the guidance would be around 43.5%, which compares to 45.4% from 2025. So I would like to understand the main reasons for such EBITDA margin decrease into 2026.

Luis Andre Blanco

Management

Thanks, Flavio. I'll start with the first one. Our CapEx regarding 2025 has increased mostly in the intangible because all this program regarding these investments that Virgilio mentioned under Continuing Education and SPM segments. We started it at the fourth quarter of 2025. So we started this program in the fourth quarter. That's why we have an acceleration of the CapEx during the fourth quarter. That's why we have increase in intangibles on the fourth quarter. Regarding OpEx, we have achieved our view for the year. There is some seasonality on that, and we can provide more color after the call directly to you. Regarding the reductions in terms of margins, if we can -- in 2026, if we got the midpoint of the EBITDA guidance and the midpoint of the revenue guidance and compare with the margins that we delivered in 2025, we are talking about 190 bps reductions on it. This is partly reflecting the impact of the program that we are putting in place regarding the expansions in Continuing Education and SPM and as well a mix effect that the segments of Continuing Educational and SPM will grow faster than the Undergrad segment.

Renata Couto

Operator

Next question comes from Andre Salles from UBS.

Andre Salles

Analyst

Congrats on delivering the guidance here. My question is more, I mean, on capital allocation as you guys are deploying a diversified strategy here in our read, I mean, you have the opportunity on consolidating med schools. You are investing in businesses other than higher education. You have an ongoing buyback program until 2026. You just announced robust dividends now. I mean, can you guys comment on how do you rank these opportunities here in terms of relevance for the next, I don't know, 3 to 5 years in terms of your capital allocation priorities, as, I mean, they might end up competing with each other? I would like to hear more about it.

Luis Andre Blanco

Management

Thank you, Andre. It's Blanco speaking. I will take this question. This is a great question. Thank you for us to have the opportunity to do that. First, it's very important to highlight that this flexibility on capital allocations come because our ability on generating free cash flow. As we presented, we delivered more than BRL 1 billion in free cash flow during the 2025. And this gives us the opportunity in allocating in inorganic dividends and share buyback. How we think about that, the inorganic movements, as I mentioned in the Cepeda questions, we focus on having at least 200 seats per year in medicine schools that delivered an IRR of at least 20% nominal unleveraged returns. Regarding the mix between capital allocation -- shareholders' remunerations between share buyback and dividends, we see that a mix between these tools deliver the highest value to our shareholders. And we have in mind to start buyback programs when we see opportunity regarding the share price when we see value -- undervalue in our share price as we see at this moment. And we complement it with dividends and control our net debt to EBITDA. As you can see, doing that in 2025, having the expansion through FUNIC, paying dividends and performing the share buyback. We did that and reduced our leverage from 1.2 to 0.8x net debt to EBITDA. So this is our view. This is the view that we will keep for the following years. We see that we can keep our ability on generating a strong free cash flow in the future. And with this free cash flow, we'll continue to do business combinations with this 20% return on that and dividing the remaining through dividends and share buyback, depending on the share price, of course, and the net debt at the end of the day.

Virgilio Deloy Gibbon

Management

Just to add some color here, Andre. So how I'd like to see sort of the cash flow generation during 2025 and how we use it in terms of allocate this cap in terms through the year. So to reach this BRL 1 billion of free cash flow maybe 1/3 of that amount, we are applying to a buyback program, the 4 million shares. It's around another BRL 300 million the dividends, that's a robust dividend that is around 40% of our net income. It's 30% of our free cash flow again. So the other 40% also help us to fund future opportunities and acquisition here. So moving ahead, we still see a very resilient type of business that we can fund organically our improvements, our new products and services integration of all of this beautiful platform that for one side can be a beautiful growth avenue in the future but also create enormous advantage for our core business on Undergrad because we have more than 300,000 physicians and this is an army talking about our brand and also help us to have a very low cost of acquisition, keep the resilience of our business, occupy 100% of our semester over semester. So that's a very beautiful strategy in terms of capital allocation, investing on our digital platform, distributing tons of value to our shareholders through buyback program and also dividends, and that will continue for the following years and also funding future opportunities in terms of acquisition.

Renata Couto

Operator

Our next question comes from Lucca Marquezini from Itau.

Lucca Marquezini

Analyst

I just have a follow-up question regarding the guidance. So the guidance, the mid implies a 9% growth in revenue. So can you please provide more detail on the growth breakdown by segment and also whether this should come more from volume growth or higher prices. If you could provide some more detail on the revenue growth implied in the guidance, it would be very helpful.

Luis Andre Blanco

Management

Lucca, as you know, we don't provide guidance per segment. We provide the consolidated guidance encompassing the 3 segments. But let me give you some color about that. In general terms, Undergrad will perform in single digits, mixing a ticket effect that will be aligned with inflation and the volume that we'll have a growth -- a small growth that is related to our medicine programs are mostly mature. So at the top of line Undergrad will be single digits. The SPM segment will be double digits as well as Continuing Education. Regarding EBITDA itself, we don't provide nor in the real terms the EBITDA per segment, we just provide gross margins per segment. So don't -- I don't have much to say on that. Just saying that part of these reductions in terms of margins is related to the programs -- the investment programs that we are doing, reinforcing product teams, reinforcing sales teams in the Continuing Educational and SPM segments.

Renata Couto

Operator

Since we don't have any other questions, we're going to end the call. I appreciate the participation of you all, and have a nice night.