Renata Couto: Yes, just a clarification. The due date for tomorrow is [indiscernible] timeframe to return with results.
Lucas Nagano: Perfect. Thank you.
Virgilio Gibbon: Okay.
Renata Couto: So the next question comes from Leandro Bastos from Citi. Leandro, you may now go.
Leandro Bastos: Yes. Thank you, guys. Two questions on our side. First one about kind of the rationalization of costs, the restructuring that you mentioned. I’m just wondering if you could comment how far advanced you think the company is in the process of rationalization? If you see additional levers for reducing applications and unlocking efficiencies or if we could expect basically what we saw during Q1 and basically the carry impact from these initiatives through the year? If you could, I don’t know, provide some color on how should we think about this margin dynamic forward, I think would be helpful. That will be the first one. The other, if you could also talk about how you saw competition during this recent intake season in terms of candidates per seat.
How was the strategy for pricing with of course, good volumes and kind of a pricing ahead of inflation? So if you just kind of can comment a little bit on how sort of the competitive environment. I think would be interesting to hear. That will be it, thank you so much.
Luis Andre Blanco: Thank you for your question, Leandro. I will start with the first one, and Virgilio will jump to the second. Regarding the expectations margins — gross margins going ahead, we don’t give a guidance for gross margins for the year. What we can expect is to achieve the guidance of adjusted EBITDA that we gave for the year. So that’s our point. We have — we are very constructive with that. We have been not only giving annual guidance, but achieving annual guidance before in the last years, and we are confident that during 2024, we’re going to do the same. So I prefer to focus on the — what the guidance that we provide the market, rather than give a guidance in specific gross margins going ahead.
Virgilio Gibbon: And just adding a color on that, Leandro, so we did a big restructuring process in the last quarter of 2023, we dismiss around 200 people because of the restructuring, we integrated all the companies acquired, mainly in the digital area. So in terms of COGS, I think we did — we already completed the work. So now, it’s much more related to growth and top line expansion than more cost efficiency than in the past. Another lever here was our corporate expenses that is — now, we are getting some not synergy, but we are growing top line and our structure is already mature after the IPO, five years of IPO. So we are also getting synergies on G&A expenses on the overall. And that is considered on our expectation on the release guidance that we gave to the market on last quarter.
About the competition, this intake, it’s close what we saw for the last two years in terms of candidates per seat, I think we don’t know why we kept so stable, the competition here, my true sense here that because all the efforts in terms of brand, the change that we did last semester, I think it starts taking off and helping us to attract more leads. And remember that we now have more than 300,000 physicians and medical students talking about Afya, using our solutions. So it’s a huge army knowing what we are — our company here is doing for their journey for their career. I think this is helping us to attract more leads and to fulfill all the seats that we are doing in the market with every semester, every year in a better way, attracting good students and a good level to complete our second system here.
So the competition for us, it’s quite the same that we saw during the — actually, since 2020, 2021, the candidates per seat was around 6.4 candidates receipts, and we have something between five and eight during the last four years. And when we analyze also the smaller campuses in more remote areas, we also have a very good intake and we could attract and enroll very good cohort of students to our school. So there is no news on the competition side on our side. Remember that we also have a very good condition to pass inflation, a little bit above inflation to our price year-over-year since 2019.
Renata Couto: All right. Since we do not have any other questions, we are going to end the call. If you have any other questions, we are in the Investor Relations area, we are going to be happy to help you. Have a good night.
