Good morning. Welcome to the conference call of SulAmérica to announce the results of the Q1 of 2022. Today with us, we have Mr. Ricardo Bottas, CEO and IRO of SulAmérica, and the vice presidents of the company. This conference call is being broadcast live at the internet and can be accessed at investor relations website at the address www.sulamerica.com.br/iri. All participants will be connected in listen-only mode during the company's presentation, and then we are going to start a question-and-answer session when further instructions will be provided. Should any of you need any assistance during this conference call, please request the help of an operator by pressing star zero. SulAmérica conference call is being recorded, and its audio will be available right after its end at the company's investor relations website. Now, we would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ricardo Bottas, SulAmérica's IRO. Mr. Bottas, please, you may begin. Good morning, everyone. I am here at the company, gathered with the executive committee, to talk about the results of the Q1 of 2022, an atypical period marked by the impacts of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which had a strong impact on the results of the health department and also in the seasonality. As to the pandemic, since March, we have been seeing an improvement in numbers of admissions, which may indicate that finally the impact of the pandemic is behind us. However, we're still monitoring all indicators related to that which are at controlled levels at the time. Now, I would like to take the opportunity to give an update about our business combination with Rede D'Or. After the approval of the board of directors of both companies, in April, the shareholders of both companies have approved the transaction, and on SulAmérica, we are really confident that this transaction will provide major gains to both companies, its shareholders, our members and business partners, employees, and society as a whole, combining two operations that are leaders in each segment and recognized for the quality of their services and capacity of sustainable growth. At the same time, we are still investing on the growth and development of SulAmérica. We have kept a pace of consistent growth of revenues and members despite the challenging scenario, expanding the numbers of members in our dental and health businesses. I would like to highlight our commercial strength combined with the control of the pandemic and the expectation that over the next few quarters we are going to recover our results, which depend on a combination of a better and higher control of frequencies necessary to the recomposition of our average premiums. We are also expanding our ESG agenda, integrating our strategy and purpose of offering integral health. We also have our not-for-profit organization with the aim of providing access to people in situations of social vulnerability and also to provide healthcare information and services, reinforcing our commitment to society, and reinforcing our pillar of emotional health. I would like to turn the conference over to Reinaldo Amorim, who since March has been our CFO, and then we are going to give it over to our health and dental vice president, Juliana Caligiuri, then Marcelo Mello, who's going to to talk about our life pension and investments. Good morning, Ricardo Bottas. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here on my first conference call to talk a little bit about the quarter's numbers. On slide number two, operational revenues have totaled BRL 5.4 billion, approximately 5% higher than the same period in 2021, demonstrating the growth of 6% in health and dental revenues and a little bit more than 19%, in our property and casualty businesses. Juliana Caligiuri and Marcelo Mello are going to give you more details about the growth next. Now, moving to slide number three, you can see the main indicators of this quarter, and I would like to indicate the improvement of all our business lines as compared to Q4 2021. This is a significant gain even though this quarter was challenging. Loss ratio, 85.2% is also above usual and was impacted both by the costs related to COVID-19 because of the Omicron variant, as Bottas has said, but also because of a seasonality that is still atypical in the health segment with elective procedures at higher levels than usual. As compared to Q1 2021, the indicator is worse by 4.6 percentage points. In the beginning of last year, we're still in with social distancing, and elective procedures had not yet gone back to normal levels, thereby affecting our comparison. As to Q4 2021, we already see an improvement of 3.2 percentage points. Still talking about loss ratio, I would like to highlight the importance of our price adjustments, both in renewals and new sales. These adjustments are already being applied, and they are necessary to rebuild the economic balance of our contract. It's important to remember that adjustments are more concentrated after the H2 of the year, and in this manner, this effect will be clearer after the Q3 this year. This dynamic is fundamental so that we can gradually recover our profitability after an atypical period of high cost that we've been seeing since 2021. Now moving to slide four. When we compare the result of this quarter with Q4 2021, we see an improvement of all indicators. The financial result is still a highlight, totaling BRL 138 million, in line with a higher average Selic rate, considering our exposure to post-fixed assets and also our performance with assets pegged to the inflation. Lastly, our net income this quarter totaled BRL 24 million, still below our usual levels for Q1s, but basically following the dynamics of our high loss ratio, but reversing the loss that we had in Q4 2021. Now, I would like to turn it over to Juliana to talk about health and dental. Thank you, Reinaldo. Good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be here taking part in my first conference call as my Orange, the dream team. Focusing on the numbers of the quarter, I'm going to talk about our growth dynamics, both of organic and inorganic growth, and also our mid-ticket strategy. Starting with our Direto product, our regional line with more affordable prices has been having a great performance. We already have more than 60,000 members in 11 regions with a ramp-up of these products accelerating since last year. We are focusing on a maturation of the products that we have already launched. We're going to have novelties in the pipeline still this year. We also have a forecast of launching the Direto Nacional still this year, expanding and improving our domestic portfolio and giving more options to our customers and brokers. I would also like to give you an update on Paraná Clínicas. We are expanding this operation. We already have 114,000 members in an organic mode as a result of our commercial strategy that has proven to be right. Now we are expanding the semi-vertical model in Paraná with expansion of the model in the cities of Londrina, Maringá, and Cascavel still this year. We are also advancing towards Ponta Grossa and Telêmaco Borba with a recent incorporation of the portfolios of the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Ponta Grossa with an additional 20,000 new lives. This is a new growth border for the company. In talking about expansion, we are finalizing the acquisition of São Paulo Saúde, which should take place over the next few months, thereby adding another 115 new lives to our São Paulo operation. Consistent organic and inorganic expansion, exploring new tickets and regions is our focus. Now on slide six, I'll talk about our operational performance. The revenues have increased 6% in the quarter, reflecting primarily the increasing number of beneficiaries of group groups and also price adjustments in all our price lists, more than offsetting the effects of the portfolio mix. As Reinaldo said, it's something that takes time. To roll out to the whole portfolio, it's going to be more concentrated as of the Q3. The positive performance in increased number of beneficiaries presented throughout 2021 was also maintained the first months of the year. We have expanded our base of clients and reached 4.4 million beneficiaries in group plans, adding 239,000 more lives, which is an organic growth. It's over 120,000 net additions plus 118,000 lives in dental, which is a performance consistent and above the average of the market. Now going into loss ratio, slide 7. As Bottas and Reinaldo pointed out, it was still an atypical period. In addition to price adjustments, we should not fail to mention the inflation. The first months of the year, there was a very relevant impact also of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which was an offender in the period with estimated cost of BRL 200 million. Combined with elective frequency, which was somewhat normal, there is an indicator of loss ratio of 86.5% above what used to be the loss ratio in previous quarters. Comparing to the fourth quarter 2021, it means an improvement of 2.9 percentage points. These effects of loss ratio have impact directly our gross margin with a worsening of 52% over the Q1 2021, but an improvement of 90% compared to the fourth quarter 2021. Despite those atypical periods in the last years and the results below what we expected, we are going to really move towards normalization with the end of the pandemic. We are going to review really the track record of SulAmérica. Since I joined the company, we've been really focusing on having a very robust operation with a very strong strategic growth, which has been right. Now I would like to hand it over to Marcelo Mello, Vice President of Life, Pension and Investments. Good morning, Juliana. Hello, everyone. I'll start on slide eight, talking about life, which follows that recovery trend that we've observed in the Q1 with a growth of 90% over the same period last year. Following with good performance of our group life and also our credit life portfolio with recovery of Safe Trip, which has been really impacted due to restrictions to travel in the past two years. Loss ratio has maintained a positive trend as a result of the decrease of death related to COVID-19, and Omicron has not impacted significantly our life portfolio. Now we are really resuming our regular levels of profitability. Therefore, loss ratio in the quarter was 42.4%, an improvement of 38.7 percentage points over the previous quarter, and 11.7 percentage points over the Q1 2021. Our gross margin followed the dynamics of revenues and loss ratio, adding up to BRL 33 million in the quarter, reverting the negative margin observed in the Q1 2021. Slide nine. Now we talk about pension. There was a decrease in revenues in the Q1 as a result of fewer contributions in VGBL, which was similarly observed in the end of last year. Our reserves were BRL 9.4 billion, a slight reduction of 2% over March 2021, following fewer contributions in addition to a negative balance because of portability. Despite this challenging scenario in pension observed throughout the industry, we've been working on expanding our portfolio of products and strategies, which still maintains long-term good foundation. Slide 10 shows asset management, and we have a total managed amount of nearly BRL 50 billion, driven by the growth in our own assets and third-party assets, resulting from our good performance with credit funds, confirming effectiveness of our strategies and the reinforcement we have made in our teams throughout the year of 2021. Operating revenues grew 2% with an increase in administration fees and performance fees. Fees really following all the credit fund movement with gross margin expanding to the same level of what we had the Q1 of 2021. Let me now hand it back to Reinaldo, who's going to close the presentation. Thank you. Now slide 11, we can observe that the index of administrative expenses, SG&A, was 7.5% in the quarter, excluding service provision to Grupo Allianz, which is related to P&C and CAR. It was a 9% increase explained due to expenses with advertising and third-party services. Despite the increase compared to the Q1 2021, the expenses showed a similar level improvement compared to the fourth quarter last year, presenting a gain of almost one percentage point in its index. We are still focused on maintaining these levels in control of our SG&A, as well as gaining more in operational efficiency. We still maintain our important investments to further develop the company. Now slide 12, let me briefly tell you about the allocation of our own assets. In March, 70% of our assets were allocated in Selic CDI related with the floating interest rate, with a positive in public securities and private securities. This is going to positively contribute to results in future cycles. In addition, we have allocation of 19% in prefix, inflation prefix, fixed rates, inflation-linked, and also 1% in shares. With that, I close my initial considerations, and we can go into the Q&A session. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to now start our Q&A session. To ask a question, please type star one. To withdraw it from the list, please type star two. Our first question comes from Jean Seski of BTG Pactual. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. I would like to touch more on the theme of organic growth. We see that in Q1, the company's organic growth was under pressure. You terminated a few ASO contracts, but what it impacted your organic growth? Also about an outlook for the year, do you expect growth to go back to the levels that we used to see in the last quarters? That's it. Thank you very much. Hi, Jan, this is Juliana. First, I'll talk about organic growth. In 2021, we saw a more aggressive market, and of course, we did not join the price war, and we had to adapt our portfolio. We focused on retaining our portfolio and growing new sales in a sustainable way. I think that the market this year is still very busy. There's a lot going on. Everyone wants to expand their portfolios, but we are very solid in terms of sustaining our growth. I think that our portfolio is very good in terms of meeting the needs of our customers. We are very close to our clients. I think that we still have a relevant space for growth. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Mauricio Cepeda from Credit Suisse. Hi, everyone. Bottas, Juliana, Marcelo, Reinaldo. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I also have a question on growth. I would like to talk about SMB. I think that the market has a lot of SMB investors. Everyone is trying to explore that segment. My question is about your plans. What is your intention in terms of SMB? What is your intention? Do you want to explore other channels, the banking channel or something like that, in order to be able and to use this as a form of organic growth, considering the apparent difficulty that you are having in big corporate segment? Hi, Mauricio. Thank you for your question. Obviously, SMB is one of SulAmérica's focus segment. There's still a lot of opportunity for us to explore, and I think that in terms of portfolio, Direto is here to fit into the segment, providing a more affordable offer to this segment in addition to all other lines that we already had. Our main focus in growth is through our brokers. We are really close to our brokers and this is a fundamental channel for us. This is one of the differentiator of SulAmérica's, its capacity of its relationship with brokers, and we want to move in that direction. We also have an opportunity of growing dental in SMB and we have other customers. Definitely SMB is one of our main focuses. Great. Very clear. Are you thinking of any specific product design in addition to the channel? Well, as I said, the Direto in the many regions where we have already launched it, we still see many opportunities for growth and we are going to combine this to provide a bigger scope. In my understanding, the balance that we have in the portfolio, we can reach different sizes of companies in different segments, and we are very well positioned to operate in this bracket. Mid-ticket is what reinforces really our strategy for the SMB. Thank you very much, Juliana. The next question comes from Vinicius Ribeiro, UBS. Good morning. I have two quick questions. First, about loss ratio. We wouldn't expect the ex-COVID loss ratio to have resumed the levels that you used to have in 2019, but I'd like to hear more from you. How do you expect its behavior? What are the most important variables from price adjustments up to regular frequency back to hospitals? Concerning organic growth, please tell us more about the market prices. In price negotiations, do you think that the tickets are coming back to healthy levels, or do you think that competition is still very fierce as it used to be in previous years? Hi, Vinicius. Thank you for the question. I'm going to start with the second part. We see that the market is following up at still higher levels. I think 2021 was harder. You see, this year I think the market has understood the importance of having some price adjustments. We have made significant adjustments, and we see that competitors are following along. Some want to gain market; others tend to reduce a little bit. This is something absolutely necessary in the industry. The effects of the price adjustments are gradual. I think we're going to see that coming in the H2 of the year, but we've seen the market following along. Concerning loss ratio, I cannot really anticipate what's going to happen throughout the year, but we still see higher frequency because, well, COVID levels are going down, which is wonderful, but elective surgeries have a higher frequency than they used to have. We are putting together a number of actions to manage that. With the fact of the price adjustments on the H2 of the year, and if everything moves as is, we will probably have better controlled loss ratio. That's great, Juliana. Can you share with us what is the level of price adjustments you've been working on? Just for us to have an idea of that number and what the market is working on. For SME or for SMB, the levels practiced are used, of course, for group plans of large groups, it's on a one-to-one basis. Sometimes there is a risk of downgrading or loss of clients, but we've been managing very closely our portfolio to strike a good balance. Our churn rate has been below what we have expected, so I think the market has realized that this price adjustment is absolutely needed. What I can tell you is that SME is following along the categories as expected. That's great. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ricardo Boiati of Banco Safra. Hi, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. It is a follow-up concerning the previous questions about price adjustments. You see, Juliana, just to make it clear, in your opinion, the opinion of the company, do you think that the price adjustments made so far are enough, in your opinion, to have loss ratio aligned with your track record in the company? Of course, I am already excluding the COVID-19 impact, which we'll face throughout time, and also the price adjustments of individual plan, of course, the individual book. I want to understand whether the price adjustments that you are working on with your clients, do you think they are enough, and then you can just go into regular price adjustments as part of the routine, or do you still expect something else to happen, especially because of the high inflation rates in Brazil? Now, concerning that, I have a second question. How do you see the affordability of companies and families which have been impacted by the high inflation rates? You've talked about the risk of downgrading of some plans going into more affordable options. Do you think this is a trend? Do you think affordability is becoming a more latent issue because companies do not have much space in terms of operating room because the costs are increasing? And one last question. Do you still anticipate the impact of that proposal of having a standardized national wage for nursing staff if this proposal is really passed and approved? Have you already started assessing the impact that this is going to have on SulAmérica and to the industry as a whole? Well, thank you, Ricardo. I just took note of them so that I wouldn't get lost. Now, concerning the price adjustment being enough or not. Well, there have been two years of COVID-19 pandemic, and those two years have really changed the whole dynamic of our industry. We've been making some price adjustments, but gradually we are going to redistribute everything. To get to a good loss ratio, we also have to get to regular frequencies, and this quarter has a lot of seasonality. The Q2 tends to be more impacted. Yes, I think we are going to get to a healthy alignment, but it takes some time, probably by the fourth quarter, Q1 2023. That's my best answer to you. We are on track for sufficiency, but still a long, hard-working option. Concerning affordability, we haven't seen excessive downgrading or migration to other plans. The growth of Direto results from new sales much more than exchange to or downgrading to a plan. This is a possibility we always concern. We understand that the economy is under a lot of pressure, as well as we are, our providers are, clients are under pressure. I still do not see any significant movement towards that, but we are prepared should it comes to that. Finally, about the regulatory wages in nursing, this is a topic of concern. It's not something that impacts us directly, but it certainly impacts us, let's say, with the relationship with our providers. It's a constant concern with the whole industry, and we really have to understand how this is going to become a reality. Yes, it does bring some additional pressure to our industry. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. As a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please press star one. Please wait. Our next question comes from Marcio Osako from Bradesco BBI. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions too. Number one is about the frequency of elective procedures. The question is whether these higher levels that you're seeing contrast with historical levels, is this generalized in all products or is it more concentrated in higher ticket products, for example? Number two, in terms of the adjustments that you are implementing for corporate contracts, do you see or do you find that you need to make more adjustments in products in contrast with history in order to adjust the loss ratio? So, in terms of network, dental plans, contract terms, and whether this is happening, how much does this affect in terms of percentage? And how smaller is it because of the adjustments in the products? Thank you very much. Thank you for your question, Osako. Well, now talking about the frequency, we see it in a broader way of we're not breaking it down by portfolio. Of course, different portfolios have different behaviors. So some plans have more reimbursement, but the use of elective procedures still high all over the board. It's something that. The behavior of the population after the pandemic is still there. About adjustments, obviously, we review our product portfolio very frequently, and especially business plans, we adapt it to our customer needs. There are many different ways of us keeping the balance in terms of copay, adjusting the network or different models and other things that may help us to control the claims. I do not see that this is going to significantly impact our premiums. We make these adjustments to gain efficiency and not necessarily to reduce premiums. Our sales logic, it's still to have the best premiums possible, but to have an efficiency in terms of claims. Thank you very much. We are now ending our question-and-answer session. Now, I would like to give the floor back to Mr. Ricardo Bottas for his closing remarks. Thank you very much. I'm going to give Juliana some time for her to breathe. Many questions asked to her. Beautiful first time, very challenging, and I would like to pay our tribute on the International Day of Nursing, the Day of Nurses, to say that we are recognized and are grateful to these frontline professionals, and they are an important part of our group of more than 1,200 hospitals and the thousands of employees spread throughout Brazil. I would like to acknowledge these professionals who are so special. Once again, I would like to thank the high level of engagement in our employees, the trust and dedication of our thousands of insurance brokers, healthcare providers, business partners, suppliers, shareholders, and other stakeholders who support us on this journey in a period that is still atypical in the first months of this year. We are going to keep working so that together we can bring our businesses back to normal and our performance too. At the same time, we are very confident to advance with the new phases of approval. We had better retention and high quality of our products, and we're still confident to get to the new phases for the approval of our merger with Rede D'Or as announced in February. Once again, this is a historical transaction in the healthcare industry in Brazil. For it to happen so that it is complete as soon as possible. Thank you all very much. Have a nice day. SulAmérica's conference call has now ended. Thank you very much and have a good day.
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