BIED3: quote, dividends and indicators for Bahema Educação

Bioma Educação S.A., known in the Brazilian capital markets for its trajectory under the name Bahema Educação and the ticker BIED3, is a holding company focused on private K-12 education, with shares traded on B3. The company traces its origins to a group founded in 1953 by the Affonso Ferreira family, initially focused on the sale of agricultural implements. Over more than seven decades, the business went through several sectoral and corporate transformations, shifting from equipment and machinery to agribusiness, fast-food franchises and, later, investment in equity stakes. The strategic shift toward private basic education began in 2016, after a non-operating period that started in 2010, consolidating its current focus as an operator and investor in schools. In 2025, its corporate name was changed to Bioma Educação S.A., formalizing a brand that had already been used internally and that replaced the former Bahema Educação in corporate references.

The company’s history is marked by distinct operating cycles. From 1974 to 2009, the group maintained Bahema Agropecuária, focused on cattle raising, which was sold in 2009. Between 1993 and 1999, it operated as a franchisee of the Arby’s fast-food chain in Brazil, through Arby’s Brasil. In 1998, the machinery resale activity was carved out into Bahema Equipamentos, which was sold by the controlling shareholders in 2003. Exiting the equipment, agribusiness and food businesses led the company, from the mid-1980s onward, to concentrate on minority stakes in listed companies with appreciation potential, with particular emphasis on the investment in Unibanco. The latter’s merger with Itaú in 2008 triggered the distribution of most of the capital, which until then had been made up primarily of Unibanco shares, resulting in capital reductions until 2010 and a period of operational inactivity until the end of 2015. This trajectory paved the way for the redefinition of the business model that culminated in its current positioning in basic education.

From 2016 onward, what was then Bahema Educação began systematically investing in private K-12 schools, building a group of leading regional brands. In 2017, it acquired 80% of Escola da Vila (SP), 5% of Escola Parque (RJ) and entered into a partnership with Escola Balão Vermelho (MG), raising around R$ 30 million through a share issue to finance these transactions. In subsequent years, expansion continued with an increased stake in Escola Mais, the creation of a high school program at Balão Vermelho, acquisition of stakes in schools such as Centro Educacional Viva (RJ), Fórum Cultural (RJ), Colégio Apoio (PE) and Colégio BIS – Brazilian International School (SP), as well as a larger stake in Escola Parque. In 2020, the company took control of Escola Mais and consolidated full ownership of Viva, Balão Vermelho and Escola Autonomia (SC). Between 2021 and 2025, Bioma Educação continued to adjust its portfolio, acquiring Escolas Internacionais de Santa Catarina (renamed Escola Dual), acquiring and later divesting the Intergraus prep course, and divesting from Colégio BIS and Escola Mais, in addition to capital increases and transactions involving convertible debentures that strengthened its financial structure. At the beginning of 2026, the group comprised schools in five states, with approximately 9,000 students enrolled.

Bioma Educação’s business model is centered on the provision of K-12 educational services, from early childhood education through high school, supplemented by extracurricular activities and ancillary services. The company does not account for its revenue in multiple operating segments, considering investment in schools as a single segment. Revenue comes mainly from tuition and related educational services, including extracurricular activities, school meals, the sale of educational materials and other complementary services. Its activities also include offering training courses for teachers, coordinators and principals, in both in-person and online formats, for both the internal audience of the group’s schools and external clients. As a holding company, it also maintains as its corporate purpose the possibility of holding equity stakes in other companies in the education sector, developing non-degree courses and providing administrative and pedagogical support services to educational institutions.

The schools integrated into Bioma Educação are concentrated in the Southeast, South and Northeast regions, with a presence in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Santa Catarina, which gives the group national reach, albeit with a focus on specific urban centers. All revenue is generated in Brazil, with no material international operations. In general, the invested school brands are positioned in the higher value-added segments of their respective markets, with some of the highest tuition fees in each city and differentiated pedagogical approaches. The private K-12 education market in Brazil is highly fragmented, with tens of thousands of private schools and a strong presence of small, family-owned institutions. In this fragmented environment, groups such as Bioma Educação seek to consolidate regional school networks through selective acquisitions and scale gains in management and services, in a context in which consolidation is still taking place gradually.

Bioma Educação’s customer base is composed of families that contract annual tuition and complementary services such as sports and arts activities, language courses, educational excursions and exchange trips, as well as meals and school supplies. The schools’ operations revolve around the annual enrollment cycle, with an emphasis both on renewing currently enrolled students and attracting new ones. Relationships with families tend to be long term, given the continuous nature of basic education, and educational revenue is recognized evenly over the 12 months of the academic year. Extracurricular activities, although more flexible in terms of entry and exit, are also often contracted on an annual basis. On the cost side, the structure is intensive in qualified labor, while physical inputs such as paper and materials for producing educational content carry less weight, with a trend toward increasing digitization of teaching materials.

The competitive environment in which Bioma Educação operates does not exhibit significant concentration at the national level, since no educational group holds a meaningful share of the private market as a whole. Competition occurs mainly at the local level, with neighborhood schools and mid-sized institutions vying for enrollments, especially in early childhood education, where the preference for smaller units closer to home is more common. Entry barriers in the K-12 segment are relatively low in terms of physical capital, but high pedagogical quality standards, established reputation and management capabilities are critical factors for differentiation and continuity. In this context, consolidated groups such as Bioma Educação operate in a scenario in which new national and foreign consolidators have been acquiring regional schools, without, however, substantially altering the sector’s fragmented profile.

Bioma Educação and its subsidiaries are subject to the Brazilian K-12 regulatory framework, structured by the Federal Constitution, the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (LDB) and the National Education Plan (PNE), as well as the rules of the National Education Council and the State and Municipal Councils. The group’s schools are accredited with the State Departments of Education for elementary and high school and with the Municipal Departments of Education for early childhood education, according to the jurisdiction of each level of government. Regulatory norms define curriculum guidelines, minimum course hours, the school calendar, forms of assessment and criteria for organizing the stages of education, requiring institutions to comply with minimum standards of quality and academic documentation. Activities are carried out exclusively within Brazilian territory, and the company does not rely on specific public concessions, but rather on authorizations and accreditations typical of the private education sector.

In environmental, social and governance (ESG) terms, Bioma Educação does not have formalized corporate socio-environmental policies nor does it publish specific annual reports on the topic, arguing that the nature of its activities does not generate significant environmental impacts that would justify such documents. Even so, sustainability and social responsibility issues are integrated into the company’s Code of Ethics and into the schools’ pedagogical projects. There are emblematic cases, such as Escola Parque in Rio de Janeiro, which obtained ABNT conformity certification as a carbon-neutral school for certain units, with renewal of this certification for subsequent years, based on an emissions inventory, a reduction and offset plan and external auditing. Several schools maintain scholarship programs to increase diversity in the student body, and Bioma Educação is a founding member of Instituto Fandoca, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising donations to cover ancillary expenses for scholarship students. In terms of governance, the company has a Code of Ethics and a Transparency Channel for receiving complaints and reports of possible misconduct or legal violations.