Digital is gaining traction and already accounts for 23% of Valid's revenue.

Valid gained fame and scale by issuing documents such as ID cards and driver's licenses, as well as producing cards and SIM cards. But, a little over three years ago, with the prospect of stagnation or slowdown in these segments, it decided it was time to renew its identity.

To stay in the spotlight, the chosen path was to build new businesses in the areas of mobile, digital government, and digital identity , following the rise of so-called idtechs . And the most recent snapshot of this transition, the results for the fourth quarter and the year 2025, have just been released.

At first glance, the balance sheet shows the effects of this ongoing change, such as the drops in revenue: in three months, 9.8%, to R$ 531.4 million, and, in 2025, 5%, to R$ 2.06 billion. In addition to the decline in quarterly profit, of 29.2%, to R$ 379.6 million – for the year, there was an increase of 42.8%, to R$ 88.4 million.

“We have this responsibility on our shoulders to change our revenue matrix, and we don't hide the fact that we deal with businesses that are failing,” says Ilson Bressan , CEO of Valid. “But our response is this portfolio of the future. And the more mature businesses still generate results for us to invest in these new areas.”

Amid the challenge of balancing these plates, he prefers to draw attention to one detail in the balance sheet: the annual revenue from digital businesses, which include new fronts and offerings with this focus in the more mature portfolio, which grew 27% in the year, to R$ 472 million.

“That’s almost R$500 million, which already represents about 23% of total revenue,” he says. “If we were a completely separate company, the market would be pricing us at a multiple of five times the revenue from this digital business. And that would already be higher than Valid’s valuation today.”

The market hasn't fully bought into this thesis regarding the company's performance. The company's shares, valued at R$1.5 billion, have accumulated a drop of nearly 18% in twelve months, and a decline of over 7% is projected for 2026.

Bressan provides other figures to reinforce his arguments. He says, for example, that the growth of new segments helped offset declines in more traditional businesses. The main one was in payment methods, with card issuance, whose revenue fell by 38.5% in 2025.

The vertical was also one of the main factors impacting EBITDA, which fell 11.3% for the year to R$432.1 million. However, the indicator showed a 10.3% expansion in the quarter, to R$120.7 million, with a margin of 22.7%, compared to 18.6% a year earlier.

Another point highlighted in the report is that Valid ended 2025 with a net cash position of R$ 93 million, equivalent to a negative net debt of 0.2 times EBITDA. "We have a solid financial position and the resources to continue financing the growth of our digital businesses."

This cash flow to fuel new business has also been recently reinforced. In January, Valid approved a financing line with BNDES that could reach up to R$ 300 million. Previously, in 2025, it had already secured financing of up to R$ 150 million with FINEP.

The company has already defined the next steps to be taken to accelerate this digital footprint, with a greater focus on one area: the integrated identification platform – from onboarding and monitoring credentials in these environments to the security of transactions and operations in such spaces.

After expanding the team dedicated to these areas in 2025, from 244 to 362 professionals, one of the plans already underway is the integration of all portfolio offerings into a unified commercial strategy, focusing on cross-selling, an approach previously unexplored by Valid.

This orientation plays a strategic role, even for more mature businesses, such as credit cards, which can serve as a gateway for Valid to gain ground with digital offerings in another focus segment in this new positioning: the private sector.

“Today, our account manager doesn’t ask a bank, for example, if they want to buy something beyond the physical card,” says Bressan. “But that bank is buying Unico ’s digital onboarding, Clearsale ’s anti-fraud system, and solutions from other players.”

By mentioning these players – and others, such as idwall – the executive makes it clear who Valid is competing with in this new journey. And, in this direction, he emphasizes that integration also involves developing products that bring together resources and technologies from different business units of the company.

This is the case, for example, with a product that is fresh out of the oven and combines the eSIM, an evolution of the traditional SIM card embedded directly in smartphones, with biometric features to bring an additional layer of security to transactions on these devices.

“We need to close the gaps we have in relation to the market and competitors who have taken the lead in terms of this integrated digital identification platform,” he says. “Much of this will be done internally, but M&As are also welcome to accelerate this portfolio.”

Valid's most recent acquisition, the purchase of the idtech company Flexdoc, took place in May 2023. Last year, the company looked more internally, expanding its holdings and taking control of VSoft and Mitra, the result of previous M&As.

“We evaluated more than 30 companies in 2025 alone and entered into more advanced talks with at least half a dozen of them. At some point, these deals may happen,” he says. “This is an important year for integrating this platform concept. But it’s time for us to go back to having M&A.”