Good morning, everyone. I'm honored to be presenting our earnings for 2022 at Grupo Ambipar. These are solid despite the challenging scenario. The awareness and pressure from the society, along with strong regulation, makes the demand for our services grow consistently and not related to the macroeconomic scenario. Our strategy has been to be building a offering or supply of services that are valuable with innovation, standardization, and scalable processes. The accommodation of these factors creates many different entry barriers that protect our activity. Our mission is to continue to be a reference in environmental services. We are aware that we are a new company in a new sector with very few listed comparable or peers. We have committed, however, to be more transparent, help you more and more in this journey. Our release in the quarter was a result of this effort.
I hope you like this. We're also open to hearing suggestions and demands from our current and potential investors. We understand that the highest interest rate in Brazil bring in higher financial expenses, which generate opportunities to invest with returns above our cost of capital, and this is what we have been doing, which is something that our smaller competitors have less access to capital. We have a strong avenue for growth in this sense. In 2022, we focused on inorganic and organic investments to consolidate the market. In environment, we started to work with recycling glass, and we have been investing in a bigger center for repurposing in Chile. In response, we started with ocean, airway, and industrial services, as well as the biggest acquisition with response, which was Witt O'Brien's.
In 2023, we will focus on the integration of these companies and our capital structure. The transaction with SPAC that's already begun. It leverages our governance situation, and we've built a very interesting condition for liquidity with about $3 billion in our cash position to go through this market scenario without having to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that appear. With me today, we have Rafael Espírito Santo. He's our CFO at Ambipar Response after the SPAC transaction. Pedro Petersen, he's our IR at Response. Ricardo, you already know him, he's our IR director for Ambipar. Renato is part of our investor relations team. We'll start this earnings call, and we are really happy to be able to share these results with you.
We are certain that 2023 will be challenging, but we'll have a lot of opportunities for Ambipar. We can move on to the next slide, please. Here you can see a bit of the highlights. The growth of the revenue was about 74% compared to the net revenue with the fourth quarter of 2021, as we mentioned when we were starting here. This is a very robust level of growth with returns. The gross profits are in line with the growth in the revenue. We have been able to keep up with our margins, and we've been able to capture these synergies within the acquisitions performed. Those are strong in 21 and 22. In the top line, there's been important impact as well as in the gross margin. The increase in the EBITDA is about 82%.
It's a bit of a reflex in our gross margin. We've been able to work with a lot of austerity and capturing synergies and the advances in the margin. That's a bit of what we've been doing when it comes to the strategy, with the acquisition of assets, and with this we can make our EBITDA margin really exponential. We can move on. This is a bit of our financial performance. Just to highlight that we got back to our release here, and we mentioned environment and response. When we look at our return on invested capital, we've done many investments that bring in returns above our cost of capital. When we look at our ROIC operationally and we deduct the intangibles, we use this terminology here to make it very clear and transparent in how we calculate this.
This is about 30% way above our cost of capital. We can be careful in this capital employment and bring in the returns expected. About our financial results, as I mentioned at the beginning, we're very aware of this, and we are aware that the peak in interest does reflect a bit more on the bottom line. We are aware, and this is all in our strategy, that while right now what we would like to do is to add value to our shareholders. We don't wanna lose opportunities, and of course, we'll have this exponential growth as we are delivering this very high, robust level of returns to our shareholders. Next slide. Here we're going to talk about environments, and our gross revenue has been growing at a very accelerated pace.
We had a small drop in the fourth quarter of 2022 due to some work we've been implementing with the profitability of our contracts. We've been reviewing our contracts, looking at them, and considering the returns they provide. When there's not a good balance with the tier, we've been working on a request to rebalance these contracts, and the contracts that are not being rebalanced, we have been terminating. This, of course, brings in higher returns. It reflects in our margins, and that's why our margins are a lot better in environment now. We also have a lot of awareness about how less and less we've been depending on major contracts, and I wanna, of course, get back to this about. Yes, we like big contracts, but we like contracts that are profitable.
We have more contracts in our portfolio, so we can really make the contracts that are not having profitability really be rebalanced, if not, we can of course terminate. We wanna highlight the CAGR in the last 5 years, above 70%. Once again, we've been able to deliver a lot of growth with returns. Moving on. Here you have our gross profits. There is an effect with a small variation in the gross margins, which is also the fruit of the incorporation of the companies we acquire. The third quarter had an acquisition of Disal. We know there's a gross margins a little smaller, we've had done excellent work there when it comes to cross-selling and also the project with GIRI, which is a work in progress that should be ending by the end of 23.
That, of course, will bring in important margin gains because the services will become more sophisticated. Over time, also, we've looked at some different acquisitions, and we see a small drop now. We've been able to gain traction in these acquisitions, working on the synergies, as I mentioned in the beginning. We have the glass market we've entered, and that's been very strong, bringing important scale gains. Of course, in this circular economy front, we are very optimistic with this market. As I've also mentioned in the beginning, pressure from the society and a more robust regulation scenario will bring in a lot of opportunities for growth and margin gains, of course.
When it comes to the annual comparison in the last five years, we've also had margin gains that are a little smaller in 2018, 2021, but we've had exponential margin gains throughout the period. We can move on to the next one. About the EBITDA, really in line with the gross margin. When we look at the history in the last nine quarters, if we look at the growth of the revenue, and we look at the organic growth and environment for the quarter in 2022 and the 4th quarter of 2021, we had a growth of 13%. After Rafael will talk about response, but it was also about 31%. Despite the inorganics, we've been growing organically as well, and this has affected in our margins.
About the CAGR, the EBITDA CAGR, we've also kept up to date with the growth of our revenue, that demonstrates we have been working with austerity, synergies, and a very strong market that potentially we'll be able to reach. We can move on to the next one. I'll pass the floor on to Rafael to talk about response. I wanna remind you all that in our release, in line with what Thiago just mentioned, we've been mentioning a market study that we hired with Ernst & Young, that demonstrates a bit of the potential in our market, especially when it comes to the expected growth and our penetration in the current market.
It's a market that's not very well known, so we actually sponsored this study with Ernst & Young so that it could base the overall market considering the potentials that can be noticed in the circular economy front highlighted by Thiago. We have some information on our release about the study that will be presented completely in our Ambipar Day that we're gonna be communicating. Just to mention that, Rafa, please. Thank you, Ricardo. Thank you, Thiago. Good afternoon, everyone, and it's a pleasure to be with the ones that don't know me yet, that we still haven't had the opportunity to speak.
Before we get into the specific numbers, I think I just wanna take advantage of this opportunity to say how excited I am about joining this team here at Ambipar formally, because we formally took over here. Me and Pedro, we started off in the beginning of this month formally, right? Our relationship with the group started in the end of 2021, actually. Ever since then, we have all of the team from HPX that has been close to the company in this period, in this process. The more we got to know about the business, the more we liked it. It's a business that we understood would meet all of the investment criteria's that HPX had established back then. It's a business model that is very unique.
It's a winning business model, and it's dominant in Brazil, with a potential to be replicated to other countries, especially in North America. Of course, with shareholders that are really long term. These are shareholders that not only the controller, but other shareholders that we were able to bring to Ambipar Response and that have a very long-term vision. This is why, and due to all of this, I am very excited to be with the team and being able to contribute to this story that's been so successful in the past years, but still has a lot of potential up ahead. We have been directly contributing with Ambipar Response initially, and indirectly, of course, we'll be contributing with the holding company as a whole and with the shareholders as well.
Now, as we move on to the next slides, if we start off with revenue, we can see we have two main highlights, with a very similar trend as that presented in Environment. They're really kind of following some similar trends. Response has been able to grow its revenue over 100% a year in the last three years with the maintenance of margins. It's a growth that we've been able to keep at a very profitable level. In the revenue, we have a major contribution from the M&As that have been done throughout the year. We had nine M&As, but more specifically, we had four in North America, three in Canada, one in the U.S., and growth as well in inorganic.
If you look at the fourth quarter, the only contribution that we had was from Witt O'Brien's, contributing BRL 168 million. Even with the exception of Witt O'Brien's and all the other acquisitions we had during 2022, and that concept that is very common in retail, which is the same-store sales. If we get the same companies that were already at our base, in response in the fourth quarter of 2021, we have a growth that is above or higher than 30%. This growth is really coming from cross-selling and this integration we've already implemented. This is a strategy that the company has. Whenever we acquire a new company, really being able to conduct the rebranding work, and the focus is really to move the brand to Ambipar Response.
This is something that's already been done in all of the operations acquired globally. We have access to this sales platform that's very strong. You have asset sharing and of course, cross-selling. This brings in a lot of synergies to the business's operations and of course, this organic growth that's so interesting. Another important point I would mention here is that, especially in Response, about 70% of our revenue comes from out of Brazil. It's in other currencies. In 2022, the Real gained value compared to all of this basket of different currencies in Response, especially in Latin America with the Chilean peso and the European currencies as well, the euro and the pound.
This, of course, made the growth in Reais smaller than the constant currency growth, as we like mentioning. We had a quick calculation here, and we saw that if we had mentioned a fixed currency, it would be about six percentage points higher in the fourth quarter if it weren't for the appreciation of the Real throughout 2022. We can move on to the next slide, where we talk about the gross profits. As a company that's purely service-related, our matrix for cost is very much focused on four main categories: personnel, third-party services, maintenance, and this is really, of course, focused on labor and maintenance of the assets, which is fuel and freight, et cetera. Of course, these lines here have variations over time.
Especially when we take a look at, when you consider all of the acquisitions, there's a variation also in the mix of what's been established at the basis. Depending on the geographic region, or the specific segment, this cost composition could be modified, and that doesn't necessarily mean that we are losing margins or gaining margins. It's just a matter of service mixes. Of course, as you mentioned, when we completed the acquisition of Witt O'Brien's, it became a consulting company. This, of course, brings in a higher expense in personnel expenses.
When we look at the breakdown per line, you'll have these variations with an increment in personnel costs, as well as a compensation in third-party services, which is a strategy that the company has, investing in equipment or presence where we were outsourcing services, and then you bring in this benefit in this third-party services or outsourced services. When we move on to the next slide and we look at EBITDA, we can see a bit of what we mentioned. You have this growth of the revenue and this mix of the costs with, of course, the control that's very significant of our expenses. We've been able to, at the end of the day, keep a very stable margin, as you mentioned, throughout the last years, despite this growth. I think that's super healthy growth for this year.
We'll continue to notice major opportunities. We are super excited. I'll pass the floor back on to Thiago. Thank you, Rafael. We can move on to the next slide. Great starting point. We're super excited with what the team here from HPX can add to Ambipar. About the EBITDA calculation, this is a bit of the CVM resolution. We don't have our adjusted EBITDA yet. Here we present an EBITDA of BRL 349 million, approximately BRL 1.4 billion. A growth of 88%, as you've already mentioned, in the consolidated results. We can move on to the next one. About the financial results, we've already mentioned this a bit. Our results grew 231%.
Everything, of course, in line with our strategy and what we established where we wanna use third-party capital to not lose opportunities for growth, which of course creates a smaller bottom line. We're super aware of this. Returns are cost of capital, in line with our strategy, delivering growth with returns. We can move on to the next one. Here, the net income is a reflection of everything we mentioned. We have had a drop in this net income, and we've presented this a little bit smaller than the fourth quarter. The peak in interest, we believe, will be kept at this level. Of course, we've been very careful with how we apply capital for 2023.
Also the liquidity that we've brought with these BRL three billion cash will help us go through this challenging scenario with a bit of comfort. The net income doesn't get in the way, and we're very aware of this very promising future we have and the structure we set up. This is a bit about our debt level. We present in the fourth quarter of 2022 a bit of leverage. We always take a look at the leverage with the analyzed pro forma EBITDA, and this is what we see in our covenant clauses when we look at this internally as we grow organically in a very robust manner. When we look at the EBITDA, we always look at pro forma.
When we calculate this, we increased a bit more, which is the fruit of the payment for Witt O'Brien's . We also add, when we add pro forma and the closing of the stock agreement, we get back to the same leverage in 2021. We had strong investments. We grew and delivered returns, and now we have leverage that's just as the fourth quarter of 2021. This demonstrates how we've been very careful in our capital allocation. The gross debt, BRL 7.1 billion, and the net debt is BRL 4 billion, BRL 4.1 billion. CapEx, we tried to improve a bit here. The company is a new company.
This team here has this mandate to be even closer with our strengthened team, and our role is to help you guys in this journey to try to explain how we perform our investments and how these bring in the expected investments. The release is prepared very different, in a very different way. The CapEx here, we also tried to provide more color, so we had the disclosure per business unit. We also gave you a better disclosure on how we apply this, and this is really reflecting on our results. Margins are arriving, growth has arrived, and we are super certain that the more disclosure we provide and the more you understand this, you'll be able to see the potential for this ecosystem we've created. About the CapEx, yes, we did have a slight drop with...
An increase if we look at the cumulative results, but this has been keeping up with our growth. We even talked about this in other conferences. When you take a look at the CapEx, please don't be afraid. When we look at the CapEx, we allocate capital, and we try to solve a cost matrix issue and also a customer issue, bringing in profitability. As I mentioned, we are being very careful with the profitability of our contracts. That has been, of course, reflecting in our margins. This is how we look at CapEx, and we hope you like this new way of presenting this to you and how we're disclosing this. We can move on. A bit of the acquisitions in the fourth quarter. We had two, obviously. One which is very relevant, Witt O'Brien's.
Rafael mentioned this, quite a bit and how their business model is a little different than what we had in North America. More focused on Witt O'Brien's really helps us to manage crisis situations. They've already created this actually, and we are very optimistic. Within our strategy, with being a global reference in the business, not only response but environment as well, and Vida -cert, with some complementarity of our services in the circular economy front, with the cooperatives of trash collectors. This not only reaches the E for environment, but also the S for social. Vida -cert is a very interesting acquisition, and we're super excited about it. It's not as big as Witt O'Brien's , of course, but it does contribute and helps with the S of the ESG in our business.
We can move on to the next one, please. Before we move to Q&A, I think we should talk about the announcement we had yesterday about the new member of our board, Carlos Piani. Rafael mentioned that this relationship with people from the former HPX, which doesn't exist anymore, right? We were incorporated now. We are all Ambipar, but this relationship is long-term, right? It started off in the end of 2021. People were basically working on all of the documentation and negotiations of the deal. We closed with the HPX team at New York Stock Exchange, and of course, this brought in a very strong relationship. Carlos Piani has a lot of experience in multinational companies and global companies, and we believe that he will bring in a strong strategic vision for the company.
That's his mandate here as the chairman of the board. This will also bring a lot of value. As we've been talking about this a lot yesterday, he will help potentialize the governance aspect. Our business is environment, but we have social that's intrinsically related to our business. More and more we are reinforcing the G in governance. It's a practically independent member as a chairman of the board, which adds all of his experience and also brings in the G for governance. We are super excited. Good luck, Carlos, in this journey, and we are super optimistic about everything he can add. Let's move on to Q&A. Great. I would like to remind you all to submit any questions.
Please feel free to select the button for the Q&A in English or Portuguese. We'll address them all here. I'm gonna start off with the first question that arrived, which is from Julia Zangrillo in Santander. She says the following: "Good afternoon. Congrats on the earnings and results." Thank you, Julia, and for the new disclosure on information. Her question is about response margins. This has been at good levels even with the Witt O'Brien's situation. How should we expect the behavior of the response margins in the next quarters? I'll start off here, and then of course, Pedro and Rafael can contribute. The Witt O'Brien's margins and EBITDA are a little lower compared to response as a whole because it's asset-light.
During the fourth quarter of 2022, we had some very interesting operations in the Brazilian business and Latin American business, and also for North America. We had some small and large emergencies that contributed a lot to these margins, with the exception of Witt O'Brien's, and of course, helped offset the response margins. Of course, there's a lot of concern in regards to our reliance on these major occurrences. This of course will always contribute to this, and this is probably the beauty with having this portfolio of services and segments that can be applicable to different regions. The smaller the sample, the smaller the standard deviation. We...
Yes, we did have some occasional occurrences that helped to offset this smaller margin with Witt O'Brien's, but of course, we hope this will continue to happen every quarter. Obviously, when we take a look at this specific region or specific segment, there will be a bigger variation. In the consolidated results, our expectations are that we will see a smaller deviation. I want to highlight also the industrial services front. Once we incorporate this into our ecosystem, and we split this response into six major businesses, but industrial services has been able to capture quicker cross-selling than what we were expecting, and this is excellent news. This brought in some important margins and offsetted the impact that Witt O'Brien's would have had in the consolidated margin drop. Great. We have a third question.
I'm gonna break this down. This is from Victor Cunha, and he said, "In the last quarter, the company had many acquisitions in the environment segment, and in the response segment. The company mentioned that you focus on the integration operations, but how could we expect that in this year, there won't be that many acquisitions?" Well, as I mentioned in the introduction, 2023, we consider to be a year that requires a bit of caution with the macroeconomic scenario very unstable. We have a robust capital structure, and we'll be careful as we employ capital. We will have some acquisitions. When we take a look at this, we could have more of a geographic situation here. The results in 2022 proved the thesis of the ecosystem we were able to create.
With 2023 being a little more organic, I think the company will really be seen by the market and cruise speed capturing these synergies. I believe we are not going to step on the brakes. We're just not going to press on the accelerator because the market's available. The growth is available. We looked at the study and environment. We're still just in the beginning. We have 2% market share of a potential market, right? This, of course, makes the market have even greater potential. This, of course, at Ambipar, we create this market and we are very well positioned for this. To be objective and organic will exist occasionally, but this will be an important opportunity for us to see the organic growth as well.
When we get back to their questions here, as you mentioned, he says that the gross margins for the response segment were reduced significantly with the incorporation Witt O'Brien's. Ambipar likes to generate synergies and improve the company's margins. Do you consider that the costs can be reduced due to the business structure? I'll start this answer and then Thiago and Rafa can also complement or add more. The margins did have a slight drop in response from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. This is super marginal compared to the margins Witt O'Brien's operate and how significant this was in the ecosystem. Rafa will also mention that we had some emergencies and that this mix is going to be more constant due to the increase in the sample.
In this sense, we believe that despite Witt O'Brien's being a major lead generator for operation, we are already building this in other markets, but especially in Latin America and in Brazil, because it's a company that has a geographic footprint that's global. The margin issues I don't really believe in, but I think Rafa and Pedro can add on to this on the cost structure. In this sense, so that we can have a better idea on margin conversions with the normalized scenario with Witt O'Brien's. Let me start here. Well, I think that a good clarification in this sense about the strategy for acquisitions that Response has is really related to business complementarity and generation of commercial synergies. This is why the first thing that we do when we acquire a company is to include them in the existing platform.
In Brazil, this is really direct and quick considering the platform that was already built here in Brazil, which is pretty much like a plug and play structure. As soon as the company is acquired, it already is included in the systems, the platform that exists and the sales structure. In the U.S., we've been able to build this slowly but surely. Companies that we acquired normally perform specific services in specific regions. The first thing we do is always look for the commercial synergies, cross-selling and operational synergies with the sharing of these assets. We think that there is room for cost synergies, but it's not going to be the main strategy that the company will have, just looking and cutting off costs, especially not at this moment.
Specifically Witt O'Brien's, our strategy has been to acquire a really renowned platform when it comes to crisis management and big incidents and disasters and climate disasters that could generate opportunities for us to use our asset base that we call the L3, really service the same occurrences Witt O'Brien's just provides advisory services to. If you look at the pool of revenues for this type of Witt O'Brien's maybe covers only 10% of all of this. The other 90% were focused on other companies that would work on the field services. The idea was to kind of capture part of the 90% that has been directed to this setup. We have a last issue here still from Vitor saying that there's a possibility we mentioned on improvements and optimization of the shareholding and tax structures.
What would be the magnitude of this possible restructuring work and what we can imagine from now on that will be done in this sense? Well, the group grew at a real quick pace and numbers prove this. We really have been working on a robust study when it comes to the optimization of the tax loads. Well, of course, we have to be very careful with all of this when it comes to tax issues. We don't normally get into major structures that could bring any kind of risk. But of course, we do look at this, the tax issues, where we look at tax issues with care. We're studying this and we'll be careful about this. Yes, we'll have some important relevant tax gains over time. Great.
I think now we have another question from Andrea from Santander. He was asking about the following. He said, "Good afternoon. In the last 2 quarters, we saw there was a recovery in the company's ROIC. What would be the ROIC level that the company expects to reach when the growth is not as accelerated?" Well, I think as we address the operational ROIC, we understand that that would be maybe a standard ROIC. Although now we slowed down the operational ROIC, it would be what we're looking at as a standard for the company. That's why the calculation was done in that way. Above 30% would be a ROIC that we consider to be expected.
If I could add on, Ambipar Response, not having acquisitions impacts the ROIC in total levels, but it's, if you look at this, it's a little bit higher actually because as you have goodwill payments during the acquisition, the invested capital ROIC is greater. As you reinvest in the business and you grow the business that was acquired, and the companies really are part of this family and this ecosystem of companies, the capital's being invested into the operational ROIC. You'll have a convergence of these two return rates over time. Well, we have one more question now from Vagner from Quantitas, and he's asking about the following. "In environment, we have noticed a reduction in the CPV for third-party services and fuel lines as well. For third-party services, this reduction is due to what?" That's a question.
I can probably address this by saying that it's related to the use of the CapEx investments in the last quarters. The more investments in machinery, the less reliance we have in hiring third-party services to be able to provide these. It's an overall reflection. Thiago, do you want to add on? This occurred and occurs a lot when we perform an acquisition. The company acquired has an additional service or something, then we would work on the outsourcing or, of this service. Now when we start looking at this primary operational method, we perform the investments in CapEx, and this brings in the expected return. The employment of this CapEx brings in the returns. Of course, then third-party service lines are reduced and bring in better margins.
If we can work with smaller numbers in these lines, we believe this is part of our strategy. There could be some variations quarter by quarter, of course, but the trend is that there should be a smaller composition in the cost. The second question is about the cost of the products or products sold in environment and what is that related to. It's related directly to our circular economy activities, and this has been growing a lot. Contrary to the total waste management activities where we provide services in the circular economy, there really is a commercial operation with the acquisition or sale of recycled equipment or the processing and transformation of these products into new products. Maybe they'll be a little closer to what an industrial or commercial activity than the actual service provision.
That's why it behaved differently than our history as the business unit for circular economy has been gaining more relevance within environment results or earnings. We had the disclosure, of course. This was positioned as others before. Now that we've decided to disclose this and this became more relevant, we want to present the history of the past also so you can compare this. In the fourth quarter, we did have some compression of these costs due to the markets, but also because of the scale gains we've had when it comes to the commercialization of these recyclables. As you bring in more material into the group, you have more opportunities and gain more bargaining power in the negotiations. Great. We have another question from Gisele from BTG. Actually, she's also...
This is also in line with another question with the same kind of content from Guilherme Levy. I'll address this answer. Well, her question is the following: "Good afternoon. What's the CapEx expectation for 2023? Is there some disclosure that we can estimate for environment or response? What would be the level of a recurring CapEx for maintenance that we could expect for this operation?" We have some restrictions to talk about the future and provide guidance, but we're looking at 2023. Look at the pace we're taking on with more organic growth. We'll have a smaller level of CapEx than our historical levels, but this will make...
In 21 and 22, we had a lot of growth in Ambipar, strategies to take on greater market positions, being positioned in the market, having primary operations of some, and internalize these operations that were outsourced from some of the companies acquired. This, of course, brings in 23 with more organic growth. At cruise speed, we can expect a smaller amount of CapEx between environment and response, and the mix is very similar to what our history and our historic has been looking at. In response, we did have some important base opening, sorry. In 2022, we also opened up and started some new services with marine and air services as well. We did invest a bit to internalize the operations of the acquired companies and bring in a more robust structure.
We also, sometimes they weren't able to grow because they didn't have the capital structure to do this. Now we can, Ambipar brings in this access to capital and bank loans. This brings them a lot more comfort and confidence so that they can take on higher reaches, right, and higher flights. For the structure in 2023 considering the restrictions with the CapEx at lower levels, this will be probably proven in the first quarter of 2023. We have another question coming in from Leonardo Bugi from Tesi. He's asking about the margins. He had mentioned in the release in the fourth quarter that in the last quarters this year, there's a bit of seasonality that brings in better margins.
Could we talk about what the level of this impact will be and how, and what this is related to, and if we could imagine this for the fourth quarters. In the fourth quarter, there is a bit of an issue that's quite intrinsic in the entire market around Brazil and globally about really fulfilling the budgets. So companies will of course have their budget planning done in the previous year, and this needs to be fulfilled. Throughout the year, the companies of course, balance this out, open and shut the tap basically to not go over the budgets. When you reach the end of the year, you have to fulfill that, so they don't have any kind of budget restrictions on the next year, which ends up leveraging the demand for our services.
Of course, this happens due to the same reasons in different industries and companies, which is a little different than retail, where you have more seasonality due to other factors. In our case, it's a lot more relating to the budget planning in industry as a whole. Is there any other issue you would like to highlight, Thiago, on this issue with the seasonality in the fourth quarter? No, that's exactly it. Thank you. We have one more question, and this question is from Bruno Oliveira. He is asking about the company's strategy for dividend distribution and payout now and in the future. The company is at a moment where we're focused on the growth and returns on investments that are quite interesting, and this has been presented. At this moment, we're still growing and expanding.
We have opportunities in line with market studies. We have a lot of room to be occupied still. Of course, we have these focuses to work with the minimum payment that's established in the bylaws, that's 25%, and we don't consider in a midterm anything different to change the payout. Perfect. Let's move on here with the next questions. We have another question from Douglas. He's asking about if there's a business intelligence department inside the company to help with decision-making and with being more precise to solve business problems that are generated due within the companies in the group. Well, we have the board. That's where the strategy comes, and that's where the founder is. That's where we make our decision-making processes.
Executives submit different issues to the board, that's where we have the decision-making that's based on our returns. This is the department we've had, and this has been working very well. We have another question from Umberto. If we consider the acquisitions and the goodwill paid for these acquisitions, if there is some kind of a tax benefit in this sense, and if we would be able to provide some dimension to this. Well, here, it's a matter to another issue. Actually this strategy in different periods, of course in the financial industry as well. Of course, well, there's a tax amortization and it just is in our radar, the company is really conservative when it comes to tax planning.
We do have, we do keep an eye on this, but we don't have any kind of measurements for this. Our focus is just the operation and the growth. This is another issue now about the debt level that's been growing significantly. It's not a concern for the company in the next quarters to reduce this indicator if we consider that this could impact negatively the company. We have Isao from Valore D, he's asking about this. Yeah, it's not our concern actually. It's not what keeps us awake at night. It's all in our strategy. We published a number with our cash flow in the release to demonstrate that operationally we are strong cash generators. Of course, this is a fruit of this growth.
Ever since, as long as the capital is employed with returns, the leverage level doesn't concern us. As we reach this cruising speed, this is probably gonna be reduced as we are important cash generators. Basically, we don't see any negative impacts in the short future. Actually, as soon as we have returns above cost of capital. So we have one more question here from Pedro Oliveira from HISA. Pleasure to be with you, Pedro. This here it says, "Good afternoon. Can we expect that the gross margin for environment up ahead with the same levels that we've been reporting? Could you give us an update of the acquired companies and capturing synergies per business unit?
What would be the consolidated EBITDA margin that the company could reach in the future according to the company's management? I think here we should mention the issue with the gross margins and some synergy capturing for the future per business unit. Our strategy was to build this ecosystem where, of course, there are opportunities when we plug in new companies into our ecosystem. This vision of synergy gains through the dilution of expenses is not necessarily does not have much adherence to our strategy, where I capture synergies through the expansion of the addressable market. When it comes to margins, we don't see such a significant difference in the short term. We're operating about high twenties, 27%-28% in some cases. In Environment, it was even higher than 30%.
We don't look at this. We don't see much of a change if we look at the longer history. Despite the major accelerated growth quarterly or annually, the margins were pretty stable. The synergy gains that we noticed are a lot more related to the expansion of the addressable market, increasing the top line, than actually just reducing expenses that are below the gross profits. Perfect. Here we have another question that's very generic, but I think we should address, which is how the company plans to add value to shareholders. Here, this, of course, includes the reduction of, well, I think capital reduction. There's no possibility for this to happen at this moment due to everything we've been sharing and explaining to the market.
We also mentioned the capital allocation, the only way to include this reduction of the PL would be a buyback program where we would maybe buy back these shares which would affect our equity. The value generation for our shareholders will take place with a capital allocation based on where we can see better returns, investing in new acquisitions, investing in operations that already exist, or through the buyback of shares, of course, if this appears to be the most adequate for capital investments. We are searching for returns on the invested capital. Among the options that exist, the reduction of the PL would only be taking place if it's through the buyback program. Well, I don't know if this would be the reduction of the P&L. Yes, that's exactly it.
That makes more sense, right? The P&L. That's how the company will add value, bringing in capital, bringing funding, and applying it in the best way. Exponentially in the future, this can bring more accelerated growth in regards to the bottom line. That's how we generate value for shareholders in the P&L and of course long-term shareholders, which are our investors, right? We have one more question, Fabiano from Nau. He's asking about if we have a slowdown in M&As and reduction of CapEx, could we believe we would end 2023 with a free cash flow that's positive, and if we imagine some payments of debt now with Ambipar Response having higher international exposure? Well, what we are planning for 2023, actually, considering the visibility we have in the macro scenario, is a year of caution and cruise speed.
Of course, this will positively affect our cash flow. When it comes to debt, part of the Response debt we've already taken on in dollars for the Woodle Brands acquisition. We had an interesting investment in USD at a 6.5% per year. That's prefixed rates with no exposure to rate volatility, and employed in the U.S. We took that in at the holding level in the U.S. We have a natural hedging. We're also always looking at this with a close focus on our cash flow. Whenever we can have this natural hedge, we will definitely work on this.
We have one more here from Giovanni from GDP Investimentos, and he's asking if we have any idea about how this would affect the introduction of IVA in Brazil when it comes to tax issues. We believe that this can bring a simplification in the national tax system, but we don't have any visibility about if it would bring in savings or additional costs. Any kind of simplification would help a lot with the bureaucracy in our back office. Perfect. These were the questions we received. If we have any other questions, you can always send them directly to our investor relations team. We are available to support all investors, shareholders, and stakeholders interested in the company.
We really value transparency and meeting everyone's needs and requests, as you can notice, as we were able to address all of the questions, as we also do in all of our investor contact channels. Thiago has the final message. Great. Thank you, Ricardo. Before I get to the final message, just a small correction here that will correct the release also about the amount of carbon credits that are traded. We added the total amount, and there's an accounting effect that we only have the revenue for, which is our part related to the credit generation. We have a small mismatch in regards to the accounting revenue and the quantity that's traded, which is quite frequently traded by Biofílica, but sometimes the revenue belongs to a partner.
We're gonna adjust and correct this, but nothing significant in our numbers. It's just the KPI that we set up that has a small error that we're gonna correct. That's it. I wanna thank you all. We're super satisfied with the opportunity to deliver these robust results, proving our thesis. We really created an interesting business that brings in returns to our investors. We're super optimistic also about the future, and we're in a market that is new but that has a huge potential, and I hope that Ambipar Day can strengthen our business even more. This release was just to help you guys have more visibility of our potential and the business we created with all these entry barriers that really protect our activities. That's it, guys. Thank you so much, and see you in the next quarter.
As Ricardo mentioned, this entire team here is available to meet the needs of our investors. Thank you so much. Good afternoon.