Morning, everybody, thank you for your attendance. We're going to begin our conference call for the results of the full year and fourth quarter 2023. As always, in the fourth quarter, we have the company, we have Marcelo Niemeyer Hampshire, the VP of Corporate Area, Gustavo Vianna Otto, the VP for Operations, and our CEO, and myself, the IR Director. I would like to communicate that on March 8th it will be International Women's Day. To celebrate that day, we will be certifying the women through a process. This is a process made through blockchain, and it has analyzed all of the practices that we have: prevention of violence, harassment, a safe working environment, and the fostering of wellbeing at work.
Through this certification, we reiterate our commitment with an inclusive environment that will offer respect to everybody with a good personal and professional environment, supporting all of our employees, partners, and others. Thank you very much. I would like to give the floor to Gustavo, who will begin presenting the results. Thank you, Marita. A good morning to all of you. Before we begin the presentation here, I would like to congratulate all of the women that are part of our team, those warriors that create value for our customers day after day. They wake up in the morning servicing our customers and offering their very best. This presentation, therefore, is devoted to all of you women. We're very happy to have you working by our side. We begin with the presentation.
Our revenues, BRL 10.6 million, a growth of 15% vis-à-vis same period last year, an organic growth of around 10%. We're going to give you more details. EBITDA standing at BRL 1.2 million, 22% growth and 11.6% adjusted margin. Adjusted net profit, BRL 730 million, a growth higher than 20%, and once again, a 6.9% adjusted margin. We have 4,345 customers. We have a footprint in all of the states of the Republic. Of course, the Net Promoter Score ended the year at 71%, very close to what we were presenting formerly between 70%, 71%. Our net revenue by the four main lines of solution: integrated facilities, 40%; followed by security, 28%; maintenance and industrial services, 25%; and intralogistics, 7%.
Of course, we do continue to have an important characteristic, which is a significant fragmentation of our customer portfolio, which enables us to work with our strategy. The largest client represents 4%, and 39% distributed among other customers, as you can see on the chart. Very well. Regarding net revenue, we can observe a somewhat different graph if we think about last year. Most of this growth has come through organic growth, 70%-75% of it. Of course, this relates to our M&A program that we will refer to. We acquired 5 companies in 2023.
Our 2022 harvest was highly concentrated in the first semester, while this year only 2 companies were integrated in the first semester, the other 3, which are the ones with a higher ticket, were integrated in the fourth quarter, 1 in the month of November. Well, partially integrated into the quarter. Our growth continues to be between 10% and 12%, very much in line with previous years. As you can observe in the chart, that is interesting to remark on, is the rupture of the revenues of 2022. We had BRL 8 million last year, while in the semester, BRL 222, because of what we have been speaking, our temporary labor, of course, had a boom during the pandemic and the years ensuing this with a very strong demand.
This growth happened through Luandre in 2020 with Grupo Global and other companies. What we have observed this year, drastic drop because of a certain normalcy, more security in the market among the customers, and therefore they're hiring their own labor or outsourcing. In our recent M&As, we will show you the breakout so that we can understand the behavior of that segment. In the fourth quarter, we have a jump in additional services, much greater than the previous year, which of course is very positive. It shows the loyalty of the customer base, the satisfaction, and the confidence they have in us by increasing our volume of work. Several achievements in the fourth quarter of last year. It was a very good quarter. It takes 2 or 3 months to achieve a contract and then to begin receiving the revenues.
Most of the 2Q ended up with very good revenues in the 4Q of 2023. Regarding our annual revenues, of course, the graph is very similar to that of the previous graph. I highlight here the low ticket for the first half of last year for the 2023 harvest, a scanty contribution in the year 2023. What I would like to underscore for 2023 that we had a record of achievement. It was a very good year when it comes to achievement. We truly saw that it surpassed our expectations.
This thanks to the investment we made in the commercial area, investment in people, bringing in new leaders, new sellers, reformulating the macro structure of some regionals, making them ever more robust, defining the profile of employees that would work in each regional, achieving contracts, of course, defending our contracts and customers, market intelligence, a pre-sale team, and the reorganization of the macro structure, especially in some regionals during the year. All of this is responsible for the growth of 2023. CRM is another significant factor. We devoted a great deal of time to enhance it using market intelligence tools that enable us to be more assertive in our market action. Our hit rate increased because of this. Our capacity for mobilization and focus doubtlessly were enhanced. Our planning cycle, which is a pillar of our management model, also was significantly enhanced.
Every month, all the sellers from all of the regionals follow up on the results and on this pipeline. Of course, the systematic work of the meritocracy in the commercial area. Nowadays, we have greater accountability when it comes to this, and I do not doubt that we will be able to work better with our commercial team going forward for 2024. Besides continuing to grow, of course, and achieving new contracts, we would like to focus on the defense part. Of course, we have an entire team that is working with the customer, supporting the contract, adding value to the customer every day, conquering the customers. Throughout last year, we have developed new teams and tools to enhance the part of defense that I will explore further ahead. In this graph, once again, I think you're quite familiar with it.
Our organic growth, of course, deserves merit. It continues at the levels of previous years, with exception of 2020 when we had the pandemic. If we exclude 2020, you will see that we are very close to our average delivery of the last few years. During this period, approximately two-thirds of this growth took place in our customer base, which of course is very natural. It's the cheapest, fastest way to achieve contracts and to increase revenues, and also due to our one-stop shop strategy that has proven to be positive. New businesses, and new avenues for growth. With this, we have added new customers, expanding our customer base so that we can work more with CRM and much more. The growth of the portfolios has increased in the last few years, thanks to the strategy.
What I would like to highlight here is that our churn in 2023 was below 1%, or the best, of course, of the series. Our average is 1.3. Of course, this refers to what I have just mentioned, more solutions for the customer, a greater capacity to enhance loyalty, and of course, better results. Thank you, Gustavo. We will now go on to the M&A program. Marcelo will present these results to you. Thank you, Marita, and a good morning to all of you. I'm going to refer to what happened with our M&A program last year. We carried out 9 M&As. As you can see on the slide, 4 of them had the closing happening this year, but the signing of the contract was last year.
Well, we consider all of this to be part of our 2023 M&A. The combined revenues are BRL 1.1 billion. Of course, we are working with middle-size companies. These are companies that offer us greater synergy and a faster payback for our investment. A relevant point that I would like to remark is that last year we have begun working with new segments. This is the case of Luandre, a company that offers labor for the industrial sector. We have Control, an old partner of ours, and we had remarked that we wanted to work in terms of electric maintenance, and now we're going to get to know the segment better. This is also the case of Trademark, where we have entered, once again, the segment of electrical maintenance.
These acquisitions, as mentioned by Gustavo, were concentrated in the last quarter of the year, and the contribution of these companies to the revenues and results of 2023 was minor. This revenue of BRL 2 billion, we had BRL 45 million consolidated in 2023. This is an important piece of information, a very possible piece of information, because we begin 2024 with significant contracted growth. We have BRL 1.55 billion in revenues that have already been acquired that will be part of our results for 2024. Gross revenue of 2023 means we are beginning the year with contracted growth of 14%, thanks to the acquisitions carried out. Another relevant piece of information that Gustavo mentioned in the presentation is the impact that these acquisitions had on our margin in the fourth quarter.
In fact, we had a gain of revenues consolidated in the last quarter of 2023. As you know, these companies, it is desirable that they have a low margin, a margin of 3%-4%. Among the total revenues of last year, it was BRL 2.8 billion net revenues. BRL 251 billion of those BRL 2.8 billion come from the consolidation of the revenues of Engie, Compart, and other partial integrations. 9% of the total revenues of GPS come from this recent harvest. If you work with a simple mathematical weight, 4% on the average and 91% of the revenues with a 12% margin, you will see that through this account, the average tends to drop as a whole. That is why the margin of the last quarter, 2023, had a drop vis-à-vis 2022.
Because of that consolidation of revenues recently acquired in the fourth quarter, we will be reverting this the coming year. We will continue with this dynamic in the first quarter of the year. We will see ever more revenues being consolidated downwards, of course. Through the first half of the year, we expect to maintain that dynamic because of the consolidation. As we deliver the companies and capture synergies, we will return to our historic levels of profitability, and things will continue on this way if we have revenues on specific revenues, and if they come from M&As. Up to Campseg, we have concluded the systems integration. The integration was concluded in January of this year, and from Trademark onward, Trademark Leon, In-Haus, Control and Marfood. These are companies that are in the process of integration.
We begin the year with a significant load of work. We're integrating these 5 companies. You know that the complexity of this integration is enormous. We can go on to the next slide, please. Here you have a summary of what we have done since the IPO in April of 2021. 3 years, we have bought 25 companies with a gross revenue of BRL 4.8 billion. We have been able to deliver our growth goal in the middle-sized companies. It's always more cumbersome. It's more cumbersome to acquire 10 companies than acquiring 1. The intelligence dynamics, the integration tends to be more complex. On the other hand, these are companies with less scale, with lower margins. They offer a potential to increase margin and of course capture greater synergies. This is a profile of companies we work with.
Most of the acquisitions are concentrated in relatively new segments. 4 of the 22 acquisitions are concentrated on temporary labor, and 8 acquisitions in the maintenance segment. Of course, this is a proof of the importance of our strategy, where we're always creating new avenues for growth, incorporating new businesses. Of course, each business has its own operational peculiarities, but we share the same management model, processes, and meritocracy. This strategy in practice has proven to be a truly winning strategy. For this year, the challenge continues on as always. We're going to acquire companies with combined revenues of BRL 2 million. This is the challenge we have in acquisitions. Our M&A pipeline continues to be very robust, and it's important to have several companies interacting with us in the M&A pipeline.
It enables us to be selective, to work with a low margin, to have a qualified customer portfolio. These multiple options are very important for us. We have 21 companies in our pipeline with a gross revenue of BRL 12 billion. Having this qualified pipeline means that we're in the final stage of negotiation. We're extremely optimistic for this year. We hope this year to be able to deliver our growth objective in the first half of the year, as we did in 2022, to capture most of the invoicing and the companies that have been acquired this year. This means we will have an inorganic growth more similar to what it was in 2022, a more relevant growth for the company. That is all, Marita. You can continue. Thank you, Marcelo.
To continue, I would like to speak about our EBITDA for the fourth quarter, a growth of 9% compared to the fourth quarter 2022, and an 11.2% margin. We have already mentioned the companies acquired in that quarter, reducing the margin to 11.2%. Besides the M&A impact, we had the impact of labor expenses. We ended several lawsuits that came from the acquired companies, and of course, it ended up costing us more than expected. You will see this movement during the coming year in what relates to the labor liabilities. Normally, we don't have cash to make agreements in the first instance. We allow the processes to evolve, and they end up creating a cost that is higher than the average ticket. If we think about the provisions we have for this, 1.2 above our historical levels.
This is the impact of acquired companies, labor liabilities, and the provisions that we set up based on the EBITDA and that we normally adjust in the fourth quarter. For the entire year, we had a 22% growth of EBITDA with an 11.6 margin. This margin between 11% and 12% that we normally harp on, what we expect is a margin for EBITDA between 11% and 12%. When we have acquisitions, the expectation is to have EBITDA margins of 10%-11%. We're delivering 11.6% because most of the acquisitions happened at the end of the year. As Marcelo mentioned, we will hope for a more typical margin for 2024 because of the pool of the 7 acquisitions that have already been announced.
We see something similar because we have the reversal of taxes on interest rates that represented a significant amount. The reversal this is a provision that we do for acquired companies. If this does not materialize after 5 years, this prescribes, we have a reversal. We launch this as a provision. If it doesn't happen, there is that reversal. Here you see 25% growth of year-on-year with a margin of 6.9. Now, let's speak about our cash generation. 82% of our adjusted EBITDA in 2023, we had that effect of concentration of the M&As and accounts receivable. You will see the amounts are somewhat higher for all of the M&As. We do have an initial balance to receive.
Something that is not very typical, this refers to the working days 29, 30, and 31st of December that happened on a weekend. The payment is postponed by 30 days in accounts receivable. All of this is equalized in January, of course. This did create a impact on the accounts receivable, as you will see on the balance. Operational cash flow, interest and taxes, BRL 583 million. We're speaking about the interest rate and financing activities where we had BRL 300 million in amortization of debentures, BRL 156 million of dividends that we paid last year, and a parcel of BRL 5 million and a positive entrance of BRL 30 million.
In terms of investment activities, what you see here is a reflection of the acquisitions during the period, generating cash and equivalents of BRL 990 million at the end of the period of the year, of course. We always show you our leverage considering the cash disbursement we had with acquisitions. Our leverage is 1.0x, which enables us to finance the M&A program for 2024. Our leverage was consistently below 1x, but in the fourth quarter, once again, we had that cash disbursement for the three companies that were reflected at the end of 2023, and we will still have the impact of this in the first quarter of 2024. This will continue with the four companies that will be incorporated. When we speak about return, we always speak about this.
Our ROIC reached 21%, somewhat above what it was last year. The ROI, once again above what it was the previous year in accordance with our expectations and according to our historical background. With this, we would like to end the presentation, and I will now give the floor to Luiz, who will convey a general message to all of you. Thank you, Marita, and a good day to all of you. We deemed that 2023 was a positive year in terms of performance, margin and growth. Not very different from what we have done normally. We were quite successful in our M&A program, the behavior of the M&A acquisitions compared to 2022 had an impact on revenues and company margin. This is an important point I would like to highlight.
I remind you that GPS is a company that offers a myriad of solutions for clients in different market segments throughout the country. It is important to underscore that the company result arises from that customer and customer construction. Of course, all of this done by our contract managers, our regional managers, and all the efforts that we put forward to service the customers. Throughout the periods, we have always mentioned to you that the M&As don't impact our results. The impact is more uniform during the year, and our margins tend to grow 11%-12%. When there is a different impact during the year, of course, our margin will drop to 10%-11%. You saw the behavior of our margin during the quarter where we had a stronger impact of M&As.
As Marcelo said, we entered it having a lower margin, so we have this slight variation in our margin. We believe that the year was very good. We were able to create our results. All of the support that the company offers to create a system environment, a management environment that will foster all of this when we service the customer means we are investing heavily in systems. Along with our planning cycle and our discipline of working with the budget contract by contract, line item by line item, we hold monthly meetings with the team to motivate them and to follow up on execution. All of this has offered the company good results. Organic growth, we have always spoken to you about this. It's a growth that we pursue.
We want to have qualified growth, one that will bring about margins so that we can have good results. The returns mentioned by Marita, of course, we focus on margin. We don't bet on future results. In good years, in terms of organic growth, we fall between 9%-11% for the company, and 10%-11% for years that are not very good. Our average was 10% on the whole. With the performance and very important achievement, the churn, of course, is on the right path. This is what I wanted to highlight before we go on to the question-and-answer session. Thank you very much. Now we see some people who have already raised their hands. Let's begin with Felipe. Felipe Lenza. Good morning, everybody. Congratulations for your result and partnership.
My question refers to the holding group that has gone into judicial recovery and is working with a price war. Perhaps this will open room for GPS to acquire more customers. If you could give us more color in terms of this. The second question, if we take into account this price war, do you expect to continue on with your margins throughout 2024? Thank you. Very well. Good morning, Felipe. It's a pleasure to speak to you. If I understood your question properly, you're asking about our operation vis-à-vis a competitor that is in judicial recovery. In fact, the market has had significant movement because of this piece of news. It's a very large company with revenues of more than BRL 1 billion. GPS gained knowledge of this fact and immediately adopted a stance to become an option for their customers.
We have seen similar movements like this one in companies that enter into Judicial Recovery or that are in a state of insolvency. Well, the player can't give you guarantees. They don't have machinery to offer as guarantee to their creditor. Of course, there is that effect of the customers leaving as they share part of the responsibility. We took a very good stance. What I can say is that we were in a good position. We had several achievements, quite representative, not only large companies, but also new customers where we will be able to provide the solution that GPS has. We're quite satisfied with the performance of our team, and because of the fact that we were acknowledged by the market as an important player supporting this company in moment of difficulty.
Now, if we can expect the same level of margins, if I'm not mistaken, for the first quarter of 2024. Was that the second part of the question? Yes. Taking into account, of course, that difficulty in negotiating contracts and impacting margins because of the competitor. Well, there's no reason to create margin pressure in this type of situation. What is important is contracting a supplier that has a good financial standing. When the customers undergo this situation, they think it is very important to contract a supplier once again that has a financial situation that is compatible with the size of the contract. Now, we have a strong balance, and we naturally became an option. We're not going to create pressure for margins at a time when customers are more concerned in contracting an alternative supplier.
When it comes to the margins, yes, we do expect to have a greater pressure on margins. Because of the volume of integrations of new companies that will take place in the first quarter. It's a mathematical fact. We are going to integrate in the first quarter BRL 500 million in revenues from the companies that were acquired in 2023. These companies, it's desirable that they come with a smaller margin so that we can have time to integrate them into our system and capture synergies. In the first quarter, we will have BRL 500 million in revenue becoming consolidated in our results. We have BRL 3.5 billion. Of this amount, almost 20% of the revenues will come with a 4% margin.
When you weigh this mathematically, 80% of invoicing with a base 12 and 20% with 4% margin, of course there will be a drop in margins. It's a simple mathematical calculation. As we are able to integrate the company, work with synergies and bring up their margin to 11%, which is a challenge, we will see results in subsequent quarters. The dynamic of integration of a company, until we integrate the company, what we do is to keep the company as it is. This integration will extend for three to four months. Here we, of course, work with the margins after they have been integrated. We work towards cost reduction, expense reduction. Now, reduction of personnel will of course bring additional costs to the company. This is the result of an acquisition and the integration in our company.
The results begin to resume after the fifth or sixth months, sometimes immediately when we're speaking about indirect costs. In terms of operational margins, this process could extend for one or two years until they're fully integrated into GPS. As Marcelo remarked in this first quarter, we're consolidating a large pool of companies with lower margins, and of course our margins will be pressured because of this. The day we acquire a company and our margin hasn't dropped, it means we haven't made a good acquisition. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Let's continue on with Gabriel Rezende. If you unmute your microphone, you may proceed. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Luis, Marcelo, Maria, and Gustavo. We have two follow-ups from your presentation.
First of all, confirm two comments that you made, Marita, to understand, to a typical movement we saw in the fourth quarter, referring to the concentration of the acquired companies in the fourth quarter, the accounts receivable that was somewhat larger, and payments for labor lawsuits. These two atypical results are due therefore to the acquisitions. A second point to Otto, if you could give us more details on the strategies developed during 2023 to defend your territory. Just offering us more details of what you adopted in 2023, and if this explains the lower churn below the 1.3. Regarding those two impacts, yes, it is precisely that. Accounts receivable will also be the same in the first quarter because of the first acquisitions that we're integrating now. Regarding labor expenses, it doesn't necessarily relate to the companies we're integrating now.
These labor liabilities are part of our balance. The fact is that the companies acquired do bring in these liabilities, and sometimes we don't have cash to make an agreement to end the lawsuit, and this process is postponed. The more it extends, it is very difficult to recover the amount of the lawsuit. You have to recalculate everything, and this has a negative effect for the company. It's not that we're paying the lawsuits of Conseg at this point in time. This is what has had an impact. We know that we're acquiring the company now, we're saying to you that it is probable that these labor liabilities will persist until the fourth quarter, which is what happened in 2022.
When we acquire companies, we know that we are acquiring companies with these liabilities. To give you more color in terms of these labor issues, these mid-sized companies do not have very much access to competitive financing, the entrepreneur of those companies tends to control the cash disbursement. They prolong this as much as possible. Of course, the cost of increasing capital tends to be much too costly. These companies face a great deal of lawsuits. What we do is contrary to this. We know that the lawsuit will become ever more expensive the closer we come to the judgment. Normally, justice wants you to work with an agreement. Secondly, because there's a financial cost besides the principle. This stance of entrepreneurs of the companies is very common.
When they come to GPS, what we tend to do that is smarter for the long term is to use that process which is under execution and try to settle it as soon as possible to end with the interest of Selic without additional cost. This is what is happening with the litigation of this company. Well, thank you for the question regarding the defense and your request for details. What is it that we developed during 2023? Some management tools to minimize losses in contracts in several aspects. The first is to increase customer loyalty. How to make a customer loyal? Well, there are some paths to do this. One of the main ones, and this is a growing demand that we observe when we're in that process of creating a new solution, is digitizing the service. We have migrated to that realm last year.
We have an in-house software called GPS AB that was implemented throughout 2023 with very positive results. We have more than 100 large customers using this software. We are able to follow up real time on some operational tasks, if they're being complied with or not. If they're not being complied with, this is scaled up, it goes to the leader, and all of this mobilizes the company to ensure that we deliver each task, no matter how unimportant it is, tasks that are foreseen in a work plan, to do this as assertively as possible. Another interesting tool that I will mention here, even though you are there delivering everything on time according to plan, at some point in time, the customer wants a leader there. They want to talk to them. They want to make suggestions for something different.
We developed a system to follow up on these operational visits, to follow up on the visit to the customer, which is fundamental for our business and making the most of these calls to customers. We have a tool where we can follow up on operational non-conformities. You may be delivering tasks, but there are regulatory issues, labor, security, other variables that are not tasks. They are a follow-up of the inspection that should be carried out. We make the most of the call to qualitatively guarantee that everything is being done. We anticipate everything. We resolve minor problems. We are working more intelligently, and we are solving in-house problems, and we share this with the customer. Another important point, it is not worthwhile doing all of this if we are not standing in front of our customer rendering accounts. The accountability is very important.
We have created a very important report at GPS, a 360% report to make the manager's life more productive. That is our role, to develop the tools, give this to our managers. We have to involve the customer, seduce the customer, and contribute to the customer. This report is very automated. It is more interesting, more attractive, and doubtlessly, it will contribute a great deal during this year. Another matter in prevention, the NPS. Few companies work with Net Promoter Score. Until a short time ago, we had a portrait twice a year or once a year. You're doing very well today, but in two weeks, you're also with good results because life is very dynamic. We have to constantly follow up on this.
We have a PDCA cycle that is being generated to follow up on customers that are not following this and to make sure that what we suggest is being complied with. Finally, we have new BI tools to follow up on loss of contract to enable us to have a quicker understanding of that loss so that we can either revert the loss if possible or work on some aspects to avoid future losses. This set of tools took up an important part of my time last year, and I believe that this will further reduce churn as mentioned and guarantee, of course, better operations. Excellent. Thank you very much. Have a good day, and congratulations for your results. Lucas Nagano, your audio has been unmuted. Morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my question. We have two questions that are in.
The first about leverage. It increased to one point times Net Debt/EBITDA, and you still have more integrations during the first quarter. Which is the ideal or healthy range that you have to maintain the M&A pipeline? Secondly, in terms of taxation, the sector as a whole could transfer prices to preserve their margins. To understand if there's a possibility of having a backward movement in terms of your margins, an adjustable market in the future. I'm going to ask Luis Carlos Martinez Romero to remark on this, and then I will do so as well. Comes to leveraging, Lucas, we are a highly disciplined company in the growth process, when it comes to our financial strength. We have goals that we set forth and that as part of our growth process, work as a backing for us. The way we work with financial indicators is very simple.
We are a company that does not like to live with leverage rates above 1.5 Net Debt/EBITDA. We're a company that likes to work with a great deal of cash to be prepared for any adversity, as in the period of COVID initially, or to make the most of opportunities. The strength of cash is very important for us. We work with debts with a very low leverage and high cash level, and attempting to prolong the debt as much as possible. It's not that we don't like to leverage the company more than 1.5 times. Now, the second question, Marita. Our vision regarding the second part of your question, we have a productive viewpoint. We're realistic optimists here. This will bring about an effect.
It can leverage outsourcing the credit that our customer will have because of the IVA will be full. If they outsource the activities they have, they will be able to obtain the credits that they will have from that differently from having their own employees and paying salaries. Salaries don't generate any type of credit, the outsourcing process will become ever more simple. The customer will understand that they have an activity which is a not core activity. They have intangible costs, 100 cleaning people. They're going to outsource this. They're going to receive credit paid for this, and if they end up paying for salaries, this credit will not exist. Throughout time, there is a triage, and this is done very carefully. The transition will take place between 2027 and 2032, and through time, it could create a more obvious effect.
For the time being, outsourcing could be an interesting choice for our customers. The way the reform has been presented, I don't foresee it will have a negative impact. There are two taxes that we collect from our customers, the ISS from services and others now. This doesn't stimulate outsourcing. We have PIS/COFINS because of the legislation, most of the customers don't have credits because of this. We're optimistic when we think about these two taxes, ISS and PIS/COFINS. Regarding leverage, it's not pro forma in our debt. We already have all of the cash there for acquisition. Some of it will be coming out this year, in EBITDA, we don't have this contribution. We understand that we have BRL 150 million that are not part of this leverage.
A company that renders services has to be quite conservative when it comes to the leverage it works with. Because of this, we're very disciplined. We acquire companies. We are able to reduce their leverage to reasonable levels very quickly because the integration process, the capture of synergy, and the synergy getting to cash tends to be a very rapid process. This enables us to continue on with our acquisition process. The definition of price here is fundamental discipline in the integration process allied to our conservative process enables us to go through the M&A pipeline in a very disciplined way. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was very clear. Let's open the floor for João. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. We have two follow up.
The first referring the 2024 M&A program, simply to make sure that I understood correctly, those BRL 2 billion are additional to what you had in the 2023 program, so you will have BRL 4 billion in M&A revenues? The second question is about labor liabilities and the level was expected as you are consolidating the market. It means that you're acquiring companies with liabilities that are somewhat more delicate than in the past. Is this due to your expenses in 2022, 2023, and will this normalize? You're right. Yes, we have BRL 2 billion this year. For this year we will have BRL 4 billion, and the pipeline that we have today is very comfortable to deliver our goal.
In terms of the labor liabilities, we're looking at companies with margins that are low, 3%-4%. This is ideal. One of the reasons for this is a labor reason. Entrepreneurs are usually pushing their labor liabilities. It's a significant impact on margin. We have been quite opportunistic in the last two years. We have acquired companies with very low margins, and there's a side effect, and we're now working to be able to settle all of the lawsuits that we acquired. We don't allow these lawsuits to truly evolve. In our legal department, we have a very organized documentation to be able to end this lawsuit as soon as possible. This is the challenge, and we do this with the companies that are coming in. This is a first hurdle that you have to overcome.
It's always been this way, and the higher the cost of the acquisition, the higher the lawsuits. In 2024, we do hope to remain at those levels. Depending on the 2024 vintage or harvest, we will be able to look towards 2025. Yeah, we're still paying for the 2022 harvest. We have a somewhat retarded effect here. João, regarding your questions on M&A answered by Marcelo. If we have in-house goals, if we know our pipeline, we have a very robust pipeline. The opportunities are there. We're always looking at them. We have a specialized group in the company to manage that pipeline, and Marcelo's involvement in this is enormous. We're always looking for the best possible acquisition conditions at that point in time.
We don't have the guarantee that those BRL 2 billion that we have as a goal will take place in a uniform way throughout the year. It's what we desire. In M&As, we depend on another party, a party that has problems, desires, and aspirations. What we do is negotiate and find a point of balance, make sure that we're comfortable in terms of pricing and the conditions of the acquisition. The pipeline does exist. We have an internal goal that we share with you. What comes first is to close a good deal, something that will work within the company, within the price, payment, and risk conditions that will allow us to feel comfortable, always backed by the financial discipline that I have just mentioned. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Perhaps it makes sense to think that you are acquiring a company that has a higher labor liability, but with a lower margin compared to the last few years. I think this is what you're doing. Yes. The better the acquisition, the worse is the context that we are absorbing. Through time, of course, we increase synergy. We lower down that labor risk to the average risk of the company. Very well. We have finished our time, but we still have a question from Victor. Victor, good morning. I have 2 questions. The first. In 2023, you acquired 3 companies to work in the maintenance of telephony and electrical networks. How has the integration process been considering that you're working in novel markets? The second question is a follow-up regarding the contract for temporary labor.
In the fourth quarter, when we compare this with the third quarter number of customers, there was a slight reduction, but also a increase in the number of employees. Now, we think that this drop is related to what you said, temporary labor contracts and not any other issue. Simply to verify this. Good morning, Vitor. I will answer the second part of your second question. The reduction in number of customers that you observed, you are right. In fact, the temporary labor, well, the main business is for Grupo Global and other companies, but we also work with other companies. Simply to mention an example to clarify this issue, one of the businesses that Grupo Global delivers to the market is the hiring of trainees. What happened? The customer will work with CIEE, which is an institution that offers trainees to the market.
For this, they will look for Global. Global will draft up a contract with that customer, find a trainee that has the right profile, and there's a period to deliver all of this, and we are compensated through a percentage of the first search for a traineeship for that trainee. This is paid in two to four installments normally. Let us imagine the trainee will make BRL 1,500. We will receive BRL 500 in three installments for this. That customer, who is a small customer, who has a structure and look for us, will become part of our base. For three months, we will receive BRL 500 per month, and then they will come out of our base. We have several similar examples to show you why we have that reduction in number of customers.
The metric, of course, is to show you the number of full-time customers. To shed light on your answer, at the end of the day, our churn had a decrease. Our organic growth continued as it always was. For temporary labor, well, we're going to work with a more opportunistic acquisition where the price will be much better than that of the market. Now, regarding the telephony network of Control and other companies, yes, we are in an integration phase, and we have the integration of the back office, the payroll. We have an app and we work with those companies. The back office issue doesn't change at all. We work with different sectors. We are able to leverage our entire ecosystem for those companies as well. Now, there are operational differences that we learn about through time.
We integrate, we let some time go by so that we can understand the operational logic, and if we like the business, we will work with new movement in that sector. We're quite enthusiastic with these new businesses. We're quite mobilized. There are some larger companies that can be acquired, but first of all, we're going to get to know the business, the operational logic day after day. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know if Gabriel is still there. Gabriel, we're going to unmute your microphone. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a question on the 2024 M&A program. Is there any sector that draws more attention that would be more attractive in terms of an M&As? Which are the new sectors that you're looking at? Are you planning on entering new sectors, Gabriel?
We have a highly diversified pipeline with all sectors. Curiously, we have a greater concentration in food companies, which is a business that we were able to grow through consolidation. Last year, we acquired Marfood. We have a good concentration of companies in this sector. We have Control. We shared all of our back office systems, but there was greater complexity in the back office. We learned from that. We're ready to make new steps. We have Comad. We have several mid-sized companies that's here in our pipeline. In food, we truly do want to work with engineering and offshore maintenance. This is a very broad and fragmented segment. We are able to scale everything that has been built in terms of systems and control for that segment as well.
Another segment is to grow in exams for admission, periodic exams. We would like to join that sector, something that perhaps doesn't refer to M&A. We have our human resource system. One of our dreams, our old dreams, is to prepare that system to offer to the market. It's a very positive, productive system. It can automate the entire human resource system from beginning to end until we admit an employee to the end. We are thinking of acquiring small companies in technology and human resources to attach to our system. Last year, we acquired an electronic point company called Smart Control. It's a system that we did not have. It was one of our suppliers. We acquired this company that was immaterial. We have other companies in technology and human resource as part of our pipeline as well. That was very clear.
Thank you very much. I would like to thank you very much. We no longer have any questions up to this moment, so we will end the conference call here, thanking all of you for your attendance. Of course, we're at your disposal for subsequent clarifications. Just a minute, it seems we have somebody else