Good morning, everyone. We are here to present the results of the first quarter of the GPS group. I'm Maria Elsa Alba Bernhoeft and Marcelo Niemeyer Hampshire, cooperative IT and business. I'd like to start by talking about EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA net profit. We had a high number of 21% growth compared to the first quarter 2022. Within this growth of 21%, we had 8% of organic growth. We get adjusted a bit. We had BRL 294 million, accounting for the growth of 50%, a margin that is quite robust of 11.6% in the quarter, considering the fact that we haven't had the M&A in this period. An adjusted net profit, BRL 138 million, 23% higher than first quarter 2022, with a margin of 5.5%.
We exceeded the 4,000 clients. We have a large group with NPS of 74%. It's a semester survey. That's the result of the December 2022 survey. Within this group of clients, we don't have the number of clients from Edge, Facilities and Maintenance and Compart since they are not yet integrated to our systems, and we already see them in our results. With regards to our distribution in terms of solutions, you can see the results of Facilities at 41%, Security with 28%, Maintenance and Industrial Services, 24%, and Indoor Logistics, 7%. As a reference, in the first quarter 2022, Maintenance accounted for 6% less, 18% of the total share year-over-year. It's grown 6%. The 6% came. We had 3% of Facilities.
We decreased in Facilities and also a little bit in Security. With that, we're building a base of revenue by type of service, by line of solution, increasingly more balanced amongst the various services we provide to our clients. The polarization of revenue per client is very divided. We had the largest client accounting for 4%. Reminding you that within this largest client, we have over 10 contracts, which means that when we lose a contract or win a contract, it doesn't mean a loss or a gain of the totality that we have there and a breakdown amongst the base of clients of revenue that is very positive without creating dependence on few clients. As to net revenue, we've grown 21% quarter-over-quarter. The first quarter of 2021, we had an effect of M&A that has been smaller.
What you see with 21% obviously reflects an M&A pace that is slower in this year, in this first quarter, and organic net revenue of 8%. The 8% is very much impacted by the 2021 crop results that becomes the organic revenue data, and we make the acquisition, integrate companies, and make our adjustment of contracts to make this margin profitable in terms of what we see of the acquired one below the GPS level. With that, we have a reduction in the revenue and increased margin as you can see in the result of Q1. Just as a reference, if you remove the crop of 2021, our organic growth would have been 14%. This 14% you can check in the revenue explanatory note per crop that we have published in our results.
In organic net revenue account represented by 7 companies we've integrated in 2022 and 2 companies in 2023 that we announced in late 2022 that have just joined us in 2023, which are Engie and Compart. Regarding our EBITDA, as we've mentioned here, strong EBITDA in this quarter. Results are BRL 294 million in adjusted EBITDA. A growth of 50% regarding 1Q 2022, and the margin is quite robust, 11.6%. This is the 3rd quarter we present a margin above 11, which is not so typical, especially when we have M&As. You will realize the 3 quarters in which we had a result of M&A and incorporation that was slightly smaller. Our M&A pace was quite strong in the first half last year, and the margin was slightly below the 11.
In the first quarter, we have a margin of 11.6%, which is quite significant growth considering first quarter 2022. According to seasonality, this which it is the quarter in which we have the smallest margin. It was 9.4% in the first quarter 2022. 23% growth of adjusted net revenue with a-Margin that has been 5.5%. You will see the increase of Selic or interest rates that occurred the same over the same period. Now I'd like to turn over to Marcelo, who's going to talk about M&As. Thank you, Maria. Good morning, everyone. Here you have a summary of the acquisitions we made over last year. There were 9 acquisitions. With this combined revenue of the 9 company were BRL 1.7 billion over the year. The two last were the maintenance operation of Engie in Brazil.
We signed a contract in November, and the deal was closed in January this year. The revenue is BRL 113 million a year. It's a building maintenance and very much focused on energy efficiency. The last one was Compart. It's a field marketing company that provides sales promoters for the retail environment. We signed the acquisition in December, and the deal was closed in January. All those companies have been integrated. The only exception is Compart. It's at its final stage of integrating systems. Our intent is to have the go live of the system of the integration of the system in the 1st of June now. Of all the acquired companies, the only one that has not been fully integrated, it's Compart. It's important to mention that we keep agility in the integration.
It's important to keep great agility in the integration of the company. We only capture synergies from the systems integration. For those 9 companies, the average integration time was 114 days, actually. For an accounting issue, Engie and Compart, as the business was only closed in 2023, those two acquisitions have been reallocated to the M&A program of 2023. Here we have a summary of what we've done in the M&A program. Since the IPO, 15 acquisitions with the revenue, combined revenue of BRL 3.1 billion. I think it's important to highlight that we've managed to maintain the acquisitions within what we consider the ideal profiles. Middle-sized company with BRL 105 million of revenue a year. The companies that provide us greater opportunities to capture synergies, especially indirect synergy.
Because of the synergy, we can increase significantly the margins of those companies. Because of that, the acquisition payback is fast. It's about 2-3 years. We've been able to fulfill our acquisition goal within those companies with this ideal profile, which are companies that have a revenue of BRL 100 million-BRL 500 million a year. Another datum that I highlight is our growth in two segments, relatively new for GPS of temporary labor. Of those acquisitions, three were in this sector. I'd say they were the two greatest acquisitions in this segment. We have been able to grow quite a lot in this sector, which is quite new for GPS. The other sector that has been quite irrelevant in this process of acquisition has been the Maintenance and Industrial Services with five acquisitions.
That is also a new service to us. We started working this activity with the acquisition of Ivanti, which was 2020 or 2021, I'm not quite sure. We've been able to, since then, grow quite a lot, both organically and inorganically with the acquisitions. The integration with our M&A team, we have the delivery of our goals. Our pipeline is quite heated. We have 28 companies overall in our acquisition pipeline. We always like to work with a very robust pipeline because it allows us to be more selective in the decision of which company to acquire and which not to acquire. Of the pipeline of 28 companies, we call hot pipeline. The processes that are at the final lap, they are 14 companies.
When I say final lap, I mean companies that are at the final phase of due diligence, negotiation of contracts/price, final lap of negotiation of buying and selling. We have 14 companies with a combined revenue of those 14 companies of BRL 3 billion a year. We are quite comfortable that we're going to deliver the goal for this year. Obviously, that unlike last year, we're going to have greater concentration of acquisitions starting second half. Last year was in the first semester. This year, our expectations is that the acquisitions should happen over the second semester. That's about it, Marieta. I think we can move on to the next slide. Here, I think this is quite positive data of the semester.
Our operating cash has been quite robust of BRL 390 million. We have managed to get that despite the paying of PLR. The 1st quarter of the year is very much pressured because of the concentration of the PLR in March. We've paid on the 5th of March, BRL 128 million of PLR. Even considering this cash disbursement that is relevant, we managed to deliver this one-off BRL 390 million, which corresponds to 133% of the EBITDA generated over the period. Here we have interest and income tax. It's increased, the volume of interest disbursed. A combination of 2 factors, on one side, Selic, which is the official interest rate that increases our financial cost.
The other one, the net debt of because of the investments we made over the last year in our acquisition program. Financing activities. The main factor here is actually emission of debentures, BRL 77 million. We had a positive effect of BRL 31 million, which was the investment of shareholders in the acquisition of shares. In terms of investment, we had a negative effect of BRL 194 million. Main factor here, being the financial investments. Whenever we have a financial investment, we reduce cash and direct capital for a financial investment. This tightens our cash flow. We had a negative effect of BRL 169 million because of financial investment. Another relevant factor that affected this account was investment in operating assets.
We invested BRL 35 million over the quarter in these operating assets, and we closed the quarter with a cash volume and equivalent of BRL 904 million. This robust cash generation, you move on. This robust cash generation of the quarter allowed us to have relevant reduction of the net debt from BRL 944 million, which was the closing of last year, to BRL 766 million this quarter. A reduction of net debt of BRL 180 million. The reduction of net debt, combined with the increase of our EBITDA in the past 12 months, an increase from BRL 1 billion to BRL 8 million to BRL 1 billion 106, allow this reduction in leverage from 0.9 to 0.7. We are in a position that of cash, we have 2.8 cash and a position of leverage that is quite comfortable. That gives us great confidence to finance the M&A program for this year.
Marita, I think this is it. Do you have anything else to add? No, we conclude our presentation. Now we'll open up for questions. We have some people that have raised their hands. Let's follow the order. Let's get the microphone open. Renata Cabral would be the first one. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. We were looking at your organic growth, and you've explained on the release that you had a negative effect of the crop of acquisitions of 2021. I'd like you to give better color as to why the crop gave to negative growth to organic growth. Well, Renata, thank you for the question. Well, we like to buy companies that have a combination of two factors. One, indirect that is high. On the other hand, because of this high indirect, low EBITDA margin.
Usually, those companies that we acquire that are mid-sized companies, they do not have a follow-up of accounting results by contract. This is very good for us, because what happens frequently is that those companies have profitable contracts and have 10%, 20% of contracts with huge losses that they don't even know they exist. When we make the systems integration and we start having the measurement of contract results, we obviously identify these gaps, and we try to renegotiate with the clients so that we get to an equation of results that is sustainable. In some cases, the negotiation is not possible, and we decide to hand over the contract. We don't deal with deficit contracts. Specifically, the 2021 crop was very good because we were able to fit many acquisitions of company with a very low margin. It's good because we pay little.
We buy company with margins of 1%, 2%. Only with the synergy, indirect synergy gains that you can triple many times, triple the margin. To buy companies with this margin profile that is tight is very good for us because then we are able to pay very quickly the investment. There is a side effect. The companies that we buy, this 2021 season, let's say especially two, one, Rudder and Allis, they were companies that had tight margins and many losing or deficit contracts. Losing had contracts with banks with great deficits and bank contracts have tight margins because the supply, you know, the supply team of banks are very efficient, so they tighten customers, so they usually have tight margin contracts. Especially at Uards, they had relevant contracts with the banking sector, and they were in deficit. We tried to negotiate them.
We lost some contracts. We lost revenue and but we made a better margin. The 2021 was good, quite positive, so we managed to buy companies with a tight margin, and we were able, after systems integration and after screening the contracts, we were able to increase the profitability of those companies. I think the margin that we've captured in the first quarter, the margin that was quite qualified above our expectations in recurring basis, it has very much related to this margin quality in the season of 2021. This impacted our organic growth. We had a re-revenue drop in this season. If we exclude this season, 14%, and our growth would be 14%. Look, we always have this effect. It's recurrent effect.
We'll always have acquisition. We'll always be dealing with contracts that are on a deficit. What happened this quarter is that we had a large concentration of contracts lost because they were on deficit and impacted our organic growth. I understand. Very clear. You've answered my second question, which was about the margin, why there was this effect of having very good margin in the fourth quarter and very much because of this effect. You've acquired company with a very low margin. You've managed to bring to a higher level. That would be it, right? Okay, thank you very much. Second person that raised their hand, your microphone is open. Oi. [Foreign language] bom dia. [Foreign language] Parabéns pelo resultado. Good morning. Congratulations on your results. I have two questions. The first, you've mentioned the expectation of 2023.
You may have a concentration of M&A in the 2nd semester. My 1st question is: how can we think about margin dynamics, as you've just mentioned? Usually, the acquisition targets usually have lower margins. Should we expect that anyhow you can keep the margin above 10% in the 2nd semester? The 2nd question a bit related to CapEx, and we did some calculations here. 1st quarter, it seems as it has increased CapEx vis-à-vis revenue if you somehow are changing the profile of the new contracts. Thank you. Vitor, regarding margin, we estimate that we're going to keep to this range that is recurring of ours between 10 and 11.
Looking at the pipeline that Marcelo has mentioned here, we estimate this year, well, we can sort of forecast that we're going to be between 10, 11, the margin above 11 even, it is the third quarter that we're delivering. It's not non-recurring in our view. With regards to CapEx, there are no changes in strategy. Our guidance is still towards allocation of equipment. We only keep it away or we mobilize it when there is no reason for that. There's no difference between allocation and acquisition of equipment. It will change quarter by quarter, this CapEx volume. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was BRL 30 million. BRL 34 million. It is not very much different from our history. We'll have a natural growth over the quarters. Just to add to margin, the margin comment of Maria's.
This quarter, well, this margin is something we consider atypical. It's being benefited due to the fact that we had no relevant integration of companies in this quarter. Naturally, in the second half, as we release the acquisitions and we have a more relevant volume of integrations, the trend is that this margin would be more within our recurring expectation, which is from 10% to 11%. We've always delivered between 10% and 11% in this context of having many integrations. This is our reality. Our reality is to deliver margin on this area between 10%, 11%, even considering negative effect of integration companies. There are two negative effects. First, you have the costs related to capturing synergies you mobilize here with several things, so this tightens a bit our profitability.
The second negative effect is the very margin of the integrated company that is much lower than ours, so it temporarily reduces the weighted average of our margins. Well, it actually drops. As we capture synergies and improve by consequence the profitability of those companies, the margin converge to our standard and get back to the level of 11%. In the second half, my expectation is that we do have margin impact because of the integrations, but we've always had those impacts, so we're going to between 10%-11%. This semester was sort of different because we had few in-company integrations over this period. Just adding to the question of the investments in fixed assets. If you look historically, actually we have a change much more the impact of acquisition of maintenance companies.
If you think it's a level that's been established with 5 companies that we bought of maintenance and industrial services, this would be the recurring profile of the company, if you look at both. Historically, actually, it had a small growth as we've integrated companies of services and industrials maintenance. Thank you. Now, the third person is Julia. Julia. Julia. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Good morning. I have 2 questions. When you make that conciliation of EBITDA, of CVM, and adjusted, this difference, how much would it be in SG&A and cost of services provided? I ask this because perhaps my question is very much related to gross margin. Perhaps it's been a bit smaller or lower than I expected. I don't know if this can have some non-recurring effect or if this is it, or the surprise has been on the SG&A.
It's a very good cost control. Can you help me understand these two points, please? I don't know to what extent the slide of the EBITDA CVM slide will help you answer the question. Well, it does not help. It doesn't. You'd like to know to what extent the margin improvement has been in the gross or indirect. What will help you, Julia, is the history spreadsheet that we have already published that distributes the spending by nature between COGS and SG&A. It's on our website, and you can check it there. For example, of those calculations that we adjust in our EBITDA, you're going to be able to conciliate each one of them between what is COGS and what's SG&A. I don't have it right now. If you like, we can talk specifically about this topic with basis on this.
We provide this visibility of that from the IPO, but we've continued disclosing through the history spreadsheet. Well, Julia, our internal analysis, you can check it based on this note that Marita has mentioned, is that this margin gain has happened a bit on the gross margin and a bit on indirect because of the dependence of our fixed cost because of revenue. A bit on the margin. We haven't lost gross margin regarding the 4th quarter immediately before. Well, because of that, we have seasonality of the In the 4th quarter, it's worthwhile mentioning. We have to compare 1st quarter to 1st quarter because our business is seasonal, and the seasonality is basically concentrated on 2 points. The 1st one is the concentration we have of additional service or extra services.
In the last quarter, there is a volume of extra services that is very high, especially in temporary labor. It's very seasonal, that's when you have retail promotions that are end of year. Temporary services have a great concentration of revenue and margin at the end of the year. In the that period, we have extra service that is historically more profitable with operating margin that is better in the last quarter of the year. That's one aspect. The other aspect is that we have a concentration of carryover of contract readjustment. In the first quarter, when you carry over the salary readjustment, you have some adjustment in provisions. If an employee gets BRL 1,500, the increase is to BRL 1,600.
When they go on holidays, the salary they're going to get is BRL 1,600, no longer BRL 1,500. When I readjust the salary of employees, I have to get everything I have in terms of inventory, and I have to correct it for the new salary. This has great impact to the gross margin. The first quarter, when I carry over things and readjust all the amounts, I take all the provision of my liability of all this and the searching salary of a bit is provisioned, and I correct it based on the new amount of the salary. This affects our revenue as well. Can I add another one? Based on seasonality, the results have been quite good.
It is possible to say that you can annualize this first quarter from here upwards over the year, and the same question goes to profit. Does it fold, does it follow this tone that is of growth, this organic growth of 8%, will it be maintained? Julia, look, our vision here is that what we can deliver in terms of recurring margin is something between 10%-11%. This quarter has been benefited in a non-recurring way due to almost absence of no integration of companies in the first quarter. In the landscape where we keep the pace of company acquisition and our footprint of inorganic growth, always going to have integrated companies. What we can expect of a recurring margin in this context, which we'll always be integrating companies is a margin between 10%-11%.
We don't believe, because I understand that when I am just annualizing it, I'm not considering new acquisitions. You wouldn't have this additional expense. I would have the volume of acquisitions made up to today annualized, and this organic growth will be maintained. Of course, if we have new companies coming in, you're going to get the revenue and the margin drops. Is that correct? The reasoning, is it correct? You can consider two questions that are important. One regarding organic growth. On recurring base, we have deliveries between 10 and 12. This adjustment of contracts that we had in the 2021 season, it normalizes from now onwards. The other effect of the margin is the opposite. It's smaller as we get to M&As.
Well, our view is that in the top line when you talk about organic growth, our recurring basis is between 10%-12% year-over-year, as we've seen or expected since 2012, 2015. You're considering a hypothetical scenario where we have no M&A. If there is seasonality of the year, would there be a reason for the results, the revenue of contracts in the first quarter to be higher than the first, higher than the second, third and fourth? Well, we are quite confident that this landscape with absence of M&A, we're going to have an EBITDA margin of over 11%, a bit below, a bit above. Well, our results are a combination of many factors. We have 490 contracts, managing contracts, so each one has a specific performance.
Our result is the combination of the performance of those various businesses in the company. Keeping this hypothetical context in which there are no M&As, we are very confident that our margin will be closer to 11%, possibly a bit above, depending on specific points of every quarter. There is a slight seasonality of revenue, typically grows for the second half, as Marcelo has mentioned, extra services, seasonality of temporary labor that typically are more concentrated in the second half. If you annualize the first quarter, you would perhaps not capture for the whole year the seasonality that we have of revenue in the second half, which is organic, not inorganic. Thank you very much. That was it. Thank you, Julia. We have a question through the chat from. I'm going to read it to you all. You're prioritizing some.
Are you prioritize some specific region in Brazil considering acquisitions? How do you evaluate the portfolio of public clients in those acquisitions? Joseph, thank you for your question. Our vision here in acquisition is opportunistic. We don't have anything about buying company on A, B or C region. It's considering these industries or sectors we operate and things that have synergy with our group. We see companies with some features. First, ideally, companies that have high indirect costs, indirect costs accounting for 10% of net revenue, and as a consequence, have low profitability. With this kind of company, we're able to be very efficient in terms of our cost of capital. That's the first piece. Revenue pulverization. We like companies that have pulverized revenue in various clients.
Companies that have a concentration of revenue client A, B or C, it adds risk to the acquisition. We like companies with pulverized revenue. As to public market, we don't like to buy companies that have public contracts. Obviously, this, a company always has a contract with public sector. This is unavoidable. When I'm say public, except for Banco do Brasil and Petrobras, they're totally different. With public agencies, I mean, We know it's inevitable. Every company has some kind of a stake in the public market. Up to 10% of revenue in the public sector, we are willing to move on with the negotiation. If it is high concentration, even so, it's a deal that we consider attractive, we're going to be much stricter in terms of negotiation.
With a greater stake in the public market, the deal is priced considering that the public contracts will be lost. We don't price public contracts. We are willing to move on with the transaction, but without paying for the public contracts because we know they are contracts that have different type of management. For the company to operate in the public sector, it must have a different strategy, which is different from ours. We move on with the person that we have, Luiz Capistrano from Itaú. Your mic is open. Good morning, Marcelo, Maria. Thank you for giving me the space. About the 14% of organic growth is related to the season of 2021.
This number draws our attention considering that we had then, this year, in this round of collective bargaining, a number that was smaller, 7%, 8%. It was not 100% reflect in the first quarter. We still have the second quarter to have good part of readjustment of salaries. You know, from what I remember of collective bargaining, I think you had organic growth of new contracts, cross-selling of new clients. It was quite interesting. If you could give me that breakdown. They usually bring in the institutional presentation on a yearly base. You have always breakdown on churn, same client, sales of new contracts. You can give me an idea, not specific numbers, but how these numbers are broken down and if it's shows a trend of acceleration, how you see that part of organic growth.
The second point I'd like to comment a bit with you is on the M&A part. You're quite confident it's been a sort of temporary suspension for the second quarter. I'd like to understand, on your view, if there is a kind of forecast in the drop, interest rate drop. We are missing cycle close. We're close to that. In Brazil, people are starting to talk about that, even though it hasn't started yet. We know interest rates are quite important in this whole M&A valuation discussion. You have to be more diligent regarding multiples. I'd like to understand, what do you have in mind for the M&A pipeline regarding the interest rate? 14%. What is 14%?
Luiz, when we evaluate organic and the breakdown that we usually make, we only disclose it annually because we've noticed there's a slight drop in churn and an increase in new clients. I think the whole commercial effort, especially when Gustavo mentioned in the release of the fourth quarter, when we made the presentation of fourth quarter, he mentioned, the processes started structuring in the commercial front. We have some fruits that we're using this rationale of actually increasing the logic with our clients and keeping this cross-sell work and a slight drop in churn. Our homework here is always to look at to the 10 and 12 a year, and apparently. Not apparently. Objectively, this work of commercial front has generated very positive results.
We don't think that this is necessarily recurring, but this being good news in this area of organic growth. Churn's slightly smaller and the new customers or new clients take a bit higher. Well, from what I understand it, the question is whether we are incorporating some outlook of better scenario in pricing. Yes. Look, to us, it's very difficult to work with scenarios. It's difficult to work with the reality today. If we project future scenarios, it's very difficult. We're still aligning with some business people the worsening of the scenario because of the increase we had of the worsening of the scenario we've had this year. We haven't completed this alignment yet. We haven't even thought about the interest rates drop. We're working with the scenario that we have today, difficult, high interest rates.
To us, it's quite difficult to project scenarios. We work with the scenarios that we have at the moment, and it's already a huge challenge to work in this way because there is dynamics of aligning with sellers that is very long-lasting scenario worsened last year with increase in interest rates, and it continues to worsen over this year. We are still sort of having, you know, negotiations with the sellers trying to lower our valuation. We're not expecting a better scenario in terms of valuation. I'm going to bring a question from the chat that we have, which is precisely on the adjustment of valuation in the M&A processes because of sort of the bit of turmoil in the macro scenario, or if this process is underway, if we've already made the adjustment or not.
If you can move on to this question from the Q&A. Well, we're working with the scenario that we have today, difficult, high interest rates. Many companies are facing difficulties. This mid-sized company we're here, we've noticed great degradation in the accounts, the results, in the liabilities of companies. This obviously represents an opportunity on one hand, and on the other hand, there's a difficulty. You need to find an equity finder that makes the transaction feasible. We're working with the scenario that we have today, which is difficult, especially for this niche that we like to operate on, which are mid-sized companies. They suffer more. They're capturing 3% a month. This is the reality. This is it. We're working with the scenario that we have today, quite difficult, full of challenges, and we have to adjust to the valuation.
We have to adjust our valuation metrics to this scenario, and this requires a lot of work. Perfect. Thank you very much. I have here João, who's raised his hand. João, please. Hello, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one regarding contract negotiations that you mentioned of the 2021 season. I'd like to check whether you have some plans of revisiting any additional contracts over this year, or if we should expect that from now on, the only impact to organic revenue will be carryover from the first quarter of what you've done, or if you can have a new round of negotiations. João, look, every transaction we make because of the feature that I've mentioned, the companies we buy, those companies, they have difficulty of having sort of very clear or clean accounts for by their tax IG.
Those companies, people make money in 80% of contracts and have great losses in 20%, and they don't even know about that. This is a huge opportunity. By mobilizing the contracts, you improve the margin of the company and the profitability. Historically, when Marita says that we will provide 10%-12% organically, we add to that. Although we are always losing contracts in companies that are being acquired. If you exclude from our organic growth, those losses of contracts because of the companies that we buy that have deficit contracts, certainly historical organic growth would be closer to 14%. What has happened in this quarter is that the 2021 season was very good to us in terms of payback, but on the other hand, added many deficit contracts.
We had a point outside the curve, the 2021 season. That's why the growth was 12%. Well, 10%. We didn't manage to get that growth to, from 10 to 12. We always have this situation of mobilizing deficit contracts because of the integration of new companies. Despite of that, even in this scenario, our expectation is to grow between 10 to 12%. Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much. The second question, actually following up on the M&A point, you mentioned that the midsize player, well, the macro scenario is very bad, and for a less efficient players, it's even worse. From our understanding, the midsize company would be more interested in selling company in a scenario which it's deteriorating. They would be more in a hurry to sell it.
What is the most important part of the discussions that you have happening today considering this macro scenario that in our mind should actually expedite the M&A processes? It does expedite for sure. There are two things. First, which is very difficult, is to realign everything. You send a proposal to pay. The quotes, they are at the final lap. They left early last year when you had a different scenario. The work to realign results is very difficult. We've gone over this tape, this qualified step. We have everything realigned or in diligence or at the final lap of negotiation contract, but it's been delayed the process because of having to renegotiate multiples. You have a second point.
We have other companies that were in a situation that was very difficult on the threshold of making the acquisition unfeasible. They end up not having positive equity value. With the current scenario, well, things have sort of gone totally unfeasible. Some companies are totally unfeasible to be bought because the volume of liabilities, financial debt, tax debt, and contingencies are much higher than the enterprise value of the company. This has made it. We lost a lot of deals that were unfeasible. The reduction of the multiple combined with the increase of the liabilities of the company made the deal unfeasible. Perfect. Thank you very much. Very clear. Just a quick follow-up. The idea is to keep on buying a hundred percent of company, not just majority stake and leave for sellers. The idea is to follow it.
They are businesses that we already have today, that we are used to operating, cleaning, maintenance, Security, temporary labor, Indoor Logistics, and food, the idea is to buy 100%. They are new businesses, since they are new businesses in which we are interested in going into, electric, network, maintenance of telephone networks or grids, maintenance, offshore maintenance services. Since they are new businesses that we are not knowledgeable technically of the services provided to client, for these new sectors, we decide to have a partial acquisition. Have the companies, people with us, we gain with synergies, and it's a price we pay, and the price is fair.
On the other hand, we have the seller on the side to help me in this complex task of integrating systems, of absorbing new services. This is the line. We'll keep them part of the acquired company. Okay. Thank you very much. Let's move on with Lucas. Open the microphone for Lucas. Thank you. Good morning, Marcelo, Maria. Question regarding minimum wage. We know that the % of employees you have that earn minimum wage are small. There are some slightly above that have some effect. Could you share with us what % of your employees had this increase of minimum wage? More specifically in the state of São Paulo, we have a project of the governor to have higher minimum wage of BRL 1,500 vis-à-vis BRL 1,320, which is the federal minimum wage.
What is the % of São Paulo employees that would be out of this square, let's say? If you could comment on that. Lucas, would you like me to answer it? Look, the minimum national increase is no problem because it goes into the collective bargaining. They follow, obviously, the national level. It's not a challenge that is new. It's a challenge that we have of carrying over the adjustments in each category. Specifically regarding São Paulo, the collective bargaining agreements have been published. Regarding São Paulo, we had the conventions that have been published. The increase of the minimum wage to 1,500 will be additional one. Our tasks that will be impacted, that has the floor below 1,500 is the ASG, the auxiliary of our general services. The floor would be 1,400, and it would have to win.
For security guards, we have salaries above that. We have some problems, specific in some positions, and it's in the state of São Paulo. Our total financial impact with provisions, charges is BRL 1,400,000. However, in practically all our contracts, we have, you know, carryover contract clauses, and this will transfer the or carry it over to our clients. Obviously, it's not always easy to transfer cost increases, so we have contract merit, and we have reasons for this transfer. It's not a very relevant amount. BRL 1,400,000 of per month of carryover amount. Very clear. Quite small impact to you.
If you allow me a second question on the M&A integration process, any evolution that has happened since the IPO to now in the integration team, give me a bit of flavor as how you're maturing this M&A process, if there's anything you can share that is different. Vis-à-vis the past, what we made of changes, those that actually led the integration was Carla, who was our M&A director. She took the process from beginning to end. She would buy and integrate. Since her challenge has increased a lot, and the complexity because there are more companies being negotiated, we divided the teams. Today, Carla and her team are devoted to acquisition itself of companies, and the post-deal management has a lot of to be negotiated or deal. There are lots to be negotiated, and she's very much concentrated on that.
We created an integration department, Samuel, director responsible for this area. We set up a team for company integration. It's running quite well. While this integration, we have a dedicated team to integration, and it's running quite well. Samuel has been one acquired one. He came from an acquired company, so he knows. He came from Jana, a company we bought some years ago. He knows quite well the integration process, and it's going quite well. The change was early last year, along with Guilherme Bottura, the financial director, and within the structure of Samuel, we have some hubs led in the large processes of integration, financial, supplies, HR, so on and so forth. Today, I would tell you that we have a capability of integration that is reflected in the number of days, always 114 days, with a much greater expertise as well.
Super clear. Thank you very much and have a good day. Thank you. Good day. We're going to move on from Pedro Moreira's question. He's asking about the working capital improvement. The improvement in working capital has helped us in the cash generation over the period. It's a recovery of delayed accounts receivable. We had a lot of maintenance companies last year. We acquired Comau amongst others, those companies have greater complexity in the integration of the revenue. There was a slowdown of certain revenues, and we integrated that this semester. This cash generation positive result has a lot to do with measurement of how much we've invoiced and also receivables in arrears. If you compare receivables regarding 2022, we basically flat.
We reduced BRL 58.7 million, meaning to say that even growing 21%, we were able to improve our ability of receiving from our clients, result of the work we did in the fourth quarter with some trends that we actually or some things out-outstanding that we actually managed to receive in the first quarter. BRL 29 million. I don't know if there's anybody else. At the moment, we have no one else with their hands raised and no other questions on the Q&A. It's 10:55 A.M. We will wrap up the meeting. Thank you very much for your participation, and we'll be available for possible future questions. Thank you all very much, and we wish you all a very good day.