This number still does not include the numbers of 3 companies that are being integrated and will be fully integrated in the 4th quarter in terms of clients, employees and contracts. Up to present, there are 137,000 workers, we have also increased the number of contracts, contract managers by 8% that cover the entire national territory, keeping our leadership position stable. We have 3,635 groups of customers. Of course, this has increased because of the acquisition, our NPS continues to be 74%. As a reminder, the NPS is measured every quarter. We will have another survey at the end of the year. Our revenues per solution line are part of our solution. We like to present to the customers a very diversified service. In facilities, we have reached 43%.
There was a drop from the first quarter to present of 3% because maintenance and industrial services as a counterpart grew to 20% thanks to the acquisitions in this sector. In terms of security and logistics, slight movements of 1%. Additionally, for logistics, that gets to 7% of our net revenue and security with 31%. Another important aspect is the fragmentation of our customer base. We continue with significant fragmentation. Our largest client represents 4% of our net revenue, and this customer has several contracts, more than a dozen contracts, which does not mean that we depend exclusively on a single contract. Our relationship is quite diversified with every customer. We have in our 45% of our revenue distributed among more than 3,000 customers, a very good diversification.
Our net revenue for the quarter reached BRL 427,000, a growth of 46% vis-a-vis the third quarter last year. The organic revenue had a growth of 12%. An interesting and very positive movement in line with what we have been remarking and in line with our expectations. Our inorganic net revenue is represented by the 6 companies that we have acquired and the 2 companies we acquired in 2022. The revenues for 2022 are still pro rata. The companies will only be integrated with the full closing of the operation. Beginning this quarter, the 7 companies are already reflected in our results. The net revenues for the 9 months reached BRL 6,733. We had a growth of 44% vis-a-vis last year. Inorganic revenues, a growth of 11% with positive results.
The inorganic revenue in the same period for the companies of 21, they represented 29% and in 2022 with a pro rata participation. I would now like to give the floor to Marcelo to speak about M&As. Well, good morning, everybody, and here you have a summary of the acquisitions we carried out during the year. The last acquisition was the maintenance operations of the Engie Group in Brazil, something that we closed on Monday or Tuesday. This is a company that in the 12 previous months before the signing of the contract had made BRL 113 million. What is interesting is that this maintenance company that is highly focused and highly competent in energy efficiency, and we're adding this to our solution portfolio.
We had spoken about this some years ago of having an area in energy efficiency, and now we have achieved this with the acquisition of Engie. These two companies have a combined revenue of BRL 1.5 million per year. You know that our goal was BRL 1.75 billion. We're somewhat below our goal, through M&A, we're attempting to deliver this goal this year still. We're missing BRL 250 million in terms of invoicing. What is important to highlight here is our efficiency and systems integration. As you know, it is important to be very expeditious in the integration process where we begin to capture synergy.
Now, when the company operates in our management environment, we have concluded the integration of E-Vertical, which is E-Vertical, which is the last one that was integrated, and we decided to postpone the integration of Global Serviços for February. This related to an issue of the company working with temporary services that has high seasonality at the end of the year. We decided to avoid this period that is complicated in terms of accounting and conclude the integration of systems of Global only in February. We have just signed a sale and purchase agreement that has now allowed us to begin our integration process so far. Next slide, please, Marita. Here you see a summary of our activity in M&A since the IPO. We are speaking of 14 companies that were acquired with a joint revenue of the 14 companies of approximately BRL 3 billion per year.
This is the combined revenues. It is important to highlight that we were able to maintain our focus on the medium-sized companies. This is a profile of company that offers a better return on invested capital. These are companies with less revenues to decrease fixed cost. Because of this, they operate with EBITDA margins, operational margins that are more compressed. They do offer a very high potential of synergy during the integration. As a result, they are of help to us. The payback, the return on capital invested is always better with this profile of company. We have been able to deliver our growth goal with this type of company. Of course, they are more labor-intensive to buy 5 companies that jointly invoice BRL 1 billion vis-à-vis acquiring a single company that invoices BRL 1 billion. I think this additional work is worthwhile.
Another important point, as our diversification strategy has given us good results, among these 14 acquisitions, you will see that 5 were maintenance companies and industrial services. This is a new service for us, and you will see the importance that this has for our inorganic as well as our organic growth. Two companies with temporary labor and field marketing, Global and Iris, which is a very new segment for Global. We began with this segment with the acquisition of Luandre in 2020, we already have a very robust acquisition process in this segment. This is part of our strategy of diversifying, incorporating new services that technically are different but that share the same management environment that GPS works. This has proven to truly be a winning strategy. We can continue. Now to speak about EBITDA for the period.
For the third quarter, we had a positive result, BRL 279 million, representing a growth of 53% vis-à-vis the same period last year. With a margin that is quite positive of 11.5%, 0.5% higher vis-à-vis the third quarter of 2021. In the nine months, we also had substantial growth, 43% with a margin of 10.6%, very much in line with what we had already achieved last year as well. We would like to highlight that we had some effects that positively impacted the margin in the third quarter, an increase in operational margin because of the contracts.
We have a balance of contracts in the process of negotiation with the customers and because of cross-sell and the effect of capturing the synergies, both administrative and operational, of the companies that have been acquired and already integrated. This through a very disciplined work of integration of the companies acquired. We have released often that M&A does have an impact on our margin at the moment of integrations. You will see that the third quarter already shows the recovery of the impact we had at the beginning of the year. We imagine that the fourth quarter may still have some impact due to the acquisitions. The result will once again be very much in line with what we are presenting for the nine months.
Regarding net income, adjusted net income, the growth is 26% vis-à-vis the third quarter, with a net margin of 5.7%, 1 percentage point below that of last year. A 30% growth in adjusted net income when we compare the 9 months with a net margin of 5.6%. That is to say, 0.5 percentage points below the 9 months of 2021. Net income is being impacted by the increase in Selic. The Selic impacts our financial expenses. They're made up of interest rates and debentures, but also because of the update of contingencies that we have to do mandatorily. You will see when we're speaking about monetary correction or interest rates of these contingencies, this is the impact on the net income margin.
To speak about our operational cash flow. We began in January with BRL 652 million. We generated operational cash of BRL 598 million, beyond the BRL 600 million, and this represented 84% of the adjusted EBITDA for the period. This was 18 percentage points lower than last year, basically because we had an increase in accounts receivable of BRL 376 million, especially from the companies acquired, and an impact of the taxes to recover of BRL 133 million also impacting our cash. The taxes that are recoverable this year, we carried out an exercise to incorporate 20 companies. This means using the tax that we have, that we in truth anticipate, and then we have to compensate or liquidate. The company structure enables us to have a greater efficiency with this.
In terms of interest, we paid BRL 251 million, BRL 90 million of income tax, the rest in terms of interest rate impacted by Selic. In terms of the net cash of funding, it was negative BRL 323 million because of the amortization of loans and debentures of BRL 248 million, and the exercise of purchase of 4 companies that added up to BRL 88 million. In terms of the investment activities or funding activities, we did have the positive impact of integralizing capital of BRL 33 million as a whole. In the investment activities, we generated a positive effect of BRL 169 million because we redeemed some applications and the payment of acquisitions of Multi, Sulzer, E-Vertical, Global, and 2 other companies representing BRL 292 million, and a net disbursement of approximately BRL 70 million.
We reached the end of the period with a cash of BRL 846 million, BRL 200 million above the beginning of the year. When we speak about our leverage, we have maintained a stable level of 1.0 times. In the fourth quarters, we have maintained a very stable level of leverage, 0.9, 1.0 times EBITDA. By having this level, even though we total the acquisition of 7 companies with the expense of BRL 290 million and the exercise of 4 options of BRL 80 million that we had carried out in the past, what you see here is the reflection of this discipline in integrating companies. We quickly capture operational cash generation. We maintain our leverage stabilized despite the robust investment in 7 companies and purchase options of an additional 4 companies.
This indicator here, if you look at the EBITDA we have, obviously does not calculate the EBITDA of the acquired companies. It simply is accumulating here what we have already incorporated from the acquired companies, although we have accounted for all of the investments made in these companies. The portfolio duration is 43 months, quite lengthy, and we consider that the company has been able to generate operational cash to allow us to have organic growth, continue on with M&As, and preserving our financial soundness. We are quite comfortable with our cash position for funding, for organic growth, and to manage the company in a well-structured way. We would like to end the presentation, and we will now go on to questions and answers. Well, to begin with, I have Lucas Esteves. Lucas, we're going to open your microphone. Yes. Of course.
Hello, Marita, Marcelo. Can you hear me? Yes. This is Lucas, of course, from Santander. I do apologize. Congratulations for another quarter with excellent results. I have two questions. First of all, given the change in the executive power for the coming year and the expectation in the market that we will have a move backwards in terms of reforms, now, if there is a move forward in the labor process, in which magnitude would GPS be affected? And I would like to explore the drivers of efficiency in your contract that led to this high EBITDA margin.
Does this refer to the revisions of the contracts during negotiations in terms of collective bargaining, or are you working with new contracts and new negotiations? Thank you. Hello, Lucas. Good morning, and thank you for the questions. When we had the labor reform during the Temer government, to be very objective, we didn't have a single gain because of the reform. Absolutely nothing. Our values vis-à-vis net revenue remained stable at 200, and our volume of shares coming in year after year, proportionally vis-à-vis what is effective, also remained stable, 9%-10%. Therefore, we did not have any gain or benefit due to this reform. An alteration, a change, in the reform will not bring about a loss for GPS. What is being discussed and what I have been following up on are some very timely actions.
They're discussing the issue of intermittent work. GPS and our employees work here, in a regime of temporary work. We practically don't have anybody working intermittently in the company, in the sector of events, and this would be irrelevant in our revenues as a whole, which means that the intermittent labor will not impact us at all. A second point that is being debated is the issue of the agreements made directly between the company and the employee, something that does not even exist within the company. Our employees are, cleaning people, maintenance people, they are guards, which means that we do not have room for a direct agreement between GPS and these employees.
Our entire relationship with our employees is regulated by the 400 collective bargaining clauses. This means we have no direct agreement with our employees, which means this would end up being irrelevant for us. Very generally, there is another point, which is the continuity of the validity of this collective bargaining. If a new conversion has not been negotiated or if it is maturing, if a new convention has not been negotiated, the collective bargaining that will continue to produce its effects, which for us is also irrelevant. It's almost unthinkable to think of having a collective convention here offering BRL 50 per guard, hypothetically, of course. If this convention is over and if there is no new convention regulating this remuneration, we will not pay the guards because they will not be working, which of course is something that does not happen here.
We are convinced that the effect for our day-to-day work will be null. Deeply thinking about this, we receive this question very recurrently because of the complexity of the labor environment in Brazil. For GPS, the more complex the environment, the better the strategic analysis we carry out. We're able to set ourselves out better vis-à-vis the competitors. We have a greater scale, a better structure to get organized systemically in this sea of complexity, this labor environment and the environment of benefits in Brazil. We have been here investing in systems for quite some time to have more systematic control. The more complex the environment, the more we are able to differentiate ourselves from the competitors that do not have the same structure and the same scale to resolve these issues. We also add value for our customers.
Basically, customers are hiring us to manage all of this complexity for them. This is our viewpoint on the issue. Thank you. That was very clear. Do you have another question, Lucas? I'm sorry. No? The second point that I referred to in terms of efficiency gains, well, it's very difficult to speak about margins. We have more than 10,000 contracts at GPS, and we have more than 400 contract managers. They're here to manage the result of the contracts. Basically, our result is a combination of the performance of these 400 managers. You always have a group of managers with a better performance, some that will perform below average. GPS has that statistical benefit of having the result represented by the average performance of several contract managers. It's very difficult to tell you where this incremental margin comes from.
What I can say is that this margin is atypical, it is non-recurrent probably, and what we expect recurrently is an EBITDA margin between 10% and 11%. Evidently, in some quarters, the margin will be somewhat above 11%. This would be natural. Other quarters with margins closer to 10% or perhaps lower. What we do expect is that in the long term and in the recurrent base, the EBITDA margin will be between 10% and 11%, which is sustainable for our work. Thank you. Thank you for the very clear responses. Have a good Friday. We now open the floor to Lucas Marquiori. Good morning, Marcelo, Marita. Marcelo, in the points that you have just remarked, I would like to discuss the program for inorganic growth. I have a single question. Simply to review your scenario.
We're in the month of November, the year has almost ended, and I understand that the cumulated M&A program up to present is coming to an end, and I know that the goal was closer to BRL 2 billion. There are very relevant changes in the negotiation cycles. You have a very robust package, several acquisitions being done at the beginning of the year, and with a very clear dynamic for a negotiation. If the economic area changes, will this make you postpone your negotiations for the second semester? Are they done by cycles? Everything that we change and we discussed, perhaps this will lead you to postponing the close of this cycle of negotiations and broadening your window for the acquisition of new deals. Is this a correct reading? Are you also looking at this and trying to understand what is happening?
I would like to understand your reading of this volatility in terms of the labor market. These are my points today. Thank you for the question, Lucas. I think your reading is quite correct. We do work in cycles. When we had the IPO, the goal was BRL 1.5 billion. This year, the goal is BRL 1 billion 750 million. The accrued goal for two years is BRL 2 billion 750 million. We're close to BRL 3 billion already. We have an accrued gap of BRL 250 million that we still have to deliver. What is happening is that the M&As that were closed in the first semester of the year are processes that we began to negotiate last year when the environment had low interest rates of 5% a year.
What has happened this year is that the scenario has changed drastically in terms of the interest rate, especially. Of course, this impacts our assessment premises. On the other hand, the sellers who began to negotiate with us last year at a 5% interest rate, it's not easy for them to absorb changes in valuation. What has happened now between harvests is our negotiation with the sellers to adjust their expectation to the new reality of the interest rates. It is one thing to acquire a company where the cost of capital is 5%-6% a year. It's another situation of acquiring a company where the expectations are changing. Of course, this has impacted our negotiations since April, May, up to present. Very gradually, our sellers are beginning to understand this. They're absorbing the new reality, and we're unharnessing, unleashing the deals again.
We're struggling to deliver that gap that we're missing this year, BRL 250 million. Part of this will carry on for next year, we will deliver most of this. Our priority in acquisitions, this is a business that is very dear to us, is to carry out acquisitions that will enable us to have a sound balance to continue to carry out new acquisitions. We're highly concerned here with the company leverage as a result of the acquisitions. We're never going to do a deal here simply to deliver our goal, but compromising our ability to carry out new acquisitions. This is our top priority, to acquire companies within our pricing assumptions. We will never carry out a deal that escapes from these assumptions.
We know that if we begin to make acquisitions that do not comply with this assumption, it will make our growth unfeasible, our inorganic growth in the long term. We will be overly leveraged. This will prevent us from raising resources to carry on new acquisitions. For more than 15 years, we have been able to finance our acquisitions with the company's cash generation. We have been able to do that because we buy according to some premises that enable us to be very speedy in the payment and to proceed on with a new acquisition. We will be perhaps somewhat below for the year. We will begin doing this next year. In an accumulated vision, we will deliver on our acquisition goals.
As most of the goal was delivered in the first semester, naturally, the concentration of the M&A team focused on qualifying the pipeline for 2023. For some time already, we're working on creating a qualified pipeline for 2023, one that will be compatible with this new economic scenario and the new premises of pricing. Because of this scenario, we carried out the Engie deal, Engie. We're working on this to be able to deliver part of that gap this year. Perhaps part of those BRL 250 million will have to be resolved in 2023. I don't know if I have answered your question. Yes, quite fully. Thank you very much, Marcelo and Marita. Thank you. We're going to open the floor for Gabriel Rezende. Gabriel? Gabriel, perhaps your microphone is muted. He might have left, perhaps. Very well.
We have two or three additional questions, I believe. Renata? We're going to open your microphone. Very well. You may proceed, Renata. Gabriel was able to reconnect. Gabriel, we're going to turn on your microphone. You may proceed with your question. I do apologize. I had a problem with Zoom on the cell phone. I was also going to ask about the M&A pipeline. This was made clear.
To speak about the expansion in the maintenance segment, I would like to understand the company's strategy, if this is geared to diversifying revenues, a view to diversify customers, to leverage cross-selling within your present day base, and how could this impact your figures if there would be a change in terms of margin or returns with this new gain in position in the maintenance segment that represents a large part of the M&As you carried out last year. Hello, Gabriel. For some time already, we have had this strategy for diversifying. Throughout the last few years, we have developed several systems and solutions to simplify the management of the labor environment, the benefits. Well, that complicated scenario in Brazil.
Our strategy is to add to our portfolio new services that have their technical peculiarity, but that, in essence, share all of the systems that we have been working on for so many years. On the other hand, these are services that enable us to replicate our management model, where we make the contract manager accountable for everything. We have added maintenance of highways, temporary labor, field marketing, and of course, in the coming years, we would like to also add additional services. As we add new services, we increase our potential market size because of the addition of services. On the other hand, as you mentioned, we increase our capacity to work with the service cross-selling. Whenever we acquire a company, and we have the case of Engie operations in Brazil, for example, that only has maintenance.
With the acquisition of Engie, we're going to add a new customer portfolio, and this will enable us to offer the other solutions of GPS in the portfolio. We're going to add security services, cleaning, internal logistics, temporary labor, and of course, this will aid and abet the organic growth through the cross-selling strategy. This is our strategy. We're always creating this using M&As to create new avenues for growth. Thank you, Marcelo. That was very clear. Thank you. Thank you, Gabriel. I think we have an enormous competition in terms of conference calls today. Lucas, is that you again? Yes, follow-up in terms of the M&A follow-up. A question that I have posed repeatedly, part of those BRL 200 million-250 million in revenue that might be carried over the coming year.
Is this because the private sellers are not recognizing the variation in the selling process? There has also been that seasonality and the negotiation of collective bargaining. This impacts prices that could be higher, this could open new opportunities to execute your M&A pipeline the coming year. I know that you're gaining scale to increase the number of M&As carried out every year. I would like to know if the coming year, you're thinking of a growth of BRL 250 million year-on-year. If you would have the possibility of growing more than BRL 2 billion the coming year because of M&As. Lucas, yes, I think there is room for this. It will obviously depend on the number and options we have in our pipeline. Of course, companies that fit into our valuation premises.
With the worsening of the economic scenario, initially, we do have that difficulty of sellers adapting to the new premises and accepting them, but the bill will come. That bill of capital increase will get to everybody, and when that bill arrives, the scenario will change. Sellers will feel more pressure to carry out a deal. They have smaller companies with a higher cost of capital. As you mentioned, transferring the readjustment will be burdensome for their cash. In the short-term scenario, we do have that natural moment of adapting to the new premises. The seller will have to accept to sell with a slight loss in valuation, but in the long term, everything will work out. Our expectation is that this more challenging moment will end up helping us. Thank you. That was very clear. Thank you once again, Marita and Marcelo.
We're now going to open Vitor's microphone. Good morning, and congratulations for the results. This is more of a follow-up in terms of the Engie operation, the purchase agreement with Engie. Does this also include the agreement of maintaining the contract with a certain number of years? How does this operate? The second question also regarding that operation, if you could speak at greater length of the services that this operation will be rendering and if the fact that it has become an independent company, if this will enable us to also go towards other companies in the same sector. Vitor, this was one of our concerns. Whenever we carry out an M&A, we're concerned with the fragmentation of revenue. This is a red flag for us because it increases the risk of transactions. Engie has a highly fragmented revenue.
The Engie revenues, the Engie operations are irrelevant for them, so this is not our concern. They have their revenue concentrated on several other customers that do not belong to the Engie Group. A relevant part of Engie manutenção revenues are important for us, otherwise we would not have carried out this deal. Now, Engie carries out building, electrical, and industrial maintenance, focusing on energy efficiency. The real focus is through day-to-day maintenance activities. They are able to identify eventual areas for gains in energy efficiency. They propose this to the customer, and they're able to capture gains. You can change a chiller, a pump. You will have to make an investment, but we'll redo the consumption. This is what they do, carrying out maintenance with a focus on energy efficiency. We're very interested in this type of service.
Vivante already had this focus of industrial and electrical maintenance with a view towards energy efficiency. We're consolidating this through this M&A. This is a region that will grow a great deal. It's environmentally correct. With the cost of energy increasing steadily for our customers, we do have a competitive edge. We can reduce the contract churn because few companies have this competency. They value this. We're quite enthusiastic with this acquisition that will add a great deal to our customer portfolio as well. It is a new solution. Thank you. That is excellent. Very well. It seems we have no more questions. Oh, Ricardo. We'll turn on your microphone. [Foreign language]. Ricardo Urso, can you hear me? Yes. Good morning. First of all, congratulations for the meeting and for the results that you have been presenting. This is a company with a highly differentiated management model.
I would like to look at the long-term outlook, the market in which GPS has is a market of more than BRL 100 trillion, and the share of GPS is very low. When we look at the invoicing and the service lines in which you are active, we perceive that there is a difference among some of the services, especially when we think of logistics. I would like to gain a better understanding of which is your outlook for growth in these line items through organic contracts or M&As. Ricardo, our strategy here when it comes to inorganic growth is to carry out good transactions, and we have to have the origination of opportunities. The multiple options enable us to be more selective. If it is a maintenance, security or logistic or clinic company, it will not necessarily be part of our pipeline.
We want to have a lot of options enabling us to be very selective in this process and to truly acquire companies that will offer the best returns and burden our leverage indicators less. This is what we attempt to do in inorganic growth. We want to carry out good acquisitions, obviously of companies that render services with those characteristics, services that are labor-intensive and on the other hand, enable us to replicate our management model. By respecting this premise, of course, we want to have options in our pipeline. This enables us to do good business. In the logistics segment, this is a segment that is more consolidated, and we have less options of medium-sized companies for acquisition. We acquired Motus and Loghis, but the maintenance sector, the temporary labor, cleaning and nutrition, these are sectors with a higher liquidity when it comes to M&As.
This is a strategy therefore. The strategy is to have several dozens of companies interacting with us, a very good selection so that we can in fact choose a company that offers the best return. In organic growth, to add to this, we also do not have a specific direction towards any type of sector. Naturally, facilities and security are the largest markets, and this is where you will see our greater penetration. We would like to remind you that our customer base is mainly industrial customers, and they tend to buy a greater diversity of services. We have the opportunity to sell facilities, security, sell logistics, maintenance services, and of course, this allows us to grow in all of those fronts. In organic growth, we don't have that specific focus, and we remind you that our contract managers have a global EBITDA goal.
Within the customer, they have to seek out opportunities, of course, within what the customer is demanding. Thank you. Thank you very much, Renata. If we could open the microphone for Renata. We can hear you, Renata. Good. I do apologize. I had some technical problems. Good morning. My question is a very quick one. You have reached the number of 137 direct and indirect employees this month. I know that you have a very robust system to process payroll and benefits. However, do you think there's a certain limit in terms of number of employees because you would have to invest more in your own system, in additional systems? I simply would like to know if you hold this discussion regarding the number of employees. Thank you. That's the positive part of our business, Renata.
This is clearly the more scalable part of our business when we look at our payroll, at benefits and the management of labor issues. Whatever we use to manage 5,000 employees is the same that we use to manage 150,000, 300,000 or 1 million. The tables are the same. This is what is fantastic. We are able to scale up the solutions today to 138,000 in the future for many more employees. As we increase the processing base, we have to increase the number of servers, but this is not a reason of concern. In terms of the processing logic, the system is the same. The calculation schedules are the same. Our tools, our applications that manage all of that red tape with the employees are the same.
This is the scalable part of GPS to call it like it's a system. Well, thank you. That was very clear. Thank you very much. I would like to thank all of you for your presence with us. We're going to close 10 minutes before. There is a huge competition.