Good morning, everybody. We're all here together to present the results for the fourth quarter 2024 and for the full year of 2024 as well. As we usually do, we have Marcelo Botelho responsible for M&A IT and Corporate, and we also invite our CEO, Luis Martinez, to participate in the call. Good morning, everybody. We're going to begin by speaking about our highlights. Now, the highlight for this period: we reached a revenue of BRL 14.8 billion in the year, with an increase of 39% vis-à-vis 2023. Most of this increase comes from the acquisitions, especially GRSA, with a significant contribution and 6% of organic growth, and we'll speak about this further ahead. Practically $1.5 million, 24% higher than 2023 for adjusted EBITDA margin, 10.1% margin.
We normally remain between 10% and 11%, and this is what happened once again with 2024, with some acquisitions, especially GRSA, adjusted net profit of BRL 783 million, 7% higher than last year, with a net margin of 5.3%, impacted by the M&As and by amortization. I'm sorry, not amortization, but financial expenses. We have reached 4,820 groups of customers with an NPS of 75%, somewhat lower than the first quarter because of the entry of new companies, and it's predictable that this would happen. Our net revenue by number of clients remains stable. We have 17% for total. When you see the growth, this is also impacting in a balanced way all of our areas. Net revenue per customer. Now we're excluding the 100 greatest; the rest represent more than 51% of our net revenue.
It is a priority to have this type of dispersion, not to depend specifically on groups of customers. I will give the floor to Gustavo Otto, who will speak about the revenues. Good morning, everybody. It is a pleasure to be with you once again. As you can see on the screen, a significant growth during the year of 43%, most of these revenues coming from GRSA. We consolidated this company beginning in June, and an organic growth of 5%, doubtlessly below our expectations. We normally converse a great deal about this. Now, which figures we should expect? We have a benchmark for the last five years that has served as a focus for planning, and this was below. Now, which are the factors impacting the last quarter of 2024? A lower volume of additional services. The customers have closed the tab. They're exerting pressure.
They're much more careful in terms of the use of their budgets for projects and initiatives that are away from the day-to-day of their site. In maintenance, specifically, we are suffering because of these spot services, which tend to be seasonal, and throughout the year, customers have been using this last quarter to use their budget. There has been a change in behavior. Another point is a lower use of temporary labor services. There has been a reduction in demand on the part of customers in the last quarter of the year. We have felt this in-house, and also by speaking to competitors and those from the sector and customers, there has been a reduction in demand and $35 million above what had been provisioned for the year.
We provisioned 0.8% of our net revenue for reasons that have not been invoiced, and Maria will explain the impacts of this on our results, but we reached $35 million for the last quarter of this year.
Regarding the entire year, you can see a growth of net revenue very similar to the growth of the quarter, even though GRSA entered the group beginning in July. This also happens because of the behavior of our 2023 vintage or cohorts. At the end of 2023, there was a slight peak, and of course, this is in accordance with these very high figures. Now, regarding our organic growth, what I can say is the following: a 6% increase, 4% below our expectation, which is the average of the last five years due to two scenarios. The external scenario, the present-day economic situation of the country, makes customers to be much more cautious about their budget, and of course, there is enormous pressure in terms of prices with our team throughout the country, regardless of which sector we're speaking about. Industry and infrastructure are our main sectors.
Additionally, we have more bids, more calls for price, more than we had imagined for the customers. A great deal of review of scope, not only requested by the customers to reduce the intensity of labor in their day-to-day, but something that comes from ourselves as well. As there is this price crunch, we would like to preserve margins, be as productive as possible, work as well as we can in service. Therefore, we ourselves propose changes in our services, less additional services and spot projects. Another outside factor is pressure in terms of deadlines, terms. Now, we have felt this more and more. Now, when it comes to deadlines, a great deal of pressure as well. On our side, concern from the part of the teams that are ever more mature in terms of their commitment with our growth, not only organic but also non-inorganic growth.
Now, the competition has become fierce. We perceive this in the bids in which we participate when we're backing up a contract. When we try to increase the number of contracts, we see that the price and the acceptance of the clauses in the contract conditions are becoming ever more difficult. We're being very careful with this not to cross the line and put at risk our governance, our reputation, and the quality of our services as well as our EBITDA. In some cases, we have suffered with a judicial recovery with delays from the customers, and given the situation, we have made some decisions of moving away from some contracts, which happened with contracts that were not minor, simply as a defense of the liquidity of the company because of the credit risk that we do have to include in terms of our pricing.
Now, the stance of our team is to prioritize our margins. Of course, this is the most important factor in our operation. We have to preserve our margins, and we have to preserve Operating Cash Generation. As I mentioned, our growth, the growth of our teams fully depends on preserving this. So we have been deploying work in terms of responsibility to ensure that we are able to surpass this moment to have healthy and profitable margins.
We have qualified our commercial journey that I could discuss with you to include more governance in the commercial process to ensure that what I just mentioned will work and the intensive use of the GPS Vista, which is our operational app, helps us in the quality of services and the loyalty of customers and the use of technology to always seek to replace labor with highly qualified technologies, lower-cost technologies, impacting our revenues and increasing our margins. Very well, we're going to speak about M&As. I would like to give the floor to Marcelo Botelho for this. Thank you, Maria. Good morning, everybody. Well, you can see the consolidation that we have carried out in terms of M&As in the last working actively with positions $1.1 billion in revenues for the companies acquired in 2023 and for 2024, $4.2 billion with GRSA contributing a great deal to this.
We continue to use the M&A tool to find companies that have a synergy with us, and we can capture the benefit of the management system that we have developed in-house throughout these last two years. We have grown in existing segments in security with Invicta and Comseg, and we have entered new segments since the IPO. We have consolidated our segment in several new areas, and in the next slide, we have this information more objectively. We have also consolidated our movements in temporary labor, and in the last two years, we carried out two acquisitions called Pater and TrendRH in that segment. We have entered two new segments where we're still learning how to operate the acquisitions of TLSV, which works in maintenance of telephony networks and Control working in the maintenance of electrical networks. These are new sectors, and we're still learning how to operate them.
We entered a segment like Lyon, offering labor for engineering and environmental security, and of course, the highlight of the period, GRSA for Food. I don't remember when we acquired this. I think it was in 2017. Now, with Marfood and GRSA, we have consolidated our movements in that area, and it's one of the largest segments in GPS besides security, and of course, this year, we're much more attentive to M&As, to the economic environment. Our leverage, as you know, has increased significantly because of GRSA, so we're very attentive to this, but opportunities do arise, and in a rather selective way, we have to capture these good opportunities, so this year, we carried out two acquisitions quite recently, actually. The acquisition of RHMED that we disclosed 10 days ago. It's a company that works with two types of services.
One service for primary health attention that adheres to what we do, the outsourcing of labor, and this is for industrial customers. Instead of having an outpatient center, well, we work with RH MED, and this is a service that has a great deal of synergy with what we do. There's a second that is larger, represents 73% of revenues, a more specific service. Obviously, there is a new component. They have created service rendering and occupational health, and that is why we're working with both of these. This represents a significant verticalization of GPS. We do render those services. Last year, GPS and GR spent BRL 16 million with this type of health service, occupational health, and others and RH MED is not a provider for GPS so because of these new volumes, we will increase revenues by almost 50%. This is what underlies the logic of the acquisition.
And another part of the reasoning of this acquisition is strategic. The fact that we're adding an additional component, a component that is important in our human resource ecosystem. A few years ago, we acquired a small company that had technology and management of work. It was one of the few systems that we outsourced in GPS's proprietary system. And presently, with the acquisition of RHMED , we are acquiring another system, which is the management of the occupational health test. So we're filling in the gaps that we have to have a full system. And this was the reasoning underlying this acquisition to bring this intelligence in-house for occupational health. And this is a strategic business for us. We have to be expeditious in the process of recruiting associates. We have to work with agility and put the employee working quickly at their position.
One of the bottlenecks is the carrying out of these occupational health exams. Because of the environment where they're going to work, these employees have to carry out quite a few exams, and these can be lengthy and slow. We have now eliminated this bottleneck, and we can better manage this operational bottleneck. The other acquisition that was disclosed this morning is the acquisition of Nutricar. The main goal here is synergy, commercial synergy with GPS. Most of the customers of GPS are potential customers in terms of Food, of Nutricar and others. Above everything, there's an enormous synergy with GR. GR works with several restaurants throughout the country, and many of these can work with this. Our customers who use these restaurants want to have a better variety, dessert, something sweet.
So most of our restaurants can work with this, and there's a potential for cross-selling with GR, with GPS. And the autonomous grocery store is very similar to the dynamic of GR. It's even simpler. It doesn't have the variable foods. It's just an operation related to the distribution of food that is sold on-site. And with a person operating the restaurant, we can already operate and manage these small stores. Nutricar is a very recent company. It was created a short time before the pandemic. It has had very fast growth in the autonomous market. And they're located mainly in residential condominiums or commercial condos. And in the last year, we have seen that several companies are offering the service. And by far, we saw that Nutricar was the best. It has the best products, the best presentation for the customer, the best automatic checkout process.
I'm a client of the store that I have in my condo, and their operation is truly spectacular. We are acquiring 60%. There are three young and spectacular founders who began this business from scratch. We're working with them. We're very enthusiastic, and we believe this has high potential of speeding up the growth of the company through our GPS customers. They invoiced BRL 152 million, and RH MED also invoiced something very similar to that in terms of gross revenue. Here's the summary of the acquisitions we have carried out since the IPO. They are 23, 25 in truth with these two recent acquisitions, BRL 8.1 billion in revenues. We have acquisitions of medium-sized companies. Generally, those companies that we assess and that we understand offer the best potential for return for us.
In GR, we found the acquisition of a large company with an exceptional customer portfolio at a reasonable value. That is why we continued on with that acquisition. Going forward, the trend is to continue in that range of medium-sized companies. We continue to believe that it is in that universe where we have the best opportunity of carrying out acquisitions with a rapid payback. It's a requirement as GPS funds all of these acquisitions with its own cash generation to avoid excessive leverage. We have to be selective in terms of the payback of these acquisitions. The faster payback is in that niche of medium-sized companies. It is very probable that our acquisition efforts will remain in that niche.
Of course, with a higher degree of selectivity because of the challenging economic context, the very high interest rates, which has an impact on the return of capital, and because of the GPS leverage with the acquisition of GR, we increased our leverage. We are at 1.8 times. Now, this can drop to 1.6, which was the goal for the year, but we continue to have high leverage, and because of this, we will be ever more selective with acquisitions this year. I think that is all, Maria. Very well. Let's finish the presentation to have room for questions, so here we have adjusted EBITDA, a growth of 24% growth vis-à-vis the fourth quarter 2023 with a slightly compressed margin of 9.5% because of some specific effects that impact the year as well as the quarter. I will comment on this later.
During the year, once again, a 24% growth and a margin of 10.1%. Gustavo mentioned this and we state that our discipline, a stringent discipline, is a prerequisite. When we acquired a company like GRSA this year, we could deliver margins between 10% and 11%. It ended up being 10.1%. This margin was impacted by the acquisition of GRSA. That was significant. The increase in labor suits now has happened because we have older suits in more advanced phases, and we also had a movement, like Gustavo mentioned, where we had a loss that will still have to be invoiced. Every year, we accumulate accounts receivable, and in November, we have a cut by launching another provision. Now, this provision tends to be 0.8% of revenues. This year, it was somewhat higher, standing at 0.92%.
This is what we launched in November, and that is why the fourth quarter was somewhat more impacted. These are losses of, well, measurements that the customer so far has not approved, has not paid for, and they are connected to more specific issues. We continue with our normal rigor when it comes to the credit analysis of our customer base. This is a one-time effect. Now, this is a very important point. We have to have precision and security of the process, and this is a critical process for us, so our dynamic is to recognize revenues based on the contract. It's a contract foresees a readjustment in January. There is a specific adjustment, and the market dynamic is that one. There is a negotiation process with a customer before this adjustment.
Throughout the year, we have learned, we have enhanced this process so that every month we have a provision of 0.8% of growth revenue in our results for losses in this measurement. This is something that we do month after month. When the month of November comes, we carry out an analysis. We look at all of the measurements that have not been invoiced. We analyze this case by case. And if there's a risk of not invoicing this, we write down the amount simply because these measurements have not been invoiced. As a counterpart in the month of December, we revert the provisions of November. Those provisions of 0.8% carried out during the year. Historically, we always had a gain in this write-off in terms of provision. The provision was always higher than the volume written off.
Now, this year, for the first time, we lost BRL 35 million. Now, by analyzing what happened, we realized that we had a very high volume of measurements written off in the maintenance segment, especially Control and TLSV. This is due to a more complex dynamic of recognition. There's a great deal of material added. The process tends to be more complex, and that means that we are more prone to these measurements, and this is what has gained that dynamic of reversion of provision and that write-off and ended up impacting the fourth quarter. We always have gains in the fourth quarter, but this year we had a loss of BRL 35 million due to this process. Simply to conclude this, Maria, it is a very safe process. If you look at what we have to invoice for 12 months, it's practically nil, zero.
We don't allow this balance to get very old, which means that this gives our process of revenue recognition more security, but we continue to provision at 0.8% of our revenues. This year, we had that one-off event. Now, net revenue with a similar impact than EBITDA. We had financial expenses and an increase of debt. This also impacted net revenue, and that is why we have that drop. Quarter on quarter, there was a drop and an increase of 7% year on year, and a drop in net margin because of the three elements, the EBITDA and the financial expenses, and increase in debt. Now, cash flow, we generated an increase in December, operating cash of BRL 1,400, 8 percentage points above what it was last year, interest and interest rate of BRL 1.5 million, and these two items have been impacted by the investments in GRSA.
We worked with the ventures and loans, and we also had a significant cash disbursement to pay GRSA at BRL 1.3 billion. But the result is positive for the year, and this period was positive. In terms of leverage, as Marcelo mentioned, we stand at 1.8 times. And we remind you that this figure is not 12 months. There are seven months of EBITDA coming from GRSA. And in the fourth quarter, we had a cash disbursement of the 13th salary return on invested capital. We reached 17% down, 3.1 percentage points vis-à-vis 2023. That's an investment, especially GRSA, that's so far not reflected in the adjusted EBITDA. The results of GRSA only began in July, and the debt for that quarter takes into account the full quarter. Now, regardless of this, we believe that this drop has to do with results that will still come because of the integration.
Once we capture the synergy coming from GRSA, and the same behavior in return on equity for the same reasons. I will now give the floor to Luis before we conclude the presentation. Good morning, everybody. We like to show you this graph. It gives you a historical outlook of the performance of GPS, revenue, EBITDA, margins. It's always good to look in the rearview mirror. We have grown our net revenue by 30%, organic growth 11%, EBITDA grew 31%, which means, as you can observe, we remain at that margin level of 10%-11%. This is what we can achieve sustainably. We continue on with our M&A program, and this is a margin that we would like to preserve. Gustavo mentioned our organic growth. What we seek in organic growth is through cross-selling activities, working with the customer.
We look for new opportunities to work with the customer, but always within a margin that we deem to be sustainable. The year 2024 was not simple in terms of competition. The economic environment continues to be quite turbulent, and labor still quite. Historically, we have gone through this in similar environments with four different governments in these last 10 years, always maintaining margins. A slight drop in 2024 because of the acquisition of GRSA, but throughout 2025, we will attempt to increase the margin as the company has already been fully integrated. GRSA was integrated in terms of system. They began to operate with a GPS system on January 1st. Of course, there are problems. It's a large company, very complex one with specialized sales mechanisms. But in terms of the integration that was successful, the customers were not impacted.
Publicly, I would like to thank our integration team and thank the team from GRSA who cooperated and helped us work and advance as a group. Very well, Maria. I think we can now go on to questions and answers. I already have a list of people who have raised their hands. We'll unmute the audio for André Mazini. Just a minute if you wish. You may proceed, André, with your question. Hello, team. Good morning. Thank you for the call and for taking our two questions. First, if you could speak about the two acquisitions at the end of February, the company in occupational health and the mini markets in condos, Nutricar. Speak about return on invested capital in Nutricar. It seems that the labor component is quite low. It's self-service. Will other verticals have more automation considering technological development and AI?
Secondly, you speak about the demand of temporary labor, a reduction that you have had in the post-pandemic period. Do you think that temporary labor can become as good as it was in 2022? Or if this change is truly structural and if your pricing was after the fact, and perhaps this led to a peak in revenue? Well, thank you, André, for the question. Regarding the acquisitions, RH MED, it's a significant verticalization for us. It's BRL 60 million of revenues in terms of volume, almost half the revenues of the company. And there's also the strategic issue of filling in the gaps in our system in terms of occupational health. This is, of course, the main reasoning for that acquisition. Yes, there are less employees in terms of that. When we speak about Nutricar, the whole system is fully automated.
When we speak about the intensiveness of labor or not, it depends on the dynamic of synergy, our ability to scale up our system, our relationship with the customers. We see this being very strong with Nutricar. The operational synergy is enormous. When it comes to material delivery, sales point to sales point, the logic is very similar to GRSA. There's commercial synergy. This can allow us to have a better relationship with our customer, a relationship that will extend during more time. I think this is the most important factor. When it comes to synergy, this year, we're very attentive because of the economic context, the high interest rate, and because of our leverage. We don't open up the amounts we paid, but these are acquisitions. RHMED was an opportunistic acquisition with excellent payout.
Nutricar perhaps wasn't as sexy, but it is something that will grow considerably, because of this cross-selling potential, the payback should be really exceptional. André, when it comes to temporary labor, doubtlessly after the pandemic, there was a significant change in the scenario. I mentioned this in other meetings. That moment was very unpredictable, and there was an increase in demand for temporary labor. What we perceive now is stability, stability that goes hand in hand with a very complicated economic situation in the country. What I mentioned about organic growth, the pressure on price and deadlines, it's something I perceive with greater intensity in this sector, customers are demanding deadlines that don't make sense for the company because we're trying to grow and have a healthy margin in the long term. Now, customer pressure has increased. We're defending ourselves as we can.
Sometimes we have to move back in terms of deadlines. We have to negotiate more adequate deadlines. At this point in time, I'm not very sure that if we will continue to invest in that sector. We will review this in some months. We need to see greater stability, better understand the dynamic of that sector. We do converse with some of the companies in the sector, and we bring M&A opportunities to the table. We exchange views. Many people are concerned, and we're basically in waiting mode, trying to resolve these problems in the best way possible, being opportunistic. Companies that have organic growth, this is how our growth should proceed in the short term. Who knows, further ahead, we can begin working more with inorganic growth. Regarding the last question, a return on the investment made, we paid adequate multiples.
We worked very diligently in the negotiations, especially with new segments. Now, the gains in synergy are great. We were able to reduce administrative costs by 50% in these companies. So despite that loss of revenue, the difficulty of organic growth in the sector, the work in synergy and overhead made feasible all of this process. Of course, the return was not what we expected, but we did have return. We have new avenues of growth that we have to explore, and there are possibilities for our teams to grow. So as part of our growth strategy, we did comply with several of our indicators. Now, both of the companies have revenue multiples. We never reached the peak that we had reached in the pandemic, and this, of course, had an impact. Now, the 2022 cohort grew 22% this year. Now, André asked a question about the two M&As.
Now, given the volume of investments used in the acquisition of GRSA, we would be more cautious, of course, upon resuming that M&A dynamic. We're very disciplined in terms of leverage. These two M&As were maturing for some time in the company. They did not impact the conditions, the satisfactory conditions we reached with the sellers. And the volume of investments will not make a difference in terms of our leverage. In truth, they will have a minor impact on leverage. Now, the discipline of delivering to resume with the speed and strength that we had last year, we're going to review this for the second half of this year. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, team. We open the audio for André Ferreira. You may proceed. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking our questions. We have two topics here. The first, on the margins of GRSA.
How do you imagine the margin evolution for the second quarter and second half of the year? In April, you will have the physical integration of teams, if I'm not mistaken. Would it make sense to have an improvement in the first quarter, a drop in the second, and then resumption in the second half of the year? And what will happen with inflation of food and the impact on the GRSA margins? Second point, if we think about Brazil with a lowered unemployment rate, if you foresee the need of having a real increase in salary, will this exert pressure in hiring? And if you can transfer this increase to the customers? Now, regarding margin, it's what you said. We got the system in January. We're now undergoing system stabilization process that will extend to March.
We will begin, once again, the integration of structure in April and May, as well as optimization. We expect a first quarter or first half of the year similar to that of last year. Secondly, we will have a demobilization of structure. This will give us a healthier margin. We should get to 10%-11%, which is the average margin per GPS. We have several synergies mapped out, not only for teams. There is cost with systems, costs with operations, SAP. And these will no longer be necessary. Those systems are very costly. When it comes to inflation with food, well, we've been through a very delicate moment in terms of inflation with food. They have a very smart menu for the companies. They are able to replace foods that have become more costly with lower-cost foods. They have a very intelligent system to manage their menus.
They've been through these situations before, and they were able to maintain their profitability margins. There's nothing relevant in that field. At least this is our reading regarding the inflation of GRSA and what they present in their menu. Now, to add to what Marcelo said, it's important to highlight that most of the contracts of GR, the readjustment is made up of two variables: the collective bargaining for the category and food inflation, each representing 50%. In most of the contracts, in more than 90% of the contracts, there is a clause against protection against risks that you mentioned. Now, regarding labor, very honestly, I hope that in 2025, we will have a year similar to that of 2024. There's a monetary crunch that we have observed in the last month, especially in the last quarter.
This will begin to impact employment this year, more in the second half of the year. Obviously, this will cause less pressure in terms of our needs for hiring or any type of readjustment referring to benefits. It's not the variables that's a problem. It's the structural condition of the sector. There's no room to negotiate with our employees when they have a salary and benefit increase that is higher than that of collective bargaining. You know how prices work. We have spoken about this in previous meetings. Our readjustment for intensive work and labor follows the collective bargaining convention. If we move away from this script in terms of our payroll and cost with benefits, our margin could drop 20%, 30%, 40% with any minor change that we implement. There's no possibility whatsoever of doing something different from our competitors.
Otherwise, many people will disappear from the market. There are other ways of doing this, working with loyalty, loyalty in the relationship with our employees. One of them is the GPS Você that we mentioned in the release. It gives our teams higher productivity, and it's a significant differential for them because of the transparency and the accountability that the system brings. We have been enriching GPS, and the relationship the employee has with the company offers greater transparency. It offers other options. The idea is that the app will help them on those fronts. We have invested significantly in that and a good relationship with the leaders on the field. Our teams attempt to create a relationship of trust with our customers. They work with them in their day-to-day, and we're increasing the loyalty of our employees.
This is the path that we will use to surpass that problem in the offer of labor, supply of labor. Lucas Marquiori can now pose his question. Well, thank you. Thank you, Maria. Good day. And it's good to see all of you there. I don't have a specific question. I simply wanted to hear from you. Make the most of this space and share a frustration with the results of the fourth quarter. Historically, we understood that the business model is like a pendulum: profitability and growth. And historically, you do defend profitability and the growth of margins. And the pressure that you had in the fourth quarter means that I think you did not comply with these two parts: in measurement, in maintenance. And when you're trying to balance all these dishes, these dishes will end up falling. Well, perhaps your plate is too full.
Are there too many things to integrate? Is it difficult to grow with profitability? Has the gain become ever more difficult? At the end of the day, what the investor wants is to understand which is the level of trust they can have in this pendulum. And if the growth is ascertained for 2025 and going forward, well, Lucas, thank you for that question, that comment. We are a company that is highly focused and disciplined on servicing our customer well with a constant focus on the management of our costs and expenses to generate results. This is something that was never lost. It's a continuum. It's a culture at the company. Despite growth, we are able to transfer to the new people this culture. And we are going to continue to deliver that level of margin between 10% and 11%.
The year of 2024 was a year with an abundance of opportunities. We carried out this great acquisition. We devoted efforts. We will still devote a great deal of effort, and there's a good outlook for the generation of results. Now, in terms of organic growth, in that graph that I presented, you can see stability, but if you look at it year on year, the part of organic growth and growth through acquisition, it depends on the market moment, on the competitive pressure, situation of our customers. We have to be sensitive to that, the despair of most of our competitors as well, and what you see here is stringent discipline in working with adequate pricing in our operations and contracts, ensuring that all of this is maintained despite growth.
Now, if we see greater organic growth or higher margins, this will take the company to other levels, of course. However, if we continue to be focused, as we always have been, preserving margins, reducing the competitiveness gap, being champions in servicing our customers and controlling our costs, now this is the winning strategy for the long term. There will be pressure quarter on quarter, year on year, but we don't lose that outlook of replicating this future, something we have been able to do since 2008 when we went in with the RP, we did the IPO, deleveraged to have organized and sustainable growth. An updated piece of information regarding the fourth quarter, we had that one-off event with a loss of BRL 35 million in November. If we exclude that effect, well, the margin would once again grow that we had.
And besides that, we have the effect of GR, practically BRL 1 billion and average margin of 7%. Now, if you exclude the effect of GR from our margin, I haven't calculated it, it gets to 10.8%. And with the BRL 35 million, we would be very close to 11% if we exclude the GR. So that's our historical profitability levels. We're always seeking to be more productive, more efficient, but, well, competition depends on seconds. And when you quantify the results in the fourth quarter, and if you look at the reasons that led to a 9.5% margin, you have to extract the GRSA, that non-recurrent impact of the BRL 35 million, and the labor costs that increased from 1.3% to 1.9%. Now, the labor context will become more normalized after the second half of the year.
Yes, it was below expectations, but I think the reasons are extremely clear, quantified, and they are non-recurrent. That's very clear. Thank you very much. We have the microphone unmuted for Gabriel Frazão. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. It's only one question on the losses in your provision for labor. If we could have more details of why that loss is more prone to happen in the industrial and maintenance sector and not in the other sectors you work in? It's simple, Gabriel. The measurement of maintenance cleaning is very simple. In maintenance, for example, we have the price for food, and you multiply this by the amount. It's an objective measurement of revenue in maintenance. Well, this is a very complex business, the material used. We have thousands of different services. In the maintenance of the electrical network, we have measurements that are compound measurements.
You have to carry out measurements by electrical posts, and all of this has to be shown in the measurement, so the amount of information, the variables that you have tend to be ever more complex, and of course, this generates a higher cost for the customer, and the working capital for maintenance is worse than for the others, now because of the situation that is more complex, because the process takes longer, so the working capital in maintenance activities is much worse. It's more difficult to approve these measurements, therefore, now this is something that is very recent for us, especially maintenance of electric networks. We're learning a bit, and this year, of course, this generated discussion, our provisions for 0.8% was not sufficient to withstand the eliminations that we had during the year, now we're still very comfortable in the process.
We're comfortable that we should not leave these measurements, allow them to become older. This will eliminate the problem, and we have to eliminate these. Our background of invoice revenues has to be shorter, three or four months. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, we are on time, but Daniel, if you still have a question. Yes, thank you very much, Maria. We have two questions. First, about organic growth. I'd like to hear your vision of when we can begin to see improvements in GRSA. Will this happen in the second half of the year? Speaking about organic growth, about temporary labor and the 2022 effect, are we going to do away with that base of comparison and have a more acceptable base of comparison? Second question. To understand that issue of measurement, the explanation was very clear. Thank you very much.
And the impact of BRL 35 million. You say that you have a 0.8% of provisioning in industrial maintenance. And because of that effect, wouldn't it be better to increase this to 0.92% or 0.95%? This could become the new level for the company. And those 35 million, is this fully one-off or only half of it is one-off? Well, thank you for the questions, Gasparete. Regarding your first provocation, the cross-selling of GRSA and the group, well, this is proceeding full steam. The commercial team. Well, this is the easiest part that we have in the integration process of acquired companies. Since last year, we have been training the GR teams with our system, with the CRM, the GPS Portal.
They are already part of our planning cycle since November of last year, when for the first time we began to follow up on their commercial agenda with the teams at GRSA. So this is already being explored with results. We already have some achievements thanks to the synergy of the team. And the matrix relationship that exists between our commercial leader that works with the planning cycle with the leader of GRSA is something that is working very fluidly, operating well. And the leader from GRSA is somebody we brought in from the market, a highly seasoned person who has been working with us for more than six months. So from the commercial viewpoint, GRSA is fully embarked in our cycle, in our system, and at our meetings for the planning agenda. Gasparete, you had another question. Temporary labor services. And the effect of this higher turn.
Daniel, we have always grown despite these losses of revenue. As we carried out acquisitions and we like to acquire companies at a low price, these companies come with contracts that are in deficit, and we want that to happen. It's desirable. It facilitates margin gains. Now, what's worse is the margin of a company that you acquired. The payback will be better, but statistically, you will lose out on that contract. Now, despite the acquisitions that do have this variable, we have been able to grow. We have delivered 100% growth. What happened with temporary labor services is a very special circumstance. We had a contract with deficit, with a peak in revenues, and a structural change in the volume of invoicing. This was in the period of the pandemic, several customers using temporary labor at that time. This was a very specific circumstance.
But we grew despite this. We know that growth is below expectations, and we have to deliver growth even though we lose the contract in some of the acquisitions we're going to do. We're not going to deliver margins below 10%. Now, growth does oscillate throughout the years. Sometimes you grow 10%, you grow 6%. The playing field is not very precise. It has fluctuations, and one bad year will offset another year. We have to have 10% of organic growth. Now, this is normal. That's part of the competitive environment. In the long term, a bad year will be offset by a good year. This is what has happened in the last decade, and we're convinced that this will continue to happen, offsetting one bad year with a good year. Now, regarding GRSA, the cross-selling potential is enormous, but cross-selling is the last phase of integration.
It's something that takes time. You train the team, the contract manager to begin to show results. You begin the dynamic of the follow-up cycle. They begin to render accounts. It takes a full year before we can understand that dynamic, and it's only after all of this that the cross-selling can begin. There is a high cross-selling potential, but not for this year, perhaps for 2026. The priority now is the integration of the team, ensuring that they will work with us in the planning cycle, understand the dynamic of their business, understand where they can revert negative situations, and always seeking this with the customer jointly, and once all of this has been stabilized, once that machine is fully operational, we believe that we can go on to cross-selling.
It doesn't mean that the commercial activities are not already making the most of the relationship that exists with customers from GRSA. We're working on that. The focus now is integration, the systems. Integration has been done. We're stabilizing the systems. The team has to work with the planning cycle. I think they're ready for that. They have already prepared a budget. Beginning in February, they're looking at results based on the contract, and the benefit of this wheel spinning is what will take us to the best cross-selling results, and well, regarding the measurement, the provisioning of 0.8%, we have debated this thoroughly in-house. At the end of the day, it's 0.8%. It's a historical estimate that has always worked.
Now, this year, we decided to maintain the 0.8 and enhance the system to have a better tracking of additional services, a better tracking of the customer approval of these additional services. It's an information chain to increase provisioning. We have to have a more organized measurement logic with the elements that we have already approved. It will be easier to show the customer the approval process for all of this. And we believe that the 0.8% provisioning is sufficient. What happened was a one-off event because of the acquisition of some maintenance companies. This happened before integration. And we're enhancing this process, as Marcelo said. We don't believe that we will have to change the provisioning level that we're working with of 0.8% of revenue. Thank you very much for your answers. Lucas Nagano, I don't know if you're still there. We're still here. If you're there.
Good morning. Can you hear me? Quick question here. First, about diversification of M&As, which is your approach, your strategy. Are you attempting to diversify the portfolio, or are you going to continue with deals in the traditional areas as temporary labor is becoming scarcer? The second question about judicialization. When you look at the cost of labor risk in the last 12 months, it was lower. It seems that in the fourth quarter, it dropped. So it did represent that 1% that you commented on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lucas, for the question. Yes, our approach to M&As has always been opportunistic. We have a very active pipeline. We interact with several companies to be able to select those bids, those acquisitions that will have a faster payback.
If we have a company that is fragmented, that has several customers, that depends on several customers, a low EBITDA, this is what we're seeking, and to find that company profile, you have to have several options on the table to obtain the better deal. What is happening is that the best options on the table do not have a level of security. One of the reasons why we opened up this range last year was that we have ever more options on the table to carry out good acquisitions, and we have to scale up our HR system, our results system for those businesses. Our system is 100% plug and play. The benefit management system is the same, so we can scale up all of the systems that we have invested in in that business, and that's the main motivation. This increases the options we have on the table.
And regarding the issue of judicialization, in fact, there was an improvement in the third quarter. There's a significant impact because of the recess of the Judiciary. And we will begin again with this, with the same disbursement that we had in the second half of last year. If we look at the curve of suits, we see a reduction of those suits that are in the phase of execution, which are the most costly suits. They come from the recently acquired companies. And the number of suits is already significantly lower than those of last year. But we do have a remaining stock that we're managing. And our vision is that we're going to normalize everything in the second half of the year. In the last few years, we entered more complex businesses. We have that labor problem. Maintenance, for example, is a more complex industry.
We have a higher number of attorneys and complaints, and I think this has increased our recurrent cost of labor suits. It could be at 1.3. We're not sure what will happen with that, and of course, we should be able to resolve this in the second half of the year. That was very clear. Thank you very much. Very well. We have no further questions. An anonymous question. We normally ask the person to identify themselves. If you wish to raise your hand, please. Our channel is open. Should you have additional doubts, we will therefore close this session. I would like to thank all of the participants that have remained to the end, and I apologize for the delay. Have a good Carnival and have a very good day.