Good morning, everyone. Here we are with Marcelo Hampshire as well as other corporate areas. We're here to present to you the results for the second quarter 2025. We're going to begin our video conference as highlights. We reached a net revenue of BRL 4.3 million in the quarter, 23% above the second quarter 2024. We had an improvement of 6% organic growth compared to the second quarter 2024. We're going to speak about this further ahead, but we are having more positive results. We have been able to obtain new contracts, and we have an incremental improvement quarter-on-quarter. In the fourth quarter, the organic growth was 5%. Now we have reached 6%, Adjusted EBITDA BRL 405 million, 16% higher than the same quarter in 2024. We had one-off expenses because of GRSA and other labor expenses.
We have the payment of longstanding shares, and we have a margin of 9.4% for this quarter and adjusted net revenue BRL 156 million, 6% below vis-à-vis the second quarter 2024 and a 3.6% net margin. We had an increase in debt, and along with this, we had an increase in services. Now, in terms of net revenue per customer, we continue to have a more fragmented base so that we don't depend on a single customer. Our main customer represents only 6%, and we have a good distribution among the 4,697 customers that we serve at present. Here we have our net revenue by line of solution. As you can observe, through time, we have reached a better balance in the business. We have greater maturity. We have a similar percentage in terms of facilities, maintenance, and we had a reduction in security.
As you can see, this is the behavior we have adopted because the pressure for cost is greater. Some of the security has been migrated into other areas. We're quite comfortable, and you can see that the distribution of revenues by line of solution offers us a well-balanced portfolio as part of our services. Of course, great solidity, as I mentioned, 4,697 customers. As always, our NPS Score carried out every quarter reached a result of 75%, excluding the harvest of 2024. We began to apply this survey in the second half. I spoke about an improvement in the organic growth this quarter. We have had a significant achievement greater than our losses. This was always positive, but this year the figure is more positive.
We look at this result positively, but also extremely aware and understanding that we will have a challenge in the second half of maintaining this relationship ratio of achievement and losses, trying to, of course, avoid customer pressure in terms of price. We have a different context, of course, with the tariffs. Our services are resilient. We tend to have significant continuity with our customers, but we are looking upon this with greater caution. Our vision for the quarter is positive, and we're continuing to work so that this organic growth will be incremental through time. Perhaps we will have to get more contracts and the revenues of M&A this year due to the 2024 harvest. In the quarter, once again, the 6% organic net revenue growth.
As I mentioned, we're looking at the monitoring it very closely because the macro environment, the environment with the customers has not changed drastically. We have significant and important contracts that we will be implementing in the second half of this year, but our caution in management continues on, and we want to make sure that it will be incrementally better through time. Regarding M&As, I will give the floor to Marcelo to refer to the harvest not only of 2024, but also 2025.
Thank you, Marita. I'm going to quickly summarize our M&A program for 2024-2024. We have five acquisitions that we carried out last year. These are companies with combined revenues of BRL 4.2 billion, and Nutricar and RH Med are acquisitions we carried out this year. I think it makes sense to comment on them with more detail. The last three, at least, GRSA, RH Med, and Nutricar.
Nutricar is our latest acquisition. It is a company of autonomous markets. It has commercial and operational synergy, especially with G, but it also has a significant commercial synergy with the other customers of GPS. So, GRSA and GPS are potential customers for Nutricar. We're in the stage of integrating systems, and as it has a certain complexity in terms of inventory management, which is new for us, we're thinking of system integration for January of 2026. RH Med, we spoke about the results up to March. It's a company for occupational health, and the M&A was driven by a more strategic decision. It's a turning point in the process, the exams for the admittance of employees. I think I have already commented on this, and every month we hire and lay off 10,000 people.
The reason underlying this M&A was to acquire RH Med to automate the occupational exams more, to have a more expeditious and less bureaucratic process, of course. Additionally, GPS is a significant consumer of this type of service. We spend approximately BRL 5 million a month, BRL 60 million a year with occupational health exams. Now, only the volume of GPS contributed to RH Med contributes to the revenues of RH Med significantly. GRSA was our greatest acquisition up to present. It's a deal that was closed last year. We have integrated the system of GRSA in January of this year until the month of April. We have that traditional period for the system to stabilize, and beginning in April, we began to capture the synergies of indirect costs with greater speed. The results of this quarter, Marita mentioned this, were somewhat under pressure because of the mobilization of suppliers and team.
Of course, we haven't fully completed the capture of synergies. We have synergies that will be captured in the mid and long-term systems, the team, especially the synergies that relate to the implementation of our management model. The short-term synergies are related to direct costs, and those are the ones that we capture faster. Those that take longer are the synergies that depend on the change of culture of the teams, and these will be captured the coming year. Marita, regarding the M&As, this is what I had to say. In this slide, we present a summary of our acquisitions since the IPO. There have been 25 acquisitions. These 25 companies have a combined gross revenue of BRL 8.4 billion per year. We have learned how to use these acquisition processes to have a more diverse action and to become consolidated in other sectors.
We have eight acquisitions in the facilities and security services segment. This is very relevant for GPS. It was before the IPO. Presently, it represents 22% of our revenues, and it became relevant because of the acquisitions carried out. In catering, also, we only had one company with limited revenue, and with the acquisitions, especially with the acquisition of GRSA, this represents 22% of our revenues. This is another sector where we have grown a great deal. We have grown in temporary labor and field marketing with four acquisitions carried out. It's a sector that did not exist before the IPO. Now it's responsible for 7% of our revenues. We have some companies that are still in the test period, basically the TLSV maintenance for telephony control for the control of electrical networks.
Evidently, we have a concentration of our M&A team now focused on the acquisition program for this year. I had remarked at our meeting that we were focused on reducing our Leverage Ratio initially with the acquisition of GRSA. Last year, we reached 2.2x Net Debt/EBITDA. We were able to reduce this to 1.6 x. Our goal is to reduce this to 1.5 x. We're within our Leverage Ratio goal, and we are presently more comfortable when it comes to resuming our M&A Pipeline. We have a mature Pipeline for this year. Simply to give you broad figures, in the Pipeline interacting with us, it's a global Pipeline. We have 20 companies with a combined revenue of BRL 20 billion. In the qualified Pipeline, companies that have accepted the proposal or are in the due diligence phase or are negotiating contracts, we have 10 companies with a combined revenue of BRL 2 billion.
What is important is that in the qualified Pipeline, we have cleaning, security, and efficiency companies, a sector that we have not had the opportunity to acquire. These 10 companies that are part of the qualified Pipeline, 6/10 companies work with security with combined revenues of BRL 1.3 billion. I think this is relevant information.
Thank you, Marcelo. We will continue on here. Speaking about EBITDA, in the quarter, we spoke about the one-off expenses for GRSA impacting our quarter margin of 9.4%, an increase in labor costs. We spoke a great deal about labor. Now we're closing the longer suits. Those are in a stage of execution. Those that are somewhat more complex, we continue on with this plan. Of course, it's had an impact on our revenues, and the impact this year will be very similar to what we saw last year.
We look at our stock of labor suits, and the homework that we have here is to enhance the efficiency of this stock, make sure that we will not lose. We want to close the suits that we have acquired as expeditiously as possible. Here you see the Adjusted EBITDA for this year, the margin of 9.6% lower than in the first half of 2024. We continue, of course, to have very sustainable margins in our organic business. Now, regarding adjusted net profit, we have the effects of financial expenses, and they are linked to an increase of debt that we carried out last year and to the increase in the SELIC Rate. Now, the SELIC Rate impacts us in two different ways, in the financial debt and in the monetary correction of our costs.
The items that are important in our PIS Tax, the adjudicating taxes, PERSE and others do impact our net revenue because they undergo this monetary correction. In terms of taxes, the effective quarter was $58 million. PERSE added another $17.5 million. To remind you, we have the indemnity in this area that presently has been covered only, the combined effect of taxes on adjudicating and PERSE represents $75.6 million for the half. We also have the indemnities from PERSE. Our net profit, of course, is impacted by these financial expenses that are non-cash and the monetary correction of these contingencies. To continue on, we have had a positive cash generation for the quarter, for the period, with $845 million, $1.5 billion in EBITDA. You will see the amount of interest and interest rate played affected by the SELIC Rate, but we're gaining efficiency in the compensation of credits.
You can see a value compared to the same period of last year that is only 3% higher in terms of funding activities. We had the payment of dividends, $647 million. We paid loans and debentures amounting to $73 million, leases $42 million, taxes $28 million more. We have a positive income of our option program that we implemented in April. When it comes to the investment activities, we would like to highlight that we had a change in the cash accounting policy for this quarter. In the past, we had a differentiation of what was cash and financial applications. We no longer have this differentiation operationally. This is what we did in the second quarter. All of that amount that was accounted for as financial investments are now part of our cash, which is how we manage the company.
That is why you'll see $1.6 billion of income in cash. This is due to an accounting change, including everything into cash and Cash Equivalents. We have an investment of $105 million immobilized and $76 million from the acquisitions of the 2025 harvest. We have a cash and Cash Equivalents of $2.6 billion. As Marcelo Hampshire mentioned, we had a reduction of 0.6 percentage points regarding the second quarter 2024 in our Leverage Ratio. Once again, working with the discipline, we carry out the M&A, we do the synergies, we capture the synergies, we work towards improving EBITDA, and this gives us a ratio of Net Debt/EBITDA that converges towards our 1.5 x, which is our comfort zone. We're almost there, and continuously we focus on this homework that we have. I'm going to refer to some of our questions.
First of all, I will speak about our sustainability report that is being launched today. This is for the year 2024. It is on our site, and we are also launching a podcast for the group interaction. The first podcast was done with Marcos Pereira. All of this so that you can get to know our leadership team better and have more proximity. Besides myself and Marcelo, whom you already know, we have other people leading the team, and they are fundamental for the performance, the consistent performance we present here. Thank you, and we will now go on for the questions. We will begin with Mrs. Andreia Ferreira. You can activate your microphone, please.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations for your results. I have two questions. The first is about the provision for labor liabilities in the second quarter.
What do you expect for the rest of 2025 and if there will be an improvement in 2026? Secondly, I would like to speak about organic growth. You did have an improvement quarter-on-quarter, 6% now, which is the growth you expect to have in the third and fourth quarters in organic growth. Organic growth partially comes from the closing of contracts that naturally take place throughout the second half of the year. You have closed much more than that in terms of revenues, so that contracts were much more than what you had in the Pipeline.
If you expect an increase of pace in the coming semesters, which is the comfort that you have with this, does that come from reflecting on a full quarter, the organic growth, and if there's risk that this growth will be frustrated because the customer will be under greater pressure in the second half of the year?
The first question about labor liabilities, our decision is how much we accelerate the decision on these longstanding suits. When these liabilities get to us in a very advanced phase, the entire process tends to be more fragile. It is more difficult to defend ourselves than we seek out an exit that will end up being more costly. This is what we did in the past and what we are doing this year.
Our expectation for this year is that we will work with a significant closing, which will, of course, represent labor expenses very similar to those we had last year. They won't be better because our plan is to carry out a clean-out of this and end the suit. Our expectation for this year is that our labor revenues, of course, will end up being more costly and will occur in this exercise of 2025 so that we can work more calmly in 2026. This is our vision regarding these labor liabilities. This will happen. If we acquire a company that has a highly deteriorated liability, we will be facing the same issue. Our outlook for 2026 is better. For 2025, the outlook is similar to that of 2024. If a company comes with liabilities that are very difficult, you will be able to have a vision of this.
Now, speaking about organic growth, Marcelo, let's remark on the following. We're enthusiastic. The market is improving, and our expectation in the third quarter is that we will have a greater carryover of the achievements that we have reached. Andreia asked about the risk of feeling frustrated with growth because of economic pressure. This risk always exists. Our type of business tends to be very stable. Revenues, very, very little once you close the contract. We do have that degree of comfort because of the nature of our activity. There are unforeseen events. We do expect an increase in growth in coming quarters, an increase because of the favorable carryover of our achievements. It's important to say that we close a contract. We have import contracts. These don't grow that much quarter-on-quarter. There's an incremental value. What is important are the achievements, not losses.
It may go from 6%- 7%, 7.5% growth. This is what we're expecting. These are what happens in our business. There is a significant volatility quarter-on-quarter, as you know. To speak quickly on labor liabilities, we're not able to tell you a precise date, but we're quite convinced that during the coming year or another year, we will converge to have more normalized labor liabilities, this 2% of net revenue and not a recurrent revenue in the long term. In the past, it was 1%. Perhaps midway, 1.3% would be a good reading of labor expenses, recurrent expenses in the long term.
We're quite confident that when the tide comes down and we're able to go back to a more normalized level of suits, to have less suits and more suits at an initial phase, we can go back to a normalized recurrent level of expenses, and we will have a margin gain because of this, of course. Thank you.
Now, if you allow me to go back to what you mentioned of organic growth, 7%, 7.5%, is this more probable in the third quarter or throughout the second half of the year?
To have an idea of the growth, we can't give you precise information, but in the second half of this year, what we observe in our Pipeline is an increase in pace to 7%, 7.5%. This is what we foresee at present. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Have a good day.
A question by Lucas Maschio.
Good morning.
Two points at our end. First, about GRSA, and as we don't have more information in terms of their margin, I would like to request more color. What gives you comfort to put in the release that the expenses were concentrated on the second quarter, which is the nature of the cost? Are personnel issues behind you? Simply to hear from you why this should improve in the third and fourth quarters. The second topic, thank you for the detailed information on your acquisition Pipeline. Marcelo speaks about a clean-out in security, $3 billion, that you're going to perhaps have an IPO in that sector. This is something that was on the table. Are you now speaking about new customers? Is there an acquisition option that is very different?
Is this a negotiation that was ready in the past and now has a new acquisition price simply to qualify the conditions of the acquisition that have changed in the last two or three years? Thank you.
We have that comfort because we're speaking of expenses in rescission and events that will happen in the second quarter. Marcelo mentioned we still have synergies to capture, and you're speaking about other items that are linked to this, but that are more marginal. We don't think that these items will impact our results in the third and fourth quarters, and the expense we had was more concentrated. This is what gives us that comfort. If you look at the results of GRSA in the second quarter, the main expenses refer to non-recurring events.
To give you examples, very old employees and what you have to pay for them, rescission costs that are a one-off event, and that represents the bulk, more than 80% that has already been addressed in the second quarter. You have the effect of the demobilization of suppliers. You have the rescission fines that tend to be relevant. Most of these have taken place in the second quarter. We haven't captured 100% of the synergy so far. Some things are going to happen in the second half of the year. Other things will be left for 2026. Most of this was captured in the second quarter. Now, regarding the Pipeline, it's a mixture of both things.
On the one hand, we have a strategy of continuously increasing the size of our addressable market with companies that have synergy with ours so that we're never faced with that problem of not having room to grow. Not having security means we expanded to maintenance, industrial services, temporary labor, field marketing, catering, and more recently, the maintenance of electric networks and telephony. These are businesses that, of course, have their peculiarity in terms of operation, but that essentially share that management model, the way that we make our teams accountable. The systems are exactly the same. This is one of the elements. After the IPO, we wanted to open up the field of action and acquire companies in new sectors. On the other hand, my thoughts are the following. Some factors have caused a problem in the security companies.
The main factor was the PERSE, several security companies, and PERSE is a somewhat confused measure regarding its breadth. For most of the companies in security, they use the PERSE benefit and are now in a difficult situation. The company has a margin temporarily inflated by this benefit, and the issue is quite complex, very confusing indeed. The seller finds himself in a situation where they don't want to put aside these results, and the buyers, GPS, don't want to pay for this because it is something uncertain. I think this has added a great deal of complexity since the pandemic for acquisitions in that sector. Now, with the definite resolution on this matter, because there is a thesis for maintenance, but it is becoming more normalized, we are now back to a more productive environment to once again carry out acquisitions in security.
These are some of the elements at play.
Thank you. That was very clear.
Thank you, Marcelo. Have a good day.
Lucas Estevez, we have activated your microphone.
Good morning, Marita, Marcelo. Congratulations for your results. Regarding your margin in terms of labor liabilities, you have been working on this for several quarters. We will see this impact decreasing gradually, therefore. There is that concentration that in the second quarter, non-recurring event. Now, in terms of margin, we're expecting an increase of 1% going forward. Is that it? To think about the previous acquisitions, most of that process that you're ending does come from the acquisitions, right? Is this considered in the purchase price, or was it a surprise for you? Has it changed the way that you assess the companies going forward?
Luca, let me speak about the margin, and then Marcelo will speak about the M&A accounts, the labor accounts. Our vision is for an incremental improvement of margin for the coming period. We can't tell you exactly which will be the percentage, the value. Yes, we are going to stop having these one-off impacts, events that happen exclusively in the second quarter. We no longer have that pressure. The labor liabilities continue to give you an idea. Last year, we ended with labor liabilities of our net revenue around 1.9%. This was a different behavior quarter-on-quarter. We end up having forensic holidays that decrease the number of working days. In the judiciary, during the semesters, in the first quarter, it was 1.6%. Then we had 1.2%. The third quarter will be more similar with the second. In the fourth quarter, we also have some forensic holidays.
When it comes to these labor liabilities, we imagine a profile very similar to that of last year. The margin will improve in the second half of 2025 because of these non-recurring events that will not happen again. Regarding the way that we deal with the litigation, of course, we deal with them. We carry out acquisitions that are opportunistic, as we call them. They have a low EBITDA margin, a high indirect cost because this is the type of company that offers us the potential to considerably increase the EBITDA. As a strategy, we tend to have several companies interacting with us in the Pipeline continuously. We can find those companies that have this characteristic: high indirect costs with a very low margin. When companies have a low margin, one of the reasons of having low margins is due to their labor litigations.
90% of these companies do not have cash availability to pay these labor suits continuously. 100% of the companies tend to prolong these labor suits as much as they can. You can prolong your cash disbursement. What happens is that the account keeps increasing. It's increasing because when it comes to the execution phase, the values tend to increase, and the values are also corrected by the SELIC Rate. In our approach of carrying out these opportunistic purchases, we end up purchasing companies that have a complex labor litigation scenario. We consider this in the price, of course. The company EBITDA that was the base where we apply a multiple already takes into account the labor expenses. This is part of the price. There are always surprises. I'm not going to say they don't exist. They always come with acquisitions. As a rule, everything is under control.
Once GPS acquires the company, we begin to deal with the litigation, eliminating those labor suits that are under execution. This, of course, increases our expenses. We have discounted this labor cost from the seller. We consider higher values, of course. As I mentioned, these companies don't make agreements in the initial phase. The mindset is to prolong the suit as much as possible to preserve their cash. Upon execution, most of what they pay in terms of labor liabilities makes them spend much more. We settle with this. In the mid and long term, we are able to reduce the structural cost of these companies. This, of course, has an impact on GPS because we have to settle that stock of suits that are underway and that reach that execution phase.
Since July of last year up to present, our stock of suits under execution had a drop of 25%. We reduced our stock of liabilities in GPS in the execution phase by 25%. That is why our level of expenses increased 2%. We're dealing with more costly suits. Simply to complete this, the format with which we work with provisioning is somewhat perverse, perhaps. Why? We have a very simple and objective provisioning system, which I think is better, although it does have some side effects, which is the dynamic. We base ourselves on our stock of actions underway and multiply this by the average loss of that in the last 12 months. What is happening at present? Our average ticket, therefore, is higher simply because of the settlement of those suits that are in the execution phase.
On the other hand, the remaining stock is a more qualified stock because proportionally, it has less suits in the execution phase. I don't capture this in the provisioning at that moment. I'm simply multiplying my stock of actions by the amount lost in the last 12 months. During the coming months, when the debt profile increases, the effect will be the opposite. I will have an improvement in provisioning. This is the equation that we work with in labor liabilities.
That was very clear. Thank you. If you allow me one more question, let's see if you agree with this. You have that pressure of competition, the competition throwing the prices to the floor. Now, reducing prices will reduce their margins consistently. Will this open up some opportunities of improving your Pipeline? Do you agree with me?
It's as if they were tightening the string that is around their necks in the coming quarters. Does this mean you will have more opportunities for acquisition?
Yes. Yes, indeed. It is precisely this factor that has made feasible the number of acquisitions we have. Some of our competitors end up not having the same competitive edge that GPS has, the skill, systematic processes. For them to compete with us and with other structured companies, they play around with their results. Most of these companies do not have a visibility of the results in the contract. They have 30%, 40% of their profit in a situation of deficit, and they don't know about this. This is a snowball that keeps rolling. In Brazil, of course, we have several escape valves to continue to survive. People don't pay their taxes.
They accumulate fiscal losses, but at a certain point, everything will blow up. We have carried out several acquisitions in the past with very fast paybacks of companies with those characteristics. It will continue to happen. That's the situation at present, and it will continue in the future.
Thank you. That was very clear. Thank you very much.
We will open the microphone, activate the microphone for Kiefer.
Thank you for taking my question. We have two here. First of all, speak about your working capital. What has been the process of adjustment in the receivables process? I think this has been addressed by you, but it's something I would like to understand better, which was the evolution in the last month. The second point refers to organic growth from a different viewpoint.
You said that you see a more positive scenario between achievement of some contracts and the loss of others. There is the price pressure. Once you close the contract, there is volatility regarding the revenue. The company is very careful in terms of the profitability of these contracts. Which is your posture vis-à-vis that scenario? Is this allowing you to enhance your margins or not? The example of GRSA, for example, if you had contracts with the worst profitability that you're addressing, now to acquire other contracts in GRSA and others with those profitability problems is a challenge. I know that the expenses are under control. You're able to manage this internally, but new contracts with the profitability level that you want will depend on negotiations that are not simple. Which is the macro scenario? Is it improving? Is it becoming more exacerbated?
If you have had contracts with a better profitability, losing out those contracts with the worst profitability.
Speaking about our working capital, and Marcelo will speak about the macroeconomic environment, I'm going to speak more specifically about the receivables TME that increased last year. I think this is something that stood out for you because of a sector in industrial maintenance that typically has a longer term. This had an increase of PMR last year, but now everything is normalized. Our vision is that we are stable. We have been stable for some quarters. We have been maintaining this balance for some quarters. After what happened last year, we implemented incentives and internal adjustments, and we now have a situation of stability. What we see now is a neutral environment similar to what we observe at present.
Without significant changes going forward, we have been able to manage our suppliers, our inventories, but everything in a balanced way. We don't think there will be relevant changes in our working capital. I will link that question with another question that you posed, which is important. Organic growth. Organic growth demands working capital as we're implementing and putting into practice contracts. If we grow more robustly in the organic area, we are going to use more working capital. Let's imagine that we have a large contract, BRL 30 million per month. I'm going to implement the contract during a certain period, and I anticipate our cash disbursement to hire people, supplies, equipment, and it will stabilize that more in the future, but the result is positive, linked to organic growth. Structurally for us, working capital is highly stable.
In terms of market pressure, we don't have a very precise reading of this. The issue of prices is always present in our industry. There are better and worse times, of course. What we have seen in the last years, last year and this year, is enormous price pressure. It's curious because the economy is growing, and all of the economic data show the contrary, but there is enormous pressure among our customers. The purchase teams are very active, trying to exert pressure on prices. I don't have clarity on whether the environment is improving or not, and I don't know if our organic growth is due to a slightly more favorable environment. I can't tell you; there are too many variables in this equation. A reflection that we carry out constantly is that a tax confusion like PERSE causes damage.
Our competitors are benefiting from PERSE, and their price is 3- 6 percentage points lower than ours, 6%- 7% lower than ours. This confusion caused by PERSE has led to enormous chaos in the pricing structure of the market. The trend going forward is for this to become normalized. There are various forces acting jointly, and it's difficult to have a clear vision on how these forces will behave through time. The fact is that we have a reading that the organic growth will improve, and we will have a favorable evolution in coming quarters. Now, to speak about GRSA, we don't look at GRSA differently than we look at other businesses. Our priority is always the margin. When we're working with a customer, we have a minimum that we seek, and as part of that, we work with negotiations.
We don't think that catering structurally has a different margin condition than our other businesses. In our opinion, and in the way in which we position ourselves in that negotiation environment with a customer, the priority is always profitability. In the past, you saw that you could have a volatility growth of revenue, but the margin tends to be very stable. This is valid regardless of the type of solution we're working with. Now, regarding GRSA, something I forgot to comment on. Whenever we acquire a company, as large companies don't have the measurement of results per contract, it's normal to have companies with a relevant part of their invoicing in contracts that are in a situation of deficit. Once they come into the system, we stabilize the system, and we have the security that the contract structurally has a deficit.
We seek for the negotiation, but this process with GRSA has not begun yet. We're still attempting to understand the contracts, and that period will take the rest of the year. We're only going to have the necessary clarity to determine if a contract is structurally in deficit or not at the beginning of 2026. Eventually, we will clean out these contracts in GRSA. This process has not even begun. It will only begin in 2026.
Thank you, and congratulations for your results once again.
Once again, we will give the floor to Mauricio Sepúlveda.
Hello, Marita, Marcelo. Thank you for taking our questions. We have two. A more strategic question in terms of diversification. You have diversified to multiple services. Which is your mandate strategically at present? Guidelines in terms of which are the services that are the target of acquisition?
Anything outside of what you already have, or are you considering expanding your portfolio to other services? When you think of other sub-sectors, are you thinking only of expanding the addressable market and capturing G&A? Or are there strategic areas? I'm asking this because of the complexity. The more you diversify, the more you increase complexity. Does this limit you in any fashion? My second question refers to the organic growth that has been fully explored with a long-term vision. I understand that you're working in an industry with more pressure. Their churn is high, and competitors, because they don't work on their accounts, have a higher churn. In the long term, these double-digit growth, will this still be possible because of the churn? You have a size that is much larger than you had a few years ago.
Thank you, Mauricio, for the questions regarding that strategic view of expanding the range of services. Some complexities in the past led us to this diversification. The accountability in terms of contracts, the management model, the model of meritocracy. This is our competitive edge, and it works in all of these businesses. The second point that is a relevant competitive differential is our management system. Since GPS , our highest cost is the IT team. We have a very high cost to develop the necessary tools to navigate through Brazil, where the information environment is chaotic. The benefits, the labor litigations, all of this creates a very complex environment. It would be impossible for GPS to manage this complexity if we did not have an intensive use of systems. These systems cannot be purchased in the market.
You have to develop them. Since 2008, GPS spends every year, and this is accounted for as a cost, not as an invested. We spend a ton of money to develop these systems, and all of the businesses we have entered in the last years use this precise system. The payroll, the vouchers for meals, everything is exactly the same in all companies. Although the services have an operational complexity, the back office, the control systems are exactly the same, and our competitors get lost in that labyrinth. They go bankrupt, not in operations, but precisely because they can't get organized in this chaotic information environment. This is a strategic decision we took way back, and we will continue to diversify for businesses that have that specific characteristic.
They help us to allocate a manager who is a contract manager to work with a negotiation with the customer and to use precisely the same systems we have invested in for so many years. In fact, as you observe, the complexity increases. Our Executive Directors are overloaded because of that diversification we carried out in the last few years. Our vision at present is to consolidate all of these businesses, those that we are already part of, to carry out acquisitions in maintenance, security, food, etc., those areas that are more consolidated and allow for some time so that our Regional Directors, our executives can reorganize and consolidate their own operations in these new activities. We will resume diversification to other sectors.
Of course, there will be diversification in the coming years, but at a lower intensity so that our team has time to consolidate what we have already acquired. Regarding the other question about the organic growth, our vision has to be realistic. In view of the size of the company, in the past, the catering was 15%. Now, with the size of the company, this is not feasible. We don't think we will have an organic growth of two digits, a strong two-digit growth because of the size of the company, which is a challenge. What we see, therefore, is a considerable opportunity for organic growth in cross-selling. Based on our own capacity to have that competitive edge vis-à-vis our competitors. The market will always be the market, a highly competitive market in terms of the supply for the customer.
We imagine that, structurally speaking, the organic growth will be a high single, eventually perhaps a double digit, but no longer at the levels that we had formerly. We're a much larger company than we were in the past.
Thank you, Marcelo, Marita. Simply a point that you mentioned, your contract manager that is so important in the synergy. Now, in the past, they were used to having pure labor. Now you have maintenance contracts that are very complex. Is this an element of synergy, or do you change operations with each new business?
The contract manager normally is an expert, a specialist. It's very difficult to manage catering contracts or maintenance contracts. Synergy doesn't come from the person. It comes from the management logic. It comes from the accountability logic of following up on results. It's part of the process. It doesn't lie in the people.
What does have objective synergy? We have 30 regional bases, and each regional base has a Regional Director. That Regional Director, yes, is the person responsible for the region, and that person is accountable for all of our business in that region. The regional back office, because each regional has its own back office, an HR team, a quality team, the occupational health and labor team. Now, the back office of the regional is exactly the same for all of our businesses in that region. Now, the contract manager specializes in a single activity. When I speak about synergy, it's the process synergy, the management model and not the person, and the back office, of course. Back office systems and much more. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I think we have gone somewhat beyond our time. I don't know if Gabriel is there.
Gabriel, you can still ask your question.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. A question about the contracting of labor. If you could share with us if it's difficult to hire new qualified labor in specific areas as the employment rate is at its lower level at present, and if this will be a challenge to increase the pace of organic growth.
The scenario is very complicated when it comes to hiring. We have several vacancies with a delay. It's always been difficult, but has become more difficult in the last few years. It's a point of attention for the company now to respond to this challenge. We try to get better organized. We use interviews, technology, but yes, it is very difficult. It's a difficulty for the growth and for the margins.
When GPS cannot cover a vacancy, the customer discounts it from us, and the discount is not proportional. The discount penalizes us contractually, so that cancellation of payment applied by the customer is higher than not having that employee, and it's a challenge to keep our margin, and it has hampered our margins in subsegments. We still haven't had a problem of discontinuity. If we're looking at that and saying, "We can't comply with this contract, we can no longer hire people." You have to be creative in your approach, and we look for niches, hiring pockets, but we never face that situation of discontinuity.
That was very clear. Thank you very much.
If Gasparetti is still there, he had a question, I think he had raised his hand.
Thank you for taking the question, two quick questions.
You spoke about TR, you're going to begin managing the contracts in 2026. How do you foresee the organic growth from 2025 to 2026? It's a challenge, and the churn in 2026. Secondly, which is the consolidated margin of GRSA if we were to take away these adjustments for the capture of synergy this quarter? If you could share with us so that we could have a magnitude of this one. The organic growth of GRSA is at the same base as we have always had. I don't follow up anymore on that business. Our organizational logic is based on region, and the format based on which we follow up is the Regional Director who sees if he's going to grow security, catering, or other areas. This is important, but my reading, my feeling is that it is on the same base as the GPS. There is no distortion.
During the coming year, we could have a slowdown of growth when we begin that process of cleaning out the contracts. I truly can't tell you which is that degree of cleaning out that will be necessary. We don't have sufficient time in our system to look at a contract to see if it is in a situation of deficit. This is only something we will see in the second half of the year. Perhaps the coming year, this will have an impact on the organic growth of GRSA, but we are going to improve the margins, and as we clean out the contracts, we're going to increase or open up the margins. The two effects that we have that offend the margin are the labor liabilities in the first half of the year, 40 basis points, and in GRSA, the effect was higher.
This is an operation that came in with a margin that was much below what we wanted, and our vision is that in previous quarters, before the arrival of GRSA, they were impacting the consolidated margin. Until last year, they were working with a margin of 7%. This, of course, has become more exacerbated in the first and second quarters, and it will reach two digits in the fourth quarter. This is what we can share with you. We're on the right path to reach a two-digit margin in the fourth quarter. We're being very optimistic. We already had that reading when we carried out the acquisition. There's a great deal of synergy. What we're working with in the short term, it's a synergy that is in our hands, the back office. A great deal of synergy, the overlay of office structures, and the synergy of systems.
GRSA had a very high cost in systems, and we have drastically reduced this system cost. Our expectation is considerable that in the second half of the year, we will obtain synergies at the level of the GPS.
Thank you. Thank you very much, and have a good day. I would like to thank all of you. Thank you so much for your attendance. Have a good day.