Morning, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and Welcome to the earnings conference call to discuss the results of the fourth quarter and full year of 2022 of Viveo. For those who need simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on the platform. To access, just click on the interpretation button through the globe icon at the bottom of the screen and choose your preferred language, Portuguese or English. For those listening to the video conference in English, there is an option to mute the original audio in Portuguese by clicking on mute original audio. We inform you that this video conference is being recorded and will be made available on the company's IR website, www.viveo.com.br/ri, where the complete material of our earnings release is available. You can also download the presentation using the chat icon, also in English. During the company's presentation, all participants will have their microphone disabled.
Then we will start the Q&A session. We would like to remind you that to ask questions, you must click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of the screen and write down your question to get in line. When being announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen. Then you must unmute your microphone to ask questions. We recommend that the questions should be asked all at once. We point out that the information contained in this presentation and any statements that may be made during the video conference regarding business prospects, projections, and operational and financial goals of Viveo constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management, as well as information currently available. Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors could affect Viveo's future results and could lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. With us today, we have Mr. Leonardo Byrro, Chief Executive Officer, André Pacheco, VP of Strategy and New Businesses, Guilherme Goulart, Chief Financial Officer, Flavia Carvalho, Director of Investor Relations and M&A, Thiago Liska, Director of Diagnostics and Vaccines, Vilson Schvartzman, Commercial VP of Distribution and Logistics Operations, Flavio Leal, Director Officer of B2B Services, and Renan Hervelha, Retail Director. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Leonardo Byrro, Chief Executive Officer, who will start the presentation. Please, Mr. Byrro, you may proceed.
For the first time, we can see you live. We are using a different format today. So I also have the team together with me. I would like to start with the main highlights for 2022. First, our organic growth. More than a year in a row, we grew by 15% year-on-year and grew in all business units. We see a positive growth in all business units, some more, some less, both in relation to acquisitions and organic growth. This is something we also like to point out. Also, we started capturing the synergies that we announced in the Viveo Day. We stood a little bit above the synergies that we expected for 2022. We started 2023 able to seek all the synergies for the year. We have also improved our capital structure. We made important acquisitions.
We also extended our debt profile, reducing the spread and doing everything that was within our reach so that we could have a better capital structure to keep on the speeds that we want for the growth. We also made the integration of 10 companies. There was nearly one company coming on board every month to strengthen our offer of services. We had a very important priority to receive all those companies without disturbing all the operations that were going on. We worked on the integration of culture, values, purposes. We received many employees, and we have about 7,000 people on board, and we devote a lot of time in order to make the alignments in the cultural aspects and make all those people align.
This was the focus for us during the months so that we could devote our time and receive all those people into our ecosystems. We were very happy with the results that we were able to deliver and also some other highlights that you can see on the slide. In the last quarter, we had integration of Pró Infusion, PHD, and Nutrifica, and those three companies in the vertical of services, in the handling, and PHD in verticals of materials, disposable materials, especially for hospital and clinics. These were the latest incorporations. There is one that still needs to be completed. We are waiting for the CADE approval of Neve, and we expect to have this completed in the next few years. The combined revenue was about BRL 2.3 billion, and this is something that we brought into our office.
Our company, and this put us on track for the year 2023, seeking for the BRL 64 million, BRL 67 million, right, of synergies that we want to capture along the year. Moving on to the next slide. One of the priorities of 2023 is to have an integration. Everything that we have done, not only in 2022, and also some of the items of 2022, whose integration needs an advancement. We need two moments for the integration. When we do the closing of the operation, for example, on the first, we integrate all the management aspects, processes, and the priorities for the company. Each area already knows to whom they should report. No company is left loose inside the ecosystem. This starts from the closing date.
We are going to focus on the integration of simplification of operations, and the investments would bring an operational complexity to our daily lives of our teams. Also, we are going to focus on the systemic integration. This is something that we have not done in some of the companies. Along the year, you are going to listen to the reduction of the numbers of corporate companies, corporate unit, and we had done in Byogene and Biogenetix in May 2022. In March of 2023, we did this for Daviso and Flexicotton, two industrial assets whose complexity for the integration is very relevant. There are many manufacturing aspects involved, and along the next quarters, we are going to have a schedule, which is going to be quite daring to incorporate and integrate those companies. This is going to bring us three important things.
Simplification in the operation of our daily activities, capture of synergies, and we are also going to use the goodwill that we have in our balance sheet. We have about BRL 1.6 billion in goodwill in our balance sheet, and this is going to bring in BRL 5,000. This is something that we are going to take advantage along this year and starting now. This is going to make our strategy viable so that we can work as an ecosystem. If we want to promote business, to combine business, and deliver better solutions to our clients, we really need to be integrated from the operational viewpoint at home. Otherwise, the teams are not going to work in a coordinated way and generate important solutions. Without a doubt, this is going to be our priority for 2023.
In addition to this, we would like to point out that we made a decision to make an acquisition of 100% of Far.me, and we started with a minority acquisition in 2020. It was a company that was from Belo Horizonte City with visionary companies that created a service that was going to bring in very expressive value to our health chain. We took part in this growth along the last two years, and we not only help them in the daily management, but we also integrate them into the ecosystem of Viveo. The major trigger when we decided to take control over this asset is to see a positive economics unit.
We saw that many of the action that we were making, not only to grow, but also to make adjustments to profitability and the operation, we saw positive results, and that made us very confident to give this additional step and accelerate the growth along the year. The founders are also with us, and all those founders are still part of all this. We have the target of double the number of customers, the customer bases. We ended 3,500 recurring clients. The churn was very low, and we see the size of the market is very relevant, especially when we talk about chronic patients, recurring patients that we understand are the ones that grow the most in the Brazilian market. It is 880 million people take at least one recurring drug every month.
This is still a small asset considering the whole ecosystem, but we believe in the long-term potential of those initiatives. Now, we would like to talk about some initiatives on sustainability, and this is something that has been accelerated in the past three years. We have had a lot of recognitions on those edges, both regarding suppliers, clients, partners, and we are opening the space to do businesses with Viveo, considering our solid strategy of sustainability, and we also received some recognition from external players. I would like to talk about the biomass thermal fluid heater. It brings more sustainable energy. We had a certification of renewables, and hot melt technology as well that no longer uses raw materials that are polluting, to use raw materials which are much more sustainable in the long term, improving not only the perception of a product, but also reducing costs.
All those initiatives will bring in all those aspects, cost reduction and quality improvement. In relation to our distribution centers, the same thing. Electric trucks, returnable boxes, initiatives to reduce emissions. As for diversity, we have reached more than 20% of women in leadership positions, and this is 5 x bigger than three or four years ago. The PCD Inclusion Pact that we signed for disabled people, so that we can provide more opportunities for disabled people in the company, and also the engineering companies that become ever more sustainable. You are going to be listening to us talking about this agenda, which will also move together with the strategies of the company. These were the main highlights that I would like to share with you for 2022, and now I would like to move on to the discussion of results.
I would like to talk about our total growth of 64% for the year, sorry, for the quarter. When we compare to the fourth quarter of 2021, and 46% in relation to the total growth, reaching BRL 8.8 billion in net revenue for the year. This growth came with an expansion of the margin, with the total margin of the year closing at 16% versus the previous year, an important growth of more than 1 percentage point, and we have a growth of 69% in the gross profit. We are going to go for our objective to grow at 15% in organic growth, but with profitability improving in our margins. This is a proper trade-off for us. We reached BRL 200 million, BRL 199 million in adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter, and BRL 731 for the year, with 55% of growth in a margin of 8.4% for net profit.
In spite of the impact related to relevant expenses for the half of the year, we closed nearly in line, 1.4% in comparison to the previous year. We also had a growth of 12% for the year, even considering the expenses that we had along the half of the year. Our cash cycle ended below what we reported in the fourth quarter of the previous year. We can see some effect, especially related to the stock levels. We try to make adjustment to the stock levels, as we mentioned in the last quarters. When we compare the third quarter, we can see that the main variation was related to the stock levels. In the payable, accounts payable, we also made some improvements in the cycle. In the last part of the year, we had lots of negotiations with suppliers.
We reduced the inventory levels because of some changes that we had in the beginning of the year. You saw that we had higher sales reported in the third quarter of the year, and because of that, we had inventory levels which were lower, but 100% aligned with the industry, aligned with our suppliers. This is going to be normalized along the first quarter of 2023. The annualized ROIC, considering the better cycle of 27% along the year. With this, we had different dynamics today. We are going to hand the floor to the head of units, so that I am not going to be the only one doing the talking. I am going to turn the call to Vilson so that he can talk about the dynamics of how the pipelines happened in hospitals and clinics. Hello. Good morning.
Good morning, everyone. I am Vilson Schvartzman. Since June 2022, I have been responsible for distribution operations, which is the business unit that provides services to clinics, operators, and hospitals. We can see that both in the fourth quarter of last year and during the full year, we had a very important growth. This growth becomes much more important when we manage to see the organic growth in a very solid way. In comparison to the market, it is higher. In other words, in 2022, we had a growth which was above that reported by the market. That provides us with a certainty that integrations have been very successful. The main points that brought in this growth, I think I can start discussing the acquisitions. It was very successful when we tried to integrate all those assets, especially pro forma, that had come with more than BRL 1.5 billion in sales.
The integration was very quick, both in terms of the strategy as mindset of our understanding of how the market works. At the same time, we had a very important growth in materials. We have a buffer, which is very solid for the manufactured product, which is Cremer. In 2022, we had an expansion of this platform with this portfolio, with more technical products, which is related to the portfolio of some companies that were acquired. We also had organic growth on top of this technical growth. It was all very successful in this sense. In terms of oncology, we understand that this is a market that has been growing fast, so this has been the target of the industry for growth. We grew more than 25% in 2022.
Here we can see a big avenue for growth for 2023 and the years to come, because our market share is still lower than what we reported before. We had those big opportunities for investment in this area that is fast-growing. At the same time, this is important for profitability, since we see that there is sustainability in the public market down-to-earth growth with a responsible credit approach and a very ROIC analysis, which is also very cautious, very responsible. We also grew our share in our public market, and we see the opportunity of doubling the share in the years to come. This brings in good results in the pipeline, but also in terms of profitability for the BU as a whole. Specialties, which is a segment which was very important to our results in 2022.
It is a segment that came with the Cirúrgica Mafra, and today we are the leaders of corrective dermatology, a fast-growing segment. It is the growth that is close to 20% as reported last year, and we are sure that we can have big investments in this segment. We also believe that we are going to grow both in the market, which is already established, and we are going to grow the market, especially considering the new professionals of non-doctors, non-physicians in this segment. This makes us believe that 2023, we have the proper foundations to make the proper deliveries.
Thank you. I am Thiago Liska, responsible for laboratories and vaccines. In the opening, it was mentioned that organic growth was very strong, and our division reported even more positive results. We can see that for the quarter, we grew organically, and the total growth was very positive.
The total growth was impacted by the acquisitions of Apijã, Laborsys, and Macromed, as they started operating in December, so we can see the impact in terms of the total growth. If we talk about organic growth, for those who have been monitoring what we have been doing in terms of results, we mentioned that this half of the year would be much more positive because the 2021 basis was less impacted by the pandemic. So we had the growth in the number of customers. The objective was to capture a very robust organic growth. In the fourth quarter, there was an event that accelerated the vaccines as a result of meningitis campaign that made us accelerate the sales of a product. There was also a very important launch in the industry related to herpes zoster vaccine.
In the fourth quarter, we saw that this launch had matured. I believe that those two events made the organic growth accelerate. When we look at the annualized figures, it is more in line with what we have in terms of expectations in the long term for the company to grow above 50%. This was based in the comparison basis of the first half of the year that was still impacted by the pandemic, which was related to the glove sales and also the pandemic. This is the point. We believe in the robust growth of the channel, and we will be looking for growth which is above the market, and there is still a lot of space for the penetration.
Hello, I am Renan. I am responsible for the retail channel. In the fourth quarter, we had a growth of more than 8%, driven by an acquisition base at the end of 2021. When we see the growth as for the year, we grew more than 35%, even considering the effects of W. If we do not consider the COVID effect, it grew by 11%, driven by the categories of which we are leaders. So we gained market share. We gained market share also in first aid, and we also launched new categories.
We broke into the category of baby shampoos, conditioners, and a number of other products in this category with a Patrulha Canina that brought us important results for our long-term strategies, that is to include the new categories and expand our addressable market, and also with partnerships with companies that want to distribute in the country, such as Purell, which is a global leader in hand hygiene. So we had exclusive partnership for distribution in Brazil, and this has been contributing quite a lot to our strategic growth in the long term. Also a big focus on the preservation of our profitability, our manufacturer products with the price pass-through, increasing the margins of our business unit. We continue growing for this year and bringing in new categories, new channels along the year. Thank you.
Okay, Renan, thank you. I am Flavio. I am responsible for the unit of B2B Services. This is a unit that has a number of closings, considering also the acquisition. It is a business unit that made the most acquisitions in 2022. I would like to remind you what services represent in terms of the net income. It was 1.5 in the fourth quarter of 2022. We reached 16.1 and year to date, or the accumulated the year, 21%. We have Healthl og and the sterile solutions. Some highlights of each of this business. Health Log continues capturing new clients. We started the operation in the state of Minas Gerais, which is in the phase of expansion, and also patient care with BMS. We reached 66 new clients with handlers. A.C.Camargo, HCor, all those hospitals.
This performance reinforces that the strategy was not only very assertive, but also all those companies have been leveraged by the ecosystem. Our operating capacity made those businesses stronger.
Thank you, Flavio. Thank you, team, for the contribution. The team is going to continue for the Q&A session, should you have any questions later on. Some other points related to our delivered solutions. Gross profit and profitability, they were also driven by the expansion of the mixes among the businesses, new companies that came into the company related to the acquisitions with higher margin. As Flavio mentioned, those companies helped us accelerate the growth, which was already double digit by themselves, and especially with a focus on services. Also we capture synergies in the second half of the year that brought some leverage for the year.
SG&A was a bit higher than what we had in the previous quarters, and we started receiving all those companies. We did not have time to process all the synergies yet, and this is something we are going to do along the year. We are going to do this very cautiously so that we are not going to break the toy, as we usually say here. We receive the company well, the companies respect their legacy and the way they are being operated. Through all the time, we are going to make all the necessary synergies. This would be the important highlights. As to EBITDA, there was a drop in the margin for the quarter. As I said, it was driven by the increase in the expenses related to the acquired companies. Along the time, we are going to make the proper judgments.
We have a very important union agreement, and we also have to consider the high level of inflation at that time. Many of the renegotiations within unions were based on those moments of the economics. Also these expenses related to the post-pandemic, more activities in the offices, and these were expenses that we did not have in the previous years. I think this is a normal movement considering that we are resuming the operations. We had an EBITDA margin, which is important. We are going on the right track to grow with profitability, both in terms of organic growth and also considering the acquisitions. We are very confident when we say that we are going to capture the 67 in terms of synergies that we are going to capture along the year 2023. Now, next slide, we are going to talk about the adjusted net income.
As I mentioned, we were in line, BRL 9 million, in relation to the fourth quarter of the previous year. Here we have some highlights related to the amortization of all the acquisitions that we have been doing. This is something that started to be relevant in terms of figures. This is a comparison basis when we see the fourth quarter of last year in comparison to the fourth quarter of 2022, and we see a growth of 12% year-on-year. We know that this is going to be one of the biggest challenges ahead of us. How are we going to reduce our cash consumption? We know that interest-related expenses are going to be higher than that of 2022.
We have a lot of the initiatives, such as the improvement in the cash cycle, and we are also going to improve the net income along the year. Considering the capital structure, there are some things that I would like to mention. We captured BRL 1.4 billion along the second half of 2022 with CDI + 1.60%, which was very positive when we compare to the previous year. We can see that we reduced the total spread for the year. We also made an effort to extend the debt profile and the maturity dates. If we look two years back, we see that it was 2.5, 2.6 of years for the maturity of our debt, and we stand at 4.6. We extended the debt, we reduced the spread, and we had an important effort to improve the working capital and other items to reinforce our capital structure.
I would also like to draw your attention to our rating. There was an increase of our rating in the fourth emission of debentures. Moody's increased our rate to AA.br. We celebrated this a lot, and this shows our financial discipline. As you can see, the extension, we had 2.5 in March 2021, and we have CDI + 1.6% in terms of spread, and our pro forma leverage at the closing of the fourth quarter stood at 1.59. In addition to that, we have about BRL 950 million in M&As to be paid in the years to come. Down here, you can see the amortization schedule for our debt and most of maturity periods in 2025, 2026. Our ROIC, obviously, it stands at a high level, but this is something specific, one-off. This is related to the closing of the year.
This is not the level that we consider to be stabilized for the company. Of course, we continue with a very important agenda of working on all the initiatives of the company. These are the main priorities, corporates, targets, my targets, so that together with the team, we can go after continuous growth along the time. Here on the graphs, you can see the inventory levels, a reduction of 62- 52 days in the fourth quarter of 2022, aligned with the industry levels. We can also see that we started 2023 with inventory levels lower than what we had reported in the previous year, and somehow it impacted our service level. We are remaking all those inventory levels along the first quarter of 2023. We have all this account receivable. We can see we had a challenge along the year in order to improve this dimension.
We have already made a plan, which has already been designed. It is already implemented, and we can see that in the future, we are going to have a normalization of the cash cycle. We have about 20 days to close the first quarter, and the expectation is that the cycle is going to be much more in line with what we had in 2023. This is what we expect to report in 2023, considering all the seasonalities that we saw along, comparing the two years. This is it. We managed to cover all the points that we would like to disclose to you. I once again would like to thank you for attending our conference. I am going to open the Q&A session so that we can answer your questions and discuss whatever you feel like it. Thank you.
Now we are going to start the Q&A session. We would like to remind you that if you wish to ask a question, click on the Q&A icon on the bottom side of the screen and write your question to be in the line. When you are announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on the screen, and then you must unmute your microphone to ask a question. We kindly request that the question should be asked all at once. First question, Fred Mendes, sell-side analyst with Bank of America. Fred, your line is open. Freddy?
Hello. Good morning. Good morning for the call, and thank you for making all those officers available for us. I have some questions here on my side. It seems that 2023 will have a scenario when the growth will be lower. I would like to understand the scenario from the historical viewpoint. What is the volume of the distributors, and if this is a moment to gain market share, how do you see all this? This would be my first question. The second question, it is not true that we saw an increase in the accounts receivable. Is this related to hospital asking for longer term, and how do you see this in the beginning of the year? Do you think you are going back to normal levels, or how do you see this period, in other words? Thank you.
Freddy, thank you for taking part in our event and for the questions. In relation to 2023, our budget and our objective is to grow at 14%-15% a year. This is our dynamics. We have lots of things to do at home considering all the acquisitions and the new businesses that we brought on board.
We are going to expand this to new clients, to other regions in Brazil. We are going to combine all those businesses, and this is likely to provide us with a higher market share along the year, even with the lower growth in the market, if materializes. This is the answer to your first question. We have the expectation of gaining market share. When you ask about the projections for the year, we see that the growth is going to be even bigger than that of last year. We have some things that was not done in the previous year and will help us grow, and we believe that the opportunities to grow according to our target is something that we can do at home.
But we are very confident that if we do what we must at home, we are going to grow along the year. In relation to the accounts receivable increase, I think that considering the hospital dimension, we understand that there is a need to extend the terms, but this is not something limited to this business. This is the dynamics that apply to other businesses as well. This is something that we try to link to the ROIC. The term would be one of the variables to have a good relationship with the client. We also have to include products, services, and terms. We have to discuss in order to have a solution, to reach a solution. "How can we possibly help you?" This is what we ask them. We bring all these possibilities to the table, and we try to help the client.
This is part of our ecosystem. This is why we want to have a service basis, which is very relevant products, et cetera, so that we can have the capacity to help them and take part in the solution of the partner so that we can reach a win-win solution.
Very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Gustavo Miele, sell-side analyst with Goldman Sachs. Gustavo, your line is open. You may proceed, sir.
Good morning, Leonardo Byrro, and good morning, all the other officers of the company. Thank you very much for the presentation. I would also like to ask you a question. The first one related to the discussion of working capital mentioned by Freddy, but more focused on stocks. We saw that a sequential improvement in the days of inventory levels, but what would be the impact of the products more related to the pandemic considering this evaluation? You mentioned that backlog of gloves that was addressed in the quarter. Could you tell us what was the performance of the recurring stock levels for the company? This would be very interesting for us. If you could mention the stock and the hospital dimension so that we can project the results for 2023. The second point, more related to the synergies.
I would first like to understand how you could put those synergies in the calendar if we consider the four quarters of the year. Are you going to be able to provide those deliveries according to guidance and compare it to what you did in 2022? You mentioned the reduction of corporate entities. Also, I would like you to mention the cross-sell strategy, which is becoming ever more complete and mature. Thank you. These are the two questions.
Thank you, Miele, for the question, for the participation. I am going to turn the floor to André to talk about working capital and stock, and then we can talk about the synergies. Then I will be back.
Gustavo, talking about the stock. Yes, we had components which were more efficient in reducing the surplus that we had or the excess stocks that we had before the pandemic. That would account for 30% or 40% of the mentioned reduction. 60%- 70% is related to the sales acceleration that we saw in the fourth quarter, higher than the expectations of some industries. That made us end the period with some products below the ordinary level. What I can say that down the road, we can be a bit below 60 days, 57 or 58 days. This is what we could expect as we resume the normal levels of ex-COVID products.
Thank you, André. In relation to the synergies, yes, I think they have a very important component considering our capacity to integrate the corporate entities. This is one way we can capture the synergies, and this is something that we are going to see across the year. We had two important corporations in March, and we are likely to have others along the half of the year. As of the third quarter, we can see that the synergies are going to be accelerating to how they are going to be captured. I think this could be the schedule.
In addition to those two assets, we will have 5- 10 corporate entities that are going to be merged into two or are going to be simplified. We do not see a lot of opportunity to do more because we are still focused on the BRL 67 million, which is part of the budget of the company, our goal to be delivered this year. Without any doubt, we are going to go after this. This is a year that anything that can be reduced, expenses, anything that can be done at home will improve the results, and we're going to look at those. This is going to be done along the year. This is the number that we are looking at, and this is something that we're going to be seeing in the third quarter.
In terms of cross-sell, we do not consider this a synergy in the revenues. This is going to materialize as we leverage our operation and manage to have more efficiency based on this. We have cross-sell opportunities that we see in our ecosystem, but this has not been included in the accounts we have made so far.
Very clear. Leo, André, thank you very much for the answers.
Our next question comes from Felipe Amancio, sell-side analyst with Itaú BBA. Felipe, your line is open. Felipe, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for answering my question. This quarter, once again, we saw an organic growth, which was very strong. In retail, we saw a more flat organic growth. Could you provide us more color in relation to the effects that you saw this year? What is the strategy of the company to preserve the margins in this segment? How the price pass-through initiative has been happening, and what do you see in the retail channel, please?
Thank you, Felipe, for attending the conference, for the question. I'll start answering, and then Renan will add more details. The dynamics of the fourth quarter is that we saw a tougher quarter in relation to sell-out, considering the main clients with a lower demanded volume compared to the other quarters, and we also prioritized the profitability. We increased prices from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, so our homework was to recompose our margins, and we managed to have this movement. So 2023 starts with a margin level much more aligned with our objective for the year 2023.
For the first time ever, as a comparison, we see the inflation of the inputs considering our manufactured products, we see there was a deflation. We see this reverted order, this has been our priority. There was a combination of lower demand in that tougher market and also the price pass-through. It was just natural that we would have an impact on the volume in the short term. This is something that we saw in a different way for the first quarter of the year. We saw the recovery of some volumes, our expectation is to have an organic growth, which is much higher in the first quarter in comparison to the first quarter of 2022. This is important.
Yes, we see that the price had an impact, but we prioritize margin and profitability so that we could start the year according to our expectation. This year, the first quarter of this year has a double-digit growth. There are some initiatives on which we're focusing for the year. First, new categories that are going to come on board. We had some launches, such as baby line and some other categories which are not yet in our business.
Then we're going to continue gaining market share in the categories where we have the market, we lead the market with several products that we have already launched in the beginning of the year. Third, the start of new channels. Marketplace, digital, supermarkets, several channels that we are not present yet, especially supermarkets. New businesses and specific new categories for those channels that are going to contribute to our growth along the year.
Perfect. Thank you for the answer. It's all very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Yan, sell-side analyst with BTG Pactual. Yan, your line is open. Yan, please, you may proceed.
Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Leonardo. Good morning, everyone. I would like to ask two questions. First is related to CapEx. We saw that the cash. Sorry. There was a good generation of cash, an improvement in the cash cycle and working capital. But we also saw that there was a relevant increase in CapEx. I understand this is related to the expansion of the CDs, the distribution centers. But what is the expectation for 2023?
What do you expect in terms of CapEx as a percentage of the revenue for this year, considering the agenda of expansion? This is the first question related to the CapEx. The second one is related to services. We saw that there has been a very good expansion in services and care with the acquisitions. But when we look at this year, 2023, is the focus to grow organically, or do you search in the short term, increasing the portfolio of solutions by means of inorganic means? Thank you very much.
Hello, Yan. Thank you very much for attending and for the question. In relation to the cash, one of our priorities for the year is to manage to equate the cycle, or in other words, to regulate our inventory levels, as André mentioned, to have good negotiations with accounts receivables, always prioritizing ROIC. This is going to be a very important dynamic for the year, but this is not going to affect our CapEx. We have CapEx for technology, logistics, and industry. We continue with the same guidance of about 1.5% of our revenue.
We are trying always to optimize, but we are not going to leave a project with good returns behind because they will generate good results for the company. We are going to be ever more disciplined, but we are not going to miss good opportunities of investments. We have very nice projects in those two fronts for the long-term generation for our businesses. In relation to services, care, yes, we are very enthusiastic with the potential to expand this to other clients, to other regions in Brazil along this year.
The market moment and the search for efficiency for good solutions, discussions with the service providers and stakeholders and the industries that are ever more closer to us. This is a very good moment for conversation. Solutions are what is going to make a difference in order to generate efficiency in a structural manner to the sector. The moment is very favorable for us to bring in new solutions and more growth to the business.
Are there opportunities for M&A?
Yes, without any doubt. We have always M&A in our pipelines, but our priority is to grow with what we have at home, but always on the lookout for new opportunities, because there are always discussions going on.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Leandro with Citi . Leandro, we are going to open your line for you to ask a question. Leandro, you may proceed.
Thank you. I have two questions on my side. First is related to sales. You said that there was an increase in sales in the fourth quarter. How do you see this beginning of the year for the sector, especially related to hospital and clinics? My second question is related to default. What is the strategy that you have for the pass-through of cash, how this has been received by the clients, and how do you see the main competitors in relation to this system?
Hi, Leandro. Thank you for attending the call and for the question. In relation to sales, we have been trying to increase using what we already have at home, looking at the ecosystem, looking for double-digit growth for the half of the year. We see different dynamics considering all the business care services. We have different dynamics for lab and hospitals.
Those dynamics is a bit lower than we expected. As we have seen in January, I believe that everybody is trying to improve their cash cycle along the quarter and make adjustments to their inventory levels. We see that the terms are a bit shorter. But we look at it very positively in terms of share gain. We gained some share last year, and we see that in 2023, we are going to continue gaining share. This is the beginning of the year, which is tougher, but we continue with the objective of double-digit growth across the year. The default was made in January. We made some adjustments of prices, of policies, and this was something that we have been doing every month. We made some adjustments, and this is something that is still getting materialized.
But we see that generally speaking, the major players, the most relevant competitors that we have, were all doing the same, making adjustments. This is something that we saw at the end of the quarter. We see that there are renewals of some agreements, and we saw some adjustments being made. Somehow, we saw the dynamics was very positive for the sector according to our expectations, as we have mentioned previously. André, is there anything you would like to add?
This is exactly that. As we were at this moment, the competitors followed suit. After the first two weeks, we saw that some other competitors also made adjustments according to the taxations.
Okay. Thank you. Have a good day, everyone.
Our next question comes from Stella Sottomaior, sell-side analyst of JP Morgan. Stella, your line is open. Stella, you may proceed.
Hello. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. I would like to discuss the gross margin. We saw in the press release that one of the factors that made the gross margin go down a little bit was the product mix. Thinking about the next quarters, what would be the ideal mix of each segment in terms of revenue share that would lead the ideal gross margin for the company? My second question is related to the capital structure. What would be an optimal structure? What would be the leverage level that is the focus of the company nowadays?
Hi, Stella. Thank you for attending the conference and for the questions. In relation to the gross margin, the ideal mix is the one that the client requires. We want to have all the products provided to the client according to the demand. But of course, we have categories of product that would contribute more or less, and this is also the dynamic of seasonality. Something that affected our margin in the comparison that you mentioned year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter, is much more related to the vaccines in the labs reagents.
In this sense, this would affect negatively. When we look at the clinics, when we focus of higher cost products and less on disposables, this will cause an effect. This is an effect of the mix, so it's difficult to be very accurate if the dynamics is going to be positive or not, because there are the regular seasonality. There's also the behavior of the clients in a certain quarter.
What I can say to you is that we are going to go after the ideal ROIC, grew in the businesses whose margin is higher and where the market share that we have is lower. For example, disposables in hospitals in which our market share is lower, generic drugs where our market share is lower, gross margin of drugs is higher than the others. If we can add more to where our market share is lower, this is going to improve our results. All those variables is going to affect the results of the quarters as one category grows more than the other. But we are going to strive for reaching a level of margin that we reported this quarter.
Or if we look at the first quarter of 2022 compared to the other year, whose seasonality is very similar, as I mentioned, our margin should be similar, and that's what we're focusing on. As for capital structure, there's not an optimum point, but if we are at in the cruising speed, we want to have 1.5 in relation the ratio of net debt and EBITDA. This is the place where we would like to be along the time. We will always have the possibility of leverage the company to go above that as we grow inorganically or make other movements. But our focus is to have a cash generation to go back to 1.5.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
We'd like to remind you that if you wish to ask a question, you must click in the icon Q&A at the bottom of the screen and write your name, company, and language to be in the line. The Q&A session is over. I would like to turn the call over to the company for the final remarks.
Thank you once again for attending our event. We are always at your service. Not only me, Flavia, Guilherme, and all the team. I would like to point out that our priorities for 2023 is to seek this or double-digit organic growth, doing what we have been doing so far. We are going to talk about synergy and integration quite a lot, capturing synergies that would impact our bottom line and promote ecosystem cases. This is something that we've been working on with our leadership so that we can have better results in the verticals where each area is operating, but also increase the capacity of being with the client, identifying pains and opportunities so that we can leverage other businesses.
There are many interesting cases going on and along the quarters. I would like to share those success with you and also on our Viveo Day. This is our purpose, to work in an integrated manner and provide solutions considering what we have here. A great year for everyone, and have a good day.
The video conference related to the fourth quarter of 2022 has come to an end.