Thanks for attending this presentation of the full year 2024 earnings. As you know, the revenue for the full year was EUR 654.5 million, a growth of 6.3% reported, 4.7% like for like. As today, as we have released, just released, recurring operating income is EUR 39.5 million, which is a growth of 24.7%, EUR 7.8 million in growth. We have some exceptional items for EUR 28.4 million compared to EUR 11.7 million last year. It is worth noting that only 7 million of these exceptional items are cash items, which are mainly restructuring costs and various fees, mainly related to the Visiodent acquisition this year and also due to the refinancing. It means that 21 million of these exceptional items are non-cash. They are accounting entry to adjust the balance sheet mostly, most of which stems from In Practice Systems.
As you know, we put it under administration in December, and it's a capital loss of EUR 8.8 million. Also, as we will see later on, we passed an impairment on pharmacy and pharmacist operations in France and in the U.K. for EUR 8.6 million to be in line with the market conditions, which are the two main non-cash items, so the net income results is a loss of EUR 14.7 million, and so as I've mentioned, and we'll dig into it later on this one, it's mainly due, it's completely due, to the non-cash item. Otherwise, it would have been a net profit. The operating free cash flow is EUR 101.8 million, a growth of almost EUR 4 million this year, showing that the operations are doing good, and we'll see later.
The net debt is in growth of EUR 39.6 million, mainly due to the Visiodent acquisition this year that happened in March. I propose, I suggest we dive deep into the full year P&L. As you see, the purchases grew smaller, lower than the revenue this year, 3.6%. It's also due to an impact of lower equipment sales at SmartRx, our pharmacist operations in France, but also from a policy of the group to control its costs. The external expenses, a part of it is the external contractors. You can see that it grew only 3.8% compared to 6.3% for the revenue. It's the group's policy to internalize its offshore operations, the external contractors.
It happened with the BPO contract at Allianz, for which we had some contractors in Mauritius, and we internalized the head counts in our offshore operation in Morocco. It has an impact on the payroll cost, which grew a bit faster than the external expenses at 5.5%, nevertheless lower than the revenue growth. This payroll cost we will detail a bit later in the next slide about it. It's due also to this internalization of contractors. Overall, the cost control of the company this year, the focus on cost control this year has paid off, as you can see, with the EBITDA growing by 13.5%, which is EUR 14.8 million, and net EBITDA margin coming from 17.7% to 18.9%. The depreciation and amortization grew a bit from 77.2 to 84.1, out of which you have EUR 17 million in IFRS 16.
The other one is tangible and intangible assets. We kept on investing in R&D and also in, so we have the depreciation of R&D of the previous investment, previous year's investments, and also intangible assets, especially screens for CMedia, our marketing operations in pharmacies in France. Overall, it's a recurring operating income of EUR 39.5 million, a growth of 24.7%, and a recurring operating income margin, REBIT margin of 6% compared to 5.1%. So, a good operational performance, which transfers into this REBIT and its margins. As I mentioned before, we have some non-recurring items, exceptional items, and I must insist on the fact that out of this EUR 28.4 million, only EUR 7 million are in cash. So this leads to an operating income of EUR 11.1 million, compared with EUR 20 million last year due to this non-recurring operating income.
On the financial results side, you can see that it grew by EUR 9 million this year. This is due to, as you know, we had a bigger loan in July, also the growth in interest expenses and a few fees. It's important to know also that there's a non-cash component of these financial results, which is due to an impairment on In Practice Systems, EUR 6 million. Total tax, remember, last year we had a case law that prompted us to impair a part of our deferred tax assets of EUR 20 million, of which EUR 12.3 million was non-cash. So it just means that this year we came back to a normal total tax. All of this results in net income group share of EUR 14.7 million.
As I mentioned earlier on, the non-cash items on the expenses and on the financial results, without that, we would have had a double digit net profit. As I mentioned earlier, we have a slide on the payrolls. As you can see, the payroll cost grew 5.5% and the head count by 1.2%. So one could wonder why there's such a gap. The gap is due to the In Practice Systems operation. Just please bear in mind that it was deconsolidated on December 10, 2023, meaning that we have almost 11 months and a half of payroll costs for In Practice Systems, but that the head counts at December 31, 2023, of course, were lower, due to the fact that the people were not in the company or not consolidating the head counts.
So it means that we have this difference. You can see on this slide also, at the center of this slide, the fact that we internalized what was done by external contractors before in our offshore operations, especially in Morocco. That's why you can see the growth is coming mainly from the offshore head counts. All in, it means that offshore represents almost 30% of the head counts, compared to the internal at 70%. So this shows really the policy of the group. We have this slide on R&D investments. As you can see, we capitalized still some R&D this year. It's a growth of 1.7%, a bit less than EUR 1 million because we keep on investing in our solutions. And we have depreciation and amortization of R&D growing 14.8%, EUR 5.9 million. It stems from the previous investment that we had done.
And all in, those two variations have a negative impact on our recurring operating income. As you know, capitalized R&D becomes as a minus and EBITDA as a plus on impact. So it means that without that, we would have a €5 million more on recurring operating income. So now, let's talk about the free cash flow. On the free cash flow, as you can see that our cash flow generated from operating activity has grown from €97.9 million to €101.8 million, translating from the good operational activities. You can see, from the beginning on the tax paid, maybe you can see there's a growth of almost €12 million. Remember that we had this tax litigation with the French tax authority that led us to €11 million, almost €11 million payment in February last year.
It was due from also previous year, and we had mentioned this in the previous meeting. On acquisition of intangible assets, you can see that it's mainly, as you know, it's mainly R&D. So it grew a bit. We have a growth in tangible assets, about €9 million, which is mainly due to IT infrastructure investments at cegedim.cloud, and also investment at CMedia for the screens, equipping the pharmacist in France. Overall, the net cash flow by infra by investment operation was €111.3 million. Sorry. And you can see there on the financing operation, the loan, the growth in loan that we had this summer, and we can see later on, all in, the change in cash is a positive of €3.6 million this year.
That's basically it about the cash, the free cash flow statement. I mean, that the debt due to the growth due to the Visiodent acquisition came from €145-€185 million. So on the financing, now you are familiar with our new financing arrangements with the bank loan. Also, on the covenant, what we can say is that we respect our covenants, and there is no worry about that. On the balance sheet, the main point, as you can see, is that the goodwill that grew because of the impact of the acquisition of Visiodent this year, that led to this to the growth in goodwill. Now, I'll propose that we suggest that we have a look on the various divisions. The first one, as you know, that we introduced to you is the software and services.
You remember that we had a growth of 1.8%. Cegedim Santé had a growth, reported, like for like, was done due to a negative Ségur base effect, and we can see, and we can note, that on the sales, that's why it explained the growth at Cegedim Santé unreported, but also on rebate, the positive impacts of the Visiodent integration this year that led to a recurring operating income of EUR 0.3 million at Cegedim Santé. On other activities in France, as we mentioned earlier, the HR activities, due to the customer diversification and the health insurance activities due to robust project-based sales, those two businesses recorded a strong growth, a good growth, this year, and due to also a policy of cost control, we're able to generate good profitability.
The pharmacy in France, however, had a negative Ségur base effect in sales, due also to, as I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, due to a lower equipment sales, and it impacted also its EBITDA. On international activities, the exit of In Practice Systems weighs a bit on sales, and EBITDA is impacted also by a change in capitalization, R&D capitalization rule in the U.K., to be more in line with the market condition. Oops, sorry. On the cloud division, you can see that both businesses had performed very well this year, generating a growth for the division of 7.3%, as we mentioned in January. It translated into growth in recurring operating income and also in the growth of the recurring operating income margin, which came from 11.9% to 12.4% in 2024.
Yes, it was nothing that on the e-business side, the two segments, invoicing and purchasing and healthcare flows, contributed this year. That's basically for the flow division, what we can say, a good year. On data and marketing, remember that the marketing activity had a tremendous year this year, not only due to its phygital strategy that bears fruits, but also to its special campaigns during the Olympic Games in Paris this year that improved the revenue, but also the profitability. On the data side, activity, it still experienced some growth this year, after a remarkable 2023 full year. France is still doing good. We have international activity, which is a bit more difficult this year, that weighs a little bit on the profitability. Overall, still a growth in recurring operating income this year and a stable reported margin around 13.1% in 2024.
On the BPO division, so you know that we have a comparison effect, positive base effect on the insurance BPO sales this year due to the start of the Allianz contract on April 1, 2023. But still, the overflow business contributed to the growth and also to the improved profitability this year and also on the other outsourcing contracts. On the business services BPO, we had a growth due especially to the compliance offering this year and winning also of new customers. It was combined with a tight control of staff costs, and both contributed to an improvement in the recurring operating income for the division this year. Last but not least, the cloud and support division, remember the growth of 11.3% this year, backed by its sovereign cloud offerings.
Also, good to remember that it had been awarded the ANSSI security visa for cegedim.cloud, which will, we believe, help gain more contracts in the future. Remember that in the cloud and support, you can see the recurring operating income is negative, but it's also you have the cloud division, and the cloud external sales, but you have also the support activities. The idea is that at some point it will compensate one to another. This is the outlook that we communicated to the market today, on the release. We believe that we could do a like-for-like growth in the 2%-4% range, which is quite similar to what we released this year. Also, we want to keep on increasing our recurring operating income on the same path that we had known this year.
These are the next meetings that we will have together. The first quarter revenue on April 24, the shareholder general meeting. Oops, sorry. Shareholder general meeting on June 13 and the first half revenue in July, the results of the first half in September 25. And that's probably [uncertain]