I'll do the performance overview, and then Giorgi will do, will talk about the... Our CFO will talk about portfolio results and liquidity, and the dividend income outlook. In the end, I will say goodbye. So let me let me start with the recent development. Our most important measurement, NAV per share, has grown in the quarter by more than 5%. That's due to the Bank of Georgia's excellent performance, mainly was driven by that. So our NAV per share stands nearly at 67, sorry, 77 GEL per share. Our another important measurement, what we follow, our NCC ratio, this is our basically the leverage.
Ratio has been down significantly by 8.5 percentage points year-over-year, so it reached our targeted 15%, so it's closer to our target of 15%. It's at 15.9%. Over the quarter, it was also down by 1.5 percentage points. So, good results on deleveraging. As a result of deleveraging and the improved performance, we got upgraded by S&P from single B plus to double B minus. That's also a good news. Dividend has been a record high. In nine months, we received more than GEL 200 million in dividends. In the quarter, we received GEL 54 million in dividends.
I should mention here that recurring dividend is around GEL 146 million for this year, for nine months. What we have received, the rest is one-off. Good news is also that we have stepped up our buyback program in lieu of deleveraging and a good performance. We have announced $50 million share buyback and consolidation program, and that's in line with our capital allocation framework. As you said, as we have mentioned, as we will be decreasing the leverage ratios, we'll be increasing the buybacks.
So let me go to the next slide, and as you see here a leverage, gross leverage, you see, was decreased from more than $360 million to $150 million. And what's importantly, the net debt is down from $146 million to $110 million. That's year-over-year, but it's down by 25%. So that's kind of good progress we had during the year. If you look at the NCC ratio in greater detail, you'll see here that a year ago, we had a NCC ratio of 24.4%. Now we are at 15.9%. So nice decrease.
We have a decrease in net debt as well as the commitments to invest; we have decreased significantly. Now, if you look at our NCC ratio over the time, in past four years, it's been down from 42.5% to 15.9%. That's big decrease, big deleveraging, basically, and this is on the back of the decreasing debt, increasing cash balance, net cash balance, basically, and also increasing the value of our portfolio companies. So all in the right place. Looking at the buyback program, which we announced $50 million, counting in it, we were gonna spend the $50 million in next six months or so.
We are looking at $86 million total buyback since the GCAP inception five years ago. So significant buybacks we have been doing in these five years, $86 million, and the number of shares which we will be retiring will be 8.1 million shares. So, significant portion of our share count will be retired. Just to jump to our performance of our education business, I just want to draw your attention, moving from the talking about the NCCs and the share buybacks, basically. Performance of our education business, which has been doing extremely well. We had the first graders this year.
As you know, we have started the education season, and we had 873 first graders, which we have received in year one. This is up from 245 first graders, which we received four years ago. So it's significant growth. In terms of the capacity, we are up from 2,800 learners. We are up to nearly 7,300 learners. And then that's capacity-wise. In terms of the number of learners we have now, we are more than doubled from 2,500 to nearly 6,000 learners, which we currently have. So that gives you a pretty big growth trajectory going forward.
CAGR increase in the number of learners is around 23%, and CAGR increase in number of first graders is like a 37%. So that's a significant growth, which will be reflected in the coming years. This business is not reflected in one go, basically. But it's you can have a pretty well planned cash flows coming into this business. We, as you saw, the hospital business did not have a great results for a number of reasons. One is the intro- the deduction of the new regulations on the ER, which we have been redoing, and that gave us the that way we could not receive the patients in our facilities as usual.
But in terms of the performance of the hospital business, we are not happy, and we are restructuring the way it will work. So let me remind you that we are, we have two kind of sets of pockets here in healthcare business. One is the hospitals, which consists of the larger specialty hospitals and the regional hospitals, basically. And then we have clinics and diagnostics, which consists of the community clinics and polyclinics and diagnostics, basically. We are separating larger specialty hospitals from the rest of the hospital business because there's a kind of very different business, and this is mainly driven by the revenue growth and driven by the by introducing of new business lines and new treatments.
It's basically a revenue game. It's a different game. In terms of the regional hospitals and community clinics, we are putting them together, and we have brought a CEO of our competitor who has been working on regional hospitals and pretty successfully. That business line, regional and community hospital, will be spearheaded by the new CEO. This is more a kind of an efficiency game. So we are servicing efficiently our customers and less about the innovation and revenue growth. More of discipline in terms of the efficiency. In terms of the polyclinics and diagnostics, which contribute around 20% of all healthcare business.
That's where we see the opportunity to grow, and this is another growth pocket, where we will be investing and growing our polyclinics footprint. And this way, the management will be more focused on the growth rather than maintaining the services. So hospitals, six hospitals, which are large and specialty hospitals, are growth-driven, revenue growth-driven hospitals, and we will have a separate focus by the management team. And the polyclinics and diagnostics will have a separate focus on that in terms of the growing the revenue. And the regional and community hospitals will be managed separately as it's a different type of business. In terms of the reporting, we will report the large and specialty hospitals as well, and the regional and community clinics as one business line.
And we will be reporting polyclinics and diagnostics as separately, a separate business line under the investment, section of our portfolio company. So in terms of the NAV growth over the time, over the five years, CAGR NAV growth will be at 12.3% in terms of the, Lari terms. In terms of the US dollar, it's actually similar, CAGR 12.3%, and in sterling, it's a little bit, over 13%. So, not a great stellar performance, but not a bad performance if we consider the two crises that we have in between the war in Ukraine and the, the COVID crisis, basically.
In terms of the cash flow, free cash flow generation and development, we're gonna have a record free cash flow around $31 million. This is the way we are looking at the cash flow, is that the cash dividend income minus cash spent on the minus interest rate and cash spend on OpEx at GCAP level. So we are, as you may see, that we're gonna more than double 2019 number, and we have significant growth there. So 2023 will be marked as a strong turn into the generating cash. Now, I will hand over this presentation to Nino, who will talk about the macro development.
Thank you, Irakli. Hello and welcome, everyone. As per our usual format, I will do brief macroeconomic update on Georgia. So, and of course, we have dedicated Q&A session to answer your questions. Before I move and zoom in on Georgia, let me briefly touch on prevailing global macro trends. Global growth is slowing compared to last year, 3.5% global growth. So this year, 3% growth is expected, which is lower than historical standards. And so despite the fact that risks are kind of more balanced than it was in the first half of the year, due to the resolution of the U.S. debt ceiling, as well as Swiss and U.S. authorities' quick action to contain financial turbulence.
Risks for global growth are still here related to China's property markets, as well as increasing inflation expectations and strong labor markets, and also recent and ongoing geopolitical tensions. So in our region, rather than the general pre-COVID recovery, our region benefited from inward migration as well as transit trade and capital reallocation. So these factors were important for Georgia's growth, also. As you know, we had two years of double-digit growth, and after the two years of double-digit growth and high base effect, so this year we are still growing quite nicely. So nine months growth came at 6.8%, according to the preliminary estimate, despite the fact that we see some moderation, especially in the third quarter.
Nine months growth is still at 6.8%. We don't have the structural breakdown for the third quarter, but in the first half, the key sectors contributing to the real GDP growth were the trade, information technology sector, as well as construction, financial intermediation. But there were sectors which contributed negatively including mining, manufacturing, and healthcare. So in terms of expenditure side, net export was the sole driver for the GDP growth, and we also see some encouraging signs, as we see investment to contribute positively in our growth. So on the inflation side, our inflation is below the target since April 2023.
So we had the gradual deceleration throughout 2022, along with the exchange rate appreciation, as exchange rate pass-through is significant for our domestic prices. This year, we saw sharp decline in the headline number on the back of high base effect, as well as, lower prices on the energy and food, food components in the international market. Our core inflation is also below 3%, so National Bank of Georgia targets headline number, but core inflation is also below 3% since July. National Bank of Georgia started to exit from tight monetary policy in May, and in cumulative, they, they did 100 basis point cuts.
And at their last meeting, they decided to keep the rate due to the fact that our domestic economy is still strong and we have some... We might have some potential pressures from the wage growth. There is some geopolitical tensions, and very important factor is interest rate differential, which is narrowing, and it keeps emerging market central banks to be more cautious in terms of easing the rate. So on the next slide, we have some kind of, we call it kind of new opportunities which emerged since last year.
So last year we were telling that we have this inward migration, we have this high-skilled labor force, and we expected this high-skilled labor to affect our IT sector, and so these expectations are reflected in numbers. Share of IT sector significantly increased compared to this, compared to 2021. And also contribution surged. Like, if you look at since the war, the IT sector was one of the most important contributor in our real GDP growth. Another source we are capturing this information technology sector is that we see export of services to surge, so it is still low compared to the total export of services, but still the trend is quite encouraging.
And of course, we are welcome any sign of diversification, including export of services where tourism has this dominant role. Another opportunities we see is on the next slide, which is the Middle Corridor. As you know, in the map, if you look at the map, Georgia is kind of bridge between Europe and Asia, and it connects Eastern European countries to landlocked Central Asian and Middle East countries. And this historic concept, based on the Silk Road, always gave significant role to Georgia and led country to be highly integrated in the international market. And this Middle Corridor, the importance of the Middle Corridor even increased after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
And now what we see in numbers, like if you look at our re-export, re-export increased by 89% compared to last year in nine months, and it doubled compared to 2021. And also the chart is quite interesting, despite the number is kind of insignificant, but trend is nice and shows the importance of this Middle Corridor. So revenues from road usage and number of freight vehicles surged significantly since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There are some challenges related to the Middle Corridor due to the infrastructural bottlenecks as well as some legislation, but the countries are committed and trying to harmonize the legislation and improve infrastructure in order to get additional opportunities from this corridor.
In the next slide, we have kind of snapshots about our external position. So our external position improved significantly despite the moderation of the growth of the FX inflows. FX inflows remained at elevated levels. So in nine months, FX inflows coming from export of goods, money transfer, tourism revenues reached more than GEL 11 billion, and it is more than 70%, almost 80% higher compared to nine months of last year. And these flows are reflected in our current account also, which continues to improve. In the first half, our current account deficit was 5.3%, compared to 8.6% last year. The key driver for our current account this year is mostly tourism revenues.
Re-export surged, as I have mentioned, and total export also increased, driven by the re-export. We had 12.7% growth in our export in nine months compared to the nine months of last year. Exchange rate remains strong, started to appreciate in mid-2021, and then there was some, after, there was some, in this, appreciation interrupted during the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but then the trend continued, appreciation trend continued. Since summer, we see some slight depreciation, more like flattening of exchange rate, and it is mostly related to the global factors like the US dollar strengthened significantly compared to June. Dollar index is up by 3% compared to June number.
And mainly, I guess, mainly driven by the jump of the 10-year yield and narrowed interest rate differential. In the next slide, we have kind of a sum-up of macroeconomic framework. So this we had this elevated FX inflows remained at the level and so this appropriate timing was used by the monetary and fiscal authorities to rebuild the buffers. Net international reserves is at historic high, record high, $5.3 billion as of September. And in net terms, National Bank of Georgia bought some $1.4 billion for its reserves. For the fiscal policy, so debt is below the pre-pandemic level and projected to remain to decelerate slightly.
So the key projection for the fiscal policy is that, they, they are intention to reduce the reliance on the FX-denominated debt, so they on a gross level, so they want to keep the level, at, at this, at this level, but they want to lower the, external debt and to replace it by the, GEL-denominated debt, which will increase Georgia's resilience, towards the external shocks. Overall balance, is projected to be 2.8% in 2023, and, it is continued to decelerate slowly to 2.1% in 2027.
As I have mentioned, National Bank of Georgia also started to ease, but they kept the rate unchanged, so according to their statements, they will continue to exit from tight monetary policy, but their path will be gradual, and due to the risks around the globe, including the regional tensions, as well as yes, increasing cost of funds. So on the next slide, we have kind of a quick summary. Key messages we wanted to deliver is that, despite the high base effect, economy continued to grow nicely. Inflation is below target since April, and it is close. It is 0.7% as of September.
Our external balance sheet improved, including the reserves in record high reserves, narrowing current account deficit, debt level, which is below pre-pandemic levels, and fiscal deficit, which is below 3% and continue to reduce. GEL is also. There was some flattening in the GEL in the exchange rate. It is above the pre-pandemic levels and appreciated compared to the same period of last year. In general, macroeconomic framework is sound, so policymakers use time appropriately to rebuild the buffers and to improve the external balance sheet of the country. This was a very quick overview from my side. Now I will hand over to Irakli to continue on performance overview. Thanks.
Thanks, Nino. Let me, let me share the presentation. So let me continue with the, performance. So basically, we have a, on the revenue side, we are up nearly 10% on aggregate level, at GEL 1.5 billion in nine months. We are up at nearly 7% in the quarter, year-over-year. We had a nice performance by the, large portfolio companies, as well as other companies, actually. They have done, pretty well. In terms of the EBITDA, we are up at 4.2% in a, nine months terms in on aggregate level, and nearly 4% we are up in the quarter.
So, in terms of the cash flows, cash flows are actually behind compared to last year for two reasons. Main reason is a growth we have in pharmacy sector, where we are growing pretty fast, and that is kind of the primary driver of the decline in our cash flows and cash balance also declined. But we think that it's gonna catch up till the year end because we will be collecting more cash as we are preparing for the season. So the Q4, it's a pretty high season in retail, and that is kind of one of the reflections of this cash flow statement.
In terms of the NAV per share development, you see in the quarter, we basically was mainly driven by the Bank of Georgia, by our listed portfolio company. Private portfolio didn't grow, it actually declined a little bit, due to the hospital performance or underperformance, basically. But rest is in line, so we grew by five percentage point... by 5%, in the quarter. So, we are happy with the headline growth. We want to see more of private portfolio growth going forward. That's what we expect in Q4, actually. So now let me hand over to Giorgi, who will talk about the portfolio valuation.
Thank you, Irakli. Hello, everyone. I will speak about the valuations in our portfolio companies in the next few slides. Starting with the overview, what you see here is that, you know, this quarter, similar to the previous quarters, we updated the valuations, but this time it was done all in-house. We will be using the third-party valuation firm again at year-end. As you know, we use them every six months. Here you will see that, the valuation-wise, the share of the listed and observable portfolio increased to 36% during the quarter within our overall portfolio. That was largely because Bank of Georgia's share price increased to close to 37 GBP at the end of the quarter. The water utility option value was retained unchanged.
We didn't make any changes here. We do expect a complete, you know, review, another review of this valuation at the end of the year when we publish the fourth quarter results, on the back of, you know, the new tariff period that will kick in from January first. So the tariffs for water utility will be determined before the end of this year. That will give us a, a very good visibility into what the EBITDA of this business will be for the next two years, and that will be helpful for the valuation. So we will update it in the, in the fourth quarter.
As it relate to the private portfolio, what we saw across the board was, you know, some multiples came down, especially in the retail pharmacy, hospitals, businesses, and we will walk them through later. But, you know, retail pharmacy continued to be our largest private portfolio business, followed by hospitals, and the insurance businesses. Together, they make up about 40% of our portfolio. 15% is in the investment stage businesses, renewable energy, education, clinics and diagnostics, and other portfolio actually had a strong quarter, which meant that, you know, their share increased from 8%- 9% in the overall portfolio. On the next slide, we show you how the portfolio valuations change. So this is the gross level, and this excludes any dividend movements as well.
Bank of Georgia added more than 200 million GEL to our overall portfolio value. About 93 million GEL decrease came from the large portfolio companies, largely in the healthcare space, which was hospitals, and clinics and diagnostics. In the investment stage, we also had the reduction, small reduction, in the education business that I will walk you through later. The other businesses and the renewable is energy. They both added about 28 million GEL valuations. In other businesses, this was largely because of the strong performance within beverage business, in particular beer business, and within the auto services, as well. Our portfolio at the end of the quarter was about 3.5 billion GEL.
Now, in terms of the key businesses, if we start with the retail pharmacy, here you will see that the business had a good quarter, 5% growth in the revenues and about 15.6% growth in the EBITDA on a year-over-year basis in a single quarter. This is very important because, given the headwinds that the business has faced this year as the government has come up with the new regulations, capping prices for certain you know drugs and medicine, the business has managed to diversify, actually, away from you know these the sales of drugs and also focus on selling the parapharmacy products. And the share of the parapharmacy products has been increasing in the overall portfolio.
The second one that's also important to highlight is these regulations that the government has come up with has affected the ability of the smaller mom-and-pop type pharmacies to continue operating on the market, because they were dependent on buying you know from the wholesalers, and we also have a wholesale business their drugs to sell in their shops. So we've seen that some of those smaller competitors are you know getting out of business, which has allowed our business you know because we're the largest player to actually increase our network. So in a single quarter, you will note that we actually opened 10 new pharmacies in Georgia.
We've been also opening pharmacies in Armenia, and we are now up to about 13 pharmacies in Armenia, and we also have Body Shop franchise stores there as well. But in Azerbaijan, we also added 2 more, so about, we have about 4 pharmacies right now open in Azerbaijan. The key here also is that, you know, the growth in the same-store revenue has come back. So we were positive 3.5% when it comes to the same-store revenue growth in this quarter, and also the average bill size increased by about 7%. So, the pharmacy business, as I said, despite all these challenges, had a very strong quarter.
When we look at the valuations on the next slide, you will see that their enterprise value did actually manage to increase by 2.6% on the back of this strong performance in the third quarter as well. We had a slightly different picture in net debt because of two reasons. One, this business paid us dividends. When we talk about the dividends, we will see that they paid us a good amount of dividends in the third quarter, so that affected the net debt. But also because, as Irakli was explaining earlier, they stocked up ahead of the, you know, fourth quarter sales, which we expect will be, you know, cashed out during the fourth quarter, so the cash collection will be strong.
As a result, the value, the equity value of this business was down by 6%, and the adjusted net debt will be increased, you know, from above 2%- 2.3%. But we do expect that this will come down again in the next quarter as the business sells this stock stocked up inventory products and realizes cash. On the next slide, we, you know, we have the hospitals business here, which, you know, was touched in details earlier. So you know, what this translates into the renovation projects, where we had stocked about 12 hospitals out of 16 hospitals, was, you know, revenue was flattish, but because of the fixed costs associated, even during the renovation periods, EBITDA was affected, and it was down by 12%.
Now that all hospitals are back, you know, online and running, we do expect that, you know, this GEL 9 million EBITDA will improve significantly, into the fourth quarter. But this drop also meant that there was a drop in the LTM EBITDA, and therefore we adjusted the valuations accordingly. And within the valuations, you see that the enterprise value was down, by 5%. Cash collection in this business, actually, in cash conversion of the EBITDA, was fine during the quarter. However, they had to spend money for the renovations, so overall, net debt was impacted by about, 4%. And, you know, the bottom line was that the multiple was down in this business to 12.5%, and we have a reduction of about 10%, in the equity value.
Next is the insurance businesses, which combines P&C and the medical insurance businesses. So this is really a story of a combination of two stories. So one is the business, both medical and the P&C insurances had a very, very strong quarter when it comes to the revenue growth, and this growth actually was diversified across the different product types. It's not concentrated in any, you know, single product. It was across different ones, and the growth in both businesses was more than 20% in the revenues, which we see as a recurring growth. What happened on the other side was, you know, a rare combination of, you know, loss events that resulted from a landslide that happened in mountainous region of Georgia.
A tragedy that resulted in a loss of life as well, and that combined with, you know, very abnormal amount of hailstorms happening during this quarter in the Kakheti region, where we have a lot of vineyards that are insured, has resulted in the loss ratio in the P&C business actually being, you know, higher than what we have generally seen in this business. So overall, the combined ratio here was, you know, close to 100%, 100%. And therefore, we have a drop in the net income in the P&C business in the third quarter, which we think is really associated to this, you know, combination of the one-off events that we do not see or foresee repeating in the future in this scale.
But the good news again is that the growth, the revenues was very strong. If you look at the growth in the gross premiums written, is also actually even stronger, 31%, which provides, you know, insight where the revenue of this business will go into the next year. Medical business also had a strong quarter. So on top of the growth in the revenues, they also had a growth in the net income. You know, it went up by almost a hundred percent when it comes to the net income. We have about 4 million GEL that they generated so far in nine months, and we do expect that they will continue to have a strong quarter in the fourth quarter as well.
So when it comes to the valuations of this business, you know, it was mixed because of the, you know, different performances. But overall, in the P&C business, you will see that we have a slight decrease to account for this, you know, one-off losses. And the value, equity value of the business was down by about 3% to GEL 268 million. Next, we have the investment stage businesses. So I'll quickly touch you know some of them. In the renewable energy in this quarter, we actually had all of our hydropower plants and the wind farms operating, so there was not much change in the electricity generation versus last year. It was flattish.
Average sale price did increase slightly versus last year by about 4%, and that's because this year we actually managed to export some of the electricity over to our neighboring country, Turkey, which was positive to the blended sales price. So you know, broadly, revenue and the EBITDA, they were flattish, but the business generated cash in the fourth quarter, so in the third quarter. So in the valuations, that meant that, you know, we have a decrease in the net debt by about 3%, which was fully reflected in the valuation of this business, and the equity value of the business went up by, you know, close to $3 million. Now, we value this business at $97 million, where $77 million is the operational projects, and $21 million is the pipeline projects. Next one comes the education.
Education business, you know, I won't touch, as Irakli explained earlier, we had a very strong growth in the number of learners. So that's about 43% on a year-over-year basis, and despite growing the capacity as well, at close to 29%, the capacity utilization increased significantly, eighty-one percent. The third quarter usually is not, you know, very meaningful in this business to look at in terms of the numbers, because, you know, the business only operated for, you know, two weeks. The summer break ended on September fifteenth, so the revenue generation only reflects, two weeks of September, while the, you know, costs as we were growing and investing in the growth, costs get reflected from first of July.
But we do expect that when we report the fourth quarter numbers here, we will have a very strong growth, both in the revenues and the EBITDA in this business. And, you know, this small decrease that we currently have in the valuation, which is largely because of the impact from the foreign exchange rates in our international and premium schools. They charge in dollar terms, and, you know, if you look at on an 18 months basis, Lari has appreciated by close to 15% against dollar versus where it was before. That has resulted in a decrease of about 8% in the enterprise value, and that was about 7% decrease in the equity value.
We do value this business at 16.5x multiple, but I will highlight that when we look at on a forward-looking basis, so if we take 2023/2024 school year, so through the end of, you know, next June, this multiple on a forward-looking basis is actually around 11x. So as this, the growth gets captured within the P&L and accumulated in the last twelve months' performance, this multiple will come down significantly. Net debt to EBITDA is, you know, lower than our targeted amount here, which, you know, is helpful as the business actually continues to grow. Next, we have the clinics and diagnostics. Briefly here, this was the similar story to the hospital, so they were also affected by these new regulations.
We do have an increase here in the EBITDA, a significant one, but that was largely driven by one event, which was a sale of one of the clinics' buildings that was on balance sheet. You know, we recorded about GEL 3 million gain from that sale, but we expect that the cash proceeds that actually were received in the fourth quarter will be used to pay down the debt associated with this business. On the next slide, you will see that as a result of this sale, the net debt to EBITDA is decreasing from more than seven times, which was three months ago, to 4.7x .
So it's trending in the right direction, net debt to EBITDA, and our target is even lower in 2.5x , but we think this business will be able to get there over the next few quarters. Overall, we had a decrease of 8% in the clinics and diagnostics business, and it's down to slightly less than 100 million GEL now. Now, briefly about our liquidity. So we following—this is the first quarter when we have, you know, completed the refinancing of the bonds. The previous euro bonds have been fully paid down, refinanced, and completely off the balance sheet, and we are left with $38 million worth of liquidity at the end of the quarter. Last week, we received Bank of Georgia dividends, which was about $10 million.
So when we aggregate today, we have about $48 million worth of liquidity on our balance sheet, which is, you know, we think it's strong enough for us to announce this $15 million buybacks, which we announced today. And lastly, just a little bit about the dividends. So far this quarter, you know, in the third quarter, we collected about GEL 54 million, but when we aggregate on a nine-month basis, the recurring dividend collection has been GEL 146 million. I would highlight that pharmacy here has been a strong provider. It's GEL 24 million that we received from pharmacy as regular dividends, and GEL 27 million is a one-off. So in total, we have received about GEL 51 million from our pharmacy business.
We now guide you to an overall recurring dividends at the end of the year, GEL 280 million, and this is about, you know, 12% higher than where we saw the dividends the higher end of the range of dividends at the end of the last quarter. And, you know, additional one-offs are GEL 56 million. So all in, this year, we should be collecting about GEL 236 million lari dividends. On this note, I'll go back to Irakli for the wrap-up session. Irakli, feel free to continue.
Yeah. Thank you, Giorgi. I was talking in a mute microphone. So I had a strong quarter, key in terms of the NAV per share growth. Strong quarter in terms of the deleveraging, strong quarter in terms of the dividend inflows. As a result, we have stepped up the share buyback program. We are not happy with the performance of the hospital business, which we are restructuring, putting some new management team, and we think that we will turn the corner there as well. Some underperformance is due to the regulatory issues, but overall, I think we need to manage this business differently, and we are focusing on it. So let me finish with this, and let's move on the Q&A session.
... Thank you, Irakli. Just a quick reminder for everyone. If you have questions, please feel free to press the Raise Hand button or type your questions in the Q&A. We have a couple of questions in the Q&A now. The first one is from Jonathan Curry. The question is: In the education business, is it all Georgian nationals, or does it seek at the higher levels to bring in learners from abroad?
Yeah. On education business, mainly is Georgian. May not even 10%, around 5% there are some foreign. We have international, British international school. So there we have some foreign learners, but that in terms of number of learners will not be more than 5%-7%. So mainly it's Georgia, Georgian nationals.
Thank you. The next question is from Priyesh. Can you highlight any relevant market transaction activity and whether you have had any interest in GCAP's assets?
There is always an interest in GCAP's assets, but basically, I cannot talk in the details or great details, but there is a lot of interest in high quality assets what we have. So that's-
Okay. Thank you, Irakli. There is a related question from Jonathan. Has there been any progress on disposing of the non-core other businesses?
I mean, we had the divestment of the real estate businesses. You may remember, we have sold number of hotels. We sold number of the land plots, which we had under the hospital business. So we've been having some progress there. But we may have more progress in coming years, basically.
Thank you. I think Brad wants to ask a question. Brad, please go ahead. You can speak.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we do.
Earlier, you said that about 10% of the education enrollment growth was non-Georgian. Can you kind of expand on that concept and just talk about, you know, across your business, how much of the growth that you've seen or the changes you've seen this year are due to the influx of emigres and new people coming to live in Georgia, as opposed to Georgian business, and, you know, assuming that the latter is more sustainable?
So basically, it is very hard for us to differentiate, to be honest. I mean, you know, but I do not believe that the growth in our businesses is coming from solely from the foreigners living in Georgia or what have you. So basically, I think that 90% of the growth what we have is Georgia-driven. Economy is growing, you know, the wealth is growing, GDP per capita is growing. So I think that this, we have a broadly, you can assume 90% plus growth, whatever we have, is Georgia-driven. And in education business, as I said, 10% is max what we have with the foreign students. We have probably around 5% of foreign students, basically, and the rest are Georgians. And that's kind of across the board.
You know, so it's Georgian-driven growth. Or Georgian citizen-driven growth. Brad, that's-
Thank you, Brad. If you don't have any follow-up questions, we can move on to the next one.
No, that answers it. I have other questions. I'll let other people go first.
No, go ahead. Go ahead.
You can go ahead.
Okay. So this is, you know, an unrelated question, or partially related question. I can see that you are now near your 15% debt target, and you continue to have to be generating free cash flow. Once you get to that 15% target, is the plan still to distribute everything generated, be above the 15%, to shareholders, or will you consider new investment, in Georgia?
No, I mean, as long as we have a discount, what we have, and discount is pretty high, so it's very difficult for us to beat investment opportunity, what we have in terms of buying the GCAP shares. The GCAP shares are the best buy in the country today, so we will focus on that. As long as we have... If we find the investment opportunity, which is better than the GCAP shares, we will capitalize on that, but I highly doubt it's almost impossible to find such a beautiful opportunity. So we will be focusing on the GCAP. We announced the buyback. It's not a big buyback program, but our main idea is that to have a 15% over the cycle. Now, we are in an economic growth, basically.
So this year we are growing, the country is growing 7% on the back of two 10% consecutive growth, right? So basically, I would rather be below 15% when we are growing fast than above 15%. So basically, we will be moving below 15%, and we will be capitalizing on the buybacks as we go along. And obviously, divestment of one of our businesses will be a trigger to step up the buyback.
... Yeah. Thank you. That's very clear.
Thank you. There are a number of questions in the Q&A. The first one is from Steve Gorelick. How has the competition developed in the education business over this year? Are you seeing new competitors emerge?
So far, the competition, we do not have a kind of a consolidated competition. So you have small schools competing with us. There is no large player. We don't see it yet. But we are basically continuing our consolidation of the sector. As you know, we are developing new schools. We are looking to acquire ones. We like acquisition more. Obviously, it gives immediate cash flow. And then basically, so far, we don't feel the competition, to be honest. Probably it will come.
Thanks, Irakli. Another question from Steve: How has the number of hospital beds, beds in the country changed due to the new legislation? What percentage of capacity exited due to the inability to meet the new requirements? Are you able to increase prices to reflect higher quality of services?
So the prices are regulated. On some of unregulated hospitals, we are increasing. On the number of hospital beds, we had to give more space. So per bed in ER, we have a less hospital beds than we had before. So that has decreased due to the regulation. The rest are probably adjustments in terms of the closing down some departments, et cetera. So...
Thanks. The next question is from Jonathan Curry. Am I correct in understanding that going forward, you expect dividends from the core businesses to be GBP 54 million against the current market cap of GBP 400 million? And can you give some flavor of how you see future capital distribution, debt reduction by big capital investments so?
So basically, the GEL 54 million does include one of basically the recurring one is GEL 145 million Lari-
For the full year, it will be correct. Yeah, that's for the nine months, but for the full year, it's 180.
Yeah, I guess that's correct, right? Giorgi, you wanna put it?
Yeah, it's correct. I think what Jonathan said, the numbers, that's for the full years.
But going forward, we have reduced debt significantly, so debt reduction is not our top priority, basically. The buybacks is our top priority, going forward. So basically, I think we had cut pretty significant debt on our balance sheet. We have managed it down. We have refinanced it recently. It's a five-year debt now of $150 million. Net debt, we are sitting around $110 million, even less than $110 million, actually, $105 million. So basically, going forward, our focus will be more on the buybacks, and you saw the first announcement, and we'll see how we're gonna go about it. But we are, we will be focused on buybacks, as I mentioned.
Thank you. The next question is from Daniel Brown. There has been recent reported insider selling of shares. Do any of the management consider purchasing shares, considering the significant discount to NAV and attractive future prospects for the business?
Yeah, I did. I did not see the selling, but probably, as you may know, Daniel, the we have a significant compensation of the management team is in shares, so barely the management receives any any cash. So somebody may have needed the cash, and that's why they sold. So that's that's all I can say.
Thanks. The next question is from Milosh. Can you give us an update on the pipeline projects in your renewable energy business?
Yeah, on the renewable energy business, basically, we have two wind projects. We have two hydro projects, which are in the process. In total, we are looking at nearly 200 megawatts, and then we have an early-stage project, what we have around close to 300 megawatts there. So we are working on that, basically, and all the investments which we are targeting to invest in the wind and hydros are reflected in our NCC ratio, where we have a commitment to invest. And Georgi, remind me, what is our commitment for the renewable energy investment, basically?
We have about $30 million in renewable energy and about $22 million in the education. So, you know, overall, about $50 million plus is included in NCC towards these commitments that we have, the soft, we call them soft commitments, for the capital injections in the future.
Steven is asking whether we will be canceling all the shares, or it will go towards the management trust. Steven, all of it will be canceled. Management trust is well-funded, so all of these buybacks that we will undertake will be immediately canceled.
... Okay, the next question is from Harvey. Can you discuss the geopolitical situation? Have you seen the 60 Minutes piece called The Quiet Invasion, about the Russians coming into Georgia? Is it the general view among Georgians, as suggested on 60 Minutes, that the, that the arrival of Russians is bad, or do people appreciate the money and business they bring? What will be the public and the government reaction to a negative-sounding report from the EU?
Well, I have not seen the 60 Minutes, but I'll watch for sure. Thanks, Harvey, for flagging this. I mean, I think it's a little bit exaggerated. There was probably in the beginning, we had more inflows, and now there is less inflow, and I think we may have even outflow. So I don't see that dramatism there, basically, even amongst the Georgians, basically. There is some talk, obviously, whether it is a quiet invasion or it is an investment, bringing in investment. But anyway, I think that overall, I would not dramatize that much the whole thing. The second point on EU report, basically, we the...
I think that, the local politicians are very loud and clear that, I think that everybody is expecting Georgia to get the candidate status. We will wait for the report, which will come out on 8th of November, which is important report. But end of the, this year, we expect to get a candidate status, and I think that both opposition and the, the ruling party, are stating that the, candidate status will be given. So it's been, probably talks, which has already happened, and that which give the Georgian politicians, the EU gave the Georgian politicians reassurance of the candidate status. So, on the language, how, what will be the kind of, preconditions or con, or conditions, basically, we'll see on November 8th.
Thank you. The next question is from Jonathan. Clearly, the government sees the medical and pharmacy areas as ripe for regulation. Do you believe that you are now going to be in a more stable environment with less changes going forward and being a larger firm? Does regulation work for your benefit?
So basically, the regulation works in the end, regulation works in benefit for the large players. That's been before, and that's how it will be, basically. I think that what we will see, we'll see a reduction of number of beds, hospital beds, reduction in the competition, as more stricter regulation will be difficult to follow.
Thanks. The next one is from Priyesh. Is it possible for any of your IFI partners to buy GCAP shares?
I mean, I cannot speak from themselves, from this IFI, but in general, what I believe that the IFIs love to invest in new opportunities, not in the existing kind of opportunity. So, I don't believe that IFIs will go in the market and start buying the GCAP shares. But you never know. I mean, I cannot speak for them, for themselves or for IFIs.
Thank you. There are no open questions as of now. If you have any questions, please type them in the Q&A, or you can press the Raise Hand button.
Since there are no more questions, let me wrap up here. Thanks, everybody, for attending the call. I think that next important thing which is coming up is Georgia candidate status, which we'll know in coming week and until the year ends. So thank you very much, and stay tuned for our Q4 results, which I hope will be more exciting than Q3.