highlighting the six main points for this quarter. As you know, today we announced the sale of 80% of our beer business. Well, then I'll talk about much greater details later on the presentation. We also are up in NAV per share by 6.2%, which is a strong performance, mainly by our private portfolio companies. We also had a record high dividend inflow of GEL 190 million in Q3. As a result, our NCC ratio decreased substantially to 15.9%. That's a three percentage point decline. We had a aggregate also record high aggregate revenue and aggregate EBITDA of our portfolio companies. They are up 12% and 16.5% accordingly.
A strong performance on EBITDA side as well as on the revenue side. Operating cash performance is strong. We nearly more than doubled year over year to 102 million GEL, which is also a record high. And also, we repurchased more than 2 million shares in Q3. That's a pretty significant buyback program, which we have conducted. In total, we repurchased more than 10 million shares over the life of Georgia Capital, and that represents 22.5% of the GCAP's peak issue share capital.
And I'm very pleased that we are very close to the number of shares where we were at the demerger in 2018, basically numbers in terms of number of outstanding shares. Now, regarding the sale, we expect the inflow of at least $63 million from this sale. We will be divesting 80%, effectively 73.9% of our equity interest. We will remain as a shareholder and we'll have a put call option starting from to 2028. This divestment, as you know, is in line with our strategy, as we said that we want to divest our other businesses as well as the businesses which are capital heavy.
And basically, this business represents exactly the one which we were targeting to divest. We sold it to the very reputable investor. It's Royal Swinkels from Holland. They run the beer business in Holland and all over in many different places. They also have their Bavaria brand licensed here in Georgia, so they knew Georgia as well. So that's... And in terms of the valuations, basically, we sold at a premium to NAV, around 40% premium to NAV, which gave the 1.8% at this point uplift to the GCAP NAV per share, if you count as of the first half, end of first half.
So that's a significant premium to our NAV, basically. Then this represent around 5% of GCAP's NAV and 10% of the more than 10% of the GCAP's market cap, basically, this transaction. So in terms of the operating performance of the beer business, it was very strong. We were growing significantly our revenue as well as EBITDA. So the management did a great performance of this business. And actually, the CEO of beer business now is heading our pharmacy business, and CFO of the beverages business became the CEO of the beer business.
So, basically, the excellent performance by our management team in terms of delivering the great operating performance, and hence, interest from the international strategic buyer. In terms of the. If we look at the NAV per share breakdown, operating performance of our private portfolio company contributed 7.5%, which is pretty significant, tells you the economy is growing pretty fast, our portfolio companies are benefiting and growing nicely. We have a minus 3.8% contribution from multiple change. So basically, our audited valuation committee decided to bring down some of the multiples we were applying to our portfolio companies. Another positive contribution is from buybacks.
It's 2.5% represented the positive contribution to the NAV per share growth. So in total, we have a NAV per share growth of 6.2% in Q3. Here you have a kind of a more long-term view on the CAGR. So we have a CAGR of 11.6% after the inception of the Georgia Capital over the six and a half years or so. That's a buyback program, which we are very proud of, what we've been delivering.
And you see, we've been consistently buying back shares, and in total, we spent $123 million, which is more than 22% of our issued share capital as of the peak times. So, that's, and I'm particularly pleased the number of shares, as you know, grew when we took over our healthcare business, as we bought it with this new share issuance of Georgia Capital. So our number of shares at the inception was 39.4 million. It grew to 47.9 million shares in the peak, and now it's down to 39.8 million shares, very close to the number which we were at the inception of Georgia Capital.
So if you look at the aggregate portfolio results, we have in quarter the revenue grew 12%, and it grew across the board. It grew. We had a nice growth with large portfolio companies, investment stage, and other companies. In every segment, we had a strong revenue growth, but especially the growth was very strong in our large portfolio companies. That's both in pharmacy, hospitals, as well as insurance benefited from the economic growth, and they have grown significantly. Over the nine months, we also have a 9% growth across the board of the revenue. On the EBITDA side, we have a similar picture, but its growth rate is higher, 16.5% growth in EBITDA.
Q over Q, it's seventy-nine million aggregate EBITDA, and we had a growth, strong growth at large portfolio companies and investor stage portfolio companies in the quarter. Over the nine months, we have a 15% growth of the EBITDA. In terms of the cash flow, you see a very strong cash flow generation. It doubled in Q3, GEL 202 million. In nine months, also more than doubled at GEL 215 million. So very strong cash flow generation of our portfolio companies. We are printing cash across the board. Let me give you a small update on the deleveraging.
You see, our one of the key ratios which we follow is NCC ratio, which peaked at 18.9% in the second quarter, but it came down back to 15.9% as we accumulated more cash, as dividend inflow came in. And please note that in this quarter we've been buying back a lot of shares, so we're spending a lot of cash. Also, despite of the buybacks, our NCC ratio declined by three percentage points. This is due to of dividend inflows. This is over time, as you see, that we are managing down to 15%.
This is our kind of over-the-cycle target, and as economy was booming, we too went a little bit off 15%, we went to 19%. We are back to 15.9%, but I wouldn't exclude that we will go upper than 15% because of the very strong economic performance what we are seeing in Georgia, and strong performance by our portfolio company. Now, let me give a stage to Nino to talk about the macro.
Thank you, Irakli. Hello, everyone. As usual, I will do a very brief macroeconomic overview of our country. Economy continues to be very strong as preliminary real GDP numbers in eight months came at 10%. And according to the recent International Monetary Fund's projections and World Economic Outlook, Georgia is going to be again one of the fastest-growing economy in our region in the short and medium term. And if you look at the nominal GDP in U.S. dollar, so nominal GDP in U.S. dollar is expected to more than double at the end of the year to $33 billion compared to 2020. On the other hand, we have very low inflation, as the headline number came in 0.6% in September, and inflation is below target since spring last year.
On the next slide, we have some charts showing and it was trying to explain the key drivers for our strong economic performance. In the previous calls, if you remember, we were telling that the key drivers for the strong growth were the domestic factors, and that the FX inflows have been moderating since the second half of the last year. Now, in the third quarter, we see that FX inflows starting to pick up again and to increase compared to the same period of last year. Like remittances, which were like the, there was significant inflow of remittances after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as there was capital reallocation as well as migration impact. From the second half of the last year, there was significant fall in our remittances.
Now what we see is the remittances started to flatten compared to last year, despite the fact that we are still seeing declining remittances from Russia. The remittances from US and European Union compensate this decline, and remittance is kind of flattening. On the other side, the tourism revenue continued to increase, and there was significant surge in our export, goods export, as there was surge in re-exported cars to the Central Asian countries, and we see some pick-up for our domestic export, local export, like the ferroalloys and the copper. One of the domestic factors, the Georgian banks continue to be a very strong engine for our economic growth.
Bank loans increased by 18.6%, and we see significant activity both in the retail and business loans, but we should highlight the significant contribution from the business loans. There is a significant demand, what we observe, in the local and foreign currency. For the fiscal side, despite the fact that fiscal policy was quite supportive as we are in the election year. So fiscal policy variables were quite sound, like the fiscal deficit, debt levels were sound because of the strong economic activities. Government managed to accumulate extra GEL 1 billion in revenue collection compared to budgeted numbers on the back of strong economic activity. We still see labor force to be quite strong, with the lowest unemployment, historic low unemployment, and the highest number of employees.
Wage growth, despite some moderation, we see wage growth to be quite significant and in line with the low inflation. There is a significant purchasing power, increase in purchasing power for our consumers. On the next slide, we wanted to show some significant deleveraging, which is like ongoing deleveraging in our economy. And if you look at the debt level, not for the - well, not only for government, but the debt level for government and banks and other financial corporations and the non-financial corporations, the total debt level declined significantly, and we see it is to be lowest since 2014. International investment position, which is like the assets and li- stock or variable of assets and liabilities, Georgia versus the rest.
It is also improved significantly and lowest since 2012. And this significant deleveraging is happening on the back of very high GDP growth number and exchange rate appreciation. And if you look at the flow variable, like the current account deficit, we see significant improvement there also, which is on the back of stronger FDI inflows and economic activity. On the next slide, so we wanted to show some variables which kind of reflect the volatility and the geopolitical tensions and uncertainties in our economy, because these macro variables do not reflect this. They do have some lags, and this is the more frequent variables which reflects the uncertainty. So we have here exchange rate spreads and market capitalization.
So as for the currency, there was significant depreciation during spring, right after the Russian law and street protests. But due to the fact that we had the strong FX inflows and the strong economic activity, USD/GEL declined to the level, which is kind of more macro fundamentally driven. So as for the spreads, we don't have proper yield curve in the hard currency for our country. There is only one bond issued by the sovereign, maturing in 2026. But there was significant surge in the spread after Russia's law, and despite some adjustment, the spread is still higher compared to the spring level. And as for the market cap, I will not spend much time here. You're looking on a daily basis.
For the last slide, if we want to assess kind of macroeconomic framework, which is more like the fiscal policy and monetary policy. On the fiscal policy, we see that operating balance is at a historic high. We see fiscal deficit to be 2.5% of gross domestic product, which is lower compared to capped 3% target. As I have already mentioned, and I will tell you again, that the economic activity was so strong that revenue accumulation was much higher compared to the budgeted number, which gives some comfort, and the fiscal policy remains sound.
For the monetary policy side, National Bank of Georgia decided to cap the rate at 8%, so they reduced the rate this year, but in the latest monetary policy meetings, kept the rate at 8% despite the low inflation, as there is still a risk. We have more than expected economic growth number, and for the external sector, we see some geopolitical tensions in Middle East, which might affect the oil prices and inflation at home. There are still some uncertainties which might affect inflation. That's why National Bank of Georgia was kind of cautious in terms of rate and monetary policy rate, and kept it at 8%. In terms of intervention, National Bank of Georgia was quite proactive before the election and intervened a lot in order to...
So they wanted the exchange rate to be aligned to the macro fundamentals, and this not at the level driven by the uncertainty, so that's why the intervention was quite intensive before the election. So on the last slide, we have just like a very, very quick summary. We are experiencing the economy growing quite strongly at 10% in eight months, so the inflation remains below target. External demand, which was kind of moderating in the previous quarters, now we see supporting economic growth again. The external balance sheet remains solid, and we see significant deleveraging on the back of high growth and strong exchange rate, and macroeconomic policy framework remains sound and appropriate. Yeah, so this was a quick overview from my side.
I will hand over to Giorgi to continue the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Nino. Hello, everyone. I will take you through our third quarter numbers. That includes the valuations and the NAV that we put out at the end of the quarter, as well as the individual performance of the large portfolio companies on the next few slides. So starting with the valuations, in the third quarter, we did the valuations in-house based on the same methodology that our external, independent, third-party valuation firm uses every six months. The only change here that we applied was, given that the beer and distribution sale transaction finalized in October, we used the valuation from this transaction as an adjusting subsequent event and applied the same valuation to the end of September numbers.
So when you see here the other portfolio, GEL 327 million, that already assumes the exit valuation of the beer business, which is the reason why the percentage of the portfolio of the other business grew from 7% to 9% here. Elsewhere in the listed and observable portfolio, we continued to use the share price of Bank of Georgia as observed in the London Stock Exchange. In water utility, we continued to apply the put call option valuation structure that we have with the majority shareholder there. We had a small increase there, given the strong performance of the EBITDA in the water utility business. In the large portfolio companies, you would see that within the insurance and the hospitals business, the multiples came down significantly.
The key reason for that was a very strong operating performance of these businesses, where the EBITDA and the net income grew as expected, you know, in the DCF calculations that we put together at the end of last quarter. So this performance growth resulted in you know, a higher EBITDA resulted in lower multiples. With this, we had the you know, equivalent 38% in the listed and observable portfolio, and 38% within the large portfolio companies within our overall portfolio. On the next slide, you see you know, the contributions to our PNL from the valuation changes. So the biggest contribution came from the other portfolio companies. That includes the valuation uplift of the beer business.
Retail pharmacy was the second largest contributor, with GEL 38 million, and we will look at these individual valuation gains on the later slides. The next one I would highlight is the insurance business, where we also had a very strong performance. In terms of the portfolio value change, so even though the portfolio value decreased slightly, but part of the reason was, for example, Bank of Georgia paying both the full year and the interim dividends during the quarter, affecting the reduction in size here of GEL 123 million. But elsewhere, large portfolio companies and the other portfolio companies contributed to the growth. Now, in terms of the individual portfolio company performances, here, starting with the retail pharmacy business. So this business is trending in the right direction across the board.
You may recall, three quarters ago, in the fourth quarter last year, we had decrease in this business due to the various regulatory changes and the introduction of the price caps. So EBITDAs were coming down. Now that the EBITDA decrease has, you know, reversed, and we are reporting for the last three, four quarters, we're re-reporting the first, you know, growth in the EBITDA of 2% plus. We have a very strong revenue growth. The retail revenues increased by 6%, and what we also like very much in this business is that the gross profit continued to grow, thanks to the actions that the management has been taking, and the gross profit has now reached, you know, 30.6% in the third quarter.
The business continued to generate cash, and as you can see on the next slide, net debt decreased here, actually by GEL 18 million. So part of the value creation of GEL 38 million came actually from the cash generation of the business, because the net debt was down, and then the rest came up, came down to the EBITDA increasing during the quarter. So overall, we had GEL 39 million, you know, equity valuation gains here. Multiple remained the same, and given the net debt improvements, we saw the leverage ratio come down from 2.4 to 2.2, and we do expect that the leverage will come down again in the fourth quarter as the business continues to grow. Very strong outlook for this business in the fourth quarter.
We should be reporting on the EBITDA basis, 30%, three-zero, 30%-plus growth in the EBITDA in the fourth quarter. The next is the insurance business. Also, a very strong performance here across the board, both for P&C insurance and for the medical insurance business. So within P&C business, you will see that the revenue growth was more than 25%. We also saw. And it was, you know, spread out across the different products, but what we also saw was combined ratio improved and reverted back to, you know, our guided range, which is between 80%-85%, so it's now inside that range at 84.4%. Part of the reason here has been the absence of the one-off large loss events that we had last year.
That include the landslide in one of the regions, in Georgia and some of the hailstorms that we observed in the Kakheti region that affected the agriculture insurance, last year. Obviously, this large growth in the revenues translated into a very strong PNL for the P&C insurance business that you see has reported a record quarterly PNL of GEL 8.4 million. In the medical insurance business, also very strong growth, also very you know good combined ratio, which is now about 86.5%. But at the same time, we added the Ardi Insurance business, as you know. So together, these two businesses, you know, reported more revenues actually for the first time in this quarter than the P&C business. So also very strong growth here.
And overall, we saw the GEL five million, or $4.9 million, that we had, the net profit for this business more than double to GEL 13 million in this quarter. So all this strong performance in the business drove actually the valuation changes, which you can see on the next slide, which is, you know, second biggest valuation changes. Here, the P/E multiple came down to 10.9 from 12.4, and the growth of the LTM pre-tax profit by GEL 6 million resulted in about GEL 16 million valuation gains for us.
And lastly, I would mention that the leverage that we took on in this business to, you know, acquire Ardi insurance, the leverage ratio came down from 0.7 to 0.3 times on the back of the growth in the net profit of this business. Next, I will present the hospitals business. So again, here, you saw the last quarter we had, you know, flattish growth in the EBITDA this quarter as the business has been able to absorb the changes in the regulations in this industry. We are reporting the growth, very strong growth in the revenues, high single digits, 9%, and very strong growth in the EBITDA of close to 37% on a reported basis.
But on a like-for-like basis, when we adjust the last year's PNL to exclude the Batumi hospital, the one that we sold at the end of last year, actually, the EBITDA growth is close to 40%. So we are seeing the very strong dynamics in this business. It's improving. We're seeing the patient flow is growing again. We are seeing that more of the outpatient, you know, outpatients are coming within our hospitals. That's helping with the gross margins, and that's also helping generate, you know, more revenues. And as we go forward in the fourth quarter also, we also expect very strong growth. The growth in the EBITDA should be higher than the growth that we are reporting now in the third quarter.
So this strong growth also resulted in strong, valuation, performance here. The multiple came down by one times from 12.5 times to 11.5 times. We had, you know, net debt that was largely, stable, and we also saw, that on the back of the EBITDA growth, the leverage ratio came down from 6.2 to 5.9, which is still higher than our targeted range. But on the back of the growth in the EBITDA and cash, generation, we expect that this ratio will continue to, come down significantly over the next few quarters. So I'm not gonna present other business lines, today, just cautious of time and probably the questions that you have.
But all these numbers are available in the pack, so if you have any questions, we can discuss later. In terms of the liquidity, we had a record dividend inflows for one single quarter in the third quarter. And even though we did a lot of buybacks in the third quarter, we still managed to grow our liquidity from $25 million to $48 million. And you know, this liquidity is pretty strong for our balance sheets, and as you know, we are continuing to do more buybacks for the coming weeks. Our debt has not changed. This is still the $150 million bonds that we issued on the local markets last year.
Lastly, about the dividends, so we have so far collected, you know, 169 million GEL dividends, what we call the regular dividends, already. Our guidance for the regular dividends this year remains at, you know, 180 million GEL, which is a similar level as the last year. With that, I would go back to Irakli for the wrap-up session. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Giorgi. So to wrap up, we made a divestment, as we mentioned, and our per share has been growing nicely on the back of portfolio company operating performance mainly, and due to the buyback, our recurring dividends is in line with our guidance, and we are continuing to collect the dividends from our portfolio companies. We have a record high revenue and EBITDA, gross and EBITDA level, basically, and net operating cash flow is strong, more than doubling, and our buyback program is working hard. We've been buying back, and we continue to buy back on this weakness.
So we expect a strong economy this year to continue, and we expect our portfolio companies to benefit from that. Now let's move on the Q&A session.
Thank you, Irakli. Before we start the Q&A, maybe a quick reminder, if you have any questions, you can type them in the Q&A panel, or you can press the Raise Hand button. We have a number of questions in the Q&A. Maybe we can start with Anton Berg's questions. He has several questions. The first one is: Have you seen any decline in the interest from potential buyers post the political news last month?
Maybe we can take this one, and then I will read out-
Sure
... the rest of the questions.
No, basically, I think that, I mean, the sale of the business proves that there is interest from the Western strategic buyers, and overall, we are engaged on different portfolio companies in line with our strategy, so we are happy with the engagement in general.
Thanks. The next question from Anton is: What's the maximum of the liquidity you can buy back and are buying back at this level?
Giorgi, maybe you will address this question.
Sure. So there is a limitation on the price. You cannot pay more than 5% premium to the previous day. In terms of the volumes, ideally, it's 20-25% of the daily volumes. And we are, at the moment, you know, spreading the amount of buybacks that we have left over each day. We don't want to, you know, be buying back all the liquidity on each day. So there is the market that is setting the price, and then the buyback is part of the daily liquidity. But generally, we buy 20-25% maximum on a daily basis.
Thanks, Giorgi. Maybe you can take the last question from Anton as well. Can you share a rate sensitivity for the private portfolio, like the extra dividend to free cash flow you would expect to get if local rates decrease by, say, hundred pips?
... I don't think we have that readily available, but does not necessarily mean that the decrease in the rates translate into higher dividends straight away. I mean, one sensitivity that we shared that you may find in the release is 100 basis points impact on the WACC, translating to 150 million GEL impact on the portfolio value. So let's say if the interest rates come down by 100 basis points, our portfolio value will increase by 150 million GEL, the price portfolio.
But on the cash flow in terms of dividends, we don't have that numbers yet, but we will look at it and come back to you. It's it will be interesting number.
Yep.
Thank you. The next question is from John Chinnery. I've been trying to understand your calculation on operating performance. Taking retail or pharmacy, for example, you reported GEL 36 million in 3Q 2024, but EBITDA is GEL 21 million, and the net cash flow is GEL 22 million. So how does the operating performance get calculated? I see it's the change in the value based on actual or expected, so can I infer that circa GEL 14 million difference is actually the expected performance above the actual performance?
It's really the three components. I think you have the first two already. So it's the EBITDA change that you should multiply by the beginning multiple. So whatever was the multiple at the beginning of the quarter that we were applying to this business. The second one is correct, the net debt change. So if the business produced the net debt decreased the net debt, that's the value generation that goes in the operating performance. And the last one is if we have the exit. So for example, the exit from the beer business also goes in that line, which was the case that happened in the third quarter.
Thanks, Giorgi. The next question is from Milosh. "Has the revenue growth in the beer and distribution business been purely organic in recent years?
Yeah, it was all organic. There was maybe some acquisition of the brands, but, for one brand, but mainly it was organic.
Thanks, Irakli. The next question is from Andrew McGregor. "What are your major concerns post-election and view from the president that it was not free and fair? Are you worried about sanctions? What are the key indicators that you monitor in this regard?
I mean, we will, we should wait the development, but basically, the overall, the results have been announced, preliminary results. We have OECD, the assessment, which was initially mainly a positive. So we will wait. There are different assessments are coming in, but we will wait and see how it will develop. But that's what kind of. We are monitoring really the assessment of the different organizations, and we'll see, we'll see where we end. But usually, in Georgian politics, you have a lot of, let's say disagreements.
Thank you, Irakli. There are no open questions in the Q&A, and we would pretty much encourage you to ask the live questions by pressing the raise hand button, if that's convenient for you as well. So the next question is for Walter Davis. "Given the current NCC, the asset sale, cash generation, and put option for the water utility becoming exercisable from first of January next year, if I am correct, is a tender for a large share buyback under consideration?
We will come, we will come back on that one. As I said, that we need to close the deal first, and we will come back on that. We are considering everything.
Thank you. Let's wait. There are no open questions for now.
It seems that there are no more questions. Thanks everybody for attending our-
I think, Melker Samuelsson wants to-
Okay
... yeah, ask a live question.
Yes. Hello, good afternoon. I was curious to ask, in the report you've mentioned that the share of Bank of Georgia has been reduced to 19.1%, below the target of 19.5%. Are you expecting to rebuy back that existing difference, or how is that to be thought about?
Yeah, I mean, basically, I think that what we are doing, what our treasury is doing is adjusting on some of the values of the stock. And Bank of Georgia is buying back its shares, and it will be increasing. And while we are speaking, probably we are, it's increasing our shareholding, and we may buy back as well, of course. But this is work, business as usual. We've done it many times, when this kind of moment.
Thank you. Melker, do you have any follow-up questions or?
No, that's all for now. Thank you very much.
Thank you.