Nino, our Chief Economist, will talk about macroeconomic update, macro update. Giorgi, our CFO, will talk about the portfolio company results and evaluation, and he'll also do an overview of our liquidity and dividend income outlook. In the end, I will do the wrap-up, and we will have a Q&A session, as always. We had, just to summarize, the best quarter in GCAP history in terms of the growth of NAV as well as the growth of operating results of our portfolio companies. NAV grew in a quarter by 15%, and over the year, it grew 15.7%. We had an outstanding performance in terms of EBITDA growth and cash flow growth. We had more than 50% growth in EBITDA in Q4 and 25% growth over the year.
The operating cash flow grew more than two times, and basically, our portfolio companies continue to print cash. Obviously, revenue grew nicely, nearly 9% in the quarter and over the year. Another milestone we achieved to divest 80% of equity interest in our beer and distribution businesses. We received the cash of $63 million net of sales proceeds in December 2024. That's another big divestment which the group has achieved, and our strategy to build the companies in Georgia and then sell to international strategic investors at higher multiple. It has proven that this system works. As you know, we did a water utility sale a couple of years ago. We've done some hotel sales, which we have built over the times.
We've done some real estate sales, but this time, we did another sale of the operating company like beer and distribution, and we have managed to sell it at very attractive multiples, way above our NAV, which we are carrying this investment. NCC ratio, our one of the key metrics what we are looking and following has decreased as a result of the cash receipt what we had end of the year. It has decreased by three percentage points to 12.8%. So we are in a very good shape in terms of the leverage, but we want to bring down the leverage even further in short to medium term. We have announced the buyback program along with our 360 investment strategy. Basically, we've done most of the buybacks already of the $25 million in Q4 and in two months of this year.
So in total, we did buy 1.8 million shares in Q4 and Q1 2025, which is pretty significant. And over the time, we bought more than 12 million shares. That's a pretty large proportion of our market cap, around 25% of the issued share capital we've done in buybacks along with our promise, basically, what we had. So in terms of the NAV per share overview, the growth came from listed portfolio and more than 9%. Operating performance was one of the key contributors, nearly 9%. However, we did decrease the multiples marks in our books by 3.7 percentage points. So basically, right now, we are carrying our investment at lesser multiples than in the beginning of the year, and plus we had a 15% growth in NAV per share. So we are pretty happy with that one.
Buyback contributed in the quarter with one percentage point, and then we have some negative contribution from 0.3 from operating expense and liquidity management FX, basically minus 0.1%, so basically we are at GEL 95.95, but I think the low one is more than GEL 100 per share now, which is basically more than GBP 27 per share, our NAV per share, so discount is pretty big even though we had some rally recent days, so you see our track record in terms of the NAV per share growth. We have a cover of nearly 14% over its GCAP inception in 2018, and we have a nice growth in 2024 by 15.7% NAV per share. Let me update you now on the overall. I talk about these numbers, but basically we are at 38.4 million shares. We made a significant buyback, so more than 12 million shares.
Now our number of shares is less than after the demerger, which was 39.4 million shares. In total, 140 million plus in buybacks has been done over the past years, and we are looking forward to do more at these attractive prices. Let me update you on the GEL 300 million capital return program, which we have put in place in May 2024. Out of GEL 300 million , nearly two-thirds of it is already executed, and we have one-third to go, and we will be executing these buybacks in coming months. I think that our target of doing the GEL 300 million buyback by the end of 2026 is going to be fulfilled much earlier than end of 2026. Basically, I think that we can achieve these buyback targets way earlier. Please follow us, our announcements.
So, free cash flow, one of the key metrics and other key metrics which we look at, has been strong, $48 million. These are basically dividend income minus operating expense minus interest expense, what we have. So, pretty strong free cash flow generation in 2024 along with after 2023. So, it's becoming pretty elevated, and we expect this to grow further as our private companies will be delivering more dividends going forward. As you see, the operating performance of our private companies is pretty strong. So, we have this aggregate revenue growth around 9% in the quarter and over the year. Strong performance by the large companies. You see that large companies contributed more than 18% growth in revenue in Q4 and 12% growth year over year. So, very strong revenue generation overall across the board, but especially by large portfolio companies. This large portfolio companies being pharmacies, insurance, healthcare.
Then we have, you see, a pretty strong growth of the EBITDA. Overall, we had a 53% in the quarter, but large companies contributed even more, 65%+ . So excellent performance by the large portfolio companies, and we expect that to continue. We had a very strong start in January and February along the numbers we had in Q4. So our portfolio companies continue to deliver good operating performance. We'll say excellent operating performance. This is cash flow generation. Here we are talking in multiples, not in percentages, as cash generation is two times more in 2024 than in 2023. And that's what gives us the kind of outlook for the growth of dividends from our portfolio companies. Now, on the leverage, our other metrics, we see the decline in NCC ratio.
Please note that here we include the buyback commitment, what we have, and that's also is already this $25 million of buyback commitment, what we have. It's part of this ratio, which stands pretty strong. To be honest, overall, our experience of having a leverage at Holdco level is that we need to have less leverage in general. So here is declining the, you see the over time how we deliver the Holdco, and that will continue. Now I'll let Nino talk about the macro, and I'll talk to you about the wrap-up and the Q&A.
Hello, everyone. We now turn our focus to macroeconomic development and key growth drivers of our country. In 2024, we had political uncertainty related to the elections, as it was the case in many other countries around the world, and we had some geopolitical context, and so there was street protests and unrest in our country. And despite these uncertainties, our economy remained very resilient with 9.5% growth according to the preliminary estimate, and this growth was supported mainly by the strong domestic consumption and increased service exports, and if you look at the sectors, all of the sectors, mostly all of the sectors contributed positively in the growth, which means that this growth was quite diversified, and so the trade information and communication education construction were the key drivers of the growth. Whereas the other sectors also contributed quite significantly.
On the funding side, the banking sector was the major funding source for our growth as the loan book increased by 70%, excluding exchange rate impact. This strong growth was also reflected in our labor markets as the number of employed persons, which is at historic high and unemployment level at historic low as of 2024. Despite the significant wage growth in the recent years, we still see the double-digit growth in our wages, which supports purchasing power and the consumption. If you look at the several years of strong growth, it led to the significant kind of restructure of our economy and the nominal GDP in U.S. Dollar, which was stuck at $15 billion-$17 billion for decades, now doubled to $34 billion.
Even during this social unrest and protests, according to the leading indicators, we still expect some close to double-digit growth in real GDP in January. Also, we then expect GDP growth to be aligned to our potential level. On the next slide, we have some charts on the monetary side of the macroeconomic equation. Inflation is still below target, and inflation is below target since April 2023. Despite this below target inflation, we now see some pickup in headline number, mainly driven by the less contribution from the imported inflation and increasing mixed inflation in the recent months as exchange rate is depreciated compared to the last year. We have very strong economic activity. We now expect inflation to increase slightly, and we might see some overshooting of the inflation target. National Bank of Georgia reduced the rate to 8%.
So they did some 150 basis point cuts in 2024. Despite the fact that inflation was below the target for years, they were quite cautious because of some uncertainty in our country and in the region as well. National Bank of Georgia was quite active to intervene in the market in order to curb the negative expectations and to kind of stabilize the currency. And they did one of the highest interventions in the third quarter before the election. And so we have the reserves, which is like 8% lower compared to the last year. But after that, after the election, we see National Bank of Georgia to be net buyer. Also, the amounts are small, but still it is net buyer. The exchange rate, there was some depreciation periods of exchange rate is related to some street protests, but now we see exchange rate to stabilize around 2.8.
In the next slide, we are showing the external balance sheet of our country, and it is important to know that the several years of significant growth as well as stable exchange rate, which is close to the levels we observed before the COVID, helped the leveraging of our external balance sheet. The gross external debt is lowest since 2013 at 76.9%, which means that all of the sectors of the economy, government and non-government, saw significant leveraging on the back of high growth and stable exchange rate. Current account deficit continued to narrow, mainly due to the service balance and transfer balance and increasing service exports. According to the three-quarter numbers, current account deficit was at 3.5% of gross domestic product compared to 4.8% last year.
What is very important is that, as you may remember, so we had significant surge in money transfers from Russia after the war due to the migration impact. Last year, these money transfers from Russia almost returned to pre-war level, and we had significant decline in remittances from Russia. Despite this fact, FX inflows, which include export money transfer and tourism revenues, was almost flattish. Despite 90% drop in money transfers, the FX inflows was compensated by the increased exports by more than 7% and the increased tourism revenues. On the FDI side, so we saw FDI to be quite muted and mainly the reinvestment component to be the major part of the foreign direct investment, and it should be attributable to this election year and related uncertainty. On the next slide, we have the fiscal stance.
We are showing that despite the election year, which pressures the current expenses, so we had the positive operating balance, and operating balance even increased compared to last year on the back of significant tax revenue collection as the GDP was significantly higher compared to what was projected when the year was started. And historically, we had the positive operating surplus, and we had the deficit years only during the crisis periods. And this fiscal deficit is mostly driven by the capital expenditure rather than current expenses, which highlights this solid fiscal management. And this high growth and exchange rate appreciation compared to the close to the pre-COVID year was also very important for the government balance sheet. And as you can see in the chart, the government debt, external debt is at 36% of gross domestic product, which is lowest since 2014.
External government debt is at 25%, which is also lowest since 2014. As there is a kind of commitment to reduce the exchange rate vulnerability, so the external government debt is expected to decline even further to 21% for 2028. To wrap up the macroeconomic developments, we have very strong GDP growth despite the uncertainty. Also, we expect growth to align to our potential level. Inflation remains below target since 2023. We might see some increase in inflation for a short-term period. National Bank of Georgia was quite active to intervene and to curb negative expectations during the pre-election period. Despite the significant drop in remittances, the FX inflows was flattish on the back of rising export and tourism revenues.
The several years of very strong GDP growth reshaped our economy, and we saw some significant leveraging in our external balance sheet, including the government balance sheets, where total debt is lowest since 2014. I guess this was all from my side. I will now hand over to Georgi to continue the presentation, and I will be more than happy to answer your questions during the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you, Nino. Hello, everyone. I will now continue to take you through our excellent fourth quarter results. So starting with the valuations, the fourth quarter and the year-end, as you know, is the time when we engage our third-party independent valuation company, Kroll, previously known as Duff & Phelps. So they have done the full valuations of our portfolio companies that is across large portfolio companies and the investment-stage portfolio companies. You see the summary on this slide, and one thing that you will notice is that across the board for all our portfolio companies, we saw the multiples or the implied multiples come down significantly from the beginning of the year. That also reflects partially one that our discount rates, WACCs, were increased during the year given the political vulnerabilities and the uncertainties that we saw in the country.
And then two, because of the EBITDAs growing significantly during the quarter, especially across our large portfolio companies, so that resulted in higher EBITDAs and lower multiples. To highlight the important items on this slide, we continue to have more than 40% of our portfolio within listed and observable investments. That includes Bank of Georgia, previously known as Bank of Georgia, and the water utility. So together, they were 43%. And during the quarter, we recorded gains in both Bank of Georgia and the water utility. The large portfolio companies now represent about 38%, and the largest private investment that we hold is retail pharmacy, followed by the insurance business and then by hospitals.
Other portfolio declined from previous four to eight% of the portfolio as a result of the sale of the beer and distribution business, where we sold 80%, as you heard earlier, and therefore the portfolio was reduced by that 80%. We can see the change on the next slide, where we have a bridge of the portfolio valuation changes. So here you can see that Bank of Georgia Group added about $275 million. We had a revaluation in the water utility business as a result of the put-call structure that we currently have in that business. So we used the latest 2024 financial information, which currently represents estimates and is not audited. And based on that information, we recorded the gain of $28 million.
Now, in the other portfolio companies, we see that retail pharmacy generated about GEL 58 million gains, valuation gains for us, followed by hospitals at GEL 47 and insurance at GEL 29, which combined was GEL 126 million positive valuation gains. In the investment-stage businesses, we had primarily clinics and diagnostics and the renewable energy generating the GEL 32 million . And other portfolio, as I said earlier, the decrease was due to the divestment of the 80% stake of the beer and distribution business. So we reduced the portfolio value by the 80%, and we received the cash accordingly, which was reflected in the net debt, and we will look at that later. Now, briefly about the performance, operating performance of our portfolio companies. So across the board, all portfolio companies had the extraordinary fourth-quarter results.
I will walk you through the large portfolio companies now, and if you have questions later for any other portfolio companies, we're happy to take them as well, starting with the retail pharmacy here. We see very strong performance, and management has done an exceptional work, especially in increasing the gross profit margins that we earn in this business. When we look at on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter of 2024, our gross profit margins increased by 420 basis points, and it is now in excess of 31%, which is what we look at as a run rate at the moment, but we do expect that the gross profit margins will continue to grow. This resulted in about 53% growth within the EBITDA. On a four-year basis, the pharmacy business also grew by about 5%.
We have continued to rebalance our and optimize our stores within the pharmacy business. So we currently have 429 stores, and we are starting to see that the same store revenue growth is back, and we are seeing that the same store revenues are growing. That's together with the average bill size also growing at close to 6%. We expect that this growth that we show in the fourth quarter will, in fact, continue in the first quarter. So based on the data that we have so far, retail pharmacy business is doing pretty well, and we should be looking at another close to 50%, 50% growth in EBITDA in the first quarter, especially on the back of the increased gross profit margins that I highlighted earlier. Now, in terms of the valuations, we saw earlier that this business generated 58 million GEL valuation gains for us.
Most of these gains came from the growth in the EBITDA, that 50% growth, 53% growth that we looked at earlier, but by also decreasing the net debt of the business and growing the cash available to pay down the debt in this business. So here, you will also note that the value of this business was up by 9% in the quarter, and the implied multiples have come down from 9.7 at the end of 2023 to 8.4 at the end of 2024. Similarly, we saw that improved cash collection in the business has helped the net debt to EBITDA measurements, and we have now net debt coming down to 1.9 times already at the end of the year, approaching our target of less than 1.5 times, which we think this business can comfortably reach by the end of this year while also pay dividends to Georgia Capital.
Moving on to the insurance business, again, we had also very strong quarter here, very exceptionally strong work done by the management here as well. A couple of things to highlight is that strong growth both in revenues and the net income was driven by the combined ratios on the P&C side approaching back to 85%, which is where we think that this business should be going forward. In the medical insurance business, combined ratios also being less than 95%. Previously, it used to be more than 100%. It also continues to be a case where the acquisition of Ardi has added a very strong growth trajectory to this business, and we are seeing the benefits of that throughout the eight months since we own the Ardi business. Also, we are seeing the growth is very diversified.
So it's in the P&C, it's across the motor portfolio, credit life, agriculture, and the property insurance. So we like the growth, we like the profitability that it comes with, and we expect that this will continue into the Q1. So far, we're seeing very positive trends, and this business should also be, based on what we look at right now, reporting at least 30% growth in the net income in the first quarter, which is a very strong, as you would agree. Now, in terms of the insurance business valuation, given this strong growth in the pre-tax income or the net income, we have about 30 million GEL change in the value here. And on the back of that, the multiple has also decreased from 12.4 to 11.1 times.
We don't like to carry leverage in this business, but as you know, we took on leverage as part of the acquisition of the Ardi business. It's a five-year facility where we had the grace period for one year, and we are now starting to pay the principal on this business from the second half of this year, and we would expect that the leverage in this year will be zero along these times as we pay down this debt. Next, we have a hospitals business, which also had a very strong rebound in the fourth quarter. Strong growth in the revenues. We are reporting 16%, but on a like-for-like basis, it's actually more than that, and we like to see the growth in this business.
What we also like is that a large portion of the growth is coming from the business that management is investing their time in, which is the ambulatory business. We also like that the EBITDA margins are growing in this business. This quarter, they reached about 19%, which is still lower than where we expect this business to be, but it is up by 900 basis points versus the fourth quarter 2023. The admissions are growing. The occupancy rates are growing, as you see here. It's close to 69% in the large and specialty hospitals, and the regional and community clinics are also rebounding. Current trends also in this business are very positive, and we do expect that they will be reporting also at least 30% EBITDA growth in the first quarter. The strong growth translated into very strong valuation gains.
We had about GEL 47 million valuation gains here, where most of it came from the growth in the EBITDA. We had a net debt that was largely flat during the quarter. However, two positive dynamics that you can observe also on this slide is the multiple came down from close to 14 times, which was largely because the EBITDA that we were using for valuation back then was much lower than the run rate. Now, the EBITDA has increased, and we're looking at 10.5 times multiple. And net debt to EBITDA also came down from close to six at the beginning of the quarter to 4.8 times. And we do expect that this will continue to improve throughout the year in 2025. Now, briefly about the liquidity that we see at Georgia Capital.
Our liquidity was about $100 million at the beginning of this year, end of last year. That was because we received the dividends in the fourth quarter, but also because of the sale of the beer and distribution business, where we received $63 million. Our leverage continues to be $150 million, local dollar bonds, which mature in 2028. The next slide shows where we stand in terms of the dividend inflows. Our dividends on a year-over-year basis were flat. However, given the strong amount of buybacks that we have done, when we look at dividend per share basis, on a dividend per share basis, dividends were up by 6%. The dividends that we received on each share that we have outstanding, it was up by 6%.
We do expect that the dividends for the next year will be at least at the similar level where they were in 2024. We will update you on this as we go through, but we have a strong momentum within our private portfolio companies that we expect will translate into the increased dividend inflows for us this year. We will update you in the coming quarters, but we do have a very strong cash flow outlook on a free cash flow level as well. I don't know if you saw, but there was a report published by Deutsche Numis today, which also highlighted the strong cash flow momentum that we have within the next few years. It's a good report worth a read as well. I guess with that, I'll go back to Irakli for the wrap-up sessions.
Thank you, Giorgi.
I mean, just to wrap up, basically, very strong NAV growth, strong operating income growth, NCC declining, buybacks continuing. So economic outlook is also very strong for us. We believe that the economy will grow 5% plus this year. We had a very strong January in terms of the macro growth and in terms of our portfolio companies as well. So we are becoming very optimistic in the outlook of our portfolio company cash flow generation for 2025. So now let's move to the Q&A session and see what you have to ask. Please.
Thank you, Irakli. Maybe before we start the Q&A, a kind reminder to our audience that if you have any questions, you can press the raise hand button and ask the live question. This would be our preferred option, which ensures better engagement, or you could type your questions into the Q&A chat.
We have a question from John. John, please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you very much for the presentation and congrats on the very strong results. A couple of questions. One at holding level, you have now $100 million cash, $150 million bonds. How do you plan to use that $100 million cash? Maybe you can break down in terms of shareholder return investments and then maybe buying back some of your bonds. And then the second question is on dividends, is it possible to give some breakdowns of this year's expected dividends by company, if possible? If not, that's okay. And the third question is on hospital and pharmacy outlook. There has been a very strong recovery in the hospital business in revenues and EBITDA. Can you just talk broadly about 2025?
Georgi mentioned about the first quarter EBITDA growth, but if you can give us some more color on the hospital and the pharmacy business overall, what you expect in the revenues and EBITDA for the full year, that will be very good as well, and thank you very much.
Thanks, John, so basically, in terms of the capital allocation of $100 million cash we have, it's basically we will be doing the buybacks. We'll be doing the debt paydowns. It's very difficult to break down now, and we will be doing some investments, but most likely, we will be doing the most of the cash will be used for the buybacks and the debt paydown, so we will expect probably at least $50 million of debt to be retired this year. There will be some buybacks coming, obviously, and then there will be some investments.
But it's very hard to pin down the exact numbers. But as I said, our target leverage to bring down this year is around $50 million that we'll be targeting to at least bring down our debt. As I mentioned, we don't like the debt at Holdco company level. And we think that we should carry zero debt at Holdco in a medium run. So that's what we're targeting. We don't want to make sudden moves on taking out whole debt as we will have opportunities for the buybacks and investments. And we don't want to miss that opportunities. Therefore, we will not be making a big debt paydowns. On the second question, Jacques, remind me.
It was about the dividend breakdown for.
Yeah, dividend breakdown. Georgi, you want to talk about it? Can we break down dividends?
We can chat, but I think it would be better if we do that after the first quarter because we still need to see, for example, the dividend inflows that we expect from Bank of Georgia. They're publishing, or the Bank of Georgia, they're publishing the results tomorrow. So we would have a bit better visibility in that, which is why we didn't give you a precise number. We said 180 million plus. But one thing that we know from the private portfolio side is we do expect the growth in the retail pharmacy dividends. So last year, they paid us GEL 10 million. This year, we think it could be approaching GEL 30 million. We also expect that the insurance business, both P&C and the medical insurance business, will continue to increase the dividends that they paid us last year.
Another dividend payer that you saw at the small dividends last year was the auto services business. We do expect that the auto services dividends will pick up strongly from the levels that you saw last year. It will be high single digits, probably from 1 million GEL that we had last year. It will be a growth across the board on the dividends, but I think we can give you more detailed ones after the first quarter.
Yeah, makes sense. Thank you.
Then the last question you had about the other businesses, right? I mean, it's hard to give you the full year projections right now, but what we can see is you should have a double-digit EBITDA growth in both retail pharmacy and the hospitals businesses.
Probably the growth in the hospitals will be higher between 15% and 20%, but that all depends how everything goes locally. What we look at right now, January was very strong across all portfolio companies. From the February's perspective that we're seeing, it's also a very strong performance. I mean, we don't know the January macro data as Nino was saying, but it could be when it comes out at the end of this week, it could be a very strong macro for the Georgia country itself. That has very direct implications on our portfolio company's performance, as you can imagine. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Is it fair to say that the worst is over for the hospital business?
And do you think the leveraging happens when EBITDA goes up as well, but do you think the growth stat can come down as well once EBITDA reaches a higher level?
Worst is over. What we're seeing is that the recovery continues. And the best is yet to come for that business, we think. It will continue to grow. There will be better EBITDA margins that you see going forward. Irakli, did you want to add?
I think that a couple of things is that one very important point is that our occupancy level is still low. It's below 70%. It can easily be at 90%. So we have room to grow. The other one is the regulatory changes, which has been happening last year is over. And we had to close down some parts of the hospitals to meet these regulatory requirements. So mainly, this whole thing is done.
I think that we are in a very good position to capture the growth of the demand. So basically, I think that the 2023 and partially first half of 2024 EBITDA was artificially declined because of the regulatory changes we were going through, and we had to close some of the parts of the hospitals. Now, all of them are up and running and operating very well. Plus, we have changed the management significantly. Management restructuring we have done in that business. We are on the front foot there. We have a very strong outpatient also growing, out-of-pocket growing. We have medical insurance. We bought the company which helps us to grow the insurance part of our revenue. We are in a very good position in terms of the hospital business. We are pretty optimistic.
We cannot give you exact guidance for the hospitals, but what we can give you that we will be growing pretty solid. I mean, in the Q1 for sure, and beyond in 2025, solid. I call it probably 20% plus. We should deliver into the EBITDA growth, maybe more. But that's where we are. So after the strong growth we had in the last.
Fantastic. Yeah, thank you very much and congrats again on the results. Thank you.
Thanks, John. We have a live question from Niall O'Connor. Neil, please go ahead.
Is that working now?
Yes.
Yes, fantastic. Congratulations on a great set of results. You'd mentioned in the past trying to move away from the more capital-intensive businesses. I think at the time you highlighted renewable energy. What's your thinking on that at the moment?
Yeah, basically, we are committed to moving away from capital-intensive businesses, and we'll be doing so. We have been looking for the partnerships there, and we will continue to do so. And once we find the optimal way to realize the value, we will. But we are not in a rush. Yeah, clearly, there's a lot of cash generation in the business at the moment to finance that growth. It generates nice cash, nice yield. And it generates dollar cash flow because you may know that all the PPAs which we have signed are in dollars. So basically, it's a dollar business, effectively.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you, Giorgi. Maybe related to this question, I will take the question from John Young. With the subsea interconnect across the Black Sea plan, do you see more outside interest in the sector?
Are you talking to anyone about the potential partnership?
Yeah, that's what I mentioned. Basically, we are talking about potential partnerships, and we'll see how it will go. We are open, but at the same time, we have our appetite, let's put it that way.
Thank you. And the next question, does the company plan to exercise the option to sell the remaining 20% to Aqualia in 2025?
I mean, we cannot. I think overall, we did say about the capital-intensive business, we don't want to stay, but we don't want to talk about right now because we cannot in a way. But you'll be updated as soon as we make a decision. We have not made a decision on that yet.
Thank you. The next question is from Thomas Peers.
I think, Irakli, you already addressed this one during the presentation, but from the holding company perspective, do you expect to use the cash proceeds from the disposal of the beer? How do you expect to use the proceeds? And will you assist holding costs to deleverage dividends or buybacks?
So basically, I mean, as you saw, we came up with this $25 million buyback program, which is expiring in maybe a couple of weeks. I don't know, maybe three, four weeks. It will expire. We also mentioned that we like to deliver at least $50 million this year. So it will be used for that as well. We want to make some investments. So the investments we want to make to some of the education business, we want to invest in growth of our footprint of the schools.
So we have a kind of a plan for the deployment of the cash. But I think the good thing is that we are generating a lot of cash. So it's not only we divest, but we're also operating performance of our portfolio companies pretty strong. We have done a lot of deleveraging as well. And I think we should show that in our results shows that of our portfolio companies deleveraging. And I think some of them are ready to step up in providing dividends. So we will need to have a more better plan on showing you how we intend to distribute the capital and allocate the capital, actually, not distribute, allocate the capital.
Thank you. The next question is from John Young. At the portfolio company level, ROIC is the metric to evaluate reinvestment.
What is the hurdle rate for reinvestment, and how do you incentivize portfolio company managers to optimize ROIC?
Basically, the ROICs. It depends which portfolio company we look at. In general, basically, when the portfolio companies are reinvesting, we need to understand it's signed off from GCAP, all the reinvestments. So basically, we need to understand whether this money is good for the GCAP share buyback or it's better to invest in the projects they are targeting. So it depends on in which industry they are and where are the multiples in that industry. So it varies from, I don't know, ROIC of 16% to ROIC of 26%+ . So that's kind of a maybe range. I mean, maybe I'm missing, maybe I'm mistaken, one or two percentage, but basically, we have a pretty scientific approach to that.
So if you have a, for instance, the renewable energy reinvestment, usually you would look at the dollar yields because it has a dollar income. If you look at the schools, you will need a higher, way higher ROIC to invest because it has a lot of income. So basically, it depends where we are investing in which sector.
Thanks. The next question is from Robert Godfrey. A few years ago, you shared some targets around management, central costs related to assets. Could you share any progress and your current thoughts on this? What is current rate of employee share issuance for 2024, and how do you see this progressing?
So basically, we had your maybe you answered this question on the targets.
Yes. We had said that the operating cost at the GCAP level will be 75 basis points of our NAV. And last year, we reported 73 basis points.
So we are already in line, and we will continue to be within the target that we said before. Keep in mind that the buybacks that we're doing, obviously, are decreasing the NAV. So that adds into that equation, but we will continue to be inside 75. On your other point, which was about the share issuance, we don't issue new shares. So what we do is we buy shares for the employee and the executive trust. And we have bought shares that are sufficient for us, we think, through the end of at least 2027. And all these shares were bought, by the way, at an average price of GBP 7, even less than GBP 7. So we don't have to issue new shares. These shares are being awarded from the trust that was previously funded.
Thank you. I guess for now, we don't have any open questions.
Maybe let's wait a couple of minutes. Okay. We have a follow-up question from John. John, please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Just a follow-up on the planned investments. Irakli, you mentioned that you're also evaluating some investments in education. It has been a growing business for you. In your NCC table on page 15, you also have planned investment in the renewable energy. Just wanted to check if this is still something considered or it's not a high priority right now.
It is considered, and as you said, it's not a high priority. We have some commitments. So now we put it in NCC because there is a commitment, but basically, as I said, it is an attractive business, but it's not in line with our less capital-intensive investments. That commitment was before we announced our capital-light investment strategy. That's why we have it.
It's like a little bit legacy one. So basically, that's where we are. But we will update you on that part as well as we go.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Thanks, John. I will now take the question from Niall. Niall, please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. So you have a great set of results, but your share is still trading at about a 53-54% discount. Maybe this isn't the right question to ask you, but why do you think that might be, and how can that gap close?
I think, I mean, basically, you are absolutely right. I'm not the right person to answer this question. But to be honest, I don't know why it is. We will continue to deliver results. We'll do our job.
We will continue to deliver on our promise to do buybacks once the gap is big, especially when you have such a big NAV per share. But I think after delivering the results and delivering on the buybacks and capital returns, I hope that investors will step up and they'll take the opportunity of cheap shares. And it's 50%, by the way. It has come down. So it's not 53%. It used to be 60%. And it's in a much better shape. Obviously, not great, but it's in a much better shape than where it was before.
Cool. Still lots of upside from here, though.
Sure, sure. Of course. Feel free to buy.
Thank you.
Thanks. The next question from the Q&A. A few years ago, the company said it's going to explore the reinsurance market in the region. Can you please give us an update on that?
Unfortunately, we don't have our CEO for insurance business here. But basically, we've been doing some. We have created a department that we've been doing some reinsurance business. One of the growths of that you have there in the results. It's not a big portion yet, but we are very much focusing to grow this pie. And I think that the next growth where we are thinking is to come from the reinsurance in the region. We did get a rating. And we need to step up one notch on our rating to grow it even further. So that's where we are on the reinsurance business.
Thank you. We don't have any open questions for now.
So it seems like that we don't have more questions. Or maybe we wait a couple of minutes if there are some. No more questions. Thank you, everybody, for attending our call.
We appreciate a lot spending time with us, and we are very much looking forward to update you our Q1 numbers. Thanks, and enjoy the day.