Our goal was to have a fleet size that is in line with demand and allows for flexibility and growth if required. Our strategy was to first develop the infrastructure to properly charge vehicles of this type in a way that allows for a seamless rental and efficient use of this asset. We have been on this for over a year now, we adjust about complete with most of our facility upgrades. As with ICE vehicles, we ensured we purchased vehicle types from a varied group of manufacturers. Having a varied inventory insulates us from maintenance-related concerns and recalls in general and protects us from any residual value pressures that may be associated with vehicles of one make or model type. Our goal has been to have customers experience our product, primarily at our airports because this allows for a more certain profit outcome and additionally create consistency for the staff to be trained on the rental logistics and readiness criteria, while keeping per unit economics in line with our expectations.
We are quite comfortable with our EV strategy and supply/demand relationships and we will continue to monitor this ever-changing environment should it be required. Turning to technology, which is a key aspect of our day-to-day performance and create efficiency in the business and allows for an improved customer experience as we continue to iterate and redefine our systems and processes. We are incredibly focused on driving efficiency in our business, so much so that I asked Brian to head up our business transformation process, a much-needed step in our business evolution as we utilize data, technology and machine learning to inform aspirational improvements and decision-making, allowing for sustainable outcomes. In addition, over the past several years, we have continued to improve our proprietary demand fleet pricing system, which gives us tremendous insight on demand down to the vehicle location and prices our cars accordingly.
The combination of great strategy, forecast accuracy and vehicle inventories produces an optimization that has been a large part of our revenue success and contribution margin. We believe this technology, combined with our pricing team and field experience generates a significant advantage in managing supply and demand. Data analytics, combined with our own on-the-ground productivity system, has created efficiency in our location level of throughput, increasing our performance well above levels experienced in 2019. This is one of the many reasons why our direct operating and SG&A expenses have stayed relatively consistent as a percent of revenue, in environment that is challenged by inflationary wage pressures. The modernization of our IT systems have provided benefits and system stability, producing record uptimes, allowing our partners to seamlessly create reservations, generating real-time demand and increased revenue.
As you know, we have been early adopters of in-car telematics, which has improved our gas collections, provided asset control improvements and provide an improved customer experience due to automated check-in upon return. On the customer experience side, our touchless process allows customers to choose their vehicles on their phone or exchange it upon arrival creating a digital rental agreement which can be used to exit our facility through an automated exit gate process. Customers using this level of technology score us up to 10 points higher in MPS than traditional rentals. Facial technology rolled out at a majority of our airport locations, quickly transfer first-time Avis preferred customers to their vehicles thus bypassing our current counter-verification process.
During the year, we have rolled out an improved budget Fast Break Choice application, customers upon arrival at a budget facility, choose their vehicle from the reserve zone, take a picture of the license plate allowing the rental agreement to be sent to them digitally for a quick exit at an unmanned gate. These technologies have improved our customer experience and enhance our overall NPS scores to the record highs they are currently at. So to conclude, we had another great quarter culminating with record-setting full year revenue and the second highest adjusted EBITDA on record. Both the Americas and International employed stringent cost discipline, continuing to drive towards margin attainment with profitable revenue and cost efficiencies.
The demand environment is strong with pricing dynamics have leveled to normal seasonality and our team is focused and driven to once again deliver another strong year in 2024. The expectation is that the quarters perform with the same seasonality we have seen in the past with the second quarter larger than the first and the third quarter, representing another terrific summer peak finishing with a strong fall and winter season. We expect price to continue to moderate in the first half and adjust seasonally throughout the year, while peaking in the third quarter, maintaining high elevated levels compared to 2019 and while fleet costs will present challenges, we will continue to deplete our vehicles to keep them in-line with the demand, and our team is focused and driven to once again deliver another strong year.
Before I turn it over to Izzy, I would like to take a minute and thank Brian for the last three years in his role as CFO and his great work helping us develop into the company we are today. And while I’m thankful for his past work, I’m even more excited about what he’s going to bring in the future as our new Chief Transformation Officer, partnering with stakeholders, both in our headquarters and in the field operations. Brian and his team are off to a running start as many of these opportunities were identified during his time as CFO. I look forward to seeing the transformation group now operationalize these efficiencies across our business and throughout the year. With that, let me turn it over to Brian.
Brian Choi: Thank you, Joe, for the kind words and for entrusting me to be your CFO during such a tumultuous period of our company’s history. It’s been an incredible learning experience and I’m going to continue to lean on your guidance in this new role. I’m only comfortable taking on this position because I know the finance team here is left in very capable hands. Let me now turn it over to our new CFO, Izzy, so she can introduce herself and take you through our liquidity and outlook.
Izzy Martins: Thank you, Brian and Joe, for your kind introduction. Good morning, everyone. I look forward to getting to know you more, our investment community in the coming months. Before I get into my prepared remarks, I want to take a minute to say how excited I am to assume the CFO role. I am also truly honored to lead our talented finance team that I have worked with for many years. Brian has done an exceptional job since he joined our team 3 years ago and we will continue to support each other to drive sustainable margins for our company. I will now discuss our liquidity and near-term outlook. My comments today will focus on our adjusted results, which are reconciled from our GAAP numbers in our press release. Let me start off by addressing capital allocation.
Once again, we were quite active. We deployed nearly $260 million in the fourth quarter alone, repurchasing 1.4 million shares that brings our total share buybacks throughout 2023 to nearly $900 million or 4.3 million shares. We also paid a special dividend of $10 per share to our shareholders. This is the first cash dividend in our company’s history. In addition, we’ve reinvested $330 million throughout the year into our core business to drive long-term efficiencies and overall profitability. Examples of these investments include enhancing several operational facilities, the continual migration of data to the cloud, promoting speed, reliability and a more certain cost outcome, developing and enhancing technology to track and increase productivity.
And lastly, but just as important, introduced and refined several technological solutions to streamline our customers’ journey, enhance their experience and allow increased throughput. Actually, we have reinvested nearly $800 million over the last the years in these areas, including our new state-of-the-art headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey. We intend in 2024 to continually invest in our operational facilities and further implement technological improvement to continuously improve our customer experience and overall efficiencies in our business to drive margin contribution. To be clear, our capital allocation strategy is not changing and as always, we will continue to look for best ways to allocate our capital on a continued balanced approach in 2024.
We continue to find ourselves in the privileged position of being in the strongest financial standing in the history of our company. As of December 31, we had available liquidity of approximately $800 million with additional borrowing capacity of approximately $900 million in our ABS facilities. Our net corporate leverage ratio was 1.7x and continues to be well laddered with our corporate debt having maturities in 2026 or beyond. And as expected, we are in compliance with all of our secured financing facilities around the world. Let’s move on to outlook. As you know, we’ve made the decision as a management team to forego giving formal guidance to allow ourselves the flexibility to make agile decisions as the business environment changes. However, I wanted to give you insights for what we are seeing for the first quarter.
We expect rental demand will continue to be strong with mid-single-digit growth compared to last year. We expect total company depreciation per unit will be about $325 per car. And as Joe mentioned earlier, we will continue to deeply throughout the quarter to rationalize our fleet, from the delayed deliveries of the fourth quarter. Currently, there is a considerable amount of volatility in the used car market. However, we believe that it is prudent for our operations and the healthy and healthy for the overall industry to exit vehicles despite the used car market conditions. As we’ve stated in the past, in an environment where our core input costs are rising, both the cost of vehicles and the cost to finance them, we must be hypervigilant in matching our vehicle supply to just under demand.
We prefer to run out of the incremental vehicle than have an unutilized vehicle on the lot. You will continue to see us to put this into practice as we defleet throughout the first quarter and the earlier part of the second quarter to maintain fleet to under demand throughout 2024. In closing, let me reiterate that we anticipate our revenue to be in line with normal seasonality. Price to be well above 2019, peaking in the third quarter and anticipating a strong summer. And we will continue to defleet despite fleet cost challenges driven by the uncertainty or volatility of residual values. With that, let’s open it up for any questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our first questions come from the line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please proceed with your questions.
