But at the same time, obviously, there is a lot of large payroll against that. And then we paid out payables to the extent of almost $80 million, $90 million, about – almost $90 million on those projects. And one thing we were discussing here internally is that we can’t – we are not in a position where we can just match up the payment of the payables with when we get the money. We have to pay the – in order to get paid, in many cases, we have to have receipts that show that we paid the underlying providers. So, we can stretch it a little bit, but we really don’t have the luxury of turning that working capital cycle around. We are in a negative working capital cycle on these migrant revenues, and that’s always going to be the case.
And the other thing is that a lot of these vendors are very important to us and they are very important vendors. And they are not – they are small companies, but already owned companies, in some cases, private companies. They can’t afford to wait four months, five months, six months before they get paid even if we were to choose to do that. So, when you are dealing with these kinds of revenues, there is always going to be a lot of working capital pressure and that’s what came up during the first quarter again.
Sarah James: Very helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The next question we have comes from Mike Latimore of Northland Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi. This is Aditya on behalf of Mike Latimore. Could you give some color on if the noise around the migrant care affecting your other deals in NYC or State?
Lee Bienstock: Sure. Happy to answer that question. I think I heard it clearly, but could you just repeat the last part of the question?
Unidentified Analyst: Whether the noise around your migrant care is affecting your other deals in New York City or State?
Lee Bienstock: Yes. So, the noise, I think that certainly has – something we monitor. We are in close communication with all of our current partners and everybody in our pipeline. Whenever there is some noise or something misleading gets printed, we are very proactive. We call all of our current partners and prospective partners and we clarify. And obviously, the partners that are working with us today know the quality of our work and really value our partnership and so we are able to really address that noise. And that’s one of the things, frankly, that we are looking forward to moving past. I think a lot of the migrant-related revenues, unfortunately, became politicized, and as a result, created some noise, created some noise in the market with our investors and created noise potentially in the market with customers, which I think we have handled very, very well.
So, it’s something we are paying close attention to. We have had one partner that wanted to pause until the noise subsides. We are in close communication with that partner. But the rest of our partners are all working closely with us. We continue to address any of the noise that comes up and that has not been an issue. And with our prospective pipeline, we update everybody as we go. And we really feel like our value proposition for prospective partners and the quality of our work with all the partners we have today really speaks for itself. And one of the great things we have the opportunity to do is any prospective partners, we actually put in contact with our current customers as references. And we have done that very, very successfully.
Our current customers are great references for us, speak to the quality of our work and what it’s like to work with us and partner with us and we have utilized that as well to help in the sales process.
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. And could you also give some color on the ratio of operating cash flow to EBITDA you might expect this year?
Norman Rosenberg: Yes, sure. So, as you heard or hopefully heard, we actually – even as took the assumption of EBITDA down by a little bit, we are actually taking the cash flow from operations number. And to be clear, when we talk about cash flow from operations, that’s a GAAP line item that you have in your statement of cash flows and we are saying that now we expect that, that number is going to be between $70 million and $80 million, actually a little bit higher than the EBITDA that we have. Now typically, we should be running at – we are a taxpayer, so that’s part of the factor, we should be running at a, I don’t know, all things being equal, maybe 80% or so of the adjusted EBITDA in terms of the operating cash flow.
What we have built in is that if we are going to have a decline in this migrant revenue base, then obviously that’s going to result in – as we model it out, that’s going to result in the collection of receivables that is going to be faster than what we pay out as we go through the year. So, we are going to be collecting on older invoices here over the next two months, three months. But then at the same time, we are paying out less money, sort of a reversal of some of the working capital issues that we have had in the last three quarters to four quarters. So, for example, in Q1, if you look at that – if you look at our statement of cash flows, I think the number was a negative $10 million and change in the first quarter in the – it was about $10 million or so that was used in operations.
That number on a full year basis should be somewhere in the $70 million to $80 million range as compared to adjusted EBITDA in the $65 million to $75 million range. So, for the year, we would expect it to be a little bit more than 100% acknowledging that a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are going to get some positive working capital changes here in Q2, Q3 and Q4.
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The final question we have comes from David Grossman of Stifel. Please go ahead.
David Grossman: Hi. Thank you. Sorry, just two really quick ones. One is I am on the road, so I am not in front of a screen here, but did you give the core growth rate that you are expecting for ‘24? So, when you back out migrant work in ‘24 and ‘23 with the core growth rate, is this – what do you assume growth rate is that underlies the guide?
Norman Rosenberg: I am sorry, you are asking about the non-migrant revenue for ‘24?
David Grossman: Right.
Norman Rosenberg: Yes. So, the assumption on non-migrant revenue for ‘24 is roughly $300 million, which is…
David Grossman: Right. And what does that look like from a growth perspective year-over-year?
