During the quarter, we also sold ConcentricLife, which was no longer a core strategic asset in our portfolio. Gross proceeds from the transaction were $245 million. Adjusting for transaction costs, we received approximately $230 million in cash, resulting in a taxable gain of $175 million. The amount reported in our year-end financial statements is lower than the taxable gain as a result of the approximately $100 million of non-cash goodwill relieved from the balance sheet in connection with the sale. As a result of our collective actions in the fourth quarter, we generated a consolidated net income of $46 million as compared to a net loss of $43 million in the prior year. For the full year, the consolidated net came to $42 million versus $50 million in 2022.
And moving to the balance sheet, we continue to take actions to improve the strength of the long-term balance sheet. Starting with deferred acquisition consideration, we reduced obligations by approximately $60 million from year-end 2022 to $101 million at the end of ’23. Excluding the impact of our recently announced acquisitions, the year-end DAC balance would have been $97 million. In line with what we communicated previously. We are now on track to reduce our DAC applications to approximately $40 million by the end of 2024. We’ve also acquired 3.3 million shares during the quarter at an average price of $5.21 per share, for approximately $17 million. This brings our total buyback activity year-to-date, inclusive of the AlpInvest transaction announced on our first quarter call to approximately $209 million, representing approximately 33 million shares at an average price of $6.30.
Our existing buyback authorization as of year-end has $139 million in remaining availability. CapEx in capitalized software for the quarter was $11 million, bringing our full-year CapEx in capitalized software to $42 million, which is in line with our guidelines. As a result, we ended the quarter and year with cash of $120 million and drawings under our revolver to $59 million. Our leverage ratio at year-end was 2.9 times. And finally moving to 2024 guidance as highlighted by Mark in his remarks, we are guiding to full year 2024 as follows: Organic net revenue growth is expected to be between 5% to 7%. Organic net revenue, excluding advocacy growth is expected to be 4% to 5%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $400 million to $450 million.
We expect to deliver approximately 50% free cash flow conversion and adjusted earnings per share is expected to be between $0.75 and $0.88. That concludes our prepared remarks for this morning. I will now turn the call back over to Ben Allanson to open the Q&A portion of the call.
A – Ben Allanson: Thank you, Frank. If you have any questions, please do submit them via the chat button at the top of the screen. We’re going to start today with a question from Steve Cahill. Steve has asked here we’ve seen core creatives slow at some of your peers. Was that part of the Q4 trend that resulted in growth in EBITDA coming a little bit below expectations?
Mark Penn: I think that a lot of our core creative tends to be a little bit more project-oriented, so I think that it can ebb and flow more easily than some of the others. I was generally satisfied with the performance of the core creative, given the overall marketplace. And I think that you look then at a lot of stuff pushed into this year because I think we had a really strong Super Bowl presence.
Ben Allanson: Next question from Mark Zgutowicz over at Benchmark. Can you provide a bit of an update on your big tech client spending and has visibility here improved a little bit this year?
Mark Penn: I think we’re seeing big tech ease up. I think that we really saw this dramatic cutback at the beginning of last year that extended through the year. I think in the fourth quarter — as I said, I thought it would take about two quarters to see recovery. I think we’ve had one tech company really where we’ve expanded almost 50% to 100% without even a pitch. Some of the companies that had cut back and gone into zero, so I’m not going to say that they are back to full spend, but I think that they have considerably started to ease up, and we saw that start happening in the fourth quarter, and I expect that to continue into the first quarter. Look, I think that the work that they’re going to need to get AI working and coordinated with their own consumers is going to be huge here.
I think you see it in companies introducing AI products and then having to pull back how much work is really going to be required in the digital transformation world, end of that, I think it’s just a matter of time before those floodgates get open. I don’t think they’re open yet. I’d be surprised if they didn’t open up by mid-year.
Ben Allanson: Maybe playing off that. A question from Jason Kreyer over at Craig-Hallum. Can you just walk through some of the digital transformation trends we’re seeing today and how that perhaps plays into guidance for the new year?
Mark Penn: AI, AI and AI. Look, I think that this is going from the year of efficiency, where I think the tech companies manage to recover their bottom line very strongly by cutting back what they’re doing into what is a year of competition. I think nobody owns the cloud anymore. I think nobody owns AI. I think the two biggest things out there now are going to see really active competition. And that means the big tech companies are going to have to invest in both their own products and in the marketing of those products and in winning over consumers.
Ben Allanson: Great. Maybe on the AI question. Jeff Van Sinderen at B. Riley, can you speak more about your AI initiatives for 2024 and where you expect to gain the most traction? Maybe touch a little bit of margin contribution, how that might shift?
