Vef AB (publ)
STO:VEFAB
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Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VEF Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference has been recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, David Nangle, please go ahead.
Super. Thank you, Nadia. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to our third quarter results conference call. As per usual, I have our CIO, Alexis Koumoudos with me today, helping me in the presentation and the Q&A. And what we'll do is for the next 20 minutes to plus/minus, is go through the latest and greatest from the [ West ] side and then open up for questions from you. The details of our presentation is on the webcast which is live at the moment as well as being downloadable from our website.
But kicking in on Slide 2, key events of the quarter from our side. I think first and foremost, it's in the NAV performance, up 9% quarter-on-quarter. We now have a NAV of $475 million, and that's up at 24% from 2022 lows there's obviously a low point in the cycle. This has been driven in the quarter and year-to-date by a mixture of robust portfolio performance, healthy markets and FX tailwinds. But the most important thing for us is the portfolio performance because that's a key indication of the quality of our portfolio and where it's going and how it's performing today.
Within that, Creditas is still our standard asset in terms of size and shape of 50% of our NAV, and the Q2 numbers were out earlier this quarter. Q3 will be available soon. And the headlines there is, A they won the battle of profitability; and B, they're accelerating growth, and those are the 2 key things you want to see from any investment in a portfolio like ours. On the growth side, I think the key number that we've grabbed in this quarter is originations, which is obviously the core of their business, up 16% quarter-on-quarter in Q2 and up over 30% year-on-year.
So it bodes well in that we're reigniting growth at Creditas. And that is something, I guess, that feeds into the third point, which from a portfolio perspective, the majority of the portfolio today is actually breakeven, plus/minus. We're like 90% plus of the portfolio in that space. And once again from talking about growth in Q1 of this year, from a portfolio perspective, now in Q3 we can actually talk about growth and point to data points improving that growth.
In our cyclical size stories of Creditas and Konfio are both starting to reignite growth and show growth in their loan books and their revenues. Konfio probably running a quarter or so and a little bit harder than Creditas, but Creditas being the more public entity, you're seeing the data come through from them. And then within the top 3, Juspay, more structural growth being in India in payments and has been growing through cycle at 50%-plus, both in terms of volumes and revenues. So it's very pleasing for us to be able to point to growth again having been talking about getting to profitability, winning that battle and now winning the growth battle. This is where private investing in tech, FinTech should be, and we're getting back to that as the cycle turns.
And what's linked to that really is the return of capital flow within the ecosystem. This is the venture ecosystem in general, that you pull that down to emerging markets and FinTech that we play in. It's super encouraging we see the raise is going on out there in the market but more importantly, it's happening within our portfolio. In previous quarters, this year, we pointed to TransferGo and Gringo raising size capital at or above our NAV marks.
In this quarter, we added Konfio to that list, which is a top 3 holding and raised size capital in this quarter at our NAV mark plus/minus. So good for the company, good for their growth profile, good for reaffirming our NAV mark, which is something important for the market and makes us happy clearly. And then on the exit side, exit markets are opening up and showing signs of life, both M&A, IPO and one, I guess, the standout within that at the moment is India and its robust IPO market, which continues to deliver.
Getting to the numbers themselves on Slide 3. The headline numbers are $475 million of NAV, so the size NAV in our portfolio again, and that's up 7% year-to-date. On a SEK per share, which is obviously a key indicator versus our share price, which is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, we're now at SEK 4.61 per share, that's up from SEK 4.26 at year-end 2023.
I think it's much easier and better to look at it in a chart formation. If you look at dollars, which is the global currency and you look at our total NAV, once again, you go back to our earlier charts or trends from 2015 when we started this company, it was gradually up and to the right and then obviously took off at the back-end of 2020 and '21. Pullback we had in '22 in line with markets, we were quick to reset the values of our portfolio. And now we're starting a new cycle, not to predict the future, but you can see after ebbing and flowing around the bottom from the pullback in valuation year-to-date and quarter-on-quarter, we're starting to see our portfolio move again. This is not a forward-leaning kind of guidance, but it is something you see from a chart formation that the NAV is starting to move again. And that's really a function of the markets, our portfolio and its performance and it reigniting growth at a profitable pace.
And then last one is just the markets themselves, which obviously can be a tailwind or a headwind for everything we do. Year-to-date, they've been a tailwind. And the global markets like NASDAQ and S&P are strong, 20% plus year-to-date. More specifically, when we look at the FinTech indexes that we track and are an indication of the valuation or the direction of travel of valuations in the public space for FinTech and then into the private space, catching up with those global indices and growing harder in Q3, up 7% and 11%, respectively.
At this stage, the next few slides, I'm going to pass to Alexis, who as per usual, is going to take you through portfolio valuation and the evolution and all the moving parts over the last 3 months. Alexis, over to you.
Great. Thanks, Dave. Hi, everyone. Yes, just getting a little bit more granular on the evolution of the valuation mark with the total portfolio growing 9% quarter-on-quarter on Slide 6. The biggest drivers of that portfolio growth were Creditas and Juspay with 16% and 12%, respectively, quarter-on-quarter growth. These were driven by continued strong company performance paired with multiple expansion from the comps and a slight BRL tailwind as well as the real appreciated over the quarter.
Next down, you have 2 portfolio companies that raised fresh capital. Konfio raised a sizable price round from internals, which was priced within 4% of our second quarter 2024 NAV mark. That's why you see a 3.5% decrease in the mark there. This helps validate our mark-to-model valuation process and shows to us and the market that we are within the right ballpark with the process for these companies. Gringo raised an additional $12 million in the quarter as a Series C extension at the same valuation, bringing in fresh capital and a great new co-investor. So the mark there was flat.
And then TransferGo, the latest transaction, which was set in the last quarter benefited from the strengthening sterling in the quarter because it's an asset that's priced in sterling. And then last 2 on this list are Solfacil and Nibo, both saw healthy company performance and FX tailwinds offset by weakening comps for solar distributors and global SaaS, respectively. And the sum of all of that results in the 9% quarter-on-quarter change.
Moving on to Slide 7, so the biggest change to the valuation approach in the quarter was the size round raised by Konfio in August. So that moves from mark-to-model to latest transaction. That's alongside Gringo raising the $12 million in Series C extension, and that remains at the latest transaction, now resetting the clock for another 12 months. So the net result is that today 27% of our portfolio is now marked to latest transaction, up significantly quarter-on-quarter because of the Konfio raise with now 73% of the portfolio mark-to-model and over 90% of those incorporating multiples further down the income statement.
The direction of travel for the marks over the course of the year has been to latest transaction with significant raises. And it's -- these are important -- this is important because it helps validate our NAV and also it creates opportunities for some realizations over the course of the year.
Moving on to Slide 8. So just to quantify some of the drivers of the NAV in the quarter. For the portion of the portfolio, 73% of the portfolio, which is mark-to-model, portfolio performance was the largest contributor, contributing $20 million or about 4.5% of NAV. And that is because of Creditas and largely because of Creditas and Juspay just given the size of those 2 assets within the mark-to-model section of the portfolio.
Comps contributed $18 million, and that was multiple expansions specifically for Creditas' peer group, and then also a rebound in the payment comps for Juspay. That contributes about 4% to NAV appreciation. There was a small tailwind for the BRL, which drove the FX portion of this mark-to-model portion of the portfolio. And then within latest transaction, the negative $3 million is reflective of the Konfio round, which happened within 4% of the last mark-to-model that we had for the company. And the $2 million positive there is the TransferGo appreciation of sterling in the quarter.
In the corporate side, the $3 million is OpEx and coupon payments. And then there was some FX translation impact on the bond from the appreciating SEK in the quarter. Yes, that's the overview of the NAV evolution in the quarter.
Moving to Slide 9. So sitting 3 quarters of the way through the year, we're feeling increasingly confident in the portfolio and the outlook for delivery, and therefore, our NAV compounding and that actually is increasing from here. Now we've got over 90% of the NAV, which has reached breakeven, including the top portfolio companies. We are feeling more and more comfortable that they are accelerating growth from a controllable base. This reacceleration is resulting in our top line growth for the next 12 months for increasing to 40% for portfolio weighted revenue growth, and 60% for gross profit growth, as we're starting to see this come through in numbers and portfolio companies, and you'll see that in the publicly disclosed numbers as well from portfolio companies like Creditas who is truly reaccelerating from a self-sustaining position.
We're also seeing fresh capital coming into the portfolio, which is helping to provide companies with a buffer to fine-tune and optimize the self-sustaining growth. Given the strength of the portfolio, we continue to see investors leaning into the portfolio [Audio Gap] just as we have there Gringo and now Konfio. And these events as we've said before, help validate our NAV and also create opportunities for realizations. Dave, back to you.
Super. Thanks. Okay. So moving on to focus on Creditas. Every quarter we do so, and this quarter is no different. The key message with Creditas, as we said before, is the reacceleration of growth, and we're not talking about breakneck speed growth and getting back to 2020 and 2021 levels of 100% growth, but we are starting to see that growth accelerate and come through. The company won the battle to breakeven earlier this year, as you can see in the bottom right-hand chart. And at that point, as a board, we support the management in their ideology to get back to growing. What you're seeing in Q2, I think on the previous slide, it was quite clear, I'll just bring it up again, where you've seen the Creditas quarterly originations is their quarterly originations coming through on the loan side, up 16% quarter-on-quarter and over 30% year-on-year.
What you'll see then in the numbers coming through in Q3 and Q4 from the Q2 base that we have here is the top left-hand chart where the portfolio under management starts to pick up at a single-digit pace from the double-digit origination growth pace, and that feeds through to revenue growth and everything else within the machine. So Sergio has been open with the market and the latest statements around goals into next year and they're targeting a growth rate of 25% plus while maintaining profitability. And everything that we see in the machine today in our latest meetings with management and the numbers coming through is indicating we're moving towards that level of growth and profitability.
So just very encouraging for what we're seeing in what is our biggest company, having won the battle to breakeven and now winning the next battle to growth. We're not talking about Konfio here, but you can overlay Konfio very similarly to what the story on Creditas, a company which is returning to growth maybe a quarter or so ahead of Creditas and a little bit faster, but very similar cyclical credit growth stories within structural markets or structural growth markets in emerging markets and both now cycle positive in the trends that we're seeing.
And on top of that, the capital flowing within the system, we're just going to double click on this because I mentioned at the start we are seeing it. And in a classic way, you see it from a top-down level of the benchmark names globally within FinTech, we've seen Revolut, Stripe, Monzo, kind of classic Tier 1 global FinTech names, all raising multi-hundred million dollar rounds at healthy valuations, in many cases, up rounds from last round happening. And what you're probably not seeing whether you're an investor or a listener in Sweden or the U.S. or Europe is what's happening in markets that we play in like Brazil, India, Mexico. And there's been a number of $100 million-plus fundraises for Fintech companies of different ilks in this market. It's just super encouraging.
Some of these are up rounds, some are down rounds, some are heavily structured. But the main thing for us and the world that we play in is that capital is flowing and capital is flowing inside. It feels like we're back to 2019 in terms of naturalized capital flow, but nowhere near 2021 in terms of out of control and definitely nowhere near 2022 and '23 when nothing was happening.
On the right-hand side of this chart, it's the exit markets that are important to us as a company, looking to strengthen our balance sheet and realize value from our portfolio. M&A and IPOs are back, by no means are they market healthy, but there are pockets of real health out there. And we would point to the Indian IPO market where we have 3 assets today. This is a market that's seen over 200 IPOs in 2023 and in 2024. That's an IPO every working day, give or take. And this year is set to raise over $9 billion of capital by the IPO market.
So exit markets are open, different ones have moved ahead of others, but all of this is healthy indication for the direction of travel for VEF and its portfolio. On a specific level, Alexis has touched on this, we are seeing those capital trends and those capital flow trends feeding directly into VEF. We communicated earlier this year around the Gringo raise, which has a follow-on that Alexis mentioned in the summer and TransferGo raising earlier this year.
More recently, in the summer months, Konfio, the top 3 company, raised a size double-digit million dollar round. It was a private round, it was an internal round, so we're not overly disclosing this one unlike other rounds where there's a lot of PR and noise around them. But it was at our NAV mark plus/minus, we were happy to support and enable that round to happen for Konfio a company that is strong, growing again, in an application for a banking license and this capital will allow them or help them to get there on all fronts. And I think it is a key important point to see the direction of travel around how we value our portfolio, which has gone from mark-to-model to nearly 100% and is now evolving back to latest transaction, which is a sign once again of a healthy and recovering market.
From a share price and a discount to NAV, and we're doing our best to close that discount. We respect the opportunity and the value creation in closing that discount. We're focusing on our portfolio on building our NAV gradually over time. And then through all the tools that we have at our disposal on Slide 14, whether it's our portfolio companies, communication, showing the validity through our companies raising money at our NAV marks, next phase moving into exit, getting capital in, de-levering the balance sheet, buying back our shares. Just doing all the logical things to close that excessive gap to NAV while investing in the right companies to enable that NAV to keep on compounding up and to the right, which should be 2 very positive compounding forces.
Second last slide, just on our capital position. We are at $13.2 million of capital at the end of Q3. We'll be close to $11 million, all other things equal at the end of the year. From a leverage point of view, it's not a heavy leverage position of 8% of debt to our new Q3 NAV. But first, the debt side, nearly $40 million versus our cash position is something that we're very aware of. And we have said earlier this year, strengthening our balance sheet, getting cash in, turning some of our dollar -- our NAV into dollars is a key goal at best, and something that we're confident we will be able to do in the next 3 to 12 months, a number of work streams on the go on that front to deliver that.
And finally, just wrapping up before we open up for Q&A. Like I said this last quarter, and there's not too many differences here, but an investment company like ours is all about the portfolio. And having been through the up cycle and now 2 years of let's call it, stress, we are very confident in the quality of the companies that dominate the top end of our portfolio. They've been through up cycles, down cycles and everything in between. And now we're at a portfolio that was a good size and shape to it, profitable and moving back to growth. So profitability and growth are the 2 forces that are coming through in both our cyclical companies, but then the structural ones like Justpay and Gringo have been compounding at a very healthy pace irrespective.
And that's all being supported and reinforced by the capital, that's starting to flow through the system again. Capital into our companies enables them to grow. It also enables us to justify our NAV marks in the market. And then it provides the opportunity for us to take some cash off the table and turn NAV into cash and do all the good balance sheet things that we suggested we would do with it.
So all of that provides NAV tailwinds and this quarter, the newer news or the better news was around the NAV starting to move and that's up 9% quarter-on-quarter and up 7% year-to-date. We like our NAV moving up into the right again. And then final point, and this is a strategic priority for the remainder of this year and into 2025, we need to strengthen our balance sheets. We're very aware of that. We've got a bond outstanding.
We've got a number of companies that we can see turning NAV into cash over the next 3 to 12 months, we're continuously executing on that, and we'll provide more information as and when we can. But the order of merit here and it is sequential, it is to provide the exits, get the dollar in, de-leverage our balance sheet. And we still got an excess of discounts to our NAV is to buy back our shares, but ultimately, it's to get back to investing because the opportunity is so big in the space that we play in for years to come.
Operator, I'm happy to stop there, and we open up for questions, please.
[Operator Instructions] We take our first question, and it comes from the line of Ermin Keric from Carnegie.
Maybe the first one would be on Juspay and India. How important are Indian comps for your valuation of Juspay? I'm just thinking if there's any risk here that we are seeing the market becoming overheated and would that be a risk for the valuation of Juspay?
There are a couple of Indian comps within the comp group, but I'd say that they make up like a balanced portion of it. I'd say it's more weighted towards the global comps. So if anything, I would say that in our valuation methodology, there is no India premium factored into the valuation of Juspay. We treat it like a kind of global Indian play, and then if they're able to realize an India premium and then exit or a fund raise, then we'll leave that to kind of upside to our NAV mark.
Great. And then the second question would be more around your liquidity. I suppose that's a topic we're getting back to. But I mean, you have a cash position now of $13.2 million, and you expect in your bridge to be at $11.2 million. How much would you think you could get out from a black book IPO? And just generally, kind of -- at what level do you feel it becomes more critical and acute to strengthen the cash position? How far down do you still feel comfortable with going before feeling a bit more stressed about it?
Yes. It's a very fair question, Ermin. We -- what can I say, we're very aware of our cash position as we have been for -- always very aware, but this year it's been very much in focus. We've been very close to our Board, our biggest companies, our biggest shareholders around our cash position, where it's sitting and what we intend to do about it. We have had the luxury of time over the last 1 to 2 years to -- that's where the bond was good, it bought us time. And that's what I wanted to do through a down cycle, have a strong balance sheet. We didn't have to force anything. And I'm quite happy that I didn't have to force anything on the exit front because when you've got assets like Creditas, Juspay, et cetera, quality assets, they always have a market, but the price isn't always what you want.
Time has been our friend in terms of market recovery. And we have been pushing a number of different options, maybe half a dozen within the portfolio to realize value, i.e., sell some, if not all, of our positions in those companies to get our cash position higher and to pay down the debt and buy back our shares. We haven't done any yet, but we feel confident that we're quite close to realizing one, if not more, in the next 3 to 12 months and they'll be sequential. And I think that there will be just one -- more than one will come.
I don't want to speak about any company specifically, especially the one that you mentioned because we're not allowed. Our hands are tied about talking about any company going towards an IPO, but there's plenty in the press around that company and where it's going and at what timeframe it's going to do that in. But money that comes in from these exits will obviously give us more comfort. And I'd like to believe -- I think it would give the markets some more comfort around us being able to translate our NAV into dollars.
So in general answer, of course, if this winds down further and we don't get to the point where we've had our exits, we have options. And I say we have options in that we've always had price offers for some of our assets. We just haven't taken them because it was the wrong price for the wrong asset, and I'd rather take the better one, let's not be a fore seller. And that's been the beauty of time here.
And maybe just one last follow-up. On the bond, remind me, but didn't you kind of buy back part of what you officially printed? Is that part then canceled or could you kind of sell that out in the market if you needed to get some extra liquidity?
Yes. So from a SEK 500 million bond or $50 million, let's call it, and we still have $40 million outstanding, and we bought back $10 million and that's sitting on balance sheets. So technically, that is something that we could reissue into the market for -- that's one of the, let's call it, 5 to 10 options we have in terms of liquidity management.
[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, David Nangle for any closing remarks.
Super. Thank you. Look, I'd like to thank you all for your time as always, and for following us, both as investors and as followers of our stock. You can probably see from the communications, and the trends that we revealed both in the presentation and our communications, the things are moving directionally positive. The outlook for Q4 feels like it will be more of the same and we're looking forward to giving you our full year numbers and a healthy outlook when we talk again in Q1 of next year. Thank you very much.