VEF AB (publ) (VEFAB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VEF First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call and webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, David Nangle, CEO. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, and good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us on our Q1 results conference call. As always, I'm joined by our CIO, Alexis Koumoudos, for this call. And what we'll do over the next 10 to 15 minutes is first focus on the results themselves, give you a highlights and update on that. And then the second part of the call, we'll focus more -- probably a bit more depth in the call on recent exits and capital allocation, which is a focus of the firm at the moment. The slides are available on our website and also I'll go through them on the webcast. Going on to Slide #3, just giving you a key overview of the events of the quarter. I think from a NAV itself, we had a 1% move quarter-on-quarter in dollar NAV positive. A number of moving parts as always, but generally, it was strong underlying company performance and a tailwind of currencies versus the U.S. dollar, which met some headwinds on the multiple side of equity markets that feed into our valuations. And from a portfolio point of view, it's a repetition of the message over the last few quarters. It really is all about a quality portfolio, the majority of which today is breakeven or cash flow positive and growth is back in focus. And I kind of say that specifically when I'm thinking about our top 3 names, names like Creditas, Konfio and Juspay where either returned to growth early this year or back end of last year, more specifically, or names like Juspay, which had growth unabated through cycle. We are looking at next 12-month growth of key revenue lines and gross profit lines of 35% to 40% in 2025 year-on-year. Specifically, Creditas, which is obviously our focus and biggest asset, in itself is reaccelerating growth. It started to pick up, as we highlighted in the last few quarters, and they themselves issued their quarterly releases. We saw origination growth year-on-year of 27% last year, second half weighted. And I guess if we look at 2025, the year has started strong. Management has been quite clear. They're looking for 25% plus growth in key balance sheet lines that's in the loan book, and the start of the year has backed that up. So we're feeling very confident about that asset at this juncture. And I think what's very important for us and for the market to know it's really exit and capital allocation. That will be a lot of this presentation. Exits are in focus. They have been in focus for us for the last 18 months, but they're starting to come through to fruition, the laser which is the biggest and the highest IRR after $14.8 million we took in from a partial sale of Juspay just after quarter end, and we'll double-click on that shortly. And then the capital allocation aspect is something that we've been looking to do is, one, strengthen your balance sheet from these exits, which justify your NAV and then put that capital to work in logical capital allocation internally in the short term, which is delever our balance sheet and buy back our shares at a deep discount to NAV. And just key numbers. Our NAV at the end of the quarter was $357 million. On a per share basis, people look at that in local currency, where we're listed in SEK at SEK 3.43. It was off quarter-on-quarter in SEK as the SEK move against the dollar by about 9% versus dollar NAV, which is up 1% quarter-on-quarter. Over time, our NAV has gone up and to the right, albeit a little bit above through cycle through 2021 and more recently at the back end of 2024. And before I hand over to Alexis on the valuation section, in Q1, I'd say it was a volatile quarter for markets, and that's an understatement about what's happened since. But even though main indexes, NASDAQ, S&P were down quarter-on-quarter and also headwinds in the global fintech indexes, you actually have some outperformance in certain key names and regions in Latin America and some fintech names, which actually saw a positive move quarter-on-quarter. So a lot of moving parts in the multiple aspects of our valuation process. But maybe it's better Alexis delves into all that. So I'll pass over to you Alexis for the next few slides.

Thanks, Dave. Hi, everyone. I'll start by just running through the most important valuation drivers in the quarter. Focusing on top 3 names. So for Creditas, it continues to be valued on a mark-to-model basis and appreciated 6% quarter-on-quarter. This was driven by company performance and a recovery in the Brazilian real, which was partially offset by mixed comp performance, and that alludes to the market performance Dave was just speaking about. In Juspay, this was valued in line with our recently announced secondary transaction as part of the $60 million Series D that they raised within a tight range of last quarter's valuation. And Konfio continues to be valued at the August 2024 fundraise valuation. So as of the first quarter of '25, these top 3 holdings now represent 83% of the value of our portfolio. In the quarter, with Juspay, Konfio, Solfacil and BlackBuck, all having recent transactions or being public companies now and the exit of Gringo, 49% of the portfolio is now valued at latest transaction, up from 26% in the fourth quarter. Moving on to Slide 8 and our NAV evolution, the bridge that we normally present. So over the quarter, the NAV progressed just over 1%, as Dave mentioned, or about $4 million. In the mark-to-model side of the portfolio, the change is driven predominantly by portfolio performance, depreciation of portfolio currencies versus the U.S. dollar, and this was partially offset by compression in comp multiples and market performance. On the latest transaction portion of the portfolio, there were no real changes other than the exit in Gringo, which fell in the first quarter and that moving from this portion of the portfolio into the corporate cash side, and that was slightly offset by OpEx and coupons on corporate cash. The FX that you see at the end in the corporate section is merely the translation impact of the strengthening SEK on our outstanding bonds. Moving on to Slide 9 now and just running through some of the portfolio highlights. Some of this Dave has mentioned, but we continue to feel very strong and confident about the portfolio's ability to drive shareholder value. More than 90% of the portfolio continues to operate at breakeven, reaching a self-sustaining rate of growth and are not dependent on fresh cash to grow. They are now in control of their destiny. The portfolio on a next 12-month basis is growing at 35% and 40% revenues and in gross profit, respectively. And the portfolio continues -- the portfolio companies continue to be well capitalized and high-quality targets of attracting fresh capital, examples of which are now included in the top 2 of our 3 names, Juspay and Konfio and Gringo that was acquired in the quarter. Now moving to Slide 10. As Dave mentioned, we're going to talk a little more about exits and the progress that we've made. I wanted to take the opportunity to update you on our objective of opportunistically realizing cash at or around NAV to strengthen our balance sheet and validate the NAV on which we've made substantial progress this quarter. Exits are happening, and we'll also present our fresh capital position and the plans for that. So just on Slide 11. Here, we present the 3 exits that we've had over the last 6 months. We've delivered $32 million of exits of gross proceeds, 2 of which occurred in the first quarter, representing $30 million. The first of which was the BlackBuck IPO, where we realized $2 million, and we continue to hold $4.6 million in a listed share. In January this year, Corpay acquired our Brazilian asset, Gringo, in which we realized $15.2 million. And last week, we completed the secondary transaction as part of Juspay Series D, realizing $14.8 million in gross proceeds. The $32 million that were realized across these 3 exits represent a range of outcomes, but all of them were within a tight range of the pre-transaction NAV marks, which is an important point, and Dave will elaborate on that later. The sold shares and realized cash also represented 1.4x cash on cash returns and 11% gross IRR over the 3-year weighted investment period. And if we include the unrealized gains from these positions, i.e., BlackBuck and Juspay's remaining stakes, these 3 investments represent 2.3x multiple on invested capital and 25% IRR in which has been a difficult vintage for the industry. These 3 exits represent the first of 3 of the cycle and are the result of the work we've been doing over the last 12 to 18 months. We continue to work towards opportunistically taking cash in at around our NAV marks with the objective of balancing strengthening our capital position and validating our NAV without selling the crown jewels. And I think this is an important endeavor, specifically today when we trade at a steep discount to our NAV. Just elaborating a little more on Juspay and the Series D round in which we took some shares off on Slide 12. Last week, we announced selling $14.8 million stake in the Juspay transaction. Juspay was our first investment in India in March 2020 when we led their Series B. Since then, they've been a standout performer in our portfolio. And as a result, we invested a further $8.1 million across 2 tranches in the Series C. This round marks a great step in supporting Juspay's global expansion efforts and their investment in pushing the boundaries of AI, which are both yielding very promising results. Vimal, Sheetal and the entire Juspay team have been real pioneers of digital payments, becoming meaningful contributors to the Indian payments ecosystem. Today, Juspay powers over $450 billion of annualized TPV, representing over 30 million transactions a day, and they serve some of the largest merchants, banks, TCAPs and networks in India. The business is known for its strong technology offering reflected in best-in-class customer satisfaction and retention metrics, and this has contributed to its uniquely high combination of scale, growth and significant profitability. And this transaction has allowed us to realize a sizable gain at highly attractive returns while maintaining a 7.8% stake in the company. And we're excited to continue our journey with Juspay. We believe they've got a very bright future. And just to run through the metrics, the secondary transaction valuation represent a 4x cash-on-cash return and 37% IRR, putting it in the same category as VEF benchmark exits in Tinkoff and iyzico and a great example of the investment opportunity that's present to us in EM fintech, and which VEF is uniquely positioned to capture. Dave, handing back to you.

Super. Thanks, Alexis. Let me bring it home over the next few slides and then open up for Q&A. But I think leading on from Alexis was talking about the specific exits in those 3 names, like from an ideology point of view, what our goal was with these exits, and we're by no means in wind down of our portfolio. We're opportunistic in the names that we sell or the pieces of the names that we sell and the price that we sell at very close to NAV. But A lot of this is about validating our NAV in the eyes of the market. You can talk about your portfolio, you can talk about in theory what it's worth, but then you prove out the reality by exits and by companies raising capital, and it helps to validate what is your NAV and ideally get your share price closer to that true point of valuation. So that's the key goal here from these exits, key goal number one. And then number two, that cash then obviously strengthens our balance sheet. So it's an element of balance sheet management. And it's a good time to be building liquidity at a time of volatility. And with that excess liquidity coming through, then we have options. We have flexibility. And I guess Phase 1 of that flexibility really is focusing on delevering our balance sheet and share buybacks and adding value -- creating value for our shareholders. Now specifically around the NAV market, those 3 exits that Alexis spoke about a couple of seconds ago, in this slide here on Slide #14, you have the valuation that we had these companies at pre-exit or prepartial exit and then the value of the exit was actually done at for the stake that we hold. And what you can see in the case of Juspay, we exited just north of that pre-exit valuation amount, Gringo slightly south and then BlackBuck on the money as it's listed. But net-net, as a total amount of value in our NAV versus value of 3 portfolio companies that we exited, it was a positive move versus our NAV. And that was key for us. We keep on telling the market that our valuation process is true and fair and proper. But it's only when you have companies actually exiting when you've got real dollars coming through the door at those marks, they can truly stand behind us and stand in front of investors and say that your NAV is true and proper, lucky you are right now. And continuing on that, if you look at our portfolio as like a 100% portfolio, from these 3 exits, you now have 28% of our portfolio that's been realized or partially realized or justified by cash exits. Then you also have -- that's BlackBuck, Juspay and Gringo. But you've also got 23% of our portfolio outside of those names that have raised capital over the last 12 months in the market, names inclusive of Konfio, top 3 name and Solfacil. And these are names that have raised money at or not marks. And then less than 50% or 47% today is at a mark-to-model where we do the modeling short-term valuation on a multiple basis, which as we're seeing with the exits and the companies raising capital ends up being broadly true and very true cycle. But from a pro forma point of view, less and less of our portfolio is marked to model as we move away from COVID as companies raise money and as companies exit. And that's starting to help us justify more and more our NAV marks as we go. The second part of these exits, I say, first part is NAV mark justification. Second part is strengthening our cash and our balance sheet, which is key for any investment company. So you start off the year, our year-ends '24, you have nearly $13 million of cash and liquidity on balance sheet. After the exit from Gringo and the recent exit of Juspay and you add on the public stake in BlackBuck, which has had a good performance since IPO, we're sitting on approximately $45 million of cash and liquidity or liquid assets. And that's north of our bond position today, which is approximately $40 million. So we're back to a net liquidity positive position pro forma, which is where we wanted to be. And then that gives us positive choices of what we can do with our liquidity and how we can manage our balance sheet in this window. And that moves on to the capital allocation. You've seen the number of updates we gave last week around the exits and around our capital allocation and ideology. And this has been coming because we've dripped out of the market over the last few quarters, but it's good to have it done and be real and out there. But effectively, with the money that we have on balance sheet today, it's efficient -- it's sufficient for us to be able to partially redeem our bonds. We plan to do that in the Q2 window. And then also as important or more important for equity shareholders, it's allowed us to announce a share buyback for up to 5% of our outstanding shares. Now these things are not static in nature, neither are the exit static in nature. So more exits, opportunistic exits at the right price with the right assets gives us more firepower to put more money in the short term into delevering the balance sheet and buying back more shares i.e., they're open-ended at this stage. And then to close off, just a few points. One, we keep on saying this, it's all about the portfolio. Any investment company is only as good as its portfolio. Our portfolio is strong, it's profitable, and it's growing again. And as you can see in the market, whether it's Juspay, Konfio or Solfacil, it is attracting fresh capital from the markets, which is great to see and a justification that we are in quality names. From an exit point of view, start of 2024, you can make promises and you can say what your goals are to the market. But in the last 6 months, we've had 3 exits of 3 different assets one by IPO, by M&A and one by a partial exit and a secondary sale, many different avenues to exit your companies at the right price. And now we're leaning into what is the most obvious logical use of excess capital at the moment, and that's deleveraging our balance sheet and buying back our shares at what is a deep discount to NAV. We'll do that all day, basically buy back our portfolio at a discount. It's just the most obvious short-term strategy for us before we get back to the medium- to long-term strategy, which is adding that incremental Justpay Creditass, iyzico Tinkoff to our portfolio. I'll stop there. Operator, I'm very happy to open the floor to questions at this time.

[Operator Instructions] And the questions come from the line of Linus Sigurdson from DNB.

Starting off, I mean, now that you are in a more comfortable liquidity position, just if you could give some more color on how you view sort of the trade-off between buying back shares and paying down debt? And at what point would you say that you are comfortable starting investing again, whether that requires making new exits?

Yes, Linus, look, thanks for the question. So yes, I think you used the word comfortable, and we are comfortable with liquidity and capital. It's good to be comfortable given where we were 18 months ago. We're not flush. So we do have choices to make. It's not -- we can't do all of everything. But we have decided that we can do both work on the bond side and work on the equity side. We can lean into both sides. So what we'd like to do by the end of Q2 is have approximately half our bonds redeemed or paid back. And we are actively working as of today in buying back up to 5% of our capital and our shares in the market. So that's an ongoing more gradual process. The bonds might be a quicker one. And what we'll do then with incremental exits at this time, and we're working on a bunch of different exits. As you've seen in the last 3 exits have been very specific. We haven't forced anything. We haven't made -- we have a knee-jerk reaction to trying to get liquidity in. It's been the right exit at the right time at the right price. So short term, we could see more -- 2025, 2026, we could see more exits coming in, and that will allow us to do more of the same until the bonds are, a, gone and until our share price trades much closer to NAV, which we think it should. Then I think what you alluded to as the medium- to long-term strategy, like why do we exist? We exist to invest in the best-in-class fintech companies across emerging markets, and that does not change. It's just the short term is so much more obvious in terms of value creation for our shareholders and what we're doing right now. But we're very much working our pipeline. We do have top of pipeline, top of funnel names that we're looking at. We will be active again investing in companies, but the short-term priority is balance sheet management. That's where the value lies in 2025.

Okay. I appreciate that color. And then when you talk about additional opportunistic realizations as a core priority, how much of that do you feel is in your own hands? Or how much is at risk now given sort of the current market backdrop?

Yes. What I'd say is if I look back at start of '24, we probably had 7 or 8 different work streams on the go. And what you've seen is 3 different ones in very different ways in different markets working out. So the control on our side is to keep on working with the portfolio companies with the names, with the exit options that work through on those names. And then we've said no to 2 or 3 different exit options because it was the wrong asset at the wrong price at the wrong time. So there's an element of control. And what we find is you make your own look and the harder you work, the more likely you do succeed in these exits. But there's also a big element as you allude in terms of the market. Is the market open? Is the market flush liquidity? Is there buyers out there? Is confidence high for different markets and different segments. So the market is an aspect of this too.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back to you for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much. And look, thank you, everybody, for joining us on this call. I think you've heard the message loud and clear. We have been delivering on promises around exits. The balance sheet is stronger, and we're putting that capital to work as logically as we can in the short term to add value for you, the shareholder. We'll be taking this message on the road. Myself in [indiscernible] when the rest of the team are going to be in New York, London and Stockholm in the not-too-distant future. So if you are interested in meeting, do feel free to let us know. Otherwise, have a great Easter, and we'll talk soon.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, and have a great day.