VNV Global AB (publ) (VNV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. I think with that, we are set. Very warm welcome to the VNV Global Conference Call for the fourth quarter and 12-month report of 2022. Today, our CEO and Managing Director, Per Brilioth; and I, Dennis Mohammad, an investment manager at VNV will walk you through the financials and key events for the fourth quarter of '22. Per and I will hold the presentation followed by a Q&A where you guys are very welcome to type in your questions in the dedicated Zoom chats, and we'll address these questions after the presentation. With that, handing it over to you, Per.

Great. Thanks, Dennis, and welcome, everyone. And so we'll flip through a few slides highlighting the Q4 results and some comments on the individual names and then over to Q&A. But you can flick forward here, Dennis. So we got this [ interest ] slide, which all you will be familiar with, we still do what we do, still got [ 70 ] companies in the portfolio. And we've written down our NAV, of course, which means that our IRR for the past, well, is it now getting on to 11 years, it's come off to just under 18%. But yes, more focused on the actual report. So [ $613 ] million, which is down from some $1.4 billion at the beginning of -- or the last day of 2021. And that sort of downward adjustment 11%. We were down 11% during the fourth quarter, the one we're reporting now, the full year its obviously more because it's all the way down from $1.4 billion. That equates to some SEK 56 per share. So that's the current -- that's the [ NAV ] per the last day of December. If we go on the next page, and we highlight a little bit what the key events were, I think there's no question. I think -- I mean, there's some stuff that's gone up a little bit in the portfolio and there's some stuff that's going down. I think the main topic here is Voi, which were written down by 40% since the third quarter. And so there's no sort of getting about but that seems to sort of be a big thing to talk about in this report, and we will. We -- that will be the main drag. I mean, Voi, this is, of course, by no means reflective of the performance of the company. During this fourth quarter, it's doing really well. It's the best fourth quarter that the company has ever had, and we'll come back to sort of give you more details to the extent we can share some details on Voi. But this is sort of only driven by the fact that the peer group that we use when valuing Voi and the same peer group that we've used for the past quarters had a terrible Q4. And we may think this valuation is too low, but can change the valuation math and it can change the peer group, but if that's down, the market is down. We -- are we sort of a seller at these levels? No. Are we a buyer at these levels? Yes. So how we come into more details. I think the other big event during the quarter like in this report at least, is that we now have been able to sort of show with you more details around our ownership in Gett. So on a fully, fully diluted basis, we own just under 50% of Gett, which is a result of the financial restructuring that we did earlier last year. That -- now that, that restructuring is done and the financial risk around the company has gone because this is a debt-free company after that restructuring, but also from the fact that the management of the company has sort of really delivered a turnaround in the sort of second half, if you will, of 2022 and the company is profitable, et cetera. We've been able to also to I mean the result is that the company has been revalued upwards in our portfolio. And so that's a positive sort of driver somewhat compensating for the negative adjustment at Voi. Babylon seems sort of a relevant mention here because the $20 million that we did invest happened in the fourth quarter. Now that we've already talked about that because we -- that happened before we issued the third quarter report. So that's not news per se, but it's something that's in our portfolio is, of course, something that one needs to and has to and wants to talk about -- when we talk about of fourth quarter result. In this report, we also made clear our ambitions to sort of broaden out our financing options by announcing our plans to start to sort of build a business -- a [ fund ] business. So we're getting ready to launch a "investment fund," which will co-invest with VNV into the new deals. And this is something that, I think, is in the interest of us, the shareholders of VNV because it's sort of -- it broadens out the liquidity available for our investments and future sort of investments. And it also establishes sort of a future a sort of cash flow generator to the VNV Global shareholders in that, if successful, and if growing, these kind of businesses become very valuable. And for the potential investors into the fund, what can -- so this is attractive because it gives them access to our deal flow and it gives them access directly into that deal flow without the sort of the volatility of the share price running around up and down between the NAV. Now it's very attractive, of course, because we trade at a big discount to the NAV. But there are segments of the capital markets that prefer to do this in door-down structures and without the volatility of the listed market. So access to deal flow, which we really think is fairly unique and broad and will be the attractiveness of that. So those will be the key events. Just quickly going on into the next slide and touching upon the balance sheet, a little bit before we go into the details. There we go. So $66 million of cash, we should really add to that because we have aligned which is also on liquidity management, which is not cash cash, but nearly cash. If you add that back to the cash level, we got cash about $74 million. And add that to the value of our portfolio, which is then we've sort of adjusted in this quarter as every quarter, but now downwards. You get to a total sort of asset portfolio of $778 million, and we subtract the borrowing that we have outstanding, which this -- end of this quarter, $164 million, which is up a little bit since the end of the third quarter. That's not because we borrowed more money we have what we have outstanding, but in Swedish krona. So unusual for our suites, the Swedish krona has increased in value a little bit over this quarter versus the U.S. dollar. That's something we have been used to going the other way. Now it's going up adjust it a little bit. And hence, our borrowing in the Swedish krona, when measured in dollar terms has gone up somewhat. So after that introduction, I'll hand over to my colleague, Dennis, who will run you through some more details on the actual numbers. Over to you, Dennis.

Thank you, Per. So as Per mentioned, NAV came in at roughly $613 million per Q4 2022, which amounts to a fair value change of roughly $77 million versus Q3 2022 and corresponds to roughly $5.3 per share or SEK 55.7 per share. In dollar terms, we're down 11% quarter-over-quarter. And in SEK terms, we're down roughly 18% with the difference being driven by FX headwinds, as Per mentioned as the Swedish krona appreciated against the dollar during the quarter. At this NAV per share, our NAV discount is down to roughly 50% to 55% at current market cap versus where we closed the third quarter at roughly 65%. As Per also mentioned, FX has impacted our debt position, taking it to roughly $164 million versus [ $150 million ] in Q3. So this is up roughly 8%, 9% over the quarter. Zooming out and looking at the full year 2022, NAV is down from roughly $1.4 billion in Q4 2021 to $613 million in Q4 2022. And that corresponds to an NAV decrease in USD by 56% and in SEK by roughly 49% over the year. Now coming back to the fourth quarter and looking at the main drivers for the fair value change in Q4. If we start off with the list of holdings, as Per mentioned, the Babylon is down some -- Babylon is down to 40% during the quarter that had an impact of roughly $16 million on our NAV. And despite this $20 million funding from us in a round of total [ $80 ] million, where we participated, Babylon has also announced its intentions to sell its IPA asset in California, which should give it the funding that it needs to get to profitability. This hasn't closed yet that we haven't seen as per year-end, we haven't seen a big valuation uptick on Babylon. However, it's worth mentioning the Babylon is up roughly $14 million since year-end till today, so to speak. The other one on the public side is Swvl. That is down another 83% over the quarter, and that had roughly a $10 million impact on our NAV and as Per mentioned in the introduction to the Q4 report, there are a few drivers to that, one of them being the devaluation of the Egyptian pound, which impacted the company's runway. And as you are aware, we're working on seeing if there's any value to the salvage in the case of Swvl, and there's more details in the Q4 report. Moving on to the private holdings. The main drivers on the downside were primarily Voi. As Per mentioned, which is down an additional 40% this quarter, which corresponds to $57 million on our NAV. The main driver here is the peer group, which is unchanged from previous quarters, but it has come down a lot. As you know, we don't disclose exact peers, but it's taking one example from this very specific space the public company [indiscernible] is down roughly 50% during the fourth quarter of 2022. Voi is valued at roughly [ $360 million ] full company equity value and our stake at roughly $84 million, when excluding the convertible notes that we have in Voi. Additional markdowns across the portfolio, main ones being either going from a transaction to a peer group model, which was less of the case in this quarter, as quite a lot is already on a peer group model. But there are some movements in the case of Breadfast, for instance, and Vezeeta, But also when we see companies transitioning from focusing on growth to profitability, thereby maybe going slower than the peer group on the top line and since we value these companies on top line, that has an impact as well. And that has been the case, and for instance, Booksy that has come down in the fourth quarter as well. In terms of drivers on the upside, BlaBlaCar is the one that stands out, which is up some 13% on a price per share basis on the strong -- I'm sorry, on the back of a strong 2023 business plan outlook. But worth mentioning here is that we also converted our outstanding convertible loan to BlaBlaCar during the fourth quarter, increasing our ownership in BlaBlaCar to some 10.5%. So BlaBlaCar is now valued at roughly $1.4 billion and our stake -- or 10.5% stake is valued at roughly $142 million in the case of BlaBla. Gett is the other one on the upside, which is up some 35% on a price per share basis on the back of us having normalized at by removing the discount that we have had in historic quarters and which was motivated by the uncertainty associated with the financial restructuring of Gett that is now completed. We've also in this quarter gone over to valuing Gett on an EBITDA model as the company has delivered very strong results and very strong EBITDA for the last 5, 6 months of 2022. So Gett is valued at roughly $260 million full company equity value and our stake is valued at $126 million. And last on Gett, as Per mentioned, we've moved to better disclosure on our ownership, which, as Per mentioned, is roughly 48% to 49% in the company. The last company to mention here is [ Wasoko ], which is up some 40% on a price per share basis on the back of a very strong 2023 business plan and outlook for the year to come. Main investments in the quarter was our $20 million ticket into Babylon. And that was the only larger ticket that was done during the quarter other than a few small tickets into existing portfolio companies, and there were no exits done in the fourth quarter of 2022. I think the last point on my end that in this quarter and what you see in the NAV is that the absolute -- the vast majority of companies are now valued or mark-to-model and therefore, follow the public markets. Very little is on transactions as transactions generally go still quite a lot faster. And that's a point that obviously impacts the movements going forward as well given our valuation methodology. That's it for me. So handing it over to you, Per.

Thanks, Dennis. And so showing you the portfolio as of the end of December, BlaBlaCar is now the biggest than Gett because those revaluations, Voi a little bit lower. Otherwise, it's fairly similar picture to what we've seen before. I think highlighting now that the world is so -- one thing that's worth to highlight when the world is now so focused on profitability rather than growth is that to give you a rough idea is that some 40% of this portfolio is profitable at the EBITDA level or higher, which is usually a case in our company already today. And another 40% of the portfolio will be profitable at the same level during the next 12 months, leaving only about 20%, which is on route to become profitable, but a little bit later than that, basically. So I think that's an important sort of -- important to highlight that because from a distance, one can sort of get the feeling that, that's not the case. So 40% EBITDA profitable today for another 40% profitability expected in the next 12 months, and the remaining [ parts ] soon thereafter. The other part of the portfolio reflect to Page 9 or whatever that is Page 8, maybe, we typically want to try to give more transparency and highlight more the other part of portfolio, both for the reason that we think that our future larger names are already here. Some of these names will be the ones we talk about a few years down the line. In the same way, that Voi, BlaBla, Gett, et cetera, were in the shadows of other larger holdings, which we have sold over the years. The future sort of large parts of our portfolio, be it no traffic or [ oleo ] or flow otherwise, there's lots of companies here that has that potential, but also to sort of highlight that these are companies that, I think, importantly, and I sort of sense that it sometimes people get following our portfolio from a distance and have sympathy with that lot of people do that. But when you follow it from a distance, you may feel that this is a large number of names and -- and there -- is there anything with substance there? And I think what -- so the other point I would like to sort of stress is that these are companies where most of them have products, which the clients not only pay in cash to get access to, but they're also in an increasingly sort of growing fashion. So clearly, sort of have gone past that [ fruit ]. And moreover, many of these companies are also funded and have -- or have the ability to fund themselves without the presence of existing shareholders if they don't want to. I mean, we obviously have our [indiscernible] rights to pick up our share of any future funds. And I think there's so no traffic, for example, is a company that we own 7% of and Israeli company, but very active in this sort of mobility, sort of -- they essentially sell a software for running traffic lights in a much, much more modern way. And so we own 7% of that, and we're carrying it at somewhere slightly too low level, I'd probably argue because we see sort of that's a company that will fund themselves and they're getting a traction at higher levels than both we invested at and where we have it carrying. So that's a good example that there's real substance in this portfolio. So going into -- or just touching upon this continuously go to next page Dennis, NAV is down. And well, we still trade at a 50%, 60% sort of discount to NAV. And yes, the new NAV per share is just under SEK 56 per share. So if we go to the next page, we'd just like to take a few moments to touch upon the -- some of the larger names in the portfolio and in doing that by order of size, BlaBlaCars now the largest, which is great because we -- this is a company we have -- we strongly believe in. It's coming from history, as you all know, of marketplaces, which is so beautiful to own because it becomes very, very, very high [indiscernible] strategy when it takes everything type of situation and so basically, you don't need to invest. It's the silver capital. BlaBlaCar sort of fits those attributes very, very well. So logic that we also have had this company in our portfolio for a while, and that is now gets also to be the largest holding. That's partly because you've seen we've increased our ownership. That's from a convertible that we've had, and we converted that into equity, as I think has become clear now. But also that it's gone up a little bit in valuation. And we here, this is very logical because this is a true marketplace, but it's also a true marketplace around cost savings. So in tougher times like we're arguably in tougher times now in Europe, there's a bigger sort of propensity to try to save on costs. And so -- so cost sharing platforms will be in higher demand. So BlaBlaCar is that. But moreover, that the costs were sharing when we use BlaBlaCar is petrol and the price of petrol because of the war and everything is higher. So even more sort of inclination to share those costs. Tough time during COVID, but I really think -- when we see this company is beyond that now and firing on all cylinders. You may I mean, a number of passengers was 17.4 million during the fourth quarter in 2022. That's up 20%, roughly 80% year-on-year. And then sort of revenues move around that on the upside. This is very similar to classifieds where you don't monetize a market until you have a critical mass on liquidity. So -- but once you have that, you monetize everything gets monetized. So monetization growth becomes very lumpy here. That is very much driven and the ability to monetize is driven by liquidity, which is passengers. So that the number of passengers keeps on performing like it is thus is very, very important. Also, this company is, as I stated, those of you sort of followed our Capital Markets Day. So Nicholas Chandou, the CFO, point out that it's been EBITDA positive during the second half of 2022 and is expected to be that for the full year of 2023. So very much in that bucket of profitable companies. Going on to the second largest in the portfolio now is Gett and you all know Gett is the -- you can use Gett in London for black cabs. It's the Uber for Black cabs, which is a market with very high growth potential because of the -- the sort of the [ youth ] of that space for black cabs and get this sort of past acquisition. So there's lots of upside there. But the real value at Gett today is in Israel, where the company is -- where the company very much is the absolute leading player. And the company is EBITDA positive and has -- and that's a result of the work that the management team has done over the second half of the year, and it's growing well as well. It's growing 30% year-on-year in Israel and that has that -- and where it owns Israel and that's a profitable market that's still growing. It has some sort of more exponential growth, if you will, in their sort of smaller markets being around the U.K. and also their software business. So very excited about that. Good also to sort of finally be able to move beyond the financial restructuring and show the transparency that you are used to and that we now own just under 50% of the company on a fully diluted basis, a bit more without the dilution, which is essentially management options and management incentive programs. And then to Voi, our, which is obviously marked down during this quarter. But as I think we try to sort of portray in the slide and the report is that we -- it's not that the company is 40% -- doing 40% worse during this quarter. That's purely a factor, as Dennis has pointed out of these -- of the peer group -- of the listed peer group that we use that has come down a lot during this quarter, and that's the same valuation method, same peer group as last quarter. It's -- we may think it's too low. But you don't change valuation method of peer group from quarter-to-quarter. That stays the same and it sort of spits out the value, and that's the value we use. But the company as such is doing well. It's the best fourth quarter ever. And as we point out there and have pointed out before, it's on a path to show sort of EBITDA profitability at the full company level during 2023. And it's just a last time sort of reflecting on the value, which is $300 million and [ a bit now ]. Last time, we had that value was I think it's going back 3 years. And at that point in time, we maybe had a handful of cities. I think we counted to around [ 20 ]. And it was -- it was cutthroat full body contact competition. A lot of people have established themselves and everyone were out on the streets like all over Europe. And you've -- and so fast forward today and the company is in 100 cities, but this is -- in these 100 cities, the Voi is #1 in most of them and #1 and #2 in sort of 90% of them. And so really, really a leading position -- but moreover, in an increasing amount of cities, this is now regulated. You can't do this business if you don't have a license from the city and Voi is the leader of a number of licenses as this slide shows, in Europe. So it really has that sort of defensibility on the downside that also not only gaining these sort of -- in this regulatory fashion, gaining the right to do these business models and then in competition with sometimes all along, but sometimes the competition will [indiscernible] and not 10. So completely different sort of competitive picture. But -- so it's completely different picture when we last had its valued at these sort of levels. And in fact, I think I have -- we have a [ hat ] here because the company was so tell you -- company made [ hats ] round about that time, which showed that the company had 1 million rights -- this is the [ hat ]. It looks sort of funny. I mean, I'll take it off anyway. But today, they've done 155 million rights. So companies do well. If we then -- I think we basically lose the sort of overview. We've taken enough of your time and open up for questions. Dennis, if you could organize this, that would be great.

Absolutely. Let's kick it off. So the first question has come in is around financing and the funding need Per. We -- in the second quarter 2022 report, we mentioned that the existing portfolio, we saw needed roughly $40 million in the year to come. So a bit of an update on that and how we see the funding need for the coming 12 to 24 months.

Yes. Great question. And so of that estimate of funding need in our existing portfolio of $40 million that we talked about in the summer, we've sort of invested roughly [ $30 million ] of that. So if our estimates are right, we have another [ $10 million ] to go. And I think that's probably pretty accurate that that's not counting new investments and our pecking order in terms of priorities is to sort of -- for the use of cash is that, first and foremost, to support of the companies in the portfolio that need support and which we want to support. Number 2 is to sort of -- it becomes very difficult not to sort of start off with looking at acquiring the instruments that we have outstanding. Obviously, the shares, trade at a big discount, but also the debt. And it's only after that, that we can look at new investments. And as you know, I think we've sort of had this -- we've had the same sort of mantra or way of working for decades is that we always compare a new investment to our own stock price and where we can buy our own portfolio, which we know really well and which clearly now has been written down a lot over the course of this year. And if that sort of trades at a discount, we compare any new investment to the level of our current trading, including the discount. So it's arguably -- we get a lot of deal flow, but the deals that we have sort of comes in at you could say, the equivalent level of our current NAV, and it's hard to find something that's better than our own stock -- our own share, which half that price. I'm not saying it never happens, but -- and hence, sort of there will be the odd but they're very small investments that we'll do. But that's -- but yes, that's the current sort of thinking. So I hope that gives you -- so yes, so that's the -- so it's another attempt to go in the existing portfolio, [ 10, 15 ], call it, at that sort of level. But otherwise, like we said before, the nature of the businesses that we invest into is that nothing much happens below the EBITDA level, and 40% of our companies are EBITDA positive, 40% will be in the next 12 months. And so that may not seem like a large number, but -- that's because the company -- the portfolio holdings are very much moving towards profitability.

Super -- another question that has come in is around exits on the horizon for the coming 12 to 24 months. Do we see any of the existing portfolio companies being in an exit phase? And how do we think about cash or liquidity on the [indiscernible] in relation to that?

Yes. So -- so yes, I think when we speak in a year's time, there will have been some exits in the portfolio. And we see an increasing amount of interest from strategics into the market, including parts of our portfolio, which are the leaders in their spaces, and there are some larger ones. And there are some smaller ones in the portfolio that all fit that bill and which we sort of sense that there's people -- there's strategic type of sort of buyers that are circling. And in some cases, that's more active and in some cases, it's sort of -- it's early days. But -- but it's very difficult to go into any details of negotiations and current sort of -- any details around that because they're not done, until they're done. But I will be very surprised if we don't -- if we haven't seen some parts of our portfolio move on to other shareholders when we speak in a year's time. And I'm even surprised if that's not the case when we speak in the summer.

Excellent. Thank you. Going into the portfolio a bit, one question or a few questions on sort of comment on Swvl. So is there any more nuance, any more details that you can share on the update in relation to the comments that were made in the fourth quarter report, but also obviously, the share price that we've seen.

Yes. No, it's a super unfortunate situation. And with the benefit of hindsight, this company should have never gone public because now -- I mean their base is that they are active and building very, very valuable assets in emerging markets, right? They run the platforms for local transportation in large [ massive ] cities. And we're in this phase in the global economy on our dollar is super strong, lack of dollar liquidity that's bad for typical emerging markets. And we've seen a range of devaluations, which sort of takes down these type of assets value in dollar terms. And -- and but one sort of cost of the company, which has not gone down, which is very much dollar-based, is the listing costs, et cetera. So it's become a more and more intangible situation for the company. I think that's what's reflected in the share price of the company. So the initial business and the underlying business, which we got involved with, which the company was focused on and is still running, I think, have a lot of potential upside, but it's sort of increasingly difficult for the company to fund that in the sort of listed environment. And we'll be active to sort of try to maintain exposure to -- certainly to the earlier type of assets that the company sort of is running. And -- but it's difficult to say more on that now.

Super. Another question is coming on Voi a bit on the market situation on consolidation in this industry. How do we see that playing out and what role will Voi play in that?

Yes. So -- so it's -- yes, I think the market sort of -- the market had a phase of consolidation a few years ago, which was at a time when the whole industry was subscale. Now the most sort of the leaders in the space and Voi would be #1 there are, of course, no longer subscale in that they're becoming sort of profitable. But one cost that sort of has increased is sort of reflecting on a very attractive part of this industry, which is that the market is moving more to regulated area. And as we've seen, Voi is the market leader in that aspect. But it's not -- it doesn't come for free. There's no money involved in -- you can't buy these licenses. You have to sort of prove if you want to run in the regulated space in the city, in Europe, you have to sort of just prove that you can run this according to the terms that are put there by the cities, which is typically safety, environment, parking, being a good corporate citizen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So -- so -- but in order to sort of run these processes versus the city authorities, you have to have a certain cost layer that deals with that only. So I think it's rather clear now that some of the smaller players where as they're well-run companies in sort of they have well-run products in terms of -- on the streets -- and hence, sort of possess quite large sort of business at the revenue level, they're subscale because they don't have the capacity to sort of to be a counterpart to the cities. So for the people like Voi who are clearly sort of not subscale, they are at scale and can do this efficiently. And they've proven that there are M&A opportunities. And so nothing is done until it's done, but that's, I think, a very natural phase for the company over the course of 2023 to be engaged in.

And if I may add to that, Per. That's very true for the very core of the business. So the scooter and bike sharing I think this is a space where we're increasingly seeing a rationale of also building out the mobility platform, building out the mobility stack but also the business model. So you could add going -- the likes of Voi and [indiscernible] these companies, they're primarily B2C focus today. You could have B2B revenue streams, you could add other modalities over time. And that there will probably likely be M&A opportunities in that space also over the course of the coming years. While that's maybe more medium- to long-term and what you mentioned is probably more short-term. This is probably what I would add.

Perfect. Moving on. We had another question on the performance of Booksy, Has it been in line with expectations, and have they scaled back on geographic expansion is the question?

Thank you. Yes. So Booksy has been what can I say here? So yes, I think it's been a tough market to operate in. But on the whole, the company is performing to expectations, I would say. I mean you could differ maybe a little bit here and there. The -- I would not expect the company sort of to be engaged in any further geographical expansion at Booksy like in all the companies here and [ beyond ] also our portfolio, the focus is very much now on profitability to take destiny your own hands, not to have to raise money from markets, which are tough for, in some cases, essentially shut. And so -- Booksy has this fortunate situation that they did raise money and pass money and from where I sit, doesn't need money. But that also means that they don't have -- they have the markets they have and they need to sort of expand on those. And some of them are very mature and generating sort of profits, but across the entire portfolio, you it's -- that's not the case now, but will be in the not too distant future, I believe, but it doesn't leave any room to sort of start expanding into new geographies. So we're not ourselves on the board and not that close to the company, but I think that's an accurate sort of description of the company. Then the business model as such, we essentially love. It's a SaaS business with marketplace upside on top of that. And as you'll know, we're also exposed to the same business model in a different company here in Sweden. This company is called Bokadirekt, where we own flight larger part as a percentage, but very mature and very clear marketplace sort of upside in a not too dissimilar manner to [indiscernible], which is no longer a part of our portfolio, but sort of has the same attributes in dominant brand, et cetera. Booksy is in the dominant sort of in the same fashion in Poland, which is their home market, and Poland alone. I think will provide the sort of return that we are looking for. say, if we're looking forward 30%, 40% sort of annual return. I think Booksy Poland alone will deliver that. And then you have the upside of their other markets, Spain, U.K., France, U.S. and maybe some others that sort of gives some optionality on the upside beyond that. But the business model, when they reach maturity like we see here in Sweden, and we see in Poland across 2 different companies is something that's very nice to look at.

Perfect. One question, moving over to some more of the VNV level, and I'm reading this question here. So can you elaborate on how you will reduce costs and make the operations leaner? And if possible, do you have cash reserves for repurchasing the VNV share as we're trading to a good discount to NAV?

Yes. So we're very focused on our own cost base. And we will -- since I joined the company in 2000, a long time ago, we've always been very focused to have a cost base that's not higher than 2% of the NAV. So we're within that now. But obviously, the NAV is one thing and the market cap is also something to look at. And we've been in sort of borderline in those sort of areas. So we have reduced costs. We have been engaged in cost-cutting of late and maybe it doesn't show up so much in the fourth quarter, but it will show up over the course of 2023. So we had in Amsterdam office, which we closed and partnering with some people there, which is [ stabbed ] because they're very good people, but we -- it's just -- when we're less active on looking on new investments, we have a different kind of need and we definitely need to sort of reduce the cost base. So we -- so that's a reflection of that we are active in sort of looking -- analyzing our own costs and doing something about and taking them down essentially. The other question on buying back stock when we have liquidity, we got $74 million of cash. If you include the sort of liquidity management type of cash, $66 million without that. But -- and then, of course, the uses of that cash is -- well, it's the OpEx that we have and it's to pay the coupon, but also we have a funding need that we talked about before, which would maybe $10 million, $15 million. So I think that covers basically the cash pile that we have covers that and more. We're limited in buying back our own stock by the covenants of our bond. So although we would like to and in a typical environment, we would sort of be involved in that in sort of quite a big way, given that we're trading at this kind of a discount as we have some limitations on that in sort of in the current environment.

Excellent. I think last question, we actually got another one now, but the second last question is this. Can you comment on the line other equity investments which was marked down some $19 million in the fourth quarter? So that's for reference, that is investments below top 10% or below 2% of NAV -- so that part of the portfolio. I can start off maybe by mentioning that, obviously, there will be more details to exactly, which companies are part of the overall portfolio, and the valuations of each line item in the annual report that we published in February. But for now, Per, any comments on that part of the portfolio.

No. It's -- I mean that's the other part of the portfolio that I briefly touched upon. Some of those, we may have marked down because the model takes in inspiration and data from a listed peer group and then takes it down. And some of them are close to transactions, which will take them higher and above where we initially had them on the last transaction. So the sort of the momentum is more on the upside for a lot of those. So it's a very sort of different picture company to company. And as Dennis says, there you can sort of look to them line by line in the annual report, which is out in a few weeks.

Yes. I think I'm looking through the question list. And I think we have covered most.

Okay. Good. That's -- thank you for listening in, and thanks for all these good questions, and happy new year to you all. And then full enthusiasm for this year. I mean the companies that we have are doing well. I think the valuations move around. But we very much looking for sort of also the short-term here as there's activity around the portfolio, et cetera. And if there is anything else anyone sort of comes up with in terms of questions later on, just pinging us on e-mail or give us an order and then we will sort of try to help you out. So thanks for that, and we'll see you when we talk about our Q1 report, which Dennis remind me that -- with as April, right?

April, correct. I have exact date -- so the financial calendar is actually updated on the website. So the first quarter report is due on April 20, 2023.

April 20, afternoon, my time, April 20, we'll be talking again if not before. So thank you very much.

Thank you.