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

Okay. With that, I think we are set. Very warm welcome to the VNV Global Conference Call for the first quarter report of 2023. Today, our CEO and Managing Director, Per Brilioth; and I, Dennis Mohammad, Investment Manager at VNV, will walk you through the financials and the key events of the quarter. Per and I will hold a presentation, followed by a Q&A where we welcome you to type in your questions in the dedicated Zoom chat. And after the presentation, we will address questions. With that, I hand it over to you Per.

Thanks, Dennis, and thanks, everyone, for joining on this quarterly call. So there's a lot of familiar faces in the participants this year. So I guess all of you know what we do, but in terms of just a very short intro, we invest in the companies with network effects. We define network effects as the product that the company sells, becomes better with every new user. That's the first check in the box. Second is that the markets have to be large for them to sort of, at some point, make sense in our portfolio size-wise. And we're looking for founders that even we don't -- I've spoken about this many times, we don't have like an A, B, C, but the founders that we're looking for really has to sort of possess certain characteristics because the journey is long and sometimes hard. And -- so we spend a lot of time trying to understand that the founders that we're involved with are of a certain quality. And the portfolio is 70 companies strong, so there's 70 names in the portfolio. And again, we look for companies with network effects and bottom up, but we have found ourselves in 3 main sort of themes or sectors, which is mobility, digital health and also marketplaces. There may be a fourth one coming up, which is climate. But -- and all of these fit very well into an ESG format. I'll come back to that. We're sort of trying to up our game in explaining where this fits in into the ESG format. It's very topical and important now. The NAV performance over these past 10, now nearly 11 years since we became a pure investor or an investor into purely sort of unlisted companies just shy of 19% -- 18.5%. So this -- if you go over to the next page, this quarter, we'll go into much more details, but the NAV at the end of the quarter, which ended Friday and -- by the way, I sort of challenge anyone to come up with a company that has done this faster, including a weekend. And so we're just 4 days into the new quarter, well -- and the last quarter as of last Friday, ended with an NAV for us at just shy of $700 million, $697 million to be exact, which equates to $6.10 per share or SEK 63 per share. It's up 14% quarter-on-quarter in U.S. dollar terms and slightly below that in Swedish crowns. And so the reason for us being this fast is the ongoing rights issue. And this rights issue -- as all rights issues require prospectus, we wanted to base that prospectus on a very fresh set of numbers. So as per -- I think the schedule that we had communicated before, we were due to report 19th or 20th of April. And so we put that -- we've made it a little earlier in order to base the prospectus that you'll all get in a couple of weeks based on sort of very fresh numbers. So that's also the big event for this quarter that -- we are buying a block of BlaBlaCar shares, EUR 25 million worth of BlaBlaCar shares, and we're funding that with the rights issue, which is priced at markets. Market moves around a little bit, but SEK 20 per share. And I guess that's unusual, rights issue are typically priced with a discount to market. We wanted to make sure that this was priced at market. Now the market price of our stock, as you well know, it's at a large discount to NAV. So we want to also make sure that this financing was one that all shareholders could pick up in a pro rata fashion. So hence, the rights issue, and so that everyone has the right to pick up their pro rata share of the issue. But in the usual sort of way here in Sweden, these rights will be traded. I'll come back to that. But for every 7 shares you own, you'll get a preferential right to buy 1 new share. So that adds -- I think it's roughly 16 million new shares to the company, which will be sold at SEK 20 per share. Of these shares, just under 40% has been formally committed. In addition to that, well on -- our third largest shareholder, Baillie Gifford, has expressed its intention to take up its pro rata share, which is another 5.5% of the rights issue. Yes, so that's the order of things. The rest that's not spoken for, we have received guarantee commitments, which we paid a little bit for and -- but that's in order to sort of get this transaction sort of fully underwritten so that we could be firm in our acquisition versus the sellers of these secondary shares in BlaBlaCar. I'm taking up my full pro rata as are my colleagues. So that equates to about SEK 5 million, [Technical Difficulty] 6% of the company. And I'll speak much more about BlaBlaCar since it's not only before this transaction, our largest holding, but also one that's become much more topical around this. But basically, we have come across sellers of BlaBlaCar shares that have been in -- I don't want to call it the distressed situation, but a press situation for liquidity. And we've been able to sort of take advantage of that situation and to purchase these shares at a discount that makes sense even if you compare it to the kind of discount that we trade at in our stock. Nothing is exact. Everything moves around, but that's sort of the general thinking behind the pricing of this and which makes it, I think, a transaction that's absolutely in all our shareholders' interest that we do and finance in this way. The other thing which is tiny by comparison but of main events during the quarter is that we have one of our portfolio companies that's been acquired by its larger peer. So this is Kavall, which would be best described as a quick commerce player in the sort of digital retail grocery area. They've been acquired by their larger peer, Mathem, which with this acquisition sort of deepens their offering also into the quick commerce things. And we own a small percent of the combined company post this merger. We're very, very bullish about the macro behind both of these companies in that we believe groceries will basically be transacted retail digitally as we go along. And there's a lot of growth coming out of this space. And we're exposed in a small way, percentage wise of the portfolio and also of this company, but it gives us a seat at the table, which we'll be monitoring carefully as we go along. And then I just thought I'd sort of remind everyone about BlaBlaCar for the reasons before. So if we go to the next page, just as at a glance. This is a global company, and it's a global leader in its space of initially carpooling, but maybe best described as a marketplace for long distance travel with -- I mean over 100 million members in 22 countries. I mean just the sheer scale of that is enormous. And then -- and in France, this is a French company and France is where they've been added the longest and where they're most mature. It is as much as 15% of the adult population are not only members, but they're active users. So the number of members is a larger percentage, but active usage is that large of a subset of the entire sort of adult French population, which I think is a very good indicator of how deep this product can sort of getting -- entrenched itself into a very modern society like the French one. And furthermore, it's also got very topical characteristics to it that it's not only a sharing economy, but it's also one that benefits -- goes the right direction and is directly sort of beneficial for the climate. It fills empty seats on the road, and it saves a lot of carbon. 1.2 million tons of CO2 was avoided last year by just filling all these empty seats. And so -- and that's something that increasingly becomes something that is also being -- that the company is being able to monetize into real cash predominantly in France today, but very likely everywhere where they operate in the future because it's such an easy way for politicians to sort of do something about the climate situation that we have in a way which only benefits taxpayers. But the sort of the tailwinds for BlaBlaCar as this sort of -- as this picture tries to sort of capture is one of sharing economy, asset sharing, which is starting to become mainstream now, Airbnb, which is a good peer for BlaBlaCar, but also one that has been a benchmark not only valuation-wise, but also in terms of pointing the direction of that sharing assets is something that a larger and larger sort of population sets are very -- not only willing to do, but increasingly looking to do. In the case of BlaBlaCar, you're essentially sharing the car, which -- and that cost sharing is very closely sort of tied to sharing the cost of oil or of petrol essentially, energy prices. So now that those prices have this past year gone upwards and so increase the sort of the interest from travelers wherever they may be to share that cost. And that's maybe -- that's a very strong macro tailwind for BlaBlaCar in addition to the sort of concept of asset sharing, but also that there's monetization to be had from using this platform as a way for politicians to tackle the climate crisis in a way that's, again, beneficial to sort of everyone around and also to BlaBlaCar because it's a monetization tool. And then the other thing is that part of these 22 countries are also in the sort of subset of emerging markets. And there, it's going to be a long -- for a long time now, but people are moving offline to online from going down to the bus station to buy a ticket to booking their bus ticket online is something -- that's a very, very strong macro tailwind that BlaBlaCar is in the midst of. And if you go to the next page, I think it just becomes so clear when you look at it in this way, if this is -- it's a consumer proposition that is just difficult to beat. If you take historic -- your historic alternative to going long distance from a place like Rouen to Nantes in France, it's a 300-kilometer trip, you basically are used to be able -- used to have to engage in 4 stopovers where you take 3 metros or buses to a train station and then you have to change train. So there were 2 trains and then 3 metros or buses, 4 stopover, whereas carpooling in most of the cases is door-to-door. So that's just premium right there. And then these 4 stopovers basically take nearly a double amount of time that the door to door trip takes. So in this example, it's 3.5 hours in carpooling versus 6 hours in that alternative, which is public transport. And even though all of that is premium, this is cheaper by a wide, wide measure. So it's just a consumer proposition that is impossible, let's say, to meet -- to beat. And hence, it's one that's become so popular, which has become so clear. If you go to the next page, I think we'll try to sort of also map out, so how the company has been developing. And so this is a C2C carpooling platform at its core. So I put up on the platform that I'm going from this address in Paris to visit my parents in Lyon at 5:00 on Friday. Other people who probably live in the same neighborhood find my trip, my offering on the BlaBlaCar platform and engaged to get in -- come to my house and get into my car. And we travel together to Lyon. We will share the cost of the petrol. So that's the heart of this business and this very, very vibrant and fast-growing and profitable heart. But from that sort of starting point, the company has both expanded the C2C proposition to short distance, more like commute going from a suburb into the city. That requires a higher tech, so it made sense that, that was not the starting point. But it's one that's over the last couple of years has grown and where BlaBlaCar is increasingly becoming active also in the form of M&A or they bought -- I guess their only competitor in France, Klaxit, just the other day. You can see on the website the details around that. But also that there are -- they basically leverage their existing supply to create new products, which is an even further door-to-door sort of premium product. And so that's all -- the C2C product has been increasingly sort of been developed to offer alternatives to the initial sort of heart. And around that, there is this concept of energy certificates, which is widely adopted now in France and which is something that's, yes, just positive all around and good for BlaBlaCar in every way. And then on the other side of things, from that sort of very liquid marketplace on C2C, they've expanded into also allowing businesses to engage in this marketplace. So I think most easily understood to offer business run supply into the same marketplace in the form of operated buses, to attach bus marketplace to it. And then not yet available now, but also in the future, getting train supply into this essentially marketplace for long-distance travel. So you can sort of sense that they are -- it's expanding very much into becoming like a marketplace with a much more multifaceted sort of characteristics and multimodular sort of offerings, but still around a very, very liquid marketplace for this kind of long distance travel. Anyway, so a few -- these were just a few slides to sort of try to share why we are so interested in BlaBlaCar. We have been for many years. It's the business model in my portfolio, which is most reminiscent of classified in that it's barriers to entry grow so high. So it really sort of becomes reminiscent in the concept of winner takes everything that we know so well from classifieds. And part of the reason for why that's possible is also that it's a very fragmented supply offering into a very fragmented demand. And the marketplace in between gives rise to this sort of high barriers to entry and winner takes everything. So the rights issue that we're doing to fund this acquisition is already on its way. We announced it a week or so ago. Today, we're publishing the report. The last day that you can buy the shares and still get the right to receive the subscription rights is next Friday. That's the 14th of April. So that's the last day when the VNV Global stock trades including the rights to the subscription rights. So following Monday, on the 17 of April, subsequently, that's the first day when the shares do not include the right to receive these subscription rights for the record date on the 18th of April. And so we'll publish the prospectus based on these Q1 accounts on the 19th of April. And then we have this usual sort of period when the subscription rights will trade. So it's roughly a 2-week window, and that's between the 20th and 28th of April, one can trade the subscription rights. And when that's done, the subscription period ends on the 4th of May, which is also the value date for this new issue. So all of this will be made very, very clear in the prospectus that's coming your way on the 19th of April. So with that as a long-winding introduction, and apologies for that, I'll hand over to Dennis to run through the actual numbers of the Q1 results. Over to you, Dennis.

Thank you very much, Per. So NAV came in at some $697 million for Q1 2023, which amounts to a positive fair value change of roughly $84 million versus Q4 2022 and corresponds to $6.10 per share or SEK 63 per share. As Per mentioned, in dollar terms, we are up roughly 14% year-to-date. And in SEK terms, that number is around 13%. And the difference being driven by FX as the Swedish krona has appreciated against the dollar during the quarter. At this NAV per share, our NAV discount is -- or was around 68% at closing on Friday, the last day of the quarter, which is up from where we closed the fourth quarter at around 50%. FX has also had a very minor impact on our debt position in dollar terms, taking it up to around $167 million in Q1 versus $164 million in Q4. That's approximately up 1%. Looking at cash as per Q1, it is $61 million, when excluding liquidity management and $67 million when including liquidity management. This is down approximately 9% versus Q4 of 2022, at $74 million when including liquidity management. Looking at the main drivers of the fair value change this quarter and starting with our private holdings. The largest driver on the upside is BlaBlaCar, which is up some 45% over the quarter. That has had a $64 million impact on our NAV. And this is on the back of very strong trading among peers. So as Per mentioned and as we have communicated earlier, we are planning to do this acquisition of a EUR 25 million block of BlaBlaCar secondaries. However, since the rights issue as Per made clear now is not yet completed. The balance sheet in Q1 does not reflect our BlaBlaCar position post buying this new stake. This will be reflected in the Q2 numbers. In the Q2 numbers, you will see the balance sheet, including the new stake. The second driver of the write-up this quarter is Voi, which is up some 17% over the quarter, that has had a $14 million impact on our NAV. Also, this due to strong trading among peers. Voi closed a record Q1 in terms of rides, revenues and margins. Just looking at gross margins in January and February, they were 10 percentage points better than January and February of 2022. So they are making huge improvements on their path to profitability, having guided to be EBITDA positive this year. And so Voi has written up 17%. And also to make it clear, there has been no changes for any peers or anything like that. This is purely driven by the peer group having traded up. The third one to mention is HousingAnywhere, which is up some 18% over the quarter. That is a $7 million impact on our NAV on the back of strong trading among peers, but also a strong revenue growth in the first quarter, having grown some 40% year-over-year. And beyond that, there's also been additional write-ups across the portfolio, primarily driven by peers as well; and some smaller transactions, for instance, Breadfast, Booksy, Numan, Bokadirekt and some other names. In terms of drivers on the downside this quarter, the main ones were in the food delivery space, where we have seen write-downs on both HungryPanda and Borzo, driven by weak trading among peers in the space. As you know, we don't disclose exact peers. But as an example, Delivery Hero, which is one in this space, is down some 30% year-to-date just as a reference. On the listed holdings, the impact has been very limited this quarter. Babylon was down another 25% during Q1, which had a $6 million impact [indiscernible] and Swvl was down another 61% during the quarter which only had a $1.2 million impact on our NAV. So no major impact from those. In terms of main investments in this quarter, there was a $1.3 million investment into Housing Anywhere. There was a $1 million investment into Breadfast, another $1 million investment into our folio company Hume, and some -- and a few smaller investments and drawdowns as well. And there were no exits done in the first quarter of 2023. The last one to mention, which Per has already mentioned, is Kavall having been acquired by Mathem during this quarter, the leading grocery -- online grocery care in the Nordics. This will have no significant impact on our NAV or on our cash position even after we have done the small equity investments that we are due to make in the coming months into combined. That's it from me. Handing it back to you, Per.

Great. Thanks, Dennis. So concluding with a few slides of a general nature and then -- yes, so -- and the first one being this usual sort of portfolio slide, which is -- looks in many ways similar to the one you saw last quarter, and the changes that Dennis has gone through result in some sort of a little bit different sort of percentages here, but the overall structure is virtually the same. We said before, and that roughly holds true still that about 40% of this portfolio, maybe a touch more is EBITDA positive now. Yes, 40%, 50% even. And another sort of 40% is EBITDA positive in the next 12 months, and the remaining sort of getting to profitability a little bit later or after 12 months. The focus across the board is not on revenue growth, but it's on profitability growth, which means sort of growing the existing profitability like the ones I just mentioned. BlaBlaCar is, of course, one. Gett is another, but also moving to profitability and in some situations at the expense of revenue growth. But that's the focus across the board of the portfolio. We'd like to highlight as we often do just the other part. On the next slide, you'll see sort of -- I mean there are 60 names in this other part of the portfolio, which has gone down a little bit percentage-wise in terms of its percentage of the overall portfolio. And here's a few of these 60 names. And some companies are very young, but a lot of them are -- and certainly in terms of size of this part of the portfolio are companies like Bokadirekt, which is profitable flow, which is a $100 million company in terms of revenues; NoTraffic, which is sort of putting -- which is finalizing a raising now, which is above our mark, et cetera, et cetera. So again, without the ability in this context as we go into the detail of every single one, one does really convey that this is not a portfolio that was just built on the fumes of the very sort of expansive liquidity period that we've been through. These are companies which have a product that the customers pay money for and that are very sort of carefully run businesses, and that are, in many cases, getting funded despite the sort of tough environment that we are in. We would like to sort of, if we flip to the next page, just to spend a few pages sharing with you how to sort of map up this portfolio in terms of ESG. It's something that people or us here, we've felt for a long time that we're not an ESG investor, but everything we do has an impact in either the E and the S or the G or all 3 of them. And on this slide, we mapped up the portfolio by the United Nations' sustainable development goals. And as you can see here, as much as over 60% of the portfolio fits very well into the goal of making cities and communities more sustainable. So that, of course, is populated by holdings like BlaBlaCar and Voi. But also as you move down to going to decent work, economic growth, health and well-being, et cetera, are also large constituents in our portfolio if you just map them up by these development goals. And then going specifically into the climate part of things. If you go to the next page, you can divide the portfolio up into 2 basically, where half the portfolio has no direct impact on the climate. Certainly, no negative impact, but no direct positive impact. Like Booksy, for example, or Bokadirekt, which is a booking platform for the beauty industry. It does have an effect in one of these UN goals. But if you go specifically to climate, it has no direct impact. But on the other hand, the other half of the portfolio has a direct positive climate impact. Again, mobility and BlaBlaCar and Voi are big names here make up the bulk of that. But there's also asset sharing, sustainable consumption, food waste in one of our favorite companies, which is Olio, et cetera, et cetera. So 50% of the portfolio positive impact on the climate. And then since we -- if you go to the next page, since we come from being marketplace investors, the concept of circular economies is very embedded into what we invest into and is very embedded into the nature of the companies that we invest into. Classifieds is basically trading secondhand goods. And I think -- so you can see here how the circular sort of concept is through reduce, reuse and recycle in these different sort of segments, where our portfolio is -- a large part of our portfolio fits very well into this concept of circular economies. And for, I think, like the founders of Olio put it very well in that they are a marketplace, a community based around food waste. But since that business model hinges very much on a hyper-local network effects around the -- in the hyper-local concept like they phrased it very well, I think that the future consumption is secondhand and it's hyper local and they're in the middle of that. So that's just one part of this. We'll share the slides with you and take any questions on them as we go along. But if we leave the ESG part of the presentation and go back to the usual sort of slides that we go with. We're still -- you can see that our NAV has, for the first time since -- well, 2021 has had its first uptick for a long, long time. And as Dennis has explained, very much driven by the peers of the company that we are invested into. Despite that sort of uptick, our stock is still at a historically very, very high discount to that NAV. Just flick through the next couple of slides to see if there's anything that we haven't talked about. But the next one is on BlaBlaCar. We spent some time on this, and we can come back to this if there are any sort of questions. If you go to the next page, we have Gett. Gett is EBITDA positive last year, continues to be that now. There's not that much news around the company during the course of the first quarter of 2023, but the trend of growing profitability is still there and accelerating. And we're very active. As you know now, we own nearly half of the company and remain very active around every aspect of the company, supporting management, of course. We're not running the company that it's got an excellent management based in Israel and in the U.K. running it. Voi, also on the next page, we've talked about, I think maybe the main -- I mean it's just doing very, very well. And I'm not going to repeat stuff that we've talked about in the report, but it's -- first quarter of 2023 is the strongest in the company's history in terms of rides, revenues, margin profile, everything is going in the right direction. And the company has also been very active around managing its cost base. So in December last year, it reduced its cost base, which helped the company take it to EBITDA profitability for the full year of 2023. Now those of you who follow the space of e-scooters closely will know that there is an election in Paris just this Sunday which, from a distance, may look a little worrisome for the industry at large, but we would sort of -- we're not worried. One, first and foremost, this election in Paris which ended up in the results, which told the politicians to sort of ban scooters from the city of Paris, is one -- that's something that we've seen in several other cities, which adopted these scooters early and had maybe wild sort of entry into the world of e-scooters and then sort of had to stop. And then -- but then launched e-scooters again. So this has happened in many other cities like Madrid, Copenhagen, to name a few. And then when they relaunched, they relaunched with better regulations on parking, safety, all the stuff that actually Voi does very well, which has also helped Voi be the leader in protected market share in terms of holding -- winning tenders and holding licenses to run this business in cities across Europe. But -- and so -- and that leads us to the other aspect of this is that it's also an opportunity for Voi because the 3 operators that have the licenses in Paris that are currently ending, which is TIER, Lime, and Dott. They also incidentally hold them in London. They are now not likely -- or who knows that they lose their licenses. And when this gets relaunched, we don't have a date for that, then I think Voi is a very strong contender. So it's also an opportunity. And it's very clear that this will come back to Paris. There was -- 100,000 voters voted, so a very small subset. You couldn't vote by post, you couldn't vote electronically. So you have to sort of make your way through the rainy Parisian afternoon -- Sunday afternoon and also make your way through many closed streets due to a marathon. So the people who went out to vote were the ones who really don't like e-scooters, but the people who made 20 million sort of trips during the course of 2022 did not vote. They all want their scooters back. Anyway, that's a long-winding sort of comment, I guess, on Voi and Paris. So I think we'll stop with that and then open up for Q&A. If we could take us back to the portfolio slide, I think that's a good starting point for the Q&A. And Dennis, if you could sort of -- if you could organize the Q&A, that would be great.

Absolutely. So we've gotten a few questions in the Zoom chat. Please feel free to write if you have any if you haven't done so yet. The first question on BlaBlaCar. We said that BlaBlaCar has doubled revenues and gross profits in 2022. Can we comment on how much of that is organic and what type of revenue growth we expect going forward?

Yes. None of that is sort of organic -- I mean, sorry, 100% is organic. So they did do an acquisition, a small acquisition, but an important one, extending the reach in short-distance carpooling. But that was done very, very recently. And so for the course of '22, that's all organic. And we are not quite at liberty to sort of -- in the sort of broad context, sort of discuss growth rates, but to give you a sense, we expect the company to grow a lot on revenues, but even more on earnings. Even though maybe not quite at the annual sort of pace that we saw in '22 because then you're comparing to '21, which is still a year affected by COVID when this business was very slow. So high growth rates, although a touch slower than the '22 numbers, I think, is a broad enough comment.

Another question on BlaBlaCar. So we do have 45% increase in the fair value of BlaBlaCar in this quarter. And then that's as we've commented already driven by multiples. So a question here is, is this driven by peer share price performance or changes to the peer group?

The peer groups have stayed absolutely the same. It's just that, that peer group -- the multiples of that peer group has traded well during this first quarter of 2023.

Great. Another question not specific to BlaBlaCar, but more the composition of the portfolio. So the top 3 holdings make up over 50% of our NAVs. So what are your thoughts on this concentration? And do we want to, in any way, increase diversification? What's our view there?

We don't build our portfolio out of a diversification perspective. And for those of you who've been with us for longer, you remember that in 2018, we had like 60%, 70% in one name only. And that was just a result of that name growing a lot in value in relative terms to the rest of the portfolio. But it didn't make sense for us to sort of sell that in order to make it a smaller part of the portfolio. So if it's in the interest of our shareholders to hold on to the stock, for example, on BlaBlaCar now, if that sort of would double, everything else does the same, it will obviously be a much, much larger part of the portfolio. There will be less diversification. But if we think it still makes sense to hold on to BlaBlaCar, then we will -- that's what we'll do. And we're not going to sort of manage it sort of to have a portfolio where there's a max 20% stake, et cetera. Having said that, we think there are many benefits to have not only -- for our company not to be very concentrated on one name. I think it's -- I think you, as our shareholders, appreciate sort of that there's a general theme that I think is -- that is very, very strong, very strong moats around this concept of network effects. We've got lots of defensibility on the downside while still having sort of very high growth prospects. So that theme is the one that we concentrate on that we have maybe diversification is good, even though it's not how we run the portfolio. I think -- what -- where we come from is -- I mean we've been around a long time, so -- but what I was going to say is that we come from -- we're in this space because we are part of setting up what became this -- one of the largest classified players in the world. And whilst that was being built up, there were other classified players to look at. So it was -- even if it was like early days and many people really look at classifieds in the mid-2000s, it was still a concept that was very -- it was clear -- it was an established business model is I guess what I'm trying to say. And that is something that is present in large parts of this portfolio that Booksy has a very established business model across the world. Bokadirekt is one peer, for example. And we know and people can understand how they work and how they make money. And that's obviously a more lower risk investment. There's lower risk connected to those type of investments compared to when you go into something where there's no established business model to look at. So sometimes those investments work out well and sometimes they don't. And we have examples of both in our portfolio. And -- so where I'm getting at, I think, is that we will endeavor to sort of be -- we're more careful when there's no established business model is -- that's the atmosphere in the room, especially after this sort of a little bit bruising or very bruising sort of period that we've been through over these past 12 to 18 months. Anyway, sorry, a long-winding, maybe more philosophical answer to that specific question. So I'll shut up now. And what else, Dennis?

So there's one other question on Voi. And if there are any other cities that are planning referendum similar to the one that we saw in Paris. I can take that on Per, if you want. I would say the short answer is no. We don't see any other cities doing this. There might be some [indiscernible] effects, obviously, in France, but no one has really announced any such intentions. On the contrary, I would say we're seeing city after city in Europe moving towards a tendered model. So issuing a tender where you restrict the number of players to 1, 2 or 3. So basically, 1 to 3 operators are allowed to operate in the city. Then all operators submit an application where they are judged based on their performance on safety, sustainability and parking. Those are the 3 main criterias. And that is really the most orderly fashion to regulate the scooters and something all operators really agree on and -- because it's better for the users, it's better for the cities, but it's also better for the operators. So on the contrary, we're actually seeing a regulatory trend that's positive. I think Paris is probably the odd one out here. Back to you, Per, a question on both Babylon and on Swvl. Any update that we can give on those 2? They're obviously listed. So we're a bit more restricted on what we can share. But if there is anything we can share?

So those 2 companies are listed. So any information that's relevant to those are present at their websites or in their communication. So there's really nothing more to add to that in this context, just because of the nature of those listings. So that's frustrating. But I think that's the way we have to play that.

Is there any update on raising third-party funds? I assume this is a reference to the fund that we announced in the Q4 report that we are planning on reading?

Yes, that's very much getting going. We have received all the necessary regulatory approvals from the Swedish Securities Commission that you need to run that type of money. So that was turned around in -- at record speed, which we were very positively surprised by. And now we're in the final innings of putting together the material for that launch for which we have received quite some interest. So we're very positive on getting that closed up over the coming sort of period, a quarter or 2. So a good update there, not yet closed, but looking good.

Excellent. I think we've got two last questions as it looks right now. One is if you could elaborate the statement around the businesses -- the closing sets of the quarterly report and the introduction around becoming an investment house that's debt-free and having a cash flow-generating asset in the future. Is there any more -- maybe you can add to that?

Color I can add to that?

Color, thank you. Sorry.

That's been a long -- that's been an ambition for a long time. And in many ways, we were hoping that Avito would become that. And in fact, it was. I think in the final year that we held it, I think we were due to get like a $20 million dividend stream, which was up by some, I don't know, 50% since the year before. And so with $20 million, you could fund a lot of new Vois basically. You could probably fund 4, 5 new Vois by the size of the Vois first funding round, which we took half. So if we only take half, then you could fund a lot more. But that's the -- I think that's the best structure of the kind of work that we do to have one portfolio holding sort of developed into a cash flow -- a source of cash flow through dividend streams. And we have several in the portfolio now. And maybe I think BlaBlaCar probably stands out as one that could very well become that -- it's profitable. It's a true marketplace. It could very well become that sort of source of dividend streams, which then funds not only [ OpEx ] but also investments into new areas. And in parallel to that, I think also -- I mean we do have debt today, but our financial strategy is to have no debt. And we only allow ourselves to take on debt as a bridge to an exit, so not to go raise equity to fund new investments when we sort of have good visibility on an exit in the future. So that's the background why we have that. We don't have debts to sort of juice up the leverage and to use up the returns. We think the kind of work we do will provide enough returns, and so we don't need leverage for that. So there are companies in the portfolio that are in an exit phase, which -- where the plan is very much to use those exits to retire the debt. Nothing is sold yet, and so that has to sort of be achieved first. But the ambition is to live under our financial strategy, which is not to use debt. So that's the other point of this -- like just to try to remind ourselves and you as our investors of how we -- how we'd like to and how we. Aim our ambition is to design the structure of this company to be debt free, to have a cash flow generating asset that allows us to take risk in younger companies. That balance, I think, is very, very good. And I also think the nature of our capital structure, of permanent capital is one that I think will be -- is very attractive and where we can attract talent in the form of founders and operators and investors in different sort of formats, maybe it's through funds and maybe it's through the balance sheet. But I think -- I like to think of it as an investment house that I think is very -- is modern and will basically evolve I think, exactly down the line where capital markets -- our little part of capital markets are moving the same direction as these capital markets are moving in a very general way. So that's the -- I think that's maybe hopefully a little bit more color on that last note.

The last question that we have and that will be our time for is, is really two questions. I think one is how much cash needed to support portfolio companies, but then also how are we seeing digital evolving and now we're seeing attractive investment opportunities in this market and how do we see capital allocation because of that? I would say it's probably -- one is probably the existing portfolio and another one has allocated [ to you ].

Yes. So in the existing portfolio, there's like a $10 million to $15 million cash reserve that we have that we modeled the size of it that's needed across the portfolio, which sort of takes the receivers of that cash, essentially to cash flow positive as well. So that's the size of that. And the second question was relating to...

How we're seeing digital evolving...

Sorry. Yes. So I think there's -- I mean, it's the -- the best companies are also the best companies because they don't have to raise money when there is -- when the markets are this volatile. So that's one factor. The other factor, I think, is that -- or that's one aspect of deal flow that there's an absence of that type of deal flow. So if you want to increase exposure and take advantage of volatile markets in the very best companies, you basically have to go to secondaries. And so I think our transaction in BlaBlaCar is a good example of where there may be holders who have a very high desire or need for cash, and then -- and that can get you to a pricing which is attractive enough for us to invest into. But then because on a general note, sort of where our NAV is you see some opportunities, but that's not good enough for us. We need opportunities that are priced alongside our stock. And those are pretty rare, but we endeavor to sort of pick up the ones that make as much chance as BlaBlaCar did in this quarter. So I think we have to end there, Dennis. So I hope we've answered most of the questions. And if not, please reach out to us directly, and we'll try to help on any outstanding questions. And thanks for joining, and we'll see you in 3 months in this format.

Thank you.