VEF AB (Publ)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VEF first quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, you can please press star 1 and 1 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, David Nangle, CEO. Please go ahead, Sam.

Yeah, good morning and good afternoon, everybody, and welcome again to our quarterly results conference call, this time for the first quarter of 24. I'm David Nangle, the CEO of VEF, and with me as always will be my colleague and CIO Alexis Camudos, who is with us from Rio today at a conference in Brazil. What we'll do over the next 20 minutes plus minus as per usual. I'll give you a brief rundown of the updates of our story over the last quarter, recent past. I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. And then as always, open up to Q&A at the end. The materials themselves are on our webcast or will be on our website also during the day. But getting straight into it, just from a key event of the quarter, and this is in slide two, just kind of the salient points that we think about when we think about VEF at this point in the cycle. From a NAV point of view, You know, we had up 1% in the quarter from a dollar point of view, but 9% year on year. And probably more importantly is the trend that we're now up 17% from Q4 lows. So we do like the evolution of the trend and the number of driving factors within that, whether it be micro level at a company level, but also the various aspects of market strength and multiples FX, and then most importantly, company performance. But below that 1% move was some strong moves in both directions, which Alexis will get into. But credit assets stand at a 14% plus quarter on quarter and transfer go off the back of a funding round of 36%. The other moves on the downside are more methodology evolution, but I will let Alexis double click on them as I'm sure you have some questions. Credit assets itself in the quarter had a very strong, confident quarter. They delivered their results for last year. It's all about profitability last year. This year is all about profitable growth. We like the evolution of a company from breakneck speed growth through to profitability and now controlled growth and profitable at the same time. Management's also back off the back of these strong trends, you know, on forums, at events. Once again, speaking about its IPO attentions, which is obviously key for an investment company like us at Beth. Transfergo and their funding round was a key event of the quarter. know specific it's always good to have companies having funding rounds but this is the second one that we've had in the last six months it feeds into this trend that we've been telling investors that everything that we see through the prism of beth is getting better we're not banging the table saying it's a bull market like it was in 2020 or 2021 but just incrementally every aspect of what we do and what we touch seems to be getting better and that again in q1 with transfer ago raising 10 million dollars in an up round similar to what gringo did 20 million plus in Q4 of last year. And we'll talk about that and the evolution of the portfolio as more rounds come through and that trend starts to take hold as we go through this year. The portfolio itself, the portfolio is everything for us and for you, our investors. We have a strong portfolio. It will create value over time and that will be reflected in the share price. And where we are at is we're very happy after a couple of tough years in, I guess, global macro, nevermind markets, nevermind VC and privates. Where it started this year, we've been in a bunch of board meetings on the ground, meeting our companies, sitting with them. And it's very much about talking about front foot growth strategy with these companies as opposed to 12, 18 months ago when you're talking defense, costs, balance sheets, margin optimization, etc. We're looking at portfolio revenue growth next 12 months of approximately 30%. But stronger at an average weighted gross profit level of 65% year-on-year for the next 12 months. So this is kind of key for us in terms of the portfolio growth and that feeds through to NAV and then gradually feeds through to share price as we're seeing. And then finally, it's macro. We don't like overly talk about macro, but it gets a lot of headlines globally with the US. But in our world, our markets do tend and continue to be ahead of the curve. Brazil onto its sixth rate cut since its second half 23 peak. enough positive for the macro fintech credit tasks within that and some of our other names also. But also Mexico had its first base rate cut in Q1. So the trend from a macro rate into financial services and fintech has also been a friend to Beth through Q1. Moving on to slide number three, just some key numbers. Our NAV is just shy of $450 million at the quarter and touched nearly 4.8 billion SEC. From a SEC per share, which is obviously a key indicator given our share prices in SEC, it was up to 4.558. Obviously, the SEC was weak over the quarter, so the moderate move in the US dollar of our NAV and NAV per share was stronger from a SEC point of view, up 7% quarter on quarter, hence the move to 458 SEC per share NAV from 426. Looking at our slide four on our NAV from a dollar point of view, as I say, it's touching $450 million. A long evolution of our NAV through cycle and obviously the spike in 2021 with market forces and the pullback as we got our NAV back down to right sizing in line with public market multiples and performance. But what's key for me as someone who's managing this portfolio with the team and seeing this NAV evolve as an output of what's happening in our portfolio, there's just been a gradual uptick from that December 2022 low, as I say, 17% up from that low. And kind of restarting that gradual trend that we saw back in 2015, it was a gradual up and to the right as opposed to the dramatic spike that we had in that window and dramatic pullback. So I would much more rather manage and communicate a gradual upward trend as we're seeing over the last three to five quarters. And finally, just from a market point of view, slide number five before we move on to Alexis. It's been a strong start to the year for markets. We are market dependent in many ways. Our companies, a lot of them are valued against the market, and then also we're looking to exit them into the market, market multiple. And we ourselves are obviously a listed entity and have a market share price. But markets have been strong year to date, both in terms of NASDAQ and S&P. You'll see as market participants up 10%. And the FinTech indexes, which we follow, obviously have been up similar. Obviously, the various names within there have moved to different degrees. New banks have been up strong, whereas other names have been down strong, like Paytm in India. So it's very hard to put out. These are just average numbers. And a lot of those multiples do feed through to different names in our portfolio. But overall, markets have been a tailwind for everything we do year to date and also through 2023. At this point, I'll move on to the valuation section of our portfolio NAV, and Alexis, I'll bring you in if that's okay. Great. Thanks, Dave.

Hi, everyone. Yeah, so on slide six, I'll start by just highlighting some of the key moves in the quarter. As Dave highlighted, the valuation of credit tasks moved up 14% quarter on quarter. This was largely driven by both company performance and also the performance of the listed comps that we use in the mark-to-market valuation process for credit tasks. The other large up move was Transogo. Again, Dave spoke about this, but Transogo raised the $10 million round in the quarter, which saw the mark going up 36% quarter on quarter. On the negative side, the largest one to highlight is Confeo. the valuation for Confeo was marked down 21% quarter on quarter. This reflected pretty much an equal part, the weaker comps in the quarter, and then also the impact of the valuation evolution, the methodology evolution, which we'll cover in the next slide. And then more broadly speaking, the evolution of the valuation methodology had a impact in the quarter across some of the other names. And we'll cover that in a little bit more depth later in the presentation. But moving to slide seven. On this slide, we summarized the rationale and impact of the valuation evolution, the methodology evolution that we're using in the quarter for the mark-to-market value businesses. In a nutshell, what we're doing is that with a large portion of our portfolio now either profitable or approaching break-even, our valuation methodology has evolved to incorporate the additional data points that will drive the valuation of these businesses going forward. So as we've communicated, a big portion of our NAV now has reached a place of maturity and sustainable growth. That is The large companies are still growing into very large opportunities, but are very focused on unit economics. They're approaching or have reached steady state gross margins, and they're balancing the growth of the business with profits, ultimately solving for break even so that they're in control of their destiny. For these businesses that have reached sustainable growth and this level of maturity, we've become we've begun moving the valuation methodology to incorporate multiples further down the income statement, in particular, gross profit. As such, our valuation methodology improves with more relevant data points to value the businesses. This approach is aligned with market feedback about valuation from other growth stage investors that are likely to participate in next pricing the equity in these companies. And it's something that we've done naturally for Creditas and TransferGo over the course of 2023. And now in this quarter, we've done it for Confeo, JustPay, Solfacil and Nebo. At this point, over 90% of our market valued portfolio is valued using this methodology. And overall, we feel this results in a more robust valuation that reflects more relevant data points available to us to value these businesses the transition did prove a headwind to now the evolution of the quarter as some of the companies are still approaching steady state gross margins but as long as our companies continue to make progress on gross margins this gap will close in the coming quarters our goal in the valuation process working alongside our auditors is always to provide a true and fair value of the portfolio to the market with the highest probability of portfolio events to occur at or above ANAV. So moving on to page eight, slide eight, we show a summary of the portfolio. Of the 14 portfolio companies, 10 are marked to market representing 87% of ANAV and four based on latest transactions representing 13% of ANAV. You can see the breakdown of this on this page. The large portfolio company where there was a change in methodology was TransferGo because of the funding round that happened in the quarter. And you'll also see on this slide that we show that of the large portfolio companies that are on a mark-to-market valuation methodology, all of them incorporate revenue and gross profit multiples. On slide nine, just running through some of the key NAB and portfolio performance metrics for the quarter. As many of you will remember, in 2022, our portfolio moved to mark-to-market quickly to reflect this new environment that we were entering. What's notable in this quarter, as Dave has mentioned, is that as the environment improves and companies begin to raise rounds again, we're starting to see the portfolio shift back towards the latest transaction, which is a welcome shift. The latest transaction value portfolio increased from 7% of the portfolio to 13% in this quarter from the previous quarter. And importantly, in aggregate, this shift is happening above our NAV mark, driven by the bigger, more important companies in our portfolio. In terms of growth, the portfolio continues to execute well, expecting 30% or so next 12 months top line growth on a sustainable basis. And 95% of our portfolio are now at or can reach breakeven with existing cash position. And an additional data point related to this is a bigger portion of our portfolio now is actually at breakeven, specifically given credit announcement of reaching breakeven at the end of last quarter. And the remaining 5% who are not able to reach break even given existing cash have 18 months of runway. On slide 10, just running through the NAV bridge, showing what the biggest contributors are to the change in NAV quarter on quarter. The main positive forces driving the NAV growth in the quarter is the portfolio performance as our companies continue to execute well. The other positive impact is from the TransferGo transaction, which drove the $10 million new transaction bucket within the latest transaction valuations on this slide. On the negative front, the largest headwind came from the change in multiple bucket, which incorporates the valuation methodology evolution down the income statement mentioned before. If we isolate the impact of the valuation methodology evolution accounted for $25 million of the $24 million headwind in the NADN's bucket. FX is generally a small headwind from the depreciation of the RAI. And the change in corporate cash reflects our OPEX, which is partly offset by the portion of our unhedged bond and the translation impact of the fixed depreciation of the quarter. Overall, this was a positive quarter with portfolio growing at a healthy rate contributing to shareholder value growth whilst refining our valuation process for a maturing portfolio proved the headwind. We see this as fine tuning of our portfolio multiples with incremental data. Dave, back to you.

Super. Thanks, Alexis. From my side, to wrap up with a few slides before we open up to questions, first and foremost are credit tasks, still our biggest and most important asset. And what you've seen over with the charts on slide 11 is a company which deliberately and focused its mind to reduce growth, to reduce the balance sheet side of the story, to really focus on the income side of the story. And what you saw, as I said, over the last few quarters is a company raising its pricing, raising its margin, getting costs down, asset quality starting to turn in line with the cycle, and all of that has led to the gradual trends. We've seen gross profit back to steady state margins of 40% to 45%, and net income going from the size burn numbers back in 2021 to what was operationally breakeven in December of last year. You roll that into the start of 2024 at Creditas, and it simply had a strong start to the year. and we're starting to see that growth coming through and you'll see it in the coming quarters and i like to see 2024 as the return of growth here for companies like credit task confio and a couple of others that are in that more cyclical balance sheets heavy business as opposed to some of our clear structural growth stories like gringo and just pay which have been growing at a 50 plus minus clip through the last couple of years but the confio the credit houses are starting to put the foot back down on growth at balance sheet level to marry what is now a very efficient and fit for purpose income statement. And that also then feeds through to the confidence at founder and company level to be out there again, talking to investors at forums, Sergio himself, fuel seals on Bloomberg, giving an update on the story and talking about his IPO intentions again. So we're back at that point in the cycle for what is, as I say, our most important asset. And then to repeat this point from slide 13 around transfer goes $10 million funding round. In itself, it was obviously important because we like our companies being A, well-funded, but B, raising more incremental capital from quality investors at higher valuations either to the last funding round, but more importantly to our NAV mark because there's a lot of scrutiny and focus on NAV marks for companies like ours in the market. When our companies do raise capital at or above, it's a welcome sign and one of many we're seeing at the moment. I think the read across is as important uh for the broader ecosystem it is the second company in our top five companies to raise capital in the last six months and to do so at a higher uh level of valuation versus last or versus our nav mark and also allows the company to market more and share some information that we maybe haven't been able to share before like they did deliver 50 revenue growth last year and have best class margins in that part of the sub segment of fintech with 80 gross margins so they are also a profitable company plus minus depending on the month or a year today so nice read across 13 of our portfolio is now based on a transaction evaluation we like that evolution as much as we like the valuation side of what we do on the market model and how deep we get in it the evolution back towards the transaction base is a natural evolution of where we're at in the market cycle and on the share price and what we're doing on the irpr front you know What we've seen, this is slide 14, is a share price which has lagged and been hanging around 170, 180 a share for the last, let's call it, six months. Of late, in line with everything we're seeing from macro and market, then into the prism of our portfolio and performance, the share price is starting to react, which is generally what it tends to do, and then it can gap up quite quickly, as we've seen in the past. So over two-second share. at this point, but still a long cry away from our NAV of 458 at the end of the quarter, still a good 50% plus distance to that. So, you know, on slide 15, you know, these are the things that we continue to communicate to you that we're doing to try and close that gap because our goal as stewards of this company and your capital is to drive that NAV for share up and to the right and close that gap and discount from share price to NAV to as close as possible, if not a premium, as we saw in the last cycle. And what we're seeing, I guess the key points from this for me is just coverage. We're big fans of the investment banking community that works with us and our Swedish investment banks, many of which are on this call. We added Jefferies to that list. That's our first global bulge bracket bank covering our stock and also a bit more global reach from our stock out there. Also, the transparency continues. You see with credit tasks and their quarterly results, you see with TransferGo and the PR they put in around some of the information. around their capital raise. But also a lot of our companies are getting out there again. Confio and Creditas were in the US at a Goldman Sachs conference in February. They'll be at a B of A conference in May in New York again. So our best assets are out there talking their story, which effectively is talking our story to the broader investment community. And that's the only good thing for BEF. And as Alexis communicated, the growth is coming through again. It's more reasonable than last cycle, but it's profitable growth. It's more mature growth. And we're looking at 30% portfolio weighted revenue growth over the next 12 months. I guess the final point is probably the most important around the balance sheet. This is a key year for us in terms of exits and getting cash in this year into next year. It's something we're focusing on very much. And I guess what I can say to the tune of that at the moment is that we're more confident today than we were three months ago and then even more confident six months ago. The work streams that we have ongoing within our portfolio to get cash in at the right valuation, mind you, Are going in the right direction. Our confidence is higher than has been in the recent past that will do something this year And second last slide slide 16 just from a capital position point of view We ended a quarter with seventeen point nine million dollars of cash capital on bond sheet We expect to end the year just north of eleven million dollars Comfortable for this year comes one to next year. We are not overly invested with that invested a dollar and year to date and but very much aware of our capital position, aware of our net debt. Hence, we rolled the bond out to 2026 at the back end of last year. That was the first move in balance sheet management. That gives us the comfort zone to operate and then working on the exits on the other side and working on the share price. As I say, the work streams are moving in a positive direction, which gives us that broader comfort zone to work within. And then just to wrap up, what I would say, and this hasn't really changed much from last quarter and didn't really need to, The NAV tailwinds are in place, and that's key. NAV goes the right direction and the share price generally follows, as well as including that discount to NAV. But we're adding value on a quarter-by-quarter basis through the prism of our portfolio and through our NAV. And we're seeing the growth and the expected growth coming through. And if anything, from an analyst's point of view, we're starting to up some of the forecasts in our portfolio, a bit like the street is upping forecasts in some public companies as they got behind in the down drag of the last cycle. We are optimistic about our portfolio. How could we not be having lived with them in the up cycle through to 21, but also haven't seen them in the last couple of years being very resilient in the face of a lot of headwinds. So credit us in Confio, cyclical, but still structural companies with lots of growth potential back on the front foot with growth. Structural classic growth stories like JustPay, Gringo, putting the foot down in growth and names like TransferGo raising more capital for growth. So it does feel good at that top end 90% plus NAV part of the portfolio. You know, the geographic point of view, I've talked about this before, but we do like the aspect of being long Brazil cyclical growth into a falling rate environment. India is still the strongest structural growth story on the planet, and we're long there with just pay plus others. And then Mexico increasingly is becoming a very real U.S. nearshoring story, which is good for the economy, good for macro, and that generally feeds through to the SME. For us, that's confio. It can only be a tailwind for what they're doing. The portfolio itself, we use the word maturity a lot in this quarter, but I hate for you to think that our companies are mature like a state entity or like a utility. They're mature in terms of they're reaching steady state gross margins or they're reaching break-even in some points. but the growth is still there to go. And we're only starting to put that foot down in growth again in some of our bigger names, which is exciting. And then the venture industry is improving. That comes through in what we're seeing most importantly for our companies getting funded, Grings on Transfer Go. And then on the other side, the exit market, which is really starting to open up. It was dormant 12, 18 months ago, and you're starting to see those wheels turn again, and that gives us confidence that we can do what we need to do. On the last point, which is really around balance sheet strengthening and exits, and also working that discount NAV. We're starting to see the share price catch a bit, which is quite nice at this point in the cycle. I will stop there. Operator, I'm happy to open up to questions from the audience.

Thank you, sir. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Once again, please press star 1 and 1 for any questions. We are now going to proceed with our first question. And the questions come from the line of liners. from D&B. Please ask a question. Your line is opened.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I'd like to start with a broader question here. And you alluded to this. I mean, clearly the industry is improving. Markets are getting better. Are there any sort of external factors missing for exits to take off? Or is this more a question of time and work, if you will?

Hey, Linus. Look, I think it's time, patience. You know, when you're talking about exit markets, you're talking, for us, it's M&A, it's IPO, And then it's into the secondary sale market. I think in the IPO market, we are all eyes on the US. But my feedback from being there last week, talking to heads of ECM for US, is the US market is open for business on the IPO front. And then once that normal market stuff, when that starts to trickle down into other markets as risk appetite improves, obviously Europe is behind the US. And then some emerging markets behind that too. So a bit of patience, a bit of time, more deals being done, especially in the big boy markets. But then you've got anomalies like India, which is a hot IPO market, and we're long three assets in India. So the IPO market is something that gives us confidence, at least the direction of travel in it, and obviously watch this space. And then M&A has been constant, but I guess it's just getting a bit more active now, a bit more confidence across buyers and opportunities and openness from sellers to get out there and sell their businesses. So I think it's a bit of time, a bit of patience, but what's important and what I keep on communicating is that quarter on quarter, everything we see is just getting incrementally that bit better. And that continues into Q2.

Great. That's very helpful. And then secondly, I wanted to ask on if you could perhaps help us break down sort of the drivers between, I think you said 65% gross profit growth, your beer, if there's anything in particular coming through in that number.

Alexis, do you want to grab that? And is there anything you want to double-click on where the outliers lie, not 65%, or we just want to keep it as a generic number?

Yeah, I mean, I think, broadly speaking, so this evolution and valuation methodology that we've done, we're kind of doing it as companies are approaching steady state margins. So there's still a bit of, like, gross margins expansion that's happening at the portfolio company and that's driving that higher rate of growth for growth gross profit i'd say it's pretty broadly across all of these large portfolio companies um uh and it's not you know particularly focused on one name i'd say it's pretty consistently high across all of these names all right thank you so much those are my questions

Super. Thanks, Linus.

Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Karrick from Carnegie. Please ask your question.

Hi, Jen. Thanks for the presentation and for Thank you. More questions? So maybe just if we would start on this evaluation or evolution, rather, of the evaluation methodology, should we expect to see the same kind of negative effect when you start adding multiples even further down the P&L, like if we start to see it on EBIT or anything like that? Or was this more of a one-time when we go from sales to gross profits?

Thanks, Herman. Alexis, do you want to grab it?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Herman. Yeah, I think this change that we've made, I think, reflects how we feel the portfolio is evolving in that the companies are still very, very focused on growth. And as Dave mentioned, they're still growing into very large opportunities. So they're really optimizing gross profit and they're but they're balancing that with solving for break even and achieving revenue growth. We haven't, I still, I feel like we're still quite a long way away from any of our portfolio absolute profits because they've reached that size whereby, you know, they don't feel that there's a lot of growth left. So I can't see us moving further down the income statement on the horizon. It obviously depends how quickly our portfolio grow into their opportunities. But right now, we're still quite a long way away from, you know, really, really maturing and optimizing absolute EBIT or net income.

And maybe, Herman, just to add a point to that, I wouldn't, I know it's what we've communicated in this quarter, obviously, the move down the income statement has led to a pullback in a couple of names in terms of valuation, but I wouldn't naturally associate net you know, a move down the income statement to a negative move in valuation. It could actually be the opposite. And if anything, maybe we move the touch early, arguably discussing with our auditors. But then the flip side of that is that you get the benefit of the 65% expected gross profit growth coming through over the next 12 months versus the 30% expected revenue growth. So it kind of swings and roundabouts in timing how you do these things.

Got it. Thanks. And would it be right to think that when the companies where you're still seeing expanding GP margins, when they reach what you think is more of a steady state, this shift from looking at sales multiple to GP multiples would be quite neutral. Another way of saying is that you don't see your holdings having lower GP margins over time than the peer set you're looking at.

Yeah, exactly. And the more accurate the peer set, the more close to the gross margins for our portfolio companies, that maturity will be to them, these listed companies. But yeah, given that our companies are tech first, fintech, typically they'll have very similar gross margins, if not the potential to have slightly higher gross margins than some of their peers.

Great. That's very helpful. Then the second topic I wanted to touch upon was a little bit continuation of the exit topic. I mean, it's quite clear that you really like the portfolio you have, but you're looking to increase liquidity a little bit. Could you give us some sense for, are you feeling like you're missing out on any opportunities currently in the market and Given the NAV discounts you have, is it even an alternative to look at new investments before you would resume buybacks?

Thanks, Herman. I'll start, Alex, and feel free to layer in. It's a busy, ongoing conversation at FEPP, but we sit down with some of our bigger investors, with our board, so something we're very cognizant of. I think, first and foremost, we're happy with our portfolio. You don't want to sell your best assets, so there's obviously a attention there in what we have and what's liquid or fairly liquid within the prism of a private portfolio. Hence, we've got a number of work streams and we look to act appropriately with the right asset at the right time and the right market price, as opposed to having to force anything, which is what we really worked hard over the last couple of years to do, hence the rollover of the bond. Then you kind of flip that down to, you know, if you had an extra dollar in the house today, what would you do with it? well, you probably paid on your debt first and foremost, but then you also look at your equity as two ways of adding value, reducing leverage. And it's very hard to look at anything beyond them, at least initially. But then pulling that back, it doesn't stop us on the day-to-day pipeline work because that's the bread and butter of what we do. And finding the next Tinkoff, EasyCo, Creditas, JustPay is what investors want us to do. And that's ongoing. I have to say, Alexis is in Brazil this week and I was in Mexico a few weeks back. The lads were in India. So it continues, the pipeline build-up. And maybe 12 months ago, I would have said that we weren't missing out in the markets because the markets were very dry. Best-in-class companies were under the covers. Some of the worst ones were raised and you didn't want to touch them. But there wasn't a lot of activity out there, not the kind that we like. I guess year-to-date, we are starting to see some activity and we're starting to see maybe the first company or two that If we had additional capital, we may lean in to go deeper and potentially invest. I think we would invest, but we're actually getting back to that point in the cycle. By no means is it busy, by no means are we seeing 50 quality companies and we're missing a great opportunity, but we do feel it is coming and hence the work that we're doing to get our shop and our balance sheet in order so that we and our shareholders can take part in this next part of the cycle.

That's super helpful. Thank you very much.

We have no further questions at this time. I will hand back to you for closing remarks. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you, Opera, and thank you, everybody, as always, for dialing in, for listening in, and for following our story. As always, we're here to answer any follow-up questions that you have. Myself, Alexis, Cahal on the IR front. But thank you for your support. Thank you for following us. We hope to continue to deliver incremental positive news as we go throughout this year. And in the meantime, you guys have a great day. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.