Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kinnevik Q4 Report 2023 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Georgi Ganev, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Kinnevik's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023. I'm Georgi Ganev, Kinnevik's Chief Executive Officer, and with me today is our Chief Financial Officer, Samuel Sjöström, and our Director of Corporate Communications, Torun Litzén. With this presentation today, we're closing the books on 2023. On today's call, we will walk you through the key events and valuation changes for the fourth quarter and follow up on our progress against the priorities and expectations we set out at the beginning of 2023. We will also take the opportunity to talk about the future, the new phase Kinnevik is now entering into, and what that means in terms of our strategic focus and capital allocation. Finally, we will lay out our more near-term priorities for 2024, and as usual, end with a Q&A.
Let's first take a look at the fourth quarter on page four. Our net asset value amounted to SEK 48.2 billion. That's down 5% in the fourth quarter and 9% for the full year. Samuel will guide you through the development of the valuations of our private companies in just a few minutes. In a quarter that was relatively quiet from an investment activity perspective, we were glad to welcome SoftBank as a new co-investor in TravelPerk. SoftBank invested in an extension of the company's 2023 funding round, which we anchored with our investment in Q2. We're pleased to see another strong international investor enter the company shareholder base, and we're encouraged by TravelPerk's continued strong performance coming out of the pandemic.
They achieved 70% revenue growth in 2023 and 90% gross profit growth, and the annualized booking volumes are approaching $2 billion. In Q4, we were also pleased to see Temasek join Aira's funding round as an anchor investor. Meanwhile, H2 Green Steel raised another EUR 300 million in equity with participation from Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. The company has now raised a total of EUR 6.5 billion in financing, including EUR 4.2 billion in debt, a remarkable achievement and testament to the company's ambition and potential. Lastly, we also supported the announced merger between Oda and Mathem, as we believe the combined entity will provide an improved financial and operational outlook relative to the standalone opportunities.
That said, I will now directly hand over to Samuel, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide some more detail on our private valuations before I cover the 2023 full year and our future plans.
Thanks, Georgi, and good morning, everyone. This quarter ends the second year of a turbulent period in venture and growth investing. In our valuations this quarter, we've sought to enter 2024 with a prudent base from which the performance of our strongest businesses, rather than the struggling ones, can be reflected in our future NAV development. On page six, we've laid out the drivers of our fair value adjustments in the private portfolio this quarter. From a sector perspective, our valuation changes in Q4 followed a similar pattern to previous quarters, namely poor performance in e-commerce, caution towards valuation levels in value-based care, and strong performance and increased portfolio weight in software and virtual care. The quarter's write-down comes from three main factors.
Firstly, currencies impacted the private portfolio negatively, with SEK 1.7 billion in the quarter, with the dollar down 7% and the euro down 3%. At the end of Q4, 63% of the private portfolio was carried in dollars and 30% was carried in euros. Secondly, we have taken down our valuation multiples by 7%, despite public benchmarks expanding by 8%, in part because of an intentional and broad downward push across the portfolio and in part because of the aforementioned caution in value-based care. During the quarter, we've also had several transactions occurring at or around our Q3 marks. In many cases, this leads to us keeping valuations unchanged from Q3 and stalling for a quarter despite the upswing in markets in late 2023 and despite continued investee growth and profitability improvements.
In Q4, we saw transactions validating our valuation levels in 22% of the private portfolio by value, and during the full year 2023, that number was closer to 50%. And then thirdly, we have sought to take out the wider margin of safety to our company's own plans and expectations this quarter. In businesses that had a tough 2023, such as our Nordic e-commerce businesses, we have been particularly harsh. Despite these challenged businesses weighing on our NAV, we saw 60% revenue growth in our private portfolio on average in 2023. That is a growth rate around four times higher than the average of our company's publicly traded comparable businesses.... Wrapping up 2023, we have also sought to clean up in the long tail of our portfolio that inevitably has been built up over the last five to six years.
In this quarter, we're writing off our Monese investment, we're writing down our Omnipresent investment towards immateriality, and we are doing further write-offs in smaller sub-100 million SEK investments. Now, these revisions are highly influenced by us intending not to deploy further capital into these businesses, and us wanting to start 2024 with lighter feet, rather than these revisions strictly stemming from developments at the individual company level. So to summarize, Q4 was a quarter of significant currency headwinds, increased prudence on multiples and investment capex costs, e-commerce continuing to weigh on NAV, but software and virtual care delivering on expectations, and finally, more and more external validations supporting our valuations.
While the headline number this quarter is clearly disappointing, with this quarter's set of valuations and with our aim to continue to increase transparency around our companies and our valuation assessments, we are confident that we head into 2024 of less uncertainty, higher potential, and with an entry point setting us up for a return to strong NAV growth. On the next few pages, I would like to revisit the three categories of businesses that share valuation commonalities, and that have been the most important from a valuations perspective during 2023. They are the same ones that I highlighted earlier and that we gave more color on last quarter, and I suggest we start with the most important one, namely software and virtual care.
With that, we are on page seven and on our five largest virtual care and software businesses, Pleo, Cedar, Spring, TravelPerk, and Mews. This pillar of ours now represents almost 40% of our private portfolio, up from 29% at the beginning of the year. In Q4, our Swedish krona valuations of these investments were flat on average, despite currency headwinds and multiple contraction. Public peers, meanwhile, saw their multiples expand by 10% to 15%. Now, the gap to these peers this quarter is primarily due to transactions validating last quarter's marks, such as TravelPerk's recent funding round. It is also coming from our aforementioned ambition to enter 2024 with a prudent base that allows for strong fair value development as these companies continue to perform in 2024.
On average, these companies doubled revenues and more than doubled gross profit in 2023 on a value-weighted basis . In 2024, our careful expectations have them growing by around 50% to 60% after a strong finish to 2023. Profitability is expected to improve, with EBITDA loss margins of around 15% on average in 2024, spanning break-even to -30%, and typically correlating inversely with the pace of growth. In this quarter, we value these businesses at 9.5x revenues or 16x gross profit on average. This is a valuation level that is in line with public, fast-growing software companies on an MTM basis, with our companies growing twice and sometimes three times faster and showing as strong or stronger Rule of Forty metrics, as it's often referred to.
Naturally, Pleo, Cedar, Spring, TravelPerk, and mews are companies we support improving profitability in a substantial way. But as we've said before, more importantly, we are insisting on them not overcompensating and unnecessarily compromising on their longer-term growth potential. We deployed SEK 1.9 billion into this group of businesses during 2023, and we're continuing to try to unlock opportunities to invest more capital to help accelerate the share of our portfolio these businesses represent, up towards 50% of our private portfolio already in 2024. Moving on then to the next category, one which has come further in shifting from high growth to near-term profitability during the last two years, but where there is less guidance these days as to how the public market would value these companies. And that is our two large value-based care delivery businesses, and that means we're on page eight.
In Q4, we're taking down our Swedish krona fair values by 24% at VillageMD and 19% at Cityblock. This is coming from two shared reasons and for two company-specific reasons. The first shared reason is simple, and that is the powerful dollar headwind in the quarter. The second shared reason is that we're applying an increased level of caution in how much weight we place on valuation levels where delisted peers used to trade at. Because as you will recall, we used to have three highly relevant public comps for Village and City. One Medical, Oak Street Health, and Signify. But One Medical then got bought out by Amazon at around 3 to 3.5x revenues.
Oak Street was bought out by CVS, also at around 3.5x revenues, and the same CVS also acquired a faster-growing Signify at around 7x revenues. These three value-based care provider businesses consistently traded at material premiums to more traditional healthcare providers, also when adjusting for growth and profitability. This was largely due to the underlying secular trend of U.S. healthcare moving from fee-for-service to provider risk-sharing and value-based care. Less comparable traditional healthcare businesses have traded fairly steady since the buyouts of our value-based care benchmarks. But these data points are now soon a year old. Throughout 2023, we have sought to take down the valuation levels of our companies carefully relative to traditional care provider businesses, and that goes for Q4 as well. Now, these two common factors are exacerbated by two company-specific reasons...
Firstly, at Village, we're being more cautious in our valuation, considering the lack of influence we have over this business under Walgreens controlling shareholding. We have faith in both Walgreens and Village, but we are used to being an active and influential owner, and the discomfort of being a passenger with limited influence over outcomes is what pushes the valuation down another notch as we head into 2024. Secondly, at Cityblock, the company is exiting certain less profitable contracts and markets. This bears a 9% negative impact on our revenue outlook this quarter, which passes through onto our valuation. With these measures, City is expected to grow by around 40% in 2024, and we see them breaking even in 2025.
This is a bit later than originally envisaged, due to the step down in scale that the market exits entail, but this path remains funded with a large buffer. The third category of businesses that I wanted to cover is e-commerce. Now, these companies have weighed on our NAV during 2022 and 2023 due to repeating revisions to financial expectations in an uncertain market and ensuing multiple contraction. As a result, they have put a big dent in our overall performance, and they now make up a much lower share of our private portfolio. In this quarter, we're writing down Instabee by an additional 27%, rendering a fair value write down on 19% on our aggregate equity and convertible investment.
As we talked about last quarter, the company has had difficulties navigating a tough Swedish market, and our outlook for 2024 remains bleak and does not factor in any improvements in the company's environment. As a result, we're also taking down our valuation multiple and valuing the company at a meaningful discount to public peers. Moving on to our online grocers, the merger of Oda and Mathem creates a stronger outlook than the two standalone companies. However, circumstances are still challenging, and we're not expecting any meaningful improvements during 2024 when we calibrate our valuation. In the quarter, we're taking our underlying valuation down by around 10%, and the change in the fair value of our investment is more drastic due to weakened Norwegian krone and anticipated dilutive effects from the merger.
I should note that part of these effects may be reversed in the next quarter when all technical details of the merger have been finally concluded. So with that, I'd like to end with the full NAV development in the quarter, also considering our public investments in net cash position. That means we're on page 10. So again, we are taking down the fair value of our private portfolio by SEK 3.5 billion. Adding the SEK 0.3 billion net invested in the quarter, the private portfolio comes down by SEK 3.2 billion to SEK 28.2 billion at end of Q4. Recursion's share price continued to swing up and down, ending the quarter up 29% in dollars, and GFG had another soft quarter.
Tele2 was up SEK 0.8 billion when adding back SEK 0.5 billion in dividends received and posted a set of solid results day before yesterday, with a slight increase in their proposed dividend. All in all, NAV was down 5% in the quarter to SEK 48 billion, of which SEK 7.9 billion being our net cash position. And Georgi will get back to what this financial strength means for our capital deployment ambitions over the coming years. But to sum up, after two difficult years, in this quarter, we faced some significant FX headwinds and consciously increased our level of caution towards multiples and investee expectations. And we ended the year with the valuations of almost half our private portfolio validated by other investors.
While this quarter's negative valuation adjustments do not necessarily affect where we believe the value of our portfolio will be in a year or two from now, I strongly believe that they will help ensure making the return to a positive trend a lot more clear to everyone in 2024. With that, I'd like to hand it back over to Georgi.
Thank you, Samuel. So let's reflect on 2023, covering our capital allocation, how our companies have performed, and how this performance has informed our expectations for the year to come, starting on page 12. As Samuel said, 2023 was a very challenging year, and several companies have not met our expectations. This has been reflected in the weak development of our net asset value. On the other hand, we have made use of this environment to enter 2024 with a stronger portfolio. We have doubled down in our highest conviction companies, taking advantage of the market slump to instigate transactions and investing a record amount into secondary equity. We made a limited number of new investments in our focus sectors, and we have held back deployment into companies where our conviction is lacking.
We also used this transitionary year to clean up our portfolio, exiting or writing off six businesses. Obviously, the most notable example of this is Babylon, which was unable to fund its continued growth, resulting in the liquidation of the company. While some failures are to be expected in venture and growth investment, this result is highly regrettable and something we have spent significant time reflecting on and learning from. With our focused capital deployment amounting to SEK 4.9 billion and SEK 2.3 billion in inflows from exits and dividends from Tele2, we entered 2024 with a stronger and more concentrated portfolio, underpinned by a robust SEK 7.9 billion net cash position. On the next page, we have provided a breakdown of our capital allocation during the year...
The lion's share, nearly 40%, was deployed into our software and virtual care businesses, in line with our priority to increase exposure to these companies. SEK 1.5 billion were deployed into more opportunistic secondary acquisition, most notably our SEK 1.1 billion secondary investment in Spring Health. The transaction showcases our ability to accrete ownership also in fully funded, soon profitable companies at attractive valuations in the current markets. Another SEK 1.5 billion were invested in other performing and emerging businesses. We then also supported our struggling e-commerce companies in the down cycle with SEK 0.7 billion, and allocated only SEK 0.1 billion to protect value in our more challenged businesses. On page 14, you can see part of the reason why we have concentrated our capital deployment into software and virtual care.
As Samuel mentioned earlier, these are the fastest-growing businesses in the portfolio. The overall portfolio grew revenues on average by over 60% in 2023, which is again 4 times their public peers. Looking into 2024, some of our companies will continue the shift towards profitability at some expense of growth. We also expect portfolio growth to continue to be weighed down by a softer e-commerce market and maturing VillageMD. All in all, we expect the private portfolio to grow around 40% on average in 2024, but that is before taking into consideration our continued efforts to rebalancing the portfolio to our highest potential, typically faster-growing businesses. We also aim to add more fast-growing businesses to the portfolio. Now, turning to page 15 and the evolution of our private portfolio's financial strength.
Compared to 18 months ago, our portfolio has undergone a significant shift in runway profile. This has been achieved through a combination of investee profitability improvements, new financing, and improved portfolio concentration towards our stronger businesses. At the end of 2023, over 70% of the private portfolio by value was invested in companies that are either profitable or funded to break even. The equivalent a year ago was 25%. Meanwhile, companies representing 14% of our private portfolio by value are likely to raise new capital during 2024. This is not by any means, an abnormal number. Having a portion of our young and fast-growing portfolio looking to raise capital in the near future at any given time is to be expected. With the portfolio growing at healthy levels and clear improvements in profitability profile, clusters are now emerging more clearly in our portfolio.
On page 16, we have outlined two important clusters in 2024 and beyond. Firstly, our so-called core growth companies, Pleo, Cityblock, Spring Health, TravelPerk, and Mews. We expect these businesses to have a revenue growth of over 50% in 2024, with strong gross margins. These companies have gained share of our growth portfolio, now representing over 40% of its value. In 2024, we expect this share to increase through both value appreciation and capital deployment, and have them on a path to represent more than half of our growth portfolio by value at the end of 2024. We also have a set of newer ventures such as Agreena, Aira, and Enveda. These companies are much earlier in their growth journey, but are run by strong and diverse teams, addressing large markets and solving some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
We are carefully monitoring the progress of these companies. We have strong partners that share our conviction and priorities as owners, and we believe each of them has significant return potential over the next five years. Provided they meet our expectations, we expect to deploy a meaningful amount of capital into these businesses over 2024 and 2025. With, of course, exception of H2 Green Steel, which is fully funded. These two clusters of companies already constitute a much larger share of our portfolio value than they did a year ago, and going forward, we expect to continue concentrating the portfolio more towards these businesses. And I think this provides a good bridge to move to the final section of this presentation, focused on what lies ahead for Kinnevik as we enter a new phase of our journey, starting on page 18.
First, let's take a brief look in the rearview mirror. In 2018, we set out to make Kinnevik a leading growth investment firm. Since then, our portfolio has undergone a forceful and fundamental transformation. We have distributed close to SEK 75 billion in value to shareholders through spin-offs. We've paid out SEK 6.5 billion in cash dividend and made divestments of over SEK 30 billion. In the last six years, we've invested a total of SEK 27 billion into more than 30 new companies, and in parallel, we've also strengthened our cash position to accommodate for the risk-reward profile of our new portfolio, improving from SEK 1 billion in net debt to almost SEK 8 billion in net cash as we end 2023.
As a result, our growth portfolio today constitutes more than 70% of our total portfolio value, and we're entering 2024 with a strong balance sheet, enabling us to seize opportunities over the coming years. Moving to page 19. While 2023 has been a year of transition focused on profitability improvements, we have spent the years since 2018 ramping up our portfolio. Not only have we allocated capital at a high pace, but we also spent significant time building relationships with founders and co-investors, establishing a strong, strong track record, network, and a brand within our focus sectors. This has created an exceptional platform, which, coupled with strong cash position, empowers us to continue building our growth portfolio and to make selected investment in the most exciting companies in our focus sectors.
In this new phase we're now entering, we expect the portfolio to maintain its current size and number of investees as we add companies at a slower pace and begin to realize exits at a higher pace. We also expect a slightly higher share of listed assets and that the value will be more concentrated towards a handful of companies. With more tempered capital deployment in relation to the size of our growth portfolio, our future value creation will be more driven by the performance of our larger businesses, while capital deployment and financing rounds will be less influential. On page 20, which I would like to end on, we have concluded our outlook for 2024. Our focus will be on supporting our key company's operational performance and on increasing our portfolio concentration further.
Capital allocation will be vibrant but disciplined, and over the coming three years, we expect to deploy between SEK 3 billion to SEK 5 billion net per year on average, depending on the opportunities we see in and outside our portfolio. This, in combination with our well-funded portfolio, will enable us to execute our strategy even if exit markets stay dormant over the next years. The bar for new investments remains as high as ever, and we will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to find the best investment cases out there. While we started our journey six years ago, building a portfolio larger from scratch, we're now entering this new phase in a very different position. We have an attractive private growth portfolio of around 35 businesses with many exceptional founders, worth around SEK 30 billion in total.
We have a strong cash position, an experienced and diverse team, and a clear strategy. And I believe this makes us well-positioned for the long-term value creation, and that this long-term potential will again be reflected in our net asset value already in 2024. Finally, I would like to thank all our shareholders for your continued support as we embark on the next phase of Kinnevik's journey. And with that said, we are now ready to answer your questions. So operator, please open up for Q&A.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to 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. We will now go to your first question. One moment, please. And your first question comes from the line of Linus Sigurdsson from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and good morning. So starting off, you take down your portfolio values quite substantially here in the quarter. Is there any way you could sort of quantify how much of this is driven by, say, less positive fundamentals than you saw one quarter ago, as opposed to sort of wanting to rebase expectations, if you will?
Hey, Linus, Samuel here. I would say it like this: it's more our scrutiny of our investees' expectations that is changing rather than our investees' expectations on next year that is changing. So again, as I said in the opening remarks, we're trying to widen the margin of safety here, also drawing on what we've learned from the last two years in terms of misses and beats on expectations.
Thanks. That's very helpful. And then, second, and lastly, you say that 14% of the portfolio will need new funding during the year. Is there any color you can give on sort of how many of these you expect to, say, participate in? And if there's anything you can say about the timeline of those transactions.
I'll take that, that one as well, Linus. I'd say the absolute majority of that sits in companies that we're already sort of calibrating our participation in. It's relatively back-ended towards the end of the year, I would say, so we're not expecting too much to come through in Q1 and Q2, other than processes that are already initiated.
And just to add, Linus-
Okay
I mean, as you see on the slide, the average holding period is a little bit more than a year, so they're a relatively new investment for us. The conviction is high, but we also are very clear that they need to meet their milestones and their plans for us to have further conviction, of course.
Okay, thanks. I'll get back in line.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Andreas Joelsson from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first one on the comment on entering a new phase. It sounds a little bit like what you plan to do already in 2023. And if I look at the investments you have made and split them into the core growth companies, the newer ventures and other, it's fairly evenly split during 2023. So I'm just a little bit curious on, can you sort of confirm that that split will be different from 2024 and onwards? And also on the core growth companies, you say that you will invest, allocate, more, but I guess they are not in need of capital injection. So does that mean that you will increase your your ownership in those type of companies?
My second question is, you have a net cash position, and if we add potential dividends from Tele2 for the coming years, it does not really cover the net investment level in your outlook using the midpoint of that range. Just curious on your view on that. Thanks.
Okay. Hi, Andreas, this is Georgi. I will take the first question, and I'll hand over the second to Samuel. So absolutely, you're right. We talk about the new phase that we have actually already entered. 2023 is, as we say, a transitional year. So given the kind of tough environment and the shift to profitability and some cleanups, it's basically a lot about preparation for the phase that for 2024 and onwards. We believe that the categories that we have started to talk about will be very much like the one we will continue to talk about.
That said, we also understand that the more concentration in the portfolio we will have to a handful of, let's say, 10 companies, the more we need to increase transparency around those businesses and maybe discuss a little bit less of the ones in the long tail. So I think you can expect that our communication from 2024, Q1 and onwards, will be slightly different. But you will not be surprised, because what we have done in 2023 is actually part of entering this new phase. And then when it comes to capital allocation, yes, as we continue to rebalance our portfolio and we kind of double down in what we see potential category winners, we would like to invest in these companies, either through attractive secondary opportunities, or if they are, entering some transformational business development.
That could be an M&A or a more, you know, ambitious market expansions, et cetera, that require new capital. But that will then be from a position of strength. That's what we're saying. And I think that we have, with 2023 behind us, some proof points that we have been even more disciplined in our capital allocation to companies where we see this potential. So yes, the thing will be to be forward-leaning, to increase ownership in businesses, but also to back businesses that we like and we believe in, to take more ambitious next steps.
Maybe I can cover on the guidance and on how much capital will last. I think, you know, the math is simple, so I don't disagree. Net investments of SEK 3 billion to SEK 5 billion per year. We're getting SEK 1 billion per year from Tele2 dividends, and our HQ costs are covered by our financial net. I think these numbers are more sort of on the basis of smaller divestments in the shape and form that we've seen over the last year. I think over the next two to three years, there will also be larger exits that sort of reset the clock, if you know what I mean. So, we're gonna gauge deployment relative to what we see on the horizon.
Hmm. And maybe just to add on that, what we say today is that we believe that the next phase we're entering into will kind of increase our pace of doing exits. However, we also have the buffer to wait until the exit opportunity is better for the companies we believe in and where we see high potential. So we will not rush by exiting companies where we see we could have a better... You know, create more shareholder value in, let's say, one point five to two years from now.
Okay, so part of potential exits are not part of the net investment, so to say?
The game-changing ones are not. I mean, I think we've been fairly clear on our ambitions at VillageMD, for instance.
Very good. Thanks a lot. Very helpful.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Derek Laliberte from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Okay, thank you very much, and good morning. I just firstly wanted to follow up there on the investment guidance. I suppose you have answered this, but I really don't understand something fundamentally, because you're guiding for SEK 3 to 5 billion in net investments, and just by that definition, that would include exits. You have the net cash of SEK 8 billion right now, so shouldn't that be interpreted as that you're planning to sort of deploy all of the net cash plus the Tele2 dividends over the coming three years?
Hey, Derek. No, so again, this is an indication, and, and clearly our deployment pace will be gauged by our successes and, and also exiting companies. And I think in the near term, those exits will primarily come from the longer tail of businesses, and it's really on, on that basis that, that we're giving you these numbers. Again, in case of larger exits from larger stakes in the growth portfolio, then that would, reset the timer. And, as Georgi mentioned, we have now the capital we need to, to basically gauge when is the optimal time to exit over the next three years, and we can calibrate our deployment against that horizon.
Okay. Okay, that's fair. I think I get it. And just on the sort of fairly large valuation cuts that you're making in this quarter and the lowered financial forecasts, I mean, I understand that it's a sort of year-end and everything is up for a deeper review, I suppose, but you made a fairly big reset last Q4 as well, if I remember correctly. So just sort of wondering how we can have conviction in this being sort of a low base to grow from here during the year.
Sure, Derek. No, I think from, from what we're seeing, volatility in terms of MSD performance as well as multiples, was very high during 2022. That has stabilized last nine now in 2023, and we're seeing on average, that companies are coming in much more in line with expectations. So we feel that the environment and the, the horizon has become a lot more clear, and that's what gives us confidence in, in saying that we feel that the base we're entering 2024 with, both in terms of, of valuation levels, in terms of multiples and expectations on our investees, and also noting, the, the cleaning up, so to say, in the longer tail, makes us very confident in, in, having conviction in this year and, and in next year.
I also would like to add, Derek, that as we say in the report, more than 20% of the valuations by value as being confirmed by other rounds with external investors in the quarter, and 50% of the growth portfolio by value as being kind of validated, if you will, at our marks in our book or above, during the full year. I think this is a very big difference compared to 2022, where there were very few transactions. Our belief is that the market will continue to open up and also make it easier to compare our valuations with what the market is willing to pay for them.
All right. Thanks, thanks for the clarity. And I was just wondering on VillageMD, this downgrade due to lack of influence. I'm wondering if you just explain that in a bit more detail, because Walgreens has sort of been in the driver's seat for a while there, so I'm wondering if anything has changed of late here in your view, because yeah, the new guidance and the focus on profitability, et cetera, has been around for a while.
Sure. I think, so as you know, Derek, first of all, our ability to comment on a, on a subsidiary that is central to a large U.S.-listed company's equity stories is quite limited. I think we, we all understand the increasing uncertainty on the accurate valuation levels for these types of value-based care providers, again, considering the lack of accurate comps out there. But, you know, as it relates to, to the situation we have in VillageMD with Walgreens in the driver's seat, I think it, it sort of forms part of what we've been trying to do here in Q4 in general, which is to, to take out some uncertainty.
So, rather than trying to be in the very middle of the fair value corridor, we're trying to be in the lower end here, because Village is special in the sense that we're not necessarily in control of outcomes here, to the extent we are in other companies.
And also, I mean, what you refer to is, is Walgreens guidance and outlook. That has clearly not changed, so this is our view rather than someone else.
All right. Okay. No, that's fair. And finally, this is probably in the material somewhere, so excuse me, but with regards to Aira and also the later-stage H2 Green Steel investment here, is it correct that you haven't participated in this sort of latest rounds, and how have they affected your ownership?
That's correct. I mean, in both these cases, there were extensions of the rounds, right? With great investors coming in, so Temasek and Aira, you know, a partner that we've been working very close with for many years, and in H2 Green Steel, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. Some investors increased their investments in Aira in this extension, we did not. So the numbers we have reported earlier are the numbers we still have invested.
Okay. Okay, thank you very much for that. That was all for me.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on one on your telephone keypad. We'll now go to your next question. And your next question comes from the line of Oscar Lindström from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Thank you. Two questions from me. First off, on the cash runway improvement for your unlisted assets, which you outline on slide 15 there. How much of that has been achieved through cost cutting, rather than sort of organic growth, earnings improvement in these companies? And is that part of why you've cut your growth expectations for these companies? So that's the first question.
Hey, Oscar, Samuel. Cost cutting, clearly, one dimension of it. I think primarily in 2022, our companies did a fairly good job at, at doing big cuts rather than, several small ones. But yes, cost cutting, very much part of it. I think scale benefits we're seeing coming through in many assets. Cityblock is one example, where contribution margins are strong, but you need to become larger to enable to, to cover your overhead. I think a third effect, naturally, is funding rounds. We did, large preemptive participation in, in spring, and we have other examples of companies, that are raising capital to both up ambitions and bring them to breakeven.
I think another effect, clearly is just how fair values have changed during the year, where we are being more harsh against the companies with weaker financial positions, and that's also being reflected in the changes here. Another example, clearly, of a company that actually was funded to breakeven already, but still raised capital, is TravelPerk with the extension that they announced during January. So it's a bit of both.
All right. Thanks. And my second question is a follow-up on this capital allocation issue, which several people have asked about already. Where you say that in addition to the SEK 3 billion to SEK 5 billion, you know, net investments per year, you're also seeing potential for additional sort of larger exits. And you mentioned one of your unlisted companies there. I mean, could you potentially also... I mean, are exits from listed companies also, are they excluded from this, or is that a potential as well?
But I think, Oscar, we have tried to give the market a sense that with our strong cash position and some minor exits in this, you know, still relatively difficult market for exits in private companies, we have the guidance of a SEK 3 billion to SEK 5 billion net deployment per year. That's basically more to say we're not running into net debt territory, even if the exit market remains dormant. Should we do any, as Samuel said, game-changing type of exits, a large exit or, you know, we are approached by someone that would like to acquire some of our businesses, or any type of large exit, I think we need to redefine what that means for our capital allocation framework, both in terms of ambition level and, of course, capital allocation in general.
All right. Wonderful. Thank you. Those were the two questions I had.
Thank you. We have one further question in the queue, but if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one. Your next question comes from the line of Stefan Wård from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. So I'd like to ask a couple of questions regarding a few of the assets. If you could give us some insights into the development of Spring Health and Pleo. And, the way I see, if I understand it correctly, you have the software assets at 1.6x next year's revenue. If you could give us an indication of the expected growth for that valuation as well, would be helpful.
The expected growth of the valuation, Stefan, you said?
No, total top-line growth.
For these two specific companies.
For the software.
Yeah, yeah. I'd say Pleo is a bit later than Spring in its journey. So Pleo is around, call it the average of that of the five software and virtual care companies that we highlighted on the page in the deck. Spring Health is growing slightly faster than that average.
Okay, perfect. When it comes to the value-based care assets, and the adjustments that you made there, could you give some insight on the situation in the market there? Is it still, like, quite busy consolidation phase within value-based care, or have the assets that been decided, have they been picked off, or what's the status in the U.S.?
What we see generally is that it's difficult for smaller players that have not the scale to survive in this business. So we think that net, you know, on the balance, is good for our assets because they are large in the respective, you know, populations. So I think, acquiring populations from smaller value-based care provider gives them a good opportunity to also grow inorganically. That said, what Samuel also referred to is that Cityblock has been kind of pruning their footprint for a while now in order to focus on profitability. What we expect for them is for them to grow a little bit faster now that we have taken that kind of top line hit in Q4.
But going back to your question, I think it's more difficult for the smaller players, so there will be continued consolidation in the market.
Can you give any comments on possible listings, regardless, but not commenting on market conditions, but just assuming that the market is fairly stable and that it's possible to list companies, how many of the assets in the unlisted portfolio could be potential exits via IPOs over this investment period, the three years that you've sort of laid out for net investments?
Hey, Stefan. Look, we have a pretty good pipeline of companies that are IPO-ready or becoming IPO-ready in the near future, call it over the next year or two. There's no real rush to go public, in our view. There might be for other smaller investors, but not on our end. We're not necessarily expecting any IPOs this year. Next year, maybe towards, you know, Q4, potentially. But again, no rush. I think in relation to exits, which are clearly more difficult to forecast, typically, you know, companies get bought, not sold, and we're confident that there will be exits over the next years.
But our portfolio is a bit too small in terms of number of companies to allow us to guide you guys in a helpful way on what we expect, and I think that sort of came through in the questions we received earlier, yeah. But, you know, as part of us spending time understanding the portfolio and where it's headed, clearly we have a laundry list of exit scenarios for many of our companies, and we also have a team member dedicated to this now. So, let's see, but IPOs are unlikely until late 2025.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back for closing remarks.
Okay, thank you very much for listening and for your questions. Just as a last reminder, we will report the results for the first quarter, 2024, on the eighteenth of April. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Thank you.