Welcome to the VEF 4Q 2021 Earnings Call. For the first part of this conference, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present David Nangle, CEO. Please begin your meeting.
Super. Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. I'm Dave Nangle, CEO of VEF, and welcome to our year-end Q4 Results Call. Thank you for participation. I'll be going through a set of slides that are on the media center. They'll also be on our website. I'll spend, as per usual, maybe 15 minutes going through the slides, just the highlights of the quarter, and what's coming at us, and then I'll open up for Q&A, which will probably be the more interesting part. To kick off on slide two, just some of the recent highlights that have kinda been hitting us over the fourth quarter and towards year-end. I guess our NAV mark is front and center in that. We ended the year with a $762 million NAV.
That's close to doubling year-on-year from year-end 2020. Obviously, part of that is a function of the capital raise, $100 million we did during the summer months. On a per share basis, U.S. dollar, it was up 55% year-on-year. Effectively, it's one of our strongest years since inception as a company in terms of NAV and NAV per share performance and in effect value creation. What's driving that? A lot of this actually did come in Q4, and a lot of it was down to Creditas. It's obviously our biggest holding, north of 50% of our NAV at this stage. They had a big funding round of Series F, which was obviously well flagged and a lot of PR around it.
They raised $260 million Series F. A lot of investors that are currently in the cap table and new ones, you know, of the ilk of Fidelity came into that round. It was good to see and puts our biggest and arguably our best company in good stead, for all the 2022 throws at it. It was also a big quarter for our third biggest company, just by NAV size, which is Juspay, one of the leading payments companies and, you know, the leading one in digital payments, mobile payments, in India. They closed their Series C funding round with SoftBank coming into that. We're in a lot of cap tables with SoftBank now. They led that round, $60 million, Series C.
We did our rights, so we still own 10% of that company. Our partners at Wellington came in, all public information. It was great to have Juspay and Creditas funded, you know, in the fourth quarter. I think, you know, that's a... I'll just jump to one point beyond that. I think what's good across the top names in our portfolio, especially in a window of volatility like we have right now as we head into the early parts of 2022. You know, top five firm portfolio names, you know, from Creditas, Konfio, Juspay, TransferGo, and JUMO all raised large capital in the second half of last year. You know, in many ways, these are well capitalized for growth, which continues at the pace of all these companies.
They're well capitalized to withstand any market storms and just not to be out there trying to raise money in windows like this. You'd rather avoid them, as we all would. I think another key interesting point this year which kinda came home to roost was the fact that, you know, while our investors give us capital to put to work in some of the best private fintech companies in emerging markets, we're seeing a lot of the bigger public institutions following suit and joining us in these companies or even vice versa. Names like Wellington and Fidelity have come into portfolio holdings across Brazil and India, like Creditas, like Juspay and then Afterpay JUMO.
It's a testament to what we're investing in that our investors are willing to put their capital directly to work in some of these bigger, brighter names that are moving towards a public status. I guess just on the market volatility and backdrop, I'll talk about a bit more, but you know, it's something we're very aware of both the downside risk of Vol as well as the upside potential and opportunity. It's you know, it's something that we live and breathe over the last seven years in emerging markets, private investing, but being a public market investor. Moving on to slide number three, just some of the headline numbers you would have seen as the results came out this morning. NAV $762 million, so we're becoming a sized company at this stage.
$0.73 per share, obviously up 55% year-over-year. I think on a SEK basis, because we're listed in Sweden, our share price is in SEK. We closed the year at SEK 661 per share. Obviously the share price closed at SEK 605, slight discount, but the dip since then has come back, as have the markets. From a NAV evolution over time, this chart looks, it's a bit of a J curve. It's quite nice to see. I'm not gonna extrapolate that forward at this stage. You know, up and to the right has been the mandate and the goal, create value for shareholders as we go.
Some of that NAV obviously is part of that NAV increase is capital raises that we've done too, with the support of our shareholders over the past 15 months. A lot of it's just natural value accretion through mark-to-model, mark-to-market and exits obviously over time where we've exited names like Tinkoff and Easyco with decent amounts of value creation, about 60% IRR in both cases. From a share price evolution and per share, yep, everything was going well until the year-end. Clearly market pulled back in the tech space specifically, and growth stocks obviously hit our share. You know, the NAV per share has been on the up. The discount has widened. A bit of a pop in our share in the last few weeks.
You know, we're very much focused on the company, very much focused on the companies we invest in, on making sure we continue to value, create value through the cycle. What we find is the share price generally takes care of itself over time if we continue to do that. From a portfolio point of view, the summary at year-end, you know, where we're at is, I think, concentration is the word, but that's always gonna be the case with us. I think with the capital we put to work in Q4, we put nearly $37 million into four companies, with $25 million of that going into Creditas, $5 million into Rupeek, $6 million in two tranches into Juspay, and a small amount into Abhi.
You know, Creditas is 52% of our NAV, and as I've said many times before, concentration is a goal, not a risk. We strive to find once-in-a-generation companies at VEF, and when we do, we try and get as much capital into them as possible at a reasonable return. If you put Creditas and Konfio out together, that's 70% of our NAV, and the top five names are 81%. There's levels of concentration as names start to break out and become bigger. Within our portfolio, we're very comfortable with that trend and actually seek it. By year-end, we had $62 million of cash.
I'll talk about pipeline in a second because I guess when we raised that $100 million back in August of 2021, we told shareholders we had both internal and external needs for that money. Some of those internal needs have come to fruition with the portfolio investments in Q4, and some of the pipeline conversion will be more of a Q1 event, and it's worth digging into. Moving on to the next slide, just a bit of market volatility and what we're seeing and how we're thinking. You know, I think first and foremost is just to let investors know that we're very aware, and we don't live in a bubble of private VC land where we don't know what's happening in the public markets. We are public market creatures, and we've always worked in public markets. Our shares are listed.
Our people who back us are public market investors, and analysts are always on our back. We're very aware of how public markets work and how efficient they can be over time, and the good times and the bad times that come with markets. You know, in windows like this, we naturally have a defensive mindset, and we're nothing knee-jerk in what we do. We're not short-termist in nature, but we're very aware. I think just, you know, on our side, we have a strong track record, and people ask about our NAV, but just, you know, I'm marking our NAV, marking it up, marking it down. We aggressively marked it down at the start of COVID. When we've got specific investments wrong, we've marked it down or, you know, mid-cycle, and very happy to do that and very comfortable to do that.
I think we've always had a conservative bias towards our NAV marks for companies, and there's no point in getting carried away with market euphoria. We look for averages. We put discounts in. We look for logical comps as opposed to trying the best or biggest one in the market and putting a fat multiple around the company because it only comes back to bite you. I think we're grounded in public markets through our history. At the moment, I think, you know, our NAV benefits or our NAV is a function of obviously the transactions we did, you know, in the last 5 months. A lot of those transactions were grounded in public markets yet again, with the likes of Fidelity, Wellington, et cetera, being part of or even leading some of those rounds.
Some of them were done in December when the volatility started. Also the two holdings that we have marked to model, you know, Nibo in the accounting SaaS space, the comps there have actually held up quite well, the kind of classic names that it's comped against globally in Sweden and in the U.S. Also Revo in the buy now, pay later front. You know, we avoid names like Affirm and Afterpay that trade on, you know, double-digit multiples of sales. We're more in the low single digit when we compare it to small buy now, pay later companies in Australia and the U.S. and also single-digit PE because Revo is one of our profitable companies. I think, you know, the key for us is always fundamentals of the portfolio performing. We're very aware of markets and keep an eye on that.
We probably see as much upside from windows of volatility like this as we do downside risk. A couple of portfolio companies just worth touching on. You know, Creditas, there's not a lot to say other, you know, new news, you know, outside of the round itself. They haven't released Q4 numbers yet. Obviously the last set of numbers were the Q3 numbers, they showed a tripling of originations and revenues year on year for the core business. You know, obviously the wind is in their sails in terms of core growth. The capital they've raised now puts them in a strong position from what to do next. The plan was to be IPO ready this year. That plan is still very much there and that's public information.
Whether one pulls the trigger on an IPO is always a function of, well, more a function of markets than readiness because we will be ready. But as the position sits, you know, it sits at $394 million, as within our NAV, 52% of our NAV. We were with the team on the ground back in November. That was our last trip. Just very strong across the board in terms of team, the teams, the people they've hired, the expansion into new lines of business, the growth that we're seeing, and all that's coming out of that. We're very comfortable putting additional capital to work in that name in Q4. Juspay, obviously, our third-biggest holding.
This is, you know, one that's really come through nicely for us where we backed it. It was kind of under the radar when we backed it back in. I think it was 2018, 2019. We took a 10% position in that company, brought our partners Wellington into that. We invested $13 million at the time. But here we are a couple of years later with them raising $60 million at a significantly higher valuation. We're keeping our stake in that company. It's one of the fastest growing payments companies we've seen in the very exciting India digital payment space. They've got a number of different functionalities within the business. Obviously, it's mobile payments first, and they sit within the apps of the big e-commerce and marketplace giants in India.
They're growing with their partners, whether it's Uber, and all the e-commerce players there and the other mobility players. At the same time, they've got a full product suite within there as well as payments processing. You know, they do a lot on the UPI side, two-factor authentication. A number of solutions, a real suite of solutions within the payment space, for the big Indian players. I guess, final slide worth touching on is 15 before I kinda wrap up. This is just, you know, something that's kinda crept up on us over time. Initially, you know, we were working with some of the bigger investors globally to, you know, access their capital to put to work in the private fintech space.
That's been a you know, a trend and a theme that's been working very well for us over time. The relationships have grown, and we've been showing these assets to our bigger backers. What's happened over the last 12-18 months, which is nice to see, it's kind of been organic in nature, some of these big investors have been investing directly in the companies in our portfolio as they move closer to a public market status. I think Creditas is the best example of that, but Juspay, BlackBuck, and JUMO are also in that. It tends to be the bigger markets like Brazil and India that attracts this capital.
It's been a nice evolution of trend and theme, and we're very happy to see it continue. Final slide before I open up to Q&A is just, you know, summary of the Investment Case and Outlook. Not too much of a change here, you know, besides the backdrop that we have. You know, the NAV has been good, and we've been delivering there, and the base is strong for continued growth. Obviously, 2021 was a very strong year for the company and markets in that. Obviously the year has started a bit more volatile from a market point of view, but we're still very comfortable with what we see in our portfolio and for value creation as we look into the year. I think Creditas has to be key for us going forward.
I think that's just obvious, 52% of our NAV. We will live and die with their success, and we're very comfortable with that trend. I think, you know, upside, downside, you know, downside risk is covered by the fact, at least in the short term, that our top companies will all raise capital and raise it in size from strong shareholders. We're okay with market headwinds. We're okay with volatility. Doesn't mean we're complacent. We've got a defensive mindset. But we're also open to the opportunities that volatility brings, knowing that, you know, we invested in Easyco when the tanks were in the streets. We invested in Creditas and Tinkoff when Brazil and Russia macro were on a low ebb and no one wanted to know.
When a lot of the hot money disappears, we will be there and we're well-positioned and we're very happy to put more capital to work. On the pipeline front, I haven't talked too much about this and I'm sure there'll be questions, but I can't get too far ahead of myself, but you know, we have got pipeline to a top of pipeline that we are converting deals to be done, in Brazil and in Pakistan. Brazil more upsize, Pakistan, more early stage because nature of the market. It was a busy year last year. It takes time to convert. We're in no rush to convert. Very happy to do nothing if nothing hits our ticks all our boxes.
You know, I would expect in the Q1 of this year to be able to close or announce two, maybe three deals, but then some of these can creep into Q2. That's where we are on the deal front. I think I'll stop there. Operator, I'm very happy to open the floor to questions at this point.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find it's answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell of DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Obviously we've seen a lot of activity here throughout this quite, say healthy funding window. In your planning or strategy for the coming year or years, how do you think about that balance? I mean, we've seen how Latin American VC investments tripled in 2021. What is your view about how potentially rising interest rates in these regions could potentially decelerate the money flows, et cetera? Yeah, basically with this backdrop, would you expect a step back in activity throughout 2022? Have you started seeing any signs of that, credit funding is drying up in any of your emerging markets?
Yeah. Hey, Joachim. It's all very fair questions, and we could, we could probably spend an afternoon talking about it. But you know, what I'd say is, you know, from a VEF point of view, I guess we've invested through the cycle. So there's an element of you don't get caught in any kinda duration risk. You're not all in one window and not in another. You're kinda constantly investing, albeit you've got to be aware of the market environment that you're in and the price that you're paying, but so I'd like to think that we and anybody we speak to in the market would still be investing. There is a lot of dry powder out there, on the private side. That said, you know, when public markets do what they do, I guess the crossover money stops.
Some of the more recent fund raises will be, you know, difficult on the private side. Just talking to other VCs, you know, everybody takes a step back, everybody takes a breath. At the start of COVID, everybody did the same thing. It's like a knee-jerk reaction. It's logical risk management. Everybody is, I'd say, just one step back as opposed to on the front foot. The interesting thing is we've seen market volatility like this before where markets take a turn down. Obviously, you know, from a macro point of view, globally interest rates are on the way up, but it's not like a knee-jerk reaction. It's been well flagged for a long time. It's moving and everybody knows about it, so it's not like a shock in any way.
I would expect a little bit of an ease back on either volume or pricing, at least initially this part of the year. I'd like to think that brings a bit more sense into some pockets in the market where there was no sense. Are we seeing it really impact players yet? Not really. Deals are being announced, but a lot of those are from last year or closed last year. It just takes time to do the legals and all the detail. We have one company out there raising at the moment. They have two term sheets. So it's happening. I think it's more a market for quality than the lack of quality where everybody was getting funded. Now it's the better names that get funded or could be a bit more price sensitivity.
You know, I'll tell you again next quarter, see how the private side reacts to the public moves. I guess, you know, as a hybrid fund where we invest in privates but we're publicly listed, I guess I'd like to hope we're more in tune, and more sensitive to that. You know, we talk to the SoftBank of this world and they're very in tune as well. They're more the price setters and the trend setters in these things. Yeah, I think we will see some kind of pullback volumes pricing. How deep or dramatic it is I think will be a function of how the public markets go from here, which have been obviously down in January but a bit of a comeback in February.
I hope that answers your question, but feel free to follow up.
Yeah, no, I think that answers it. Thanks, Dave. I mean we are also seeing a shift to the VC ecosystem here. I think you alluded to this in the report, I mean potentially led by Sequoia here where venture capital funds no longer sell down at IPOs and they see this as another call it funding event as opposed to an exit event. Can you say anything about your call it strategy if you are seeing any or should we expect any nuanced shift to that when we approach now potential listings of core holdings?
Yeah. No, I think it's a great move by Sequoia. Obviously it helps when somebody big does something that you've already done or are doing in terms of the permanency of capital aspect. I think the ideology around, you know, you find once in a generation assets as we have, as many other VCs have, and then you flip them at IPO, and then they still go another 10x because the hard part of the journey was getting from zero to one, then going from one to 100 might be easier. That ideology does make sense to me. Arguably, if you were in early in a company, you should know it better than the market, albeit you gotta be careful of internal biases and inertia. I think we're very comfortable.
We think we always have been because we started this off with Tinkoff of holding a public Fintech, albeit we inherited that. I think this with Creditas will be the first time we take it from the private side to the public side. I guess we would make a decision, you know at IPO, whether the IPO was successful, failure, right pricing, and where we sit in our position. I think we're very comfortable holding that position for longer. I think then you move into a broader debate of, you know, and we do this a lot. We think a lot, and our strategy is always fluid. You know, we are we think we are EM Fintech experts, versus, with. You know, when we started this seven years ago, there was only private Fintechs.
Maybe one or two public Fintechs in EM, but there's been a lot of listings, Brazil, India, across the emerging world. There's a real range from the private side to the public side where we could potentially put our capital to work, especially when you get distortions in the public side where the publics may be cheaper or better value, better long-term value than the privates in that window. We could take size positions and sit on them for longer periods than maybe the classic asset managers are because we got permanent capital. A lot of these things going around in their head, but on a very simple basis, we could hold the publics for longer than being public, and we got that idea with Creditas, and we're just thinking about that. That can happen for sure.
That's clear then. The final one for me, and then you obviously love your portfolio here and with the shares trading at such a discount to NAV currently, to what I perhaps think and in your view, I guess, if not conservative, at least justified NAV. Is there a reason here why you wouldn't buy back shares starting today?
Like fundamentally, no, because some of the easiest value we can create for shareholders and, you know, everybody involved is to buy back our own shares at a discount that gives us, you know, our 30% IRR threshold, especially if we believe in our companies that are NAV today, if not a higher one tomorrow. Technically, I think at this point, I will come back to you on the details, but we can't buy back our shares. It's around the idea of us moving from Nasdaq First North to the main board, which is a fluid process. More details to come on that. We're not in a position to be active in the market because of that. Our hands are a bit tied.
I'll come back to you on details properly on that, Joakim. Fundamentally, yes, technically, no.
That's all. That's all from me. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from Patrik Brattelius of ABG. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. A few questions from my part. First one, just a clarification there regarding the mark-to-model valuation. Are the multiples used for the mark-to-model companies based on multiples as of last December, or are they based on multiples more closely connected to your reporting date?
We would value the portfolio at year-end, so it would be a valuation comp set as of year-end 2021, as opposed to, I guess, today or last week. It's, I guess, a 4-week gap between year-end and when we reported. Yeah. The two names within that that we've gone on a mark-to-model basis are Nibo and Revo. I guess the idea is share price defaults would mark-to-model fall. We'll reprice again, obviously, those two assets which make up a 3% I think of our NAV at the end of Q1. Nibo in the accounting SaaS space with the likes of Intuit, et cetera, Xero have held up quite well. We've been tracking that.
There's been a bit of sell-off in the buy now, pay later and some of the consumer lenders across East Europe, but we've had Revo on a quite a low valuation, so we're quite comfortable there too, I think. We'll review that again at the end of the quarter. Sorry, answer your question, Patrik. Year end.
Some color on that, too. Perfect. As you highlighted on the first slide there, we can see that your five largest holdings are well funded. Do you see any other holdings now being able to drive any material NAV growth in the coming one, two quarters, or do you expect the NAV to be rather stable around this level?
Yeah, it's fair. You know, I put a bit of a defensive bias in the presentation just because I've been getting a lot of questions around downside as both the upside. Just to go one more on the downside coverage, you know, the top five companies all raised capital. Number six, Revo, is profitable. Number seven, Rupeek just raised capital. I think with defensive nature, just to answer the defense more fully, we feel like we're in a good position. We're all interested in the upside from here. I guess if you look at something like Creditas and that's 52% of your NAV. Is that gonna do anything in Q1 or Q2?
If they got the IPO out the door in Q2, I think that would be super early, and that would be a potential event, but that's not. I wouldn't say that's plan number one given everything that's going on. So I wouldn't expect anything from our side in Creditas up or down in the first half, but let's see where markets go. Konfio, once again it's a second half NAV mark-to-model move, and that's been growing in line with plans. Juspay just raised. So I guess, you know, reading between the lines, the bigger names, the predictable nature of the bigger names doesn't show, you know, those big three names doing too much in the first half. Besides obviously them growing well, must be very happy with them. Those NAV moves are probably not a first half event.
Okay. Yeah. No, that's a little bit what I expected, but yeah, just wanted to get some clarifications and your view about that. As a last question from me, then, is if you could highlight where you currently see the best IRR potential in your view.
Look, we're never too short term, but it's amazing that the big three assets, Creditas, Konfio, and Juspay are growing at some of the fastest paces within the portfolio. They're all growing 2x-3x year-on-year. It's great to see that. It's not in perpetuity, but you know, if we get that again in 2022 into 2023, we're sitting pretty with a nice compounding top end of the portfolio, no offense to the rest. I guess from outside the portfolio, we spend a lot of time in India and Brazil. It continues. We were in Brazil, as I said, November last year. We came back once again super excited. It is the land of kind of scale high margin niches.
We keep on finding new areas we want to invest in related fintech spaces. Putting more capital to work there. India keeps on sucking us in. We're building out a nice early ecosystem portfolio in Pakistan. I guess, you know, regionally, we're doing the work now in Indonesia. We've kind of picked that from a Southeast Asia perspective as a market that deserves our time and effort. It's overdue, and that's where we're focusing. Then from a segment point of view, just more on Web3, crypto, digital assets, where that's going. A lot of our companies are moving in that direction, at least as part of their product suite. A lot of capital's gone in. It's not going anywhere.
It will be some part of the future of finance, and we don't know what percentage, but I think the risk on us of not being involved in some shape or form given our mandate is growing by the day. We're doing more and more work there.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Super. Thanks, Patrick.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Herman Wartoft of Pareto Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
All right. Perfect. Good afternoon, Dave. Just a couple of questions from me. Starting off, I would like to just dive a bit deeper into this broad sector derating I see right here on slide seven also that you see a lot of micro level performance issues in emerging market public fintech. I would just wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on this and what you're seeing in the markets at the moment.
Yeah. Hey, Herman. How are you? Look, a few things on this. You know, I'll pick an example that suits me, but you know, you take something like TransferGo in the remittance space, and obviously its last mark-to-market, our last investment round. You know, even that round and when we were marking its mark-to-model, you know, we had comps like Wise, and we had comps like Remitly trading on 10-20 times forward revenues. And we had TransferGo in the single-digit territory. Now that they've derated to single-digit comp multiple, they're in line with TransferGo, and TransferGo is growing faster. That's the kinda how we think about things.
We're obviously looking for logical multiples and logical valuations, but we try and stay ahead of these things and just try and stay comfortable with our marks so that we can, you know, never get caught too much on the downside. Then there's lots of upside as and when we IPO or exit those. You know, obviously with derating comps, it does tend to make the portfolio look a bit more fully valued when, you know, at the end of Q3, I would've argued, you know, aggressively that this was a portfolio that was aggressively undervalued. Specifically to your point, though, I want to say, yes, you know, there has been a market derating. But then you move into EM fintech, and what we found, this is not grabbing excuses, but just like, you know, looking at facts.
We look at something like Tinkoff derating, which has always been a benchmark for us, and that's a function as much of Russia, and its moves as it is markets. We look at Kaspi in Kazakhstan, another fintech benchmark. Its derating isn't much, you know, from, I guess, the volatility you've had from a Kazakhstan perspective. That's geopolitical and political. In Brazil, some of those LatAm fintech benchmarks, names like Stone and PagSeguro in the payment space have had their own micro level performance issues, and they've derated aggressively on the, you know, kind of on top of the sector derating. There's a bunch of micro level that performance issues that we've seen at companies, not that we track them, you know, intimately, but that I've seen those names double derate as opposed to just market derating.
Some of the better names are holding up better. These are just things that we, you know, we're aware when we look at our multiples and our comp sets. We're talking with the auditors. We're looking at our own companies and seeing, you know, what they're worth or what they think they're worth in relation to market. We're always trying to, you know, looking to change your comp groups all the time, but you're looking to constantly evolve and find the right comp group. For something like Nibo, it's always been easy because there's three or four listed global accounting SaaS players out there.
For something like Creditas, it's a minefield because they keep on changing their business model and growing and broadening, and it's a little bit local, and then you take some international comps as well. You know, all of that in there is what I'd say.
Yeah, I see. Perfect. If you would also just kind of flip this a little bit, has this derating led you to kind of, you know, reconsider some deals, or can you see some other opportunities opening up for you to be maybe a bit more aggressive here with adding new portfolio companies, et cetera, in this window?
Yeah, no, it's fair. We did this dance at our board actually as well because we have two deals in Brazil specifically that we're closing. We would have, you know, done the dance with them in terms of valuations and deal structuring actually late December, mid to late December. We're already in this window. Creditas round as well in this window. No, we haven't needed to change the price that we're paying for these deals. They're. The January performance of all of them have just compounded what we want to do here. When we're looking at them, you know, there is always, you know, the short term multiple analysis, but realistically, when we're putting capital to work, you know, we're looking at five years. We're looking at true cycle multiples.
We're looking for those IRRs, and it generally suits us well. I think from opportunities right now, the penny hasn't dropped really, as I was saying to, you know, Kim on the private market side yet. It really depends how deep and protracted any kind of sell-off in public markets go to. But no, we're still shopping. We're still out there, and we still got capital to put to work. We're in no rush. You know, if things derate on the private side, you know, all good for us. Maybe it'll be market specific or segment specific, but it's a bit early to say.
Yeah, fair enough. Maybe just the last one for me, I mean, if you can just talk a little bit more specifically about Creditas. I mean, we've seen inflation running quite hot in Brazil and also the central bank raising rates a lot during 2021. I'm just wondering if you can just elaborate a little bit on what and if Creditas has done something to mitigate this in their raising rates towards the consumer. Has it affected the kind of loan demand and growth in any way as you can see it recently?
Yeah. No, it's fair. Look, the bigger our companies get, the closer they get to being macro proxies. You know, as a good financial analyst, you'll know, you know, a lot of financial services companies and banks are just macro proxies. You can do all the micro level analysis you want, but, you know, GDP, inflation, interest rates rule the roost, when it comes to their broader share price movement. Creditas is getting bigger. It does have some, you know, macro tendencies, both tailwinds and headwinds. What I'd say is, you know, they're running about 2% market share in secured lending. They're very small, in the overall secured lending pot, in Brazil across payroll, home and auto. There's a lot of recycling to them as a better product.
They're recycling out of the unsecured pot towards secured pot because it's better rate, lower rate products. You know, even those rates are higher, they're higher again and unsecured, but they're lower in secured. There's a structural bias to what Creditas does. They have been upping their rates. They've had to. They're funding themselves on floating with, you know, there's three-month cycles of fixing those floating rates. On the asset side, they have been upping their rates, but so has the market. You know, with GDP growth in Brazil where it is with rates up and inflation up, it'll be a definitely from a market point of view, it'll be a slower growth year.
I would like to think that from a sector level across the board, Creditas grew its loan book maybe 3x in 2021. We'll see the final numbers. You know, I doubt we're gonna see a 3x year this year. I think in our models we're closer to 2x, but then we were closer to 2x again in 2021, and they kind of blasted through that with their own delivery. A slowdown year-on-year, but still a fast growth year.
Okay, perfect. Thanks for that, color. Okay, that's all for me. Thanks.
Super. Thanks, Herman.
Thank you. We currently have one further person in the queue. Just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now. The last person in the queue so far is Brian Satherley from Redeye. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Hi, Dave. Nice to talk to you again. A lot of my questions have already been answered already. But just one regarding the deals in the pipeline. I know you said they might get delayed a little bit. To look at some of the recent deals VEF has done, you've taken generally a lower ownership percentage than what you had done historically. I'm referencing specifically like a BlackBuck or a Rupeek. I know India-
Yeah.
EM is its own market with its own rules and own valuations accordingly. You know, for the deals upcoming, how do you think about the percentage ownership? Has anything changed, or is the strategy still the same, I imagine?
Yeah. Hey, Brian. Look, it's a mix, actually. We've gotten more comfortable with the fact that if we find a great fintech company, why should we box ourselves in when we need to own at least 10% or need to have a board seat or, you know, as we've done in the earlier stage of kind of our strategy and ideology. We stretched our wings a bit with, I mean, you mentioned BlackBuck as one. You know, of the three deals that we're looking at doing, and once again, I don't wanna get ahead of myself because things can change, but, you know, one is super early stage, and we'll lead that, and we'll own a nice double-digit percentage if it comes to roost.
One is Series A, I believe, and we will lead that, so classic VEF, and own 10% plus minus in that one. One is a little bit later stage, and we're part of a consortium of friends, and we'll take a smaller stake, something akin to BlackBuck. A mix, and I think we're very comfortable with that mix. You know, if we're in with the right people, with the right story, we're comfortable to have a 1%-5% stake and not a board representation, but full information rights once the legals are sound and the partners are good.
Got it. Makes sense. That's all for me. Thanks again.
Super. Thanks, Brian.
Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue, so I'll hand back to Dave for the closing comments.
Yeah. Look, thank you. Thank you everybody for your time, for following our story, for supporting us. It's always appreciated. Thanks for the interaction at the end of the call. Always better than me talking at everybody. We're here to answer questions as we go in good markets and in bad. Myself and Henrik Stenlund in our Stockholm office, always available to speak, so feel free to reach out. Thank you, and have a great end of your day.