Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VEF third quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Nangle, CEO of the company. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Heidi. Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you once again for attending our results call this time for Q3 2025. My apologies to our investors and followers in the U.S. We started a bit earlier this time around, but it can't be helped because of travel plans. Thank you for dialing in nonetheless. Going straight into the call, joining me, as per always, will be our CIO, Alexis Koumoudos, who will join us for the valuation section and portfolio update. Going straight into the deck, going to slide two, there are events of the quarter, but really more areas worth highlighting from today's release and what we're seeing. It is really four-fold. One is NAV continuing to trend higher.
It shouldn't be a surprise given the capital market trends, macro trends, and everything we're seeing, but we're also seeing it through the prism of our portfolio. We end the quarter at nearly $406 million of NAV, up 8.3% quarter on quarter, and nearly 15% year to date. That is just a nice supportive trend from markets, multiples, and FX. Most importantly, it is really around the portfolio, which is now in what I like to think of as a lower beta mode, break-even, reigniting growth, better risk-reward, and that is feeding through to the numbers that we're seeing in the portfolio that come through every month and every quarter as we see it. Point two is around Creditas. Clearly, our largest holding still in the portfolio. Two aspects on this.
One, fundamental to its performance, this re-acceleration of growth that we're seeing in Creditas. It is not V-shaped. It is U-shaped. It is gradually picking up. We are seeing the loan growth year on year from Q1 at 11%. It was very little year before, year on year, to 14% in Q2 and picking up again in Q3, given everything we see at the company. You cross-reference that with quality fintech companies attracting capital. Creditas just announced its latest bond closure, raised $50 million in its senior bond, 10.5%, three-and-a-half-year bond. It also made an announcement, a very high-level announcement about a month ago, around a planned equity round of about a minimum of $100 million at an indicative valuation of $3.3 billion. It is an early high-level announcement that will be followed up upon, which we obviously press released.
It is just a sign that quality fintech companies are once again attracting the right kind of capital. Point three, and this kind of touches on the first two points, is around fintech markets. They just are strong at the moment. This is capital markets into fintech markets. This is capital flowing in as well as capital flowing out. I think everybody grabs on the high-level announcements around Klarna IPO or Chime IPO in the U.S., and that's what grabs the front page of the financial press. Within our world and within the broader fintech ecosystem, we're seeing a lot of capital flowing into companies across early to late-stage rounds once again. We're getting back to healthy capital inflow markets, as well as capital flowing out, not just with IPOs, but also M&A and second reason. We see that in our portfolio, and there's plenty of examples.
It's just coming through from the broader ecosystem. I guess point four, the final point, not on this slide, but it's really around pipeline. This is an area that we're really spending more and more time on. We're getting more focused on a select number of quality fintech targets and just positioning ourselves and our shareholder capital for the right moment with the right asset at the right time to put the next Creditas, Iyzico, into our portfolio to work for medium to long-term value accretion for all. Moving on to slide three, just a quick highlight on the numbers. As I said, from a dollar point of view, we tend to focus on NAV. Total NAV, we're now back over $400 million given the performance year to date, $405.7 million, up 8% quarter on quarter, as I said.
From a SEK point of view, on a per share basis, we end the quarter at 3.75 NAV per share in SEK terms. Still trading at a fairly robust discount to that from a trader point of view, but that is starting to close in the markets. Finally, from my side, on slide number four, just a general path since inception of VEF a nd our NAV. It's not NAV per share, but it's overall NAV. What we're seeing is an evolution of what we've been talking about for the last few quarters. Mainly at the back end of last year, we talked about the reset and things starting to grow again, macro, micro factors working nicely in our favor. That just gets reflected in your NAV as you start to grow again. Then that happens to feed through to share price and your market cap.
In markets like this, the discount tends to close as well. It all kind of works in a nice manner once the trends continue. I will stop from my side at this point and come back at the end. I'm going to pass over to Alexis, our CIO, who's going to talk you through some of the valuation moves and approaches we had in this quarter and some of the detail behind that. Alexis, over to you.
Great. Thanks, Dave. Hi, everyone. Just running through, I think, the major valuation approach and changes in the quarter. I think the biggest change in the quarter is really Konfío. They had been marked at latest transaction for about a year. We rolled it into a marked model valuation methodology now. That was a big contributor to our quarter-on-quarter NAV change. Another driver, as you can see on slide five, being Creditas.
Overall, now with Konfío joining the marked model portion of the portfolio, the marked model methodology accounts for 79% of the valuation methodology for the portfolio. 21% is now valued at latest transaction. Moving on to slide six. On this slide, we just break down the third quarter NAV evolution. You can see there are three big contributors to the quarter-on-quarter $31 million growth in our NAV. The first and biggest is the portfolio company performance, which contributed around $20 million in the quarter. That's a factor of our portfolio companies growing and executing on their business plans. The second is strong equity market performance and the impact of it on our comps for the marked model valuation methodologies in the portfolio. That contributed $15 million. With the further appreciation of the Brazilian real and the Mexican peso in the quarter, contributing another $6 million or so.
There are some small offsetting factors like our OpEx and coupon payments here. All in all, those were the biggest drivers in the $31 million quarter-on-quarter growth in our NAV. Moving on to slide seven. Because of the size of the change in Konfío valuation, we just wanted to walk you through the key contributors to this and why there was a 39% uplift in Konfío's valuation quarter-on-quarter. There are three key components of this. First of all, we have the company growth. What we've broken out here and shown is Konfío's loan portfolio has grown 30% year-on-year from August 2023 when the last transaction happened to August this year. Then we've broken down some of the key comps that we use for Konfío here.
You can see that there was broad appreciation over the year that Konfío was held at latest transaction in share price and therefore valuation of the comps. I think the biggest portion of that gain as well was felt in the last quarter where a lot of these stocks performed pretty well. The third component to it is the peso appreciation over the year. The peso appreciated 7% versus the dollar over the year. When we stitch these together, these elements combined with the outlook that we have for Konfío and the business plan that we keep, this results in a 39% uplift over the course of the year for Konfío. Moving on to slide eight. To reiterate, we continue to feel confident in our high-quality portfolio and its ability to compound from here. We see our portfolio growing around 30% year on year from a profitable and self-sustaining base.
Dave is going to talk a little bit about Creditas's re-acceleration in an upcoming slide. We also definitely feel that we are entering a new cycle, as Dave alluded to at the beginning of the presentation. We're seeing a real pickup in fundraising activity across our core geographies and ecosystems with rounds like Creditas's upcoming that are taking shape. This increased interest we feel will definitely benefit our portfolio. Handing back to you, Dave.
Super. Thanks, Alexis, for that. Cool. Moving on to slide number nine, just to focus on Creditas because it's been a busy year to date and fairness for the company. I think on a fundamental point of view, this whole idea of reigniting growth is nice to talk about, but it's actually great to see in the numbers. I guess when you talk about reigniting growth, there's elements of the market and people expect a V-shaped recovery. You go back to strong double-digit growth from no growth. What you're seeing here is a gradual U-shaped recovery in the trends as the machine starts to reignite and the lending machine, the underwriting process, which is great because there was a real focus in the years of 2022 and 2023 of efficiency, of margins, of asset quality, of getting to that break-even point and that sustainability point.
You switch gears and you balance a better risk-reward model. You're seeing the year-on-year trends on top of the slide, the loan portfolio year-on-year trends on a quarterly basis, going from 1% year on year to 7% to 11% to 14%. That's a very simple, clear trend. We see it once again going up, feeding through to Q3 of this year, given the data that we're seeing on a monthly basis. It's a nice trend. It's a gradual trend getting to 20% to 30% growth level. The Creditas field is a sustainable level if you compound at a cash flow neutral positive baseline as it moves forward over the next couple of years. The revenues obviously feed off that balance sheet growth. The flip side of that or linked to that is capital does tend to flow towards companies that are performing in better environments.
Creditas is no exception of that. They've just closed another bond, a $50 million euro bond. Quite nice to see them closing that. Obviously, a month ago, they did, as I said at the start, they announced the planned fundraise, $100 million indicative valuation, $3.3 billion, which they believe is coming their way. We keep that very high level until things are firm and concluded. It's very clear that we welcome any fundraise, debt, equity that strengthens Creditas's capital position. That's only good news for the company. It's good news for us and where the company is growing. When all those details become firm, finalized, we will clearly communicate them to the market A and B and reflect them in our NAV. Moving on to slide 10, just getting a little bit more micro on these healthy markets. One can't go too far on overdoing how healthy they are.
Just versus 2022 when the music stopped and 2023 when it was tumbleweeds, there's just been a gradual pickup in activity through 2024 and 2025 across. We see both sides, private, public entries, exits. We see it in emerging. We look at developed for lead indicators. In emerging, there's benchmark. We play a lot in Mexico, Brazil, and India. There's a lot of strong double-digit million and triple-digit million fundraisers happening across benchmark fintech names, which some of ours are benefiting. We talked about Creditas just now, but also Juspay earlier this year. Our portfolio companies are benefiting with capital coming in. It also helps us with capital going out. We did a bit of secondary in Juspay. The IPO markets are very healthy and getting healthier, in the U.S. The U.S. tends to lead and the world tends to follow.
Although India has been healthy and we IPO'd BlackBuck in that market. There are a number of companies getting ready for IPO across a number of scale emerging markets following the U.S. lead. These are just good trends. Capital flowing in and out of the industry is good for our business and for our companies and what we do on a macro, bigger picture level. Slide 11 before I wrap up. The whole cash and balance sheet, we've been keeping the market up to date on this. I think we've been very focused on getting cash in. We've been talking a lot about it through 2024 into early 2025. The three exits we did, which we've maybe over-talked about at this stage, have put us in a very solid position from a balance sheet point of view and from a debt leverage point of view.
We end the quarter at $17.6 million of cash on balance sheet. Our debt position after paying down approximately half our debt earlier this year is just over 5% of our net asset value at $25 million. We're in a very comfortable debt position. We've also used the opportunity year to date to be buying record shares when the discount actually touched nearly 60% at one point. It was just the most obvious thing to do with our capital. We bought back over 2% of our shares with $5.3 million. It's been a good exercise in capital in delivering exits, delivering exits to net asset value, and then the most logical capital allocation tools as you work through your debt and deleveraging buying back your shares.
Now we're into a point where you can sit back and have a good, healthy debate at team and board level around capital allocation strategy, where we're going from here with the next incremental dollar in, cross-referencing our debt position, which is a lot lower, our equities, which is the discounts closing with the pipeline that we're seeing. It is a much more robust debate as opposed to one-dimensional, obvious, we'll pay down our debt, we'll buy back our shares, then we'll get back to investing. It is a nice evolution of that. Finally, just to wrap up, pretty similar to last time, and we are a beast of consistency, but we try and do that and then we tweak as we go. Look, it's always been about the portfolio. We talk a lot about Creditas, Konfío, and Juspay because they dominate. They're over 80% of our NAV.
It is natural we do so. The reigniting growth we're seeing at Creditas and Konfío is clear. Juspay continues to compound at a healthy level. Hence, it's able to raise capital earlier this year. We were able to take money off the table. Fresh capital is coming into our companies, which is great. There is a number of companies coming through. Maybe that's a point for next quarter's update. I believe the companies like Abhi growing triple-digit percentage growth in a lot of its key metrics. It's a company that's doing exceptionally well in Pakistan and into the Middle East. Rupeek, gold-backed lending in India is getting a very strong tailwind from the gold price and its core business. Juspay, which is solar panel ecosystem distribution into lending, is producing record results month on month for August into September. It is feeling very good about itself again.
A lot of this is macro markets capital trends, but then it feeds into the micro level delivery and it spits out results. Maybe that's one for next quarter. We need to get a little bit deeper into behind the big three, which we tend to over-focus on. I think the exits we've done so far over the last 12 months have been good. We have no pressure to push anything out the door at the wrong price. We do have offers for different names as we go. We're selective in what we do, right asset, right time, right check, right price. We're pretty confident that we could get more out the door in the next 3 to 15 months as we look ahead. Capital allocation has become a broader debate of what is the next most important thing. I think it's a healthy debate.
Quite obviously, we've been doing the most obvious next thing with our debt into our equity. It's just nice to be in a capital comfortable position with options on the table. We'll continue to do what's best for shareholders, both from a short-term value accretion point of view and a long-term growth point of view. That kind of touches on pipeline. This is probably a bit like the similar smaller names in our portfolio, which is worthy of a slide or two the next time we give an update. Pipeline work is getting a lot more focused. We're enamored by a very focused number of fintechs that we've been very close to over the last three to five years, tracking them in scale emerging markets, staying close to the founders and their shareholders, watching them trend positive as they come out of the last cycle.
We're just positioning ourselves as we have always done in the past to make sure that we are the capital allocator of choice for best-in-class fintechs who want capital to be with them for their next part of the journey. These are healthy work streams, the base that we're having at the moment, but it's taking a lot more of our time as we go. I will stop there. Maybe, Heidi, operator, if you want to open up to any questions there are from the floor.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone, and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. We will take our first question. The question comes from the line of [Lionel Sitgardston]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Starting off, is there anything at all you can say about how the capital raise for Creditas is progressing? At a high level, any indication on what we should expect in terms of a timeline around a potential outcome?
Hey, Lionel. How are you? It's the right question to ask. I'd do the same if I was in your seat. We're a little bit or a lot restricted in what we can and can't say for obvious reasons. I guess what I would say is that they wouldn't have made an announcement unless they thought it was real. We wouldn't have followed up unless we thought it was real. That's just probably point number one. Timing is just difficult. It's difficult because these things can take time because there's parties involved and there's structuring and there's legals. I guess the indication that they actually felt confident enough to put it out there in the first place would give you the shorter than longer feel in terms of timeline.
Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. My second question was on Konfío. You mentioned how the comp set has come up mainly in the last quarter. Can you say anything about how operational momentum has progressed sequentially throughout this past year?
Yeah. No, that's fair. Obviously, the core delivery of these companies is key for them and for us. Actually, the reason why I called a little bit earlier is I'm off to D.C. for a Konfío board meeting. We're doing a good session there with all key shareholders in place. They started off the year super strong. Loan growth really picked up. Whereas the kind of Creditas performance has been a gradual re-acceleration, and Creditas is clearly more transparent with its information. I always apologize when we can't show what we want to show. Konfío front-loaded a lot of its growth to the first half, and it's slowing a bit now. Overall, we're probably going to end the year in a very similar outlook for Creditas and Konfío, where they both end up in that 20% - 30% credit growth for the year. Margins are holding strong.
Asset margins at about 50%. Pricing is not under pressure in the market that it's playing in, and it's getting more and more efficient on the cost base. Actually, Konfío is probably one of the more impressive companies in our portfolio with use on impact already of AI tools, and it is cash flow positive. It's building a little bit of cash. One focal point, and we've talked about this line as before, and it's been something that I've talked about for a number of quarters, is around the licensing, the bank license application, which is very clear and transparent for Konfío and will be a fundamental game changer in terms of franchise value, as well as a cost of funding game changer in terms of how they fund themselves. That's just an ongoing process. For me, it's a when, not if scenario.
I'd like to think it's in the bag by year end, given what we've seen with other fintechs like Revolut, Plata. There have been a number over the last two or three years who have received their banking license, and I fully believe we're next in line. I hate the timing on these things because you're dealing with regulators. I think operationally, directionally positive, a bit like Creditas, albeit more front-loaded for this year anyway. Next year will be different. Regulatory-wise and fundamentally to the valuation of the business and where it's going, the bank license is key.
Thanks. That's very much appreciated. I wanted to ask on your other investments line, and your NAV keeps getting larger. Is there anything you can say about the general direction of travel in that end of the portfolio in terms of operating performance?
Yeah. No, like I alluded at the end of the presentation, what we'll do is we'll do a session in the next results deck where we get into some of the names beyond the top three. Because even though the top three dominate over 80%, there's still a big stake that's not the top three. You know there are names like Abhi. It's really grown exceptionally fast. It's the only fintech in Pakistan with a banking license, which gives an exceptional position to enable growth and value creation. It's also doing very well in the Middle East and the interaction between the two regions. As I said, with Solfácil, the solar lender and ecosystem play in Brazil, once again, their trends are picking up very strong, strong double-digit growth in that name.
Nibo is another one I didn't mention in the accounting SaaS from software, but like Fort Knox for Brazil, we're seeing this kind of 30% - 40% compounding profitable growth now, albeit from a small base. Don't get me wrong. These aren't scale like Creditas. There are some which are going less exciting in there, as you would expect. I think we're going to see some breakout names coming out of there into the top end of the portfolio that we'll be highlighting on a more consistent basis as we go forward.
Okay. Thanks a lot. My final question, could you comment anything about how you think about exits near term in terms of should we think more like full sales or more like your partial exit in Juspay? Thank you.
Yeah. No, it's fair. We think about it a lot and what we've learned. You learn a lot doing this over time. You should always be trying to exit. You should always be looking for the dollar in. You're not forcing anything, but it just should be constant. We have a number of work streams and people owning those work streams across different areas, M&A, IPO, secondaries, and across key individual names. More likely than not, it'll be slicing of positions like what we did with Juspay. You stay in the game with company X or company Y, but you take a sliver off the table, $10 million, $20 million of one of our top three, for example, as you go, as they raise money or somebody leans in versus a wholesale exit of a company.
I think historically, people tended to think about exits as your IPO or maybe your M&A. What investors are getting more and more comfortable and used to is that the secondary market for private companies is becoming a more real thing. We're seeing obviously daily flow in big global private companies like Stripe, for example, and SpaceX. There's daily markets in them. That trend and theme is actually flowing down to smaller markets, emerging markets, and smaller stocks, albeit it's less liquid at the gray market. It's more and more happening. Doing them around events when a company is raising, like Juspay did earlier this year, is easy. Around that, there's a lot of conversations going on constantly. That's also from the shopping and the investment side.
When we're looking at a pipeline of five companies or 10 companies, yes, you're waiting for the next fundraise to be part of that lead or be part therein. In between funding rounds, there's always areas where you can clean up cap tables, buy secondary, and buy employee shares. The founder might want to take some money off the table. It's becoming a much more intricate area of capital in, capital out, as opposed to the plain vanilla Series A, B, C, D that is the way in, and M&A and IPO is the way out.
Okay, that's very clear. Thank you so much.
Super, Lionel. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I would like to hand back for closing remarks.
Super. Thank you, Heidi. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in at a slightly earlier time this time around. We're pretty happy where we're at from a business point of view year to date and how everything's going. There's a hell of a lot more work to do. We're quite excited. We're working hard. It's not just the short term in terms of what we're doing, the exits, the buybacks, the pay down debt, but it's also reigniting growth in our portfolio companies and in our pipeline engine for putting more capital to work in the medium term into the next gen winners at VEF because we're 10 years old or young at this stage. We're looking forward to the next 10 to 20 years of doing more of the same, obviously bigger, better, faster. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.