Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the VEF 4Q 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, you will need to press again star one and one. I would now like to end the conference. Our speaker today, David Nangle. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Roberto, and welcome everybody to our Q4 2022 Results Conference Call. I'm David Nangle, the CEO of VEF. With me today on the call, as for the last few calls, is our CIO, Alexis Koumoudos. As usual, what we'll do is we'll spend about 20-25 minutes max going through our presentation, update you all on the quarter gone and the year gone by, as well as outlook for 2023. Then we'll open up for Q&A and make it a bit more interactive. But slides are on our website as and are also in the portal, so I'll go through them as I speak. Key event slide number two, key events of the quarter. So what was happening? Effectively from our side, it's a lot of work has been done on valuation.
We continue our robust market-based valuation approach that has been key in a world of falling public market comps when everybody's questioning the value of private companies in portfolios like ours. We've laid out our shop very clearly. We've been very conservative in the current environment and very robust, and I think fairly transparent in what we can do. Over 70% of our portfolio is now valued on a market-based approach. What we like to think is that our NAV is very reflective real time at a quarterly basis of the public market reality as opposed to playing catch up or behind the curve. That's something that we've been stating again and again, and we stand behind our NAV.
I think if you look at Q4, what happened in Q4, our NAV was down to $382 million, down 14% quarter-on-quarter and 50% year-on-year. I think in the quarter, pure fintech stocks sold off. If you have a portfolio indexed against the public market fintech stocks, you are gonna be hit as they ebb and flow in this current market environment. Year-on-year, fintech indexes were down between 50%-60%. We do a lot of micro-level work in our portfolio, but at a macro level, we're broadly down in line with the fintech indexes out there, which is logical given the nature of the portfolio that we hold.
The biggest moves within our portfolio was our biggest names in Creditas and Konfío, mainly driven by pure comps. On the portfolio front, the fundamental stuff day-to-day, what's key to, you know, today and future value of this company, it continues to deliver. We had a portfolio that grew revenue through 2022, 120% year-on-year. The final numbers are coming through, but it's approximate end number for the full year 2022, and we expect about that to fall to about 65% in 2023. Yes, more moderated top line growth as you would expect in a year that's coming, but still very robust levels of growth. What's combining with that more moderated robust growth levels is profitability or goals to attain profitability.
At this point, about 70% of our portfolio or NAV portfolio is profitable or can reach break even with the current capital position. It's managing the risk reward of the portfolio in this environment, which makes sense at this point. On a specific basis, Creditas is still 50% of our NAV, continues to report quarterly numbers, and I'll get into them in the deck. It continued to be robust on the growth level. The nine-month numbers for this year were up 90% on a portfolio basis and 173% on a revenue basis year-on-year. A lot of key positive trajectory in underlying trends at Creditas are feeding through to our 2023 numbers and trends, and I'll get into that.
We have a new, name that's the second biggest in the portfolio. Juspay, it's not a new name to the portfolio, but the ebb and the flow of positioning within the portfolio always changes. Juspay is becoming a more and more important asset to VEF and our NAV. We're super impressed by everything that they do on the ground in the business. Valuation-wise, we are very happy with where this could go. From a capital position point of view, just shy of $50 million of capital at the end of Q4, put us in a comfortable position in the market that we're in. We're back on the front foot.
We started to ebb on this in the Q3 conference call. You know a lot of defense played last year, but in Q3 and Q4 we started to buy back our own shares, which we paused for now. That was an action on the front foot to create value for us and our shareholders. Upping our IR and PR as we look to, you know, reduce that trade discount to NAV, something that really does irk us, given how much we stand behind our NAV. More fundamental to long-term growth in our business, we are actually starting to see some fresh opportunities arise, at this point in the core investment thesis as well as in the secondary market.
Something that 2022 on average was lacking as we were looking internally and that the opportunity set wasn't as robust as it was in previous years. I'll get into that. On slide three, just some numbers. These came through this morning in our release, but $382 million of NAV on a per share basis in SEK, which the market tends to track, 3.82. Obviously that cross-references with our share price, which is ebbing around 230 at the moment, 245 SEK at year-end 2022. On slide four, if you look at our NAV evolution, it is quite interesting.
I've said this before in many investor meetings, you know, the evolution from sub $100 million back in start of 2015 to $382 million at the end of Q4 2022 does feel like a positive result. The hindsight when you look at 2021 and the evolution of what happened there, obviously it was a negative indication or direction over the last 12-18 months. It's almost like 2021 was the aberration as opposed to 2022. If you look at our long-term performance, we are delivering double-digit NAV per share and double-digit share price over the last 7 years. The performance of VEF and what we do is strong and consistent.
The evolutions of our NAV and the anomaly that was 2021, the drawback down to today, is very clear for all to see. If I'm looking at slide four, I'm looking at, you know, the fintech indexes and which is a basket of fintech stocks, traded stocks, and a broad resemblance of what we do on the private side. For somebody like us who lays out their soul at this point in the cycle, valuing our companies against this basket, it's very clear that the ebbs and flows of these indexes and the stocks within them, which are benchmarked against our companies, will have an impact on how we value our companies irrespective of how well those companies are doing. In Q4, we once again had a sell-off in global fintech.
It's not an aggressive one like the first half of 2022, but it was definitely a negative direction, 5%-7%. Within that, some of the comps that we use in different names in our portfolio were down double digits over the quarter. That obviously fed through to the valuation process. This is at a year-end 2022 point. I, you know, as pure as this process is, the anomalies are as we sit here today, these indexes are up about 16% year to date. It's not like we're not a public market fund or public holdings. We're not putting in daily or weekly or even monthly NAV marks.
You can see how our NAV mark will ebb and flow with the volatility of these indexes, which are net positive year to date, but obviously had a slight down in Q4. If we get into a micro level of the portfolio and the evolution of the valuation in Q4, the names which drove the, I guess, the 12% decrease in the portfolio, 14% overall in their NAV, it was the bigger names and even, you know, moves in those names tend to drive more than the smaller names. Creditas off 9% quarter-on-quarter. I see that in the way that Creditas, we took it down in Q2 of last year in line with comps. It was the logical thing to do. It was up 8% in Q3, now down 9% in Q4.
Comps are moving in that space, Creditas is a reflection of them. We also did put a $5 million additional check into Creditas, and a convertible note along with other internal shareholders in the period. Konfío down a more substantial 34% in the quarter. The comps against it were more dramatic, the majority of that negative move is comp driven. We also did reduce our forecast for Konfío in a more moderated growth drive to break even scenario, as opposed to more aggressive growth and burn scenario, that's obviously reflected in these numbers. Beyond that, two of our smaller names, Magnetis and Finja, in different markets, different businesses, we're more conservative, reducing them at this point. Jumo is probably the one that stands out. We reduced that by 74% quarter-on-quarter.
Effectively it's the timeline of them closing a funding round, which is ongoing. We took the logical conservative stance to not imply a successful raise and not imply the benefit from that raise and then to market the business without that raise embedded, as opposed to when the raise gets done and closed, and it'll be a different business with different growth profiles. It's a logical conservative move at this point in time. At this stage, from a valuation perspective, maybe I'll pass over to Alexis for the next few slides before I take up at the end. Alexis.
Great. Thanks, Dave. Hi, everyone. Yeah, just to double down a little bit on what Dave has been alluding to in terms of a bit more color on valuation and portfolio side. Slide seven is just a reminder about our approach to valuations and therefore how we shape our NAV. We continue to implement what we believe is a very robust and conservative approach to assigning fair value to our stakes and portfolio companies. First of all, we categorize all companies according to the period of time since their last significant transaction. So portfolio companies that fall within 12 months since the last significant transaction, we mark to last transaction. At the same time, we identify comps for these companies and benchmark implied differences in valuation based on what we determine to be key multiples.
If there's any meaningful change in the environment with this, within this period, we calibrate the last transaction valuation to reflect the change in the environment. Beyond the 12 months from the last transaction, we use mark-to-model methodology based on identified key public comps and relative valuation methodologies. You can see that these methodologies are designed so that we reflect changes in the market environment as well as changes in the outlook for our companies at all points in time, and that our NAV reflects what we and our auditors feel are true and fair values. On the next slide eight, we just go into this in a little bit more detail.
As you can see, of the 17 portfolio companies, Seven portfolio companies are marked to the latest transaction, which represents 27% of our NAV contribution. On this slide, we disclose a little bit more in terms of detail of these rounds to illustrate how recent and significant these transactions are. The remaining 9 portfolio companies are valued on market-based methodologies, which represents 71% of NAV contribution. This includes Creditas, which is valued based on a calibration methodology. On the next slide, on slide nine, this we've designed to give a brief update of the NAV and portfolio performance. Over the course of 2022, NAV reduced by 50% to reflect the current environment and the resulting fair values of our portfolio companies.
As shown in the previous slide, 71% of our portfolio is mark-to-model-based or, market-based valuations and 29% on last transaction. Over the course of 2022, our portfolio companies grew revenues by 120% on a weighted basis, which was in line with our expectations for the previous quarter. Our internal expectations for revenue growth in the portfolio for 2023 is 65%, which I think reflects three things. 1, the NAV contribution is concentrated amongst our largest portfolio companies. 2, some of the larger companies are reaching a scale where growth tends to taper. 3, across the portfolio companies, the companies are correctly focusing their efforts on, and their resources on efficiency and profitability.
We believe this is a strong growth, considering the environment and maturity of our portfolio. One of the key factors enabling our portfolio to continue to sustain such good growth is our relentless focus on strong unit economics in the portfolio. On the portfolio capital needs, we feel generally very well positioned to navigate the current environment. 69% of our portfolio, in terms of NAV contribution, are or can reach profitability with their existing capital position. The remaining 31% of our portfolio, which is typically earlier stage, or companies in growth mode, have a portfolio-weighted runway of 15 months, which we feel comfortable with. On the next slide 10, we produced a bridge, isolating the attribution to various factors for the fourth quarter moves in $ value. We split this into three categories.
The first is the 71% of the portfolio that's valued on market-based approaches. The second is 29% of the portfolio valued on last transaction. The third bucket is changes based on activities at the corporate level. As you can see, the portfolio company performance and actually the outlook, in terms of NAV attribution, was largely in line. Our portfolio has delivered well on the fourth quarter targets, but some adjustments have been made on outlook to prioritize efficient capital allocation and path to profitability. The largest impact on this entire bridge is in fact the market impact, which effectively contributed to a $68 million reduction in our NAV for the quarter. This reflects a reduction in comp multiples through equity market performance in the quarter.
This is an external force, but given our process-driven valuation approach for deriving fair values in this window, there's a direct impact from market moves in our market-based valuations. There was a small impact from FX as most of our currencies, including the Brazilian real and Mexican peso, strengthened marginally in the quarter. Nine million dollars within this bucket, from new investments and other, captures the $5 million that we invested in Creditas' convertible note and some other small movements. For the portfolio based on latest transaction, there's a small impact from FX on shares which were priced in non-dollar currencies. In the corporate bucket, you'll see the $7.8 million represents the $5 million that we invested into Creditas and also our OpEx.
There's a small translational effect of $3.8 million from FX, which is related to the strengthening SEK and its impact on our sustainability bond, which was a tailwind in the last quarter, but some of that has reversed. I think, you know, the key takeaways here are portfolio is delivering on in line and on target, but $68 million of the $63 million reduction in NAV is coming from the market forces, which as we know, you know, can as easily reverse as it comes down. Actually, markets have made a very strong start to 2023.
Super. Thank you, Alexis. Look, a couple of slides from my side before we wrap up and open up the Q&A. One is Creditas, obviously still approximately 50% of our NAV, continues to release their quarterly numbers. These are all public information as released by Creditas themselves. The Q3 numbers are the latest set of numbers, and they're reflected in the next few slides that I'm showing. What they do show is real-time, a company still delivering robust growth. You know, nine months of 2022 versus same period last year, you have a portfolio growth of nearly 100% and top line revenue growth of 173%. It's hard to ask much more than that in the performance from the company.
What I have you know, besides that from Creditas is a reiteration of the message giving last quarter. As we look into Q4 and as we look into next year, it's still very much a robust growth story. They're not gonna double and triple their portfolio from here, be more moderated, but still very robust by any normal standards. What we like is the trend and the underlying numbers at Creditas as they, you know, have a lot of positive dynamics from an analyst point of view and an Excel point of view as they reprice up the asset side of the portfolio. On the funding side, where they've been squeezed on their growth margins, Selic rate the interest rates in Brazil seem to have topped out.
That put the cap on where that funding cost has gone and the next iteration is flattered down, which is obviously the next benefit on their margins. You know, from a cost and CAC optimization that continues, and we see that benefiting at a business on the numbers, and all this moving in the right direction towards reducing burn and getting to break even at some point in 2023, which then leads to a plan, the potential IPO at some point beyond that, with 2024 being a logical goal and data point for something like that. Obviously with any moving parts. From a share price NAV per share premium discount.
Look, we're not happy with how the year 2022 played out from an NAV per share and a share price, but it is a reflection of what happened in the markets. As Alexis alluded to, it was very much evaluation comping, and we've had no real car crashes in our portfolio, very much at the top end. The businesses are holding up very well, irrespective of being worth less today than they were worth yesterday. It's not the kind of environment where one gets rewarded for conservatism in one's valuation marks. The market tends to look through and look for further downside and extrapolates.
A bit like at the back end of 2021 when things were on the up, the market tends to look through and extrapolate in the upside and trade a premium at NAV. We get that. Where we see ourselves now with our analyst view is we're becoming a very clear, well, a value play, given the discounts nearly 50% at NAV, as well as a higher beta growth play. We're probably not the first iteration growth and recovery stock, we get how we'll be higher beta into that and how we're very much, you know, dependent on our core portfolio which is performing combined with how the markets perform from here. From a closing discount to NAV, this remains front and center of everything we do as a company. We care. We care because we run the company.
We care because we're shareholders. We care because we believe it's wrong even though markets talk. We understand that. We launched the buyback last year. We carried that through to Q4. We paused that for a window. It's there for us to do more. We have the ability to do up to $10 million of buybacks in our own shares. On the IR and the PR front, we have never shied away from engaging with investors, and we're finding new investors continuously for our stock and our story. There's different areas of the investment community that are finding our story for the first time with different mandates and liking what they see. We've had a lot of our core investor base.
If you look at our cap table shareholder base at the end of 2021, you move to the end of 2022, the core of that is still very much there. We're very proud of that, and we're very happy and grateful for that. That's because we do a lot on the investor relations front. We are listening to the market. We're doing our best on increased transparency. You see our decks on a quarter-by-quarter basis getting better, deeper, more detailed, so we are listening. The nature of our business is investing in private companies in emerging markets. They are private, that's the key word. Not every company can be like Creditas and who is starting to open their kimono and share information with the markets.
We like that it helps us, it helps you, and we do our best with other companies, as they grow up and they're willing to share. The investment performance, I'm starting to get cautiously optimistic about 2023. Not that it's quite business as usual, but it is a year where I expect to see once again companies within our portfolio raising capital in a, let's call it a benchmark way of raises above the last round for more capital coming into them. M&A is very much on the table this year, potential exits. These are kind of key events I expect to be happening, as we run through 2023. As well as from a valuation point of view, not to call the bottom because I was stupid to try and call the bottom.
It does seem we are ebbing and flowing around the bottom. I do like the start of the year that markets have had, especially in tech, and that reflection that it has from a valuation point of view on us, on our portfolio. From a capital position, you know, this is an update on last quarter's slide. The $48.5 million in bank at the end of Q4 2022. The moving parts are similar other than we took $5 million out of the portfolio needs which we invested in Creditas and the convertible. The buybacks still sits there, and coupon and OpEx. At this point, the expectation is to have a cash position at the end of 2023 with $27.5 million at their current plan, an evolution of that plan.
There's gonna be many moving parts to that as we go through the year. Final slide, just to wrap up before we open up to questions from you guys. I guess to reiterate, 2022 was a year to play defense after what happened initially at the start of the year. I believe we played defense very well. We didn't step on any landmines. They were everywhere. Our job was to make sure, you know, we kept this portfolio intact, in good shape. We defended it where we could, put more capital to work and supported our companies. We got our own balance sheet right with the sustainable bond and a very focused team and got our NAV down.
You know, it's not that we're proud of what we've done with our NAV, we are markets people, and we're very quick to move to the new market reality as opposed to the more private world, which maybe has a lag effect just given the nature of what they do versus our public market base. I think, you know, we're starting to lean forward in the second half of 2022. We're benching forward, don't get me wrong, from the buybacks and looking at opportunities, talking to our partners. I'm actually in the Middle East right now. Alexis will be in India in two weeks time. Very much back on the road, very much in the trenches with our companies and our partners.
Buying back our shares was the first obvious capital move on that front, investment opportunities that I'll talk in second are starting to appear. You know, capital position is comfortable. I'm happy with that. Creditas, our biggest holding, continues to do us proud. It's in a very good place, from a performance point of view and looking at 2023. There's other names, and I talked about this in the management letter, names coming through. Juspay and Gringo, not to pick two, are probably top of list of names that excite us most with potential impact for us, their company or NAV as we look into 2023.
That's not taking a five-year view or a 10-year view, but being very short term as to two companies that really excite us and can do great things for us and our portfolio company. Finally, from the investment opportunities, what I would say beyond buying back our own shares, putting more capital to work in an opportune way in our own companies, we are starting to see, you know, opportunities coming through with some of the better fintechs now starting to raise capital again. Names that we maybe missed in the last cycle coming back to the market at more realistic valuations. Also, we're seeing a lot of secondary being shaken out in the market where investors in companies in our portfolio and elsewhere, may be off out of their own jurisdiction.
Angels who've made a lot of money from early, even if things have pulled back, those blocks are starting to come. A more vibrant secondary market is evolving, and that just screams opportunity to somebody like us who's got true cycle permanent capital. We've gone on for a little bit longer than usual, but I'll stop there, and ask the operator to open up for Q&A, and myself and Alexis will happily answer.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We are now taking the first question. The first question from Joachim Gunell from DNB. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. good afternoon, Dave and Alexis. Can you talk a bit about, from like a sequential point of view, how your, call it, growth strategies have been revised, in a fashion that was most perhaps factored or reflected in, call it Q2, Q3? Have you revised down, your call it growth ambitions for call it, 2023? Is there any way you can provide some sort of like aggregate, portfolio, ambition? Are we talking... obviously it's Creditas.
Hey, Joachim. Maybe I'll start, and Alexis feel free to override at that. Obviously it's a portfolio of 17 companies, and there's a lot of individual stories within that. Some actually models have been upped, some have been cut, and they might have been cut at volume and balance sheet level, but they might be staying stable at a revenue level because while volumes may be pulled back for a variety of reasons, margins are going up in many of our markets. Kind of introduction preamble to your question. On top of that, I guess we've stated that our companies are growing revenue. Let's call it a consistent line of revenue across the portfolio, 120% in 2022, and we currently have it modeled at about 65% for 2023 on aggregate.
We will be more conservative than the models that our companies provide us. We do our own numbers around them with a conservative bias. What I would say generally, and I can give you a specific number, is that that number for as we started 2022 and we're modeling 2023, that revenue growth number for 2023 was higher, let's be logical. For 2023 as one would have assumed more capital flowing into these companies and more risk on and more growth. You're talking north of that 65%, but we wouldn't have expected 120% year-on-year revenue growth in 2022 and then again into 2023. You're talking of a range of between that 65% and maybe 80%-90% in a, in range bound.
It's just different companies on a, on a case-by-case basis. I'm not sure I can give anything more than that at this point, but I don't know, Alexis, if you wanna overlay that with anything of interest.
Don't have much to add to that. I think you've covered it pretty comprehensively.
Sure. During this like back of the envelope calculations, I would assume that, some sort of looking at your portfolio aggregate sales multiple on a 2023 basis would come down below, call it 5 terms or something like that. Or am I roughly in ballpark there?
Go ahead. Yeah, I'd say so, you know, there's two portions of portfolio. One is based on like market multiples or... That is comfortably below five times. Yeah. I would say.
Lovely. Yeah.
Then the other is like based on last round, you know, transaction values and, we have implied multiples that we track there, but, I don't have an aggregate number there.
No, that's fine. Thank you. Let's not spend too much time on like technicalities. Can you say anything about the... I mean, call it asset quality on across your lending businesses and also what you have seen in terms of, yeah, in the first month here of 2023, if transaction volumes are coming down as everybody's concerned of a cyclical slowdown?
Yeah. I think from an asset quality point of view, I guess all eyes on the top of our portfolio, which is credit assets and Konfío, albeit we have other lenders, be it Revo in Russia and Abhi lending in Pakistan, JUMO in Africa. Asset quality, I know it's surprising or unsurprising, but it hasn't been an issue. Hasn't been an issue yet, as in everyone is looking at it. In Brazil, there's a big focus on asset quality and the analysts on the streets who are looking at all the listed companies, banks, lenders, we're very focused on the asset quality evolution of MPLs and all the data below that, first payment default through to provisioning. While we have a few banks on average showing a bit of strain, other ones are showing less strain.
Net-net, we are not seeing an issue. As we, you know, Creditas asset quality, I think the headline would be stable. Konfío, very similar. Nothing has, you know, the trajectory in Q4 has been stable versus Q3, and that's pretty much across our portfolio. I don't... at this point in the cycle, we are not looking at an asset quality problem. That may change or things may get... it might be a modest cycle or, you know, from here, but nothing to flag on that front. From a growth point of view, different markets, different trends, but Brazil is a market where January is a big month, whereas you know, December is a quiet month.
So you know, through companies like Creditas, FinanZero, our digital loan broker, is seeing, you know, transactions pick up in January, as is normally the seasonal case. Other markets is a bit slower in January. It can be mixed market by market, but nothing new in January as we've come back in the new year from a volume point of view where we go, "Oh, this has changed," or, "Oh, we didn't expect that.
Very clear. Can you talk a bit about the fact that you've utilized one quarter or one-third of the obviously share buyback plan that you had. Then the weighted average price at which you have bought back shares have obviously been higher where the shares are currently trading. You obviously see value below on the upside where the share price currently is. With regards to that, can you just comment a bit about basically your capital position and the fact that you paused the buyback program here in November and how you see things played out. Are there any... Call it, what's the quality of potential targets out there, basically?
Yeah, no. Lovely question. The former analyst in me would have asked the exact same question. I do like it with my analyst hat on. Like, you know, put my CEO hat on, here is what I'd say. I'm very happy we have the buyback mandate. It's limited in number up to $10 million. I'm very happy that we executed it, a part of it in Q3, into Q4. It was the right thing to do. It was an indication to the market it was the right valuation. I would buy back so much more of our stock right now, if I was in a much better capital position to do so. It's the most obvious and logical thing I could do with any excess capital.
I look at our capital position today, I use the word comfortable, but it's not in excess. I look at the world today, there's still a lot of moving parts. It's more of a CEO into CFO talking to our board, you know, asset liability, capital management decision whereby we're happy to have the mandate. We would fundamentally be very happy to buy back our shares at these levels, but we're just holding back for now on doing that. It's more capital risk management preservation, albeit a small incremental amount, as opposed to anything changing in our view of the merit of buyback and the value therein.
Lovely. I hope, well, let's all hope you can put on the CEO cap again later this year then. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thanks.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Priya Rathod from KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question and for the presentation. I just have a question on your cash position. Looking into 2023, you're seeing and actively looking for investment opportunities. Do you feel as though you've got enough cash to deploy to take those opportunities? I mean this in the context of, you know, if an opportunity arises tomorrow, are you comfortable with your current cash levels and liquid assets to invest, or would you potentially need to exit one of your holdings to invest? Any color on that would be great. Thank you.
Yeah. It's a very fair question and thanks for it. Look, what we've ran over the years is a, let's call it a just-in-time cash business, and cash in business. A little bit of risk in that, but our last two placements were done at a point when we were low on capital, and we had deals lined up, and we went out to our shareholder base, explained the situation, and raised capital for all the right reasons to put that money to work in names like Creditas, Konfío, iyzico, in the past. We kinda see it similar at this point in that our cash position is comfortable. We can nibble our shares from a buyback if we want to continue that. We have capital put aside. We put $5 million into Creditas.
We've got another $6 million set aside, Konfío plus one other. That makes us happy from a portfolio spans point of view. It doesn't make us running out there writing big checks, but you know, when I start to say the investment opportunities are starting to appear, they're not yet obvious to us as in the right companies, the right valuations, right check size, but I think that will happen. Then we will lean into our shareholder base, you know, as the time is right, as the opportunities arise, when that comes. I think we're very much focused on... What I like about us, right? Not to not answer your question, but I like about VEF right now is that we can do nothing else, and there's a lot of value creation within what we currently have.
We're not a classic venture capital fund where we have to keep on investing to create value or keep on investing to get paid. We actually have a portfolio that can compound naturally with some reinvestment as we go. That's a big value uplift to us, combined with us closing that discount to NAV. I think there is some tailwinds, some micro-level positives in the portfolio coming this year, which will help us do that, and we'll do our best to do that as well. That will lead into a timeline of when we see opportunities leading into our shareholders in better markets seeing exits coming through in some of our portfolio companies to have the capital to make the next leg of investment.
We kind of see it as an evolution, as opposed to an immediate moment of we need to do something if we find something.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Ermin Keric for Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Gentlemen, hi. Thanks for taking the question and for the presentation. The first one would be a little bit of a follow-up on Joachim's question on the growth pace. Would it be any way to give some color on how much closer to profitability the portfolio has gotten compared to what the plan was at the start of 2022, given the increased focus?
Yeah, that's a, that's a different way of looking at it, and I guess they're linked. The idea of growth and profitability and moderating growth to get to profitability quicker as opposed to excess capital, excess expansion, customer acquisition costs to grow volumes and top line quicker, but pushing out that break-even point. You know, I guess that the reflection is that 120% 2022 revenue growth forecast or fact going to a 65% forecast next year for the portfolio, that is reflecting more of the portfolio, being at or looking to get to break even in this year. We say break even at this point, we're talking Revo in Russia, we're talking Nibo in Brazil, two of our Pakistani companies, Mahaana, and Abhi, give or take break even. Juspay not far off.
Just to be our number two holding Creditas within that plan to break even this year and the numbers and trends should get us there. Likewise, Konfío is on a plan for that. You know, if you asked us the same question 12 months ago, would it be 70% of the portfolio would be break even or plan to break even this year? It would be less, a bit like Joachim's question. You know, it would be, you know, in the 30%-50% mark of our NAV as opposed to 70% plus, from top of mind guesstimate. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it.
Thanks. That's very helpful. There's been some questions on your bond and if there's any covenants that are at risk now when you're approaching to be in net debt position. Could you just clarify that for the market?
Yeah, no, it's a, it's a fair question. Henrik and I look at it a lot. obviously it's a, it's key aspect of our capital structure. my answer would be no. there's nothing top of mind that's restrictive. There might be one or two small things, and allow me to come back to you, nothing essential or dramatic, I believe. Let me double-check with Henrik on this, and come back to you directly and anybody else in this call that wants to know. From going from net cash positive to net cash negative, I don't believe we are restricted in any major way. I would know if we were, but not in a major way.
Thank you. That's perfectly fine. Then maybe more specific questions on a few holdings, and we can take them directly, both of them. Maybe first with REVO. Is that just a policy decision to have it at zero, or do you think there would be no way to extract cash if you wanted to from it today? I think what I'm fishing for is basically what could implied valuation be if you would do a more fair value assessment of it today if the zero is just a policy decision? Then the second thing would be, you mentioned that the embedded discount of Juspay versus Peers has been expanding.
Could you just give us any sense to how big it is today and where it was at the point of the last transaction you did there? Thank you.
Yes. No, that's fair. Let maybe I'll do REVO, and I'll let Alexis jump in on Juspay. I think the REVO, Russia is a policy decision. It's no offense to REVO on a micro level. It's just, Russia is where it is in its cycle of life. It is, I guess, the parallel universe that is Russia. What is anything worth in that market? How can you realize it? How can you extract the capital from that market, which is quite difficult right now. REVO is a profitable company. As I said in my management letter, we're talking double-digit, must be low double-digit million dollars of bottom line, not top line.
What does somebody pay for, let's call it a $10 million bottom line, consumer buy now, pay later company growing at a healthy clip in Russia? Do they pay 5 times P? Do they pay 10? 10 is probably punchy, maybe 5. 5 times 10 is $50 million. You know, that's the company level value. We own 20%, you do the math like that. That's just me throwing out general numbers, and Erman as opposed to putting a value on it. There's the other side of that of it earning, and being in Russia, and can those earnings be dividended out to the variety of shareholders who are in play. Look, all this isn't. None of this is lost on us.
You know, we're very involved in Revo, albeit we've marked it to zero for the right reasons. We're working all avenues on that one while making sure it continues to be a healthy going concern and continues to grow in value, albeit being in that market. It's gonna grow in business outside of Russia and East Europe, and Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and there's value in that. That's small versus the Russian business today. That's on Revo. Alexis, do you wanna make a... Anything to say on Juspay?
Absolutely, yeah. What I would say on Juspay is, you know, the last significant round that they did, they took in additional money in June, but that was effectively an extension of a round that happened at the beginning of 2022. I think it closed like around January 2022 or the end of 2021. At that point in time, the valuation that we have Juspay marked at today is the valuation of that round. At that point in time, it was a very realistic kind of multiple when you look at like peers and public comps. The company has since, you know, delivered broadly 100% year-on-year revenue growth. They still have a lot of cash in the bank.
I think we are, you know, facing a time probably in 2023 when unless they raise money again, we will be looking to move this to a mark-to-model. As Dave implied, you know, I think there's some pent up NAV attribution that could come from a process like that. I think, you know, the delivery of Juspay has been extremely good and they occupy quite a unique position in India, which has become a strategically important market for payments companies and fintech and tech companies generally. I think there's a few tailwinds that could result in, you know, some kind of a meaningful change in the valuation of Juspay. We can't, you know, promise anything, but those are, those are the factors at play here.
Yeah. No, thanks, Alexis and Erman. We love to promise stuff, but I think what we're hoping to show, and I hate to use the word conservative over and over, and you know, a lot of companies and investors talk about it, but you talked about Revo there. Alexis talked about Juspay. You know, we're back and forth on Konfío, which we're valuing at less than our cash invested value, which obviously, you know, is below our preference stack value, which we can get back. We wanted to throw that term into a valuation. We've been very aggressive with Creditas in line with market, albeit, you know, it topped up its last round during the summer.
You know, and I know the market doesn't award this from a share price and a discount to NAV point of view, and I get that, but I guess we're looking to stand behind our NAV and throw all this conservatism out to the market and then benefit on the way back up.
I think that sounds very reasonable. Thanks for taking the questions.
Cool. Sorry, Ermin, just one more thing. Henrik was at me in terms of our covenants on the bond and nothing major to highlight with plenty of headroom in the covenants that they found.
Perfect. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Joachim Gunell from DNB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. Just a final one, with regards to the call it 30% of your NAV where you believe that perhaps that part of the portfolio is not necessarily entirely funded to break even yet. What are your thoughts here with regards to whether you are fully willing to take your pro rata share in incoming funding rounds or can you say anything about if there are any cases where you perhaps could be taking even.
If you are afraid that you'll have to take call it even beyond your pro rata share with regards to what we have seen with some call it investors who were attracted to the call it emerging market fintech opportunity, but is not necessarily as attracted to it anymore.
Hey, man. I thought there was rules about people having two questions, we'll go with it. What I'd say, Joachim, is that we're not, we're not forced to do anything. It's not. You know, we look at every investment decision, whether it's the first investment or the fifth investment in any company, you know, on a case by case and an individual basis. We've also got to a point in the cycle where capital is a bit more scarce. The investment decisions and processes are sharper or sharp as ever in our case. We put our capital to work where it has the best impact, from a NAV portfolio return on capital point of view.
We don't like our companies failing, but in the world that we play in, it can happen if companies don't make it. We look at each raise on a case by case basis, and we're as likely to put more money in as we're likely to put no money in. We're not on the hook for anything, and we're in a good position to call these. What we've looked to address from a NAV and a NAV important point of view is the top end of the portfolio first and foremost, because it's most logical important to us, and that's Creditas into Juspay and in Konfío.
Even below that, the Rupeek, the BlackBuck, the Solfácil, Gringo, names which some of those can get to breakeven with the current capital, look very, very good position to raise capital. That will be maybe with or without our capital. We're not feeling like we're about to look over the cliff on any name where it needs capital. We don't want to give them capital. Nobody gives them capital. They're in trouble. That doesn't that's not the case where we're at this point. Albeit we might have some micro-level situations like that as we go forward.
Perfect. Just the very final one with regards to that. Okay. If even if there are no obvious opportunities out there as we go into, say, mid-2023 and you hopefully can find some. Can you say anything whether you think that this strategy with one nuance shift where you took like 1%, 2% stakes in some interesting assets, whether that has worked out the way you would hope it would be as opposed to being a more, call it active owner on the board, et cetera?
Yeah. I think our natural bias is to take size stakes and be active, ideally in a positive way and be good stewards of our capital and be in the trenches with our companies and be very involved. There's nothing wrong with taking minor investments, especially if they're good return on capital investments. The bias would be for, you know, if we're gonna take a minority stake, small one like we did at Rupeek, but we built it up and now we've got a, not a board seat, but a shadow board seat in that company to build their position. BlackBuck was a smaller position again. I think our natural tendency is to go for those Gringo or Solfácil or Gringo-like stakes where we get, you know, size double digits %, and board representation.
It's more what we do, tried and tested.
Very good. Thank you both.
Cool. Good man.
Thank you for your question. There are no further question at the moment.
Super. Look, thank you operator and thank you everybody for dialing in and staying with us. This has been a long results call, probably our longest to date, indicative of the environment that we are in, but also I think growing investor and analyst interest in our stock. We respect that. We appreciate it. I hope the message is coming across clear from our side around conservativeness bouncing around the bottom, opportunity starting to lean forward. I think I can say at this point we are cautiously optimistic about 2023 while still conservative and playing some defense as we go because we're not out of the woods yet. Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you at the Q1 conference call.
That conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may hold.